Tag: random life

For the last two, perhaps three Christmases, Matthew and I have looked curiously at the various Italian Christmas cakes that appear in the stores where we work early each November. This year instead of talking about getting one, we did on the post Christmas sales of course 🙂 which made the price a lot more attractive. The cake we picked up was a Dolce Bacio Panettone, that is described as

(the) Most famous Italian chocolate is transformed into a panettone (traditional Italian Christmas cake). This is the origin of big Dolce Bacio (Sweet kiss). Soft cake filled with chocolate and hazelnut cream in the shape of a chocolate. This panettone is a nice present to be eaten in company of friends, family or colleagues. A sweet present to be made to everyone who deserves a kiss. Source – ItalianfoodsHQ.

However imagine our response when we had each had a slice of cake each and both didn’t think it tasted that nice. We still had 2/3 of a cake left and we were going to get our monies worth, so we brainstormed and I came up with this idea to make it a lot more palatable.

Step 1 – Line spring form cake pan with baking paper.
Step 2 – Crumble cake and using roughly half form a base.
Step 3 – Press cake down well to create a well formed base.
Step 4 – Spoon thin layers of ice-cream onto cake layer, not worrying if you have thick and thin patches.
Step 5 – Use the other half of the cake and create a another layer in the same method used before.

Step 6 – Spoon another layer of ice-cream on to the cake, trying to get a relatively even layer this time.
Step 7 – Cover pan with some baking paper and place in the freezer for 24hrs or until set.
Step 8 – Serve with fresh fruit and enjoy a cake that tastes a whole lot nicer than it did originally.

Notes: If we had, had any chocolate or chocolate sauce in the house I would have drizzled the sauce or molten chocolate between the layers for extra goodness. The idea would also work quite nicely with any cake even if it tasted nice before hand 🙂

Some time back in November I guess, I picked up some frozen Blueberries and Raspberries to make Berry Ice-Cream from Celebrate issue of the Donna Hay magazine (just swirling frozen berries into softened ice-cream and then re-freezing in a pudding cloth).

Then the other day at work I picked up some sour cream from the reduced to clear section, having seen somewhere in the back of mind sour cream muffins.

A google search yesterday gave me these recipes Blueberry Cream Muffins, Sour Cream Blueberry Muffins and Blueberry Sour Cream Muffins, which I used for the basis of my recipe as well as drawing on a Baking Sheet blog post from the other week called Bakery Style Muffins.

Berry Sour Cream Patty Cakes

Ingredients
2 & 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Baking Soda
pinch of salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 butter (melted)
dash of Vanilla essence
200ml sour cream
dollops of Milk and Buttermilk if needed for achieving consistency
2 cups or so of berries (I used Blueberries and Raspberries)

Method
Preheat oven to 160°C and place patty or muffin papers into patty pan or muffin pans. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, in a separate bowl combine the egg, sour cream, vanilla and melted butter. Make a well in the dry ingredients bowl and pour in the sour cream mixture and mix together, if mixture is not wet enough add dollops of milk and or butter milk till it is gooey enough to spoon into patty pans. Stir in berries, be sure to do this well so that the berries are evenly distributed through the mixture. Spoon mixture into patty pans so that the mixture is just about at the top of the pan. Cook in oven for 15 minutes or so until skewer comes out clean (muffins will need longer to cook than patty cakes). Makes 40 patty cakes.

Now for some notes.

• Since this recipe makes quite a few patty cakes be sure to either freeze them in small batches or store in the fridge to prevent mould growing in them (cakes etc with fruit especially berries are quite prone to mould if stored at room temp, so eat quick or store in the fridge/freezer.
• These will be quite airy patty cakes due to the amount of baking powder and baking soda used if you don’t like airy cakes, halve the baking powder and soda amounts.
• Enjoy with a nice glass of milk 🙂

In other news:

• On my hook at the moment is this Crochet Cupcake Pincushion.
• I want one of these – Flame-worked All Glass Crochet Hooks in ruby or opal please (Mum, ideal 21st birthday gift, you have 232 days to purchase one).
• Mum is just about finished her crocheted bag.
• This arvo Mum and I went through her old wool to see what I could use to create with and found some knitted goodies which will be fun to felt.

Lastly, this coming Thursday, January 26th is Australia Day so Be Australian, Eat More Lamb (you have to click on that link, though if you aren’t Australian you probably won’t get half the stuff said but still click on it).