Orange and lemon flavoured cupcakes

Despite the sun shining brightly outside, I am inside baking cupcakes. I had been sitting outside, reading food magazines , when I came across this recipe. It looked yummie, the yellowie cupcake with its blue frosting, topped off with black currants. How could I resist an image like that? I just had to make my own batch.

I tried to wait for as long as I possibly could before going back inside to bake the cupcakes. When I couldn't wait any longer, I kept telling myself that "well, it's 1p.m-ish, and that's when the sun shines at it brightest", as if that was of any concern to me; being born in India, the only time I'd ever gotten sunburned was once on a snowboarding trip to Chamonix, France. Apparently, high altitudes does burn even my Indian skin....

Orange and lemon flavoured cupcakes
Makes 16

3 eggs

150 g sugar
zest of one orange or lemon
200 g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp powdered vanilla sugar
½ tsp salt
½ dl milk
3/4 dl orange juice
2 tbsp lemon juice

Frosting

200 g powdered sugar/icing sugar
1 tbsp water
1 tbsp lemon- or lime juice
food colouring or fruit juice
fresh berries

Preheat your oven to 180°C

Beat the eggs and sugar together in a bowl. Add milk, lemon-/lime juice, and zest. Carefully fold in the flour mixed with baking soda, powdered vanilla sugar, and salt. Line an oven tray with 15-20 cupcake paper liners, or line standard cupcake tins with paper liners.Fill each paper liner 2/3 full. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Allow to cool on wire racks.

Mix the icing sugar with water and lemon- or orange juice. Add a couple of drops of food coloring/fruit juice, stir. Using a spoon, garnish each cupcake with frosting and fresh berries.

På svenska
Citron- och apelsinmuffins

Quick dinner

I opened my fridge and found.......... NOTHING! And it wasn't even like I had an empty fridge, I just couldn't find a single thing in the fridge that I felt like cooking for dinner. I hate when that happens, I have a full fridge and still nothing to cook.

In the end, I made homemade pasta- gosh, I just love my pasta machine- fried some button mushrooms and grated garlic in a frying pan. Poured over half a tub of creme fraiche, and sprinkled some fresh basil on top, gave it a good stir, mixed the pasta and the sauce together in the pasta casserole, and served.

Orange flavoured chocolate cupcakes

Today's project, after yesterday's nearly lethal spicy dinner, is to make birthday cupcakes for my bf's dad who turns 70 today.

I have been browsing through different blogs looking for the perfect recipe. I knew what I wanted, something easy to make, but at the same time something utterly delicious. Don't know why I thought that one excluded the other!!

I stumbled across several recipes that sounded yummie, Martha has some great ones over @ MarthaStewart.com, but I decided on this recipe from DagensMuffins in the end. I tweaked it some, the original recipe does not call for orange zest....

Orange flavoured chocolate cupcakes
Makes 15-20

2 eggs
3 dl sugar
1 ½ dl all-purpose flour
4 tbsp cocoa
2 tsp powdered vanilla sugar
a pinch of salt
100 g margarine or butter, melted
zest from 1/4 orange
15-20 squares of chocolate

Pre-heat the oven to 200° C

Beat eggs and sugar together in a plastic bowl.

Add the flour, cocoa, powdered vanilla, and salt.

Whisk well to combine until smooth.

Add in the melted margarine/butter, and mix to combine.

Grate orange zest into the mixture, and whisk some more to combine.

Line an oven tray with 15-20 cupcake paper liners, or line standard cupcake tins with paper liners.

Fill each paper liner 2/3 full. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes. When done, transfer onto wire racks, press a chocolate square into each cupcake, and set to cool allowing the chocolate to melt ontop of the chocolate cupcake.

På svenska
Apelsinsdoftande chokladmuffins

Chilli beancurd and mixed oriental mushroom stir fry

Before I write anything else, allow me to issue a WARNING!! This dish is extremely spicy. My boyfriend almost self-combusted!

I don't even know what to write about this dish, it was probably one of the spiciest dishes I have ever cooked and/or tasted.

I blame the spicyness on the chili bean sauce; the recipe called for one entire tablespoon of this hellish sauce. I am not kidding you, I will NEVER use 1 whole tbsp of it ever again. NEVER!

Let's just get to the recipe, because the dish was really tasty, except for the feeling of being on the verge of bursting into flames.

Chili beancurd and mixed oriental mushroom stir fry
Serves 4
Ching He Huang

1 tablespoon groundnut oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed and finely chopped
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
1 medium red chili, deseeded and chopped
100g oyster mushrooms, halved if large
100g enoki mushrooms, separated into small
bunches
100g shiitake mushrooms, sliced
400g fresh tofu (beancurd), cut into 2cm cubes
50ml vegetable stock
1 tablespoon chili bean sauce DO NOT USE 1 TBSP! I'd use 1 tsp, maybe less!
dash of light soy sauce
2 spring onions, sliced diagonally
handful of coriander leaves, finely chopped

Heat the wok over a high heat and add the groundnut oil. Add the garlic, ginger
and chillies and stir fry for a few seconds.

Add the mushrooms and stir fry for less than one minute. Add the tofu and
carefully stir well.

Pour in the vegetable stock then add the chili bean sauce and light soy sauce
and cook for less than 1 minute. Add the sliced spring onions and coriander and
serve immediately.

I substituted the mushrooms in the recipe for button mushrooms and dried Chinese mushrooms, and the beancurd for chicken cut into bite size pieces.

Homemade pasta

Got a gift card from Clas Ohlson for my 25th birthday the other week. (Yes, I am now a quarter of a century old... yikes!) With the gift card in my hand, I headed in to Clas Ohlson, and came out one Mercato Atlas pasta machine richer!

This is how you make homemade pasta:

100 g plain flour per person

1 egg per person


Combine in a food processor until the dough resembles cooked couscous. Tip out and press down on the dough, be sure to catch any straggling bits.



Place the dough in the pasta machine, roll through and fold in half on the thickest setting 4-5 times.

Now, take it down notch and roll trough. Do this again and again, taking it down a notch each time until you have the desired thickness of your pasta.

Make the pasta sheet into tagliatelle or angel hair by using the different attachments on your pasta machine. Or cut the dough with a knife, either one works!

Cook the pasta in lightly salted water for 45 seconds to 1 minute.

Watch Jamie Oliver make pasta

Red Currant Puree

I spent about 1 hour the other day picking red currants from a bush at my bf's parents house. I picked loads, and we made red currant cordial. I also brought some berries home with me, and browsing on MarthaStewart.com I came across this recipe for Red Currant Puree. Martha says you can use the puree for a Red Currant Champagne Cocktail. I'm always up for a drink, so I decided to take on the challenge of making my own red currant puree.



Red Currant Puree

680 g red currants, frozen or fresh, stemmed
0.9 dl sugar
2 tbsp sugar

Place the ingredients in a saucepan. Stir to combine. Bring to the boil on medium to high heat, lower heat to simmer for 15 minute,s or until all the juices have been released.
Sieve through a fine meshed sieve into a bowl. Allow to cool. Can be stored in the fridge for 7 days. I poured the puree into ice-cube bags and placed them in the freezer.

Red Currant Champagne Cocktail
Serves 1

2 tbsp red currant puree
Champagne, chilled

Place red currant puree in a champagne glass. Slowly pour over the champagne.

På svenska
Röd vinbärspuré

I am back...

...from two weeks of vacation in the Azores. Sadly without a single good food experience. I even said to my boyfriend, on the plane last night, right after I had finished the air plane food, that "this was the best food I've had in two weeks".

Well, welcome back to me, I guess!

More later, now laundry!