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Lemon Diva Cupcakes

Two down and many more to go!  Today I decided to try my hand at Julie Goodwin's Lemon Diva Cupcakes from her first cookbook "Our Family Table".  This recipe from memory won Julie the cupcake challenge on the first series of Masterchef Australi.  I also chose this recipe as there are a few lemons sitting in the fruit bowl. A good excuse as any to use up the lemons! But also anytime is a good time to bake I day!

Probably the best thing to remember is to make sure you take the butter out to allow it enough time  to soften.  This makes it easier to cream the butter and sugar together.  But you do not want to leave it out to long as it will be rather soft and difficult to cream.

 

 

The good thing about this cupcake recipe is that it is not one that has any complicated techniques to it.  Just a simple cupcake recipe.  Ingredients are butter, sugar, vanilla, eggs, lemon zest, Self Raising Flour and milk.  The cupcakes are baked in a moderate oven for 20 minutes or until golden.

Adding the eggs to the butter and sugar together.

Adding the flour to the mixture.

 The uncooked mixture about to go into the oven.

The cooked cupcakes out of the oven.

 

The next procees is simple as well.  You just need to make the icing.  But you need to make sure that the cupcakes have completely cooled before putting the icing on.  As it will melt the icing, if put on a hot cake. 

 

 

The icing ingredients include icing sugar, butter, lemon juice and yellow food colouring.  Once again you need to make sure the butter has softened to allow it to be easier to beat until light and creamy.  Once it is like this slowly add the icing sugar untilit is all combined.  Then finally add the lemon juice and yellow food colouring.  I found  I had to add quite a few drops of colouring until it was the colour that I liked.  Then pipe the icing on top of the cake and enjoy them.

 

 

 Personally I added extra lemon juice to the icing to get the citrus taste that I like.  Next time when I make them I will probably use more lemon zest and lemon juice.  But these cakes are nice and soft and moist.  Looking forward to doing some more baking soon.







Chinese-Style Braised Pork Rashers

Here it goes. My first recipe from my goal to cook a recipe from all of my cookbooks. I have a large collection of books to choose from.  So what to cook was the question and what author to choose from.  But also what did I have avaliable in the pantry, fridge and freezer.  I though long and hard about this.  I found some pork rashers in the freezer. So to cook some sort of pork dish was the goal.  But now what cookbook to use is the question.


After looking through a few cookbooks.  I found the recipe and author I was looking for.  I chose to use Julie Goodwin's "The Heart Of The Home" published in 2011.  Julie is Australia's first Masterchef winner.  I think Julie is great. A mum like me and a true home cook. She was definately not expected to win Masterchef when she did.  A true underdog in my belief.  So out of her cookbook I chose to cook "Chinese-style Braised Pork Rashers".



 

 

 

The great thing about this recipe is that it only takes 5 minutes in preparation time. Every ingredient is placed in a pot and simmered for an hour at least.  Or until the rashers skin has become gelatinous and the meat is tender.  It smells amazing while cooking.

 

 

 

 

  The ingredients are pork rashers, brown sugar, cgilli powder, ginger, soy sauce, garlic, oyster sauce, chinese five spicce and cornflour(not pictured here for thickening the sauce).

 

 

The only thing that I changed form teh recipe was that I reduced the amount of chilli powder in it.  As my son would never have tried the pork.  besides that I think ther ecipe turned out great.  The recipe was aas good as I expected it to be.  My husband was surprised at how good it tasted. This will definately be a recipe that I will cook again.

 

 

If you would like to check out Julie Goodwin's website click on the link below.

 

http://www.juliegoodwin.com.au/

 

 



Starting Out

My name is Samantha Perkovic. I work with my husband in our family business.  But my love is for cooking, collecting cookbooks, trying different restaurants and travelling.  What I am hoping to do  with this blog is to attempt to cook a different recipe form all of the cookbooks that I own!  There are quite a few books in the bookshelf.  So this should be a lot of fun.  There may also be restaurant reviews. And pieces written about our family travels when we do get away.  So I hope you enjoy reading what I put together.