In the Den Kitchen

From the Den Kitchen–Marbled Chocolate Cheesecake Slice

You can now find previous In the Den Kitchen posts here or on Pinterest. Clicking Recipes in the menu above will also take you to my In the Den Kitchen Pinterest board. I’m slowly reworking some older posts so they will show up there too.
Links to any Your Inspiration at Home (YIAH) products will take you to my YIAH page. You can shop in Australia, New Zealand, USA & Canada from my page. If you are interested in learning about YIAH jump over to my Facebook page.

This is a family favourite slice. I have fond memories of my Godmother or my Mum cooking it when we went away for family holidays.

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In the Den Kitchen–Chinese Chicken & Corn soup

This recipe is a family favourite. I often remember having Chinese Chicken & Corn soup especially of a weekend. The recipe comes from the Women’s Weekly Chinese Cooking Class cookbook (I LOVE this recipe book – I cook so many recipes from it) but the recipe below is my modification to it.

It’s a winter warmer and so easy to use leftovers from a roast chicken or buy a roast chook from Coles or Woolies.

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In the Den Kitchen – Food Glorious Food

An early edition this week. This recipe went out to the subscribers to my YIAH newsletter earlier this month but I thought I’d share it here too.

You may have seen these stunning creations floating around the net in the last few weeks and let me tell you they are so super easy to make.

YIAH Apple Roses

All you need is

a sheet of puff pastry
an apple
some apricot jam
YIAH Baked Apple Pie spice

Preheat oven to 180°C
Get a microwave safe bowl and put some water and a squeeze of lemon juice in it.
Cut the apples in half, remove the core and cut the apples in paper thin slices. Leave the peel on to give your roses colour. the colour of your apple skin will determine the colour of your rose. Place the sliced apples in the bowl with lemon and water.
Soften your apple slices by microwaving for about 3 minutes.
Roll out your puff pastry to make it a bit thinner. Cut into 6 strips.
In another microwave safe bowl, put 3 tablespoons of apricot jam and 2 tablespoons water. Microwave for about a minute. Spread on your pastry.
Drain the apples.
Place your apple slices along one edge of the dough, with the skins hanging over the top. Sprinkle with a little Apple Pie Spice.
Fold up the bottom part of the dough and roll your rose.
Place in a silicone muffin cup.
Repeat with remaining pastry and apple slices.
Bake for about 40 minutes to allow pastry to cook. If the apple gets too brown, place on a lower shelf.
To serve: dust with icing sugar (or some YIAH Rose sugar)

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In the Den Kitchen: Anzac Biscuits

Tomorrow is Anzac Day. A national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand that broadly commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders “who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations” and “the contribution and suffering of all those who have served.”

It’s also a time when we make Anzac biscuits (these are NEVER to be called cookies). You can make these any time of year but they always seem more special on the 25th April.

ANZAC Biscuits

A little history of the Anzac biscuit (thanks to Sky News, you can read the whole thing here)

The first known Anzac biscuit recipe appeared in The War Chest Cookery Book, which was published in Sydney in 1917, but this recipe was for a cake, not a biscuit.

It is said that biscuits with a similar recipe to the one we knew today appeared in magazines under different names, sometimes called “Rolled Oat Biscuits” or “Soldier’s Biscuits”. The current name only came about after the legendary ANZAC Gallipoli Campaign.

Anzac biscuit recipes, in the form we know them today, began appearing in cookbooks in the 1920s. They were sometimes called “Anzac crisps” or “Anzac crispies” (but not “Anzac cookies”) in reference to their hardness. The earliest recipe for these “crispies” found to date is from a New Zealand cookbook published in 1921.

There’s hundreds of recipes out there but I’m sharing the recipe I’ve made for years. We also now make the Anzac biscuit recipe in the Thermomix Everyday Cookbook but this one is my favourite.

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In the Den Kitchen – Happy Easter

Slightly belated Easter greeting. Two things I love about Easter -it means it’s time for Hot Cross Buns (yay) and Cadbury Creme Eggs. But as much as I love these buns I’m not a fan of them appearing in the stores in late December/early January – I mean, really? And, I might get heaps of hate for this, but I’m not a fan of those which are full of fruit. Me, I prefer simple – sultanas and currents (or craisins) or choc chip.

The last couple of years I’ve been making my own. I’ve been using the recipe in the Thermomix Everyday Cookbook. I modify it every time I make it. This year I’ve added a little YIAH Pumpkin Pie baking spice. I thought I’d also share with you my choc chip modification of the original recipe. This is hubby’s favourite – he doesn’t like dried fruit (strange man LOL)

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And the best bit – leave off the cross and they are yummy choc chip buns to eat any time of year!

In the Den Kitchen – Afternoon Teal

I am turning into a food blogger LOL looking at my last few posts – they are nearly all foodie ones. And here’s another!

Last Sunday I held one of my annual fundraisers, raising money for Ovarian Cancer Australia. This year Scrap Teal You Drop was a smaller affair mainly due to a rescheduling of date (we were going to hold it in mid-February but a little person got sick) Anywho, we raised about $800. If you are interested in donating you can go to my Afternoon Teal page. I’ll be blogging about my Afternoon Teal next week.

Today on In The Den Kitchen – Afternoon Teal I thought I’d share some of the food that I cooked for everyone to munch on after a day of creating.

I’m still doing lots of experimenting with YIAH products. First of the sweet treats I cooked was my favourite 5 second coconut slice but I added some YIAH Black Forest Dukkah to the base and some YIAH Chocolate Raspberry Truffle powder to the icing. Next was Chocolate Orange Balls using YIAH Choc Orange powder (this stuff smells and tastes like Jaffas) and Apricot Fudge using YIAH White Chocolate powder.

Afternoon Teal food Afternoon Teal food - Coconut slice

I also made some Mars Bar Surprise slice, Teal cupcakes and a Teal Ribbon cake

Afternoon Teal food Afternoon Teal - Teal Ribbon Cake

In the Den Kitchen – Cob loaf

You can now find previous In the Den Kitchen posts here or on Pinterest. Clicking Recipes in the menu above will also take you to my In the Den Kitchen Pinterest board. I’m slowly reworking some older posts so they will show up there too.

So last week I promised you my recipe for Cob Loaf. This is a Thermomix recipe but you could easily make it without.

cobloaf

[yumprint-recipe id=’16’]Now you can just eat this as is with butter (warm from the oven yum!!) or fill it with one of the many filled cob loaf recipes out there (like the one I shared last week)
Enjoy!

In the Den Kitchen – YIAH edition

So what is YIAH I hear you ask? Well it stands for Your Inspiration at Home. It’s an Australian company that makes all-natural seasonings, spices, salts and other items (like teas, chocolate powders, dip mixes and lots more) and sells them via Independent consultants, like me (as of this evening)

Cupcake cover

I hosted a party last year and fell in love with the products. I was hooked when I tried the dip mixes and chocolate powders. The opportunity to join YIAH came up (ok so they had a joining special this month and hubby said go for it) so I have decided to join and share my love of the product with friends and family.

Anywho, from now on some of my In the Den Kitchen posts will contain YIAH products or I’ll be sharing recipes from the YIAH recipe site.

Today I’m sharing one of the first YIAH recipes I cooked – Bacon & Corn Cob Loaf

I usually make my own cobb loaf, but you’ll have to wait til next week for that one 😉

If you are interested in checking out what YIAH has to offer, go have a look at my page

Since we’ve waved goodbye to summer here in Australia I thought I’d share my favourite recipes for using up your summer berries. You can do these any time of the year with frozen berries (just check your berries haven’t been recalled first – well months after you use them :/)

Of course a big favourite for berries is jam. Over Christmas I made a few batches of jam in the attempt to gather a few favourites I will use over & over. So here they are – Nightwolf’s Den favourite jam recipes…

In The Den Kitchen Nightwolf's Den favourite jam recipes

Strawberry Vanilla Jam by Tenina

Photo of Strawberry Vanilla Jam

Raspberry Jam (I used recipe 1)

Thermomix Raspberry Jam Recipe

Orange Marmalade

Bacon Jam by ThermoFun (not a fruit jam but so, so yummy. If you like bacon, try it)

ThermoFunBaconJam

and finally not a jam but a way to use up leftover strawberries – Strawberry Sauce (very nice over ice cream, in a milkshake or mixed in lemonade)

What’s your favourite jam recipe? I’m always looking for more jams to try out.

In the Den Kitchen–an update

This week I’m doing a little forward planning. Creating a list of recipes I want to write up and share. Creating a list of recipes I want to try and share.

So no recipe this week. Just a photo of some yummy looking Braided Nutella Bread (yes I’ll be giving this a go)

Braided Nutella Bread

If you want some foodie ideas you can check (& maybe even follow) my In the Den Kitchen Pinterest board. I’ll be back next week with a new recipe 😀