Apricot and White Chocolate Muesli Bars

Growing up, muesli bars were always a bit of a treat. Mum used to make the best home made ones using a combination of weetbix, oats, sugar, dried fruit, honey, butter and (a heap of) peanut butter then wrapped them in tin foil as if they were bought from the shop.

This recipe is perhaps a wee bit better for for you as it uses oil rather than butter and it doesn't have peanut butter or sugar. But they still taste amazing- promise! I adapted it from Annabel Langbein. Again, the operative word being 'adapted' as I never can seem to stick to a recipe. Maybe I should work on that..?

Apricot and White Chocolate Muesli Bars

3 cup rolled oats
1 cup finely crushed Weet-bix
1 cup nuts and or seeds
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup dried apricots, finely diced
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup warmed honey/maple syrup
1 cup flavourless oil (e.g. grapeseed)
1/2 cup melted white chocolate

(Anything can be subsituted in this recipe, as long as the wet to dry ingredients are kept the same).

Preheat oven to 160' C. Line a 30cm x 24cm sponge roll tin. Mix oats, nuts, weet-bix, coconut, apricots and flour in a bowl. Combine warmed honey and oil and stir to combine.

Press firmly into tin a bake for 30 mins or until crisp.


Cool slightly begore cutting. When completely cooled, drizzle with melted chocolate.



Nom nom nom...


I have been muching my way through this tin all afternoon. I may have found my new favourite muesli bar...

Easter Cupcakes

After making cupcakes at work yesterday, a four year old girl told me that the difference between muffins and cupcakes were that cupcakes were muffins with cups and muffins were plain and didn't have cups. I wasn't so sure. Children's working theories never fail to surprise me!

Baking with children can be a little stressful at times - especially when you have 10 of them at the table with you. They just can't seem to help themselves from licking the spoon, or dipping their fingers into the mixture...

Here is a recipe that is great for doing with children (or by yourself!):

Ingredients:
125g Butter (softened) 1 Cup Plain Flour
1 tsp Vanilla Essence 2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 Cup Caster Sugar 2 Tbsp Cocoa
2 Eggs 1/4 Milk (I used 3 Tbsp Sour Cream)

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla, then eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa together. Fold into creamed mixture. Stir in milk or sour cream. Place 18 patty cases in patty tins. Spoon mixture evenly into paper cases. Bake at 190 degrees celcius for 15 minutes or until cakes spring back when lightly touched. Transfer to a wire rack.


Decorate to your hearts content


Happy Easter and happy baking everyone.x

A little over-board?

I made a promise to my boyfriend a long time ago that I would make him a cake - not just any cake however, his favourite- carrot cake (with cream cheese icing of course). Although it's a few months later, I finally made one tonight.

I'm all about my decorating at the moment and have been wanting to try out my Nutbrown Icing Set that I was given a while ago. Unfortunately it didn't work so well i.e. it fell apart (darn)! So yet again I reverted to my trust worthy Icing set from the super market...

I didn't really have any decorating 'plan' in mind which is perhaps why I went a little over-board:


And a little more still:

...and just a tad more:Walnuts!

No matter what, you can never go too over-board with cream cheese icing...at least that's what I think. I know my boyfriend would agree to that.

I'm off to lick the rest of the bowl! Mmm..

Hope you all have a happy weekend.x

Experimenting with creativity and little time

Please excuse me while I have a wee moan about work eating all my time...eating being the operative word. My free time disappears so fast I don't remember having it in the first place. Gone are the days where I could bake all afternoon, then blog about it. Gone. GONE. But I have faith that it won't be like this forever. So bear with me while I still get used to working full time. Maybe it's a time management thing? Or maybe it's a career choice thing, where I need to switch to baking and bloging for a living...ok maybe not, but it would be nice.

The other night I was home, so I relished the opportunity to try out my new gifts! It was a rather quick go, hence the 'creative' outcomes but it was fun to see how these gimics would turn out.

The chocolate moulds will definitely get a lot more use out of them. As for the chocolate, it was a little too artificial tasting for my liking, so I think I may have to stick to the stuff found in local supermarkets.


The decorating pens were fun too, but cooled very fast and made it hard to use after a wee while. I still think they're fantastic though. I'm looking forward to finding a use for them.

Hope you are all having a great week.x

A gift from Korea

Guess what! Our flat now has internet. Horah. It's amazing what you can do when you don't have internet to occupy your time. But now that it's here again, may the procsrastination begin...

I recieved a wee gift from a friend who has been living in South Korea. She gave me a bag full of what seemed like, a never ending bag of goodies.

Here's some of the things I found:

Chocolate moulds (hearts, alphabet and teddies)


Melting candy (mmm) and moulds for ice or cakes


A little oven mit and a mini water sprinkler

and what I am most excited about using...Icing in a easy-dispensable tube! Apparently you zapp it in the microwave for a minute, then use. No fussing about piping bags here!

Lucky huh?! Looks like South Korea knows a thing or two about fun baking supplies. I'm very much looking forward to experimenting with all of these things. I shall let you know how I get on!

Thanks again Sophie!x

Long time no see

HELLO.
You may have noticed the lack of posts lately..I do still exist! However my access to internet doesn't..our flat is still waiting for our internet to kick start. We've been told its not far away, so when it does eventually arrive, I will be sure to get my little fingers typing hard. I've missed you all greatly. I especially can't wait to show you a wee package that I received from a friend in Korea.
Till then, happy baking, happy cooking and happy all round.
x

A bite for lunch

I am now in my second week of having entered the "real world". Up until now, I have been a student and have very much enjoyed the lifestyle that being a student entails (sleep-ins, ALOT of free time, student allowance..to name a few).

Life as an official 'worker' isn't all bad though. Infact I quite enjoy preparing lunches to take to work. I know- Im extremely sad.

You may have noticed that I haven't bloged about food for a wee while. I'm in between houses at the moment so its been a bit tricky. BUT I had the opportunity to do so tonight and decided to make some carrot muffins. A nice wee something to pop in the lunch box. Ha, I was actually so desperate for muffins I had to borrow muffin tins from work.

I didn't have a recipe on hand so made my own version. I added some oats, jam and a bit of apple juice to the mixture, they turned out to be rather yummy if I don't say so myself..

Ingredients:

2 cup flour
3 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup oats
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 nutmeg
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup milk
1 egg
1/2 cup apple juice
1/4 cup jam
1 cup carrot, grated

How-to:

Sift flour, baking powder into a bowl. Add oats, spices and mix to combine. In a separate bowl combine the oil and sugar. Mix well, add egg and milk and apple juice. Combine the wet mixture with the dry and gradually add the carrot. Spoon mixture into greased muffin tins filling half way whilst adding a drop of jam before filling the rest 2/3 full. Place in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

It makes 36 mini muffins, I utlised the freezor.



After a week of sandwhiches I decided I needed a change so made a super easy salad that required little effort. It's super easy, I'm all about convenience now that I'm a working woman.



Ingredients:

1 can chickpeas
1 can corn kernals
1 can diced beetroot
1/2 cup diced feta
1/2 cup diced cucumber
1/2 cup grated carrot
1 large bunch of rocket

How-to:

Comibine all ingredients. Mix and bob's your uncle.
It would be nice with a yummy dressing, maybe a vinaigrette?



Lunch for the week is done.