Cadbury Caramilk Spread

I ended up making this recipe after eating the Cadbury Caramilk and finding it too sweet. The Caramilk tasted exactly like their Cadbury Dream chocolate, very disappointing! This recipe saves the day and saves me throwing the chocolate in the bin.

The Caramilk spread tastes so good, it ends up having a slightly creamy tang from the creme friache and it has fudgy texture. Good luck in trying not to eat it in one go.

Recipe for the Cadbury Caramilk spread

Ingredients:

250 grams of chopped Caramilk

150 grams of creme friache

30 grams of butter

30 grams of milk (yes I said grams lol)

Method:

Add the creme friache, butter and milk into a pot. Simmer it on low heat, once the mixture has a few bubbles appearing, take the pot off the stove. Add the chopped Caramilk chocolate and let it rest for a minute or less. Stir the mixture until it’s fully combined. Pour the mixture into a glass container and leave it in the fridge for a few hours.

Recipe sourced from: Mai Cui from the Facebook group Markdown Addicts Australia





Easy homemade Scones

Making scones is one thing that I hate the most, I hate kneading things by hand. After volunteering for the Country Women’s Association at the Easter Show as a scone cutter, I felt invincible and knew that I could conquer this fear by making my own scones at home.

Volunteering for the CWA at the Easter Show was one of the most amazing and tiring experiences of my life. I got to meet some amazing women and learnt so much. My role was a scone cutter, this meant that once the mixture was mixed, I had to knead the scone mixture and cut them into scones. I cut a lot of scones on my 4 hour shift and was so tired afterwards. On the day that I volunteered they sold 5124 scones!

It’s actually taken me a few weeks to want to even think about making scones and because it was my day off, I felt inspired to make some scones.

I googled so many recipes and I found a recipe by the CWA that won me over. This recipe looked so easy. The recipe took so little time to make, I was chuffed. To cut the scones I used the top of a glass because I could not find my cookie cutter. To ensure the scones are not sticky, I used lots of plain flour to flour the bench and scones.

The results were beautiful.

I ate one of the scones straight from the oven. The scones tasted so amazing, they were fluffy and soft on the inside. My husband was also impressed.

I really think that I’ve found the best scone recipe ever, I’ll definitely make them again soon.

CWA scones Recipe:

3/4 cups of cream

1 cup of milk

3 tablespoons of sifted icing sugar

3 cups of sifted self raising flour

Method:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius

With an electric beater on low speed, mix the cream, milk and icing sugar for one minute.

Mix in the flour with wooden spoon, be careful not to over mix.

Put mixture on a well floured surface and knead. If mixture gets sticky, dust with plain flour.

Cut the scones into desired shape. Place scones on a greased/floured baking tray and make sure the scones are touching each other. I used cooking oil spray and sprinkle of plain flour.

Cook in the oven for 12-15 minutes.

Cinnamon sugar candied nuts

I love cinnamon sugar, it is just one of many sweet things that I adore, I believe that cinnamon sugar works well in any baking recipe. I had tonnes of raw macadamia and raw pecan nuts sitting in my pantry (my mum went crazy buying me tonnes), so I thought why not make some cinnamon sugar candied nuts.

The idea of cinnamon sugar candied nuts just sounded delicious, I assumed that they’d taste like the ones that from the nut shops that you’d buy. I searched for a recipe and I found one that was nice and easy.

The recipe was pretty easy to follow, however in one instance I forgot to turn them over (I blame my toddler). Once the nuts were baked, I let them cool and resisted the urge to eat one.

The cinnamon sugar candied nuts tasted so delicious, it really gave the nuts a nice crunch to them and the nuts itself tasted like they just had been roasted.

I decided to share the cinnamon sugar candied nuts with my dad and he loved them.

This recipe is so dangerously easy to make and so delicious.

The recipe for cinnamon sugar candied nuts- https://damndelicious.net/2013/10/30/cinnamon-sugar-candied-nuts/

Pavlova

I have a few items that I really dislike baking and pavlova is one of them. Making pavlova scares me because it always looks so complicated, I felt inspired to make one after finding a recipe by Adam Liaw.

The last time I made a pavlova it went quite brown and it was quite flat, I felt so deflated after that, so I decided to give up. Then one day I saw a Instagram post from Adam Liaw promising that his recipe will help make the perfect pavlova, so I decided to be brave and give it a go.

After reading the recipe it seems that the main reason that my pavlova might have failed is the fact that I did not mix the egg whites/sugar long enough and that my oven was too hot. This time around I followed those steps carefully and thankfully my pavlova looked much nicer.

For the garnishing I put mango, whipped cream and shredded coconut. I was so proud of my pavlova, look how high and white it looks. 😍

The pavlova tasted really nice and the additions of mangoes instead of the usual strawberries was a nice change. I might have put the same garnishes as Adam’s if I had the ingredients.

Looks like I might be making a pavlova again soon, I’m crossing it off my baking nemesis list.

Adam Liaw’s recipe:

Pavlova

Gingerbread cupcakes

It’s that time of the year again where I go into crazy baking mode baking for all the Christmas parties that I have to attend. This year I’ve gone crazy on gingerbread.

The one thing I hate about Christmas type cakes is fruit cake, I hate dried fruit, I find it disgusting and as a child I used to pick the fruit out of the cake and just eat the cake.

This year I decided to bake gingerbread inspired recipes and today I decided to bake gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese icing and sprinkled with gingerbread crumble.

I actually had a dream about this recipe idea in my sleep, I was so excited to make it the next day. I ended up googling a few recipes for gingerbread cupcakes and then chose one that seemed to suit my needs. The recipe that I chose looked easy to make, the only tweak that I made was not using maple syrup and only using not quite 1/2 a cup of treacle rather than molasses. Despite these tweaks, the recipe did turn out really well, such a relief.

For the gingerbread crumble, I tweaked the recipe to add more spices to the mix.

The result, delicious Christmas inspired cupcakes.

The cupcake combination worked really well and it was not too intense in gingerbread flavouring. The cupcake was also so moist.

I apologise for not posting this recipe before Christmas, I was just so busy! I also apologise for not typing out the recipe, no time with a toddler. 😭

The recipe can be located on these links:

Gingerbread cupcakes (minus the Twix)

The gingerbread crumble (add mixed spice)

Cream cheese icing

Snickerdoodles

When I went to America, I fell in love with snickerdoodles, I ate them nearly everyday, I tried looking for them when I got back to Australia, but I never found any that tasted as good. Thankfully the internet has so many awesome recipes for making snickerdoodles. 

I was feeling too cold and lazy, I googled the easiest snickerdoodle recipe that I could find. The recipe I found online was by Food.com, their recipe had a high rating and it looked really easy follow. 

I did a few tweaks to the recipe, I put more cinnamon than sugar in my cinnamon/sugar mixture. The recipe required 1 cup of butter, I ended up using one 250 grams block of unsalted butter that I had melted in the microwave. For the dough, I rolled it in the cinnamon sugar and then rolled it neatly into a ball with my hands.

The snickerdoodles only took 10 minutes to bake.

I ended up allowing the snickerdoodles to cool on the baking tray, this meant that the snickerdoodles had a crispy edge and a soft centre. 

The snickerdoodles tasted so good, whilst eating one, I was reminded of the snickerdoodles that I ate whilst in America. 

I definitely recommend you try this recipe if you love snickerdoodles, they’re easy to make and they taste A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! 

Snickerdoodles recipe can be located on this website Food.com Snickerdoodles

Vanilla and sour cream cupcakes

When I go to the supermarket, my bad habit is buying so many different things to use for baking because I have grand plans to bake something fabulous with it and then weeks later I forget about it. Yesterday I looked in my fridge and realised that I had forgotten to use the sour cream and it was due to expire next week, so I decided to find a recipe that I can use it in, I finally settled on a cupcake recipe because it looked easy. 

This recipe for vanilla and sour cream cupcakes was perfect for me, because it only required one bowl and I didn’t have the energy to make anything too complicated. When making the cupcakes, it was the first time in a long time that I had to use my hand mixer to mix the batter. 

The cupcakes were baked in only 17 minutes and they looked so golden brown and delicious. For the icing, I decided that I would use my usual buttercream recipe and make a two toned icing. 

The cupcakes tasted really good, I was so relieved that it tasted so moist and buttery because I can never can tell how well a new recipe will turn out and it kind of makes me feel nervous.

Maybe “accidentally” buying too many ingredients for baking is a good thing because it encourages me to explore different recipes.

 I’m super excited to be adding a new cupcake recipe to my list of favourites. 

The recipe for these cupcakes can be found here- Vanilla and sour cream cupcakes 

*note: I added a touch of vanilla bean paste to the recipe 

Eggless moist chocolate cupcakes

I love baking and the one thing that I seem to run out of is eggs, I always buy a huge tray of organic eggs and I always run out so quickly. Of course when it came time to bake cupcakes for my friend’s birthday, I had no eggs leftover. *cue the panic 

I was feeling too cold and lazy to go to the shops to buy eggs and my husband was not getting my subtle hints for him to go buy me some eggs, so I decided to look up eggless cupcakes recipes and I stumbled upon one that looked so easy to make.

I was quite sceptical to use a recipe that contained no eggs, I wasn’t too convinced that it would work out, but I was willing to give it a try because it looked so easy to make. The recipe very little time to make. 

I did encounter one issue, when I added the melted butter to the dry ingredients, mixed it and then added the milk, it was kind of  lumpy and the lumps were not coming out, so I left them and thankfully when the cupcakes were ready there were no signs of lumps in the baked cupcake. 

To finish off the cupcake I decided to add a milk chocolate icing. The cupcake tasted so good, and thankfully the cupcake tasted so chocolately and moist.

I am eggtremely excited to have found a great eggless recipe. 😉

The recipe for the eggless chocolate cupcakes can be found on this link 

All Recipe’s eggless chocolate cupcakes

Easy to make cinnamon scrolls

I love eating cinnamon scrolls, but I hate making them, most recipes that I’ve seen seem to be very time consuming and complex, I was so excited when I found an easier recipe via The Organised Housewife.

Following baking bloggers on Facebook can be a good and bad thing, bad because I keep saving recipes that I want to make and never get time to make and good because I find recipes that amaze me. 

The cinnamon scrolls recipe from The Organised Housewife looked so simple to make, so I decided to make it this morning with toddler in tow (normally I bake after he is in bed). The recipe didn’t take long to make and I was done much under an hour.

25 minutes later and my cinnamon scrolls were baked, talk about easy.

For the icing, I used a cream cheese recipe that I found on All Recipes website because I love cream cheese icing more than the conventional icing sugar glaze.

The results…

This version of the cinnamon scroll was both soft on the inside but crunchy on the top. I really liked it this way because I really hate hard cinnamon scrolls that are crunchy all over. 

The cinnamon scrolls tasted so good, once again even my husband tried one and liked it. The cream cheese icing was a perfect pairing to the cinnamon scroll and I ended up using a lot of cream cheese icing on the roll. Sooooo good!

I am so pleased that the cinnamon scrolls turned out nicely, I might even make them again soon. That is another item to cross off my baking bucket list.

The cinnamon scrolls recipe can be found on this website The Organised Housewife cinnamon scrolls 

The cream cheese icing can be found on this website All Recipe’s cream cheese icing

5 ingredients Spanish Churros

Today I am stuck at home feeling sick and of course this is the time in which I’m having a craving for everything that is not within my reach, today I just wanted Spanish churros, but I’m feeling too sick to go to San Churro, so I decided to make my own.

When I first made Spanish churros, the experience was so frustrating, that I never made them again. This time I happened to stumble upon a recipe by Recipe Tin Eats and it looked so easy, only 5 ingredients used for the batter, I was of course immediately sold. 

The churros batter was SO easy to make that it was dangerous, dangerous because it meant that I could easily whip these up anytime and quickly! (Uh oh.. there goes my diet).

The one thing that I used differently, was this time I used my wok to cook the churros , it is such a great idea and easier to work with than a pot, less splash with the hot oil.

The churros only took three minutes to cook and they were ready to eat.  For the chocolate sauce, I used Lindt chocolate and I did not add the thickened cream because I like my chocolate sauce thick.

The churros tasted so delicious, it took me a lot of resistance not to eat them all. My husband who doesn’t like sweet things liked them too.

I feel so much better now that I’ve got my Spanish churros fix, now it’s back to bed for me, so I can get better. 

Recipe Tin Eats Spanish churros recipe can be found on her website Recipe Tin Eats Spanish churros