Savory Spinach and Feta Muffins

As someone who is both a fairly new vegetarian and a broke-ish uni student, I’m always looking for cheap, meat-free and quick meals.

These muffins are super easy to make and they taste great too! They also freeze really well so you make make a big batch of them and defrost as needed. I find that they’re great for lunch as I usually end up eating on the go or while studying, so something simple and portable is great for me.

I’ve made these a couple of times with different combinations of veggies, and you can toss whatever you have on hand in them but this particular combination is awesome!

For these muffins you will need
100g of feta cheese
150g of frozen spinach, thawed
1/2 cup of sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
2 cups of self-raising flour
1 egg
1 cup of milk
1/2 cup of cheese

 

 

 

Method
1. Grease a large 6 hole muffin tin (or a smaller 12 hole tin) and preheat your oven to 180 degrees or 160 fan-forced.
2. Add the flour into a bowl, then crumble the feta over the top. Add in the spinach and chopped tomatoes.
3. Add in your egg and milk, then mix gently to combine.
4. Add in the cheese. Be careful you don’t over mix!
5. Divide into muffins tins and bake for 20 minutes or until the tops are golden brown.

These are awesome straight from the oven and I have to stop myself eating them all as soon as they’re done baking! Let me know what other combinations you like to use in your savory muffins!

 

Christmas Cookies

It’s that time of the year!!! I’m always in charge of sweets and desserts for christmas, and this year I am making panna cotta and tiramisu. But I wanted to try my hand a decorating some cute Christmas cookies too! These are really simple to make and decorate and they look pretty good too.

You will need:

1 cup of butter
1 cup of sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups of flour
3/4 tsp of baking powder
2 cups of icing sugar
1/2 cup of milk
Food colouring (red and green)
Writing icing
Cookie cutters (I used a candy cane and a tree)

Method
1. Cream the sugar and the butter together until light and fluffy.
2. Beat in the egg
3. Add the vanilla
4. Slowly add in the dry ingredients
5. Split dough into two portions, wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate for half an hour
6. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line two baking sheets with paper.
7. Lightly flour your surface, rolling pin and cookie cutters. Roll out the dough until it’s about half a centimeter thick. Cut as many shapes as you can, re-roll the trimmings and repeat.

8. Bake for 9 minutes or until edges are golden. Remove from oven cool. It is important that the cookies are completely cool before you begin icing them, or the icing will melt and run everywhere.

9. Outline your shape with the writing icing. There may be a a firm type of icing you can make for this and pipe onto the cookies, but everything I’ve tried is too runny! if any of you know of anything, let me know!.

10. Once the outline is set you can flood the cookies with the main colour. Combine half the icing sugar with as much milk as you need to make a thin paste. Add in the food colouring. You can pipe the icing on, but I poured it into a small ziplock bag and snipped a tiny bit off the corner, as I found this much easier to work with because the hole is much smaller than any of the fittings i have for my piping bag.

11. Once the icing is set, you can use thee writing icing or any other icing of your choice to decorate! I also used mini m&,m’s to make christmas lights on my trees.

These are super fun for the holidays and can be easily adapted for any other holidays too! You could do pumpkin ones for Halloween, little presents for birthdays, anything!

Let me know if you try any of these out and any other ideas you have!

Easy-peasy Cinnamon Scrolls

A few years ago, I went on a school trip to California. One morning towards the end of the trip, at the point of which I was incredibly jetlagged, someone handed me a cinnamon scroll for breakfast. In my exhausted brain, that cinnamon scroll was the single best thing I had ever eaten in my life. Since then, I have tried to re-create it quite a few times, but it has never quite been as good as the one I had that morning. Until now.

And this recipe was, by far, the quickest and simplest one I’ve tried yet! Bonus!

~RECIPE~

Ingredients
Dough
-2 cups plain flour
-3 teaspoons caster sugar
-2 teaspoons baking powder
-a pinch of salt
-1¼ cups thickened cream

Filling
-5 tablespoons of butter
-5 tablespoons of brown sugar
-5 tablespoons of cinnamon

Icing
-½ cup icing sugar
-1 tablespoon milk

Method
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees
2. Put the sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and cream into a mixing bowl. Stir to combine
3. Lightly flour bench space, then turn out your dough and knead until smooth.
4. Roll out into a rectangle (dough should be about 1cm thick)
5. Melt your butter and combine the cinnamon and sugar in a separate bowl
6. Brush the dough with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.
7. Roll into a long, starting from one of the long sides
8. Cut into 10 slices
9. You can either place them side by side on a baking dish or put them into individual holes on a cupcake tin, which I feel helps them keep a nice shape
10. Bake for 20-35 minutes or until golden
11. To make the icing, whisk together the icing sugar and milk and drizzle over the scrolls.

These can be enjoyed warm or cold, but personally I think they are best served warm. I ate at least 3 straight out of the oven!

No-Bake Oreo Cheesecake

I love Oreos. And I love cheesecake! So I thought why not combine the two? I’ve made quite a few cheesecakes before (my brother loves them) so I thought it should be relatively easy.

As I usually do when I cook, I look through a few different recipes and sort of combine them into something I think will work best based on what ingredients and equipment I have. I based my recipe mostly on this recipe. 

I used 2 packages of oreos for the base, which is a little more than this recipe suggests, and I also scraped out the filling and added it into the cheesecake mixture.

The oreos stuck to the springform pan a little and I had to stick a knife in there to get it out, so I would suggest lining your pan with baking paper before you begin.

~RECIPE~

Ingredients

Crust
-2 packages of oreos, filling removed
-4 tablespoons of butter, melted

Filling
-500ml of thickened cream
-500g of cream cheese, softened
-oreo filling
-1/2 cup of icing sugar
-1 teaspoon of vanilla
-Another package of oreos, lightly crushed

Method

1. Remove the filling from 2 packages of oreos, place the biscuits in a food processor and crush
2. Add the butter and process until combined
3. Press into springform pan
4. Pour the cream into a stand mixer and whip until it holds soft peaks. Transfer to another bowl.
5. Put the cream cheese and oreo filling into the mixer and mix until smooth. Then add the vanilla and the icing sugar and mix until combined.
6. Fold in the whipped cream and the crushed oreos. Pour over base and refrigerate until set, at least 6 hours.
7. Enjoy!

This cheesecake turned out great! Even my younger sister had some and she doesn’t usually like cheesecake. I guess it was the oreos that did it!

Since this is a no-bake cheesecake, it will be on the softer side but you should still be able to slice into it easily and it will still hold its shape.

If you try making this yourself, let me know how it goes!

Happy baking!