Picnic treats

Oh dear, I've been terribly absentee lately, please forgive me! With starting my new job and getting organised for Christmas I've just been so tired and not really up for writing anything. But I'm back and I promise to try harder in the future!

Today's post will be about picnic style foods.

My pulled pork is amazing if I do say so myself, I think food isn't something you need to be humble about! Especially when it's so easy, you just rub a shoulder of pork with garlic salt and pop in a slow cooker, cover with coke (not diet!) and leave for as long as possible, I like to leave it at least 8 hours. When the meat is tender and literally falling apart, peel off the fat layer, I like to cook with it on for flavour and juiciness but then pull it off 

after because it's rubbery and yucky to eat. Transfer to meat to a big bowl or plate and tip out the coke, saving about 2 cups worth. Shred the meat with two forks and put the pulled mess back into the slow cooker, pour in about half a cup of barbecue sauce and then some of the saved 'coke' unless you reach the level of desired juiciness. Now all you have to do is let it warm back up and then voila!

Now this pork is amazing in sandwiches, burgers, or just on its own, you could even mix it through a salad! But my favourite way of eating it is with roast sweet potato. Just slice partways down the middle of a washed sweet potato, wrap in foil, and then put on a lined tray....the juices might leak out that's all, and roast in the oven 180degrees for about an hour until soft. Then just squeeze the sides opens and pour the meat into the middle. This is good hot or cold.

Another item I like to take to picnics is my creamy potato salad.

In a large bowl put some frozen peas, sweet corn, chopped capsicum, and really any veggies you like.

Peel and chop some potatoes into bite sized pieces then boil until tender. Add the hot potato to the veggie bowl. 

Fry up some bacon until crispy and crunchy then chop or cut into small chunks and add to bowl. Mix everything around.

In a separate bowl add 1/3c mayo, 1 crushed clove of garlic, 1/4t mustard, 3-4 drops of lemon juice and mix well. You can add some whole grain mustard if you like. 

Mix the mayo mix into the potato mix and stir well. And voila! And easy potato salad. This recipe can be tweaked to make a pasta salad too if you just swap the potato for cooked pasta.

Cornish pasties are a must for quick and easy deliciousness that can be eaten hot or cold.

Into a bowl grate a carrot, potato, and half an onion. Squeeze out the extra moisture.

Add 500g of mince and 1t Worcestershire sauce and mix well. Now how you present this is up to you. You can make it like a sausage roll, spreading the mix across one edge of the thawed puff pastry and rolling it up, getting two rolls out of each sheet. Or you can make it look more like a pasty, cut circles out of the pastry, place the filling in the middle and pull up the sides to meet, squishing them together with a dab of water.

Either way works well, after you've shaped them all you have to do is pop them on a lined tray, spray with oil and crack some salt over the top for yummy pastry. Then just pop them in a 180 degree oven until the pastry is golden brown and the filling is cooked, this could take up to half an hour.

Deliciously divine piña colada cupcakes

Ok so this recipe is absolutely amazing and is one of my most frequently requested treats and sweets. So I thought I'd share it with you. Now when you make the batter it will looks super runny and super tasty but try not to eat the whole think before you cook it! And don't worry about the runnyness it will still cook ok, I will admit first time I made it I was worried too but it was super yummy. 

Also for the frosting make sure the cream cheese and butter are soft before you beat them, otherwise you will get a lumpy yucky frosting.

Ingredients:

[For Cupcake]

1/3 C coconut rum

3/4 C coconut milk

1/4 C pineapple juice

1 t vanilla

1 1/2 C plain flour

1 t bicarbonate of soda

1/4 t salt

1/2 C butter - room temp

1 C+3T caster sugar

3 large eggs - room temp

1 C dessicated or shredded coconut

1 C crushed pineapple

[Frosting]

250 g cream cheese - room temp

1/4 C butter - room temp

2 C icing sugar

3 T coconut cream

Method:

[For cupcake]

Preheat oven to 180 degrees

In a small bowl combine rum, milk, juice, and vanilla.

In a medium sized bowl, whisk the flour, bicarb, and salt together.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add eggs, beating well after each.

Alternate adding flour mix and rum mix, beating well after each addition. You do not need to add all the liquid.

Add the coconut and pineapple.

Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full

Bake for 25 minutes or until cupcakes bounce back when lightly touched.

[For Icing]

Beat cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy.

Slowly mix in icing sugar then mix in coconut cream.

Pipe onto cupcakes.

End result.....I think you'll agree its delish!

Recipe: snack crumbles

I had a lot of kinda mushy pears that I had to use up ASAP so I whipped up a super fast crumble. It was even faster because I had the crumble topping ready made in the freezer.

So in a small saucepan I mixed together 4 small pears and 2 apples, peeled and finely diced, and a large handful of sultanas. I added about 3 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of water and if I'm really honest about 2 teaspoons of mixed spice because I really like the Christmassy flavour. Then I simmered it all together for about 10 minutes. As you can see from the picture I have these individual aluminium baking cases which I spread the mixture across.

Grabbing the crumble bag out of the freezer I sprinkled some on top of each pear mix and popped it in the oven for about fifteen minutes to get some colour on top.

The topping is plain flour, sugar, shredded coconut, and rolled oats mixed with butter. I couldn't possibly tell you the measurements because I do this by feel. But If I had to guess I'd say 1/3c flour, 1/4 c coconut, 1/4c oats, 1/4c sugar, and 3 tablespoons of butter. 

Once the mini crumbles cool I wrapped them in foil, labelled them and popped them in the freezer. They'll be great for quick snacks warmed up in the oven, or to take to work and eat cold. 

So give these a shot, or use your own fillings, they are easily customisable to your favourite fruits or flavours.

Garden wall

So today I added more plants to my wall. We don't have much of a garden but we do have a wall that has full sun although on the floor allows for part shade. Lately I've been expanding my little garden.

I started with herbs, very easy to grow and require little effort. I now have thyme, rosemary, coriander, mint, oregano, and parsley both. These I grew from seedlings. But now I'm one upping my game and trying to grow rosemary and parsley from seeds. In some tiny terracotta pots that I painted with green paint and chalkboard paint i planted the rosemary and half the parsley which will hopefully be grown enough to make super cute Xmas gifts. 

As you can see in the large pot at the bottom there are some tiny tufts of green...a new addition of carrots! Hopefully they'll be awesome and go well with my new capsicum plant and older pots of spring onion, spinach, and garlic. Not to mention my jug of leeks....did you know that you can re grow the ends of leeks in a little bit of water?! I'm very excited to watch them grow in a new glass jug.

I start my new job tomorrow, and I will admit to feeling very scared and nervous about it. To mark my entrance into the adult workforce today i planted some seeds of bok choy with the idea that it's a fresh start, a new beginning. 

I'll admit though I'm not very good at gardening so once they're ready to be harvested I'll have no idea what I'm doing! But I guess I'll figure it out when it comes to it.

Now my indoor plants are also super cute. In this photo they're outside because it was quite cold in my office and I wanted to give them a bit of sun. But usually they're kept in a greenhouse from ikea in my office, or along my windowsill. My greenhouse plants are grown in mugs or cups and are super cute in a weird way. 

The little pots are the rosemary/ parsley gifts to be.

Too many distractions in the kitchen!

We all make mistakes. Especially  in the kitchen. 

Today I made my banana bread muffins. Now they're just banana bread cooked in cupcake cases for ease of freezing and eating for breakfast. And today I tried something new by adding a touch of mixed spice and about half a cup of oats. The problem was I got distracted by trying to make a cool logo for my blog that time flew and I forgot all about them. Luckily I remembered in time so they didn't burn but were awfully brown. Oh well, still good!

This morning I made an apple and pear strudel, I've never made that before but wanted to have a crack and I had heaps of pears left. Having only scrappy bits of Filo pastry left I layered it up and sprayed each bit with oil. Next time I'll stick to melted butter for the sheer difference in flavour, and I'd use a lot less pastry. I was worried it wouldn't wrap properly and I overdid it a bit! But it was yummy and full of flavour from the apple, pear, and sultana filling. I had a teeny amount of filling lefts over so I quickly whipped up a crumble topping using butter, flour, sugar, oats, and coconut. I popped the filling in a small pie case from woollies I think, sprinkled the crumble mix on top (and froze the extra ), then popped it in the oven. Once it had cooled I stuck it in a bag and took it to work for an after lunch treat. I was so pleased with it I have a new crumble flavour! Typically I made apple or apple and raspberry crumble but now I can include pear!

Clearly not my best day in the kitchen but given the fact that I worked today and have a really sore arm/wrist from said work, the fact that I got two dishes out is pretty good. 

Frozen smoothies

Lately I've been inspired to try new things in the kitchen. Now this is partly for my cookbook 'Kitchen Magic' and partly because my new job is inciting a feeling of change. Instead of squashing this down I'm going to embrace it!

I'm more of a night owl than a early bird, I mean seriously it's so bright all the time here, at least at night it's quiet and i have a much wider range of freedom around the house. I definitely prefer to be alone in the kitchen so I can really spread out and make what I want without judgement. So I quite often cook late at night after my mum has gone to bed. My point is though that breakfast is my least favourite meal of the day.

When I have to get up in the morning and need to have breakfast I find myself feeling very unenthusiastic and really quite lazy. So for some timesavers that let me have ten more minutes in bed I've begun experimenting. I started by freezing individually wrapped muffins for a quick and easy breakfast. I even tried healthier ones with carrot in! Not my favourite texture but ill experiment more with the next batch.

And now...now I'm trying breakfast smoothies! I generally don't drink them very often but I'm thinking if I have them literally prepped then I'll have no reason not to. There wasn't much range of fruits at the local market so all I got were apples and pears which was very disappointing. But that's ok! 

I probably should've googled and tried specific recipes but I really just let loose my random side. 

Because I wasn't sure how it would work i tried both blending then freezing the smoothie, and leaving it chunky when froze to be blended when I want one. So I made two batches of each 'flavour' and stuck them in the freezer.  So all I have to do on an early morning before work is grab a blended one and let it defrost a little before popping it in a glass to drink. Or quickly blend up a batch and enjoy.

Also I wanted to make it feel a little breakfasty I added some breakfast oats...you know, the ones you pop in the microwave with some milk and then force yourself to eat. It made the texturea little strange but should help to keep me fuller for longer.

So do you have any super delicious smoothie recipes I should try?

Recipe: Fruit Mince Muffins

For a Christmassy snack and a deliciously scented house try these yummy muffins.

Ingredients:
300g Plain flour
75g Brown sugar
1 1/2 t Baking powder
1 t Bicarbonate soda
1 t Ground cinnamon
1/4t Allspice
250g Fruit mince
300ml Buttermilk
75ml Milk
4 T Vegetable oil
1 Egg
Icing sugar, to dust

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease or line the muffin pans.
2. Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate soda in a bowl. Add the cinnamon, pecans and fruit mince and stir to combine.
3. In a separate jug, mix together the buttermilk, milk, oil and egg. Fold into the dry ingredients until just combined.
4. Fill the greased muffin pans with the mixture and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until cooked through. Set aside to cool slightly. Dust with icing