creativebakingexploits

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Curried-Sweet Potato-Lentil Soup

First I fried the peeled and chopped sweet potatoes along with cut up onions, fried using coconut oil.

I added all the seasonings while still frying, salt, thyme, curry, ground nutmeg, mixed spice and a bit of pepper

once onions starting to soften, added the red lentils and water and brought to a boil, than let simmer until potatoes were soft and lentils thickened and absorbed the water.

than used an electric hand blender/whizzer until everything seemed blended. 

This turned out quite nice, and if you like lentils you will for sure love this, personally I do not mind lentils and I think its totally fine, but I also do not love it, so in this way the soup was not like ‘totally awesome’ but it is very healthy, especially the lentils! and you can easily experiment with different spices to go for a totally different flavor. 

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Homemade Cannelloni!

The Stuffing Mixture: 

500g or 18oz Ricotta 

Overflowing 1/2cup Parmesan cheese 

Overflowing 1/2cup Mozzarella cheese

2Tpsp Parsley

1/2Tsp Salt 

Pinch Pepper 

2 Cloves Garlic- finely chopped 

10oz cooked Spinach 

1 Egg 

 Marinara Sauce: 

1 can Pasatta 

Some tomato paste 

1Tsp Basel 

1Tsp Oregano 

1Tsp Garlic 

A little Salt & Pepper 

2Tpsp Olive Oil 

 Stuffing: 

Cook the spinach in a frying pan with 2 Tbsp water and some coconut oil

Than mix all the ingredients 

 Marinara: 

Cook on low heat for at least 20 minutes so the olive oil properly mixes together with all other ingredients (it’s very important as i’ve learned from my pizza sauce- to cook all ingredients together first)

Putting it all together:

While preparing Stuffing and sauce preheat oven to about 160°C (I have a fan assisted oven)

Put ‘Stuffing Mixture’ inside hard Cannelloni- using a small dessert fork  

Cover the bottom of your chosen pan with a generous amount of Sauce

Place stuffed Cannelloni on-top of the sauce

Cover the top of the Cannelloni with a generous amount of sauce and some Parmesan and Mozzarella or one of them depending on your preference (I like Parmesan better)

Cover baking dish with foil and cool for 30 minutes

Remove foil and cook a further 10 minutes- at this time I also cooked some garlic bread.

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Pizza perfected

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Homemade Pizza- cooked on a stone.

After many many many tries at getting a good pizza crust the way I like it I am finally on my way to perfection! Courtesy of a Papa Johns Pizza Crust Recipe

8 cups all purpose flour

6 Tablespoons Sugar

6 3/4 teaspoons yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

3 cups very warm water

6 Tablespoons Olive Oil or Vegetable oil

mix all the dry ingredients into a bowl

add the very warm water (but not boiling) slowly while the stand mixer is on speed 1. I did not add all of the water- left 100 ml to use if needed

once starts to take a bit of shape and looks sticky change the speed to medium. 

kneed for about 5 minutes or until nearly smooth and pulls away from sides

pour out dough onto a lightly floured surface and kneed several times until very smooth

put back into bowl (I put a tiny layer of flour on the bottom so it wouldn’t stick)

put into a warm place for a minimum of 1 hour (the more the better) I try to turn my oven on for 1 minute at 250C every 45 minutes to keep the temp nice and warm for the yeast. (or you can forget and leave your oven on and end up with it black like in the picture! haha)

after an hour and a half I pulled it out and saw it more than doubled, I punched it down and put it out on a lightly floured surface and kneaded it several times and than stretched it out, I initially gently used a rolling pin and than stretched the rest gently with my fingers and hand.

Oh I forgot this recipe makes about 4 pizzas, so pull apart dough into 4 balls and than roll it out, prepare the dough you want to cook now and than you can put the other dough balls (separately) into a baggie and freeze it for next time!

with this recipe its important to pre-bake it- depending on your oven anything between 5-15 minutes.

add your toppings and bake until cheese is melted and crust looks golden brown.

take out and eat right away! and Enjoy! :)

3 cans tomato puree

3/4 cup water

3 tsp sugar

3 tsp olive oil

3/4 tsp lemon juice

3/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp oregano

3/8 tsp basil

3/8 tsp thyme

3/8 tsp garlic powder

I also added some cut up onion.

I halved the sauce recipe and it would have actually been enough for 4 pizzas I think, maybe my sauce was too watery and that’s why I couldn’t put loads on the pizza- also the more you put on the harder it is to slide it off onto the stone.. so you have to find a careful balance. but yeah the sauce you don’t use just freeze it

add all the ingredients and cook on medium heat until it is bubbling than reduce heat to low and simmer for 15-20 minutes. 

timing is important as otherwise the ingredients do not have time to properly combine and make the nice flavor.  

I discovered this when I would not pre-cook my sauce at all, there was a huge difference in flavor when it was cooked before hand- also the olive oil is a huge key ingredient.

in my opinion a good olive oil makes or breaks the sauce, as I use the super cheap puree, and can achieve a fantastic flavor.

So invest in an oilve oil that you like

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Pumpkin Soup & Biscuits

Yass after a tutorial from Mom on how to handle the biscuit dough I got it pretty perfect :) 

The key to the biscuits working is freezing your butter and than grating into the self rising mixture (which you can make your own by adding 11/2tsp baking powder & 1/2tsp salt per cup of flour.) 

you squeeze together with your finger tips the butter and flour so its like a lumpy flour mixture (It is by no means taking any form yet) than you put it in the fridge to cool for 15 minutes.

than you add your milk or buttermilk (I used milk) and mix together again with your finger tips, being careful not to over mix and over handle the dough. (I didn’t add all of my milk at first in order to see what was really needed)

than you put the dough onto a lightly floured surface and kneed a couple times so it takes a bit of shape

than you roll it out with a floured rolling pin- into a rectangle and than fold the rectangle into a square and than roll out again into a rectangle and fold.... Do this at least 5 times (your making biscuit layers)

than using a cookie cutter or a simple mug or cup cut out the biscuits. 

put together the rest bits and cut out the shapes again (the rest bits won’t look perfectly smooth and round- but they’ll still taste good!)

cook the ones you want to eat right now and you can freeze the rest

Freeze by putting onto a baking tray and into the freezer, once frozen can put them all into a ziplocked bag for next time!

Once I managed to cut the pumpkin in half (which was quite hard) I put the two halves face down on a baking pan lined with foil, and put it in the oven for lik 30 minutes, while that was cooking and softening I worked on getting together the veggie broth with cumin, coriander powder, garlic powder and salt and pepper.

oh I forgot you have to de-seed it and take out the stringy bits- I rinsed the seeds and dried them off, and than mixed them with some olive oil and salt, I put them on a baking tray lined with foil and cooked them for like 30 minutes

I than took the pumpkin from the oven (it weighed about 800g) and scooped out the now very soft pumpkin and put it in the veggie broth mixture,- be careful how much of the veggie broth you add because that determines how thick or thin the soup will be. 

than I blended it with a electric hand whizzer to make it smooth. 

I added some plain yogurt and mixed it again.

The seeds were a fail, i’m not sure if I put to much olive oil on them or if they got over cooked, they definitely had to much salt on them. 

I wish I hadn’t added so much veggie broth because it could have been a bit thicker. and though it tasted good I decided I prefer more of a sweet pumpkin soup, not the spicy one I went for. 

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my attempt at biscuits was a total fail! haha. they did not rise at all and they were not lite and fluffy at all!!! I really struggled with the consistency- it was like ridiculously sticky, like didn’t hold shape well at all, but upon adding more flour it just stayed the same (I must have added a further 1/4cup probably more). 

this recipe was so simple I thought I couldn’t go wrong!

just flour, corn starch, baking powder, salt, sugar and buttermilk.  I guess unless you are a pro at how dough bread should be this recipe is not for you!! so I will not be using it again! 

I just started to get the hang of Yeast, so perhaps i’ll try and find one that uses yeast, or at the least baking soda and baking powder.

we still ate them and they were ok, but they were not biscuits.

haha oh well win some loose some. and this was a definite loose :) 

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I bought some ingredients for yummy smoothies and tried it out! here are my results!

Matcha Smoothie:

0.625 cups (1/2+1/8) Milk

Heaping 1/4 cup Vanilla Yogurt

small teaspoon Matcha Powder

1 teaspoon honey of choice

half a frozen banana

Peanut Butter Smoothie

0.625 cups (1/2+1/8) Milk

Heaping 1/4 cup Vanilla Yogurt

1big spoon Peanut Butter

1teaspoon honey

sprinkle oats on

half a frozen banana

I blended it all in a mixer until well blended, and drank immediately :) :)

To make the frozen banana’s cut up a bunch of banana’s and place on a tray (laid out evenly) and put in freezer for at least two hours, than take off tray and put in a zip lock bag or something- keep it stored in the freezer 

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Cinnamon rolls round 3

I followed the recipe from the first time I made cinnamon rolls and they turned out perfect once again- I however used even less butter and brown sugar/cinnamon combo than the first time, and still I think it was a bit too sweet.

I think next time i’ll sprinkle a very very light layer of sugar ontop. this if of course as per every ones preference, we are leaning more towards less sweet and more doughy!

this time I made a powdered sugar, butter, buttermilk, vanilla essence combo! you can see from the pictures that I did not blend it together long enough so that’s why it looks some what grainy.   

Also I prepared the dough in the evening but than we fell asleep! so I put the covered dough in the fridge over night and than took them out in the morning, left it at room temperature for an hour and than rolled it out.

I let it sit in the pan while I made the frosting. 

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The other night I made Nachos for a good friend and me, normally when I make nachos I’m feeling lazy so I just bung it all in the microwave, and when i’m really lazy there is no meat.. but this time I wanted to dedicate a bit more time to it. 

What you’ll need:

minced meat

1 onion

1 can tomatoes- could be diced or cut up (mine were diced)

some sort of taco seasoning- I used my homemade Fajita seasoning

bit of chilli powder and chilli flakes

bit of paprika

Coriander

some of a can of corn

bag of plain tortillia chips

avocados for quacamole 

1 tomato

Sour cream

grated cheese

Lime Juice, salt & pepper

First you brown the meat with the onion until the onion is clear (leave some of the onion for the guac).

When meat and onion nearly done start adding the spices, cook while mixing

add the can tomato and add more flavor accordingly

grate cheese separately 

pour bag of chips into a baking tray and cover with your meat/tomato sauce, add a bit of corn and then top with the cheese

put into oven at around 160°C (I have a fan assisted oven) 

Cook until cheese is melted- at least 15 minutes

For the Guacamole:

scoop out and mash up the avocados

put some of the red onion cut up for the meat into the avocado

add the cut up tomato- cut into small squares or whatever

add lime juice, salt, pepper and finely cut coriander to taste

can also add a bit of chilli powder, paprika and garlic powder.

Take Nachos out of oven and eat immediately, top with cut up coriander, sour cream and guacamole and ENJOY! 

Spending a bit more time on making your Nachos is well worth it, and if I had kidney beans or white beans I also would have added that (refried beans would be the best but to make them they must be cooked over night and all day the next day- so can’t be spontaneous) 

These were a total success and in the end its still a pretty quick dinner, and if your into Mexican often, you normally always have most of these ingredients in your house!

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Well my yeast is definitely active! It rose even further after I took this picture!

but please note once your yeast packaging is open it should be in an air tight container and than put in the fridge.

when you want to use the yeast take only what you need from the container and put the rest immediately back into the fridge.

yeast should be room temp before using.

I proofed it by adding yeast to water and than waiting a bit for it to settle and than added some sugar, after some minutes it started to form a foam top, which continued to get bigger after this picture was taken.

this means your yeast is active and ok to use!!! 

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A little organizing in my baking drawer, complete with labels for ease! Also check out our new refillable salt and pepper grinders! And check out my overflowing seasoning and herb/flavor drawer! At one point it looked super tidy, complete with labels ontop of each bottle so I don't have to lift every single one to find what I'm after! But now it's a bit stuffed! Yes what once seemed like a spacious kitchen is now too small!

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My second attempt at cinnamon rolls: in some ways these were better but sadly the yeast failed so they didn't rise at all! And what makes a good cinnamon roll is that it is super fluffy and light (my first ones were perfect in this aspect) but on these I got the sugar cinnamon combo correct. So for next time I’ll need to proof my yeast to make sure it’s still ‘active’. 

Also I didn’t use buttermilk this time and I won’t do that again, I think buttermilk is much better than milk for a cinnamon roll. I also used toast butter last time and I am not sure how much of a difference this made to the outcome.

21/4 tsp yeast

250ml (1cup) milk

1/2 cup tee butter (1cube 125g)

1/4 tsp salt

3 cups all purpose flour

1/2 Tbsp cinnamon

1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp sugar, divided

Frosting: I used cream cheese, butter, a bit of milk and vanilla zucker, oh and than I used a bit of an opened buttercream frosting I had in the fridge. Frosting was a success!  

In this recipe it told me to warm 1/4cup (3 Tbsp) butter with the 250ml milk until it is warm and than add yeast. but than my rolls never rose so its possible that this killed my yeast (though i’m absolutely certain it was no too hot!),

Than I added the salt and 1tbsp sugar to the milk/butter/yeast mixture

I than added the flour 1/2cup at a time to the milk/butter/yeast/etc mixture. 

I started my standmixer on medium to low power.-  it formed into a nice ball, but it was not sticky at all and this was my first clue that something was not right/same as the first time I made them.  It should be very sticky! mostly pull away from the sides and stick to the bottom. Mine was not sticky at all. (in my other blog you can see just how different the dough looks to this one) 

OH I almost forgot I added 1 tsp vanilla essence to the dough.

I heated my oven up for 5minutes- turned it off- and put the dough inside with a dish towel over the bowl, I waited one hour.  But it didn’t rise at all during this time :( (but too late now except to follow through and hope it tastes at least a little good still) 

I than floured my stovetop and rolled the dough to about 1cm thickness.

This is where I deviated from the recipe, I spread melted butter (1/4cup) and than sprinkled cinnamon and sugar over it, so that every part looked to be covered but it was not starting to pile on. (I think the sugar the recipe calls for is way to much- as seen in my first attempt the cinnamon/sugar and butter carmalized and became crunchy in places and incredibly sweet) Sometimes less is better :) 

I rolled up the dough into a circular rectangular shape, and than cut it into the pieces you can see from the picture.  They should have spread out and risen additionally while the oven got hot but they didn’t. :(

So the outcome was less fluffy/fat and more like compressed dough/bread. So it wasn’t bad per say, it just wasn’t at all how a cinnamon roll is supposed to be!

It still tasted good, but sadly no where near as good as the first attempt

(and here I thought it would be a walk in the park to make it the second time) 

well all that goes to show you that different recipes can make a big difference, using slightly different ingredients to adding your ingredients in a different way all make a huge impact on the outcome! 

So stay tuned for my 3rd attempt where hopefully I will take things I learned from both attempts to perfect what we like best!

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Cinnamon Rolls

Dough up to 4 ¼ cups all-purpose flour, divided 1/3 cup granulated sugar 2 ¼ teaspoons instant dry yeast pinch salt 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted (1/2cup) 3 large eggs, lightly whisked ¾ cup buttermilk

Filling ½ cup unsalted butter, very soft - let it sit out while dough rises 1 to 1 ¼ cups light brown sugar, packed about 3 teaspoons cinnamon (I used almost 5 teaspoons)

I combined all the dry ingredients into bowl: Note only 4 cups flour

Melted 6 Tbsp butter in a mug and put aside

Whisked the 3 eggs in a separate bowl and put aside

I heated up the buttermilk just a tiny bit so it was like just past cold and onto warm.

Added Buttermilk, eggs & melted butter to the dry ingredients and with the dough hook attached started my stand mixer at low/medium speed. I saw that it was incredibly sticky and just stuck to the bowl everywhere and took on no shape so I added the remaining 1/4 cup flour- Basically my dough looked like the pictures, it took shape into a lumpy ball, and managed to be mixed and not stick too strongly to the edges so that no form at all happened- though it did majorly stick to the bottom of the bowl. Basically if your dough is nearly unmanageable and annoying its probably right. (yeah you know when recipes say ‘will be sticky’ what they should have said is agonizingly and annoyingly sticky) Don’t be tempted to add more flour because you will take away from its fluffyness later one!!! Try not to throw the bowl against the wall but just think of how fluffy they will be!

So once I got my sorta ball shape I heated my oven up for like 5 minutes turned it off and put the covered dough inside the oven waited 21/2 hours- after 21/2 it was on its way to exploding out of the bowl. :) OH yes and I heated my oven up every 45 min for a minute to keep the oven warm.

 After the dough has at least doubled in size punch it down as can be seen in my picture and knead a couple times.

Roll out onto well floured stove-top. the dough stuck like crazy to my rolling pin so I had to put flour on top of the dough as well so I could manage better. Spread it out like really thin like at least 1cm (because it will rise additionally!) I didn’t roll it out thin enough so my rolls were MASSIVE, like NO JOKE

I spread 1/2 cup butter leaving a small border around the edges. I sprinkled the brown sugar and cinnamon over the top, I used what she told me too even though it was really piling on and seemed like ridiculously too much! It was WAYYYYYYYYY to much but I decided to do what the recipe said. I would recommend just lightlyish covering the entire area with cinnamon and sugar but not totally building layers where the sugar layer gets thick.

I cut the dough into 6 thin strips and than rolled it up. but this was way more futtery than if I had just rolled the entire thing up into a circular rectangular shape and than cut it into rolls! 

I did not anticipate that they would rise yet again!!! hahaha so my already big rolls like doubled in size once cooked! and the recipe says I should have let them rise an additional 1hour once rolled up and on the pan. But in the end it was ok to just cook straight away- but just know that they will double in size again!- so have space on your pan and don’t be afraid to cut your cinnamon rolls into really small sizes seeing as they will double in size once left to rise or immediately cooked.

For the frosting I combined some buttermilk, powder sugar and vanilla sugar and 1/2 cup butter. As a side not  I prefer powdered sugar frosting to cream cheese frosting. 

These turned out like way way better than I ever expected! they were like soooooooooo thick-fat-soft-fluffy- gooey! it was like oh my gosh better than cinnabon! the only thing was there was just way to much brown sugar and cinnamon filling it. but my husband and another person did not complain about that at all! so I don’t know I guess its all down to preference! But I would like to be able to eat one cinnamon roll without my teeth hurting from all the sugar! haha.

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it's sooo true what you're writting about baking and cooking Heather! when I'm back from Australia i'd really enjoy to change some recipes (: it's always great to know others who loves the same things! greetz Steff (Lockää)

Yeah i’m pretty excited and really looking forward to keeping a blog for things I get up too.  

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The Beginning of Something Awesome

So much like I have already mentioned in my other blog ‘My Crafty Creations Exploits’ I thought I have to do the same with my baking exploits especially seeing as I do more baking than anything else. 

you know its funny cause when I first got married (8years ago) I hated! like hated cooking, so we basically had nothing homemade, and all my husband could make was pasta pasta and more pasta, and yeah did I mention pasta! suffice it to say I’m somewhat fed up of pasta to this day! but pasta is coming back in style as I get creative with different sauces so there's still hope pasta don’t despair just yet.

anyways let me get back on track :) but since moving to Austria nearly 4 years ago (wow where does the time go!) I have had allot of time on my hands as my husband travels pretty much all the time, and so I slowly started trying things out, and getting creative, I learned that if I gave myself plenty of time to bake something I normally didn’t get stressed out or have any freak out sessions, though there were still times when it didn’t look the way I wanted and I very nearly just through the whole thing out cause it must be a fail if it doesn’t look the way I want!!! (and I blame that on my home-ec teacher who was always grading me bad cause my food looked crap haha). But you know with time I started to get less stressed out and actually started to enjoy it, and I actually found that I was good at it (don’t mean to brag hehe ;) ) I got incredible fulfillment as a wife when Lukas liked what I cooked! And more and more and more I enjoyed to bless him with a good meal, and would love hearing him say ‘WOW this is good’! I even started to invite people over and cook for others. I think my mother worried that she did not instill anything on me with regards to cooking, hopefully by now I have shown her that is most certainly not true!She really helped me to be adventurous and to have a sense for what flavors would match good with things, and to just bung things in based on what you have at the house! And too never follow a recipe verbatimly! Haha and consequently never have a clear recipe to tell others when they ask how you make something J haha  I also became obsessed with getting the perfect chocolate chip cookie, or the perfect spongue cake (since I can’t buy bettery crocker here), and also cupcakes! And then after several attempts I got it the way I wanted (like betty crocker!) so than I got more creative and tried cookies and cream cupcakes or funfetti cake! And and and and.  I would see something and be like you know what I WANT that so you know what I’m going to bake it since I can’t have it otherwise! Baking is very time consuming but is also very fulfilling- when someone says wow that was soo good, and the next time Yum yum! Or can you make that please! It just feels so dang good to make people happy with food! After all food is simply amazing and apart from the gift of a husband food would probably be the second best gift from God! SOOOO back to why I started this post! I will first catch you up on some of my baking exploits I have already done. And then in the future I will give an in depth post on all the specifics of the current baking project! 

So stay tuned and enjoy and don’t let your mouth water to much!

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this is pretty easy, its a bit futtery but everyone that has had them including my husband has said they absolutely adore them! 

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candied yams! everyone just loves it when I make this! i’ll be sure to post a detailed blog this thanksgiving!