How avoid mash mellows sticking to your cutlery

Do you find when you're cutting (either with scissors or a knife) into mash-mellows they leave this sticky mess on your knife or scissors? Even if you stick a fork into it, you know you're not getting your fork back clean. When sticking them on skewers and toasting them over the fire - you're hoping it melts off before you have to clean it off with your teeth.

Well relax! I've found the best way to avoid this is to dip or spray the knife/ scissors/ fork/ skewer with cooking oil (vegetable, canola, olive etc.)  before prodding these sweet squishy dumplings of sugar. Don't mess with icing sugar or hot water - just oil!

No commentsRead more

Keeping your egg white peaks stiff

This could bring misguided traffic to this site… oh well! Quick tip to keep your egg white peaks stiff.
After whipping your egg whites to form various peak levels (soft to stiff), you may find they don’t always stay that way. Especially if you are a slow worker, like me sometimes. Tip from my Mum, add a pinch of salt while you’re whipping the eggs.

No commentsRead more

Cutting cake into layers

I learnt a really neat trick to cut a cake into layers. I typically would use a knife and struggle with the wonkiness. After googling for a little while, I found a lot of tips to cut cakes into two layers, again with a knife. 

I came across this site that was brilliant! http://www.wikihow.com/Cut-a-Cake-Layer-in-Half I did this for my black forest cake and it worked a charm! Especially with having to split the cake into 3 pieces. Below my pictorial instructions.

Add toothpicks around cake to line up where you’ll split the cake

Using fishing line or scentless dental floss, line up along the top of the toothpicks and pull through slowly.

After pulling through the line, the layers should come apart.

3 commentsRead more

Regrowing Shallots

This started off as an experiment that proved fruitful indeed. 

Hypothesis: Can you regrow shallots in a jar with water. 

Background: My parents, grandma and Uncles have always talked about regrowing various herbs and plants where the original produce came from the supermarket. These included such items coriander, parsley, spring onions, chilli, garlic etc. I was a bit sceptical but then, I see 

Setup: Stubs of shallots cut a few inches from the roots. Place standing in a glass of water filled just above the roots. Sit on the window sill that gets sunlight.

Maintenance: Regularly change the water to freshen it up.  

Result: Free shallots! 

Before

Before

After

After

After - Strong stems

After - Still room to grow

1 commentRead more

Disposable piping bag

For so long I've avoided recipes that require piping. First you need to buy the piping bag, then the added attachments, oh then there's the cleaning and the storage of the little bits and pieces. Too hard! I know, I know you can buy disposable ones at the supermarket. Again, too hard. 


What I've always done is use a sandwich bag, put the icing in, push it to one corner and snipe that corner. Pretty sweet! But ... with heavier icing and frosting, the plastic stretches out of shape and its just harder to pipe with. It needs more rigidity. 


After watching a few cooking shows on TV, I noticed piping bags made from baking paper. So I googled how to make one. Its pretty easy and does the trick! From now on - baking paper piping bag all the time!


Basically you need a triangle pieces of baking paper and fold that into a cone-like shape, then fold down the wider end to secure. Check out this video on youtube search how to make a piping bag from baking paper.

No commentsRead more

Avoiding Bitter Garlic in Stir-fry

Do you find that when frying garlic it goes bitter? It's not the garlic's fault. It's because its over cooked. 

Usually during stir-fries, you're often directed to add onion and garlic to a hot oily pan. This is where you're going wrong. Garlic takes less time to cook than onion. 

So next time, add the onion first, when its about to go translucent, then add the garlic. If you forget to add the garlic then, you can add it while your other ingredients are in the pan (meat, veges etc). No dramas and no burnt bitter garlic.

No commentsRead more