Bran muffins

Pastry

oven month

m usually not in an ideal baking situation so this month is my chance! A full size oven, all the ingredients and cake tins, cold weather and aussie family ti eat....
Today i made some bran muffins with apple. Also a spiced cake ( common sense cook book) and addded some apple and used the topping from another recipe (1 tab so buttrr 3 sr flour 3 brown sugar).

Recenyly made gingerbread, grapefruit& sour cream cake, hot cross buns, pizza, garlic herb olive bread using the pizza base, peach crumble.
Also a carrot and orange cake.

Carrot and orange cake with greek yogurt icing

Easy hot cross buns from the bbc

Gingerbread in the toaster oven

Balls this size took about 10 min

flour 1 cup

quater teaspponn bi carb

half table spoon ground ginger

then add half cup firmly packed brown cane sugar 

and then about 75g butter

and then half a beaten egg (i put the other half in the pancake batter)

i put it in glad wrap in the fridge for about half hour, then cooked one lot, then another lot, that was yesterday, will probs cook the last bit today

Toaster Oven cooking!!

A whole new world of cooking Western food for one!! I always wish we had an oven, a big gas one like people have in Aust. But they are expensive, we could get a vbench top electric one like we had before, but electricy is so expenisve and it doesn't seem worth as I'm the only one who really likes Western food anyway, SOeuns happy to eat it but he doesn't get that excited so it doesnt seem worth it buy an oven at this stage.

Anyway the last tenant left behind a toaster oven, and I made pizza in it today!! And I have the ingredients for gingerbread, maybe just cooking a few at a time- wonder if the dough keeps?

Also i've done potatos, how I would in an oven, like wedges, i ate with natural yogurt and sweet chilli sauce.

Sourdough pancakes

Sourdough pancakes SO FLUFFY, mixing it up is like bicarb and vinegar effect

(Also been eating the cottage cheese on the whey pancakes, and straining yogurt til its like cream cheese)

Mix
1 tab spn sugar
1/2 tea spoon salt
3/4 teaspoon bicarb
1/2 tab spn water
1 cup of sd starter

then in with an egg

Whey Pancakes

Made these today from King Arhtur Flour

1 cup plain flour
1 tb sp sugar 
half teaspoon baking soda
pinch teaspoon salt
1 cup whey
1 large eggs
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Mix the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl. 

In a smaller bowl, beat together the whey, eggs and vegetable oil. 

I made them with acidic whey from making making cottage cheese, even tho I read for pancakes you should use sweet whey such as from yogurt.

Trying to cook and eat foreign food bu tnot buy too many foreign items

Recently i've been experiment with bready things and milky things, kind of thinking about if we live out of town one day, and kind of to make eating what's normal to me cheaper. At this stage of life we don't have an oven. It would probably be better to be learning how to cook and eat Khmer food, but at the moment I'm thinking about how to cook "Aussie" food in Cambodia.

After thinking about campfire damper, and reading a bit about Dutch oven and preppers I cooked some bread on the stove in a saucepan. I used a yeast dough, our heavy bottom saucepan, I put sesame seeds on top, so it would have at least some texture- no crispy top! Soeun really liked it, so I made it again. Both times I lined the pan with foil as I didn't want to have to wash it- both times the bottom was really balck and burned even though we put the gas a low as possble, must try it on /in fire (we have just started grilling meat near the front door, I just need to have the dough ready at the same time the fire is ready).

Another way I could cut down on buying imported products is by making sourdough, using that I won't need to buy yeast from the supermarket. I've been reading about making starters using al sorts of things, I already tried a flour and water one. It didn't work - after that week I read a bit more and I think it was cos I used the wrong flour. The easiest cheapest flour for me to get is made from cassava, i think we call it tapioca flour/starch. I use it for cakes, breads etc, but i don't think it works for a sd starter unless you use something else as well. So this week I have some wheat flour from the supermarket and I'm trying again. Kind of defeats the purpose (i have to go to the supermarket to get the wheat flour, i was hoping to just use things I can buy in a normal khmer market).

There is no dairy industry here in Cambodia, so milk and all milk prducts are imported. If I had my own source of milk it would be even better (can we get a goat?) , but recently we've been eating yogurt so I've been making some in the esky overnight and trying to make cottage cheese (first time it didn't work, but this time seems ok). ANd as a result of that also been learning about whey and what to do with it.

I didn't make yogurt until recently as I read up on it and it sounded complicated and I don't ahve a thermometre. Also i had tried making cottage cheese awhile ago in the sun but it was gross and it make me sick. But over the last week I just started experimenting using the esky for yogurt and the stove top for cc and they are both working, I'm not following any exact instrucitons but I got the general vibe from youtube, blogs etc.

bread machine!

After 2 months of confusion I finally brought home a kenwood BM250. Tried out the brioche recipe that came it, it worked! tried again and added cinnamon this time, yum! Also tired the raid bake white bread and the seeded wholemeal, both were ok too. The main reason to the the machine was to make brown bread, as its hard/expensive to buy.
I don't have all the exact ingredients, like I don't have milk powder or real butter (for the sweet bread), so i'll have to try again when I do. Looking for more wholemeal recipes to try. Also not sure what flour I'm using, it comes from the market, I call it plain white flour which they say not to use in the machine but seems to be ok.

Hoping to try making golden syrup dumplings with palm sugar
http://mumsrecipes-m.blogspot.com/2012/03/golden-syrup-dumplings.html

Want to try making pizza things on the stove one day, heres one way of doing it http://www.cooklocal.com/2011/05/30/fried-pizza-a-family-tradition/

today's kitchen experiments include steaming beef with ginger and garlic
and making a banana cake in the rice cooker but using palm sugar instead of white -which makes it extra moist but i'm also using wholemeal flour instead of white, and coconut cream instead of oil/butter

choc cocnut rice cooker cake

125g flour
175 g sugar
1/2 teaspoon of both baking soda and baking powder
60 g cocoa

mix then add 2 eggs and 400ml of coconut cream

cook for around an hour in rice cooker

yeast cooking with no oven!

I recently tried a flat bread recipe, made of same stuff as our pizza base but done in the fry pan. ate it with the pumpkin curry, and lots ofo other things, hoping to try with some while meal flour soon

rice cooker banana cake

i didnt really follow the method, this photo i s mine but words from a blog

Rice Cooker Banana Cake

3 eggs
110g sugar
110g melted butter
200g banana (weight without skin)
160g plain flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
a pinch of salt, less than 1/8 tsp

Method

1. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a big bowl, set aside. Melt the butter and sugar in a non-stick pot and set aside to cool a while. Mash the bananas with a fork and set aside.

2. Add in beaten eggs to the melted cake batter from (1) and mix well using a manual whisk or spatula.

3. Add in mashed bananas, mix well using a spatula.

4. Finally fold in sifted flour mixture (over 3 times) using a spatula.

5. Pour the cake batter into the greased rice cooker bowl. Press "COOK" and allow it to cook for at least 1 hour. (In my case, I pressed "COOK" 3 times. Each time my rice cooker has finished cooking, it will beep and automatically switch to "KEEP WARM" mode, so I just have to press "CANCEL" and press "COOK" again. It took me 30 min + 17 min + 17 min = 1 hour 4 min in total. This is a cake that works in a rice cooker without the cake-baking function. Note that cooking time may vary based on the capacity of your rice cooker. Mine has a 5.5 cup capacity. )

6. Allow the cake to cool for a while, before turning out. (My cake flipped out easily in a split second even without using a knife to loosen the edges. And look at the crust, how I love the crust of a rice cooker cake!)

rice cooker cake!!!!

http://everybodyeatswell.blogspot.be/2013/06/rcc-6-rice-cooker-moist-chocolate-cake.html

making a cake by steaming... used to try it on the stove, just got the idea to use a rice cooker, first try it worked out well, i didn't use evaptorated milk, also i didn't have vanilla and i used oil instead of butter, and normal sugar, took about 45 min

Ingredients 150g of unsalted melted butter or corn oil (reduced from 175g) 175g castor sugar (reduced from 1 cup which is 225g) 1/2 can evaporated milk, about 200ml 2 eggs, lightly beaten 1 cup plain flour, about 125g 1/2 cup cocoa powder, about 60g 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 3/4 tsp vanilla essence

Method 1. Combine sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla essence and butter in a saucepan.

2. Stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved.

3. Add the beaten eggs into the slightly cooled evaporated milk mixture and stir till well-mixed.

4. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda into a large mixing bowl then pour the egg mixture over the flour and stir till well-mixed. (cake batter should be runny).

grease pot, cook for an hourish, pushing down "cook" lever every 5-10 min

Vegan choc cake

1.25 cups SR flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup veg oil

preheat oven 180, mix dry ingredients, add wet and mix, bake for 30 min