Monthly Archives: July 2011

Cook Book Challenge: Week 4

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A belated post, and a rushed one (I’m not keeping up with this challenge very well).

This week I turned to one of my most disliked cookbooks. This is one part of a 4 pack of Pilsbury’s “Cookies, Brownies and Chocolate Galore”, this one being the “Cookies, Brownies and Bars” book. Another op-shop find from my dad, and was chosen for this week by my boyfriend.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some great looking things in here. But all recipes advocate using their brand, most of the recipes advocate using something that isn’t easily substituted.

I live in Australia. I can’t get most of it here.

Oh well.

But a cookie pizza? Cinch to sub.

Grab a slice…

Cook Book Challenge: Week 3

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For this week of the challenge, I am turning to one of my favourite mini books. My boyfriend’s mum got me New Idea’s “Ultimate Chocolate Cookbook”, a tiny book that has 25 delicious recipes inside. One of my favourite aspects of the book is the troubleshooting chapter in the back, which shows you how to recover failed recipes by morphing them into something new. I haven’t had to resort to this myself yet, but I think recipes books need more of these.

As for the recipes, they range from the fun to the decadent. I think I have cooked almost all of them, so finding an untouched one was a challenge in itself. I happened to cook two recipes out of it today. One being white choc chip banana pikelets. The other being this molten chocolate torte:

Tuck in!

Cook Book Challenge: Week 2

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The first season of MasterChef coincided with two other significant events for me: the first cake decorating book my dad bequeathed unto me, and the time around which my dessert-loving boyfriend and I stopped spending every waking hour at live music concerts and more time hanging out at home and, subsequently, cooking for him.

It reignited a love of food and baking that I’d had flashes of as a child, but had lost touch with as other things filled my life.

Julie Goodwin, Australia’s first MasterChef, won many hearts during a competition throughout which she often appeared out of her league. She was so lovely I couldn’t be upset when she beat my favourite contestant, Poh, in the Grand Final. But I think the moment she won the most hearts was when, during one of the final challenges, she revealed the idea for her cook book. Every chapter to tell of a chapter in her life. It would be filled with stories and photos of her family and their favourite recipes. But the final chapter would be left blank, for us to fill with out of tales, photos and recipes.

Win she did, and with her publishing deal she released exactly the book she’d promised on the show, titled “Our Family Table”.

Turn the cover…