Basic Home Cooking

Are you forever looking through cook books searching for basic easy recipes? Are you constantly left with instructions that seem like they are in another language or require ingredients that cost the earth to purchase or a journey to far out specialist shops to get? And then when you’ve used that 1 teaspoon from that 1 litre bottle of blossom water, what the hell do you do with the rest of it?!

Great food does not need to be this much of a hassle. Where did the days go where the pantry had everything you needed for a quick buttercake? Or the fridge, eggs for a simple pavlova. As long as you’ve got butter, sugar, eggs and flour lurking somewhere in your kitchen, take a leaf out of my book and get cooking!

Before you get started, think about what you might need. Here’s a quick list of must haves for an easy and straight forward cooking session, with no added stress involved!

1.       A tablespoon or wooden spoon.

2.       A medium sized mixing bowl.

3.       Beaters (electric or hand held), or a whisk.

4.       Measuring cups or a measuring jug.

5.       A rolling pin.

6.       Scales (its always good to have one with both pounds and kilograms just in case)

7.       A small selection of cake tins, here are some examples, of course its up to you how you want your cooking to look:

- Round 20cm cake tin

- Slice tin

- Loaf tin

- baking trays for biscuits.

       8. Baking paper.
       9. Foil.
       10. And for the lucky last, if you feel like your oven does not like you, for example it chooses to burn everything or you end up with a lop sided cake, I suggest buying an oven thermometer.

After moving into a new apartment, about a year ago I’ve only just recently mastered the art of cooking in my oven. One tray at a time on a maximum of 180˚C, with a spare oven tray on the bottom shelf to prevent the burning of my beautiful creations! Being a pastry chef myself, great frustration has occurred in that kitchen, but it has taught me to persevere! At the end of the day packet biscuits are never as yummy as the real thing, and saying you’ve made it yourself is the best reward.

Like many Aussie kids I was brought up with treats from the phenomenon of the ‘Australian Women’s weekly’ cookbooks. So thanks to my wonderful mum, I’d recommend this a great place to start. Every week without fail, there’d be a new cake on the table, accompanied by a container of yummy cookies. No-one went hungry in the Thompson household, even when mum had to go to work most days, she’d always have something there for us, but then again everyone knows that women are the best multi-taskers, this is true.

So after much thought, I’ve decided to start with a recipe which I spent most of my childhood chomping on; from the ‘Women’s weekly, cakes and slices’ cookbook.

Cinnamon teacake
Preheat your oven to 180˚C.

60g butter- room temperature, or just chuck it in the microwave or the oven til soft.
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup castor sugar
1 egg

1 cup self raising flour (if you only have plain flour, just add a tsp of baking powder to each cup of flour needed)
1/3 cup milk

Beat the butter and sugar together, add the vanilla and egg and beat til creamy. If it looks as though it’s curdled DON’T panic! This can be fixed by adding a little of the flour. This recipe is pretty much disaster proof. Add the milk and the flour and stir til all the ingredients are thoroughly combined.

Grab a 20cm (or closest to) cake tin. Grease really well with spray or butter. Cut a circle to fit the bottom of the cake tin from a roll of baking paper and place inside the tin. It doesn’t have to fit perfectly, as long as the bottom is covered, you should be safe. Take your mixture and pour into the cake tin, scraping down the sides of the bowl to make the most of the mixture.

Place in the oven for about 20-25 minutes.

While you are waiting for your lovely cake to cook, melt about 15g of butter and in a separate bowl take 1 tablespoon of castor sugar and ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon and mix.
When your cake has cooked, leave for a few minutes in the tin. Place on a cooling rack, brush with the butter and sprinkle on the cinnamon sugar mixture.

Little chewy meringues

I’m super excited and a little proud about this recipe. After many, many failed attempts at meringues, I’ve finally concocted a recipe that produces small bite size meringues that are crunchy on the outside and just a little chewy on the inside.
Even though this is a super easy recipe, you will need to put a little time aside to prepare. After you have made up the mixture and piped it onto the trays, you must sit the trays, (without any cover) at room temperature for a minimum of 1 hour.

It should make 25-30, spread over two or three oven trays, lined with baking paper.

3 egg whites
2/3 cup castor sugar

You will need electric beaters for this recipe. Mine broke suddenly so I had to battle it out with a whisk. Make sure all your utensils are clean and dry.

Separate egg whites into a medium sized bowl. Beat til stiff peaks form. (Stiff peaks are when the mixture is so thick that if separates a little as though it was curdled, when moved apart.) Rain in the castor sugar about 1/6^th at a time, beating well in between goes. You want each lot of sugar to dissolve as much as possible before the next is added. You should end up with a silky thick mixture.

Using a piping bag, and a number 7 star nozzle, pipe blobs of mixture onto the trays. Don’t worry if the pattern doesn’t show, it’s not a big deal. As long as the blobs are relatively the same size, they should look great. This is also important for cooking time to get an even consistency through the whole batch.  If you prefer to skip the piping bag method you can spoon on the mixture instead, for a rustic look.

After you’ve rested the trays, preheat the oven to 90˚C. Some ovens have a higher minimum temperature, so in this case, you can put a tea towel in the oven door so some of the heat escapes during the cooking process, but never leave the kitchen unattended. Cook for 2 hours or til crunchy and light looking. If you’re not happy with the way they look, you can always crush them up and sprinkle them over an ice-cream desert, or use for a cake topping, yum!

Next entry I’ll be making hazelnut thins and raspberry pie, for non –stress desserts.
Support common cookery by following my blog, lots of tips and handy hints to come.

And remember practice makes perfect. Happy Baking!