we like to eat.

nighthawks:

Some of you were curious about the recipe I used to make the roasted chickpeas, so I thought I’d go ahead and type up how I went about making this fantastic snack. You can find a bunch of recipe variations on the internet, so feel free to search around for one that works best for you.

What you need:
-Canned chickpeas
-Olive oil
-Spices/Seasoning
-Colander
-Baking sheet
-Bowl

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 420 F

2. Open up a can of chickpeas, throw them in a strainer/colander, and rinse!

3. Once you’ve washed your chickpeas, let them dry for about 10 minutes or so. You can speed up this process by patting them dry with some paper towel.

4. Spread your chickpeas onto a baking sheet and throw them in the oven! Let them roast for about 20-25 minutes.

5. While your chickpeas are roasting, you should have an impromptu dance party!

6. Once the 20-25 minutes is up, take your chickpeas out of the oven and transfer them to a bowl. Use about a tablespoon of olive oil and drizzle it onto the chickpeas. Next, sprinkle whatever spices you like onto your chickpeas. It’s really up to you what kind of spices and how much spice to use. Experiment! I used curry powder, chili powder, and salt on the chickpeas I made yesterday.

7. Once olive oil-ed and spice-d, put your chickpeas back onto the baking sheet and throw them into the oven for another 10-15 minutes. The goal is to get your chickpeas to be hard and crunchy like a peanut, so you might have to keep them in longer depending on your oven. Check on them every once in awhile, taste-testing, to make sure they are roasted perfectly.

8. Voila! Now you have a healthy snack! Put those babies in a sealed container and munch on them whenever you get a craving for something salty and crunchy.

Om nom nom. I made these today, with cajun spice mix and salt, and i should have made more, because they were delicious, but they were gone far too quickly for my liking!

Peanut butter & nutella brownies. Recipe from here.

I was skeptical about these, because there’s not much cocoa or actual chocolate involved, which is usually the way brownies go (my usual recipe has 2 cups of cocoa in it), but I guess the Nutella makes up for it, because they’re kind of amazing! Fudgey, but also crusty on the top. The recipe suggests to use crunchy peanut butter; I didn’t, because crunchy peanut butter is the devil as far as I’m concerned, but I guess if you’re into that you could do it? Anyway, I think this might be my “oh no, we’re nearly out of cocoa and there’s no cooking chocolate” go-to brownie recipe!

nohemy:

This is a genuine photo of the milk locks they use in the public service.

Srsly…..wut.

Yeah the coffee club at my work is srs business. When you’ll love coles a little too much.

Look, I’m not good at cooking many things, but I thought I would show you all my current specialty, which is MEXICAN PIE. This one looks EXACTLY LIKE THE BOOK. How often does that happen, seriously. It is a pretty amazing dish if you eat meat, and if you like tacos, but don’t like lettuce or how messy tacos are, because it smells like tacos when it’s cooking, which is A++. Here is a general recipe:

YOU WILL NEED:
• 2 carrots (chopped small)
• an onion (again chopped small)
• 2 cloves of garlic (crushed with crusher or otherwise)
• minced beef, some.
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 1 can red kidney beans (rinse the shit out of them, they are hells nasty otherwise)
• chilli, to taste (fresh or from a tube like I use because it saves you dangerous chopping)
• corn chips, half a bag usually works for me
• CHEESE. LOTS OF CHEESE.

So. Heat some oil in a frypan, cook the onion, carrot and garlic until it’s sort of translucent and y’know, cooked, then add the mince and the chilli and cook until browned, breaking it up with a spoon/spatula as you go, then add the tomatoes and kidney beans and cook for a tiny bit more, so it’s all amalgamated and stuff, then pour it into an ovenproof, slightly greased casserole dish and cover with the corn chips (sort of stick them in the top, overlapping a bit? The picture is what it should look like at the end) and then cover THAT with cheese, then heat in a 200ºC oven (apparently 392ºF) for about 30 minutes until crunchy on top, then sprinkle with paprika and some parsley (I GREW MINE, THANKS) and you can totally eat that mofo. I think sour cream would also be a delicious addition, but I am yet to try that.

This recipe looked a lot more complicated than it turned out to be, but you do have to have faith-a-faith-a-faith that it will actually happen.

The coconut macaroon shell is pretty straightforward, as long as you use a mixer for the egg whites. I skipped the kaffir lime leaves, as for some reason chinatown was all out, but i dont think it made much of a  difference, as the lime and lemon curd filling was very, very citrusy. 

The filling takes a while to come together- the recipe says 10 minutes on the stove before it starts to thicken, but i waited twenty and then scooped a cup of the liquid out of the saucepan and kept going. Eventually it got the idea and thickened, and i poured it into the macaroon shell and popped it into the fridge overnight. 

If you have a springform pan, use it. While the shell is robust enough to cut into slices, i wouldn’t attempt to lever it out of a tin. I took this to work and it all got eaten, but it was pretty heavy going. The coconut shell is really delicious and not too heavy, but the curd filling is very, very sweet. Next time i would probably make it with a dark chocolate ganache filling.

Good for: Coeliacs, 3 hour work meetings, sweet tooths.

Bad for: Your teeth.

Look, you guys, K reminded me yesterday that I’ve been really lax the past little while. I have a sort of backlog of baking pictures to post, but I though I’d start with these, because I spent all afternoon on them, and it was about as time consuming as you could imagine biscuits would be, but by the end I felt totally achieved. I’ve changed the measurements from the weights in the book to cups, because I don’t have a scale but I DO have a bunch of measuring cups, which is a set up I am led to believe lots of people have. I rounded these up/down, and they worked fine.

Chocolate & Cinnamon Alphabet Biscuits (Recipe from Bake It, which…has no listed author? Dang. It comes in a series of “[insert cooking style/technique here] it” books, I believe.)

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 & a bit cups caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups plain flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 egg white (for glazing)
1 extra tablespoon caster sugar and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, for sprinkling.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F/gas mark 5). Cream butter & sugar in a bowl using an electric mixer until pale and fluffy, then beat in the egg and the vanilla. Sift in flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and cinnamon, then use a wooden spoon (or, if you’re lazy and have an awesome mixer like I do, the dough attachment (NOT the dough hook, it’s not that thick, just the one that isn’t a wire beater)) to stir until a soft dough forms. Wrap it in plastic (I take it out of the bowl and wrap it separately, but I suppose you could just cover it) and chill for 30 minutes in the fridge.

HERE IS WHERE I DEVIATED. If you have alphabet letter cutters, I will come round and rob you for them, but before that, you can roll out the dough to about 5mm thick between 2 bits of baking/greaseproof paper and cut the letters out with them. I only have a star cutter, so I did a few like that before shaping the letters by hand. This is quite good if you want them to look a bit like your handwriting (see the g, y, w and m on mine), but I imagine it is more time consuming. Work quickly! I can’t stress this enough. The dough becomes warm very fast, especially if you’re using your hands and they’re on the warm-ish side like mine are, and it makes it harder to get the dough off the paper.

To make the glaze, whisk the egg white until fluffy, and mix the sugar and cinnamon together. (ps: cinnamon sugar is a good thing to have on hand, in a jar somewhere. It is awesome on toast, and it’s something that, if you make a lot of biscuits, is good for coating them in, a la snickerdoodles.)

Place the biscuits on a well greased tray/s or one covered in baking paper (this is how I do all my biscuits, by the by, I never trust greasing and I find it easier to keep the trays in good condition), and brush with glaze, then sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake for 10 minutes, or until brown. THAT IS TEN MINUTES, I ASSURE YOU. I overcooked my first lot by about 2 minutes, and they were black. To make the whole alphabet and then some, it probably took me about 6 trays’ worth, but it depends how big your letters/trays/oven is, I guess. Once cooked, let them cool on the tray for about two minutes (they’re slightly soft when they come out, but they harden really quickly), then transfer to a wire rack if you have one - I just took them off the tray.

LOOK, YOU’VE MADE A COOKIE ALPHABET. These would be a pretty amazing thing to take to a party, I reckon, if only because people will be all “shit son, you made these all yourself?” and try to take the letter of their name, and then maybe you will be friends. Don’t laugh, I have tempted people into being friends with me with baked goods before. They are generally crunchy and very cinnamony, more than the chocolate although there is definite cocoa overtones. Good with coffee! I defs recommend.