Recipe collection

If anyone is looking to host a function, the dishes served are very important to the sucess of the event.
Here I have included 3 entree, 5 main and 5 desert recipes that could be served at a function.
Entree:
Creemy pumpkin and thyme soup recipe

 

Baked stuffed Mushrooms recipe

French toast recipe
Main:
Ham and Potato bake recipe
Lasagne Recipe

Shepherds pie recipe


















Salmon with risoni, lemon and herb salad recipe
Linguine with cherry tomatos and goats cheese recipe























Dessert:
Chocolate pudding Recipe

Chocolate fudge pudding cake Recipe

Apple crumble recipe

Passion fruit cheesecake Recipe
Triffle Recipe

All of these recipies are great and good for function. Most can be made ahead of time and stored and reheated. All of them can be made in multiples for the amount of peopel involved.

Culture

All around the world there are many different cultures and festivals that go with those festivals. If i could go to anyone in the world i woould go tho a Chinese New Year cellebration. In China this is a huge festival in which they celebrate the good spirits' victory over darkness and by bringing tham a new year.
 Chinese new year is mostly celebrated in China, but also in other countries.  They celebrations go on for a number of days and include parades, lanterns, music, lots of red, packets of money for children, and food.
You could pretty much guess that the food that they had would be chinese, noodles, spring rolls, dimsim,dumplings, sweet and sour pork, fried rice, etc.

They eat allot of rich food over the course of this festival so to end it they have a few days of eating only plain rice to clean their systems.

Food Safety

When cooking it is very important to make sure that you are following the food saftey rules. These incluse not leaving meat or pultry out or letting them get into the food danger zone. The danger zome is between

5ᵒC and 60ᵒC.

Another point to consider with food safety is how to corectly handle raw chicken. To ensure that chicken is prepared correctly, it must not come into contact with any other type of meat. If it dose come into contact, both meats must be thrown out because of cross contamination.  Any tools used on raw chicken must be thourally cleaned before they an be used on anything else. Chicken must be fully cooked before serving and must not go into the dager zone. These percautions willensure that harmful bactiria don't spread.

Dietary Disease

Many People these days suffer from heart disease. Basically it can lead to heart attacks and is causedby too much colesteral in the heart. It is really upsetting when you cannot eat all of those lovely foods because you are watching your health.
colesteral is caused by the excess salts and fats in our food. They form together and start to clog the blood vessals around the heart. This narrows the arteries and can lead to heart attacks.
But fear not, because I have included a recipe that you can try and is fine for those worried about their colesterol.
 Ingredients:
5 large strawberries, halved
1/4 rockmellon, cut into balls or cubes
2 bannanas, pealed and cut into chunks
1 apple cut into chunks
or any other fruit that you like
20 Skewers

All you haveto do is put all of the pieces of fruit onto skewers and serve. They are a great frozen treet as well so try freezing them and having them on a hot day.

How to cover a cake with marzipan/fondant

Something that must be covered when thinking about cake decoration is marzipan fondant. It is a very common and effective way for covering a cake.
Use a cake board about the same size as the cake. Ensure that the cake is cooled completely.
First, tape down some baking paper onto the bench. Roll out the marzipan onto it with another sheet of baking paper on top. Anytime that the paper on top starts to crease, take it off and place it again. This will ensure that the marzipan is flat. Roll it until it is 1/2 a centemeter thick.
The marzipan should be twice the hight plus the top long and wide and a few centemeters longer in each direction.

Take the marzipan and wrap it around the roling pin loosely, drape it over the cake evenly.

Smoothe the top, then work your way down and around smoothing it out. Try to avoid any creases, even around the corners. Cut off the excess. Smoothe the sides and top with some icing sugar.

Leave the cake to dryfor a few days in a warm dry place.

For more infomation you can go to these sites;
cakefrills, covering a cake with marzipan
youtube video
nydailynews covering-large-cake-marzipan

Dragon cake

This week, I did cake decorating. The recipe I chose came from a Disney cake book. It was a dragon cake and it was very simple to do.
You will need:
8 spearmint leaves (6 halved width wise)
5 square chocolate covered biscuits or after dinner mints halved diagonally
2 marshmellows
4 chocolate chips
2 rollups
2 skewers
2 22cm round cakes
ICING
250g butter
2 1/2 cups icing suger
4 tbs milk
vanilla essence
green food colouring

First, freeze the cakes overnight. This will ensure that they are easier to ice and cut.
Make the icing by whiping the butter with electric mixer until it is as white as possible. Then sift in about half of the icing sugar and the milk and essence. Beat until smoothe. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until combined. Add the colouring to make it your desired shade.
Prepare your lollies.
Cut one of you cakes in half, then sandwidge them together with icing. You should now have a fat semi-circle. Put it onto the board with the flat cut side downwards.
Cut the other cake as shown in this template.

Assemble the dragon as shown.
Cover the dragon with the green icing.
The biscuits get placed along the spine, from the head to the tail, to form spikes.
The mint leave halves are used for tallens on the feet.
The marshmellows are used for the eyes. Poke a hole into the top of them with skewers and put one chocolate chip into each hole point down. The remaining two mint leaves are used as eyebrows.
The last two chocolate chips are used for nostrils.
the Rollups are for the wings. un-roll them and cut one corner off. Use the Skewers and start at the cut off corner and roll them up, stopping at the middle.
Cut along the edges to create semi-circle marks.
Put into the cake just before serving because they will sag quickly.

ginger bread houses

 

This week I made some very cool ginger bread houses. gingerbread recipe. I made the houses using about half the ginger bread for each house. Above is the template that I used for the house. I used a packet of royal icing for the icing holing the two houses together and for the vine work. Some normal icing was used for everything else. Spearmint leaves with the very bottom cut off were used for the bushes around the houses. The cutoff bottom bits were cut up futher to make the leaves on the vine house. I piped the vines on with the fine nozel of a piping bag. The windows were made by cuting the hole befor baking and putting in some boiled sweets. The sweets melted to form coloured suger windows.

One packet of MnM's were used to do the roofing on the second house. I used normal icing sugar for this and i found that it didn't give enough hold to keep the MnM's from sliding off the house. I would definately recomend using Royal icing for the roof as well.

To make the door's I cut the hole from the house fronts and put icing over the front of the cut out rectangle. One MnM was placed onto the door as a handle.

When putting the house together, remember to use alot of icing. This will make sure that it will stay together and hold. Put the walls together first and put a couple glasses in the middle and around the sides to hold the walls in place. When the walls are firmly set, place the roof's on using alot of icing to hold them in place.

For MnM roof, spread icing over both sides of the roof, place the MnM's onto the roof, starting at the top and putting them in at an angle. Each new row goes slightly under the row above it, this holds them in place.

Refridgerate in an airtight container for up to a week.

I would definately recomend this for people to try.

9/10

Saftey in the kitchen

Ok, I really can't stress this enough. Whenever you cook, you need to be very conscienous of safety in the kitchen. Last week I was collecting my cooking from the cooking rooms before going hame for the day. We have a cold room and because some people have been leaving the door open, it now wines whenever it is open.It is increadibly anoying but there is a button you can hold to stop the noise. So I was holding the button on the door so that every one could collect their cooking. When the last person left i went to close the door, but forgot to remove my finger. I couldn't write for three days because my finger was swolen and sore. Be warned, safety in the kitchen is not just for while you're cooking, it applys to any time you are in the kitchen.

Mummy cupcakes

This week I made some very cute mummy cupcakes. The recipe and idea came from the lovely Lilly Vanilli's book 'A Zombie ate my Cupcake'. This is an amazing book full of spooky and brilliant recipes. They are very simple, all you have to do is make a batch of chocolate cupcakes, a batch of vanilla icing and either red and black food colouring, or chocolate chips. Simplly use a piping bag with a flat tip to pipe on white 'bandages' around the outside leaving the center clear. Either colour the remaining icing red and black and pipe on red eyes with black pupils or put two chocolate chips for the eyes. They are very cute but a couple of mine didn't work because I didn't wait for them  to cool completely before icing them. The icing meltes and ruined the bandage design. I give this recipies four out of five, mostly because I was running out of time and found waiting for the cupcakes to cool frustrating. They tasted amazing.http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/simple-chocolate-cupcakes-L5862.html This is the site that I got my cupcake recipie from. They were great.

This is me

This is my first attempt at a blog. I'm starting this one to document my culeranary adventures. I have always enjoyed cooking, because I have an un-satisfiable sweet tooth. I've taken cooking in school since year nine and enjoyed it.