Peanut Butter

My friends the other week were making fun of the peanut butter that I eat! Apparently one of my friends buys the same peanut butter that I buy to feed her dog.

The thing is that I like my peanut butter without the added sugar that so many of the manufacturer's add! It is actually a lot more difficult to buy my kind of peanut butter (so to speak) so I consider it as a more... sophisticated taste, not like the common garden variety peanut butter.

It all stems from when I was growing up, and Mum used to buy my peanut butter from the health food shop. They would crush peanuts and so my peanut butter had absolutely no additives. The problem with this that was after a while it would go hard and impossible to spread, as the peanut flesh separated from the oil. In hindsight I think that the issue here was leaving it in the non airtight plastic containers that they sold it in rather than transferring it to a more suitable container.

Eventually I gave up trying to spread it on my bread, as bread that is that durable generally tastes of cardboard, and tried to move back to peanut butter that you buy in a jar. It was really difficult, and my poor mother had to hunt around many different shops trying to find a peanut butter without any added sugar. I remember it was a bit difficult for her to find, and not always available at the same shop, so I would make sure to stock up a few jars just in case we could not find it again.

More recently Sanitarium have been consistently producing a "No Added Salt" variety that is coincidentally no added sugar so I have been converted. Occasionally I will look through all of the varieties on a supermarket shelf to see if there are alternatives but as a general rule I am disappointed. I might need to find a health food shop and test out my theory regarding the container that I store it in!

I still do not understand why people like peanut butter with sugar in it. Peanuts are savoury, so why eat sweet peanut butter??

Triple Choc Fudge Cookies

It is Australia Day tomorrow, and we're planning to hit the river and watch the fireworks along with 300 000 other people in Perth. Good food and snacks are essential, and to this end I have baked a batch of Triple Choc Fudge Cookies.

I am not sure whose recipe it is, all I know is that it was cut out of a newspaper, most likely the West Australian, and the person who the recipe belongs to used to make them for the Left Bank in the 1990s.

I had a little trouble following the recipe, mainly because I didn't actually read ahead.

2 eggs
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
200g dark chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1/4 cup self-raising flour
100g white chocolate, chopped
100g milk chocolate, chopped



Preheat oven to 180C.
Cover baking trays with baking paper.
Beat eggs, sugar and vanilla in a bowl until frothy.
Combine dark chocolate and oil in a pan and stir over a gentle heat until the chocolate is melted, cool.
Stir egg mixture into chocolate mixture.


Stir in the flour, and white and milk chocolate.
Refirgerate for one hour.
Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls, place 5cm apart on prepared trays and flatten slightly.
Bake for eight minutes, don't overcook.
Cool on the trays.



Notes
- I do not always understand the timing on some recipes - why preheat the oven at the start when you're going to put the dough in the fridge for an hour? At any rate mine does not take that long so I preheated it before I took the dough out of the fridge.
- Again, I would wait until I had melted the chocolate and pulled it off the heat before I beat the eggs, that way the chocolate+oil should be cool enough to work with!
- I used light olive oil. Olives ... oh oops, I was going to say that they are a vegetable but I think that they might be a fruit!
- I put the dark chocolate and oil into a glass bowl and melted the mixture over a pot of simmering water. I remember that last time I made this recipe the texture of the chocolate went a bit strange so I thought I would err on the side of caution.
- Remember to flatten the dough!
- The dough is quite greasy. Take off all rings and consider wearing gloves.
- I cooked them for 7 minutes at 170C fan forced. They are still squishy when you take them out of the oven but they firm up just enough as they cool.
Note to self Do not use small bowl to melt chocolate as you are expected to use this bowl to mix the cookies!

Pancakes yum!

I am going to have to try Edna Mae’s Sour Cream Pancakes as demonstrated by Smitten Kitchen. The pancakes that I make are more crepe style, but these make me think that it is time to branch out!

Young Coconut Juice

I do enjoy drinking young coconut juice. I have previously only had it when I went out for dinner to particular asian cafes. A little while ago I was browsing in an Asian Grocery store - or as my Mum calls it "The Chinese Shop" and came across a few different tins of young coconut meat in syrup. Just the thing for a warm summer day. Serve with ice. I shall have to buy some more tins!

Warm Lamb Salad and Chocolate Fondue

I organised a girls night for last night. I try to organise them when C is working, so that he does not feel like a duck out of water when a horde of giggling girls show up. Usually this works, however he is working in the Perth metro area this roster so was home and in true duck form!

It has been ages since we had chocolate fondue so much so that I could not remember which fondue pot is preferred! I have two, but for only four of us (plus one duck) one was sufficient. I only had milk or white chocolate in the pantry, and we ended up using around 300g of milk chocolate. Usually I prefer to use dark chocolate in the fondue as it is not as rich as dairy laden milk chocolate.

M and L both brought enough fruit and shortbread to feed a small army, and we had strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, nectarine, bananas and pears. Yum!

I also cooked lamb salad for dinner, adapted from this recipe from taste.com.au.

I sliced around 600g sweet potato, skin on, and roasted it for 35 minutes at 190C fan forced. I seasoned it with olive oil and salt and pepper. I turned it around 15 minutes into the cooking process. Once it was cooked I turned off the oven and left it in there to try and stay warm, as KC had not yet arrived.


I then took a red onion cut into wedges, and a bunch of asparagus cut into thirds, and cooked them on the griddle plate. I also sprayed these with some olive oil as suggested in the recipe, although I am not sure that it was necessary.
(We have an awesome Swiss Diamond Griddle for use on the stove top! The cookware is so easy to clean, everything wipes off easily with a damp cloth.)

Once this was cooked, I transferred them to the oven to keep warm.
I put 1kg of butterflied lamb leg on the plate, and cooked the blood out of the lamb, so it was still pink on the middle but not raw. The duck gave me a hand with the meat, and he also sliced it once the lamb had rested for 10 minutes.


While the lamb was resting I assembled the rest of the salad. 100g of rocket laid on a plate, topped with the sweet potato, red onion, asparagus and 150g of Margaret River Dairy Company Australian Feta. Lamb was arranged on top, dressed with organic extra virgin olive oil and dinner was served!

Recipe cards

M & Stetson have posted templates for Recipe cards. Such a lovely idea of personalised cards. Having a template means that you can you can print as you need. The storage boxes that they have used are lovely!

Lemon Cheesecake

When you are working in the middle of nowhere, and discover that it is the birthday of a workmate also stuck in the middle of nowhere, where do you turn to?

According to C, it is to White Wings and their Lemon Cheesecake packet, conveniently left behind and requiring only butter, milk, sugar and water.



No baking required! Just mix and stir and pour! Not bad really considering there was no pre-planning involved, and instant birthday cake for the boys.

I am, however, a little concerned at the brightness of the topping! I wonder what it has in it to make it glow like that...

Notes
Middle of nowhere = at least two hours drive on unsealed road to the nearest corner store.