orange almond cake

Finally on the mend and back at work with only a lingering cough. Being sick is just the worst, and I was definitely very miserable.

Feeling better means I'm back in the kitchen but still feeling like something pretty simple and basic, I whipped up this orange almond cake. I can't take any credit for the recipe as I picked it up in a cookbook somewhere, the name and place evades me.

I found this cake to be just so moist and flavoursome, holding its form perfectly even with no flour. I shared with my family who was also surprised at the moistness of the cake.

I didn't have almond meal, but had plenty of almonds on hand, so I processed 200 g in the food processor until fine.

Ingredients

(serves 8-10)

2 oranges

1 1/2 c almond meal (or 200g almonds ground)

6 eggs, lightly whisked

1 tsp bi-carb soda

1/2 c raw sugar

Heat oven to 160 C and line a spring form cake dish with baking paper

Place oranges in a pot and bring to the boil.

Simmer for 45 minutes, drain and cool.

Place in a food processor and blend until smooth.

Fold in almond meal, eggs, sugar and bi-carb gently.

Pour mixture into the tin and place in oven to bake for 45-50 minutes (until firm).

Remove from oven and cool.

Serve and enjoy.

garlic, lime and chili mussels with spelt pasta

It's like a ghost town on this blog a the moment.. and not for any other reason than the fact that I am down and out with the flu.

I am truly miserable right now, coughing, sneezing, moaning and carrying around roll of toilet paper to blown my nose. I feel like I'm suffering the 'man-flu'.

Joel has been great, bringing me cups of peppermint tea first thing in the morning and offering to get me anything I need. I am so glad my husband works from home.

Enough of my misery. I haven't been adventurous in the kitchen recently, as you can imagine. However, as they say on the cooking shows - here is something I prepared earlier.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

70g wholemeal spelt pasta

1kg organic live mussels (in shell)

1 tblsp olive oil

1/2 garlic sprig, minced

1 lime, finely grated rind and juiced

1/2 small red hot chili, finely sliced

1/4 c dry sherry

2 handfuls of green peas, roughly chopped

1/4 c finely chopped parsley

salt and pepper to taste

Bring a medium sized pot of water to the boil and add pasta, cook until al-dente then drain and set aside.

As the pasta is cooking, heat the oil in a saucepan/wok and add garlic, chili, sherry and lime rind - cook until fragrant and sherry has mostly evaporated.

Turn off heat and stir through the peas.

Bring a large pot/saucepan of salted water to the boil and add the mussels.

Boil for about 5-7 minutes until the mussels have opened.

With two-thirds of the mussels, remove the flesh out of the shell and add to the garlic mix - keeping the remaining mussels in the shell for decoration.

Re-heat the saucepan/wok and add in the pasta, parsley and lime juice tossing and heating through for a minute or two.

Serve and decorate with the mussels in shell.

vegan risotto with truffle oil

You may not realise it, but I love any excuse to add truffle to a meal. I usually add it to a mushroom based dish and this one was not going to get away without a drizzle or two.

It’s such a whole sensory experience that compares to none other. When you sit down to a meal and smell the truffle, it’s like your first kiss, every time. Your heart skips a beat and you can’t wait to dig in, but you want to take it slow and savour every moment. What an analogy huh!

Risotto is an awesome one pot meal to spare you that laborious task of washing up too much. Adding to that beautiful experience.

I don’t know about you, but usually I find myself using heaps of pots and baking dishes when preparing dinner. It’s not so bad because I wash as I go – we’ve got a pretty tight kitchen so bench space is hard to come by. Actually, if I think about it, every night the dishes (bar the ones we eat on) are all washed up and stacked before we sit down to eat. Joel likes that because he is always on washing up duty but there is rarely much to do.

Ingredients

(serves 4)

1 tblsp olive oil

1 brown onion, finely sliced

200g button mushrooms, finely sliced

1 c arborio rice (risotto rice)

2 ½ c water

1 bunch asparagus, sliced into 1cm rounds

1 c peas, frozen or fresh

salt and pepper to taste

Optional: Tartufo Bianco (white truffle oil)

Heat oil in a heavy based saucepan, add onion and stir until softened.

Next add mushrooms and stir fry for approximately 5 minutes.

Add rice and mix for a further 2 minutes.

Then add 1 c of water to the pan and simmer until water has been absorbed, stirring minimally.

Next mix in the asparagus and add the remaining water.

Cover saucepan to cook through, approximately 15 minutes.

Finally add the peas stirring the risotto until the peas are cooked.

Season with salt and pepper, drizzle with truffle oil and serve.

carrot cake muffins

Hooray, the days are reaching summer proportions. It felt like the coldest winter ever, but we seem to be on the other side of it now and I'm looking forward to spending time at the beach.

Anyway, to celebrate the dramatic weather change, I decided to do some baking. I know, crazy.. why would you turn the oven on in 30C+ weather? Because I wanted some carrot cake, that's why.

I whipped these up, left them to cool then took a plate to my parents place to share. Because what better way to celebrate (and test) than to share. 

Mum said that the muffin was delicious. She even closed her eyes as she ate saying 'you better make sure you put in your blog that your mum loved these'. Done!

Dad said there's a real 'wang' to the icing before the coconut kicks in and that he loved the cake.

I told Joel what Dad said, and he started saying it. Great, now the word wang was being thrown around in reference to my muffins. Nice. Still, it didn't spoil the beauty of them!

Ingredients

(makes 12)

Cake

3 carrots, grated

1 c plain wholemeal flour

1 tsp bi-carb soda

1/4 c raisins

1/4 c walnuts, slightly crushed

1 tsp mixed spice

2 eggs, lightly whisked

1/4 c water

2 tblsp sugar

1/4 c coconut oil

'Icing'

2 tblsp creamed coconut, warmed

2 tsp water

1/2 lime, grated rind and juice

1 tsp agave syrup

Heat oven to 160C and line a muffin tray.

Combine all ingredients for the cake in a large bowl and mix until well combined.

Spoon a tablespoon size amount into each muffin hole in the tray.

Place in oven for 20-30 minutes until cake springs back to the touch.

Remove and cool entirely.

Assembly

Combine all ingredients for the icing in a small bowl until well combined.

Using a butter knife, spread the mixture over the cooled muffins.

Enjoy!

vegan apple pie

Okay, okay, okay, so my craving for apple pie was not entirely quenched by the tea that I came up with the other day. It kept coming to mind that I just wanted to enjoy a real, warm apple pie - and I finally gave in.

Joel hovered the whole time that I was making this. I've never seen him so interested in something that I am making. He would just wonder into the kitchen, sip on his beer and say 'mmm I love pie'.

The smell that filled the house was this warm, caramely rich and deep appley cinnamon smell that made it hard not to dig in as soon as the pie came out of the oven.

To top off this evening, a book that I have been eyeing off for over a year now has finally been released. I have it downloaded on the kindle app on my ipad ready to go.

So, I am going to love and leave you as I have a date with a book and some pie.

Ingredients

(makes 6-8 slices)

Pastry

2 c white spelt flour

1 tblsp fine sugar

3 tblsp non-dairy butter

45 ml iced water

Filling

4 apple (skin on), cored and sliced 1cm

1/4 c currants

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tblsp water

Pastry

In a medium sized bowl combine flour, sugar and salt.

Rub butter into flour until it resembles fine bread crumbs.

Create a well in the middle and slowly add water, cutting it in with 2 forks. 

Add enough water for the pastry to come together without being sticky.

Roll into a ball and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Cut 1/4 of the pastry out and place back in the refrigerator.

Roll out the 3/4 of the pastry between two baking paper sheets.

Remove one side of the paper and invert into baking dish, press down and slowly remove the top sheet.

Trim off excess pastry and use to fill in any gaps.

Using a fork, poke holes in the pastry and place in oven for 20 minutes until golden.

Remove and cool.

Filling

While the pastry is in the refrigerator cooling, start the filling.

Combine all ingredients in a medium sized pot and heat on medium for 20 or so minutes until apples are softened.

Remove from heat and cool.

Assembly

Fill the pastry dish with apples.

Then, roll out the final 1/4 of pastry and cut into 2cm strips.

Lay each strip down diagonal, about 3cm apart down the length of the dish.

Repeat in the opposite direction.

Return to oven to bake for a further 20 minutes until golden.

red lentil burgers

Is life just busier? I feel the days are going faster than ever and any spare time that I have gets filled up pretty quickly. I don't mind though, I love fitting as much into life as possible that's just living, right?!

After a busy weekend and a full day at work I came home, chopped the fire wood, started the fire, then got started on these beauties.

Luckily there were heaps more burgers than I anticipated which means I can stock the freezer for a quick lunch option on work days. Sometimes with all the rushing, it's good to have a healthy back-up meal that you can defrost for a quick satisfying lunch or dinner and this is surely one.

Ingredients

(makes 20)

1 1/2 c split red lentils, soaked for 6-8 hours

1 c walnuts

2 carrots, grated

1 brown onion, grated

1 c besan flour

1 tsp bi-carb soda

1 tblsp savoury yeast flakes

2 eggs, lightly whisked

olive oil, for greasing

salt and pepper, to taste

Heat oven to 180 C and line a large baking tray with parchment paper then lightly grease with oil.

Bring lentils to boil in a heavy based saucepan.

Cook for 15-20 minutes until soft, then drain and set aside to cool.

Add walnuts to a food processor/blender and pulse until crumbled.

Mix walnuts, carrots and onion in a medium sized bowl.

Next add in the lentils and remainder of ingredients, mixing until well combined.

Using wet hands, scoop small handful sizes of the mixture then roll into a ball.

Place on tray and push down lightly to flatten out.

Repeat until all the mixture has been used.

Place tray in oven for 25 minutes, then flip the burgers and bake for a further 15 minutes.

Serve!

herbed chickpea salad

Absolutely love chickpeas and it has been too long between friends.

Like, seriously, way too long. I even expressed to Joel how excited I was to be having chickpeas for dinner. He sarcastically responded by saying, ‘that’s great honey’.

As you may have read in the last post, we did a whole lot of gardening on the weekend and I had to harvest all my herbs. I don’t really like using up all my crops as I feel safer with still some sitting there. It’s like, but what if I want some fresh mint later in the week? What will I do then! I even get a little precious and won’t use as much as I like, just so there is always something filling the pots. It makes me feel wealthy in a very green way.

Anyways, with the massive influx of herbs in my kitchen, I have been throwing them into everything. Handfuls of mint in some mineral water, chives in my cabbage wraps for lunch, parsley on EVERYTHING.

Chickpeas are so tasty and make an awesome protein packed ‘throw together’ salad-like meal. And best of all, they are inexpensive. Joel and I lived off legumes when we travelled Europe. They were the most filling, affordable meal addition for us vegetarians/pescatarians, on a very tight budget. 30 Euro cents (40c in Aus) would get you a 500g jar of pre-prepared beans, peas, lentils etc and would easily stretch 2 meals each.

You can get super creative with chickpea salads. I’ve just thrown in whatever I felt like when digging through the refrigerator, but any fresh vegetables will work.

Ingredients

(makes 4 serves)

1 ½ c dried chickpeas, soaked for 6-8 hours (or 2 drained and rinsed tins)

1 spanish red onion, finely diced

1 cucumber, diced

½ c of complimentary fresh herbs (mint, chives, parsley etc)

½ lime juice

salt and pepper to taste

If you are using dried chickpeas, place them in a pot of water and bring to the boil.

Simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Drain and set aside to cool.

Add all ingredients in a medium bowl and toss well to combine.

Place in refrigerator for 30 minutes - 1 hour for flavours to infuse.

Serve and enjoy.

dairy-free lamingtons

Lamingtons were a childhood favourite of mine.

They are one of my first baked treats that really worked out well for me, every time. From about the age of 13/14 I loved being in the kitchen baking. I have fond memories of hanging out on the bench helping mum while we made ANZAC cookies.

When I got the gist of baking on my own, most afternoons after school I would be straight into the kitchen and browse through my favourite cookbook of all time – Woman's Weekly ‘Sweet Old Fashioned Favourites’. The go-tos would be: Devil’s Food Cake, Vanilla Slice, Coconut Ice, ANZAC Cookies and of course Lamingtons.

Now that I am older and my tastes have changed, I find myself baking less and less. But I was feeling nostalgic and decided to come up with a dairy-free, low-gi option for one of my all-time favourite homemade bakes.

I was amazed at how similar to the old version these were! The main difference was the coconut sugar in the sponge as it added a deeper rich caramel flavour. Yum!

Ingredients

(makes 12)

Sponge

3 eggs

1/2 c coconut sugar

1/2 c self raising flour

1/2 tsp bi-carb soda

Icing

1/2 c cocoa powder

1/4 c agave syrup

1/8 tsp stevia powder

1 tblsp cocoa butter

1 tblsp creamed coconut or coconut oil

1 vanilla bean, scraped

1/4 c water

tiny pinch of salt

chipped coconut

Sponge

Heat oven to 150 degrees and line a 9"x12" baking dish with baking paper.

Beat eggs in a medium bowl until thick and creamy.

Slowly add coconut sugar until well dissolved.

Next, slowly fold through sifted self-raising flour and bi-carb soda.

Pour mixture into the dish and bake in oven for 20 mins.

Remove from oven and cool completely.

Icing

Bring a saucepan to boil, half filled with water.

Next combine all ingredients for the 'icing' in a small bowl and stir constantly over the boiling water until butter is melted.

Assembly

Slice sponge into small squares.

Dip each square into 'icing' then roll into the chipped coconut and place on a plate.

Repeat the process for all the squares and place the plate in the refrigerator to cool.

Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to a week.

everything from scratch pizza

I love to make everything from scratch. Knowing what goes into the food you make/eat is so important these days. So many times have I looked at the back of packaging and not known 9 out of 10 of the ingredients listed.

Recently, I was having a lunch with my dad and we were at this café where their specialty was crepes. Dad was egging me on, so when I asked if it was dairy-free, the lady informed me that they pre-buy their crepes and that she would check. She started reading the list on the back to me: Energy, Fibre, Protein, Carbohydrates, Sodium. She then proudly announced that ‘nope, no dairy here’. I was stunned! She was reading out the nutritional information rather than the ingredients! I had no idea that some people may not know the difference between the ingredients and nutritional information. Not to mention that maybe everyone isn’t as much of a control freak as I am, and may not even pay attention to the ingredients of the food they are eating. It sure was an eye opener..

Anyways, to finish the story, I got my hands on the packet and read that it did in deed have dairy, so opted for a smoked salmon salad instead.

For a while now, I have been wanting to make this caramelised onion and pumpkin spelt pizza - ever since the organic food festival a couple of months back.

Ingredients

(8 slices)

300g pumpkin, skinned, deseeded and cubed

1 tsp olive oil

Dough

7g dried yeast

2 tsp raw sugar

2/3 c warm water

1 c wholemeal spelt flour (+ extra for kneading)

1 tblsp olive oil

pinch of salt

Sauce

5 fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped

8 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tblsp water

2 tsp malt extract

2 tsp apple cider vinegar

pinch of salt

Caramelised Onions

2 large brown onions, finely sliced

1 tblsp olive oil

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

fresh parsley to serve

Firstly, heat oven to 200 degrees.

Toss pumpkin and olive oil and place on a baking tray, in the oven for 30-40 mins.

Next, you will need to start the dough.

Whisk yeast, sugar and water in a small jug and set aside for 2 mins to activate.

Place spelt flour, oil and salt in a medium bowl.

Once the yeast is bubbly and activated, mix it into flour - knead until elastic and smooth (adding extra flour as needed).

Roll into a ball and place into a flour lined bowl. Cover and set aside to double in size (I find it helps to place the bowl above the warm oven).

Combine all ingredients for the sauce in a heavy based pan.

Simmer on medium heat until sauce-like (approximately 10-20 mins).

While you are waiting for your sauce to simmer down, add onions, oil and vinegar to a medium saucepan.

Heat on medium and toss the onions until softened and caramelised.

Remove from heat and set aside.

Assemble

Ensure the oven is on the highest heat setting.

Roll out dough on a floured pizza stone or baking tray (approximately 1.5 cm thick).

Spread over the tomato sauce, then the caramelised onions.

Finally, sprinkle over the roasted pumpkin.

Place in hot oven and bake for 35 mins or until the edges start to darken.

Remove from oven, garnish with parsley and slice into 8 portions.

Enjoy!