Can I borrow an 8 cup baking tray?

After my apple crumble I decide that I'd like to do another bake to up the anty a little. My choice is a blackberry, cherry & walnut bake with dark chocolate custard - you can hear the fat in your thighs right?
I have a few of the same ingredients from the apple crumble, but still head up to the shops to get what I need.
The list is as follows:
- Self raising flower
- Frozen blackberries
- Frozen cherries
- Crumbed walnuts
- Slivered almonds
- Almond meal
- Cornflower
- Lemon
- Dark cooking chocolate
- Thickened Cream
- Vanilla beans x 2

I head straight to the 'flour' aisle and find everything I need, including my crumbed walnuts and slivered almonds ( I have a mass collection of left over nuts in my pantry now). The lemon, dark cooking chocolate and thickened cream I find without hassle, but when I find the vanilla beans I see that there are 2 beans for $8. $8?!?! Psht, no vanilla bean for my custard - I'm on a teensy bit of a budget this week.
Next I head to my frozen food aisle and find that their are neither blackberries nor cherrys. Urgh.
I remembered seeing canned blackberries and cherries went I bought my apples last week, so I decide to grab those - surely they wont make TOO much of a difference.

Loaded up with all my bits and bobs I head home, read the recipe over approximately 3 times and set out to make a delicious 1950s housewife bake.
The first step is to mix the blackberries, cherries, cornflower and lemon zest together. Now I think I assumed correctly in the fact that the frozen berries obviously wouldn't have any syrup in them. So I drained out my tinned berries as best I could, but there was still a whole heap of syrup - I decide to see how I go with this.

After mixing it all together and popping it in what I thought was an '8 cup baking dish' I quickly realize that my dish is way too big. Too late now though. We'll just have to see how I go with this too.

My next instruction was to put all the other dry ingredients and the butter together to make the dough for the top of the bake. 

 Then when it was all crumbly, I put the milk in

After the dough was made I spread it over the berries. The recipe said to allow for gaps and to pop this on top sloppily and not to try and make it look perfect - easy for me!

 The next step was to add my slivered almonds and walnuts, looks tasty already!

So off to the oven my bake goes and what do you know it, the oven hasn't been pre-heating because I didn't push the button all the way, so the light was on but there was no heat. Fantastic. So I give it ten minutes then pop it back in. Hoping that all goes well.
Pulling myself away from my slight setback, I decide to give this custard a go. The recipe states that I need to put the cream and milk into a saucepan over low heat and get it to a hot stage, but not boiling. I re-read this a couple of times thinking..saucepan? Why on earth would I use something so large. Deciding to just go with it, I pull this out -

 Quite obviously a fry pan. I also decide not to transfer it to a saucepan because I thought "surely there's not a huge difference?"
The next step is to get the yolks of 3 eggs. I've never tried this before, but saw them doing a competition for it on Masterchef. I give it a crack (get it?) and managed to do a pretty good job! Whipped those babies up and added the rest of my ingredients.

 The next step is to add my fry pan milk *shudder* as you can see in the picture it got stuck to the bottom of the pan. Yum.

 In the end the custard was shocking. It developed this weird yellowy oily residue on top and went all gluggy and I'm not going to lie, it looked a little like poop. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and tried it. It didn't taste so bad! Not amazing, but not bad. The consistency and oily stuff freaked me out so I ended up tipping it out - not entirely sure that the lack of vanilla  beans had anything to do with it, but I'm glad I didn't spend $8 on them when they would have been tipped down the drain.
It looked like this -

Mmm, poop custard.

I guess it was received well because by the time I came home from work it had all been eaten - so that's good! The bake itself was really tasty, but I think a smaller baking tray would have been ideal.

See you next time!

bon apetit. 

harper.

What I learnt:

- The difference between a fry pan and a saucepan

- Custard is a very sensitive food to make, maybe concentrate on that more than trying to get good photo of it being made

- Always double check the oven is actually on

Can I borrow some ice cream?

Todays recipe was a Salted Caramel Apple Crumble. Whenever my Nan from Perth flies over to visit she makes like 10 dishes of her apple crumple and it's simply amazing. We all gain 5kg kilos in the crumble itself, so this desert was a bit of a challenge.
I set off to Woolworths again, swiped Mums staff card and came home with everything I needed.
The recipe is based in a series of "you can make amazing recipes with canned fruit" which suited me fine because I didn't want to cut up almost 1kg of apples (my Nan does this in the lounge room whilst watching the bold and the beautiful - I'm not judging her but I don't think I've quite reached that level of senility yet!)
The recipe calls for:
1/2 cup pure cream. 1/2 cup brown sugar, 85g butter chopped, 1 tablespoon of sea salt 2x 770g cans of sliced apple and vanilla ice cream to serve.
For the crumble it requires: 1/3 cup of brown sugar, 1 3/4 cups of rolled oats, 50g of butter chopped, 1/2 cup shredded coconut and 3/4 cup of pecans chopped.
Learning from my previous cooking mistake, I checked what I already had in the cupboard and found we had a few of the basics - win!
So my ingredients looked like this so far:

After reading over the recipe a couple of times, it took me a little while to figure out that there were TWO lots of sugar going into two separate parts of the recipe, but once I sorted this out I was good to go.
The first step was to put the cream, sugar and butter into a saucepan over a high heat and to let it simmer for 2 minutes.

So I'm looking at my saucepan, two minutes have past...and it still looks like this ^

What the hell? Its on a high heat. Check. I've stirred it. Check. I re-read the recipe. Check. I type into Google to check that I've got the right definition of simmering in my head...yep I sure do. What is going on?!
I smell gas. Hmm...how peculiar.
I lift up the saucepan and apparently at some point or another the flame on the stove has gone out and I've been "simmering" my ingredients on gas.
Cooking 1. Harper 0.
With the dumb move behind me I reignite the stove and away we were, simmering in no time!

P.s I learnt this nifty trick. Don't you hate it when you're wooden spoon is covered in gunk and you don't want to put it down anywhere?

How good is that?

Anyway, moving on! The next step is to add the 2 770g of apples to the mixture. I feel that is a lot of apples but decide not to stray from the recipe. After stirring them around into the delicious looking caramel I pop them into my dish. 

Now that the apples are done. Its time to start working on le crumble. Pretty much all of my left over dry ingredients + the butter just get mixed in a large bowl - pretty simple stuff. However the measurements of butter are getting me. I don't have any scales so I'm pretty much winging it with these - something that I'm definitely not capable of just yet.

After mixing it all together by hand - definitely one of my favorite things to do, the mixture gets poured over the apples. At this point I can sort of tell that I should have used more butter because its SUPER crumbly and isn't gooey enough to hold all the dry ingredients together. But I freak out thinking the oven has been on for too long and just throw it in there hoping it'll all work out.

25 minutes later the top has got a lovely golden glow to it and my kitchen smells like delicious home cooking. It looked like this:

It does look a tad brown in the picture, but it was cooked perfectly all the way through. As expected however, I really needed to add more butter to get the crumble a little stickier on top - but it's all a learning process!
Until next time lovers,
bon apetit
harper.

What I learnt:
- Always check the stove
- When the recipe suggests what to serve it with, go with it. Ice cream would have really topped this dish off but I had to stinge out and go with cream, didn't I?
- Buy a set of scales and don't be afraid to use butter!

Can I borrow some eggs?

After I made my fabulous tuna and hummus wraps I decided to move onto something a little sweeter.
I won't try to deny it, I didn't make these from scratch. I bought a Betty Crocker box of cookie mix (as mentioned earlier) because I wasn't ready for two failures in baked goods quite so soon.
So I set up my ingredients for what I needed, only to realize that the cucumber disaster had come back to haunt me in the form of no eggs! Unlike the cucumber, I definitely needed the egg for this recipe, so off to Woolworths I went...again.

Being such a typical girl I didn't buy just the one thing I needed, and instead I came back with an extra two cooking magazines, they were only $3 each - don't judge me! But the important thing is I didn't forget the eggs this time.

 This recipe is incredibly simple so there was no way I could screw it up. I preheated my oven to 180 degrees and put my ingredients in a bowl. Here you can see the Betty Crocker mix plus my BYO ingredients, butter & an egg. 

The recipe asked to mix with my hands. The bowl was definitely an awkward height and trying to set up a camera to photograph your greasy cookie hands was a challenge, but the feeling was awesome! So squidgy and delicious. I had to have a taste (I washed my hands after, don't stress!)

The next step was to squish them into little balls and press them down with the spoon. I had heaps of batter so I did this on two separate trays rather than form one giant cookie - actually that's not a bad idea. Maybe next time!

I had to cook them for 13-15 minutes depending on the oven apparently, and at the 10 minute mark I noticed that they were looking pretty golden already, so I quickly re-read the box and realized that there were two pre-heat options. 180 for an oven and 160 for fan forced. I was using fan forced. 

So I quickly turned the heat down and left them in for a minute longer, then yanked those babies out of the oven and let them cool and set. 

Apart from the little mishap they ended up being DELICIOUS which you'd hope so for box mix. I shared them around and work and everyone was none the wiser and texted me in compliments later on that night. Job well done I say

bon apetit!

harper.
p.s turns out there were actually eggs in the cupboard already.

What I learnt-
- When looking for ingredients and before running off to Woolworths, check both the fridge AND the pantry
- Always read the recipe, and for me, read it twice
- Taking the cookies out just before they are too golden and letting them set on a wire cooling tray stops the cookies from drying out and leaves them moist and tasty

Can I borrow a cucumber?

Today I woke up after a bingey eating weekend consisting mainly of chocolate. So I Google "healthy easy recipes" some time after breakfast. I sift and sift through hundreds of recipes and come across something I seem to have most of the ingredients for. A healthy tuna and hummus wrap - no problems! Without checking my cupboard and fridge and with dire anticipation I head up to the local Woolworths and set myself on a mission. Shopping list:

- Tuna
- Hummus
- Semi dried tomatoes
- Fresh mint & parsley

Well, I think to myself, seems I didn't have most of the ingredients at home. Oh well. Now I tried to bake brownies the other day but I wasn't particularly proud of them and considered them as a ride off, so in redemption I decide to make choc chip cookies (I tried to stay away from chocolate okay?) Out of a box though, I'm not ready to be doing this all manually obviously after the brownie fiasco. So I grab a Betty Crocker box and check the back. Butter? Check. One egg? Check.
Great! Time to head home. Processing my groceries in the check out and feeling like a champ, I'm now officially hungry and looking forward to these wraps.
When I get home and re-read the recipe (which I had on my iPhone at the store) it calls for baby spinach and cucumber as well. I check the fridge and find baby spinach (complete luck) but no cucumber! Even though I recall having a cucumber bought only 2 days ago. Maybe someone had the cucumber munchies.
So I spread out my fresh food and start to make my wrap, it looked something like this

Then after adding the hummus, tuna, baby spinach, semi dried tomatoes and garnished with mint and parsley, it looked like this

 Now to fold the damn thing. I've never been an expert in wrapping wraps. I eat a lot of them and I feel that I should have acquired this skill by now but it's just not coming too me. I think its a born and bred thing. 
But this is how i went about it anyway. Step 1.

 Step 2.

 Step crap. The damn thing broke at the bottom,

 I tried to get a photo of it nicely but it just wouldn't stay wrapped!!!!! I'd like to say this was my wrap

But this was my wrap.

 In the end they were delicious so I didn't mind so much that I couldn't get a good photo of it. Another photographer once told me that sometimes if you can't get the photo, or you miss a shot, to just embrace and enjoy the moment for what it is. So that's exactly what I did.
However I did feel that it lacked that certain crunch factor without the cucumber. I tidied up, put all the groceries away and prepared for my cookie bake off by looking in the fridge to get some eggs. Guess what I couldn't find?
Eggs.
Guess what I did find?

Yep.
bon apetite!
harper

What I learnt:
- Look in the fridge before you leave home!
- Look again
- Perhaps softer or larger wraps should be acquired to prevent wrap breakage

Can I borrow some rosemary?

So with the new challenge in mind what did I decide to cook first off? A roast. Yep. A long winded, long ass, millions of ways to cook a roast, roast.
I was staying at my boyfriends and said to him "Won't it be fun if we cook something together?"
"Sure" he replies. So off we set to our local Coles to pick up some goodies for this roast. I had my heart set on beef, so headed straight to the beef section. Unknowingly picking this recipe I didn't realize that 1kg of beef works out at around $30. Now only working at night and not for very much per hour I find that this is WAY out of my budget. Next stop - chicken.
How do I choose a chicken? A big chicken or a little chicken? An Inghams chicken or a Coles chicken? A stuffed chicken or an emptied cavity chicken? Why are there so many types of damn chickens?! I can't remember what I got in the end.
Potatoes, pumpkin, garlic, onion and carrot were my vegetables of choice. I also bought 2 tomatoes which I didn't even end up using.
As mentioned earlier I'm obviously not a cook. So being a person born in the technological age, I started Googling how long I should cook my chicken. Jamie Oliver says 1 hour and 20, others say 45 minutes, some people even specifically cook their chicken for 1 hour 22 minutes and 35 seconds - I'm way in over my head here. Not to mention I haven't a clue how long to cook the vegetables for. So my next step after being failed by Google and its millions of results is to text my dad. It went something like this
Me - "If I cook a roast chicken for an hour, long long til I should put the vegetables in?"
Dad - "Now"
I can tell he isn't going to be much help.
After venting my frustrations to my patient boyfriend he says we should just wing it (enjoy that pun)
The journey home was short and I warned him that it was a long cooking experience. He didn't like the sound of that so I fed him a timtam and popped him in front of the TV.
Okay so I have the chicken, I cut it out of its bag and squirm a little over the squidgyness of the beast. I drizzled it in oil, covered it in salt, pepper & rosemary and massaged it all over. I then put some oil in the base of a pan, broke open my garlic into bulbs and let them run free in the pan with my chicken. Oh, I also read from Jamie Oliver to put a lemon up the "cavity" so I did. And that was a first. In the end of this ordeal, the meal looked something like this:

So far so good. 

The next step is to chop my vegetables. After seeing my dad do this a couple of times I very vaguely remember him saying to chop the veggies quite large, so I do this.
45 minutes goes past and once again according to Mr. Oliver I look at my chicken and see its already super brown on top. I poke it with a knife and juices start coming out! Looks really good so far! But then I freak out. Is the chicken almost done?! What about the veggies?! We can't have a chicken without the vegetables. Crap crap crap!
So in a fluster of worry, without microwaving or boiling the vegetables first I just pop them in the pan (raw) and quickly shove it back in the oven (note the stabbing mark on the chicken)

I think it was at around an hour and a half that the chicken was looking mighty cooked and I decided that my vegetables would just have to do. In the end they still tasted really nice but the pumpkin was a little soggy, I didn't end up eating the onion because I was so full on potatoes which were delicious but not crunchy and the carrot was probably perfect - so that's a plus!

The boyfriend was incredibly happy with my meal and managed to top off 3/4 of the chicken - to say he was hungry is a massive understatement. I didn't end up getting a nice presentable picture of my chicken because when I cut it up I made a big old mess, so here's what it looked like when it came out all finished 

All up I'm pretty impressed with myself and this roast dinner, I think its a good sign. 

bon apetite! 

harper.

What I learnt:

- Microwave or boil at least the potatoes before roasting them

- Don't cook a roast on an empty stomach

- Pick a green vegetable to brighten up the plate some more

Can I borrow...

Hello cooking world! This is Harper and it's just fine and dandy to meet you.
Let me give all you foodies out there a little background knowledge! I'm a young Sydney-sider, currently in between career paths, jobs and well, everything really. I have recently been sitting on my tantalizing couch watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S episodes back to back and eating tuna out of a can and an occasional scoop of ice cream from my fine selection.
Although I do have a job, it's at night. Which leaves me with approximately 8 hours a day to hang out with my friends (the characters I mean) After recently taking up knitting whilst listening to a bit of Sinatra I got an "inter-frention" by one of my nearest and dearest who suggested starting a blog along the lines of that movie "Julie and Julia" the only difference being that I am not a cook. In fact, I'm a born and bred "un-cook" (if there is such a thing). I can burn water, I can screw up a macaroni and cheese out of a box and once I tried to boil spaghetti in cold water - are you getting the picture?
I feel like with all this spare time every week (going on 40 hours) I may as well take up this challenge and hopefully become a fine ass homemaker that someone will wife eventually!
I look forward to sharing pictures, stories and delicious (hopefully!) food with you along the way.