Meringue Cupcakes

Recipe from CupcakesImages by Yasmin

I love meringue. It is beautiful on lemon meringue pie, so it is just as beautiful as an icing for cupcakes. To make this cupcake look even more sweet and appetising it is dusted with jelly crystals. De-lic-ious! This was served for afternoon tea with Citrus Slice, posted previously. Great for a hot summers day.

Ingredients:
For cupcake:

• 1 1/3 cups plain flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup milk

Meringue Topping:

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 large egg whites
• jelly crystals, to decorate (any colour)

Method:
Line cupcake tins with patty pans.

For cupcakes, combine the flour, baking powder and salt into a small bowl. In a medium sized bowl, beat the butter, sugar and vanilla until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until just blended after each addition. With mixer on slow speed, add the mixed dry ingredients and milk. Spoon the batter into the prepared patty pans, filling each 3/4 full. Bake for 10-20 minutes, until golden brown and firm to touch. Transfer to wire rack once cool.

For Meringue, beat at high speed the egg whites until soft peaks form when beaters are removed. While the motor is running slowly pour the sugar into the egg whites. Beat until meringue is thick and forms soft peaks.

Spoon meringue on top of the cupcakes. Using the spoon create small peaks on the cupcakes. Dust with jelly crystals. Store in refrigerator in sealed container.

French Toast

Recipe and Images by Yasmin

Quick, simple, hot and delicious! French toast makes for an exotic breakfast!!!

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1/4 - 1/2 cup milk
• 2-3 bread slices

Method:
Combine egg and milk until smooth mixture. Soak bread slices in mixture. Cook for a few minutes until golden brown in a sandwhich toaster or place in a frying pan with butter.

Vegetable Pie

Recipe and Images by Yasmin

This is a delicious and healthy dish for dinner or lunch; a boxing day delight! Although the many vegies, this pie is sweet in some sections because of the sultanas which give the dish a nice sweet kick! I would recommend this pie to anyone, as my family knows - I love pies!!!

Ingredients:

• 2 sheets puff pastry
• 1 cup cooked brown rice
•  1/2 cups sultanas
• 3 tsp curry powder
• 2 medium carrots grated
• 1 onion grated
• 1 stalk of celery, chopped
• 125g grated cheese
• 2 cups broccoli
• egg for glazing
• seasame seeds

Method:
Line pie tin with sheet of pastry. Combine  remaining ingredients and place in pie shell. Cover with pastry and bake in moderate oven until golden.

Chocolate Cherry Ice-cream Cake

Recipe from Women's Weekly The Barbecue Cookbook
Images by Yasmin

This is a beautiful idea; two wonderful creations combined - ice-cream and cake! Ice-cream cake is fun to make with a few people as it brings you together and enables you to relax as you work. As a result, this is how the image below came to be made. Because there are chocolate and cherries in this recipe, I naturally don't like it; however, I am under the impression that my friends and family LOVE it so I'm sure you will too! Boxing Day was also when this dish was served, alongside the Orange Creme Caramel dessert. Good combination! Unfortunately, as you can see in the image below, the loveheart tin chosen to make this dessert in wasn't deep enough, so we could only stack two layers into the cake; serving the third as a scoop of ice-cream.

Ingredients:

• 2L vanilla ice-cream
• 90g dark cooking chocolate
• 1/2 cup thickened cream
• 2 tblsp cocoa
• 2 tblsp red glace cherries, chopped
• 1/2 bag of honeycomb chocolates

Method:

Heat chocolate and cream over low heat until chocolate is melted, stir in sifted cocoa, cool to room temperature. Whip cream until soft peaks form.

Soften Ice-cream tube slightly, divide between three bowls. Mix glace cherries into ice-cream in one bowl. Spoon ice-cream into cake tin. Freeze while preparing the next layer.

Gently fold chocolate cream into the second bowl of vanilla ice-cream. Spoon chocolate ice-cream over first layer.

For third layer, half or quater the chocolate honeycomb pieces. Mix into the last bowl of ice-cream. Spoon over chocolate ice-cream (if you have room!!!). Freeze several hours or overnight.

Orange Creme Caramel

Recipe from Women's Weekly Barbecue Cookbook

Images by Amanda and Yasmin

This is a yummy dessert with an interesting texture. It is not as hard as a cheesecake but not as soft as custard. This dessert has double points for me because it is a citrus flavoured dish; however, it looses points because it is a very subtle flavour of citrus orange - and I love a strong citrus flavour. However, if you have a pallet similar to my sisters, you will love the infusion of orange you taste with each bite. It seems as though you might taste the orange but then as you grasp for the flavour it slips out of reach until another bite is taken. I served this dessert on Boxing Day and everybody loved it.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 lemon juice
• 1/2 cup water
• 4 eggs
• 1/3 cup sugar, extra
• 300ml jar thickened cream
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 2 tsp grated orange rind

Method:

Combine sugar, lemon juice and water in pan, stir over low heat without boiling until sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil, do not stir. Boil rapidly, uncovered, until syrup turns golden brown, about 5 minutes. Pour the syrup into an 18cm round cake tin.

Lightly beat eggs and extra sugar together. Heat cream, milk and orange rind until hot, whisk into egg mixture. Strain mixture into tin, place in baking dish with hot water to come halfway up side of tin. Bake in moderately slow oven 45-50 minutes or until set. Remove from water, cool, refrigerate overnight. Turn onto serving dish, decorate with cream and orange segments if desired. Serves 6.