Pie pie pie.

I freaking LOVE pie. FOR REALS. It doesn't matter what kind. M made me a cherry pie on Christmas Eve last year. Cherries and pie are two of my favourite ever things so combining the two made me lose my shit. Still my best pie memory (pie memories are totally a thing.)

I made this for a potluck dinner - if you're among friends, you can all just dig in with forks/spoons. It's the type of pie that everyone thinks they can manage a giant slice of and it ends up defeating them because it's very sweet and rich. Also, it's a cheat pie, because you hardly have to do anything.

  

Banoffee Pie

350 gram packet of shortbread

100 grams of butter, melted

1 can of Highlander pre-made caramel

2 bananas, sliced

1 600ml bottle of cream

teaspoon of icing sugar

1 flake chocolate bar

1. Crush biscuits. I used my dad's old crazy awesome blender, but you can nearly entirely crush shortbread using just your hands. Mix melted butter with biscuit crumbs and press into a greased pie dish.
2. Bake pie crust at 180 degrees for 15 minutes. (Original recipe said to just refrigerate crust for an hour, but I had read a few by that stage and got a wee bit confused/wasn't paying attention. Do what you like!)
3. Let crust cool (I chucked mine in the freezer for 10 mins) whilst you prepare the caramel. By prepare, I actually mean tip it out of the tin and mix it in a bowl until it is smooth. It will become thinner as you mix so don't be too pedantic, you don't want a runny mess. Also, while the crust cools, you can whip the cream + icing sugar.
4. Start to assemble pie. Firstly pour caramel over the crust, layer sliced bananas, top with whipped cream. (You can pipe it if you have time and want it to look prettier.) Finally, crush a flake and sprinkle over the top.

Take to potluck dinner and claim all this credit for something which looks like you put heaps of effort into, when really you hardly did at all. And marvel at how quickly it takes for everyone to go from being like "OMG YUM" to "Ughhh my tummy hurts whyyyyyy did I eat so much of this pie, I need to lie down." If that happens, you made it properly. And you did warn them. Or maybe you didn't.

x

Can you though?

image via tumblr.

Raspberry and lemon friands

Recently I've been exceptionally clumsy whilst in the kitchen, and seem to burn myself on everything I touch. For instance: I burt my thumb on the side of the pan while taking these out of the oven, and got to use some of my very favourite square words, the ones I save for special occasions. And the other day I burnt my finger on a cheese toastie. Not even the toastie machine, but the hot molten cheese inside as I cut it. It blistered straight away too. But I guess, the bonus of burning your digits on hot food things is that in the time in takes to run your burn under cold water, your treat is cooling down to optimal consuming temperature.

Friands are delish and underrated, in my opinion. It's so easy to make them gluten free, and unlike muffins, you put the flavours on the top of the batter. So if you want three different types of friand in one batch, you can! These ones use the whole egg, not just the white, so you aren't stuck with a buttload of yolks to try to find uses for.

Raspberry and lemon friands

100 grams butter

1/3 cup gluten free plain flour (or rice flour)

1 1/3 cups icing sugar

1 cup almond meal

zest of one lemon

3 eggs

a whole lot of raspberries (frozen is fine and what I used.)

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease a muffin tin (or a friand tin, if you have one) with butter or cooking spray. Melt butter in a small saucepan over a low heat and cook for one minute or until butter turns golden.
2. Sift flour and icing sugar into a mixing bowl, stir in almond meal and lemon zest.
3. Lightly beat eggs with a fork and stir both eggs and butter into dry ingredients until well combined. Mixture will be quite thin and not what you expect it to be, don't panic and re-read all the instructions to make sure you haven't missed something, this is what it's supposed to look like. Spoon mixture into tin, filling each two-thirds full. Press raspberries into the top of the batter (original recipe said TWO raspberries but come on now, let's not be miserable with the rasperries, jeez).
4. Bake in pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes, til golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
5. Cool in tins for 5 minutes, then turn onto wire rack to cool completely. Dust with icing sugar prior to serving. Makes 9 large muffin sized friands.

I can imagine passionfruit and blueberry would be pretty good, I added a wee bit of stewed rhubarb to these ones too because we had some but you couldn't tell. Chocolate would be awesome, so would caramel. Marshmallow, even?! Maybe all three together, like a pinky bar friand (next time!!) Do your thing, live your dreams.

x

Struggletown

You know how you see in movies where some major crisis happens and the main character ends up in the kitchen making really elaborate cakes as a way to deal slash not deal with said crisis? I used to think that was all shit until one generally all-round awesome girl/flatmate at uni used to do the same thing. We would come home from studying for some exam and there would be muffins and slices EVERYWHERE. And she would be all happy and content and relaxed by having finished a project unrelated to the things that were stressing her and I always used to be jealous that she could use baking as a coping mechanism. The things she would make were yum, too. Yum enough to make up for the time when she said it would be an awesome idea to make a pavlova by putting the meringue into a loaf tin and baking it. The outcome of that venture sat on the back lawn for the longest time, even the feral cats wouldn't eat it. You live, you learn, huh?

Anyway - things are not at crisis point but I really struggle to bake when stressed, because I swear to god all the ingredients can tell when you're pissed and apprehensive and not into it and they deliberately make it a horrible experience. This is true for me, anyway. Neenish tarts have had me in tears before. All like, what the fuck? Why are you all puffy, you're supposed to be a TART, that definitely wasn't self-raising flour...did I just put baking powder in there? I swear I didn't, whaaaaaaaaaaat WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME

I don't like feeling as though my baking is just purposely trying to break my resolve.  I know that's why this has been a bit fail so far. When I finally can chill out, I swear to god this will be an actual thing and I will be baking and happy and I will look back on these posts and be all 'Hah hah, stupid girl. Aren't you glad to finally have your shit sorted?'

That's the plan anyway.

Perhaps the first actual entry can be "Rescue Remedy Cupcakes."

uggggggghhhhhhhhh