Scrumptious Turkey and stuffing!

This Christmas I made my best turkey and stuffing ever, so I wanted to put up my recipe for all.
I bought a 6.4 kg Turkey (about 14 1/2 lbs) that took 2 days to defrost. Once it was defrosted, I rinsed it inside and out, patted it dry and took out the giblets for gravy. I rubbed the turkey down with lemon, lots of extra juice went inside too, letting everything soak in for a bit. Then I literally took a handful of olive oil and rubbed it into the outside skin as I sprinkled lots of salt. For spices I used thyme, sage and mixed pepper. (Pink pepper goes great with turkey!)
To make sure my turkey would be tasty enough, I also added ur basic chicken seasoning a little. Once the turkey was all rubbed up, I covered it with bacon slices, pinning it on the legs and other parts with tooth picks. This way you don't have to baste the turkey, the bacon drippings ensure moisture. What's important is to stuff the turkey BEFORE you put the bacon on it, otherwise it's pretty tedious! ;-) As far as I remember, that was all I did for the actual turkey.
I put the turkey neck into a pot of water, along with boullion, 3 garlic cloves and celery leaves with a few whole pepper corns, brought it to a boil and let simmer for about 2 hrs. I made about 2 litres (slighly over half a gallon) of turkey stock with that.
For the stuffing I used:
2 packages toast bread, cut into cubes, then oven dried
2 cups chopped and cooked chestnuts
1 package of raisins
2 sweet onions
1 large celery stalk, chopped, without leaves (you need those for gravy)
1/1 cup of white sweet wine

I realized afterwards that some dried plums or apricots would have gone wonderfully with this stuffing, as well as 1 or 2 red onions. (There's always next time!) All the ingredients were mixed together, without the wine. Next, I poured as much of the turkey stock over the stuffing until everything was relativley moist, then poured the wine over it. Stuffed the turkey, stuffed the tray, covered the turkey with bacon, covered it with tin foil and shoved it into the oven. We had the temperature on pretty high, at about 200 C° and it only took like 3 hours to make the turkey. For the gravy, I just added some wine and some drippings and used cornstarch to thicken it. You use less fat that way and it still tastes perfect. The picture looks a bit weird, but ask everyone who ate it and they will swear it was fantastic!

Schnitzel!

Here is my Schnitzel recipe, the real viennese ones use veal cutlets, but pork cutlets are fine too and turkey schnitzels are just delicious. For those of you who want to try that, there are a couple of tricks to making Schnitzel.
Firstly, do NOT fry them in oil. It's not to deep fry, u need to use some sort of shortening, my grandma uses butter and I use sunflower margerine. We don't want our schnitzel to be brown on the outside and raw on the inside, so use low flame and no oil. (Well, if you use butter be sure to but a little bit of oil in so that the butter doesn't burn!)
Secondly, you do have to beat them. I have a wooden mallet that I use, I cover the meat with a piece of ceran wrap so that nothing sprays. (My mom's trick) U don't have to beat it a lot if u are using turkey as it might just tear. For pork, though, beat it and it kind of spreads out. The real viennese schnitzel have to be beat so thin that you can see the shadow of your hand behind it!

Anyhow, you need 3 stations for schnitzel: a plate of flour, a plate of egg and a plate of breadcrumbs.
I put a bit of soy sauce in the egg mixture for flavour and I buy breadcrumbs that have spices in it. Otherwise, you can just put some salt, pepper and/or dried parsley bits in the breadcrumbs.

To sum it up:
1) beat the meat
2) pat flour into it
3) dip in egg mixture
4) dip in breadcrumb mixture, be sure to press real hard and cover all wet spots with it
5) fry for about 12-15 min in fat, not oil

voilà, you have schnitzel. Serve them with a wedge of lemon and they taste great.
This is the same principle for cordon bleu too, except that you use chicken and put a slice of cheese and a slice of ham in a slit that you cut in the chicken's breast. I deepfry cordon bleu in my deepfrier though, and they come out fine if I bread them twice.
Another yummy idea, for those who can find cheap camembert, is to do this to camembert or mozzarella. It tastes really good with french bread and a big salad. Here they serve breaded camembert with cranberry sauce and it's super delicious. Just be sure to eat it hot, or it doesn't tase that good. Enjoy!

Chicken and Turkey Wellington

Last Christmas I didn't give you my heart, no, but I did make a stuffed Turkey Wellington. I thought it would be really complicated but it was easy and looked oh-so-fancy.

1 Kg/2.2. lbs Turkey meat, one piece, no bone
4-6 spring onions
2 cans mushrooms
handful of fresh parsley
1 1/2 apples, peeled and chopped
1/2 can of cranberries
1 package of puff pastry, I think mine was like 759 grams, like 3/4 kilo.

I bought about 1 kilo (2 lbs) of turkey filet, I think it was breast. It looked like a rather large chunk, so I sliced it ALMOST all the way through and then folded it open.
For the filling, I fried up some spring onions, mushrooms, parsley, and some apple chunks. Basically, what you would put into your normal turkey stuffing but without bread cubes.
Next, I spread the stuffing (be sure to chop it small) on the meat, and then rolled it up and tied it with cooking yarn. (At least that's what they call it here...)
Next, I browned the roll from all sides, not too much though, just enough to seal the pores. I also hadn't put any spices on it yet, it's better to do that after it has been browned.

Now, the best thing to do is to let the roll cool off before you use the puff pastry on it or the puff pastry melts a bit and any decorations you do won't look pretty anymore.
I put the turkey roll on my baking pan, the oven was on about 180 C° (350 degrees Fahrenheit). I arranged the puff pastry sheet over the turkey roll, not covering the bottom on which it lay. Before, I cut of a strip of the puff pastry and cut out some diamond shapes that I arranged to look like flowers. (All the artists may let their imaginations run wild)
For that pretty shine, you can either brush milk all over the pastry, or egg yolk, egg white or a whole egg that has been slightly whipped. Milk makes it the shiniest in my opinion, but egg will make any decorations stick well.
I think I left it in the oven for about 45 min, not exactly sure. I would poke near the bottom of the turkey with a knife and watch what color the liquid was that came out. Since it was already browned it didn't take that long to cook, and it actually came out a little too dry since I was afraid of having an un-done birdie.
Sadly, I have no picture,since it did look rather cute, especially when you start to slice it and you can see the swirl on the inside! I had put cranberries in the filling for sweetness sake, but I am sure that any sort of filling will do. I would suggest this way of making a turkey since it looks real fancy when finished, though it only takes you about 30 min. to prepare it. He he he!

Oh, before I forget it, a nice way of making chicken breast (for visitors, for example) is to cut little pockets into the chicken boobs, fill them with something like onions and mushrooms, secure the opening with a toothpick and brown them. Then u also make them "wellington", be sure to take out the toothpicks first though, cover them in puff pastry and stick them into the oven. Cheap, easy yet a nice "adult food", haha.

Le Soccer cake!

For Jason's birthday I made him a soccer cake, also very simple. I used the chocolate cake recipe I posted earlier, and made a normal buttercream icing with green food coloring and grated coconut for the grass feeling. The rest was just decoration. He doesn't have "normal" soccer men, he only has Bionicles, so I mushed up some sort of soccer players with play-dough. I put some toothpics through their legs so that they would hold, and left them in the fridge so that they would be hard and not melt. For the goals I used 2 straws that I cut most of the long end off, stuck the openings together and there you have a goal! Had I been really smart, I could have used another color icing to write "happy birthday" and not just make the markings on the "lawn". So, if anyone has a boy-birthday coming up, feel free to use this idea! (Just for info, a little kid's finger had retraced my markings..."just to taste, Mommy!")

Ideas for the Mommies!

On Mandy's birthday last year I made her a Barbie Princess cake. She and her friends were enthused, parents impressed, when actually it was nothing fancy! Here you can get cheap cake layers, sort of like angel food cake. I bought 3 cake layers and cut each cake a bit smaller than the other. I made some sort of simple icing, mixed a few canned cherries in there. I bought food coloring and Marzipan, I had the idea for the dress in mind already. I colored the marzipan with the food coloring and (reminded me of playing with play-dough) I made the dress. Before I got to the bodice, I stuck half a Barbie in the top and then finished off the dress. Made a little crown for the doll, and presto, you have a barbie cake!
Admitted, the doll looked a bit short, or a little pregnant (a litte bit pg, har har) but the kids didn't notice. I slapped on a bit of whipped cream for decorations and made a candle "bouquet" for the doll to hold and Mandy to blow out. It was actually a lot of fun making, and even more fun when the little girls all fought over what part of the dress they wanted to eat.
The year before that, I had made her a fairy castle cake. I bought chocolate layer cake, cut out circles with some plastic cups, put icing between each cut out circle and stacked them on shashlick picks for the tower. I made a cone out of paper for the tower roofs, but someone said I could have also used ice-cream cones. The rest was mainly decoration, little pink sugar hearts, little pink marshmallows, etc. The picture isn't all that good.
Let's see what I can come up with this year.

Easy-peasy Chocolate Cake

Mom asked for a good chocolate cake recipe a while back, and I typed it up and sent it to her. She told me it turned out really well, and I figured I might as well post recipes that are easy to make and always work. A.k.a. tried-and-proven things.

So, here is the recipes for my never-failing-chocolate cake, doesn't even take long to make.

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

1 cup of cocoa, unsweetened
2 cups boiling water
2 3/4 cups flour (your basic, non-self-rising kind)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup softened butter or margerine
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
vanilla

So, first you pour the boiling water over the cocoa, whisking it till it's smooth and then put it aside to cool off. That can be done before you even start the cake, since it does take a while to cool off. Cream up the butter and sugar until fluffy, then you beat in the eggs one at a time. (Actually this cake is a bit like a pound cake, but not as heavy!) Stir in the vanilla (or vanilla sugar) and then add the SIFTED flour and cocoa mix alternately.
Now, I divided the batter into 3 different pans, although you can also put them into one big pan, you will just have to check to see if it's done more often (toothpick-test) and the top often gets harder since the whole cake has to stay in longer. It's probably better to split up the batter into 2 or 3 pans. This batter is for no small cake, so you might want to make some icing.

I made a chocolate icing once, but then I put only half the amount of sugar into the cake, or you can also make a butterscotch icing. If you want it real easy, use lots of whipped cream! :-)
Enjoy!