Two wins and an epic fail

So yesterday was Dessert Day. And it was a very exciting Dessert Day because we were FINALLY going to follow through on making a recipe that I'd suggested to Deidre approximately forever ago (date may involve hyperbole). We had a special guest star yesterday in the form of my IRL BFF, Char. This had the added bonus of meaning that Deidre and I didn't have to go near eggs, which was VERY exciting because y'all know how we feel about raw eggs (icky and gross, in case you don't)!!

We had three recipes to make yesterday, but as you can probably tell from the title, not everything went according to plan...

We started out making gluten free goldfish crackers, except not goldfish shaped because a) none of us own a goldfish shaped cookie cutter, and b) ain't nobody got time to draw faces and eyes on five million crackers. (Word to the wise: we had to add a couple of extra spoonfuls of rice flour to make it form a proper dough. And we left out the xanthan gum because we like to live dangerously)

When we'd made the dough, we all looked at it and went "Pffff, that's going to make about five crackers!". And then we spent the next HOUR rolling out the dough and cutting out goldfish starfish and heartfish and birdfish and star-of-David-fish (because those are the cookie cutters I have that were a suitable size). So yeah. It makes about a millionty. And then we ate about half of them for lunch, because they were completely and utterly delicious. Here's a terrible photo of the ones we didn't shove in our faces immediately:

Next up, we decided to attempt making gluten free crumpets. This was partly because I've always wanted to make my own crumpets and the recipe in the Australian Women's Weekly Cooking Class Cookbook (published sometime in the 1970s, based on the recipes it includes) looked pretty easy, and partly because Deidre has NEVER HAD A CRUMPET. This made me sad for her, and I felt the need to rectify this.

So we made up the batter, and greased a million bunch of egg rings, and everything seemed to be going according to plan:

Yes, the one in the middle on the right is Australia shaped.
And upside down. What of it? 

Except that when it came to the end of the ten minutes recommended cooking time, the tops were still raw, no holes had formed, and the bottoms looked rather like they'd already been in the toaster. So we made an executive decision, and flipped them over, even though the recipe didn't call for it. While Deidre and I peered despairingly into the frying pan, Char set to work Googling other crumpet recipes to see if she could find out where we went wrong.

Conclusions?
- Gluten is important.
- They need time to rest after you make the batter, even though the AWW didn't say to.
- Substituting gluten free flour doesn't really work.

Once both sides were cooked, we looked at them and decided that they were more English muffin-esque than crumpet-like. Plus, they were too fat to fit in the toaster. So we sliced them in half and put them under the grill in the oven. Result?

You may think they look tasty and vaguely crumpet-like. You would be wrong. They were stodgy and crunchy at the same time, while also having a hideous yeast-y and chemical-y aftertaste that none of us could describe. No one finished their "crumpet" half, and the rest of the cooked ones, along with the rest of the batter, went straight in the rubbish bin. Which was incredibly sad, but better than actually devoting time to cooking them, let alone eating them. Although honestly, considering we've now had eight Dessert Days (nine, including our Super Sized Dessert Day at Ganache Chocolate), I'm a little impressed that it's taken us this long to end up with a recipe that didn't work...

Our final dish of the day was quite possibly my favourite thing to come out of Dessert Day thus far: peppermint pattie brownies. We made a few minor changes to the recipe - namely, gluten free flour, caster sugar instead of white, and adding a few drops of green food colouring to the peppermint layer because Australian butter is BUTTER COLOURED AND NOT WHITE LIKE AMERICAN BUTTER, and the idea of a yellow-y mint flavoured layer gave me the wiggins.

ANYWAY. Minor recipe changes and a small disaster involving trying to make ganache from 70% cocoa dark chocolate later, the overall result = amazingness to the point where I'm going to be making them again tomorrow because I have the rest of a tin of evaporated milk in the fridge and this is the only recipe I have that calls for it, and any excuse to make peppermint pattie brownies is a valid one. Yes? Yes.

Enough words. Here, have some pictures to drool over:

Yes, Char's about to stab the brownies

Happy Friday, kids.

K xx

Dessert Day: the "It takes HOW long?" edition

So Deidre came over yesterday for yet another installment of Dessert Day. And in keeping with our previous Dessert Days, the weather was HORRIFIC. Seriously, you guys. Every single Dessert Day is either a millionty degrees, insanely humid, or pouring with rain. I don't know how we manage it, I really don't...

ANYWAY. We started out making the dough for this chocolate and cinnamon bread thing. In typical Dessert Day fashion, we kludged it a little - my local supermarket only stocked milk powder in 2kg bags, so we left that out, we didn't have any guar gum, and we used Schweppes soda water instead of San Pellegrino, because we're not made of money, yo.

As we went to clear off the bench and get started, Deidre found the magazine section from Sunday's newspaper, which had Ryan Gosling on the cover. Obviously, he became a Dessert Day spectator:

So we made the dough, which resulted in much "Hmm"-ing and "Seriously? TWO TABLESPOONS OF YEAST??"-ing and "Cream cheese???"-ing, and set it aside to rise for an hour. Then we got started on cooking the quinoa for these savoury treats while we started putting together the ingredients for these mint chocolate chip cookies. At which point we promptly discovered that the box of baking soda I've been baking with since approximately 1997 was no longer with us. So while Deidre took care of the quinoa, I marched the three blocks back to the supermarket in search of more.

Discovery of the day: my supermarket only stocks baking soda in 1kg boxes. A KILO OF BAKING SODA. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be passing that thing down to Little Miss A in my will...

Deidre and me with the box of baking soda. Totally to scale.

ANYWAY. So I got back and after we spent five minutes cackling hysterically about how much baking soda we had, we progressed with the cookies. They're pretty easy, and if you live in Australia and are deprived of Andes Mints (I had a packet of their baking chips, purchased at a Walmart in rural Virginia), I'm fairly certain you could replace them with 1 cup of dark chocolate chips, and replace the vanilla with mint essence, and end up with more or less the same result.

Once the cookies were in the oven (I highly recommend using a cookie scoop if you have one. It would have taken FOREVER otherwise), we went to check on the bread dough. Despite its two tablespoons of yeast and having been placed in a warm spot for an hour, it hadn't risen at all, leading us to the conclusion that in the future, we're going to prestart the yeast no matter what a recipe says. BECAUSE OF REASONS, DAMMIT.

Then we read the line in the recipe that said "Place covered bowl of dough in refrigerator overnight" and went "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, NO." So we proceeded to the next step, and rolled it out into a square. We cut up the cold butter as ordered, put it in the dough, folded it up, and rolled it out again, all as directed. The result - rather predictably - was this:

MMMMMMM, BUTTER CHUNKS.

Thankfully, the cookies came out of the oven at about that time, so we left the dough to think about what it had done while we taste tested them:

Word to the wise: the walnuts seem like a weird addition to a chocolate-y, minty cookie, but DO NOT LEAVE THEM OUT. They cut through some of the sweetness.

Ryan approved:

Yes, we're mature adults. 

Back to the incredibly confusing dough. We covered it in a truly frightening amount of cinnamon, then crumbled the chocolate ganache over it, then plonked on a bunch of chopped almonds:

Yes, that's the butter showing through the layer of cinnamon...

Then we rolled it up, which led to much "Oh God, is this even going to work??"-ing, and let it pull itself together for a few minutes while we whipped up the cheesy quinoa bites. Which, I have to say, were really quick and easy and turned out much better than I thought they would!

Sadly, this was the best photo I took of them

WIN.

Back to the dough, we spent a couple of minutes pondering what the hell "Gently coil roll" meant, and settled for folding it into three and smushing it into a loaf pan. We then checked the next step of the recipe, and went "IT HAS TO SIT FOR HOW LONG????". 90 minutes, it turned out.

*sigh*

So we went and ate our cheesy quinoa bites in front of the final episode of Pride & Prejudice, followed by a decent chunk of An Ideal Husband before putting the bread in the oven. FOR AN HOUR. Which allowed us to finish An Ideal Husband with five minutes to spare.

The recipe then said to leave the bread until completely cooled before you cut it, but LOL NOPE.

The final verdict on all the things:
Cheesy quinoa bites: could easily have other vegetables added to them. And probably more cheese.
Mint chocolate chip cookies: ZOMG, AMAZING.
Chocolate cinnamon bread thing: Tasty, but a ridiculous amount of work (and sitting around waiting for it to do things that never happened) for the ultimate end product. Also, a very confusing recipe. Also also, with all that cinnamon and a ton of nuts, my brain kept expecting it to contain apple rather than chocolate. But that's probably just me.
An Ideal Husband: Far more serious than either of us remembered. Also, whatever happened to Minnie Driver?
Ryan Gosling as a Dessert Day witness: He fell over once or twice, but didn't judge us for squealing about how gross it was to touch raw egg. So I'd call that a win!

K xx

Dessert Day: almond edition

Yesterday was Melbourne Cup Day, which means that the whole of Melbourne has a day off to go and watch a three minute horse race. Yeah. That happens.

Anyway, I spent the day watching absolutely no horse racing and instead baking up a storm with Deidre. We'd both been jonesing for a Dessert Day for a while, but were uncertain about what to make. That all became a lot simpler when Deidre was given a bag full of nut products from Lucky Nuts to try!

We decided on three recipes - a pumpkin cheesecake, some almond paste biscuits, and raspberry and white chocolate friands. Because, you know, you can never tackle too many dessert recipes at once! We started out with making the crust for the cheesecake. We used Lucky Nuts' new oven roasted almond meal, mixed with butter and brown sugar (as suggested on the packet), and it made for a phenomenal crust. Unlike your usual gluten free crusts, it wasn't oily or soggy. It had exactly the same consistency as a typical cheesecake crust, which was incredibly exciting. Most gluten free crusts come out quite gluggy. Or turn out to be a complete disaster.

The filling came from this recipe, which I think we were both a little disappointed in. Although having just checked the recipe, it appears we left out the cinnamon (it's not Dessert Day without making things up as we go along!), which may account for why it seemed a little flavourless... I still feel like it could have used some nutmeg though, and the recipe doesn't call for that.

Anyway, the pumpkin cheesecake turned out like this:

Next up, we made the biscuits, which were from a recipe book that accompanied the nuts. They were insanely easy to make, but a bit of a struggle for the food processor given the quantities of ingredients!

This was after it had been running for about a minute. We ended up having
to process everything in two batches. 

Things got kind of messy in making these - I covered myself and the bench in dough, and then did the same thing when we dipped them in chocolate. But the end result? Was DEFINITELY worth it!! They're completely delicious.

Finally, we made raspberry and white chocolate friands from the Australian Women's Weekly book, Bake. Except we used a muffin tin to make them, because who has the time and money to acquire a friand pan?!?!?  I mean, honestly. They were much easier than I thought they would be (although that could be because Deidre did the dreaded egg separating!) - I always made the assumption that friands would be complicated and somewhat temperamental. But they're not! The final verdict was that in the future, we'd smush up the raspberries and mix them through that way, rather than plopping them in on the top just before putting them in the oven.

They probably wouldn't look as pretty, but I think it would give them a more uniform raspberry flavour. Which can only be a good thing!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaand then we proceeded to taste test everything, resulting in epic food babies. Because, as is Dessert Day tradition, we'd already stuffed ourselves on cheese and corn chips and hummus and spicy pumpkin dip. And, you know, Mr Darcy:

Source

Frankly? If given the choice between watching a horse race and baking while watching Colin Firth smoulder his way around the screen, I'll take the latter every time...

K xx

Movie Mondays: She's the Man

Okay. I fully acknowledge that today's movie is kind of terrible. But while it's terrible, it's also pretty bloody amazing. And I have a slightly bizarre level of love for it.

Source

Seriously, if you haven't seen She's the Man, you're missing out. Because Amanda Byrnes deserves an Oscar for her ridiculous facial expressions alone. 

Reasons why She's the Man is awesome:
1. Amanda Bynes. Sure, she's not the greatest actress on the planet, but she's pretty darned brilliant in this.
2. It made one of Shakespeare's less spectacular and more confusing plays into a completely hilarious movie.
3. Channing Tatum as Duke Orsino. He's kind of a terrible actor. But let's face it - no one's really paying attention to his acting abilities.

Source

4. Amanda Bynes' character, Viola. She's kind of a badass. She knows what she wants and she's not afraid to go after it, no matter how absurd the lengths. A better role model than Bella Swan? Uh, YES. (Okay, except for the starting fights part. But shhhhhh) 
5. Paul, Viola's hairdresser/partner in crime. He's pretty much an evil genius.
6. Vinnie Jones. I will watch practically any movie that has Vinnie Jones in it. Because he is SPECTACULAR. (Also? Check out his profile picture on IMDB. It pretty much sums him up.)

Source

7. Toby. He's hilarious.
8. The principal. ZOMG.
9. Duke with tampons stuck up his nose.
10. The moustache trying on montage.

Source

11. Monique. She may be a Grade A bitch, but the movie wouldn't be the same without her.
12. The mascots kicking each other during the fight at the soccer game.
13. Bicycle kicks. Totally show off-y and not really necessary, but still highly entertaining.
14. Duke's "the tarantula touched me!!" freak out dance.

Source

15. Eunice.
16. Viola's stupid ex-boyfriend, Justin.
17. The real Sebastian trying to play soccer.
18. Amanda Bynes' fantastic facial expressions. 

Source

19. Viola's mum.
20. The dream in which Viola has to play soccer in a giant puffy dress and everyone laughs at her.
21. Duke trying to be all nonchalant and then whacking his head on the gym equipment.

Source

Plus, the following (truly spectacular) quotes:

Exactly. Also, source

- "Is it just me, or does this soccer game have more nudity than most?"
- "I just can't do this!" "Just remember, inside every girl, there's a boy. That came out wrong. But you know what I mean."
- "Mom, I will pick out my own dress. And no, I will not wear high heels. Because heels are a male invention designed to make women's butts look smaller...and to make it harder for them to run away."
- "And when I close my eyes, I see you for what you truly are, which is UUUUUUUUGLAY!!"
- "Is your sister hot?" "Uh...I guess so? She's got a great personality." "EW."
- "Are those real??" "Oh yeah, I'm growing sideburns now. NO!!"
- "What am I doing?? This isn't fun..."
- "Seriously, how old are you?" "I skipped a couple of grades. I'm brilliant. Shh!!"
- "[gets hit in groin with soccer ball. Guys all flinch] Oh. Right. OWWWW!! OH, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!! IT BUUUUURNS!!!!"
- "What do you think it's going to be like?" "It's going to be really special. She's just kissed about 300 guys at this point."
- "That's right. Didn't score on me last half, won't score on this half. I'm a ninja. Ninja goalie."
- "How come when I wanted to ask Eunice out everyone made fun of me, but then Sebastian likes her and suddenly she's cool? Screw you guys. I hate high school."
- "So, uh, you play the beautiful game, bros? Brothers? Brethren?"
- "Suck it up! Be a man and rub some dirt on it."
- "I can do this. I'm a dude. I'm a hunky dude. I'm a badass hunky dude!"
- "Just remind your brother how lucky he is to be in my life. And tell him to give me a call if he wants to stay in it, okay?" "Okay. Does he have your number? 1800-BEEYATCH?"
- "Quit blushing, that's laaaaaame." "Shut up, I'm not blushing."
- "Viola, darling. Remember - chew like you have a secret!"
- "Girls with asses like mine do not talk to boys with faces like yours."
- "Ask me if...I like cheese." "Um...okay. Do you...like cheese?" "Why, yes I do. My favourite's Gouda!"

Is your favourite Gouda, too? (Which is to say "do you have a bizarre love of this movie, like I do?")

K xx

Ancient History, Volume II

When I finished writing about my trip to the US back in November, I had every intention of going on to write about my other trips overseas. (Or at least the ones that occurred before I started blogging. If you REALLY want to read about the trip Ness, Kat and I took to Phuket in 2009, it's here. But I'd been blogging for about a month when I wrote it. Enter at your own risk...)

Anyway, in my typical vague fashion, I promptly got distracted by the internet Doctor Who stuff and forgot all about it. UNTIL NOW.

I went on my first overseas trip sans the parentals in 1998. I was a whopping fifteen years old, and it was the school French study tour. Because taking 40 teenage girls half way around the world seems like a WONDERFUL idea, yes? I can't remember exactly how many teachers were with us, but I *DO* remember that we had to wear our school spray jackets half the time so they could keep track of us. Or maybe it was just that 15 year old Kirsti had such horrific fashion sense than they made me wear the jacket to cover up the crimes beneath it...

Anyway, I remember being excited about the 24 hour flight to Paris, because we were flying on Singapore Airlines, and they'd JUST introduced in-seat entertainment. Which was probably the reason why the school chose Singapore - anything to keep 40 teenage girls entertained!! Being the bright young thing that I was, I figured two books would be plenty to keep me occupied for three weeks. Yeah...not so much. I finished both of them on the plane on the way over, and I think I read Pride & Prejudice about a hundred times on that trip.

We started out with several days in Paris. During which time I took many photos that turned out like this:

Yeah. That's the Bastille Monument taken from the far side of the bus, in case you were curious.

I also took this spectacular shot of a château in the Loire Valley a few days later:

Clearly, 15 year old Kirsti was a photography genius.

While in Paris, we saw all the important sights, like Notre Dame, the Louvre, Montmartre, the Rodin Museum, and Jacques Chirac. That's right. We saw the president of France. See?

Also while in Paris, our French teacher's parents joined us. She was actually French, so it wasn't like they flew over for the occasion or anything. Anyway, on one very entertaining occasion, her somewhat elderly but incredibly chic mother forgot to lock the door of the bus toilet and fell out into the aisle when the bus turned a corner. Oh, and we saw a naked dude standing on his balcony. So...yeah.

We left Paris, and stopped at Versailles on our way out of town. Wheeeeeee, shiny pretty historic things! Apparently I thought my memory would be sufficient, because I took about three photos of Versailles. And then we had a picnic and a frog jumped up the leg of my jeans. I'm still a little traumatised about it.

There's a frog in there. I promise. I circled it for you and everything.

After the picnic of trauma, we headed to Orleans, where we did homestay-y stuff and went to French high school. Mostly, I remember that my host family insisted on speaking French to me at ALL times even though they were fluent in English, and if I didn't understand a word, they'd just point at the ENORMOUS French to English dictionary that was in the study and wait for me to find out what it meant. And so it came to pass that I will ALWAYS know that the French word for wheat is "blé". Other than that, most of what I remember about Orleans is watching dubbed American television. I discovered that Melrose Place made FAR more sense to me in French than in English, and that dubbed Mulder sounds like a sleaze bag. I tried to find you a clip of it, but apparently people don't put French dubbed clips of 90s TV shows on Youtube. SAD FACE.

From Orleans, we went to La Rochelle on the Bay of Biscay. We looked at all kinds of ruin-y things and went to an oyster farm. And one night while we were there, we had to fend for ourselves in terms of dinner. We were staying in apartments, so we had a kitchen at our disposal. So we went to the supermarket and bought a bag of pasta and a block of cheese. And we were ENORMOUSLY proud of ourselves. See?

Aah, auto-timer. Such a wonderful invention. Eventually we ended up back in Paris, in what was quite possibly the crappiest hotel I've ever stayed in. It was apparently three star rated, but one of the stars had been drawn on by hand with gold paint. The lift could only hold one person and one suitcase at a time, which meant we had to drag our luggage up these stairs:

The rooms - when we eventually reached them - smelled like someone had been chain smoking in them for three weeks straight. There were cigarette burns on the bed linen. And the toilet was so close to the wall that you had to sit on it sideways. Fun times! Oh, and the lobby was filled with random fat men who didn't appear to be staying at the hotel, which was just creepy. Thankfully, we were only staying there for one night.

And from there, I went to England for a week, during which time I discovered the Harry Potter books. And then I found $20. I didn't really. But it's the only way to make the end of this story interesting!

Needless to say, I need to go back to France and a) eat more pasta and cheese because that's a genius plan, and b) take some half way reasonable photos!!

Did anyone else go on a study tour during high school?
K xx

Dessert Day #2

Yesterday, the lovely Deidre of Decoybetty came over for another installation of Dessert Day. And it was just as much fun as last time, although slightly more traumatic.

As I suggested here, we started off making crème brûlée. I think we were both a bit terrified that we'd end up cooking the eggs when we poured the hot cream in. But by some miracle, we didn't. GO US!

Once the crème brûlée was chillaxing in the fridge, we decided to do the same. (Only not in the fridge. Obviously.) Instead, we ate cheese cut with a miniature cleaver, because we're classy like that:

And we ate baked Camembert, which I neglected to take a picture of but which was delicious. And we watched this, because IT'S AWESOME:

Source

That led us to the conclusion that Bill Pullman was the 1990s version of Patrick Dempsey in that his hair had magical powers. It also led us to the conclusion that Sandra Bullock wore some truly APPALLING clothes in the 1990s.

We also discovered that pretty much every rice cracker in my house was stale. So eventually we abandoned ship and just started dipping the cheese directly into the spicy capsicum dip. Because we're classy like that.

Anyway, eventually we decided that it was time to brave the butane torch. DO NOT BRAVE THE BUTANE TORCH. Those things are freaking scary. First of all, they were rather temperamental in terms of getting the butane *into* the torch in the first place. So I ended up with my hands covered in butane on several occasions. And butane is REALLY COLD. #firstworldproblems Eventually, we got it up and running, and came out with this:

It was pretty good, if a little bland. In future, I'd probably make the recipe I found for passionfruit and coconut crème brûlée that I found on the following page of the recipe book! 

We then moved on to this recipe for gluten free peppermint Oreos. I think they turned out pretty well!

Okay, we may have gotten a LITTLE carried away with the amount of frosting in some of them. But it was just going to go to waste otherwise. And they tasted pretty damned good. They got the seal of approval from Inspector Climate (Deidre's husband) and everything!! 

After Deidre left, I ended up putting a couple of the other crème brûlées under the grill because I didn't want my hand to drop off from butane poisoning I'm a chicken I was curious to see if it was easier than the butane torch. 

It was. It could just because I didn't really know what I was doing with the torch. But pffffff, whatever. 

We already have our next Dessert Day scheduled. For World Nutella Day. You're welcome in advance. 

Has anyone else had a Dessert Day as a result of our totally awesome should-be-copyrighted-so-we-make-our-fortunes idea?

K xx

Challenge recipe 17: Arancini

First of all, this is my 300th post! So to celebrate, I've done a little five minute bloggy facelift. Wheeeeeeeee!!

Ahem. Moving rapidly along, I've been wanting to make this recipe for ages but it's always seemed like too much hard work. So I put it on my cookbook challenge list! I've detoured quite a bit from the recipe, but mostly in the technique rather than the ingredients. Here's the book:

And here's what you'll need to make the risotto:

You can actually make this part of it a day ahead. Start by dicing the onion as small as you can:

Smash a clove of garlic with the side of a knife (it's the easiest way to get the skin off. Trust me!):

Then shove it through a garlic press.

If you're me, this is the point where you decide to stop and have lunch, thus guaranteeing that your entire house smells like onion. Don't be me.

Add a tablespoon of olive oil to a saucepan, and cook the onion and garlic until translucent:

Then add half a cup of arborio rice:

Stir until it's covered in oil, then add in half a cup of dry white wine:

Stir constantly. Once the wine has mostly evaporated, add salt reduced chicken stock, half a cup at a time:

The recipe called for 2.5 cups. I ended up using 2 cups, and found that 1.5 cups probably would have been enough. Just see how it goes and judge for yourself. Anyway, when the last of the stock has almost evaporated, add in half a cup of frozen peas and remove it from the heat:

Also add half a cup of grated parmesan cheese. (The recipe also calls for 40g of diced ham, but as I don't eat pig, I left it out.)

Mix it all together, and then pour it into a medium sized bowl and let it cool for at least fifteen minutes.

Here's what you'll need for the second phase - turning the risotto into arancini:

While the rice is cooling, chop up 100g of mozzarella cheese into chunks. You want them to be about 1cm cubed. Obviously, mine were a little bigger than that. I wound up having to trim the edges later. Don't be like me.

Once the rice is cool, lightly beat an egg and add it into the risotto:

Now comes the slightly tricky part, which will be unaccompanied by pictures because it was too damned messy. Take a tablespoon of risotto in your hand, press a piece of mozzarella into the middle, and put another tablespoon of risotto on the top. Roll it around to make a ball, then toss it in plain flour. I actually found the easiest way to do it was to use a cookie scoop. It meant the size was consistent and you could dump it into your hand easily. (The recipe actually says to take two tablespoons of mixture, roll into a ball, push the cheese into the middle, then form the ball around it again. I tried this way. IT'S DUMB AND OVERLY COMPLICATED AND REALLY DOESN'T WORK.)

When you've done that, put an egg in a bowl with a tablespoon of milk:

Beat it together, then grab at least 1 cup of breadcrumbs. Again, there will be no pictures of the process because it's really messy. Take a rice ball, coat it in the egg/milk mixture, then toss it in the breadcrumbs. Repeat until you have so many breadcrumbs on your fingers that you could deep fry your hands and not feel a thing (aka until you're finished).

At this stage, you can either push on with cooking them, or stick them in the fridge until you're ready to roll.

Now, cooking them is a little complicated. The book says to deep fry them for several minutes until the mozzarella melts. I tried that, and they ended up burnt and gross on the outside with a solid piece of cheese in the middle. So here's MY method, which was far more successful (and probably a *little* healthier). Dump an entire bottle of canola oil into a saucepan. Heat it up until it's ready (I tested it by sprinkling in a few breadcrumbs. If they bubble when you add them, it's hot enough). Then deep fry the arancini one at a time until golden brown (this took about a minute each):

Put them on kitchen paper when you take them out of the oil. Once all the arancini have been fried, put them on a baking tray and stick them in the oven at 150 degrees C for 15-20 minutes.

That sad looking pale one on the far right was an experiment to see what happened if you skipped the deep frying part and put it in the oven smothered in spray oil. Answer: it cooks, but doesn't even remotely brown.

ANYWAY. Serve them as finger food or with a salad as a main course.

The verdict? They were a lot of work, but they're pretty awesome. In the future, I'd probably try making them with a more flavourful (but equally melty) cheese than mozzarella. And possibly dip them in some kind of tomato sauce-y stuff. (By which I do not mean ketchup!) I'd probably also add more pepper to the risotto to give it some bite. (Oh. AND. I used gluten free flour and gluten free breadcrumbs, and they worked fine. So they're gluten intolerance friendly!!)

So thanks for sticking by me through 300 posts. Here's to 300 more!

Has anyone else made arancini from scratch? And what do you think of the new design??
K xx