Little Blueberry Cheesecakes

Was a complete fiasco disaster.  No wonder I haven't posted anything in months......

Yes.... even the best of us, through to the least best of us, have abysmal days..

ORANGE ALMOND SYRUP PUDDINGS

It's Winter.  Oranges abound.  Let's use up the glut deliciously.
Plus, I have a very special friend visiting this afternoon.  She and I have always bonded over variations of the truth while smoking ourselves into a Foggy Haze.  We grew up and stopped smoking.  So what do ex-smokers do when they get together?  They EAT.  But the eating has to be very, very good:

I'm gonna try these little numbers for size:  They stem from Persia, but are also used as a Jewish Passover desert, and I'll add that they're Gluten Free.  But aside from all that, they have been calling me to cook them for a week now....

Orange Almond Syrup Puddings:

A quick video - instead of single puddings, a whole cake

I followed the Coles recipe... and may very well cook every single thing in this months book

Moist - emphasis on moist - Orange Poppy Seed Cake

I still haven't got around to explaining the purpose of this blog.... bear with me. Perhaps if you read and see my madcap way of cooking, it'll dawn on you.  Nobody has to be a good cook in order to cook

I love this cake, but although it takes minutes to slap together, the "boiling oranges" bit can take a fair whack of time (and the 'boiled orange' is where we get the moistness of this cake - you can choose not to, but you'll just have an orange poppy seed cake then, not a moist orange poppy seed cake).  

But I just found out I can microwave the oranges!!!  Never one to shirk a good nuclear blast, I currently have my oranges in the microwave for 8 minutes (that's a long time to be nuked).  

HOW TO MAKE THE CAKE 

I turned the oven on.  You know - the usual moderate oven thingy

170deg C/350F.    

I also readied my cake tin.  I have recently upgraded from my tiny little, rusty-round-the-edges cake tin, to a high-top spring form pan.  THIS IN ITSELF TRANSFORMS YOU INTO A COOK WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING.  The cake tin needs to be oiled/buttered OR... my personal favourite: spray the crap out of it with cooking oil spray - IT DOESN'T MATTER which oil.  It's just to stop it sticking.  You can, if you want (and it always looks good) cut out a circle of baking paper the same size as the bottom of your cake tin.  Put it in the tin - no point cutting it out and putting it anywhere else.  It too will aid in the smooth transition from tin to cake cooling rack after it's holiday in the tropics of the oven. 

Don't worry yourself over your cutting out abilities.  I have never had a cake complain.

The actual cake recipe:

2 oranges – boiled twice with fresh water for 15 minutes OR microwave as below.  Then roughly chopped, skin & all (boiling it twice with fresh water takes the acid taste away - which will be interesting to see if the microwave version can eliminate that taste..)  185g butter, melted or 1 cup of vegetable oil  3 eggs  1 cup castor sugar  1 ½ cups self-raising flour - it doesn't matter if it's Gluten Free or 'normal'  2 Tablespoons poppy seeds

YOU CAN'T STUFF UP SOUP, CAN YOU?

I don't always love food, but when I do we are a good team in a strong relationship and somehow symbiotic, even though one of us ends up eaten.  

I remember my early forays into the chemistry of food.  Yes, yes, I am from the era when "Cooking" subjects were not only mandatory for girls but they were transitioning to "Home Economics" in order to help us better understand our worth.  But really, we just cooked.  My first cooking class at Springwood High School (after the mandatory 'go out and buy all these things' class and having made an apron in 'Sewing' class), was "How to Make a Banana Sandwich".  No kidding.  

Truth be told I actually learnt something.  

Firstly, she told me to butter the bread right to the edges after spying my splodge of butter quite evenly centred on the two slices in front of me.  Having grown up in a margarine household, butter remained cold and untamed to me: any attempt at getting it to behave was met with a nasty gash in my bread.  

Patience was my second lesson: Nothing of worth was rushed.  I was taught to wait for that sweet spot when butter was at its most spreadable; or when the oven had preheated; or the required chemical reaction had occurred - which required timing and order, long before I could venture further to discover the elusive art of perfectly timed Baking.  

The last lesson of the Banana Sandwich involved the correct ingredients: Prior to my Cooking Class Guru's intervention I included sugar on the list.  When she came to check the contents of our sandwiches I thought I had done a disservice to the world of gastronomy and female intelligence by the look of complete horror on her face.  I covered the blight as quickly as possible with the perfectly-timed, room-temperature-buttered (right to the edges) slice and shoved it ever-so-indelicately into my mouth.  It was lunch time after all.

I was made to redo my sandwich, with scraps of leftovers from the perfectionists sitting either row of me.  I was told I was never to put sugar on a sandwich of 'any kind' ever again, lest I forfeit "Home Economics" altogether and would be made to repeat a grade.  I didn't believe her exaggerated threats, but having tasted the subtle yet newly sweet taste of fruit over refinery, I also found it relatively easy never to put sugar on any sandwich I ate again*...

*fairy bread being a different matter altogether 

(photo courtesy of Indulgy)

From correctly-buttered banana sandwiches to a 10 course Italian meal for 28 people with nothing but a regular household stove & oven, I have battled my wits and energy against food.  I became a vegetarian through financial choice when I left home (back in those days I think we all lived on weekly wages of something like $70 a week).  I'm no longer a vegetarian (so all you carnivores can keep reading), although I choose vegetable meals more often than those with meat of any kind.  Being a vegetarian - for whatever reason - meant really thinking about your meals, which I mostly enjoyed.  I pored over recipe books borrowed from libraries and bought at St Vinnies.  At 10am I would be thinking about dinner at 6.30pm, by midday I had the books out, reviewing each for taste, simplicity and available ingredients, by 2pm I had a recipe in mind and would need to walk across the road to the fruit and veg shop to buy all the yummy components for the Roullade or Quiche or Nut Loaf.. If anything involved pulses, well.... I'd actually have to start that meal the day before!  Yep... vegetarianism and a certain Cooking teacher whose name I can't recall, but whose lesson I never forgot taught me the fundamentals about cooking: stretching everything right to the edge, using the right ingredients* and patience.

** there are no right ingredients

Having learnt my cullinary lessons over forty years, I reckon I can cook the really good stuff now.