Little Box Brownie

A Baking Blog from Melbourne, Australia

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Cheese Cake Brownies

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I was babysitting a friends children earlier this week, and I was it total heaven. Not only did I get a scrumptious meal cooked for me, a honeycomb magnum (ice cream), I also got a pile of her great food magazines to keep me occupied all night.
I love flicking through food magazines, my heart skips a beat and I get so excited and enthusiastic when I look at them, thousands of ideas run through my head. How did they do that? Wow look at that prop! What could I make? How could I photograph it? I don’t get excited about much but food that is presented and photographed well makes me so happy, it just so inspiring. This next recipe is inspired by my night of indulgent magazine flicking.


Chocolate and Raspberry Cheese Cake Brownie

Brownie

280g butter
250g chocolate
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup flour

Cheese cake

250g cream cheese
1/3 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
As many raspberries want (I used frozen ones)

Pre heat oven to 180

In a saucepan heat butter and chocolate until melted, remove from heat and set aside.
In a separate bowl combine sugar, flour and eggs and stir until combined.  Stir through the chocolate mixture,  and pour into a 30 x 20cm tray.

To make the cheese cake mixture, place the cream cheese, sugar, egg and vanilla paste into a electric beater and beat until smooth. Spoon the cream cheese mix into the brownie mixture and use a knife to add swirls, then press the raspberries into the mixture. Bake for 40 minutes or until cooked.

Honey Cake with Candy Apricots

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While in New Zealand, I spent a day with my Great Aunty Joyce, who is the best baker I know. She has been producing wonderful baked goods from her kitchen my entire life. She makes the best sponge cake you will ever taste. 
I love that when I visit her we go to the food source. We go to the people that produce what we eat. On this particular day we went on the hunt for some veggies for her garden, as she had to plant them that weekend, as it was the equinox. We picked up some little tomato plants and some beans. 
We then went out to Arataki Honey, where you can take your own pots and they will fill them up for you, with their delicious honey while you wait (I just love this idea is so nostalgic). Or you can buy one from the shelf which is what I of course did as I didn’t want to try and get and unsealed container through Australian customs on my way home. Arataki honey is situated in Havelock North right near Hastings (my home town) they supply honey all over the world and I would have to say make some of the best. 
This next recipe was inspired by the honey that I brought with my Great Aunt, and lugged home.

Honey Cake
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup peanut oil
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 cups flour
1 cup coffee

1/2 cup chopped apricots
4 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon water

Pre heat oven to 180

Beat eggs, sugar, oil and honey together using an electric mixer.
In a separate bowl sift the dry ingredients together, then add to the egg mixture along with the coffee. Stir until combined. Pour into a loaf tin and bake for 35-40 minutes or until cooked. When cooled remove from the tin.

In a saucepan heat the sugar and water together until they combine and start to turn golden. Stir in the apricots and pour over the loaf.

Soda Bread

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Soda Bread

Last Saturday, I had a wedding to photograph 3 hours from Melbourne in a little town on the Victoria and New South Wales boarder. Me being me, I left 6 hours hours early. So having plenty of time to kill I stopped in at a few little towns on the way. One in particular took my fancy and I have now fallen in love with. A town called Chiltern, its like it came out of a movie set, a town that has almost stood still since the time of the gold rush. Its so picture perfect and quaint. It has so many Antique shops for a town as small, a junk collectors heaven.

 In this town there is a little junk shop that is so full to the brim you won’t believe your eyes, I walked in and just stood still, it was incredible.
Behind the desk sat a older gentleman, Ned, who is 95. He owns and runs this little shop, and wow what a man. He had so many story’s to tell about his life, and just one I would like to share with you, the one that inspired this bread.

When Ned was a young man, newly returned from the war, he headed to a small town where his mother was living at the time, in order to start a bakery. Being the end of the war supplies were slim. Ned took all the money he had and brought two big bags of flour, having no yeast and knowing full well how to make some good damper from his war days, he mixed the flour with some baking soda and water and went off and forgot about it for a few hours.
He told me the dough doubled in size and he punched it down and formed one hundred loafs of bread. He placed the bread in the oven and the smell attacted all the towns folk. Who came out in search of the freshly baked bread. Ned said he sold every loaf in less that ten minutes not even having time to wrap the bread for them. And that was the start of Ned very first business and he has never worked for a boss, his entire life.

 Its amazing the stories that our elders can tell us we just need to take the time to listen. If your ever in chiltern seek out Ned’s little shop and meet the man, I’m sure he will have a story to tell you, he certainly made my day.

Today I decided to try out some of this soda bread and found a recipe in an old cook book that sadly has no cover so I cannot tell you the name.

 Soda Bread 


 2 cups flour 
1 tablespoon sugar 
1 teaspoons baking soda 
1/2 teaspoon salt 
1 cups water 
2 teaspoons cider vinegar 

 pre heat oven to 200 degrees 

 Place all of the ingredients into a bowl and stir to combine, once the dough has combined form into a ball. Cut a cross into the top and place into the oven and bake for 40 minutes.

I left the bread for a few hours to see if it would rise and nothing happened, so I am not sure how long Ned forgot about the dough in order for it to rise, but feel free to experiment yourself and let me know.

soph xxx 

Hokey Pokey Ice Cream

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Apologies for being very slack with updating the blog in the past month, I returned home to New Zealand, the land of the long white cloud, for a couple of weeks. Then when I got back I have been flat chat shooting weddings, so simply haven’t had the time. I went to New Zealand to go to my nephews 1st Birthday who I had never met, so thought it was time I went over. He is so adorable, one very cute baby.

I had such a wonderful time in New Zealand, I always feel like I’m returning home when I go there, the country side is so lush and green. I get to catch up with all my friends and family, and eat some amazing food. 

Whenever I return to New Zealand I live on ice cream for the entire time, so much so that my Uncle stocks up when he knows I will be in town. He went out and brought 3 tubs and I showed up with 1 so we had 4, 2 litter tubs to get through. Yep thats right 8 litters of ice cream.  Good thing ice cream is my favourite food.

So I thought it fitting that for the first recipe I posted on my return would be a kiwi classic, Hokey Pokey Ice Cream!!! For those of you that think hokey pokey is a dance (my boyfriend included) where have you been living? Obviously not in New Zealand! It is the greatest ice cream in the world!! Hokey Pokey is what most people would know as honey comb, and when you put it in to ice cream its like a marriage made in heaven.

To make these little chunks of gold only requires 3 ingredients, its one of the easiest recipes. You could coat the Hokey Pokey in chocolate and make your own home make crunchies or violent crumbles, but I think its best in ice cream.  

Hokey Pokey

5 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons of golden syrup
1 teaspoon of baking soda


Place the sugar and golden syrup into a saucepan, stir occasionally until it starts to boil. Boil for 5 minutes stir constantly so the sugar doesn’t burn. Remove from the heat and add the baking soda. Stir it in quickly, the mixture will expand very rapidly. Pour into a prepare lined tray, and leave for 20 minutes to go hard.

Once it has cooled chop the hokey pokey into small pieces, and place in an air tight container.

Vanilla Ice Cream

4 eggs
2/3 cup of sugar
1 cup of milk
4 cups of thickened cream

Place the eggs and sugar into a bowl, and beat on high with an electric beater until the mixture becomes light and fluffy. Reduce the speed and slowly add the milk and cream until incorporate.
Either place in an ice cream machine, or do what I did and place the bowl in the freezer for 2 hours, then remove and whisk the mixture every hour, returning to the freezer, until the mixture becomes thick. Then place the hokey pokey in the mixture and stir through. Then leave to freeze. 









This is an awesome scoop that I found at a little shop called Finders Keepers it in a little town called Clive thats in between Hastings and Napier on the North Island of NZ. If you pass be sure to drop in they have some amazing little treasures, the store is set out so well that it makes it easy to find what your after. 
I brought a lot of stuff from them while I was there but have to wait until my Parents return to Oz as it wouldn’t all fit in my suit case, and I had a limit of 23 kg. My Parents are coming back on a ship so bonus no weight limit. Mum has even had to find another suit case to fit all my wonderful junk into.

Below is a few of the pieces I brought on my driving adventure with my Mum through New Zealand’s North Island.
The little edmonds tin and sandwich press was kindly given to me by my brothers God father, we went rummaging through his garage and found these great treasures.