Baking Madness

So in my little house that I am occupying now, I am without all the trappings that my kitchen in Arizona has. No mixer, no baking sheets, no scale. But I found a few recipes for baking that I wanted to try and attempted to make. My new favorite is Australian teacake. A perfect sized small cake that I bake in an aluminum pot with cinnamon and sugar on top. It's not an original recipe, I got it off of Crash Test Kitchen but it is really good, simple and quick to make. I ate a whole cake by myself in like two days. Not a light and fluffy cake, it's got some body to it making it a great cake to drink with a good cup of tea (My new fave is Chai by Good Earth Teas.)

RECIPE OF THE DAY: AUSTRALIAN CINNAMON TEACAKE

4Tb butter (1/2 stick)
1/2c sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/3c milk
1Tbs melted butter
1 Tbs sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 355F. Grease a 8in cake pan with butter and then dust with flour. If available, line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper. In a small bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until the butter turns lighter in color. Mix in egg and vanilla until well mixed. Measure out flour and milk into separate container. Add the baking powder to the flour and sift. Add half the flour mixture to the egg mixture and blend until smooth. Add half the milk mixture to the egg mixture and mix until blended. Repeat until you use the rest of the flour and milk. Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and make sure the batter is spread fairly evenly into the pan. Bake for 30 minutes or until done. Mix together the 1Tbs of sugar with the cinnamon and set aside. When the cake is done and allowed to cool, brush the top of the cake with melted butter and dust the top of the cake with the cinnamon mixture. Serve and enjoy.

Simply Stir Fry

I made this the other day as a quick dish and thought it was quite possibly the best stir-fry I think I have ever made. All the veggies were perfectly cooked, the sauce was good, and the shrimp was fantastic. There's that commercial that asks the questions :You know the secret to really good shrimp? My answer is always to cook them quickly before hand and then add then once the rest of the ingredients are done so that they don't get over-cooked. So many times people cook the shrimp and then add a bunch of ingredients on top of them to saute and you end up cooking the shrimp for like 30 minutes making them tough and flavorless. But this receipe is not only great but it's also simple.

RECIPE OF THE DAY: SHRIMP STIR-FRY

10-12 Shrimp, peeled and deveined (30-41 counts is a good size)
1/2 bell pepper
1/2 broccoli
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 med onion sliced
1 carrot. peeled and sliced
1/2 box of mushrooms, sliced
3 green onions, sliced into 1/2" pieces
3 Tbls vegetable oil
2 Tbl chicken stock
2 tsp soy sauce
salt/pepper
chinese chili sauce

In a small bowl, combine shrimp with salt and pepper to taste and 1 Tbl of vegetable oil. Toss them around to coat. Heat a skillet over medium heat and pan fry the shrimp 1-2 minutes on each side until done. Place in a separate bowl to cool. In the same pan, add the rest of the oil, onions, and garlic. When fragrant, add broccoli, carrots and mushrooms and turn the heat up to medium-high. Saute for 5 minutes then add the rest of the vegetables, soy sauce, and chicken stock. Saute for another few minutes until the bell peppers begin to soften and the liquid in the pan has reduced. Add the shrimp back into the pan and mix. Season to taste with salt and pepper and top with chili sauce. Serve with rice or noodles.