Category: Recipes

Recipes, Recipes: sweet

Cook this: White chocolate, raspberry & pistachio brownies

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It seemed like a good idea at the time. How many stories start like this and end really, really badly? A high percentage, right? I’m still not sure how, because I’m usually the poster girl for these kind of stuff ups, but this recipe is somehow the exception to the rule and miraculously turned out really, really well!

 

Ingredients:
– 300g white chocolate, broken into pieces
– 190g butter, chopped
– 1 cup caster sugar
– 285g plain flour, sifted
– 3 eggs at room temperature, lightly whisked
– 1 heaped cup of frozen raspberries
– 85g pistachios, slightly crushed

 

Method:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 160°C and line a lamington tray with non-stick baking paper.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a small pot of simmering water. Stir until completely melted and smooth, and set aside for 5 minutes to cool.
3. Stir in the eggs with a wooden spoon, then the sugar and the sifted flour.
4. Gently stir in the pistachios, then the raspberries – try not to over stir or the batter will turn pink.
5. Pour the batter into the tin, smooth it out and bake for 40 minutes, or until lightly golden and set, but still a little chewy inside as a good brownie should be!
6. Allow to cool completely in the tin before taking it out to slice up.

 

It’s like a super thick, dense mud cake/brownie hybrid. You just need to take care not to over cook it as it’ll lose its chewy brownie-like centre. I’m a big fan of white chocolate for a bit of a change every now and then, and I’m sure you could use this brownie base to mix just about anything in – it’s pretty versatile. Enjoy!

 

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Recipes

Cook this: Easy buttermilk pancakes

Photograph © Jess Carey 2014

These pancakes are literally easy enough to roll out of bed at 6:30am, have a shower, do your hair, put on a bit of make up, get dressed for work, and still have them on the table by 7:00am. This is by no means the “perfect” pancake, but it’s quick and easy, super delicious, and very versatile. It’s also a bit more exciting than cereal and toast, because some mornings, you need a bit of convincing to get out of bed. Breakfast win.

Here’s what you’ll need for two decent pancake stacks (this mixture made 8 pancakes):
– 1⅓ cups self raising flour
– ¼ cup castor sugar
– 40g butter, melted
– 1 large egg
– 1½ cups buttermilk
– 2 tbsp. water
– 2 tsp vanilla extract
– butter or spray oil for cooking

 

1. Sift the flour into a large bowl and add in the sugar.

2. Use a wooden spoon (controversial, I know, wooden spoon instead of whisk!) to then mix in the butter, egg, milk, water and vanilla until everything is well and truly combined and smooth. At this stage, feel free to add in anything else that tickles your fancy – orange or lemon zest, shredded coconut, blueberries, a swirl of Nutella, anything goes!

3. Heat a non-stick fry pan over medium heat (I really need to stress here that medium heat is essential. I got a little excited and cranked the heat up to high for the first batch of pancakes, and they came off crisp and burnt. Luckily, husband actually quite likes a burnt pancake, but lesson learnt – you can’t rush pancake perfection!), and use either cooking spray oil or a little butter to coat the pan before dropping your pancake batter on. I used ⅓ measuring cups to measure out the mixture and they made nicely sized pancakes, but if you want miniatures or pancakes the size of dinner plates or anything in between, go nuts!

4. Let them cook on one side until you can start to see the bubbles forming in the batter – check they’re browned (but not burnt), then flip them over and let them cook for another minute or two on the other side.

5. To serve them up, I stacked mine and topped them with coconut yoghurt and diced plums, but this is where the fun starts and you can just go crazy on these guys and top them with whatever the hell you want!