Brownies- Jamie's 30 Minute Meals

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe, from his book Jamie's 30 Minute Meals. He uses some ingredients that I couldn't find at the supermarket, so I substituted clementines with orange zest, pecans and sour dried cherries with macadamia nuts.

Ingredients
2x100g bars of good quality dark chocolate
250g unsalted butter at room temperature
200g caster sugar
6 level tablespoons of cocoa powder
4 heaped tablespoons of self-raising flour
2 tablespoons of crystallized ginger
4 eggs
zest of 1 orange
handful of macadamia nuts

Method:
Smash the chocolate and chop the butter into rough chunks- you can put the chocolate and butter in a water bath to melt completely if you don't have a food processor. When they have both melted and soft, add 200g caster sugar, 6 level tablespoons of cocoa powder, 4 heaped tablespoons of self-raising flour, a pinch of salt and the crystallized ginger. Mix together with a hand held electric whisk. Crack in the eggs and whiz.
Grease a non-stick baking tray (approx. 32x26cm) and drizzle with some olive oil. Use a spatula to spoon and spread the brownie mixture evenly into the tray of about 2.5 cm thickness. Sprinkle over the macadamica nuts. Grate over the zest of the orange. Bake for about 30 mins at 180 deg C.

Upside-down cranberry and blueberry cake

Here is the recipe from Rachel Allen for the upside-down cranberry cake. This is a really simple recipe. Try it.

For the buttermilk, since it's difficult to get in the store- I used this recipe- takes just 5 mins to make.
Ingredients:
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice or white vinegar
Method:
Stir in the lemon juice or vinegar in the milk. Let it stand for 5 to 10mins, and its ready to use.

Note-For the cake I also added blueberries.

Tip- while melting the butter and sugar, it may take longer than 2 mins for the sugar to melt. Allow the sugar to melt on low hear for a soft texture.

Crab Thermidor

This is a simple recipe I found on the internet a while ago. Many recipes use imitation crab meat or some subsitute for crab meat, but I used crab meat here. It's time consuming to clean crab as you may imagine, but the taste is simply divine! I love seafood, so I was willing to spend the time and effort on this one. I managed to find some frozen crab meat at the store, so that's what I am going to use next time.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon paprika

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1-1/2 cups cream

50g processed cheese, cubed

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese

250g crabmeat (1kg crab fetches about 250g meat; boil crabs whole for 7 mins, cool and clean)

Method:

-In a large saucepan, melt butter. Stir in the flour, salt, paprika and nutmeg until smooth, keep on low heat. Gradually add cream. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Reduce heat; stir in process cheese and lemon juice until cheese is melted. Remove from heat; stir in parmesan cheese until melted. Stir in crab.
-Transfer to 3 greased ramekins. Sprinkle with additional paprika and parmesan if desired. Bake, uncovered, at 180° C for 20-25 minutes or until bubbly.