Christmas Fruit Cake

Christmas Fruit Cake with Walnuts

Hello everyone! With the festive season upon us, I know I have been sharing a lot of sweet recipes due to all the holiday baking I have been doing. I will try to post more savouries soon, meanwhile I hope you are embracing the festivities and enjoying your holiday baking.

Today, I want to share this very dear and special recipe for Christmas Fruit Cake with you. This is going to be a somewhat lengthy post, but I hope you bear with me as I wish to set out as many tips and tricks that I have learnt from my own hard and sometimes tearful experience with you so that you will be able to achieve the perfect bake.

Moist Banana Walnut Chocolate Bread

Moist Banana Walnut Chocolate Bread with desiccated coconut for a soft texture and intense flavour

Hello and how have we all been keeping?

Well, my schedule has been a bit out of whack. I had it all planned but then an unscheduled road trip for 2 days seems to have side tracked my best laid plans. In any event, I am looking forward to the road trip! Will rather work extra harder these few days and enjoy! Hey, I am learning how to embrace change better and not get so cranky if things don’t go as planned. That is one of my goals for 2014 and beyond, learning to embrace things. Of course I reserve the right to be cranky every now and then. There, caveat entered!

So, where was I, ah – yes, I wanted to share a recipe for a moist banana walnut chocolate bread. Oh I know there are thousands of banana bread recipes, but I really did enjoy this recipe and it takes 2 minutes to make. Well, you got me there, it takes 10 minutes of prep time, but that is short and easy enough. This banana bread is really quite filling and it worked really well for several brunches and lunches for me. The desiccated coconut gives body to the texture. As for the chocolate chips, well, most things are better with chocolate and this is definitely the case here. As a side note, I have reduced the sugar content so if you want it sweeter, go ahead and increase the amount of sugar by 50gm.

Herbed Turkey Meatballs using Oats

These herbed turkey meatballs are made with oats and are great as an appetiser, a light meal or with pasta in a tomato based sauce

Hello and I hope you are having an awesome weekend!

The recipe for today is herbed turkey meatballs. These meatballs use oats instead of breadcrumbs. I was intrigued by the idea of substituting breadcrumbs with oats in a recipe for meatballs, however, now that I have tried it, I am not going back to breadcrumbs. Why? I guess because it is better for you since it has more fibre and taste wise, it does not pale in comparison with meatballs that use breadcrumbs.

Easy Homemade Nutty Vegan Granola

Easy Homemade Nutty Vegan Granola

Hello! I hope your week has been going well and you are still keeping your head above water with all the added chores and stress that inevitably comes with the festive season.

I had a nightmare about writing Christmas cards the other night. It was as if I just could not get the spelling right and had to waste many cards and just could not complete the stack that I had to write. Of course I woke up and realised that it was a dream but the reality remains that I still have a huge stack of cards to write and send.

Anyway, there was nothing inspiring for breakfast in the pantry so I decided to make this Nutty Granola. I have been experimenting with a whole lot of granola recipes this year and had my fair share of hits and misses. I remember a recipe I got from a world renown chef’s cookbook only to have it turn out tasting like a Chinese takeout with too much sesame seeds. My friend’s words, not mine.

Vegetarian Japanese Egg Tofu for Meatless Monday

Vegetarian Japanese Egg Tofu

Happy Meatless Monday everyone! I hope you are as excited about Meatless Monday as I am.

This Monday, I am going to share a recipe for Japanese Egg Tofu with you. This tofu has egg in it and can be easily bought from most Oriental grocers.  This is what it looks like in its packaging.

Japanese Egg Tofu

As with most tofu or beancurd, it is a very versatile protein in that it goes well with almost anything. For this dish, the tofu is sliced, dusted with corn flour and then fried until it is golden and crispy. You then braise the vegetables in a thick sauce before adding an egg in the sauce to thicken it and to bulk up the dish. I also added a lot of vegetables to bulk it up further. Here, I used mushrooms, sugar snap peas, baby corn and carrots.