Milk Chocolate and Macadamia Nut Brownies

It’s funny how 2 people, who have been together for 10 years, can have two very different opinions on brownies! I love gooey chocolate brownies of all varieties, and my fiance hates them (don’t worry, I don’t understand it either). He loves chocolate and he likes chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream, but he seriously dislikes brownies. With this in mind, and seeing as our anniversary weekend is coming up, I decided to make 2 desserts, the first being these gloriously cakey milk chocolate & macadamia nut brownies (the brownies are for me and the 2nd dessert will be for my fiance)!

If you love a good cake-like brownie and you love milk chocolate, then this is the recipe for you. They’re not too sweet and are studded with pops of salty macadamia nuts (you can use whatever nuts you like). They’re also so quick and easy to make. Bonus!

200g of lovely milk chocolate that gets melted with 125g of butter.

The macadamia nuts get roughly chopped.

Lovely thick and gooey brownie batter in a 20cm square cake pan.

The glorious cakey results!

Milk Chocolate & Macadamia Nut Brownies

• Servings: 16
• Time: 45min
• Difficulty: Easy
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Ingredients:

• 125g butter
• 200g milk chocolate, chopped
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cup plain flour
• 100g salted macadamia nuts, roughly chopped

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease & line a 20cm square cake pan, making sure that the baking paper hangs over 2 sides of the pan.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a small saucepan, over low heat, until smooth. Remove from the heat & cool for 10 min.
3. Pour the cooled chocolate mixture into a large bowl and stir in the sugar & eggs. Mix in the sifted flour and then stir in the chopped macadamia nuts.
4. Spread mixture into prepared pan and bake for 25 mins.
5. Cool in the pan, then remove and cut into squares.

Simple Suppers – Mexican Beef Salad

I love making hearty salads that are quick and easy to prepare (we all have those days where we really don’t feel like making anything fancy). This Mexican beef salad is quick, easy and most importantly, delicious!

It’s made up of strips of beef, avocado, corn, tomatoes, lettuce and roasted kidney beans. Yes, you read that last bit correctly, roasted kidney beans. When you roast the beans, you end up with a crunchy, salty, beany delight. They add great texture to salads and just make life a bit more interesting. To finish this fully loaded salad off, I’ve drizzled some Sriracha mayo over and topped it with chopped spring onion. Enjoy!

Mexican Beef Salad

• Servings: 4
• Time: 1 hr
• Difficulty: Easy
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Ingredients:

• 350g beef strips
• Lettuce, washed
• 200g cherry tomaotoes, halved
• 1 can kidney beans (drained, rinsed and dried)
• 1 can corn kernels (drained and rinsed)
• 2 avocados
• 4 spring onion, chopped
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp steak seasoning

Sriracha Mayo:

• 2 tbsp mayonnaise
• 1 tbsp sweet chili sauce
• 1 tsp Sriracha sauce

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and lightly oil a baking tray.
2. Drain, rinse and dry the kidney beans. Place the beans on the baking tray, lightly coat with oil and season with salt, pepper & paprika. Roast in the oven for 25 – 30 min.
3. Halve the cherry tomatoes, drain and rinse the corn kernels, dice the avocados and chop the spring onion. Set aside.
4. Slice the beef strips into 4 cm strips and season with the soy sauce and steak seasoning. Cook beef in a lightly oiled frying pan for about 10 min.
5. Make the Sriracha mayo by mixing all the ingredients in a small bowl.
6. To serve: tear lettuce into serving bowls, then add halved tomatoes, corn and diced avocados. Add roasted beans and cooked beef. Drizzle with Sriracha mayo and top with chopped spring onion.

My Week in Dinners

Easy mushroom and bacon Alfredo sauce. It’s such a simple and delicious sauce to make for any pasta (I used penne). Cream cheese and a bit of cream make up the base of this yummy sauce.

Angelfish fish fingers with oven fries and a side salad. I love Angelfish because it’s a very meaty fish and is cheaper than Hake (in SA). I just sliced the Angelfish up and coated it in cornflake crumbs, then shallow fried it and finished it in the oven for about 10 min. I also made a quick tartar sauce (mayo, dijon mustard, diced onion & gherkin, pepper, lemon juice and gherkin juice).

I love my chicken pot pie. It’s creamy and comforting. I use diced chicken breast because it cooks quicker and is a bit leaner. The gravy is just made up of white wine, chicken stock, whole grain mustard, thyme and some cream. Delicious!

Quick and easy chicken and guacamole tacos. I do cheat a bit and use Old El Paso crunchy taco shells and their taco seasoning. It’s a quick dinner that requires minimal cooking and time (only have to grill the chicken strips). It’s satisfying and budget friendly.

Every 2nd Friday night is burger night in our house. I usually alternate between chicken and beef. This week we had a cheeseburger topped with awesome onion rings. The onion rings turned out great (I could have eaten a whole bowl of them). I just soaked the onions in buttermilk and dredged them in seasoned flour, then shallow fried them (I don’t want to buy a deep fryer because I’m scared I might try to deep fry everything!). The burger was scrumptious.

A Food Lovers Weight Loss Journey Begins

As you’ve probably noticed from my previous posts, I’m a bit of a food addict. I love food. I love cakes, cupcakes, cookies, chocolate (LOVE IT), ice cream, pizza, burgers, pasta, fried foods, cereal, sweets, crisps, fries, etc. Okay, okay, so “a bit of a food addict” might be a gross understatement! Food is my passion. Generally there’s nothing wrong with that, but it does become a problem when you’re trying to lose weight (sigh….).

The truth is that I’ve always had an “all or nothing” approach to food. As a young kid, I was very skinny (mainly because I didn’t really eat anything). Then I hit 4th grade and my weight increased dramatically. I started eating everything in sight (comfort eating I guess). I become overweight and I stayed this way for the next few years. When I was 16 I had finally had enough and decided to join a gym and started to eat healthily. By 17, I had turned into a gym bunny & health food fanatic (dry tuna salads still haunt me to this day!). I thought my lifestyle was great, until I met my boyfriend (now fiance) when I was 18. He didn’t understand (and couldn’t stomach) the health food obsession. Obviously, I was madly in love and decided that I should start to ease up on my diet so we could enjoy our dates more. Fast forward 10 years and I’m now struggling with my weight again (I love teasing my fiance by telling him that I was thin before I met him, HAHA). The strange thing is that I don’t actually regret the weight gain because it’s made me realize that I’ve always struggled with the concept of moderation (why only eat 1 cookie when there’s a whole box) and this needs to change.

I’m now on a mission to lose weight and feel healthier, but still enjoy my food. I’m really not prepared to give up good food (and treats).

So, the game plan is this: Exercise, MODERATELY 4 – 5 days a week, eat a MODERATELY healthy diet during the day and ease up at dinners, so I can still enjoy myself in the kitchen. I’m still going to enjoy my sweet treats every week, but I’m going to eat them in MODERATION.

(Love Jillian Michaels dvds. They’re 30 mins each, so it’ll be a good workout)

(Hopefully lunches like this will help me along my journey)

(I’m still going to enjoy some cheesy goodness once a week)

(And 1 of these bad boys! Note that I did say “1”)

I’m hoping my new approach to weight loss will pay off and I hope to be sharing my weight loss success with you soon!

I really hope that as I embark on this weight loss journey (as a food addict), you’ll maybe find some inspiration from it as I keep you updated along the way 🙂

Wedding Cake Nostalgia

I love food. I mean, I really, really, really love food. Baking is definitely where my heart is. I loved it so much that I decided I should share that love, and in 2010, I did just that by starting a cupcake business. I wanted to focus just on cupcakes, but I ended up straying into the world of wedding cakes (even though I knew absolutely nothing about it). I bought some books on how to make wedding cakes, watched tons of YouTube videos and slowly taught myself how to construct and decorate them. I really enjoyed it at first. I was so excited when I got my first cupcake tower and tiered wedding cake order. It felt great to share my abilities with my clients.

I started learning new techniques like working with fondant (and making my own marshmallow fondant), making sugar flowers and different piping techniques.

Unfortunately, as time went on, I started to dread making them. I’d get up on the day of baking and wish that I didn’t have to do it. Baking had become a chore. The stress of making wedding cakes had taken its toll. It got so bad at one point that I couldn’t even watch the Food Network anymore (that was definitely a low point). I just couldn’t do it. I made the difficult decision last year to stop making wedding cakes. I needed to go back to my first love, my original idea of old-fashioned & decadent cupcakes. After stripping my business back down to basics, I decided that it might be a good idea to start this blog and share all of my favorite recipes (food that I love to eat) and experiments with you.

I really hope you can travel this blogging journey with me and score some sweet recipes along the way!