You need:

• Chocolate
• Microwave
• Sprinkles/decorations/icing
• Disposable spoons
• Thickened cream

Step one, get chocolate.

Step two, try not to eat chocolate.

Step three, buy more chocolate.

Break the chocolate into small pieces in a bowl.

If you’re really into it you could use a double boiler system to melt the chocolate but like I said, I’m lazy. I used the microwave. Put it in for 15sec at a time until it’s around 2/3rds melted.

Let the hot bowl melt it the rest of the way, this way you won’t burn it.

To turn it to ganache you need thickened cream.

Add a spoon full…

Mix it very thoroughly, it looks pretty gross.

Keep mixing until it gets much darker and really shiny. At this point you’re forgiven if you want to eat a few spoon fulls ;P

Grab yourself some pretty spoons…

And put the ganache in! If you want to be anal about it you could pipe it in but that just dirties something else.

Once they’ve cooled down a bit you can decorate them. I used left overs from the last lot so I added a bunch of sprinkles.

And piped a heart and a V so it’s like saying “Love Violet”.

Let them cool in the fridge and you’ve got some delicious spoons. That’s it! These are great to take to parties or as gifts etc.

So now you just have to give them to your friend… yeah of course… definitely don’t just eat them all. I mean that would mean you have pretty much no self control huh? Oh… right.

Yeah, sorry friends who I said would get these.

• Chocolate block
• Icing powder
• Water
• Peppermint essence
• Sprinkles
• Mini marshmallows
• Food colouring
• Freezer bag

Now you need to cut a piece of chocolate to use as the canvas. If you’re like me you probably cheaped out and bought the home brand chocolate so don’t expect too much quality-wise ;)

Decide how much chocolate you will use based on how much you love the person you’re giving it to. I’m giving mine to James… this much?

Hell no I’m not giving away that much chocolate! Realistic:

I love him but I also love chocolate! Unrepentant!

Pour the icing into a corner of the freezer bag.

Snip a tiny corner off so it becomes a make shift piping bag… or you could just use a real one.

Now pipe on a pretty design :D I wrote “James” and drew a heart… unfortunately I was a little over ambitious with the S so it looks more like “Jimmy”…

…then it melted a bit so it looked more like Jsmnay.

I piped around the outside too as a border.

While the icing is still wet add sprinkles all over it.

And brush off any extras.

He loves little marshmallows so using some more icing like glue I made a border of them.

Taadaa…

And because it already looked pretty hilarious I added some more icing on top. I’m deleting all of the inappropriate comments James keeps trying to add in here about what it really looks like.

So stick it in the fridge to set and add a cute bag!

Present for you!

Taaadaaaa! I love you Jsmnay! Even if sometimes I’m not sure why…

-_-’

So I’m sure if you were better at baking/decorating you would be able to draw something actually cute on there! And hopefully the person you give yours to won’t be silly enough to try and eat the cute bag. Happy Food Friday!

Mix them all together and allow to cook for a minute.

Now make some room on the middle of the pan and crack in an egg. Stir it around with the spatula and scramble it. Keep stirring until it comes apart into little pieces.

Add in some more oil and then the rice. Stir it all until it’s hot and add a little soy sauce.

Serve and enjoy with a good movie :D And next time I will get James to take the photos for me so you can see how awkward I am in the kitchen! What are your favorite comfort foods? I need more midnight snack ideas!

• 1 packet of marshmallows
• 1 block of chocolate
• Some butter, around a tablespoon
• Microwave proof container

You can use margarine or real butter, I didn’t want to waste the expensive margarine so I used cheap block butter.

So cut off a slice of butter.

And stick it into the microwave safe container.

Add the marshmallows…

Break the chocolate into pieces…

Add that too!

So this is what you should have…

Pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Mine is 1100w so if yours is different please adjust the time.

Use a spoon to mix it all up, the marshmallow should be liquid and sticky. Don’t worry if the rest of the ingredients are still solid because the marshmallow will melt them nice and slowly.

Mix until it looks like this:

If it gets hard before it’s combined just put back in the microwave for another 10 seconds and remix.

You want to end up with something like this…

Cool the whole thing in the fridge until it’s hard again.

Cut into squares…

And enjoy!

Deeeeeelicious!

So if you think you can do something awesome in under 120 words here’s how to enter…

You can enter via the BPAY competition website, SMS or by Twitter, with the best entry from each category winning $3,000. Not bad for 2 minutes worth of effort, just like paying your bills via BPAY.

To enter:

1) Online, visit www.bpayshortandsweet.com.au and follow the prompts.

2) Via SMS, text your name, category and your 120 character entry to 0427 777 743

3) Via Twitter, tweet the category and your 120 character entry to @BPAYSS

Category names:

Love Poem = POEM, Recipe = RECIPE, Short story = STORY, Film and Book synopsis = SYNOPSIS.

Hope you enjoyed my superfast marshmallow fudge and give it a try! I only got that one piece because when I went to get some later it was all eaten *_*

Good luck in the competition!

• Jug
• Caster sugar (I use about half a cup for this size jug because James likes it really sweet)
• Kettle
• Loose leaf tea
• Tea strainer-dunking-thingy-that-I-can’t-remember-the-name-of
• Tongs

Fill up your kettle and boil it.

Make sure to store tea in an air tight container so it lasts longer.

For the size jug I’m using I needed two of the tea dunking things with around 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of tea in each.

You shouldn’t fill them too full otherwise the tea won’t have room to move around and you won’t get a full flavour.

Once the kettle boils add the plungers and the water to the jug.

You should be able to see the colour change very soon, use your tongs to give everything a stir.

Now herein lies a very important lesson… when you go to refill your glass jug with new tea after it’s been in the fridge for days don’t pour boiling water straight into it! Glass (especially crappy glass from a $2 store) can’t take sudden temperature changes and will crack. Then you will have super hot water all over your bench which is very irritating to clean up and also then you have to have an internal debate on whether it’s worth it to catch a tram all the way to the junk store and replace the jug to continue with the tutorial… it’s not pretty, it looks something like this in fact!

So after deciding you are too lazy to go buy a replacement jug and digging around under your bench to find a smaller one and remaking it all up to this point… leave everything to cool for around 10 minutes.

Then it’s time to add in your sugar. We like a huge amount of sugar (like probably 1/4 of a cup for the big glass jug above or 1/8th of a cup for the small pyrex one below) but the first time you make this I would suggest measuring and adding a bit at a time until you’ve got a flavour you like. Ours tastes kind of like un-set jelly XD

Now stir it all together so the sugar dissolves and remove the tea strainers. Leave it out on the bench for a couple of hours until it’s room temperature then pop in the fridge over night. The next day you will have some pretty delicious tea ready and waiting to go :D

Do you guys have a favorite flavour of tea? I love strawberries and cream for the ice tea and at the moment my favorite hot tea is good old English Breakfast :D

• 4 apples
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• Lemon juice
• 1/3 cup plain flour
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• Puff Pastry (I’m using store bought because I’m lazy but I’m sure it would taste much better with home made!)

What you need, utilities:

• Mixing bowl
• Spoon for mixing
• Measuring cups
• 4x heart shaped silicon cake tins (obviously you can do it in something else XD)

First thing will be to wash and cut up your apples, remove all the skin and chop them into fairly small pieces. Set them to the side. Preheat your oven to around 190 Degrees Celsius.

In a mixing bowl put a couple of squirts of lemon juice.

Add in the white sugar…

And the brown sugar…

And the flour ^_^

Now add the Cinnamon, I use a lot (like maybe 2 teaspoons) because James loves it. I personally can’t stand cinnamon but there are so many other flavours in this that it’s tolerable ^_^

Next add a couple of shakes of Nutmeg, maybe 1/2 as much as the Cinnamon you put in.

Mix it all together!

Add in the apple pieces and mix it again. The apples should be coated in the sugary substance. It looks dry now but once the apples sit while you make the pastry cups it will go all liquidy and sticky from the apple’s juices.

Clean your pie moulds and if you’re making pastry from scratch do that now and roll it out.

If you’re using the frozen pastry then make sure it’s thawed.

Drape it over the mould and press in to place. Pleat the sides so you can cover the base properly:

You should have something like this:

Cut off the extra leaving around 1cm around the edges and pop in the filling!

I decided to be fancy and make lattice tops. This is achieved by weaving strips of pastry together. If you’re doing this then cut a bunch of 1cm strips of pastry and start by making an X with 2.

Build it slowly by adding 2 more in each direction, this way you can weave them all very easily without disturbing too much.

Continue until the whole thing is covered…

You should get something like this:

Cut off the extra and pinch around the edges to seal it…

Taaadaa!

Repeat with the rest of them!

Ok one more pie-cam-whoring photo because I spent so damn long making them XD

Now put them into the oven! After 20 minutes check on them and make sure nothing is on fire then leave for another 20 minutes.

When you’re already hungry this seems like hours though -_-’

Once you can see liquid boiling through the tops and the pastry is golden they are ready! Woo!

Take them out and leave them to cool for a bit. I like to cool them on the bottom too so they don’t get soggy as I don’t have a cooling rack.

And that’s it! Enjoy and eat! James likes to add icecream but I don’t really like icecream so I eat them plain.

Super yummy :D

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and do let me know if you give it a try! Would you guys like me to post other flavour variations I make too? Like with the different fruits?