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I was craving something with a citrus tang last night so I cobbled together a recipe for a microwavable lemon self-saucing pudding.

Ingredients
1 cup self-raising flour, sifted
1/3 cup caster sugar
2 small lemons, rind finely grated (you can substitute any citrus on hand, really)
60g butter, melted, at room temperature (I used olive oil spread)
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 egg (replace with apple sauce to veganise)

Sauce
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (again, substitute this for any citrus on hand)
1/2 cup boiling water

Instructions
You’ll need a microwave-safe bowl with at least a 6 cup capacity. I use the big bowl from my Tupperware red stack cooker set.

Combine flour, sugar and rind in the bowl. Whisk together butter, juice and egg in another small bowl then stir into the flour mixture until well combined. Flatten the surface with the back of a spoon.

To make the sauce place sugar, juice and boiling water into a microwave-safe jug and stir to dissolve the sugar. If the sugar hasn’t dissolved, put jug in microwave for short bursts and stir until sugar dissolves. Pour sauce over the back of a large spoon to evenly cover pudding.

Put pudding in the microwave and cook, uncovered, on 50% power for 8 to 9 minutes or until a skewer inserted around edges comes out clean but centre is still a little sticky. Cover tightly with foil. Stand for 5 minutes or until centre is no longer sticky.

Serve with ice-cream, yoghurt or eat it plain and enjoy the tarty bitterness!

(You’ll notice that the bowl I served it in is also Tupperware, I am such a Tupper-tragic!)

Today I was in the mood for a bit of a burger but lately I’ve gone off animal meat, so I put the feelers out on the lazyweb (i.e: Twitter!) for a vege patty recipe. Viv supplied me with this sweet potato (or kumara) and lentil patty recipe, and it was so incredible that I have to share it with everyone!

Sweet potato and lentil patties with sour cream dressing

Ingredients
Patties:
800g sweet potato, peeled and cut into 2cm pieces
2 tablespoons oil plus extra to fry
1 medium brown onion, finely chopped.
2 cloves garlic, crushed.
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
400g can brown lentils, rinsed.
1/4 cup plain flower
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons milk
2 cups packet dried breadcrumbs

Dressing:
250g low fat sour cream
1 clove garlic (crushed)
2 tablespoons chopped coriander.

Method
Preheat oven to 200/180 (FF) place sweet potato on large baking tray and drizzle with one tablespoon oil, season with salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes or until golden.

Meanwhile, heat one tablespoon oil in a large frying pan over moderately high heat. Add onion cook and stir for 5 minutes until soft. Add garlic and cinnamon; cook and stir for 2 minutes until fragrant.

Transfer mixture into a heat proof bowl. Add lentils and sweet potato. Mash coarsely and season with salt and pepper. Cool. Shape into 8 patties. Place on large plate, cover with cling wrap and cool for 30 minutes in fridge.

Place flour on a plate. Coat patties in flour, shake off excess. Dip in egg then coat evenly in breadcrumbs.

Pour extra oil in frying pan 3cm deep. Heat over moderate heat (oil is ready when a cube of bread crisps without absorbing oil) Shallow fry in batches for 2-3 minutes each side or until golden brown, serve with dressing (combine ingredients in small bowl).

Notes
I used a pinch of cayenne pepper when mashing the lentils and sweet potato because I am in love with it, and only used a third of the amount of oil when frying the patties. I’m not a fan of fresh coriander, but I had some seeds so I put them in my Flavour Shaker and shook until they were pulverised! I served the patties on fresh bread rolls with some lettuce leaves, tomato and the sour cream dressing – and my burger craving was well satiated!

Enjoy!

The weekend means mystery flowers from the market! The sign in the bucket said “Lizzies $5 or 3 for $10″, so I bought three for a very plump looking arrangement. I did a bit of a google for Lizzy/ Lizzie flowers but the image search results turned up some flowers that didn’t look like these at all. Apparently Lizzies are part of the Impatiens family, and there are quite a variety of flower heads within the genus so they could well be Lizzies… who knows?! Do you?

Here’s a closer shot so you can have a look at the buds and flowers.

The other week I was introduced to the wonder of kumatoes: small and round tomatos with a brown or striped skin. They taste crisp and sweet, perfect in salads if you want something crunchy and fresh in summer!

I love colourful foods, they make life so much nicer.

These muffins look better than they taste unfortunately. I didn’t have any buttermilk and I forgot to whisk the egg. ALWAYS WHISK THE EGG! It makes things much fluffier.

And now… I must do laundry. Fancy’s on weekend

I wanted to bake some savoury muffins for my husband to take to work and for general snacking noms, because I think I have just about hit my strawberry limit (Queensland seems to be having some kind of strawberry explosion at the moment). This recipe is super flexible: you can swap veges in and out and probably even reduce the amount of butter too. The amount of muffins it yields is totally dependent on your muffin/ cupcake tray and how much you fill each hole up, but I got 18 last night!

Click to go to the flickr page – hit “All Sizes” to get the original sized jpg to print out.

Lemme tell ya something about muffins, toots. They’re delicious. They’re delicious and I won’t hear a word against them!
/film noir

Enjoy!

I’ve never been very big on cooking, and since being diagnosed with juvenile diabetes I developed a strained relationship with food. It’s a bit of a chore, really. Gorging on a delicious treat needs to be calculated against the amount of insulin or exercise I will need to do in order to bring my blood sugar down to an acceptable level. A low blood sugar means I have to force feed myself even when I’m not hungry. I guess it’s because of this strange and forced friendship with food that I never really got into cooking… which doesn’t really make sense but it’s something I’ve just realised in the last 6 months or so.

When I first started learning about Health at Every Size principles I realised that my relationship with food would have to change. In order to eat intuitively I’d have to actually drop my food defences and think about the things my body wanted me to eat. A part of my self motivated “food counseling” has been taking photos of the things that I make. I’m also a big fat perfectionist, so I find myself making really fiddly things instead of just slopping stuff on a plate. Maybe I should work on that too

I started by making cupcakes, because everyone was making them and I wanted to join in. They’re fun and it’s easy to do pretty and creative things with them, but I think I’ve almost exhausted the humble cupcake. It was by making cupcakes that I discovered the joy of sharing food – something I have never really experienced until I started baking. Some people assume that I make these cupcakes just for myself, but they don’t see how I share them with my friends and family whenever I go visit!

In the next few months I want to learn more and more recipes, and take photos along the way of all my results. I find that when I take a photo of something I can properly document it and pat myself on the back! It might sound like a very simple sort of thing to most people, but I really struggle with food sometimes and I’ve found that cherishing my meal has helped me so much. Maybe a similar approach can help other people who feel similarly… but at the very least you can make pretty things to eat, share and reflect on!