Lots of Pumpkin! Scones, soup & curry...

Over here in usually sunny Australia, we're celebrating Australia Day (January 26th) with a long weekend. Where I am, we've been seeing rain... and LOTS of it! Thankfully, I am not at risk of being affected by immediate flood danger (though there are many in my state who have been affected by flooding, tornadoes... you name it!). But we have been spending most of our time this weekend cooped up inside the house.

What better way to take advantage of forced time indoors than cooking up a storm (no pun intended)? I managed to score a whole Queensland Blue pumpkin for 39c per kilogram yesterday morning, so everything has involved pumpkin! For lunch today, it was a homestyle chunky pumpkin soup, followed by pumpkin scones. Tomorrow I'll try my hand at a pumpkin Indian-style curry. My pumpkin soup turned out beautifully, with a richer flavour from roasting the pumpkin, hints of chili, garam masala, a few fennel seeds...

Today I'm sharing a tried and true very famous pumpkin scone recipe by Lady Flo Bjelke-Peterson. You can find the original recipe on the ABC website here, but I made a double batch so I'll post how I made these delicious scones.

LADY FLO BJELKE-PETERSON'S FAMOUS PUMPKIN SCONES

STEP 1:

Prepare your pumpkin. I diced a fair amount of my pumpkin and boiled in plain water until soft and mushy, then mashed. I set aside 2 cups of mashed pumpkin.

STEP 2:

I made a double batch of scones (hence why I saved 2 cups of the mashed pumpkin), so next I put 2 tbsp of butter, about 1/4 tsp of salt, and 1 cup of raw sugar into my mixer and beat until well combined. 

STEP 3:

I've added two eggs, and beat in well.

STEP 4:

Now's the time to add the pumpkin!

Beat in the pumpkin well - your mixture will be pretty sloppy at this point.

STEP 5:

Add your flour - I'd recommend adding only a little at a time and mixing on a low speed. I added 4 cups of self-raising flour (as per a double batch), but found my dough to still be far too moist and sticky. I would estimate that I added another cup and a half of flour before I was happy with the consistency - I stopped adding flour when my dough was still a little stickier than a normal bread dough.

STEP 6:

Turn your dough out onto a surface covered lightly with flour and knead. Cut out your scones and shape to the size you want. Personally, I've always used a drinking glass to cut my scones as this was how my mother taught me as a child. 

STEP 7:

Place your scones closely together on a baking tray sprinkled with flour (this prevents the scones from sticking) and bake for about 15 minutes in a hot oven. I had my oven set to 225 degrees Celsius (as recommended on the original recipe, and as I have done many times before), but in my new oven this was a little hot. If you think your oven runs hot like mine, I'd recommend cutting down to perhaps 190 degrees Celsius. 

Serve with jam and dollop cream while still warm from the oven. Enjoy!

New Cookbooks, New Adventures

My other-half saw a cookbook for sale in one of those shopping centre book stalls. The same cookbook I'd been admiring rather openly last time I was at his parents' place. I've trained him well to notice such things, yes? Actually, I can't take the credit. He's just great like that.  He promptly bought the book which left me grinning like a schoolgirl for the rest of the afternoon.

The cookbook? The "Australian Women's Weekly 1000 Best-Ever Recipes". SO MUCH LOVE. Anyone who does any cooking in Australia certainly must have glanced over at least one AWW cookbook in their time. If they haven't, they're missing out. In my view, AWW have the best collection of cookbooks out there. But then, that might just be my taste. 

(Photo courtesy of LifestyleTea)

This cookbook combines my love of country/homestyle cooking with modern Australian, Asian-inspired, and just about everything I love doing in the kitchen! Granted, there's a lot I won't be making out of those thousand or so recipes... But I can't wait to sit down with a coffee and my cat on one of those rare and dangerous moments my other-half leaves me unattended with a cookbook!

Stay posted for many kitchen adventures to come that this book will inspire.

Apple Blackberry Bundt Cake

I adore bundt cakes. All of the ones I've had have been moist, delicious cakes - lemon, fresh fruit, chocolate... And they look great too! I've never been a fan of working with icing - I find I try to ice a cake while it is still a little warm (patience is a virtue, I know) and thus I fail dismally. I know this is the mistake I make, but I keep repeating it time and again. With a bundt cake, you don't have that problem! Glaze while it is still a little warm, or dust with icing sugar... or just leave it as it is straight out of the tin!

I've been looking for a good recipe to "christen" my brand new Kenwood mixer my other-half bought for Christmas! Isn't it pretty?

I've been a Kenwood girl my whole life - I grew up using my mother's old Kenwood mixer, and got my own second-hand 1960's model Kenwood when I moved out of home. My other-half has helped to fix various faults that went wrong with the old one as they popped up, and now he surprised me with the brand new one! I'm a lucky girl, for sure.

So, in search of a worthy recipe, I stumbled across a Blueberry Bundt Cake with Lemon Glaze on Pinterest, which took me to the recipe on Dulce Dough. I'd been looking for a way to use a tin of Apple & Blackberry Pie Filling I'd bought months ago from Aldi, and thought I might try tweaking this recipe to suit.

APPLE & BLACKBERRY BUNDT CAKE

Recipe adapted from Dulce Dough 

INGREDIENTS:

- 3 cups plain flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp bi-carb soda
- 1 tsp cooking salt
- 3/4 cup butter
- 1 1/2 cup raw sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1 cup light sour cream
- 1x 550g can of Apple & Blackberry Pie Filling

METHOD:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius. Mix the flour, baking powder, bi-carb soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside.



In your electric mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating between each egg. Add the vanilla essence and beat well. Add the flour to the wet mixture, alternating with your sour cream, beating between each addition.



Finally, fold through the Apple & Blackberry fruit.



Pour your batter into a greased bundt tin and bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes, until cooked.  

Easy! Mine turned out great. It rose a little more than would be "perfect" for a bundt cake, so I just trimmed away the excess on the base. The result was a really lovely cake - almost like a muffin in texture with great flavour. 

Unfortunately, you'll have to accept my appologies for the poor photography! I currently don't own a camera, so photos have been taken with my tablet. I'm hoping to rectify that soon!