Apple and cinnamon cupcakes

2 tsp cinnamon

4 tsp vegetable oil

4 tsp baking powder

250g caster sugar

320g plain flour

50g unsalted butter, melted

2 lightly beaten eggs

175ml buttermilk

2 peeled finely diced apples

Turn the oven to 175 degrees (350F). Line a cupcake tin with paper liners (this recipe makes 12 decent sized cupcakes)

In a bowl combine the sifted dry ingredients.

In a large bowl beat the liquid ingredients until well combined. Add the dry ingredients and beat until nearly combined. Stir in the apples - careful not to overmix!

Bake for 20 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes, and then remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack. Top with brown sugar frosting. These keep for up to 2 days or freeze (without icing for up to 3 months).

Honey malt slice

This wickedly rich slice is based on a recipe from the Women's Weekly "biscuits and slices" recipe book.

340 grams of butter

2/3 cup honey

1 1/2 cups malted milk powder

4 cups corn flakes

4 cups rice bubbles

1 cup ground almonds

1 cup desiccated coconut

1. Lightly grease and line 2 20x30cm baking trays. Take a sheet of baking paper and lay it along the pans, allowing the paper to extend beyond the edge of the pan.

2. Combine the malted milk powder, butter and honey in a saucepan. Stir on a low heat until the butter is melted. Pour over the dry ingredients, stir, then pour the mixture into the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate till set.

Pear and butterscotch clafouti

Clafouti was originally made with cherries, but has developed far further and now includes all sorts of fruit. I love it, as a simple, quick to make and incredibly elegant dessert.

Traditional cherry clafouti includes a splash of kirsch. I decided to make a pear clafouti this time around - decided by having a surfeit of eggs in the house, and a large tin of pears at hand. To add a little extra twist, I had a think about flavours and concluded that butterscotch schnapps might just work. And indeed it does - the butterscotch schnapps being quite a warm creamy flavour it worked well with the custard and contrasted with the slightly crisper sharper edge of the pear.

Now I am sure a purist would use freshly sliced pears for this recipe, but then again, a purist wouldn't be allowing butterscotch schnapps anywhere either, so they can go be purist and we can enjoy the fruits of our experimental labours. Tinned pears mean that you can create this delicious dessert at any time of the year or day of the week. If you do use fresh pears, peel and core them, and slice them thinly.

Ingredients

Butter
5 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
1/2 cup vanilla sugar (I make my own by keeping my vanilla bean pods in the sugar jar)
1/2 cup sifted flour
1 and a half tablespoons butterscotch schnapps
1 cup (250ml) cream (normal 35% fat cream is fine; occasionally I even use sour cream)
3 extra tablespoons of caster sugar
1 large tin of pears, drained

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Take a large ceramic or glass pie dish (a gratin dish will do at a pinch). Grease the bottom with the butter and sprinkle it with the caster sugar; shake the dish to get an even spread of sugar.

Place the eggs and vanilla sugar in a bowl and beat until pale and creamy Sprinkle on the flour, add the cream and the butterscotch schnapps and mix with the whisk to combine well.

Arrange the pears around the dish in an attractive pattern. Pour the batter over the top.

Bake for about 45 minutes, until set. Allow to cool, and serve sprinkled lightly with sugar, with or without icecream.

Chocolate Caramel Slice

This is a bit of an Aussie classic, and is totally rich and sweet and addictive. I took a tray of these to a potluck the other night. My friend Kate tried one and decided that she was skipping all the other food at the party (quiches, salads, crumbles and pies) and was going to eat nothing but these for her dinner!

Base
2 cups self raising flour
250g butter
1 1/2 cups dessicated coconut
1 cup fine sugar

Caramel Layer
2 tins of sweetened condensed milk (around 400g each)
60 grams of butter
60mls (4 tablespoons)golden syrup

Topping
300g dark chocolate
40g copha/vegetable shortening


Method

Turn the oven on to warm up, to 180 degrees. Start by making the base. Put all the dry base ingredients in a bowl. Melt the butter, allow to cool a little and then mix into the dry ingredients. Line the base of a baking dish with baking paper (allowing the paper to go up two sides to help you get the slice our later). Tip the base into the tin and spread and press down with the back of a spoon.

Bake for 10 - 15 minutes until lightly golden. Cool.

While the base is baking, start the caramel - put all the ingredients in a pot and heat them, stirring continuously for 8-10 minutes - it will thicken and go golden. Pour over the biscuit base and spread out to ensure the base is covered. Cool until set (this will take 3 or 4 hours in the fridge).

Then, in a double boiler, heat the chocolate and copha and stir together till melted and pourable. Pour over the caramel and biscuit, and then cool again. Cut into squares to serve.

Hmmm... my project food blog intro

So I decided to enter this "Project Foodblog Challenge" thing. This first step is more challenging than I expected. I have to share with you what defines me as a food blogger and what makes me a food blog star... It is rare that I analyse this particular part of my life. Like most of my foodblogging friends I am passionate about food and cooking. 

I guess what I have that is perhaps a little rare in the grand foodblog community is simply the span of my cooking. 

Not just doing home cooking, nor modern cooking, nor cooking from a particular area, my food spans not only countries, but centuries. 

How many foodbloggers are catering for 200 people, as well as making dinner for one? 

How many are exploring medieval and renaissance recipes as well as inventing completely new and different food? Giving restaurant reviews across the world, as well as sharing recipes and cooking tips.

How many are cooking Italian, French, Japanese, Australian, English, Malaysian, Indonesian, Hungarian... the world on a plate? 

Hosting and cooking challenge dinner parties, organising social restaurant outings, and teaching cooking from pasta to sushi? 

Ooh, and I forgot.. doing the food design for my friend's published cookbook on the side. Many are doing one or two of these things, but I suspect very few do them all. 

I hope that what I also do is share what I love most about cooking: the adventure, the fun, and how wonderfully simple it all can be. I put together this photo montage of myself, to sort of sum up my foodie self... ======> 

On a slightly different subject....

I have mixed pride about my food photography, and in fact my photography generally.

Sometimes I take shots that I am absolutely thrilled with, but rather more often the photos are ok at best. I do wish I had more talent, but to be truthful, don't spend the time really learning enough about photography to become expert. That said, among the chaff are some real gems and I have decided to share them in a more formal fashion.

I just wanted to tell you that I now have a Redbubble site, where you can buy prints in the form of greetings cards and posters of some of my photos. Even if you don't lash out and buy anything, I would love it if you visited my site and commented on photos you like...

Tomato sauce/ketchup

So I had made the sausage rolls, but it seemed a terrible shame to serve them with commercial tomato sauce.

But what recipe to use? A quick rummage through my cookbooks turned up nothing. Hmm... time to get inventing!

1.7kg tomatoes, roughly chopped
4 large onions
1.5 cups vinegar
1 cup sugar
2 cups water

Chop the onions finely. Cook with a splash of olive oil in a deep heavy bottomed saucepan until softened and transparent. Add the other ingredients and bring to the boil. Drop to a simmer, and simmer for an hour, topping up with water if required. Push through a seive and pour into jars.

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Someone asked for my judgement on how it worked out. I would describe it as a complete success (I don't post up my failures ).  Texturally it was just right, pouring and dipping in just the way you want from a sauce - clinging to the sausage rolls perfectly.

Well worth the effort to make it. It was a little spicier somehow than a commercial tomato sauce. I would definitely make this sauce again. 

Maybe if I am lucky one of the guests at the wedding will post up their perspectives on it!