Death Cookies

Another cooking post!

And this time guys, I have a recipe for you!







When I was in primary school, my mum had this recipe we made for these AMAZING peanut butter, chocolate chip and banana cookies. We used to make them fairly regularly and they were a hit with my friends and classmates and just about everyone in the neighbourhood.

They were terribly decadent, soft and just...my mouth dies. They were so good.

And then for the longest time, we didn't make them.

A few years back I randomly recalled these cookies and tried to make them, with the very vague memory I had of the recipe, but they came out very soft and not particularily manageable.

The main things I remember for this recipe is that, it took one 375g jar of peanut butter. Yup. one whole jar.

So with a few of mum's suggestions two days ago, we tried a few things and have come up with a recipe that works pretty darn well!

So here's my very simple and actually, very quick recipe for what I call 'Death Cookies'.

Ingredients:
- 375g of peanut butter (one standard jar from the supermarket)
- 2 large bananas
- 1 egg
- half a cup of plain flour
- half a cup of self raising flour
- as many chocolate chips as you want

Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (Celsius that is)

- Mash the bananas in a bowl

- Combine the mashed bananas with the whole jar of peanut butter

- Put in all the other ingredients and continue to mix everything together until it comes to a nice thick consistency

- Get a spoon and make balls of the mixture on a baking paper lined tray. Size of the cookies is up to you I suppose!

- Pop into the oven for 12-15 minutes until it smells delicious.

- Take out of the oven and allow to cool

- When it's cooled and firmed up enough, EAT!

Allegro, Westin

This is easily one of my favourite restaurants in Melbourne I think. I'm really showing off a lot of favourites aren't I...? Will get to trying out new stuff soon...I promise!

But anyway, called up my bestie David and asked if he wanted to do dinner at Westin. I have my mom's Starwood Privellege card, which gives me 50% off the food when you dine with two people, so of course he said yes!





The staff there are some of the best I've ever come across, completely professional, whilst still being incredibly friendly and helpful. There's always a smile in their voice, as well as on their face, but it doesn't feel faked at all. Which is really so pleasant. I just feel so relaxed there.

David and I went for the pre-theater menu. What it is, is, for $48 per person (minimum 2 people) you choose to either have entree and main, or main and dessert, so two courses. Each course has three components to it, which are smaller portions of what they have on the menu, so you get to try more!





For the entree we had a sweet corn veloute, light tempura calamari with mint, red onion and cashew salad and pork and rabbit terrine with chutney and a fennel salad. The sweet corn veloute was lovely and creamy without being too rich, probably my favourite of the three actually! I also really enoyed the salad that the calamari came with, I never really thought much about eating mint, but it was really nice! Very refreshing.

The pork and rabbit terrine, was good, but didn't particularily impress me, it lacked a bit in flavour in comparison to the other dishes and the chutney wasn't as sweet or flavoursome as I usually like it. But ah. Personal taste.







For the main we had stuffed chicken breast (for the life of me I can't remember exactly what was in it...), mushroom and zuchinni risotto and ocean trout with a tempura artichoke, wilted spinach, a mash and vanilla sauce.

I've never been particularily fond of chicken breast, however the peas and the bright orange sauce, which highly appealed to me visually, were quite a treat. The fish, oh the trout was to die for. It was soft and flavoursome, the texture mixed with the mash and the vanilla sauce was just divine. So sweet and succulent. And mushroom risotto. Please, you can't go wrong with that. Not too heavy but lovely and thick, with a gorgeous creamy texture on the tongue. Great flavour.

We surprisingly managed to finish quite a lot! Just the risotto was left about half unfinished...but look at that mound that we were given!



We opted not to have dessert...as we were, not stuffed, but very satisfied. I was however positively tickled at the little bonus chocolates we were given when we asked for the bill!

Allegro has always been a pleasure to dine at and hopefully will always continue to be.

Cookfest!

So here's a post not about restaurants again!

I spent almost the whole weekend at home, with only a few trips to pick friends up from train stations and visit the supermarket.

On Saturday my boyfriend, best friend and I had a whole day of cooking!

It all started with me waking up and having this massive urge to make pancakes. Which I did. And as Rici and I munched on them with honey and peanut butter, he said he had wanted to make potato pancakes but as I had been up earlier I had announced my pancake desires before his.

So I proposed he do them for lunch instead!

So we invited my best friend David over and in that process, Rici and I also decided that he was going to do most of dinner as well and that maybe I would bake something. So a whole day in the kitchen! How fabulous!





So off to the supermarket we went to get potatoes and...ice-cream. Of course.




Unfortunatley I don't have a recipe really for the potato pancakes, Rici just has a general idea of how much stuff to put in, in general. Although if it helps we did have 1 kilo of potatoes we grated with a few eggs, a little flour, salt and pepper.






Voila!



Rici the mastered the art of pancake flipping!




In the mean time, I decided to go try make a cocktail I had from Antonio's...the frozen Mojito. It came out delicious. The trick? A LOT of mint leaves in the blender.

So after we ate out easily 10 potato pancakes...(can you imagine..? 1 kilo of potatoes between the three of us...) It was onto making macaroons! I took the recipe out of Marie Clare 'Flavours'.






Mmmmmm. CHOCOLATE!






Aren't they delicious looking? They definetly came out a lot better than I expected!



No macaroons for Blackie-poo....

After a spot of peppermint tea with our macaroons, we decided to watch Pulp Fiction to take a break from cooking, but then very promptly returned to the kitchen after to make dinner!







A spot of chicken, pesto lamb, peas and fried potatoes....including my brother, we polished it all of it off!

All in all, a very good day of cooking! It encourages me to cook more, which I never really did before, so hopefully this will keep up!

Match Bar and Grill

So I'm back in Melbourne! I've skipped a couple of restaurants I did want to put up on here but I got lazy...so I'm skipping straight to food back in the place I call home.

Last Thursday met up with my friend to go check out the Sartorialist (those of you into fashion blogs would know) then went to Match bar to wait for friends and have dinner before going to see "Where the Wild Things Are".

Now, Match is possibly, one of my favourite bar/places in Melbourne. I always enjoy coming here, the atmosphere is always relaxed, unpretentious, yet classy at the same time. I like that I'm perfectly showing up one day in shorts and flip flops and maybe on another day in my heels and a super pretty cocktail dress.

My favourite haunt would have to be the booths outside. Especially with a friend or two, or three, or four, they end up being very cosy, especially when it's quite cool, as it was. We could cosy up into the booths which acted nicely as wind barriers.



So as we got our food menus, I already knew which cocktail I wanted...my personal favourite, the Sosho Cooler.



Don't ask, just order. It's light, refreshing and not overly sweet. And goes down in about 1 minute flat.



I liked that they didn't serve too much bread, especially since there was only two of us initially and I don't eat bread since I'm gluten intolerant. My friend on the other hand, is crazy for bread. I particularily enjoyed that the it was served warm and the texture of the crust was great. (Yes maybe I had a smaaallll nibble.)



My friend ordered the Wagyu Beef Burger, which is a nice somewhat compact sized burger, but incredibly juicy and tasty...and with the egg! Match also does some of my favourite fries.



So we made sure to order a side order with alioli, which is just delicious.



I ordered the grilled calamari with tomato salad. A lovely small sized dish, the tomatoes were so sweet and appetizing (to look at and eat!). The calamari was nice, but nothing spectacular. A bit of lemon on the side might've been nice.

We noticed there was one waiter who seems to have a bit of attitude, he never seems happy to do anything for you, which should be a bad thing I suppose, but in our good spirits it just amused us more than anything. The rest of the serving staff however, were lovely and charming, especially this one curly haired waitress that kept popping by to ask how we were doing.

So my verdict? Always pleasant to be there, the cocktails are absolutely delicious and the food is definetly very decent as well.

Match Bar and Grill
249 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne
9654 6522

Eggs.

I still have some restaurants to put up...but I made scrambled eggs for my friend and I today. We stayed in our PJs until 2pm and watched Julie & Julia and Mary Poppins.

Great Sunday.