Little Box Brownie

A Baking Blog from Melbourne, Australia

Recipe

Pumpkin Reese Cookies

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Om nomm nomm, mmmmmmm cookies…. That about sums it up.
These little ones are my tribute to spooky Halloween, not that it is really celebrated in this part of the world. Why I’m not sure, who wouldn’t love to get bags full of sweet lollies and candies from people, I know I would. As a kid I dreamed of living in the US, or at least visiting during Halloween, so I could get bucketfuls of sweets. But sadly that never happened. But now I’m old and no one can tell me what to do, I can buy all the sweets and lollies I want arrrrrhaaa haaa haaa. So when I was in this candy shop the other day just breathing in the sweet aromas, I spied a huge packet full of little Reeses, which are American chocolate covered peanut butter cups. So I thought it was more than fitting to make some pumpkin reese cookies, for you all to celebrate the spookiest night of the year.
Happy Baking and eating xxx
Pumpkin Reeses Cookies
 
2/3 cup pumpkin puree
 
1/2  vegetable oil 
 
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
 
2/3 cup sugar
 
2 1/3 cup flour
 
1 teaspoon baking powder
 
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
 
15 mini Reeses
 
Pre heat oven to 150C
 
Place pumpkin, oil, vanilla and sugar into a bowl and mix to combine. Sift the flour, baking powder and soda into a bowl and then add to the pumpkin mixture and stir. Chop the Reeses into half’s and sprinkle through the dough and combine. Spoon the mixture onto a lined tray and bake for 15 minutes or until cooked.
 
Makes 10

Strawberry Friands

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Time to pack a picnic and head to a park with open fields or head to the beach and curl your feet into the sand and relish in the spring sun. Grab a friend or two, perhaps a special someone and get out there and do it. Take a little treat with you, these little friands would do very nicely. I love them and their something a little bit special than just a muffin, after all their french, oh la la. So go on hop to it, get baking.
Strawberry Friands
 
1 cup icing sugar
1/3 cup plain flour
1 cup almond meal
4 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
150g butter
7 strawberries
 
Pre heat oven to 150C
 
Sift the flour, icing sugar and almond meal into a bowl, then stir through the egg white and vanilla essence. Melt butter in the microwave, and then stir through the mixture.
Chop the strawberries into slices and reserve 8 pieces to decorate. Stir the strawberries through and pour into a friand tin or muffin tray. Place a reserved strawberry on top. Bake for 15 minutes.
 
Makes 8

Gingery Vanilla Slice

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Who loves vanilla slice? I don’t mean that awful stuff they sell at a lot of bakery’s, that rubber that they try to pass off as vanilla slice, I mean the fresh home made slice, the slice that tastes fresh and most importantly tastes real. The slice that when you bite into, it just ooze’s out and has to be licked from the plate. Its not the most perfectly lady like slice to eat, but wow how worth it it is to make yourself.
Have you ever made it? No? Well jump to it! I have a wonderful vanilla slice just for you, with a little bit of a twist. I’ve added a smudge of crystallised ginger to the mix which gives this slice a new and revived taste, equally as good as the original. As a bonus it has little chewy gingery bits, amazing.

Happy baking.
Sophia xxx

P.S Check out the awesome article on The Vivant ‘Top 25 blogs to book mark now’, they have included Little Box Brownie with some of the most fantastic blogs and have given me the most amazing write up, I am so thankful for the kind words. Please check it out.

Gingery Vanilla Slice
2 sheets store bought puff pastry 
1 1⁄2 cups milk 
1 cup cream 
5 egg yolks 
2⁄3 cup white sugar 
1⁄4 cup of cornflour 
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 cup of crystallised ginger
Preheat oven to 180°C 
Cut both pieces of puff pastry to the size of the cake tin if you don’t have one the same size as the puff pastry otherwise use that. Place both sheets of puff pastry on a baking tray with another baking tray over the top of the pastry this is so it doesn’t puff too much. Bake until golden. Place one of the sheets into the cake tin.
Meanwhile, to make the filling, place the milk, cream, yolks, sugar, cornflour, ground ginger and the crystallised ginger into a saucepan over a low heat. Whisking constantly until the mixture becomes thick. Pour over the sheet of puff pastry. Place the other sheet of pastry on top. Cover with cling wrap and place in the fridge for 6 hours to set.

 

Blackberry Slice

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A few weeks ago months ago (man times flies), I headed to the country in pursuit of an old 50’s bond wood caravan. I found one on gumtree which was 3 hours away. I know totally nuts, who drives 3 hours to look at a old caravan? Me, thats who! I put it down to my mid life no scratch that my quarter life crisis, most people buy fast red cars, not me I go looking for the old vintage stuff.
So I headed off to the country with my Mum, who I persuaded to come along with me for the company, that and I need a car with a tow-bar on it. See totally nuts I don’t even have a car that can pull a caravan!! Anyway we headed off and because we where out in the county I figured that would be the place to find an old caravan just incase the one we where off to see wasn’t right, which sadly it wasn’t. So this is how the trip went the whole way there and back, yep 6 hours of it, well something to this effect.
Mum is that a caravan?
No its a truck
Is that a caravan?
No its a sheet on someones clothes line
Mum is that a caravan?
Yes but too modern
Is that a caravan
No its a goat
Is that one?
No its a car
Is that one?
Yes but too modern
Until…
Is that a caravan??
No its not a caravan its just an over grown carport
Are you sure, it looks like a caravan to me?
So Mum jumps out to have a look and sure enough its an old wooden caravan.
The owner a older gentleman, Joe, happened to be in his garden and comes out. He shows me the caravan which sadly had been sitting there a very long time and the whole back of it had fallen out and the contents of the caravan were slowly finding there way to the great outdoors. It was a bit far gone for my handy woman skills.
Joe lives in a little town about 1.5 hours from Melbourne, where he has an amazing garden filled with all types of veggies. Joe and my Mum got on like a house on fire, as they both share a love of gardening, we were at Joe’s for about an hour with them discussing the way to plant different types of plants. We left Joe’s with a few rather large bags of plant cuttings for my Mum to plant.
Dotted all along the road side near Joe’s where blackberry plants which reminded me of where I lived as a child, there were no blackberries on the bush, however it gave me a craving for that sweet juicy taste that only blackberries have, so when I got back to Melbourne I decided I would whip this next recipe up for you, which unfortunately uses canned blackberries rather than fresh ones but hey, its sweet and delicious.
Blackberry Slice
 
Filling
 
1 can blackberries with liquid (415g)
1 cup sugar
 
Pastry 
 
200g butter
2 cups flour
1/3 cup almond meal
1/2 sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
 
Pre heat oven to 150C
 
Place the blackberries and sugar into a saucepan and simmer until  the mixture starts to thicken. Remove from the heat and set aside.
 
Place the butter, flour, almond meal and sugar in a food processor and pulse until it resembles fine bread crumbs. Then pulse in the egg and water until a dough forms. Remove from the processor and knead a couple of times. Press half the dough into a lines 25X20 cm tin. Pour in the filling and then roll out the remaining dough and cut into strips, lay these over the top to form a lattice pattern. Place in the oven and bake for 30mins or until golden.