Student kitchens
Easy, delicious, healthy(ish) recipes that won’t own your budget.Archive for eggs
Bread and butter pudding
Just because today was a crappy day, I feel the need to post about some real feel good food, classic, dependable, unfussy and fuzzy wuzzy. Bread and butter pudding is my saviour – since I bake my own bread, there’re always times when the bread is a little too dry but would taste simply lovely in blankets of eggy custard and sprinkled with cinnamon or vanilla sugar.
This time I had a slightly failed batch of buns (let’s not get into this so much as to say that I need to use some more common sense) to work with – they were barely risen, hard lumps, but I knew how to comfort myself. These look prettier than your average perfectly risen buns, because they kept their shape, but really, anything sort of slightly stale bread will do.
For those of you who already have a go-to recipe and what to know whether this one is any different: this is not a watery/liquidy pudding. It goes “glop glop” when serving rather than “squish squish.” It does not have chocolate, and personally I doubt that chocolate would improve things, or too many other over excited additions. Sorry, but this is a classic, okay? If you’re pregnant and have a craving, I would understand, but otherwise, try not to overwhelm the flavours.
Thanks goes to Laura at Hungry & Frozen for the original recipe, and delicious prose.
Bread and butter pudding
serves two
2-4 buns or enough thickly sliced bread to fill a small ovenprood dish about halfway. Don’t use that cottony soft supermarket sliced bread, it’s too thin and too soft – unless you like a soggy pudding.
25g softened butter
30g brown sugar
2 small eggs
1c milk (none of this low fat stuff, y’hear?!)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (best stuff you can find, or home made)
optional: extra sugar and cinnamon for dusting
Heat the milk and vanilla in a small saucepan until hot to the touch but not boiling. Layer buns or thikc slices of bread in a casserole dish or ovenproof fish. Beat butter and sugar together, then beat in eggs one at a time. Slowly whisk in the hot milk, and pour the mixture over the buns. Preheat the oven to 170C (330F) and let the pudding sit until the oven is up to temperature (about 10 minutes). Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Bake in the center of the oven for about 40 minutes.
Functional quiche
I’ve done quiche recipes in the past, but there are a few things about this one that are worth a mention. The tart dough is what’s leftover from making a Frangipani tart (that’s an almond-y tart), and it’s completely different to the shortcrusts I normally whip up in ten minutes (check past quiche recipes for the fast crust if you’re short on time).
The dough I used is super flaky, very much like using puff pastry, yet doesn’t require nearly as much folding. I made a very thin crust, so the edges were even crisper. You can of course use any pastry dough you want, but this one will be a winner on my list for a good long while. Meanwhile, the filling is the sort of thing you wack up in ten minutes, with whatever veges you have lying around, some eggs, and salt. So really, it’s like an egg & vegetable tart. No added cream makes it really easy to decide to whip up on the day without really needing to pop out for extra ingredients (especially if you make the pastry ahead of time and freeze it…or I suppose you could use store bought…sigh). Perfect for lunch the next day, reheated or cold.
I also got to use my brand new non stick quiche pan, which has higher sides and bigger folds, making it super cute and pretty. What can I say – I’m a sucker for kitchenware sales ($10 from Stevens, down 50%). Bring on the quiches and tarts with a decent heft of filling, I say!
For this particular quiche I used some small broccoli florets and onion that I cooked up first, plus some mushrooms and peas – a strange combination, I know, but it makes a decent lunch with the inclusion of all that greenery, you see.
Super casual, functional yet delicious vege quiche.
makes one 9″ quiche, just under 1″ thick (serving 4 as a large side)
Crust (makes 2 lots, I say make it all and freeze half for using later)
from Manggy’s blog No Special Effects
150g unsalted butter, chopped into 1 inch cubes and frozen 20 mins beforehand
225g (1 1/2 c + 1 Tbs) flour
1/2 tsp salt
75ml (approx 1/3c) super cold water
First thing to do is put your cold water in the freezer. Meanwhile, cut butter, flour and salt together with two knives, two forks, a pastry cutter or a food processor. Do not do this with your fingers, as the heat from your hands will soften the butter and it will not turn out flaky. You want the largest chunks of butter to only be about 2cm at the greatest length, and the whole thing to look like breadcrumbs with some small lumps of butter in. Remove water from the freezer and add gradually to the flour & butter mixture, using a spoon to bring it together into a dough. Only add as much water as is needed to get the dough to come together. Here you may need to use your hands to incorporate the last bits of flour (best to rinse hands in cold water first). See, cold kitchens can come in handy!
Divide the dough in half, form a ball with each half, and flatten into a disc. Place in a plastic bag and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. If you want to make the quiche as a speedy dinner, it’s best to prep the dough the night before.
Filling
4-5 free range eggs
1c broccoli , cut into small walnut sized florets
1 onion, chopped finely
approx 1/3c frozen peas
1 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
pinch dried oregano
cooking oil
optional: 1/2c grated strong cheese
Heat about 1 Tbs oil in a frypan over medium heat. Add onions, oregano and broccoli to the pan, and cook, stirring every 2 minutes, until onion is golden and translucent and the broccoli has changed colour to a much brighter green. You’re only half cooking the broccoli at this stage remember, as it will cook further in the oven. Remove pan from heat, and add frozen peas to the hot pan, and let defrost in the pan.
Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and salt until slightly frothy. Set aside.
Construction
This bit requires you to work speedily, so the pastry stays cold (and turns out flaky). Preheat the oven to 190C (375F), with a rack in the center. Grease a 9″ cake tin, quiche pan with removeable bottom or 9″ springform cake tin (unless they’re nonstick). Make sure all your filling ingredients are ready to go. Flour a working surface, and roll one portion of your dough out to a 13″ circle (you want just under 2 inches of overhang on each side to be the edge of your quiche). Fit into your prepared pan (if using a cake tin, you may need to press the pastry to the sides).
Pour the whisked eggs into the crust, and scatter the broccoli and onion over evenly. Scatter over the mushrooms, and then the cheese. Finish with freshly ground black pepper. Bake in the center of your oven for about 30 minutes (check at 20 minutes), until the sides are golden and the egg filling is just set. Remove from tin and cut up to serve on a chopping board or similar. Enjoy with a fresh salad. 
Endorphin rush – flourless chocolate cake that still resembles cake
It’s nearing the end of Univeristy holidays (for me anyway), and it was also Will’s birthday yesterday, so I ruffled through the dessert recipe folder to find something sugary that would cheer us up. Even after biking into a headwind to get to Slack’n'Slave for the ingredients, buying full price unsalted butter (which only comes in the best butter and worst kind of butter), separating 5 eggs (I still have some hair left! Mainly because I didn’t want to get egg in my hair though), and realising I couldn’t make dinner because there was a cake in the oven at a low temperature for the next hour…this cake was worth it.
Hopefully, because you’ve been cooking at home over the holidays, you’ve saved up a bit…yes? Yes…because this cake isn’t recession material, you see. The hearty dose of eggs and chocolate and and ground almonds make this one hell of a treat. If I hadn’t just spent most of my dollars on Will’s birthday presents, I would havebought proper chocolate for this cake, because due to how much there is in it, you’ll actually taste the difference.
As you can see, it’s also preeeetty. Unlike many a flourless chocolate cake, this still has a cakey crumb, but with a mixture of gritty (from the almonds) and silky, smooth moistness. It’s so rich, in fact, you may want to make this cake with more than one or two people in mind – a relatively small slice will satisfy even hardcore chocolate fans. It’s up there with Clare’s chocolate guinness cake and the Tia Maria cake I made a while ago. While it’s a little finickier (what with the separation of eggs and all), it’s all worthwhile.
Flourless chocolate torte
found on Taste
makes a thick 8″ or 9″ cake
250g dark chocolate (60% gives a regular chocolate cake level of bitterness, so if you like dark chocolate cake, best to go 72%)
150g butter
5 eggs at room temperature (important!), separated
1/2 c icing sugar
1 1/2 c ground almonds
1/2 c raw, white or caster sugar
Melt butter on low heat in a small/medium saucepan. While butter is melting, roughly chop chocolate. Once butter is fully melted, turn off heat and mix in chocolate (at this stage you can mix it a little to get it started and prep your other ingredients while the heat from the butter melts the chocolate). Make sure you don’t cut corners by heating the chocolate, or it will taste burnt and will RUIN the cake *gasp*
Set yolks aside in a small cup or similar, and separate egg whites into a large bowl (I tried to find a video, but they were really more moronic than useful, so I have a litte written thing on it below if you’ve never done it). Beat egg whites (you want an electric beater for this, trust me), gradually adding the caster sugar, until the mixture is smooth and glossy. When you stop the beaters and bring them out of the mixture, they should form sort of stiff peaks (that fall over, but they’re peaks nonetheless).
Mix chocolate into butter until fully incorporated, smooth and glossy. Add egg yolks, icing sugar, and ground almonds, and mix until fully incorporated. Preheat your oven now to 150C or 300F.
Fold the chocolatey mix into the egg whites, being careful not to beat (you want to keep as much air in as possible), until the mixture is uniform (do not keep mixing after this point). It looks pale now, but don’t worry, the insides will darken during cooking.
Generously grease an 8″ or 9″ springform cake pan, and dust with cocoa (optional), tapping the edges and rotating the pan so the cocoa sticks to the butter. This cake will stick, but if you let it cool completely, it will be possible to take it out without the whole thing falling apart (I did say it was moist!)
Scrape cake batter into the pan, and pop in the lower middle rack of your oven. Let cook for at least an hour, up to an hour and about ten minutes for the 8″ version (which is thicker). When removed from the oven, the center should not wobble, but it will be very soft (gently press the cake in the middle and it should spring back).
Once cooked, let the cake cool in the tin until the cake sinks down a little (about half an hour). Run a knife around the outside of the cake (between the cake & tin sides), and remove the ring. Let cool completely (it’s only a few hours of torture, but it’s very important if you don’t want your cake to fall apart) before dusting with icing sugar and serving with fresh fruit on the side :)
Quiche can be wholesome, too – and not soggy!
I’ve got two quiche posts (this is what happens when you buy 300mls of cream that you don’t really know what you should use in…) for you. Now, some of you may have had terrible quiche experiences from the past (soggy, soppy, sloppy…any combination of the three), but I am here to soothe your worries, and give you (almost) no excuse to try making one yourself – pastry and all (oh yes). In the interests of getting some goodness out of your pastry, I’ve added some wheatgerm to it. Wheatgerm is the stuff that is shimmied out when flour gets processed into white (unless you use stoneground). Obviously you can use a combo of wholemeal or white with some added wheatgerm. But it just means you get a slightly more interesting crust (which I promise, even the next day, is NOT soggy). Make sure to get wheatgerm that is refrigerated! Often they only bother at health food stores, but this keeps the wheatgerm stable for longer.
spring onion quiche on baked chips and roast veges
mushroom asparagus quiche with herbed roast potatoes and asparagus, and garlicky bok choy
The first was done in a 9″ tart pan, while the second in an 8″ springform pan, just to prove that you can use pretty much anything as a quiche pan! Recipe for both sized crusts are at the link below.
The great thing about these quiches is that they’re dead simple to make and keep until the next day quite well, and reheat just fine. So you can make one large quiche and not have to worry about any leftovers.
Crust
85g butter, softened and cubed
1 c plain flour
1/3 c wheatgerm
a few Tbs cold water
Rub butter and flour together with your fingertips until they resemble breadcrumbs. Add water one Tablespoon at a time, bringing things together to form a soft dough, stopping when flour is fully incorporated. Roll it out to a 11″ or 10″ diameter circle (if using a 9″ tart pan, use the 11″, if not, use 10″). Slip into your tart pan and set aside. Note: springform cake pans work just as well, although it’s harder to check if the bottoms are done.
Quiche fillings:
Spring onion and cheese
100ml cream
4 free range eggs
about 4 Tbs chopped spring onion
some grated cheese (any is good really, just not the plastic kind… *shudder*)
salt and pepper
Asparagus and mushroom
100ml cream
4 free range eggs
a pinch of nutmeg
approx 1 Tbs mustard
2-3 asparagus spears, sliced diagonally
4 mushrooms, sliced
grated parmesan cheese (to cover the base and top)
salt and pepper
Directions for both:
Preheat oven to 200C or 400F
Whisk eggs, cream, salt and pepper, mustard and nutmeg (if using). Pour into your tart pan and sprinkle over the rest of the ingredients. Pop in the oven in the center rack (or failing that, pop on the bottom rack for 5-10 minutes and the top rack for the remaining 20-30 minutes) for about 35-40 minutes until crust is golden and egg filling is not liquidy.
Comment if you want the recipe for garlicky bok choy (basically, oil, salt, garlic, bok choy), or crunchy baked chips.
Makes a great lunch/brunch the next day.
