Pecan Crumb Muffins

These little beauties are for everyone who has tried to be healthy throughout January. Ok, so I used greek yogurt rather than sour cream, but they are still packed full of sugar and butter and are amazing because of it. It's pretty much February, new years resolutions are out the window (not that I had any to start with) and its cold out. If you're gunna slip on that diet these are definitely your friend. 

The original recipe baked these as a big tray bake but I couldn't find the right tin so went for muffins. Do whatever you like, they'll still taste pretty darn good.

Ingredients:
For the Crumb:
100g butter, softened
115g plain flour
200g light brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
For the Batter:
275g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
200g greek yogurt
1 tsp vanilla paste/extract
100g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
100g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
150g pecans, chopped

To Make:

• Pre-heat oven to 180C. Pop 12 large muffin cases into a 12-hole muffin tin.
• To make the crumbs; combine all ingredients together and mix with a hand held electric whisk or in a food processor until you get a coarse crumb. Set aside until later.
• To make the batter; mix together the flour and baking powder in a medium bowl and set aside.
• Using a food processor or hand held electric whisk, cream the butter and two sugars together until light and fluffy.

• Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
• Stir the vanilla into the greek yogurt and set aside.

• Alternately add the flour and yogurt mix in 2-3 additions until the batter comes together completely. It should be smooth and quite thick!

• Finally fold in the chopped pecans with a wooden spoon.
• Drop around 2 tablespoons of batter into each of the prepared muffin cases.

• Top each case with a tablespoon of crumbs and press into the batter gently.

• Bake for 30-35 minutes until the crumbs are golden brown and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
• Remove from oven and while still warm, cover with a few teaspoons of a glaze made from milk, vanilla and icing sugar, or just dust with icing sugar.

Vanilla Cookies

So Christmas and the whole holiday season is over and everyone's back at work. It's January, it's miserable and it's getting colder once again. Sad faces all around.

Although it feels like so long ago now, it was so nice to have time off over Christmas and New Year and see lots of friends and spend time with my family. I didn't actually end up cooking as much stuff as I would have liked as time ran away from me and before I knew it the day was here and I wad back at work. A lot of my time recently has also been taken up by a certain new man in my life, Otis. 

Anyone that knows me will know that my favourite things in the world are food and dogs and I've been the happiest girl in the world since we decided a few months ago to get a new dog after our beautiful old boy, Gus, died 3 years ago. We got Otis just a week before Christmas and surprised everyone at my Grandparents house on Christmas day as my mum walked in with him in her arms. Granny couldn't be angry for long as who can stay mad at this face?

So you can see why I've been ever so slightly distracted as of late. But anyway, back to the food side of things and a simple cookie recipe with a little twist. I got the stamp as a Christmas gift form my sister and just needed an excuse to try it out! I think it makes these tasty treats even harder to resist, don't you agree?

I hope to have lot's more exciting recipes for 2013 and to try to keep blogging as much as possible!


Ingredients:
250g butter
140g caster sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
300g plain flour
1 egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract

To Make:

• Preheat oven to 190C and grease two baking trays.
• Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.
• Add the sugar and salt.
• Mix in butter and blend until crumbly texture.
• Add the egg yolk and vanilla and stir thoroughly until the dough comes together.
• Chill i the fridge for 1 hour.
• Roll into balls about the size of golf balls.

• Flour work surface and stamp.
• Flatten dough balls slightly and then press with the stamp.

• Place onto greased trays and bake for 6-8 minutes.
• Leave to cool for a few minutes and then transfer to cooling wrack to cool completely.

Mocha Brownie Trifle

We had to add some glitter for the festivities

So this little recipe actually started out as plain old brownies but then went a tiny bit wrong along the way.

For New Years Eve, some friends and I were having a little party and we were all bringing along food and lots of drink to see in the New Year. I thought it would be nice to make a super dooper brownie cake with chocolate ganache topping to finish off our NYE feast, so me and Sami set to work. Then I don't really know what happened (we got distracted/didn't cook it for long enough) and something went wrong with the brownie and it all kinda collapsed on us. We were left with a pile of chewy brownie (along with lots of brownie goo) and a big bowl of chocolate ganache and not much time to do anything about it. There was nothing else to do but make a Mocha Brownie Trifle.

We layered up the broken brownie with a biscuit base, the ganache, raspberries and topped it all off with some whipped up double cream (handily left over from making the ganache earlier). In the end we were pretty proud of our efforts! 

You can try making the brownies and hopefully they'll end up as we intended or make them into a trifle like we did with whatever extra ingredients ya fancy. This just shows that when things go wrong in the kitchen you can normally find a way to turn it around and still be left with something delicious to enjoy.

Ingredients:
For the Brownie:
4 oz semisweet chocolates
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tbs instant coffee powder dissolved in 1 tbs hot water, cooled
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 oz butter
For the Ganache:

100g good quality dark chocolate
150ml carton double cream 

Plus any extras if making a trifle

To Make:

• Pre-heat oven to 180°C.
• Combine flour and baking powder, set aside.
• Place the chocolate and butter in a heavy bottom pan over low heat until melted. 
• Stir and let cool. 
• Beat sugar and eggs until light and fluffy. 
• Fold in the chocolate mixture and cooled coffee and mix well. 
• Add flour mixture and lightly fold into the mixture. 

• Pour the batter into a greased square cake pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until firm and a tooth pick inserted into the centre comes out clean. 
• Now make the ganache: chop the chocolate into small pieces and tip into a bowl. 
• Pour the cream into a pan and heat until it is about to boil.
• Take off the heat and pour it over the chocolate. Stir until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth.
• Spread ganache over cooled brownie or break up brownie and layer with whipped double cream and anything else!

We didn't actually get around to eating very much of this after all our other food and drink but it was good to enjoy on New Years Day evening after a big bowl of my mums turkey soup.

Happy New Year!