my new favourite cake recipe

Yesterday on one of my favourite blogs was this recipe for an easy orange cake.

As oranges are in season at the moment and I got a box at 69c a kilo the other day at the fruit and veg I thought I may as well try this cake.

It is made using a whole orange and the food processor- too easy!

Yesterday I made it and just dusted it with icing sugar. 

It was so yummy that I made another one today.

Today I was a little bit more fancy and iced it with an orange butter icing and even made some candied peel to go on top.

I was feeling a little bit Masterchef after watching Donna Hay on there last night!

 I have never made this before but as I was about to make some lemon butter I noticed the recipe on the opposite page and thought I would give it a go.

I think next time I make this I might make a chocolate ganache to go on top. 

Orange and chocolate together are one of my favourite food combos!

 As we have heaps of lemons at the moment courtesy of our tree I thought I would also make a lemon version. 

I added 1/2 cup extra sugar to sweeten it a little more. 

It too was delicious - it is a lovely moist cake.

I now have plans to make candied lemon slices to grace some further cakes.

Some lemon with your tea, dear?

(This beautiful cup and saucer set are for The Girl - a little inheritance from my aunt and the table cloth was my grandmother's.)

lemon season

It is lemon season again and so with our tree loaded with lemons out come the lemon recipes.

As I know I posted about these last year I will just put in some links for you to look back on.

This is the link for yummy lemon tartlets - so easy we had these for morning tea today - yummo!

Here is the link for lemon butter I made a batch a couple of weeks ago and we are down to our last jar so it will soon be time to make another.

I also found a recipe for some lemon ice cream that I am going to try so when I do I will let you know how it goes.

pork wontons

These wontons are super easy and fun to make.

We tend to do these on a Sunday night for tea.

We use 500g of pork mince and two packets of wontons.

 Add whatever flavourings you like to the mince- we used a slash of soy, a splash of fish sauce and some green ginger wine- you could use powdered or fresh ginger.

Simply put a teaspoon of mince on your wonton wrapper, brush the edges with water and fold- this is the fun part and we end up with all sorts of interesting shapes that the kids come up with.

You can find traditional folds on the net here. 

We cooked half in the deep fryer a few at a time and steamed or boiled half.

The two sauces were a Vietnamese dipping sauce and a plum sauce both found at the supermarket without any nasty additives in them.

I often make my own concoction up with various Asian ingredients in my pantry, soy sauce, oyster sauce, honey, ginger etc.

The consensus was that the fried ones tasted better with the thicker plum sauce and the steamed with the thinner dipping sauce.

These would be great as finger food for a party.

homemade sausage rolls

B4 requested homemade sausage rolls for lunch on his birthday.

These are really yummy and use ordinary mince not sausage mince.

I used kangaroo as that's what we buy these days, but any mince would be fine.

I actually started to write out this recipe when B2 came into the room and said, "Haven't you done that before?", sure enough when I looked I found I had done a post on it last year here. 

So if you want to make these delicious sausage rolls look them up.

Note to self check before posting if you have already shared the recipes. 

I found after posting my apple pie recipe that I had done it last year as well! OOPS!

roasted vegetable and chicken soup

This delicious soup is something that I experimented with when I had the flu and wanted to make chicken soup to nourish and heal me. 

Unfortunately I spoiled the first version by adding noodles. 

So for some time I have been meaning to go back and make it again without the noodles and see what it was like.

It was divine and even VCH who is a very fussy soup eater loved it, taking it to watch B1 play soccer one very cold Friday Night.

It was a rainy week - definitely soup making weather.

We had had chicken biriyani the night before so I took the bones and added celery, carrot, onion, garlic, parsley and salt and water to make a stock. 

Meanwhile I cut up potato, pumpkin, carrot, sweet potato into soup sized pieces and drizzled them with olive oil. 

I added a whole head of garlic with the top cut off and roasted them in the oven until cooked and browned.

As I already had the leftover chicken from the biriyani I just cut that up into small pieces and drizzled a little olive oil over the top and popped it in with the veges for the final 5-10 minutes to give it a roasted effect. 

The first time I made this I started with a piece of Chicken Maryland, where I roasted the chicken then stripped off the meat and made the stock with the bones.

When the stock was cooked I strained it and then put it back into the pot and added my veges and chicken. 

To thicken the soup I took a little bit of stock and mixed in some organic gluten free gravy mix (you could just use flour or cornflour) then added it back into the soup and cooked it until it had thickened slightly.

Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

It was so yummy! 

I was going to try a bowl of soup with some peas added to give that true roast dinner effect, but the soup was all gone before I had a chance.

I am definitely going to make this again starting with a small whole chicken to make enough for our family of 8.

scones with rosella jam and cream

I finally made scones and served them with rosella jam and whipped cream.

They were delicious and I am sure we will make them a few more times while we have still have rosella jam left.

Yummm!!!