Baking!

I've been doing some baking today! And what i have made are YUMMO!




Cheese Biscuits.

1 1/2 cup Chedder Cheese, 1/2 cup spelt flour, 1/4 cup S/R flour, 4 tbsp Butter.

Mix all in a food processor for roughly 2 minutes, or until forms into a smooth ball.
Let it sit for half hour in the fridge.
Roll out to about 1/8 inch thick. Cut with however big or small you want. Cook on 170c for about 10-12 minutes. Until edges are barely brown.

Boys LOVE Them!





Spelt flour, Garlic, Spring onion and capsicum Focaccia Bread. I could have left it to rise a bit longer, but it was almost lunch time and i was getting hungry and wanted to taste me lovely creation!

Work again tomorrow! Hope your having a good week!

Cake, electricity and snotty noses!

After my cupcake disaster last week, I've been wanting to try again.. This time i decided to bake a cake. But we had no eggs left... And i was really craving a chocolate cake... So i searched the wonderful web and found a recipe* for an egg less chocolate cake. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, being egg less and using water instead of milk and not having butter, but oil instead... But OH MY GOODNESS This is a recipe to keep!!! It's so moist and chocolaty.. mmm YUM!!




Chocolate cake! Doesn't it look good??? Of course we all had a piece before i realised that i wanted to take a photo of it first whoops, sorry children come first and this way you can see what the inside looks like!



Yesterday morning Ben organised for us to have a climate smart home service. Our government has recently been organising rebates for things like insulation, solar water heaters and solar panels for houses. They also have a package called the Climate smart home service. It costs $50. A qualified sparky comes out and replaces all your light bulbs with the new energy efficient design bulbs, a new shower head for the shower (water saving shower head) and installs and wireless energy monitor into the electricity box. The sparky came out this morning, (just made it through flood waters to get to us lol).
I love the monitor. It shows you how many kW is being used and how many cents per hour that amount costs. It also has the temperature and records previous days, weeks and months. So we can work out what is using the most power and cut down on its usage.. Brilliant, although when the sparky left we had a play with it turning on everything and testing how much power it uses.... Yes, so we will start saving money maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, once we've used everything at least once or twice on different settings... We also got in the pack a thermometer, with markings of best temperatures for our fridge, freezer, air conditioning, heating etc So i am now testing everything and adjusting to suit... Now this is all in aid of
1. cutting down our power bill and
2. cutting the bill also means less power usage which means less the power companies have to produce..etc, I'm sure you all understand!! It's been in the news enough! lol.




Wireless monitor and thermometer. The sparky put all the bulbs in for us. Except the one in our room, our bed was in the way and he's not allowed to jump on our bed due to rules and regulations etc.. unfair for him! lol

So apart from our new toy, the rain has eased, but the flood waters are still up, our town has moderate flooding, just in the low lying creeks and valleys, local parks. As far as i know, no business have been affected. But some people are still unable to come to town or leave. Our friend stayed another night last night. She is hoping to get home this afternoon. We shall see, Ben went for a drive this morning and its starting to fall but slowly! Our 2 boys also have bad colds. Blue eyes is worse than cowboy. So its only just gone into Autumn and we have snot already!! Blue eye's also had a minor temp this morning, so i am watching that making sure it doesn't spike and result in a febrile convulsion.. I don't mind him having a temp when he is teething, at least he can breath through his nose. Right now his nose is so blocked and runny that it makes me worry just that little bit more.. When i picked up some medicine yesterday at the chemist our friend who works there suggested i put them on a kids multi vitamin to help stop or prevent so many winter colds.. But I will have to look into it more. Try and find the most natural one, and maybe a liquid form... Its investigation time! lol

Well I've now got to go hang some washing and do some more, try and catch up on everything before the next lot of Autumn rain!

* Eggless Chocolate Cake

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons vanilla extract

Method
1. Combine dry ingredients
2. Combine wet ingredients and stir into flour mixture.
3. Pour mixture into a 20cm round tin and bake at 175-180C for 25-35 minutes.
4. Stand for 10 minutes before turning out. Cake will be delicate while still hot.

Have i got a guessing game for you!!!

Every so often i am reminded of why i take my blue eyes with me to have a shower... I have a photo below for you, this is what my blue eyes was doing ever so quietly while i was showering this morning. I did notice the quietness while in the shower and called out to big brother cowboy and asked what was going on, he came in and said everything was A-OK mummy!!!


This is what i found upon walking into my kitchen, after already cleaning the floors before having my shower!!





Can you guess what it is?? Good luck!!





Yesterday i attempted baking some mini cupcakes, my step-mil gave me this book and mini silicone tray for Christmas.




I was very excited when i got it. I've mentioned before I'm not the greatest baker.. I've perfected my bread, I'm ok at cakes. Muffins, cupcakes and scones always seem to end in disaster. So the batch i made yesterday were definitely not up to scratch for a photo session! I thought that the silicone tray meant i didn't have to put the cupcake papers in, but no matter how long i cooked them for they fell apart when i took them out.. The mixture tasted good, its just in a big pile of crumbs. My next attempt will be with the papers!


This weekend we are going away again! This should be the last weekend away for a while. Our very close friends purchased tickets to Movie World for our Christmas present. So we are off to the Gold Coast for some beach time and some fun at Movie World. I'm charging the batteries on the camera as i type this so we should have heaps of photo's to share! Cowboy is very excited and has been asking every morning if its time to go away with his cousin's. And is very disgruntled when i say not yet.. He will be over the moon tomorrow morning when we say its time to go!

Hope your having a great day, its raining on and off here, so it's a little cooler. not as humid as yesterday. Fingers crossed it clears up for our Movie World day!!

Why i shouldn't experiment without BEN!!!

Today I'm not feeling the best (think I'm getting a head cold yuk!). So to try make myself feel better i decided to do some cooking. I pulled out one of my 4 ingredients books and found a nice sounding cake recipe*. So i said to my cowboy we would bake a cake while blue eyes is sleeping. While i was getting it all ready cowboy suggested to do cupcakes (muffins as we only have a muffin tin be he doesn't mind, more to eat!) and i thought what a wonderful idea. Even though i had never made this cake before i thought why not. And then i asked cowboy if he wanted to make it different colours, that went down with a loud yelling YES!!! Off we went making the cake putting it in the muffin tray. All going well so far even with a little helper..

Here they are before going in the oven.

After a few minutes in the oven, i had an after thought.... i think they might overflow... Cowboy and i checked them, and what do you know they are starting to overflow...

Usually when i want to experiment Ben is here, and he is my voice of reason. He talks me out of doing things that he knows instantly wont work. Me on the other hand am not thinking about what happens in the middle to get to the finished product, just the fun idea of multi coloured muffins!! Luckily i made it in time to put a tray on the bottom rack so i wouldn't have burnt mixture and smoke all through the house, my brain works sometimes lol..

Once they had finished cooking, not as much at dripped off as i thought was going to.

How they looked upon coming out of the oven. Not burnt either cooked just perfectly!

The offcuts after trimming.

The final result after trimming, they looked pretty good after alot more work for a pretty simple recipe!

Now to something i made this morning that had no problems with it!

Pasta Salad! We love pasta salad. I think it works out every time i make it because pasta is easy to cook and so are boiled eggs! I can't really fail with it!

Tonight we will have roast chicken with the salad, i was going to do this today as well. But after the muffin incident i think i might leave it to Ben when he gets home from work!

Hope your having better luck with your baking! xo

* 1,2,3,4 CAKE

• 1 cup of butter
• 2 cups of sugar
• 3 cups of self raising flour
• 4 eggs

Preheat oven to 140c.

Using electric mixer, cream butter and sugar for 5 minutes or until pale and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time.

Beating well between eggs.

Fold through sifter flour.

Spoon into prepared pan and bake for 1 1/4 hours (cover with alfoil if cake is Browning to quickly.) Cool in tin before turning out.