Fruity honey rock cakes

Today was the day of the AFL (football) grand final so we decided to make something yummy, so we honey and apricot rock cakes it was. These little fruit and spice cakes are typically perfect for a tea break but for us, they are perfect for an all the time break! 

We found the idea of this recipe in the Women's Weekly Cook book but changed it around a bit to match our tastes. As we are lovers of fruit, so therefore dried fruit, so dried apricot and sultanas were a significant component of these little cakes.

Chopping up the fruit

They were actually more like scones than cakes because they are not particularly sweet but abundance of fruit helps to create a great balance. Also, a great serving suggestion is jam and cream, which is known to be great for scones, so this will assist in flavour development for those who have a particularly sweet tooth :) And if you're one of those people who just need it to be even more sweet (we think it is good as it and we have a BIG sweet tooth), you can add extra sugar and honey than the recipe suggests. 

When mixing in the butter with the dry ingredients, use your fingers to make sure every bit of flour is covered in some butter.

Rubbing in the butter

These little cakes are a perfect snack and quite healthy too so that's always a bonus! Maddy and I can't stop going to the fridge and sneaking them into our pockets!!! 

Honey fruity rock cakes

Ingredients

2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour

¼ cup caster sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

90g butter, chopped*

¾ cup chopped dried apricots 

½ sultanas 

1 egg

2 tbsp honey

1/3 cup milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Line two baking trays with baking paper.

2. Sift dry ingredients into a large bowel and rub in butter. Add apricots and sultanas. Combine egg and honey in a small bowel and stir into mixture with milk. 

3. Place large tablespoonfuls of the mixture in rough heaps onto trays. Bake, uncovered for about 15 minutes. 

4. Allow to cool on trays before eating (we failed at this) and enjoy!

The ingredients in a bowl

Mixing the ingredients together

Tablespoon size scoops of batter

The rock cakes ready to be cooked

*Instead of using butter, coconut oil will also work work well and you can use what ever dried fruit you want. 

We hope you enjoyed these little treats! Keep cooking, twins in the kitchen.

Hoisin pork noodle salad

This dish took only 10 minutes to make and tasted delicious so it is definitely worth a try. We decided to make this for our lunch because we had some spare time since it is holidays. None of the ingredients for this recipe are too expensive which is good because we had to buy them ourselves.

This dish sounds very similar to the other pork noodle dish that we made but it is actually very different.

This dish is definitely a step up from the regular sandwich that Emily and I usually have in our lunch because it is very flavoursome and yummy!! Variations of this recipe include adding more or less than the recommended amount of hoisin sauce, using a different type of noodle and using chicken or beef mince instead of pork. We did not have any fresh ginger in the pantry so we had to use bottled ginger, but this still was ok in terms of flavour for the pork.

If you like this recipe then leave a comment below to tell us what you think or if you have any feedback for us J

Pork noodle salad

Ingredients:

200g (7oz) thick rice noodles

1 tbs peanut oil

2 tablespoons shredded ginger

500g pork mince

¼ cup hoisin sauce

½ chicken stock

½ coriander (cilantro), diced

¾ cup basil, shredded

Method:

1. Cook rice noodles in a pot of boiling water until tender. Drain and cool.

2. Heat peanut oil in a frying pan. Add ginger and pork mince and cook for 6 minutes or until fully brown.

3. Add hoisin sauce and chicken stock and cook for a further two minutes. Remove from heat and leave to cool.

4. Add the cooked rice noodles, coriander and basil to the pork mix in the frypan and stir until combined.

5. Serve into bowls with a dash of lemon juice and enjoy!!

Cooking the noodles

Cooking the pork mince

Chopping the herbs

Mixing all ingredients together

So there you go, after 5 simple steps you could have your own yummy pork noodle salad!

Keep cooking, Twins in the Kitchen

Chocolate Cupcakes

Today is our good friend's birthday from pole vault so we decided to make her cupcakes! Even though they are still yummy, we decided vanilla cupcakes were a tad boring so chocolate it was! These cupcakes are actually SO easy so they are perfect if you need to make a friend a birthday treat with not much time. They are moist and absolutely delicious and go perfectly well with the icing we put together too :)

You can embellish them however you want, but we decided some colour against the brown would look good so we went with some baking bling (sprinkle sort of things) ;) We were going to use M&Ms but of course we found out our brother Tom had eaten them all!! 

Our batter looked a bit separated which we thought was a problem but the cupcakes still turned out fantastic so don't worry if this happens to you! 

When filling the cupcake patty pans with batter, make sure you fill them about three quarters of the way full. This is essential as under-filling will result in dry and overdone cupcakes, and over-filling will result in the surface cracking with a huge pointed peak and the need for more time in the oven to cook. 

Chocolate Cupcakes 

Ingredients 

Cupcakes

¾ cup plain flour

¼ cup cocoa 

½ cup caster sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

80g butter  

2 eggs

½ cup milk

Icing

60g butter, softened 
1 ¼ cup icing sugar, sifted
1 tbsp cocoa 
2 tbsp milk 

Method

Cupcakes

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Prepare 12 hole muffin tins with patty pans. 

2. Sift all dry ingredients into a mixing bowel.

3. Make a well in the centre and add the rest of the dry ingredients. Beat on low speed until just combined, then increase the speed to medium speed for about two minutes. 

4. Fill patty pans until they are three-quarters of the way full. Bake for 15-18 minutes. 

5. Wait until cooled completely before icing. Add decorations to make your cupcakes look beautiful!

Icing

1. Sift dry ingredients into a mixing bowel and add butter and milk. 

2. Mix until light and fluffy.

3. Apply to cupcakes :)

Sifting dry ingredients into mixing bowel

Cracking an egg!

The right consistency of the batter

Cupcakes out of the oven

Ready to be iced

Icing

Placing Icing into our homemade piping bag

Start in the centre...

...and work your way around

And that's all it is! Told you it was easy didn't I? 

Keep cooking, twins in the kitchen :)