Pumpkin and Ricotta Puffs with Avocado Green Salad

Mother's Day is one of the big promotion for retail stores and restaurants, you see the ads for gift ideas everywhere or ads for Mother's Day special at the local restaurants. We like to give kitchen appliances for my mother because she can use it to cook delicious food for us!  My husband bought me this Phillip's Air Flyer last year, although not a Mother's Day present but I just loved it!  It cooks wonderful crispy potatoes chips and chicken wings without using any oil.  It doesn't only fry food with less oil, you can also baked creamy potato gratin or pasta using its brownie pan.   It is a good kitchen helper that now sit permanently at my kitchen bench. The cooking time is shorter than a built in oven as it takes less time to heat up and the food get both sides cooked nicely.  The downside is that it only has a small cooking tray and the maximum temperature goes up to 200c.  However it's a great helper if you need an extra oven to cook up something small within a short time.

I roast the pumpkin using the Air Flyer and it takes only 12 minutes to get done.  Then I bake the puffs in the big oven.  The avocado salad goes well with the puffs, these day I just prefer something light liked this.  I'm expecting my kids to make me breakfast in bed, some raisin toast with a glass of oat milk would be nice!

Have a Happy Mother's Day!

Pumpkin and Ricotta Puffs with Avocado Green Salad
(make 8)

350g pumpkin
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
40g cashew, toasted and grounded
1 tablespoon parmesan cheese
2 tablespoon light ricotta cheese
extra 1/4 teaspoon salt
pinch of chilli powder
2 sheets of puff pastry
egg wash for glazing

Avocado Green Salad:
Leafy Mixed
1/4 of a whole avocado
lemon infused olive oil
white rice vinegar

Methods:

1. Cut off the skin and seed of the pumpkin and cut into cubes.  Season with salt and oil, toss through.  Then place into the cooking tray of the Air Flyer and cook for 12 minutes at 180c.
2. Mesh the cooked pumpkin with the back of the fork, add in the cashew, parmesan cheese, ricotta cheese and season with the extra salt and chilli powder.
3. Cut the puff pastry into quarter, brush the sides with egg.  Place a heap tablespoon of pumpkin mesh on a corner, seal.  Repeat for the rest of the pastry.
4. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Bake in hot oven, 230c until it puffs up and starting to turn golden brown, turn down to 180c until the puffs turn all golden brown. 
5. Rinse the leafy mix under the sink and drain, cut the avocado into cube, dress with the olive oil and vinegar.

Hummingbird cupcakes with marmalade icing

I made these cupcakes due to two mistakes, first I bought the wrong type of tinned pineapple for making pizza, second I poured 5 times more crushed pineapple into the cake batter instead of the required amount.  These sound like a kitchen disaster was approaching.....

I used the pineapple for the pizza anyway and it was not too bad.  Then the rest of the tin had to be consumed and I remembered there was a recipe of hummingbird cupcake using it.  The last time I made this cake, it didn't really reach my expectation, it's probably the recipe's fault. It also need a lot of ingredients to make this cake that you really need a plan to shop all the things you need.  So here we go, I'm just lucky to have all the ingredients at home, including the ripe bananas.

With a high hope of having another round of a trial of the recipe, I ended up with a puddle of cake batter by adding too much pineapple.  Should I add more ingredients to make more cupcakes or should I add more flour to thicken the batter?  The later option was a good choice as the cupcakes came out moist with a good balance of flavour.  My husband loved it and asked me what's in the cake, he named a few but couldn't name them all... so I bet him and won the game of naming ingredients.

Most icing for hummingbird cake used cream cheese, this one used homemade marmalade with whipped butter cream and that was the killer part of this cake!  It would be a great cake to serve at a high tea on Mother's Day!

Have you ever make something amazing by mistake?


Hummingbird cupcakes with marmalade icing

125g plain flour
125g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
125g caster sugar
115ml sunflower oil
2 eggs
150g mashed banana
1 1/2 tablespoon grated orange zest
60g grated carrot
60g desiccated coconut
440g tin of crushed pineapple

For the icing:
58g unsalted butter, softened
75g icing sugar, sieved
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 tablespoon marmalade

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 175c. Place the muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Beat the oil and sugar till creamy than add in one egg at a time and beat until well mixed.
3. Add in sieved flour, baking powder and cinnamon into the egg mixture and stir.  Then add in the rest of the ingredients and stir till combined.
4. Spoon the batter into the cases until 3/4 full.  Bake for 25 minutes or until cooked.  Cool the cake in the tin for 5 minutes.
5. Remove the cupcakes and cool the cake on a rack before icing.
6. For the icing: beat butter and icing sugar till light and fluffy, add the orange juice and marmalade and stir.  Smear the icing onto the cupcakes before taking a big bite!

Potato Salad with Japanese Mayo and Pine Nuts

This is one of my new creation and I eat this as a light meal on my meatless day or serve as a side salad with burgers.  As I found that having a potato salad with just potato is too plain, by adding some greens into it adds more fibre and the pine nuts simply is a nice garnish with a bit of a crunch.  I choose to use Japanese Mayonnaise because it has a full flavour of whole egg, bears in mind though it has 80% of fat so don't over dressing it as I know it is hard not to!  My sister fed her fussy 2 years old with this salad and she just sat quietly and ate them all.

Potato Salad with Japanese Mayo and Pine Nuts

4-5 baby potatoes
a bowl of leafy mix (fancy lettuce, baby spinach leaves, rockets and beetroot leaves)
a small handful of pine nuts, toasted
Japanese Mayonnaise
salt and coarse black pepper to taste

Method:

1. Peel the skin of the potatoes (you can leave the skin if you wish) and cut into cubes.  Cook the potatoes cubes into boiling water until cooked.  If you can poke a fork into the cubes, it is ready.
2. Drain the water and leave the potatoes cool.  Rinse the leafy mix with water and drain as well.
3. Put the leafy mix and potatoes into a big bowl.  Add the pine nuts and mayo.  Seasoned with salt and coarse black pepper before serving.  Enjoy!

Thai Style King Crab Salad

One year we went to Japan, our tour guide helped us to order some snow crab from Hokkaido express down to Tokyo.  We had watched many travel shows talking about how tasty the crab was so we didn't want to miss the chance while we were in Japan.  The crab was cooked and came with a pair of scissor to help cutting the shell.  It was one of the unforgettable moment we had in our trip.

I'd seen live Australian king crab in some Asian restaurants or in the aquarium but I'd never tasted it.  
The first time I saw it selling at Coles, I was wondering it would taste as good as the snow crab as both of them live in the cold region.  This crab salad hadn't disappointed us, the meat was not as strong as the mud crab but had more flavour than sand crab, it's flaky and sweet.  I like to serve mud crab as a hot dish and king crab is better to serve cold.

The importance of cooking Thai food is to balance the sweet and sour flavour, I do not have an exact measurement for this recipe as it's all up to your taste buds to tell you what to put in.

Thai Style King Crab Salad

King Crab claws (cooked)
cucumber
onion
chilli
coriander
mint
lime
salt & pepper
fish sauce

Method:
Remove crab meat from the shell.  Finely cut cucumber and onion, marinate with salt, then rinse and drain.  Squeeze out juice and add to the crab meat.  Add the chopped up the coriander, mint and chilli, seasoned with fish sauce, pepper, lime juice and sugar.  Serve cold.


   

Easter Bunny Popsticks

There is only a week away from Easter, this year I'm making chocolate bunny to give to people instead of store brought Easter eggs.  I found this "Make your own Easter Gifts" pack from IGA supermarket at $10.  It includes all the things you needed to make 12 chocolate bunnies.  I buy more chocolate melts and have been making many bunnies (I do lost count how many I've made as I eat some along the way...)

I have been experiment different flavour, and I like the Hundred & Thousand Bunny and Milk top bunny the most.  The pure white choc bunny takes longer time to set and it doesn't keep well at room temperature.  It would be great to have more mould so it would take me faster to do the job.  I found that reheating the melted chocolate is not good, so I put the extra chocolate into other chocolate mould to make something else rather than washing if off.  In my first lot of chocolate, I forget to press medium on the microwave and burn my chocolate so please be careful and never overheat the chocolate!

Aren't those bunnies adorable?  They're so easy to make and you should try it!

Happy Easter!

Easter Bunny Popsticks
(make 4 each)

For the milk chocolate bunny:
120g milk chocolate
Hundred & Thousand sprinkles

For the milk top bunny:
30g white chocolate
90g milk chocolate

Method:

1. Wipe the mould clean with paper. 
2. Melt chocolate in a microwave safe bowl on medium heat for 1 minute, then 30 second on medium heat until the chocolate is all melted. 
3. Use a spoon to spoon chocolate into each mould until half full.  Place a popstick into each mould, then tap onto the table to ease the air.  Fill with more chocolate and tap again.  Don't over fill and top with hundred & thousand sprinkles.  Wipe clean and put into fridge for 15 minutes or until set.  
4. For the milk top bunny: melt white chocolate on medium heat until melted.  Spoon chocolate into mould, tap off air and then put into fridge to set.  Meanwhile, melt the milk chocolate on medium heat and lay a popstick into each mould.  Spoon the milk chocolate over the milk chocolate and keep in the fridge for about an hour or until set.

White Chocolate Fairy Cupcakes

Princesses and fairies, didn't we grown up from these lovely imagination?  When my daughter was little, she would wear her princess dress and crown to the shopping centre.  Everyone would waved at my little SnowWhite.  Her dress up box were filled with costumes, fairy wands and wings.  When her little friends came over for a play, they all dress up and became princesses or fairies from the far far away land.

I also become the fairy, the tooth fairy when my kids lose their baby teeth.  Kids wake up in the morning would find their teeth replaced by gold coins.  One time, my daughter lost her tooth into the drain while brushing her teeth. We wrote a little note to the tooth fairy to explain everything and luckily she found it and a gold coin was rewarded.  I often told them to brush their teeth probably because bad teeth would be taken by goblins.  I would soon retired from being the tooth fairy as my daughter had grown up and my son only has a few teeth to lose.  However,  I probably will be the Easter buddy and Mrs Santa for a long  time.

This white chocolate fairy cupcake had brought back many sweet memories to me..... and I made them for one of our staff's birthday because she had been a sweetheart to us.


White Chocolate Fairy Cupcakes
(make 12)

125g butter, softened
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
125g self-raising flour
75g white choc chips
1 tablespoon milk

Topping and filling:
strawberry jam
thickened cream, whipped
strawberries, halves
edible glitter
mini sugared love hearts

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 190c. Place paper cases into a 12 hole muffin tin.
2. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add beaten eggs and vanilla essence until well mix.
3. Add in sifted flour and fold it into the mixture, stir in white choc chips. Add a tablespoon of milk or a little more to make a soft, dropping mixture.
4. Spoon the mixture into muffin cases until 2/3 full.  Bake for 15 minutes or until a light golden brown.
5. Cool in wire-rack.  When the cake is completely cooled, use a knife to cut along the top of the cake, take the top out and fill the inside with strawberry jam and cover the top.
6. Pipe the cream onto the cake starting from the side of the cake, topped with strawberries or love hearts, then sprinkle with glitter. Magic may be coming on its way!

Banana cake to share with my neighbour

This banana cake is so moist and you must use four cavendish bananas and not less for the recipe.  I've used two bananas or added chopped walnuts and it got too dry or too lumpy to eat.  The best is to add a few walnuts on top and keep it as simple as it is.  Nice to go along with a cuppa and it really remind me of the banana cake we had in Hong Kong.

I took this freshly baked cake to visit my neighbour for morning tea.  He was diagnosed with a very rare cancer and undergoing chemo. His taste buds were gone but he could taste the bananas of this cake.  I'm so pleased that he enjoyed my baking. It's only a little thing I could do to cheer him and his wife up. His wife had just recovered from cancer a few years ago and they decided to retire and enjoyed life a bit more. Unfortunately, bad luck has come along for them! Let's hope thing will get better for them after the treatments and God bless for them.
 

Simple Banana Cake

4 ripes bananas, mashed
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/3 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
a pinch of salt
3 walnuts (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven at 175c. Sift plain flour and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl.
2. Combine butter, egg, sugar and vanilla in another bowl, add the mashed banana, salt, then add the flour mixture.  Stir till well combined.
3. Pour the mixture into a paper lined loaf tin. Top cake with three walnuts.  Bake for 45 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean after inserting into the cake.

Source: banana cake from Christine's Recipes