Olive Oil Raspberry Cake

It's been a long and busy week, but despite this my Mum and I have kept to our word by making lots of new and different recipes. I just haven't had the time to post them! This cake is one of the best ones I've tasted because it is very light. This was because Mum had used 2 ingredients that I have never associated with light cakes before - olive oil and apple juice. Very easy to make as well. Here it is:

INGREDIENTS
4 eggs, at room temperature
2 cups caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup extra light olive oil
1 cup apple or pear juice
3 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
300g fresh or frozen raspberries*
1 tbsp icing sugar#

1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees. Grease and line the base and sides of a pan with baking paper, allowing a 2cm overhang at both long sides.
2. Using an electric mixer, beat eggs, caster sugar and vanilla in a large bowl on high speed for 3 minutes or until pale and thick. Stir in olive oil and apple juice. Sift flour and baking powder together over the egg mixture. Fold gently until combined.
3. Pour two-thirds of cake mixture into the prepared pan. Top with half the raspberries. Pour in remaining cake mixture. Top with remaining raspberries. Bake cake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Stand cake in the pan for 10 minutes, then use the baking paper to carefully lift it out onto a wire rack to cool. Dust the cake with icing sugar just before serving.

NOTES

* You can replace the raspberries with blueberries (which is what Mum did) or pitted cherries for a variety

# Australians have a tendency to put icing sugar on absolutely anything that is sweet, even when it is not required. This cake would have been nice with icing sugar, as it is a light cake and is not heavy, too sweet or rich. But even without it, just as we did, it's perfectly fine.

This is one of the best cakes I've had because it is so light and simple to make. My new favourite - I may request it for my birthday in September!

Spinach and Lamb Cobbler

My Mum and I made this one a few days ago. It has a casserole feel to it and I took it straight out of recipes+ food magazine, one of the 2 great food magazines available in Australia. The focus of these magazines are easy, delicious and economical dishes. You have the beans and mince as a base for the spinach 'cobblers', which are a substitute for bread.

INGREDIENTS
80g rindless bacon, trimmed & finely chopped
Cooking oil spray
1 medium brown onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
450g extra lean lamb mince
400g can diced tomatoes
1 cup chicken stock
400g can red kidney beans, rinsed

THE COBBLERS
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup plain flour
250g chopped frozen spinach, thawed with excess liquid removed
1/4 cup chopped parsley
3/4 cup milk
50g margarine, melted & cooled

1. Preheat oven to 200 C. Grease an ovenproof dish.
2. Spray bacon with oil.* Heat a large frying pan over moderate heat. Cook and stir bacon and onion for 3 minutes. Add garlic; cook and stir for 30 seconds.
3. Add mince; cook, stirring with a wooden spoon to break up lumps for 5 minutes or until brown. Stir in tomato and stock. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat; simmer, stirring occasionally, for
15 minutes or until sauce thickens. Stir in beans. Spoon into prepared dish.

THE COBBLERS
4. Sift flours into a medium bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in spinach and parsley. Make a well in the centre. Pour in milk and margarine. Stir with a round bladed knife to form a soft dough. Using 2 tablespoons at a time, roll dough into balls.# Flatten slightly then place over mince mixture. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden.^

That was how the recipe told us how to do it and we pretty much followed it. But this is what we discovered while we were making them:

*Usually cooking spray is used on the dishes or utensils and not on the food. But in this case, spraying the food itself as opposed to the pan is a way to reduce the fat content. Makes sense, as when I use spray on the pans, there always seems to be an excess of oil on the corners of the dish. Just don't go overboard - it is oil after all, despite coming in spray form!

#I was in charge of making the cobblers while Mum did the base. I found that using 2 tablespoons worth of dough mixture was way too much. As it has self-raising flour, they will expand and become bigger in the oven. 1 tablespoon was enough.

^All ovens are different, obviously! I had to keep mine for around 40 minutes in the oven, even though my one is very new and strong. The reason was the cobblers. I made them quite thick and big - even just using 1 tablespoon of the mixture to make the balls. So next time, it would be easier to make the balls smaller. The base only requires 25 minutes of baking, but it all comes down to the cobblers, to make sure that they are cooked on the inside. Remember, it is a bread substitute, so they have to be well cooked.

We served ourselves straight away. It was a very filling and hearty meal, perfect for Winter and also a slim alternative to other traditional heavy casseroles. Having 2 servings does fill you up - you probably only need 1. The beans and mince base was full of flavour - reminiscent of chili (which I will post up soon). The spinach cobblers make this a heavy dish - instead of using bread to scoop up - as traditional Italian cuisine dictates - you have the cobblers. Next time I would make them smaller, like kaiser rolls. The cobblers are dominant, so by making them smaller, you can actually enjoy the bean and lamb base a bit more.

They are great for leftovers too (or 'cudin', as my friend calls it. What you 'cudin' eat today, you can eat tomorrow! FYI: In Spanish, directly translated, it would be 'pudi'!) Mum overindulged a bit, particularly on the spinach cobblers and found that they were too heavy. So next time: smaller cobblers and only one serve in one meal. It would have also been nice if there was more of the bean base. Perhaps that is why the spinach cobbler was such a dominant presence in the recipe. Adding more beans would even up the balance.

Overall, it was a great, tasty and easy casserole to make. Next time I will make those changes and let you know how I went with it.

We made this a few days ago, so Mum and I had 'cudin' for a few days. We still had some vegie soup until Mum finished the last lot yesterday. And we still have the cobbler, which Mum has told me that it's all mine!

We have our mini menu set up for the next few days. Tomorrow is Shepherd's Pie. Saturday is home made pizza with potato wedges as a snack. Sunday is chili day - which was a suggestion by my boyfriend. He also wanted me to include dessert - 'Oaties', as he calls them. So we've got a lot to look forward to.

Vegetable Soup

In the past, soup was not really one of my strengths. In fact, soup wasn't even in my 'repertoire'. But a few months ago while in Spain, it was a really cold Wintery Spring day and I had asked my Mum for her chicken soup recipe. She gave it to me, I made it and it was the best soup I had made in essentially my first attempt. This soup you can put absolutely anything you want in it. I call it my 'whatever is in the fridge, goes in here' recipe. I love those types. But then the problem is trying to remember all the ingredients so you can try and repeat it on another day. But yesterday I decided to use the same principles of the chicken soup, just turn it into a vegie one (I'm sure you can do the same for a beef consomme or a stew). So this is what I used:

MAIN FRAGRANT CONDIMENTS
1 tsp canola or sunflower oil
1 spring onion, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 tsp tumeric^
1 tsp ground cumin^
1 tsp ground cinnamon^

VEGIES#
1 stick of celery, chopped
1/4 chopped pumpkin
1/4 cabbage, chopped roughly
4 potatoes (any kind), diced into quarters
1 large head of brocolli, cut up
1 carrot, diced

STOCK*
1 and a half cubes of chicken stock
5 cups boiling water

OPTIONAL ADDITION
2 tbsp rice (or macaroni)

1. In a saucepan, place the oil over medium heat. After a minute, add the onion, garlic and spring onion and mix for 2 minutes. Add the tumeric, cumin and coriander and mix for another minute.

2. Place all the vegetables in the saucepan and combine for 1 minute. Add the chicken stock (if the liquid does not cover the vegetables entirely, add more boiling water until all vegetables are submerged). Bring to the boil. Once it is boiling, reduce to low heat, cover and leave simmering for 20 minutes. (If you're not adding the rice, serve as it is).

3. Add the rice, cover and leave for 15 minutes or until rice is cooked. Serve.

NOTES:

^ I like to use these condiments as additional seasoning instead of using salt and pepper. I find that they are more flavoursome. Plus tumeric assists with digesting the vegetables, as there is such a large variety all with differing digestive times. The tumeric helps break down the cabbage for easy digestion. For even more flavour, you could add 1 tsp of curry powder. That adds an extra flavour to the soup. I forgot to put it in, but it is still flavoursome without it. Your choice :)

# In vegetable soup, you can always add or remove vegies to your taste. I know a certain fussy pot who doesn't like pumpkin, so if I were making him this, I would exclude it. This is great because of its versatility. When you make this on several occasions, they will all turn out differently and you will quickly learn what works for you and what doesn't.

* This is one of my great soup tips I learnt from my Mum. When you are making vegetable soup, it's best to use chicken or beef stock. Otherwise the soup will have a strong vegetable taste. By using vegetable stock in vegetable soup, you are actually going to lose a lot of the natural vegetable taste by using a vegetable substitute along with vegetables. By using a chicken or beef stock, you will still be able to taste the natural vegetable flavour (Having said that, you are only using 1 and a half cubes of stock, so the flavour will not be overpowering and you can still taste the real vegetables in the soup). Same goes when making chicken soup. Always use vegetable stock.

This came out beautifully. Full flavours of the vegies without having to use extra seasoning of salt and pepper for taste. Not bad for my first time making it. And the best thing is I have leftovers :)

Next recipe: Spinach and Lamb Cobbler. Stay tuned!

Andy's Part-Time Kitchen

Over the recent months I have developed an interest in cooking. Maybe it's always been there, but it wasn't until I had some serious downtime when I was in Spain in March this year that I was able to experiment with meal making - mainly lunch and dinner options. Most of the time, the recipes turned out very well that I was asked by my boyfriend to make them again and again.

Now that I'm back home, I'm still very much interested in cooking that I've started this blog up. Ideally, I would like to have 4 or 5 different and new meals a week that I have always wanted to make, blog the recipes beforehand, make it and blog about the result. This is more for me to expand my knowledge in the kitchen. And also to push me to make more home made meals. Not that I'm a junk food junkie, but in the past it was very easy for me to bypass the cooking process and just eat any old thing - mainly junk - to satisfy my lunch or dinner craving. I want to curb this by making more home made meals and I believe that this blog will hold me accountable and encourage me to make more delicious meals at home. I used to work a full time schedule, so I want to include meals that are easy to make and easy on the wallet, now that I am in between jobs. There are many recipe ideas I get from magazines, books and TV cooking shows that I've always wanted to try. And this will help me - I will always have ideas. Any suggestions that you have are always welcome.

My first entry and experiment is a nice and easy meal - vegetable soup. Perfect for Winter. Look out for it.

HAPPY COOKING :)