Cinnamon Scrolls or Perhaps Scones

I woke up early and just felt like cinnamon scrolls.  Maybe it was because it was a weekend or maybe it was the beginning of the school holidays that swayed me away from our usual porridge or omelettes and toast. Most likely though, it was the thought of a warm scroll filled with tart apple, crunchy walnuts and the distinctive scent of cinnamon. I didn't want to fuss around with yeast and waiting though so cinnamon scrolls became cinnamon scones. Just as swirly and delicious!

Freshly baked cinnamon scones.

I gathered the ingredients, with a nod to this Thermomix recipe, decided I'd add chopped apple and walnuts too and more cinnamon, and set about making them while the day warmed up.

The makings of cinnamon scones.

While I made these cinnamon scrolls scones this time, I think I much prefer The Organised Housewife's version, for The Most Delicious Cinnamon Scrolls which doesn't require yeast either (or a Thermomix) and which uses thickened cream instead of milk in the dough. 

A sweet, crunchy and cinnamon-y filling.

While cinnamon scrolls often have an icing drizzled over their tops, I felt more like an apple and walnut filling to go with my cinnamon-y swirls instead. Apples and cinnamon always go together, don't they?!

Rolled & sliced and ready for the oven.

As they baked, the warm scent of cinnamon wafting through the kitchen, I waited impatiently and thought it may well have been quicker and easier to pop down to the little local bakery and buy a cinnamon scone scroll, one made with yeast and with icing on top, but then my kitchen wouldn't smell as nice and there probably wouldn't be apples and walnuts in such a scroll and I wouldn't have looked forward to it half as much!

Meg

Some More Simple Savings

Saving at our place is often about the little things, done often and over again. These more frugal things keep a little extra money in our family's cookie jar each week and add up over time. Many of the simple savings we make relate to the food we eat:

A nourishing homemade lunch.

We've had some cold days this past week, and I can think of nothing better than a bowlful of hot homemade soup on such shivery days. I made a huge pot of split pea and bacon soup earlier in the week and we've been enjoying it for lunch each day. I used yellow split peas, vegetable stock, onion and bacon, carrots and celery and a lone sweet potato, and added bay leaves and parsley that I grow in the garden. Here is a recipe, from the Erren's Kitchen website, for just such a soup. One big pot of a soup like this goes a long way!

A healthy & delicious afternoon snack.

Each week, I make a batch of homemade yoghurt. I make unsweetened yoghurt and top this with some fruit, like these locally-grown strawberries, in-season now and so far less expensive. I had one ripe passionfruit, left from those that came in my weekly produce box, so it's juicy pulp went on top too along with a sprinkling of chia seeds. Delicious!

While I use an EasiYo to set our yoghurt, I do not buy the matching sachets. Instead, I follow this recipe from Wendy over on her blog, My Abundant Life. (There are lots of money-saving tips in her blog's archives.) Not buying a tub of yoghurt from the supermarket each week saves us money but also reduces the amount of plastic coming into our home. (*I am not sponsored by anyone to promote EasiYo, it's just what I use to make yoghurt.)

Frozen portions of celery and capsicum.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought two huge bunches of crisp organic celery, 2 for $10, at a local health food grocery on a member's saver special. Celery has been incredibly expensive at times over the past year and organically grown celery even more so. (Here is an article from The Guardian about soaring celery prices.) Currently, at two major supermarkets, the price for a bunch of celery is $4. That's down from $7 a bunch. Given celery can be found among the list of fruit and veg with the dubious mantle of 'The Dirty Dozen', relating to those most likely contaminated by pesticide residue, and that the celery in my garden has not taken off (yet), I thought paying the $1 extra per bunch for organic celery was worth it. 

We use a lot of celery, in soups and stews, during Winter time. Storing two bunches of celery in my fridge crisper would lead to wastage (It's a lot of celery!) so I rinsed and chopped it all up and then bagged handfuls of it in the clip lock bags we wash and reuse over and over again, and froze it. I know we'll use it before our Winter time is over. While it's not for stir fries or salads, when you want crunchy celery, it's fine for the soft, cooked celery of soups and stews. There are delicious things, such as pesto, that you can make with celery leaves, you can add them in to the mix when making stock or you can put them into your compost bin or worm farm where they'll break down to become food for your soil. No waste!

Some smoothie bananas.

Overripe bananas inevitably end up in banana breads or smoothies at our place. For smoothie bananas, I simply slice them up into chunks, spread them out on a baking tray and snap freeze them. Once frozen, I transfer them all into a container and use them up by the handful in smoothies. No waste and frozen banana makes for creamy smoothies!

Homemade muffins & silverbeet pie.

With silverbeet, spring onion and parsley, picked from our garden, I made another scrumptious Silverbeet Impossible Pie. We had a slice of this with soup for lunch on the day it was baked and then warmed up for dinner the following night. It's just so good! 

While the pie was baking in the oven, I used fresh juice, from the oranges my friend grows in her garden, to make batches of orange and chocolate chip muffins. I simply added chocolate chips to Nigella Lawson's Orange Breakfast Muffins recipe. They freeze beautifully and are perfect for adding to school lunchboxes.  

Tangy & luscious lime butter.

The juice from the limes I have been foraging from a local tree has been made into batches of tangy and luscious lime butter. While there's jars of jam in our pantry, they remain unopened while lime butter is in the fridge. It's sublime on toast!

Making the most of our homegrown produce, as well as that so generously shared by friends or foraged for free, baking up a storm while the oven's on, making big batches of simple and nourishing food that can be frozen or enjoyed as leftovers, eating seasonally and having ways of eliminating food wastage means that we eat well and save at the same time in multiple ways.

What simple savings have you been making at your place?

Meg

Brown Rice & Vegetable Rolls

A rediscovered recipe, scrawled on a piece of paper and found languishing between pages of a rarely-used recipe book, reminded me of a lovely version of sausage rolls that I haven't made for a good twenty years of so!  Instead of a meaty filling, these rolls are filled with healthy brown rice and lots of nutritious vegetables. They are most lovely, warm from the oven and with a dollop of fruity chutney on the side. 

Delicious!

Brown Rice & Vegetable Rolls

Ingredients:

1 cup cooked brown rice 

1/2 cup corn kernels

1/2 cup frozen peas

1/2 cup grated carrot

2 spring onions, finely chopped

1 capsicum, finely chopped

1 cup grated tasty cheese

1 Tablespoons fruit chutney

2 eggs, beaten

3 sheets puff pastry

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 210C.

2. Combine all ingredients, except pastry sheets, in a large bowl to make the filling.

3.  Spoon filling along  one edge of each puff pastry sheet.

4.  Roll up the filling inside the pastry and seal by pressing pastry ends together.

5.  Cut evenly into individual rolls.

6.  Glaze with a little egg or milk before baking. (You could sprinkle with sesame seeds too.)

7.  Bake for approximately 30mins or until pastry is golden.

8.  Serve with some extra fruit chutney.

Ingredients for a meat-free meal.

These rolls are a delicious alternative to everyday sausage rolls and have lots of extra goodness wrapped up in them from the brown rice and the vegetables. It certainly won't be another twenty years before I make them again!

Meg

Home-baked Chocolate Chip Bars

There's always a home baked offering for morning or afternoon tea at our place. It might be  our favourite biscuits, fruity muffins, a simple slice, fresh scones or, on the odd occasion, a cake. This past week, we enjoyed home-baked chocolate chip bars which are a homemade alternative to store-bought, plastic-wrapped, super-sweet chocolate chip muesli bars.

Yum!

These homemade chocolate chip bars are very easy and quick to make. With a few minor adjustments to this original recipe, for Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Bars, from Lydia at the Thrifty Frugal Mum site, this is how I made them:

Home-baked Chocolate Chip Bars 

Dry Ingredients:

3/4 cup plain flour

1/4 cup wholemeal spelt flour (or plain wholemeal flour)

1 cup quick cooking oats

1/3 cup brown sugar (loosely packed)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Wet Ingredients:

1/2 cup oil (I used macadamia nut oil but canola or a light vegetable oil would also work.)

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1.  Preheat oven to 180C and line a 20cm cake tin or medium size slice tray.

1.  Combine all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.

2.  Whisk together wet ingredients in separate bowl or jug.

3.  Make well in centre of dry ingredients and pour in wet ingredients.

4.  Mix until combined. 

5.  Press mixture into your lined tin or tray.

6.  Bake for 15mins or until lightly golden.

7.  Cool on wire rack before cutting into bars. 

One of these chocolate chip bars is just right for morning or afternoon tea at home but also perfect for putting into a lunchbox too. With a list of easily-recognisable ingredients, that does not include things like humectant, modified starch, invert sugar and some unknown flavour, they are a more wholesome alternative to that store-bought something that comes in a packet.

Well worth baking!

Meg

First Hot Cross Buns

Hot cross buns, warm and fresh from my oven, were my Easter imaginings very early on this Good Friday morning. These imaginings ignored my somewhat hopeless record when making breads, rolls or buns that require yeast, kneading and proving. On the very few occasions I have attempted this bread-making caper, I have ended up with a variety of rocks shaped like loaves. Once, when I actually managed to get a dough to rise after placing it in a sunny spot at the top of my front steps, the whole thing managed to roll itself down to the bottom. That certainly knocked ALL the air out of it! But I promptly forgot all this in the midst of my imaginings this morning and this was the result...

A half dozen little hot cross buns.

While one has to ignore the less-than-uniform shape of these little Easter buns and imagine more defined crosses on their tops, made with a paste of flour and water, they are otherwise delicious. They are very light, not the least bit rocky and the little choc-chips inside, which are my substitute for the sultanas and mixed peel that we do not favour, are just sweet enough. With their shiny glaze of a little local honey on top, they are a step in the right direction along my bread-baking road and I couldn't be happier about that given my previous attempts.

 Mixing the dough in my favourite big bowl.

A little ball of dough after kneading on my kitchen bench.

Ready to place in warm spot to rise. 

Light & fluffy dough after hours in the oven.

There could very well have been a different outcome of hot cross rocks. Today is not ideal for baking bread. It's actually overcast, showery and cold so there was no warm sunshine in which to sit my dough to rise. (Tomorrow, it's meant to be 31C, but I could not wait.) I ditched the first sachet of yeast, declaring it dead, and used one that smelt like beer when I opened the packet. It seemed like a good omen. I followed Jamie Oliver's recipe, for if I was going to bake buns then I decided I'd rely on an expert. All was kneading together nicely until the time came to cover my little ball of spiced dough, all round and smooth and sitting in my favourite bowl (that seemed like a good omen too) and find somewhere warm for it to rise. I covered it and carefully carried it downstairs and under the house to sit it on top of our hot water system and then realised there was no heat coming off that towering tank of water. So, in desperation, I put it in my oven. Thankfully, I only preheated it to 30C because I subsequently read, while fretting that it wouldn't rise, that yeast begins to die at around 45C. I let my dough sit in the warmth of the oven, switched off and door closed, for a lot longer than the hour recommended. I left it for more like three hours and, despite my 'best' efforts, it rose!  

Dark chocolate chips instead of dried fruits.

After such a long wait, I very happily  kneaded in those chocolate chips, made six little buns and left them to rise once more which, to my amazement, they did! While they were baking, their scrumptious scent wafted through the house. They emerged from the oven golden on top and all soft on the inside. Enjoyably edible and not in the least bit like rocks. Yes!

One sweet little hot cross bun.

Tomorrow, I am going to bake these hot cross buns again for they are now all gone. I'll see if I can shape them a little more uniformly and perhaps I'll pipe those crosses on instead of painting them on with the edge of a spoon. And, with a 31C day forecast, I should have plenty of warm spots for the dough to rise in though I won't be resting it at the top of my front stairs!

Have you been baking for Easter?

Meg

Simple Carrot Cake

I think I baked this cake just so I could have cream cheese icing! I wasn't thinking about the orange carrot-y goodness or sweet local honey or the crunchy crushed walnuts. What I was thinking about was that creamy, tangy icing that makes any carrot cake complete (in my opinion).

Carrot cake with cream cheese icing.

My carrot cake craving began when I was leafing through an old copy of Backyard Farmer magazine, issue No. 12 to be precise. There was a recipe, submitted by Lisa Walker, for an 'As Simple As It Comes, But Oh So Delicious' Carrot Cake recipe from a cafe called Bruce's at Wynyard in Tasmania. I adjusted the recipe a bit, as I wanted to use spelt flours, so here's how I made it in my kitchen:

Simple Carrot Cake🥕

Ingredients:

1/3  cup brown sugar
1/2  cup wholemeal spelt flour
3/4 cup white spelt flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 large carrots, peeled & grated (*I coarsely grated the carrot but think finely grating it would be best.)
1/3 cup chopped toasted walnuts

1/2  cup vegetable oil (*I used macadamia nut oil.)
3 large eggs
1/3 cup local honey

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 170C.  Grease and line a cake tin.

2.  Whisk flours, baking powder, bicarb soda, cinnamon and sugar in large bowl.

3.  Blend oil, eggs and honey until creamy and frothy.

4.  Make well in centre of the dry ingredients. Pour in blended wet ingredients.

5.  Mix gently and, just before all the flour is incorporated, add in the grated carrot and 
     walnuts and finish combining cake batter. Do not overmix!

6.  Fill prepared cake tin with the cake batter. 

7.  Bake, on middle rack in the oven, for around 45mins. Cake should bounce back when lightly touched.

I didn't follow a recipe, like this one, for cream cheese icing. I simply beat together  1/2 tub of softened cream cheese,  a tablespoon or so of lemon juice and then added some spoonfuls of icing sugar until it tasted just right.

Wholesome ingredients.

This cake was oh so simple to make and it did taste oh so delicious....especially with that creamy, tangy cream cheese icing on top.

I've been thinking that I may just bake another carrot cake soon.  (After all, I do have half a tub of cream cheese left over so could make more icing.😉) Perhaps, I will try this recipe for the carrot cake that was judged to be Australia's Best. Apparently, the judges had a debate about whether carrot cake is really carrot cake without cream cheese icing! 

What do you think? Is carrot cake really carrot cake without cream cheese icing?

Meg

First Soapmaking: A Heart-Shaped Flop

I imagined bars of creamy, milky soap but ended up with these lumpy bumpy hearts instead. 😞

My first homemade soaps.

My first attempt at making soap didn't quite turn out perfectly but learning a new skill often takes time. This happened when I started knitting again so many years after my grandmother taught me how to cast on. So many dropped stitches! It happened too when I began teaching myself to sew. So much unpicking! And it seems now that soap making will take practice and patience and a willingness to try again. 

The soap recipe I followed is really very simple. There are very few ingredients in it; just pure soap flakes, milk and milk powder. Essential oils can be added but I chose not to add fragrance as I wanted to limit the chance for things to go awry. But awry they went anyway! Luckily, flops like this are simply opportunities to learn, aren't they...

Lumpy bumpy bases.

During my first soapmaking session, I ran into a few problems which I think probably led to this somewhat messy, heart-shaped result.  The pot I used was one I already had and I don't feel it has a heavy enough base because it didn't heat up well at low temperature so it took forever for the soap flakes to melt, and the bottom of the soap mixture began to burn when I increased the heat. It is also very light and kept moving off the hotplate as I tried stirring the soap mixture leading to a less-than-constant temperature. I will be keeping my eye out for a heavy based pot at the op-shops before I try making soap again. 

Smooth and creamy but still too thick.

After considerable time and with much stirring, both by hand and with a stick blender, my mixture did finally reach the point where it was creamy and smooth and ready to pour into my heart-shaped moulds. I found it very tricky transferring the soap mixture from the pot to fill each heart as the mixture quickly became too thick on the surface when removed from the heat meaning I could not achieve a smooth finish for the base of the soaps. I wonder if a simple rectangular container might work better and make for an easier transfer of mixture to mould. At least until I get the consistency right.

Imperfection!

After 24hours to set, I turned the soapy hearts out of their silicone mould. While they are 'rough' on the base, they are somewhat smoother on top. So, while I definitely won't be gifting my soap to anyone until I sort out a few glitches, it's still very much usable for us here at home. Well, it will be once it cures for a few weeks. In the meantime, I'll be scouring the op-shops to find me a better pot so that I can have another try. 

Are you a soap maker? How did your first attempts turn out?

Meg

Making Meals in my Kitchen

I grew up eating my mother's homemade food. It was rarely anything fancy but it was good and filling and nourishing and there on the table every day. Now I cook for my own family. The food I make isn't that fancy either but it's fresh and wholesome and there on the table every day. 

This past week there was one roast dinner and lots of salads among other homemade deliciousness. I planned out our meals for the week, substituted what I did have for what I didn't have, shopped for what I needed and made the most of the ingredients I bought. Nothing was wasted; the compost bin got the peelings and my enthusiastic Labrador "supervisor" got the tidbits with roast chicken and leftover gravy being one of his favourites ... among his many favourites!

A lovely roast dinner.

On the one cooler evening we had this past week, I roasted a whole chicken (I had one left in the freezer that I did not cook up for Christmas lunch) with lots of roasted vegetables and made pan gravy from all the goodness stuck to the bottom of the roasting tray. We had leftover chicken wraps for lunch the next day too. Yum!

An oven baked frittata filled with roast veg.

From the leftover roast vegetables, I made an oven-baked frittata for dinner the next night. It stretched to lunch, accompanied by a summer salad, the following day.

Mmm ...  Macadamia & Mango Rice Salad

Salads are on our plates often during these Summer days. They are quick to make, full of revitalising colour and healthy goodness, taste amazing and there's always leftovers if you make a big enough bowlful to begin with. 

This Macadamia and Mango Brown Rice Salad is full of flavour and crunch! I bought the mangoes and raw macadamia nuts from Aldi and I have enough of both to make another big bowlful of this over the coming weekend. Besides roasting the macadamias and cooking the rice, there's very little else other than chopping up some fresh veg, throwing in a handful of currants and whisking up a two-ingredient dressing. So simple and so good!

Macadamia nuts roasted in my oven.

I roasted beautiful macadamia nuts for the salad while I was toasting a batch of homemade granola. Granola, or toasted muesli is so simple to make and so versatile. I added dried cranberries and chopped almonds and shaved coconut to this one. My husband loves coconut-everything (me, not so much) but you can add in your own favourites be it coconut or dates or dried apricots or pecans or sunflower seeds. That was breakfast taken care of!

Toasty homemade granola.

While the oven was on, I baked a lovely lemon slice using more of the rolled oats I bought for the granola, a tin of condensed milk I had in my pantry and some lemon juice I had in the freezer. I should have photographed that slice before putting it out for afternoon tea because it was gone before I remembered ... and I don't think the aforementioned Labrador had anything to do with that!

Meg

Wholesome Brown Rice Salad

Our Christmas Day lunch is a cold meats and salads affair; it's too hot for a roast dinner when it's 40C in the shade in our down-under Summery Australia. (The weather was actually milder this year (at our place) but I had already roasted the chickens on Christmas Eve so no last-minute switch to a hot roast dinner was entertained.

A big bowl of Brown Rice Salad. 

Yum!

Amongst the array of salads I made for our family feast was this delicious and wholesome brown rice salad. It's made with healthy brown rice, lots of colourful vegetables, crunchy nuts, fresh herbs and my-favourite feta. The lemon and honey dressing is so very simple. My kind of food! 

My version of this salad combines the basis of this recipe, from Katie Workman of The Mom 100 with the currants, nuts and feta from this recipe by Nicola of Eat Well NZ. I reduced the olive oil from 1/3cup to 1/4cup for the dressing and used pecan nuts, instead of cashew nuts, because I had pecans in the pantry. It all mixed together deliciously!

🤎 Wholesome Brown Rice Salad 🤎

*** Omit the nuts if you have a nut allergy.***

Salad Ingredients:

4 cups cooked brown basmati rice

1 cup coarsely grated carrot

1 cup diced cucumber

1/2 cup diced red capsicum 

1/2 cup thinly sliced celery

1/2 cup chopped spring onion

1/2 cup toasted and roughly chopped pecan nuts

handful (or two) of currants

1 block of your favourite feta cheese

1/4 cup chopped parsley

2 Tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

Dressing Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil 

3 Tablespoons lemon juice

2 Tablespoons honey

1 Tablespoon white white vinegar

1 Tablespoon mustard

salt & pepper

1.  Mix all the vegetables, nuts and herbs through the cooked brown rice. 

2. Crumble in the feta cheese and sprinkle over the currants.

3. Whisk up the ingredients for the dressing and pour over the top of the salad. 

4. Toss to combine. Refrigerate in an air-tight container.

I doubled the recipe and made a huge bowl of this rice salad so there was plenty leftover; some to send home with family and some for us to enjoy bowlfuls of for lunch and dinner the next day. Lazy leftovers have to be one of the best things about Christmas Day lunch!

What did you cook for Christmas at your place that you have leftovers of?

Meg

Simple & Sweet Chocolate Fudge

A sweet, homemade fudge makes a lovely gift. This one is so simple; just a few ingredients melted together form a creamy, chocolatey treat. No candy thermometer required!

A little box of homemade chocolate fudge...

with peppermint crisp shards on top!

There are just a few simple steps to making this creamy chocolate fudge. I followed the recipe, for 3 Minute Chocolate Fudge, from the Chocolate, Chocolate & More website. It really does only take a few minutes!

Here's how to make it:

Put 400g condensed milk (one tin) & 2 cups dark chocolate chips 

into a microwave safe bowl.

Melt on high in microwave for one minute. Stir gently to combine.

Heat for another 30 seconds if needed to melt all chocolate chips.

Add one teaspoon vanilla extract & stir until well combined.

Cut up or crush topping for your fudge.

Carefully pour fudge into lined slice tray.

Sprinkle topping on & gently press into surface of the fudge.

After an hour or so in the refrigerator, your simple and sweet chocolate fudge should be set and ready to cut into squares. Keep in an airtight container and try to resist sampling too many pieces before packaging up your homemade fudge. 😉

To make my fudge that little bit more special, I topped it with the minty shards of a peppermint crisp. For a festive fudge, you could top with a crushed candy cane or some chopped dried fruits or nuts. 

Packaged up beautifully it makes a sweet, homemade gift for birthdays or Christmas. 

Meg