Red Velvet Cake

Saturday we hosted a beautiful pink baby shower for my friend at a Bistro in Stellenbosch. Their little girl is due in November, we can’t wait to meet her. Thank you to everyone at Ella’s for making the day special!

Of course I had to spoil mommy with her favourites, Red velvet cake. I made Red Velvet cupcakes with a butter cream cheese topping.

Red Velvet Cake

Ingredients:

115g of Butter or Margarine

1 cup of Castor Sugar

2 Eggs

30ml of red food colouring (or a few knife tips of the concentrated red colouring powder)

2 Tablespoons of Cocoa

350ml of Buttermilk

1 Teaspoon Vanilla essence

2 ½ Cups of Cake flour

½ Teaspoon of Salt

7ml of Baking Soda

12ml Brown vinegar

• Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, add the eggs one by one while mixing.
• Next mix in the rest of the liquids (buttermilk, food colouring, vanilla essence and vinegar) together with the Cocoa.
• Sift together the flour, salt, Baking Soda and add the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl.
• Gently fold together the mixture and place in cupcake holders.

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for about 22 min - 25 min. (If you bake a cake instead of the cupcakes it should take about 30 min)

Icing:

500g Butter

250g Icing sugar

250ml Cream Cheese

100ml Lemon Juice (add more if needed)

Cream together the butter, cream cheese and Lemon juice. Add the icing sugar until it reaches a nice piping consistency. This icing will harden slightly. (If you want shine add 1 tablespoon of syrup)

This recipe is not too sweet, but the icing is very rich you can definitely not eat more than 1. Let me know what you think!

Butternut and Chicken Quiche

It’s almost summer time again. The time of year where you never feel like cooked food, and you definitely don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen when you could be enjoying the sun. This is why I think quiche is the perfect summer dish. Its light and you can serve it hot or cold. You can keep it in the fridge and just add salad to complete the meal.

Quiche is versatile, you can add almost any combination and it will still taste divine! My favourite combo’s are spinach and feta, and butternut and chicken.

Today I want to share my Butternut and chicken recipe.

You’ll need to start with the crust. They say woman are better pastry chefs, because their hands are colder :). Cold is indeed the trick to a light and flaky pastry. Try to have all your ingredients as cold as possible.

Butternut and Chicken Quiche

 

Pastry - You will need:

220g Cake Flour

Pinch of salt

180g Room temperature Butter

1 egg yolk

Cold water

Sift flour and salt, and the butter. Gently rub the butter unto the flour using your fingertips, don’t overwork it.

Add the egg yolk and just enough cold water to make a stiff dough. Shape into a ball and wrap your pastry in cling wrap and leave in the fridge to chill for at least half an hour.

Again the key is not to over work the pastry, and to keep it chilled.

Now is the time you can start cooking the butternut and chicken for the filling.

Take the pastry out of the fridge and place it on a lightly floured surface.

Lightly flour the pastry and gently start to roll the pastry out.

It should be about 5mm thick, and big enough to fit a 24cm pie dish.

Place it in a dish, prick it with a fork and bake blind, (this means put some wax paper over your pastry and fill the dish with some beans or rice, it will help to keep the pastry’s shape) for 10 minutes in a 200 degrees Celsius oven.

Uncover the pastry and bake for another 7 minutes.

Your pastry is now ready to be filled with yummy ingredients.

Filling - You will need:

200g of cooked butternut,

2 Cooked chicken breasts flaked,

Some mushrooms thinly sliced,

1 fried onion,

Some chives, salt and pepper,

3 eggs + the left over egg white used in the pastry,

400ml of low fat Milk

Start by placing the fried onion all over the bottom of the pastry. Now layer the butternut, chives and chicken. Make sure that there’s an even spread of ingredients.

Now mix the eggs, milk, salt and pepper together. Pour this mixture over the filling ingredients.

Now bake the quiche in a 180 degrees Celsius oven for 30min or until golden brown.

The quiche will need to cool slightly; this will just help it set better.

There you have it, a basic quiche recipe. You can now make your own combination by replacing the butternut and chicken with your own ingredients, add more spices, try different things. You can even replace some of the milk with cream for a richer quiche.

Have fun!

Celebrating 2 years

Since I’ve last posted we’ve visited the Indian capital of South Africa. Durban. We had a total blast, trying everything from shwarama’s, to bunny chows and of course the infamous curry.

A bunny chow - it's a quater loaf of bread with curry.

The curry was absolutely divine! It wasn’t hot at all, but it was so flavourful. I have to try and make this at home!

Infamous curry

My husband and I also celebrated our wedding anniversary. I can’t believe it has been 2 years! So to celebrate our day I made one of my husband’s favourites. Scones, and tea. It was delicious, not many things can top freshly baked scones.

Scones

Sift together: 2 Cups plain flour, 1 tablespoon of Baking powder, 2.5ml of Salt.
Add 4 Tablespoons of butter to the dry ingredients and rub it together until all the flour is covered in butter and looks like bread crumbs.
Mix together 1 egg, 250ml of milk and 15ml of sugar. Add this mixture to the flour and butter mix.
Now here is the trick. Don’t mess with the mixture to much, fold the mixture just until it is mixed.

You can now either roll the mixture out 2cm thick and cut out nice shapes, or you can be lazy like me. I scoop out little balls and gently press it down until it is 2cm thick. I like doing this, it makes the scones look more rustic when it is cooked. You can brush the scones with a bit of egg to help it bake to a golden brown colour.

Now place the scones onto a prepared pan and bake in a 220 degrees Celsius oven for 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Enjoy fresh with some jams, cream, cheese or fresh fruit. You can really do whatever you like, just make sure you enjoy a cup of tea with it.

Have a great day every one!

Chicken Pie

I tried making my grandmother’s chicken pie, it did not taste like my gran’s pie. I'm sure she is hiding a secret ingredient from me… :)

Anyways, it still tasted good, and there wasn’t much left over. I think it was a success. The recipe isn’t creamy or rich, it’s actually very refreshing. Here’s what I did:

Note to self, next time remember to take the picture before calling people to the meal.

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

4 rashers Streaky bacon cut or scissored into small bits
4 Chicken breast fillets
1 tablespoon Plain flour
1 Teaspoon Dried Thyme
1 Tablespoon Butter
2 cups Chicken stock
375g Puff pastry (ready rolled)

Method

1. Cook the chicken and thyme in the chicken stock, uncovered. When it is cooked, take it out and set aside to cool down. Cut the cooked flesh into smaller pieces.
2. Let the juices reduce, and cook the bacon pieces in this reduction.
3. Add the flour and chicken pieces, let the sauce thicken.
4. Spoon into a prepared oven dish.
5. Press the meat down, to make an even flat surface.
6. Cover with the puff pastry, and brush the pastry with melted butter.
7. Bake at 200 degrees Celsius for about 20min or until the pastry is golden brown.

This dish can be prepared the night before and baked the next day. Perfect for those family gatherings when you never seem to have enough time.

Enjoy!

PS: You could also put some ready made pastry as a crust, it will absorb all the lovely juices.