Entries Tagged 'Bake' ↓

I recently got a comment on my post about the 5 minute chocolate cupcake, asking if I know of a substitute for egg. Although I have not tested this myself, I found the following options around the web. If you’re familiar with any of these please let us know whether they are successful or not!

What is a good substitute for eggs? Have a look at the options below – each option is equal to one egg. There are some of these which I would not recommend for microwave cooking. See all marked with * which are recommended.

• 2 tablespoons water mixed with 1 tablespoon oil, 2 teaspoons baking powder and 2 tablespoon cornstarch *

• 2 tablespoons arrowroot flour

• 2 tablespoons potato starch

• 1 heaped tablespoon soy powder, 2 tablespoons water

• 1 tablespoon soy milk powder, 1 tablespoon cornstarch & 2 tablespoons water

• 1/4 cup Apple / Banana puree (or any high pectin content fruit) *

• 1 tablespoon milled flax seed and 3 tablespoons water

• 1/4 cup tofu

If you have any additional suggestions which you know work well, please let us know!

Sad to say its the last day of holiday for me today, but its true.  So to celebrate, or grieve, I baked cappuccino muffins for breakfast.  I used the ready mixed type because I was too lazy to make my own.

Here’s what the packet looks like…

And here’s the end product…

The first batch turned out a bit darker, the packet instructs the baking time as 20minutes which seemed a little too long judging by the colour & texture.  I took the second batch out after 12minutes, when they were cooked through.  Not sure if it has something to do with my oven, but the 12minute batch was tastier.

For a quick treat, this is ideal!   If you like cappuccino flavour, you should definitely give this a try!

On Sunday I baked a banana bread, and for the first time used a silicone bread pan.  Is it better than a tin pan?  I don’t really know, but its easier to wash!

The bread came out looking fine, and tasting yummy.  The only limitation that the silicone bake-ware has is that it can’t resist heat of over 220 degrees Celsius.  Now I don’t know if anyone ever bakes a bread over 180 degrees Celsius, so that doesn’t really hinder me from using the pan for any bread.  The pro’s are that it bakes slightly shorter than in a tin pan – you save about 10 minutes on 1 hour baking time.

The pan does however change shape a bit if you fill it up with dough / batter, and my banana bread did come out looking a bit pregnant – LOL.

Here are some photos…

Phew.  What is there to say after a long day of cleaning and tidying!?  For the first time since being married I had someone to help me clean the house, and what pleasure.

For those who don’t live in South Africa, let me explain a bit more.  In SA its the norm to have someone clean your house for you, do your washing, ironing and pretty much all other household chores.  When we were in the UK a few years back I realized for the first time that this wasn’t so common in all other countries.

Now having lived here for my whole life, I must admit that I am one of the odd ones out to not have a domestic worker, and I’ve had to get used to people’s reactions when I tell then that I do all the housework myself, on top of working at the office for a full day.  Now this is not some kind of noble act to gain favor with anyone, or some money saving plan.  Instead I am just too distrusting to allow anyone strange into my home to come and clean & organize it for me.

I’ve been having these arguments with myself, and even with my husband about who we should pick, who we can trust, and who would be able to work with such care that our perfectionism will be satisfied.

Well, we have now finally found someone, and she did excellent for a first day.  I’m hoping that she will continue to be so thorough in future as well, as the trend is to slack as soon as you’re settled in – in many jobs that is.

For now, I am ecstatic with a lovely clean home, and NO IRONING – Yay!! So I’m going to busy myself with baking a banana bread.

Happy “rest of the” weekend all

Since I was little I wished that I could have a pool party for my birthday. Since its in the middle of winter, it’s a bit unpractical, and over the years I’ve learned to accept that I’d never have a summer party unless I moved to the Northern hemisphere (Which I did for a year and LOVED). This year the weather in the Southern hemisphere was no exception when my birthday dawned, and Mother Nature dished up the coldest day of this winter so far. The max temperature was about 15 degrees Celsius, accompanied by wind and rain. Good for me I didn’t even go outside on my birthday, and just stuck around the warmth of my heated home. There are still a lot of fun things that you can do in winter, I keep telling myself. Like staying indoors, snuggling up with a blanket, some hot chocolate and a good book. However, on my birthday, I decided to cook & bake since I had some guests over in the evening.
I bought a cake mix because I didn’t want to spend my whole day in the kitchen. My big mistake however, was when I decided on baking cupcakes instead of the usual cake. Cupcakes are really fantastic! Most reason people tend to like them more? I’ve witnessed this weird phenomenon a couple of times. With my husband’s birthday I used the same cake mix, and baked cupcakes until I ran out of time, and then used the left over batter to bake a cake. At the birthday party the cupcakes were finished before anyone had even touched the cake, and people were rather reluctant to try the cake.
The problem with cupcakes is that they take you about ten times longer to bake. I only have ONE muffin tray, and ONE oven rack… And since the batter made SEVENTY cupcakes I had to go through the baking process six times, where a cake would’ve been done in one round. Now I’m not sure I’ll be baking cupcakes anytime soon – regardless of whether my guests prefer them. I suddenly have much more respect for people who buy cupcakes instead.
Anyway, what I was actually getting at. The reason why I stayed indoors on my birthday wasn’t merely the weather. I picked up a bad case of flu somewhere between Pick ‘n Pay and home, and I’ve been battling to get rid of it. At first I thought I could manage to scare it away with some Vitamin C and pain killers, but when my voice started sounding like that of a goose, I decided to give up and visit the doctor.
I got a whole paper bag full of medicine, which – wonder above wonder – seems to be working. I got antibiotics, which I usually HATE, because even though they relieve the problem at hand, they seem to break another hundred things. My voice is still not 100%… I try to sing along to songs on the radio, and I sound like a bad mix between Bonnie Tyler and Jimmy Hendrix. Good news is that my throat is not as sore anymore, and I don’t cough too much anymore. Also, I’ve been shunned to a life indoors, and I’m not even allowed to stick my head out the door after four in the afternoon (which is probably not a bad thing, since that’s when the icy cold settles over Pretoria).
For now, I am resting since the doc booked me off till tomorrow, plus my meds make me extremely drowsy. I’m sipping my hot chocolate while sitting in bed, and enjoying the warmth of my bean bag by my feet… Reading when I’m not sleeping, and sometimes finding myself drooling on my magazines from pure exhaustion

For millions of sleep-deprived mothers around the world, this woman’s findings could be a miracle! Priscilla Dunstan, a mom from Australia with a special gift, says she’s unlocked the secret language of babies.

When Priscilla was a toddler, her parents discovered she had a photographic memory for sound. At age 4, she could hear a Mozart concert on the piano and play it back note for note.

Priscilla says her gift has helped her hear a special “second language” beyond English, allowing her to detect moods and even diagnose illnesses! “Other people might hear a note but I sort of get the whole symphony,” Priscilla says. “So when someone’s speaking, I get all this information that other people might not pick up.”

That mysterious second language took on an astounding new meaning when Priscilla became a mother to her baby, Tom. “Because of my gift for sound, I was able to pick out certain patterns in his cries and then remember what those patterns were later on when he cried again,” Priscilla says. “I realized that other babies were saying the same words.”

Here is the short version:

• Neh=”I’m hungry”
• Owh=”I’m sleepy”
• Heh=”I’m experiencing discomfort”
• Eair=”I have lower gas”
• Eh=”I need to burp”

Those “words” are actually sound reflexes, Priscilla says. “Babies all around the world have the same reflexes, and they therefore make the same sounds,” she says. If parents don’t respond to those reflexes, Priscilla says the baby will eventually stop using them.

Priscilla recommends that parents listen for those words in a baby’s pre-cry before they start crying hysterically. She says there is no one sound that’s harder to hear than others because it varies by individual. She also says some babies use some words more than others.

The Dunstan Baby Language DVD is currently available. Visit www.dunstanbaby.com to order your copy.

And NO, I do not have children, I just find this extremely interesting. I was an au pair for a while, but for babies who were talking / starting to talk. It’d be interesting to try this out though, so those of you with babies, let me know if it works please?

Sources: Oprah

My weekend started last week Wednesday, hence the reason I didn’t blog much lately.
I took the three days off word because my boyfriend had to go in for an operation, and thus it wasn’t really a holiday, but I’m still glad I took the time off. I’d have hated to go through something like that on my own.
He had a minor foot opp – just mending the ligaments again, but he’s foot is in a cast for six weeks now! Pity, cause its exactly in the time that Fall Out Boy and UB40 are in South Africa! (Damn it!)

I spent Wednesday & Thursday in the hospital with him, but on Friday he came home, so then I could actually do something more than just sit. I made Turkish delight! I’ve been planning to do so for a while now, and finally got around to it. The first time round it wasn’t as nice as I’d hoped for. I used a recipe, and I must say I was not impressed. I sprayed the pan with Spray ‘n Cook, and the Turkish delighted tasted like it so much, that I missed the real flavour. I hate Spray ‘n Cook. It was also a bit rubbery.
Take two was better, though not completely successful. I replaced half the gelatine with strawberry jelly, which made it taste MUCH better. I also used margarine instead of Spray ‘n Cook, which made it taste like sweets instead of some poisonous gas. The consistency was similar to that of the Turkish delight used in chocolate bars. It was soooooo sticky. Actually to the point that it was messy. It couldn’t be cut into squares, so instead we tried to roll it into balls (with our hands covered in margarine). We then covered the balls with a mixture of corn flour & icing sugar, but they didn’t stay ball-shaped… Instead they went flat
Eventually we decided to roll them again, and immediately cover them with melted chocolate, which worked OK, and tasted awesome – exactly like the stuff you buy in the shops!
I would not recommend it to anyone though – it is a huge mess – lots of dishes, and not worth it if you can buy a 200g slab in the shops for R10!

I also baked. 48 Bread rolls with fillings in – yum. Bacon & Onion, Bacon & Cheese, Feta & Olives, and Plain Cheese – aren’t you proud of me? If you’d like the recipe, please ask me – I just can’t post it here, else I’ll bore the non-bakers

Because I was not at home this weekend, and instead with my boyfriend, I didn’t check my e-mails or blogs for the whole time, and when I checked my old Wordpress blog, I discovered that it had been removed. It was suspended due to violation of terms & conditions. I tried to find out why, what I had done wrong, and got a fairly quick reply, saying that paid posts are not allowed on Wordpress. So for those of you who were thinking about it, don’t even go there. I might get my blog back, but at this stage I’m not really worried about it, as I have this new one, with all the original posts. I’m just thankful that I had exported my posts in time

For now I have to finish up, I’m exhausted.