ruth's kitchen experiments

Chocolate and Beetroot Cake

2012-01-03T10:27:00.000Z

"Chocolate and beetroot? Crazy!"

That's basically what I thought when I first heard of this recipe a few years ago, but I've seen lots of other food bloggers and tv chefs making this cake, as well as one show doing a test to see who could guess which cake had the beetroot in it to which most got it wrong! I decided I had to do it and in fact last summer grew some beets in our veggie patch with this recipe in mind!

I have to admit I'm not a fan of beetroot as my memories of tasting beetroot was the pickled variety and I've since discovered I'm not a fan of most pickled things. Trying this recipe forced me to try some unpickled beetroot and while I discovered I'm not a fan of it on it's own, it's awesome in chocolate cake!!!!!

I took this cake to my youth group for a test and they loved it! Gurned their noses up when they discovered there was beetroot in it but some went back for seconds anyways!

Chocolate and Beetroot Cake
(Sourced from Nigella's Website)

Serves 8-12
Ingredients
175g Plain Flour
10g Baking Powder
75g Cocoa Powder
225g Caster Sugar
3 Eggs
225g Raw, roasted, peeled and finely blended beetroot.
200ml Corn Oil

For the Chocolate ganache:
250g Dark Chocolate
250ml Double Cream

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 200˚C and grease a 9" baking tin.
2. Stir together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, cocoa and sugar).
3. Mix in the eggs one at a time, then mix in the corn oil and blended beetroot.
4. Bake for 40 minutes.
5. Gently melt the chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Once melted stir in the cream until the ganache is smooth.
6. Once the cake has cooled, top with the ganache.
7. EAT!

A Christmas Round up

2011-12-15T11:43:00.002Z

Nearly every day now I'm being asked several times, "Are you ready?" If it weren't for the fact it's Christmas in 10 days and that's all anyone talks about at this time of year (that and the threat of snow!), I'd be wondering what on earth I was meant to be ready for! The answer right now is no, I'm not. Having written out a list of what I need to sort before Christmas (presents, food, work, people to see, places to go etc etc) I am feeling the pressure, but whatever will be will be and if things aren't done, things will go on anyway. So with that in mind I'm happy to chill out a bit by making some Christmas goodies in the kitchen.

I've been busy working on my Creole Christmas Cake, and feeding it over the past few weeks with brandy. I've also made a couple of batches of Christmas Fruit Punch (Non-Alcoholic Mulled Wine) and even some of Jamie's Mince Pies.

Here's links to my other Christmas recipes, I hope they help and inspire you this Christmas season!

Christmas Mince Pies

Ginger Glazed Gammon

Maple glazed ham

My sage, sausage and apricot stuffing

Christmas roast potatoes, carrots and parsnip

Mum's Christmas Cake

Daring Bakers 21: Gingerbread House

My Christmassy Terrine - a great way to use up those Christmas leftovers!

And here are some other recipes which people find useful over Christmastime.

Honey Roast Parsnips

Great British Pudding Challenge: Canary Pudding

Garlic roast potatoes

Baby spuds in Blankets?

English toffee

Vanilla Fudge

Malteser Cheesecake

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Soy Honey Cocktail Sausages

Lemon Cake with Passionfruit Syrup

Ice Cream Cake

2011-12-13T10:44:00.000Z

When asked to bring a dessert to a gathering I often stress trying to pick something that the majority of people will like, this becomes even more stressful when you factor my picky husband in. This dessert is a winner for all ages and will be loved by 99.9%.... an almost perfect dessert for serving others but absolutely perfectly delicious.

I've adapted this recipe from Nigella's Ice Cream Cake found in Nigella Express, but really you can adapt this as you like and add whatever you want to it!

This is an incredibly easy recipe but is rather impressive too!

Ice Cream Cake
Serves 8
Ingredients
Chocolate sauce
Dulce de leche sauce
2L vanilla ice cream
3 bars of Cadbury's Crunchie
300g Maltesers

NB You will need a container to let this cake set in that will hold 2 litres.

Recipe
1. Drizzle come chocolate and dulce de leche sauce in your container for setting the cake.

2. In a large bowl leave your ice cream to soften, meanwhile pour half the maltesers into a ziplock bag and crush them. Also crush 3 of the crunchie bars.
3. Once the ice cream has softened, mix in the crushed maltesers, whole maltesers and crushed crunchie.
4. Pour the ice cream into your container, wrap in cling film (ceran wrap) and place in the freezer to set.
5. Remove from the freezer and set your container upside down on a serving plate 30 minutes before serving. The ice cream cake will separate from the container ready for you to add the last crushed crunchie bar for final decoration... and more chocolate sauce if desired ;o)

Christmas Fruit Punch (Non-Alcoholic Mulled Wine)

2011-12-05T11:51:00.001Z

Each Christmas I try to make something new to add to my list of Christmas recipes, this year I have a few things in mind and this is the first.

I love a good mulled wine so I mustered up the courage to give this recipe a go and decided to go for a non-alcoholic version seeing as it would be being served to people of various ages.. This recipe is adapted from a recipe I was given by a friend, you have to love recipes shared by friends! One problem I had, which isn't even a problem is that the punch looked rather brown when all done, so I added in a few drops of red food colouring to correct.

There is also two ways to prepare this punch - on the hob or in the slow cooker (aka crock pot).

Christmas Fruit Punch (Non-Alcoholic Mulled Wine)
Makes around 25 servings

Ingredients
2 litres orange juice
1.5 litres apple juice
1 litre cranberry juice
1.5 litres water
500g caster sugar
4 sachets of mulled wine spice
1 large orange studded with around 30-40 whole cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
(Few drops of red food colouring - optional)
1 orange cubed
1 apple cubed

Recipe
ON THE HOB
1. Mix all ingredients (except food colouring, cubed orange and cubed apple) in a large stock pot, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
2. Leave overnight for flavours to infuse.
3. Remove spice sachets, orange and cinnamon sticks (may need to pass through a sieve to filter out cloves and cinnamon stick shards). Can be stored in the fridge for up to one week. Add the food colouring if desired.
4. Add apple and orange cubes and reheat gently, then serve.

IN THE SLOW COOKER/CROCK POT

1. Mix all ingredients (except food colouring, cubed orange and cubed apple) in the slow cooker, set on high and leave for 3 hours.

2. Turn off and leave overnight for flavours to infuse.

3. Remove spice sachets, orange and cinnamon sticks (may need to pass through a sieve to filter out cloves and cinnamon stick shards). Can be stored in the fridge for up to one week. Add the food colouring if desired.

4. Add apple and orange cubes and reheat on low for 2 hours or high for 1 hour, then serve.

Tate & Lyle Christmas Competition

2010-11-25T13:25:00.000Z

http://youtube.com/watch?v=L3dhzjnBVSQ
http://tasteofchristmas.com/competiti...
http://facebook.com/welovebaking

Email your entries to competitions@tateandlyle.com

Roma Pizza/Pasta Flour

2010-11-14T15:30:00.000Z

I love me some pizza.... let's face it, if you don't there's something wrong with you! At least that's what I say about my husband eating his cheeseless pizza because he hates cheese, or at least he thinks he does.

I was excited to get an email from Roma offering me some of their lovely pizza/pasta flour to try out along with a few recipes. I'm glad I said yes, not only cos it meant I got to enjoy more pizza but also because they provided me with my new favourite dough recipe! This is a fantastic dough to work with, really easy to make and deliciously tasty. It's become my new standard recipe (sorry Jamie!)

Roma Pizza Dough

Makes 2 8/9" round pizzas

Ingredients
250g Roma Strong Pizza/Pasta Flour
1/2 tsp salt
150ml lukewarm water
3.5 g fast action yeast
1 tsp EVOO
1/2 tsp caster sugar

Recipe
1. Mix the water, yeast, EVOO and sugar together and set to the side until the mixture starts to froth.
2. Mix the roma pizza flour with the salt in a bowl with tall sides.
3. Make a hollow in the flour and pour in the yeast mixture. Mix the flour into the liquid. When fully combined, knead for 5 minutes. Cover the bowl with cling film (aka seran wrap) and place the bowl in a warm spot for an hour or until the dough has doubled in size.
4. Divide the dough in 2 and make 2 pizza bases on a floured surface. Add your favourite toppings and bake in the oven at 170˚C for 8-10 minutes.

Thank you to the good and lovely people at Roma for the free flour and the fantastic recipes!

Slow cooking???

2010-11-06T16:38:00.001Z

I've impulse bought a slow cooker and have NO recipes! Have you any that you recommend or enjoy?

Christmas Pudding

2010-11-03T10:00:00.000Z

It's hard to ignore that Christmas is on it's way now with shops having had Christmassy things in stock since September, and while I do think it's crazy to be thinking about Christmas THAT soon, it is important to get a move on with preparing some Christmas goodies ahead of time.

Last Christmas I watched Delia's Christmas Special in which she made a lot of the traditional Christmas food, one being Christmas Pudding. I've never really liked Christmas Pudding (despite absolutely loving Christmas cake. In the show Delia said most people say they don't like it because they've only ever tried store bought, but that this recipe is the "proper" way to do it and much nicer. How could I resist? The Queen has spoken! And apparently she's been using this recipe every year for over 30 years herself, how could it be bad? So I gave it a go last year and was so glad I did, I'm excited to give this a go again this year, I may just be a pudding fan after all!

The reason I'm posting this so early? Because it's good for this pudding to mature for about a month before eating. So ignore that it's still November cos it ain't too early to get cooking and baking for Christmas.

Christmas Pudding

Serves 8-10

Ingredients
4 oz (110 g) shredded suet (beef or vegetarian)
2 oz (50 g) self-raising flour, sifted
4 oz (110 g) white breadcrumbs (made from a loaf left out overnight - the best way to make breadcrumbs is in a blender, if you have one)
1 level teaspoon ground mixed spice
¼ level teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
good pinch ground cinnamon
8 oz (225 g) soft dark brown sugar
4 oz (110 g) sultanas
4 oz (110 g) raisins
10 oz (275 g) currants
1 oz (25 g) mixed candied peel, finely chopped (buy whole peel if possible, then chop it yourself)
1 oz (25 g) almonds, skinned and chopped (I left these out, not a bit fan of almonds)
1 small Bramley cooking apple (7 oz/200 g), peeled, cored and finely chopped
grated zest ½ large orange
grated zest ½ large lemon
2 tablespoons rum
2½ fl oz (75 ml) stout, plus a bit extra if needed
~~2½ fl oz (75 ml) barley wine~~ I added in 2½ fl oz more of Stout instead
2 large eggs

Equipment
You will also need a 2 pint (1.2 litre) pudding basin, lightly greased.

Recipe
1. Get our your largest bowl, and I mean your most massivest bowl, and pour in the suet, flour, breadcrumbs, spices and sugar and mix well.
2. Gradually add in the dried fruit, mixed peel, ~~almonds~~, apple, orange zest and lemon zest

3. In a separate smaller bowl measure out all the alcohol, add the eggs and beat together well
4. Pour the eggy alcohol over the other ingredients and mix thoroughly. It should be quite sloppy and fall off the spoon when tapped at the side of the bowl. (If you think it's too dry mix in a little more stout.
5. cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave for a couple of hours or overnight
6. Fill a saucepan with boiling water, place a steamer on top and bring the water to a simmer on the stove.
7. Pack the pudding mix into a greased basin, cover with 2 layers of baking paper then a sheet of tin foil, then tie with string to secure.
8. Steam your pudding for 8 hours, making sure to keep an eye on the water level, topping up with boiling water when needed.
9. When done, remove from the steamer and leave until it gets cold. Remove the baking paper and foil and wrap it all up with fresh paper, foil and string.
10. Store your pudding in a cool dry place, away from light for about a month
11. Come Christmas, start up the steamer again and get the pudding steaming for 2 hours.... delish!

Something else to consider getting ready now is Christmas Cake because it's better after a month maturing. I have two recipes for Christmas Cake here and here.

A few other Christmas recipes include:
Jamie's Mince Pies
Traditional Mince Pies
Ginger Glazed Gammon/Ham
Maple Glazed Gammon/Ham
Sage, Sausage and Apricot Stuffing
Christmas Roast veggies

Mars bar krispie treats

2010-08-31T21:00:00.000+01:00

I was sure I had blogged this before but it seems I dreamt that, so now to rectify the situation because this recipe definitely needs shared and devoured!

Here be my lovely and simple and ever so tasty recipe for mars bar krispie treats

Mars Bar Krispie Treats

Makes 16 2" squares

Ingredients
75g unsalted butter
5 x 58g Mars bars
3 cups of rice krispies/generic puffed rice
150g milk chocolate
30g unsalted butter

Recipe
1. Melt together the Mars bars and 75g butter in a double boiler.
2. Mix in the "generic puffed rice" until well combined. Spread this into an 8" x 8" baking tin and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Melt together the chocolate and 30g butter. Spread over the krispie mix and leave it back in the fridge for 30 minutes.
4. Remove from the fridge and cut into squares

Tate & Lyle Sugar - Banana Bread

2010-08-22T21:34:00.001+01:00

Banana Bread

Ingredients
145g caster sugar
1 egg
100g mashed banana
140g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
70g melted butter

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 170˚C
2. Beat sugar and eggs together
3. Mix in the mashed banana
4. Mix in the dry ingredients, then stir in the butter.
5. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes.

Thanks to Tate & Lyle for the fairtrade sugar used in this recipe. There's lots of recipe ideas for each type of sugar on their website

Tabooleh

2010-08-21T07:32:00.004+01:00

Back in March I was very fortunate and blessed to get to visit Beirut, Lebanon. You can see my vlogs from this trip in this and this blog post to see more of what I was getting up to there and some of the food we experienced.

Since coming home I have tried making some of the traditional Lebanese food for myself, one of these dishes being the well known tabooleh. This is a very finely chopped salad made up mostly of parsley, tomato and onion and dressed in olive oil and lemon juice. Very simple but amazing and flavourful.

The recipe below is adapted from Taste of Beirut's Tabooleh Salad

Tabooleh

Ingredients
2 bunches of flat leaf parsley
1/2 bunch of fresh mint
3 scallions or 1 small onion, finely chopped
2 large tomatoes
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper

Recipe
1. Wash and dry the parsley and mint. Remove the leaves from the stalks and finely chop the leaves.
2. Wash the scallions and finely chop.
3. Wash the tomatoes and finely dice.
4. Mix together the herbs, scallions and tomatoes in a bowl.
5. In a small bowl mix the lemon juice and olive oil together using a fork.
6. Mix the dressing into the salad and serve!

Chewy gooey goodness

2010-06-11T17:25:00.005+01:00

I love brownies... who doesn't? But I have to confess, until recently I had never made brownies before! Well I have but but they were flourless and so not really proper brownies.

I had to do something about this.... after all I love brownies as do most people! I recently bought The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and got stuck into making their "traditional brownies" and I'm so glad I did, or am I? This is my new favourite recipe and so I make them all the time! My waistline isn't going to thank me but I know my lips do every time.

These are so simple to make and extremely moreish.

Hummingbird Traditional Brownies (with a Ruthie twist)

Makes 12 big brownies or 24 little bite sized brownies

Ingredients
200g dark chocolate (or I sometimes use milk chocolate and add other flavours like orange, coconut, raisins, strawberry etc)
175g unsalted butter
310g caster sugar
125g plain flour
3 eggs

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 170˚C
2. Melt the chocolate and butter together until smooth in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water.
3. Take the bowl off the heat and stir in the sugar.
4. Mix in the flour (and any additional flavourings)
5. Stir in the eggs one at a time until well blended into the mix.
6. Pour the mix into a greased and lined baking tray and bake for 30 minutes (or until slightly crisp on the outside but soft in the middle).

It's a fool proof recipe and one everyone I've shared these with have enjoyed!

The rest of our trip in Lebanon

2010-03-22T15:22:00.003Z

Day 2

Days 3 and 4

Our first day in Lebanon

2010-03-17T10:32:00.001Z

A bit about our trip and the Lebanese food we've enjoyed...

Obligatory St Paddy's Post

2010-03-17T09:00:00.000Z

Happy St. Paddy's Day to you all wherever you're celebrating! I'm in Beirut, Lebanon this week and celebrating here with my new Lebanese friends!

Apologies for the lack of recipe today, but I imagine the blogosphere will be jam packed with Irish themed or "Irish" themed food for you to enjoy. For now though I'm going to get back to the Lebanese cuisine I've been enjoying...

Lemony cupcakes

2010-03-02T15:00:00.001Z

It's been such a loooong winter here, which seems to have disappeared like a flick of a switch when we moved from February to March. I made these last week when I was longing for a little sunshine again and they did the trick. I love citrusy flavours for sunny days but I'll have to remember to enjoy citrusy things to encourage the sun to come back too now!

I've based this on a recipe here from Deeba at Passionate about Baking who got it from CoffeeGrounded who got it from the Martha Stewart website. So thanks Martha!

Lemony cupcakes

Makes about 12-18 cupcakes or 6-9 muffins

Ingredients
Cupcakes
100g unsalted butter (room temp)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk (room temp)
1 teaspoon vanilla (I used the insides of a vanilla bean)
Zest of one lemon, finely grated, plus juice
1 cup granulated sugar

Icing
1 cup icing sugar
a drop of yellow food colouring
2-3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp water

Recipe
1. Preheat your oven to 170˚C and prepare your bun/muffin cases on your baking tray.
2. In one bowl mix together the four, baking powder and salt. In another bowl whisk together the butermilk, vanilla, lemon juice and zest.
3. Beat the butter until smooth, then beat in the sugar.
4. Beat in the eggs one at a time
5. Mix in a third of the flour mix, then half the buttermilk mix, another third of the flour, the rest of the buttermilk and the last of the flour mix.
6. Divide the batter amongst the bun/muffin cases and bake for 20-25 minutes.
7. Leave to cool on a rack before frosting.

8. Mix together the icing sugar and food colouring , then gradually beat in a little lemon juice at a time until all the sugar is mixed in and the mixture is thick (not too runny). Use to decorate your cupcakes.

Curried Cod Fillet

2010-02-22T19:00:00.004Z

The hubster has been out working a few more evenings recently, meaning dinner for one, meaning a choice of anything for dinner! I had a fillet of cod in the freezer and a recipe in mind just waiting for a special occasion like this!

Thanks to Jamie Oliver for this one from Ministry of Food!

Curried Cod Fillet

Ingredients
1 portion of cod fillet
2 tbsp curry powder
olive oil

Recipe
1. Roll the cod in the curry powder to coat evenly.
2. Heat a frying pan to a medium high heat and add some olive oil.
3. Fry the fish in the pan on each side for 3-4 minutes until cooked through.

Simple and beautiful.

Polo Shaped Rolo Cake

2010-02-17T12:00:00.002Z

I love going through my rss reader and coming across a new recipe that makes me want to go make it immediately - this cake was one of them. Scottish food blogger, Jacqueline, of Tinned tomatoes fame posted this recipe for rolo cake topped with gooey snowballs who found it on The Caked Crusader's blog. I knew I had all the ingredients in my kitchen so it seemed to be my destiny to make this one.

I had recently bought a new bundt tin and decided immediately to use it for this one thus resulting in polo shaped rolo cake! Really tasty cake with the occasional surprise of crispy chewy caramel throughout. This is one you should bookmark and try out.

Rolo Cake

Ingredients
Cake:
200g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1⁄3 cup caster sugar
4 large eggs
1 ½ cup self raising flour
2⁄3 cup cocoa powder
100g Rolos, halved
Buttercream:
1 cup icing sugar
100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp cocoa powder

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C
2. Grease a deep 20cm diameter bundt tin.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, then mix in the eggs one at a time.
4. Gently stir in the flour and cocoa, before stirring in the chopped rolos.
5. Spoon into the prepared cake tin and bake for approximately 30-35 minutes or until a skewer comes out cleanly. The cake will settle on cooling but this is because it’s so rich and squidgy.
6. Leave to cool in the tin, on a wire rack.

Buttercream Frosting
1. When cool make the buttercream by creaming the butter until soft and smooth, then cream in the icing sugar a little at a time.
2. Beat in the vanilla extract and cocoa powder.
3. If the mix is a bit solid, add a dash of milk to soften and slacken.
4. Spread over the cake and decorate as required .

For another fun recipe using rolos check out these caramel filled chocolate cookies

Pancake Tuesday

2010-02-15T22:23:00.004Z

In need of a pancake recipe for tomorrow? Try out either French Crepes

or a stack o American pancakes!

Or maybe you could use Nigella's pancake mix.... we love this one for it's convenience and ease of use

Instant Pancake Mix(From Nigella Express)
600g flour
3 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
40g vanilla/caster sugar

Recipe
Mix everything together and store in an airtight container

When you want some pancakes whisk together....
150g pancake mix, 1 egg, 250ml milk, t tsbp melted butter

Heat your pan with no oil, spoon batter onto pan to cook. When bubbles appear on the surface flip them over to cook until golden on each side.

Nigella makes 15 pancakes about 8cm in diameter from this mix, but we like nice big pancakes and get 6 or 7 big ones out of it.

Happy pancake day!

Naan Pizza

2010-02-09T17:49:00.003Z

Nigella published this idea before me but I had the idea before coming across it so I think I'm due a book deal and tv show of my own for that.

Today is international pizza day so it seems right to enjoy some in celebration of this dish that is a favourite worldwide. My nod to the pizza is one made with naan bread instead of dough, this idea is a great quick dinner and simple too. While I love it with tikka chicken and chunky tomato sauce, today was a frugal one with some leftovers acting as toppings - ham, fresh pineapple, sweetcorn and mozzarella.

Nutella Day... late

2010-02-06T10:10:00.002Z

Yesterday was World Nutella Day..... I didn't get to make anything Nutella based but did today instead. A simple one, nutella and pancakes....

What do you like with your nutella?

Malteser Cheesecake

2010-02-05T18:00:00.000Z

There's an amazing woman in my church who is one of the most amazing cooks I have ever met! She's an absolute star and cooks a nice hot lunch for about 20 of the older members of the church every other week and once went out of her way to make a special dinner for our youth group one Sunday.

She once made this cheesecake and when I asked for the recipe she confessed it was from a charity cookbook the local High School produced a few years ago. It turned out I had this cookbook!!!! Delicious cheesecake recipe was right under my nose and I didn't even know it!

This was so simple to make, had a fantastic thick biscuity base and lovely light fluffy cheesecakey goodness on top... not to mention the chocolatey maltesers!!!!!

Malteser Cheesecake

Ingredients
Biscuit Base
14 Digestive biscuits/Graham Crackers, crushed
1/3 cup butter, melted
Cheesecake mix
3oz (85g) icing sugar
8oz(225g) cream cheese
1/2 pint (230ml) whipping cream
135g bag of maltesers, crush most but hold a few over for decoration.

Recipe
1. Mix together the biscuits and butter until the mixture starts to stick together. If it is too dry add more melted butter. Press this mixture into the base of a 15cm cake tin. Put this in the fridge for half an hour while you work on the rest.
2. Whip the cream in a bowl until thick and put in the fridge.
3. Cream the icing sugar and cream cheese together and fold in the maltesers.
4. Take the cream out of the fridge and fold into the mixture.
5. Spread the cream cheese mix over the biscuit base and refrigerate until set.

Chocolate Bundt Pudding

2010-02-03T19:24:00.003Z

We were at friends' house for dinner a few Saturdays ago and it's become a pattern for me to bring dessert to people's houses now when we're having meals... sometimes if we're not having meals! This time I had seen Patsy's blog post on a Choclate Bundt Cake recipe and was keen to try it, especially seeing as it was a "healthier" one. Plus who doesn't love chocolate cake? Well my husband but that's neither here nor there!

I halved the recipe below and used a smaller bundt tin and served it warm with warm chocolate ganache (recipe below too)

Chocolate Bundt Pudding

Ingredients
Non-stick cooking spray with flour
3 ounces dark chocolate, fiinely chopped
3/4 cup Dutch process cocoa
~~1 teaspoon instant espresso~~
1 cup boiling water
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups light brown sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C. Spray the inside of you bundt pan with cooking spray in preparation.
2. Mix together the chocolate and boiling water in a bowl and cover. Set to the side for 5 minutes, then whisk until smooth.
3. In separate bowl, mix together the flour, salt and baking soda.
4. Using a mixer, mix the chocolate together with the sugar, oil and vanilla. Then gradually mix in the flour mixture until well combined and smooth.
5. Pour the batter into your oiled bundt tine and bake for 50 minutes, leave to cool a little but not completely.
6. Slice and serve with ganache

Ganache

Ingredients
170g dark chocolate
3/4 cup single cream

Recipe
1. Melt the chocolate in a small saucepan over a medium heat.
2. Stir in the cream until smooth.

Creamy pasta with mushroom and bacon

2010-01-19T21:00:00.001Z

When the cat's away the mice will play... apparently!

Regular readers of this blog will know my husband is a rather fussy creature when it comes to food. So when he tells me he won't be home for dinner or won't need dinner made for him I get rather excited thinking about what I can have that's usually off the menu when he is around.

Today was one of those fun days. I had all sorts of ideas about toad in the hole, chicken and broccoli bake, baked fish, sticky chicken wings and so so sooooo much more. The dentist interrupted most of these plans by numbing my mouth in order to work on a tooth that has been keeping me up the past 4 nights - I can't complain really because my tooth feels so much better already! I had a flick through a Christmas present again, Tana Ramsay's Real Family Food, and spotted her pasta with mushrooms and bacon recipe and decided that was the way forward - easy for the slightly gummy eater to enjoy

This was a great dish, also quick and easy to throw together for a weeknight meal - it's a pity the hubster won't like it! While I was making it I wondered was it like the Spaghetti Carbonara and while similar this recipe was much simpler in preparation but had better flavour.

Creamy pasta with mushroom and bacon
Based on Tana Ramsay's recipe from Real Family Food

Serves 2

Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
8 rashers of ~~streaky~~ back ~~unsmoked~~ smoked bacon, cut into 1" pieces
1 medium onion finely diced
1 garlic clove minced (or cheat like me with 1/2 tsp of "easy garlic" - jar of pre minced garlic)
250g mushrooms, diced or sliced
100ml white wine
100g dry spaghetti per person (or your pasta of choice)
200ml ~~single~~ double cream
25g flat leaf parsley, finely chopped (I subbed this for some dried parsley but think fresh would be better)
grated parmesan to serve

Recipe
1. Put a saucepan of water on to boil for the pasta and follow packet instructions.
2. Heat the oil in a pan, then fry the bacon pieces. After a couple of minutes add the onion and garlic and fry until the onion starts to colour.
3. Stir in the mushrooms and cook for 2 minutes, then add the wine and simmer until almost evaporated.
4. Add the cream and gently simmer for 3-4 minutes.
5. Drain the pasta and return to the saucepan. Mix in the sauce and parsley, then serve with grated parmesan on top.

In other news, the Irish Blog Awards 2010 have now opened nominations and will be closing them on 5th February, so get in there and get voting regardless of whether you're in Ireland or not!

Sweet & Sour Chicken

2010-01-07T20:13:00.007Z

I didn't think home made sweet and sour could be as good as what you get from the take aways, but this recipe was a success in our house, not only with me, but with my fussy hubby who'll only ever order sweet and sour chicken from the Chinese! This one's definitely going on the list of things to make again!

Rob gave me Tana Ramsay's 'Real Family Food' book for Christmas so one of the first things I did was to go through it with the post it tabs and bookmark everything I want to try out. Amongst those that were tabbed was her recipe for Chicken Skewers with Sweet and Sour Sauce. I've used this as a basis for this sweet and sour chicken dish and adapted a bit to make it more of a cantonese style dish instead of skewers with dip.

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Serves 2

Ingredients
2 skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips
Handful of chopped red pepper

Marinade
3 limes, juiced
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp plain flour

Sauce
150ml water
2 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp rice vinegar
3 tbsp ketchup
1 tsp salt
Handful of pineapple pieces from a tin (with natural juices)
1 tbsp juice from tin of pineapple
2 tsp cornflour mixed in 2 tsp water

Recipe
1. Mix together the marinade ingredients then add the chicken strips. Leave to marinate for 2 hours or overnight.
2. Heat a little oil in a pan and add the chicken and pepper (do not add excess marinade) and cook through for 5-10 minutes stirring often.
3. Mix together the ingredients for the sauce (except the cornflour in water) and bring to the boil. Stir in the cornflour mix and simmer for a few minutes.
4. Stir sauce in with the chicken and peppers and serve immediately.

My Christmassy Terrine

2010-01-06T10:00:00.000Z

Are you tired of Christmas dinner by now? If not you should give this a go, Even if you are what the heck, try it anyways.

I spotted a recipe in a magazine before Christmas (I think it was Sainsbury's own mag but not entirely sure) which I read and kept the idea in mind for during the Christmas period. The original recipe looked beautiful with dried apricots, nuts and cranberries all mixed in but I had to leave these out of my version of this recipe for husband to be able to enjoy it too.

This was rather tasty and really very easy to make but looks a bit more complicated and impressive - I love things like that!

Ruth's Christmassy Terrine

Serves 4

Ingredients
1 white onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic minced
1 tsbp olive oil
18 rashers of unsmoked streaky bacon
8 skinned and boned chicken thighs, diced into a mix of small and large pieces
150g pork mince
2 slices of bread, blended into breadcrumbs
1 tbsp brandy
1 tsp sage
2 tsp thyme
2 tsp lemon juice
salt
pepper

Recipe
1. Fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil until soft. Leave to cool for a bit.
2. Line a loaf tin with the streaky bacon, leaving a few to the side
3. Mix together the rest of the ingredients in a bowl then pour into the bacon lined tin.
4. Cover the top with the overhanging bacon and layering extra bacon over the top.
5. Cover over with tin foil and place in an oven dish. Part fill the dish with hot water and place into the oven at 180˚C for 1 hour.
6. Remove from the oven and carefully drain off any fat. Leave to cool.

This can be served hot or cold, if you want it hot place a few slices in the oven at 180˚C for 5-10 minutes
Great served with some roast root veggies, potatoes and cranberry sauce.

5 minute microwave chocolate cake

2010-01-02T09:00:00.000Z

Ever need a quick chocolate cake fix? Then this is it!

I had heard about this little beauty years ago but it slipped my mind until a colleague in the world of youth and children's work reminded me about it because she had used it as part of a children's talk and in planning our Christmas family service I remembered it again. After all that it just seemed right to make it and I did a couple of times in practice and also as a practice for my own cookery show by making it during the church service! Nigella better watch out!

5 minute microwave chocolate cake

Serves 3-4, but I made it stretch to about 20 -30 that Sunday with all the kids wanting a little piece.

Ingredients
1/2 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup chocolate chips (optional)
a splash of vanilla extract

Recipe
1. Mix together dry ingredients
2. Add the eggs and mix thoroughly.
3. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.
4. Pour the mixture into a 10cm diameter cake tin and cook for 4 minutes at 1000 watts
5. Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired and decorate with icing, or for an even quicker option chocolate spread!

Happy New Year!!!!!!!

Creole Christmas Cake

2009-12-30T09:00:00.000Z

I know I'm in a minority these days but I am a big fan of Christmas cake. When I was younger Mum would have bought slabs of "iced fruit cake" through the year for me, not just at Christmas. Last year I made my first ever Christmas Cake using Mum's Christmas Cake recipe. I watched Delia's Christmas Special a few weeks ago and loved the look of her Creole Christmas Cake and decided I just had to try it. It takes a good bit of time seeing as the dried fruits are to steep in the alcohol for a week! Then the baking takes 3 hours and after that there's the extra "feeding" but that's only if you want more alcohol in it!

It's a truly delicious cake - I was excited to try it from the moment it came out of the oven but I was good and waited to steal a few crumbs when it was taken out of the tin!

Creole Christmas Cake

Ingredients

For the pre-soaking
3 tbsp dark rum
3 tbsp brandy
3 tbsp port
3 tbsp ~~cherry brandy~~ I added an extra tbsp of rum, brandy and port instead
~~1½ tsp Angostura bitters~~ Left this out - couldn't find it!
½ level tsp ground cinnamon
½ level tsp ground nutmeg
½ level tsp ground cloves
½ level tsp salt
1½ tsp vanilla extract
1 level tbsp molasses sugar
2 oz (50 g) glacé cherries, chopped
1 lb (450 g) raisins
4 oz (110 g) pitted no-soak prunes, chopped I used sultanas instead
8 oz (225 g) currants
4 oz (110 g) mixed candied peel
2 oz (50 g) mixed chopped nuts

For the cake:
9 oz (250 g) self-raising flour
9 oz (250 g) demerara sugar
9 oz (250 g) butter, at room temperature
5 large eggs

Recipe
1. Mix together the fruits, spices, salt, vanilla, molasses and alcohol and store in a container for a week. Give the container a shake every now and again during this time.

2. Preheat the oven to 275˚F (140˚C) when you're ready to bake.
3. Measure out the flour, sugar and butter into a very large bowl and mix together.
4. Add and mix in the eggs one at a time.
5. Gradually stir in the dried fruit mixture until all is combined.
6. Pour into a greased and lined 9" round tin, then bake in the oven for 3 hours.
7. Leave to cool for 45mins in the tin then once cool wrap in greaseproof paper and foil and in an airtight container.
8. If you're wanting to "feed" the cake pierce a few holes in the cake and pour a little brandy into each one, repeat once a week for 4 weeks.

If you're decorating the traditional way, spread apricot glaze over the cake then cover with marzipan, dampen the marzipan a little and cover with white icing.

For more Christmas recipes see
Jamie's Mince Pies
Traditional Mince Pies
Ginger Glazed Gammon/Ham
Sage, Sausage and Apricot Stuffing
Christmas Roast veggies

Daring Bakers 21: Gingerbread House

2009-12-28T18:55:00.004Z

I'm late..... again.... with my Daring Bakers post for this month, but I only just got it finished. This month the challenge was a Christmassy one in that we had to make a Gingerbread House!

I have to admit I had a few problems with this one. There were two different recipes to work from for this, I thought I'd save reading any further and just do the first one, but ended in disaster for me because the dough ended up way too dry and I still had more flour to add! I asked my fellow DBers for advice and was told to add a little milk or water until it comes together so I gave it a go but it just didn't want to mix, I ended up with firm clumps swimming in milk, so that was off to the bin. I read on and tried out the second recipe which worked much better this time, but did need extra water to bring it together too, but not much and I think it turned out well in the end.....

... I'm rather proud of my little piece of architecture, but to be honest not sure a Wicked Witch would feel safe living in it.

PS I halved this recipe to make a smaller house, I also only used half the dough on the house and made gingerbread "cookies" with the rest.

Scandinavian Gingerbread (Pepparkakstuga)

Recipe

from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas

1 cup butter, room temperature [226g]
1 cup brown sugar, well packed [220g]
2 tablespoons cinnamon
4 teaspoons ground ginger
3 teaspoons ground cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ cup boiling water
5 cups all-purpose flour [875g]

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until blended. Add the cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Mix the baking soda with the boiling water and add to the dough along with the flour. Mix to make a stiff dough. If necessary add more water, a tablespoon at a time. Chill 2 hours or overnight.

2. Cut patterns for the house, making patterns for the roof, front walls, gabled walls, chimney and door out of cardboard.

3. Roll the dough out on a large, ungreased baking sheet and place the patterns on the dough. Mark off the various pieces with a knife, but leave the pieces in place.

4. [I rolled out the dough on a floured bench, roughly 1/8 inch thick (which allows for fact that the dough puffs a little when baked), cut required shapes and transferred these to the baking sheet. Any scraps I saved and rerolled at the end.]

5. Preheat the oven to 375'F (190'C). Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until the cookie dough feels firm. After baking, again place the pattern on top of the gingerbread and trim the shapes, cutting the edges with a straight-edged knife. Leave to cool on the baking sheet.

Simple Syrup: I skipped this part and glued it all together using the icing
2 cups (400g) sugar

Place in a small saucepan and heat until just boiling and the sugar dissolves. Dredge or brush the edges of the pieces to glue them together. If the syrup crystallizes, remake it.

Royal Icing:

1 large egg white
3 cups (330g) powdered sugar
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon almond extract

Beat all ingredients until smooth, adding the powdered sugar gradually to get the desired consistency. Pipe on pieces and allow to dry before assembling. If you aren't using it all at once you can keep it in a small bowl, loosely covered with a damp towel for a few hours until ready to use. You may have to beat it slightly to get it an even consistency if the top sets up a bit. Piped on the house, this will set up hard over time.

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

Daring Bakers 20: Cannoli

2009-12-06T19:00:00.002Z

Wow, it's been a while since I blogged, and a little over the due date for this DB entry but things have been rather busy blah de blah... but I'm here now with the latest Daring Bakers recipe - cannolis! The problem with my cannolis is that I don't have cannoli tubes so I ended up doing flat versions which turned out to be quite puffy....

..... but very tasty layered with whipped cream mixed with sliced strawberries, chopped pecan nuts and chocolate chips

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

CANNOLI SHELLS

Ingredients
2 cups (250 grams/16 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons(28 grams/1 ounce) sugar
1 teaspoon (5 grams/0.06 ounces) unsweetened baking cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon (1.15 grams/0.04 ounces) ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon (approx. 3 grams/0.11 ounces) salt
3 tablespoons (42 grams/1.5 ounces) vegetable or olive oil
1 teaspoon (5 grams/0.18 ounces) white wine vinegar
Approximately 1/2 cup (approx. 59 grams/approx. 4 fluid ounces/approx. 125 ml) sweet Marsala or any white or red wine you have on hand
1 large egg, separated (you will need the egg white but not the yolk)
Vegetable or any neutral oil for frying – about 2 quarts (8 cups/approx. 2 litres)
1/2 cup (approx. 62 grams/2 ounces) toasted, chopped pistachio nuts, mini chocolate chips/grated chocolate and/or candied or plain zests, fruits etc.. for garnish
Confectioners' sugar

Note - If you want a chocolate cannoli dough, substitute a few tablespoons of the flour (about 25%) with a few tablespoons of dark, unsweetened cocoa powder (Dutch process) and a little more wine until you have a workable dough (Thanks to Audax).

DIRECTIONS FOR SHELLS:
1. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer or food processor, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in the oil, vinegar, and enough of the wine to make a soft dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and well blended, about 2 minutes. Shape the dough into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the fridge from 2 hours to overnight.

2 Cut the dough into two pieces. Keep the remaining dough covered while you work. Lightly flour a large cutting or pastry board and roll the dough until super thin, about 1/16 to 1/8” thick (An area of about 13 inches by 18 inches should give you that). Cut out 3 to 5-inch circles (3-inch – small/medium; 4-inch – medium/large; 5-inch;- large. Your choice). Roll the cut out circle into an oval, rolling it larger and thinner if it’s shrunk a little.

3 Oil the outside of the cannoli tubes (You only have to do this once, as the oil from the deep fry will keep them well, uhh, oiled..lol). Roll a dough oval from the long side (If square, position like a diamond, and place tube/form on the corner closest to you, then roll) around each tube/form and dab a little egg white on the dough where the edges overlap. (Avoid getting egg white on the tube, or the pastry will stick to it.) Press well to seal. Set aside to let the egg white seal dry a little.

4. In a deep heavy saucepan, pour enough oil to reach a depth of 3 inches, or if using an electric deep-fryer, follow the manufacturer's directions. Heat the oil to 375°F (190 °C) on a deep fry thermometer, or until a small piece of the dough or bread cube placed in the oil sizzles and browns in 1 minute. Have ready a tray or sheet pan lined with paper towels or paper bags.

5. Carefully lower a few of the cannoli tubes into the hot oil. Do not crowd the pan. Fry the shells until golden, about 2 minutes, turning them so that they brown evenly.

8. Lift a cannoli tube with a wire skimmer or large slotted spoon, out of the oil. Using tongs, grasp the cannoli tube at one end. Very carefully remove the cannoli tube with the open sides straight up and down so that the oil flows back into the pan. Place the tube on paper towels or bags to drain. Repeat with the remaining tubes. While they are still hot, grasp the tubes with a potholder and pull the cannoli shells off the tubes with a pair of tongs, or with your hand protected by an oven mitt or towel. Let the shells cool completely on the paper towels. Place shells on cooling rack until ready to fill.

9. Repeat making and frying the shells with the remaining dough. If you are reusing the cannoli tubes, let them cool before wrapping them in the dough.

Cannoli shell preparation, cutting out the dough circles, sealing the dough around the form, frying the shells, finished shells ready to fill

For stacked cannoli:
1. Heat 2-inches of oil in a saucepan or deep sauté pan, to 350-375°F (176 - 190 °C).

2. Cut out desired shapes with cutters or a sharp knife. Deep fry until golden brown and blistered on each side, about 1 – 2 minutes. Remove from oil with wire skimmer or large slotted spoon, then place on paper towels or bags until dry and grease free. If they balloon up in the hot oil, dock them lightly prior to frying. Place on cooling rack until ready to stack with filling.

Daring Bakers 17:Dobos Torte

2009-08-29T10:00:00.000+01:00

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

This was an exciting challenge and a delicious one too. I made this and took it to youth group, which resulted in a request for me to make it again for someone's birthday cake!!!!

So, what is the Dobos Torta (or Torte)?

The Dobos Torta is a five-layer sponge cake, filled with a rich chocolate buttercream and topped with thin wedges of caramel. (You may come across recipes which have anywhere between six and 12 layers of cake; there are numerous family variations!) It was invented in 1885 by József C. Dobos, a Hungarian baker, and it rapidly became famous throughout Europe for both its extraordinary taste and its keeping properties. The recipe was a secret until Dobos retired in 1906 and gave the recipe to the Budapest Confectioners' and Gingerbread Makers' Chamber of Industry, providing that every member of the chamber can use it freely.

Equipment
2 baking sheets
9” (23cm) springform tin and 8” cake tin, for templates
mixing bowls (1 medium, 1 large)
a sieve
a double boiler (a large saucepan plus a large heat-proof mixing bowl which fits snugly over the top of the pan)
a small saucepan
a whisk (you could use a balloon whisk for the entire cake, but an electric hand whisk or stand mixer will make life much easier)
metal offset spatula
sharp knife
a 7 1/2” cardboard cake round, or just build cake on the base of a sprinfrom tin.
piping bag and tip, optional

Prep times
Sponge layers 20 mins prep, 40 mins cooking total if baking each layer individually.
Buttercream: 20 mins cooking. Cooling time for buttercream: about 1 hour plus 10 minutes after this to beat and divide.
Caramel layer: 10-15 minutes.
Assembly of whole cake: 20 minutes

Finishing touches
a 7” cardboard round
12 whole hazelnuts, peeled and toasted (optional)
½ cup (50g) peeled and finely chopped hazelnuts (optional)

Sponge cake layers
6 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 1/3 cups (162g) confectioner's (icing) sugar, divided
1 teaspoon (5ml) vanilla extract
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (112g) sifted cake flour (SUBSTITUTE 95g plain flour + 17g cornflour (cornstarch) sifted together)
pinch of salt

Directions for the sponge layers:
NB. The sponge layers can be prepared in advance and stored interleaved with parchment and well-wrapped in the fridge overnight.

1.Position the racks in the top and centre thirds of the oven and heat to 400F (200C).
2.Cut six pieces of parchment paper to fit the baking sheets. Using the bottom of a 9" (23cm) springform tin as a template and a dark pencil or a pen, trace a circle on each of the papers, and turn them over (the circle should be visible from the other side, so that the graphite or ink doesn't touch the cake batter.)
3.Beat the egg yolks, 2/3 cup (81g) of the confectioner's (icing) sugar, and the vanilla in a medium bowl with a mixer on high speed until the mixture is thick, pale yellow and forms a thick ribbon when the beaters are lifted a few inches above the batter, about 3 minutes. (You can do this step with a balloon whisk if you don't have a mixer.)
4.In another bowl, using clean beaters, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the remaining 2/3 cup (81g) of confectioner's (icing)sugar until the whites form stiff, shiny peaks. Using a large rubber spatula, stir about 1/4 of the beaten whites into the egg yolk mixture, then fold in the remainder, leaving a few wisps of white visible. Combine the flour and salt. Sift half the flour over the eggs, and fold in; repeat with the remaining flour.
5.Line one of the baking sheets with a circle-marked paper. Using a small offset spatula, spread about 3/4cup of the batter in an even layer, filling in the traced circle on one baking sheet. Bake on the top rack for 5 minutes, until the cake springs back when pressed gently in the centre and the edges are lightly browned. While this cake bakes, repeat the process on the other baking sheet, placing it on the centre rack. When the first cake is done, move the second cake to the top rack. Invert the first cake onto a flat surface and carefully peel off the paper. Slide the cake layer back onto the paper and let stand until cool. Rinse the baking sheet under cold running water to cool, and dry it before lining with another parchment. Continue with the remaining papers and batter to make a total of six layers. Completely cool the layers. Using an 8" springform pan bottom or plate as a template, trim each cake layer into a neat round. (A small serrated knife is best for this task.)

Chocolate Buttercream
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup (200g) caster (ultrafine or superfine white) sugar
4oz (110g) bakers chocolate or your favourite dark chocolate, finely chopped
2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons (250g) unsalted butter, at room temperature.

Directions for the chocolate buttercream:
NB. This can be prepared in advance and kept chilled until required.

1.Prepare a double-boiler: quarter-fill a large saucepan with water and bring it to a boil.
2.Meanwhile, whisk the eggs with the sugar until pale and thickened, about five minutes. You can use a balloon whisk or electric hand mixer for this.
3.Fit bowl over the boiling water in the saucepan (water should not touch bowl) and lower the heat to a brisk simmer. Cook the egg mixture, whisking constantly, for 2-3 minutes until you see it starting to thicken a bit. Whisk in the finely chopped chocolate and cook, stirring, for a further 2-3 minutes.
4.Scrape the chocolate mixture into a medium bowl and leave to cool to room temperature. It should be quite thick and sticky in consistency.
5.When cool, beat in the soft butter, a small piece (about 2 tablespoons/30g) at a time. An electric hand mixer is great here, but it is possible to beat the butter in with a spatula if it is soft enough. You should end up with a thick, velvety chocolate buttercream. Chill while you make the caramel topping.

Caramel topping
1 cup (200g) caster (superfine or ultrafine white) sugar
12 tablespoons (180 ml) water
8 teaspoons (40 ml) lemon juice
1 tablespoon neutral oil (e.g. grapeseed, rice bran, sunflower)

Directions for the caramel topping:
1.Choose the best-looking cake layer for the caramel top. To make the caramel topping: Line a jellyroll pan with parchment paper and butter the paper. Place the reserved cake layer on the paper. Score the cake into 12 equal wedges. Lightly oil a thin, sharp knife and an offset metal spatula.
2.Stir the sugar, water and lemon juice in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over a medium heat, stirring often to dissolve the sugar. Once dissolved into a smooth syrup, turn the heat up to high and boil without stirring, swirling the pan by the handle occasionally and washing down any sugar crystals on the sides of the pan with a wet brush until the syrup has turned into an amber-coloured caramel.
3.The top layer is perhaps the hardest part of the whole cake so make sure you have a oiled, hot offset spatula ready. I also find it helps if the cake layer hasn't just been taken out of the refrigerator. I made mine ahead of time and the cake layer was cold and the toffee set very, very quickly—too quickly for me to spread it. Immediately pour all of the hot caramel over the cake layer. You will have some leftover most probably but more is better than less and you can always make nice toffee pattern using the extra to decorate. Using the offset spatula, quickly spread the caramel evenly to the edge of the cake layer. Let cool until beginning to set, about 30 seconds. Using the tip of the hot oiled knife (keep re-oiling this with a pastry brush between cutting), cut through the scored marks to divide the caramel layer into 12 equal wedges. Cool another minute or so, then use the edge of the knife to completely cut and separate the wedges using one firm slice movement (rather than rocking back and forth which may produce toffee strands). Cool completely.

Assembling the Dobos
1.Divide the buttercream into six equal parts.
2.Place a dab of chocolate buttercream on the middle of a 7 1/2” cardboard round and top with one cake layer. Spread the layer with one part of the chocolate icing. Repeat with 4 more cake layers. Spread the remaining icing on the sides of the cake.
3.Optional: press the finely chopped hazelnuts onto the sides of the cake.
4.Propping a hazelnut under each wedge so that it sits at an angle, arrange the wedges on top of the cake in a spoke pattern. If you have any leftover buttercream, you can pipe rosettes under each hazelnut or a large rosette in the centre of the cake. Refrigerate the cake under a cake dome until the icing is set, about 2 hours. Let slices come to room temperature for the best possible flavour.

Storage
If you do decide to chill it, then I would advise also using a glass dome if you have done. I should also note that the cake will cut more cleanly when chilled.

Oopsy Cakesy.

2009-08-20T17:48:00.003+01:00

Today we had a "Fun Day" at church and I had bought a High School Musical box of cake mix for the group to make to go with lunch. The girls got into making it while I got o with sorting other lunchy bits out, so they emptied the box and got on with it. Apparently Katie asked me if both the bags of stuff had to go into the mixture and apparently I said "Yes" but I can't recall this conversation. So she chucked it all together, mixed in the butter, water and eggs and poured into the tray then put it all in the oven to bake. While I was clearing up the rubbish I wondered where the icing had gone to and discovered that the icing had been put into the cake mixture and was now in the oven. We worried it all may turn out a little too sweet but left it to bake and we got on with lunch and playing with HSM stickers.

When it came to eating the cake it looked good, smelled good and had a slight glaze on the top from all the sugar in it! It was real good, even with the icing IN it not ON it. So an experiment gone wrong but that turned out good and we had fun decorating it with the HSM rice paper decorations and sugary stars.

Northern Irish Food News

2009-08-15T18:50:00.004+01:00

Today saw the first ever Cupcake Camp NI at the Blick Studios in Belfast, actually in Europe even!!!! I had hoped to be there with some cupcakes but got a little busy with work and had to bail out.

I'm looking forward to hearing how it all worked out and hope I can join in next summer!

Also, Sainsburys have been in touch asking for a little plug and seeing as I'm a Sainsburys fan I thought I may just pass it on.
They're running a campaign called GR'EAT BRITAIN' ON A PLATE to encourage people who are planning a holiday at home to try out more local food. Check out the press release here

Finally, you may remember that I was at the Enjoy a Taste of Scotland event in April 08, well it turns out that now there will be a Northern Irish event too! Tesco's are hosting "Taste Northern Ireland" in Belfast on 11th and 12th September in Custom House Square with free entrance to the public. This event aims to "showcase and celebrate the fantastic breadth and quality of Northern Ireland’s produce to a wider audience." There will be lots of local exhibitors, a celebrity cookery theatre, kids cookery and more. I'll keep you posted with any other details I receive!

That's all for now, but I'll be back soon with another recipe.

Sticky Toffee Pudding

2009-07-27T19:34:00.006+01:00

I had a craving yesterday as I was making a roast dinner for some pudding so I had a look through the crazy amount of recipes I have bookmarked online and came across Sticky Toffee Pudding by The Daily Spud (one very talented blogger who beat me to win the much coveted Irish Blog Award for the Best Food/Drink Blog in 2009!). I had all the ingredients to had/good substitutes for ones I didn't have so I had to make it!

However I was struck instantly with a problem - in fact a problem with pretty much every sticky toffee pudding recipe in the world! ........ Rob doesn't like dates, no scrub that, Rob doesn't like fruit, but occasionally likes raisins if they're in the right dish so I figured I would use raisins instead of dates. Then remembered a time when we had sticky toffee pudding before and there was fruit in it which he didn't like, drastic measures needed to be taken, I was determined to make this pudding! So out came the blender and I puréed the raisins into a paste and used as an alternative to dates - rather successfully because he didn't even notice! Score!!!!!!!!

The other substitution I made in this recipe was dark brown sugar for the muscovado sugar which worked fine too.

The result - one very tasty, quick and easy pudding! Thanks Spud!!!!!
Not the best photo in the world but it sure is one tasty pud!

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Serves 8

Ingredients
For the cakey bit:
200g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp salt
150g ~~pitted dates~~ puréed raisins
250ml water
2 tblsp golden syrup
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
75g unsalted butter
125g ~~light muscovado sugar~~ dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the sauce bit:
125g ~~dark mucovado sugar~~ dark brown sugar
125g unsalted butter
180ml double cream
pinch of salt
50 ml kahlúa (optional but lovely)

You’ll also need:
Baking tin - Daily Spud used 26cm x 18cm x 3cm. I halved the recipe and used 12cm diameter x 5cm depth

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease the baking tin.
2. Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together and set to the side.
3. Bring the raisins and water to a boil over a medium-high heat, then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Remove from the heat and add the golden syrup. Stir well to combine.
5. Add the bicarbonate of soda - the mixture will froth up.
6. Cream the butter until light and fluffy, then add the ~~light muscovado sugar~~ dark brown sugar and cream together until light and fluffy.
7. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well to combine, then stir in the vanilla.
8. Add half the flour and mix to combine.
9. Add the ~~date~~ raisin mixture in 2 lots, stir to combine and finally mix in the rest of the flour until just combined.
10. Scrape the mixture into the tin and bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out fairly clean.
11. To make the sauce, melt the butter and sugar together in a small saucepan over a medium heat, stirring often as the butter melts and the sugar dissolves.
12. Add the cream and (if using) kahlua, bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring continuously and allowing the sauce to reduce and thicken.
13. Serve warm slices of the pudding, spooned over with the warm toffee sauce.

Daring Bakers 16: Bakewell Tart

2009-06-27T09:00:00.001+01:00

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

Yum yum yum yum yummmmmmmmmm this was a delicious challenge! I love bakewell tart but never made one so I was rather excited. However I had a problem and do most months with the challenge because there's usually an element of "play with the flavours" and in the past I just ended up going with the flavours in the original recipe but I wanted to do something different this time so I went and stood in the jams and conserves for at least half an hour taking in all the various types and struggling to decide which one to get. 'Strawberry..... Lemon...... Blackberry..... Plum..... Raspberry...... Orange...... Rhubarb...... Apricot, mmmmm yes apricot, and I could throw in some peaches, ooooh yes, let's do that!' So it became a Peach and Apricot Bakewell Tart!

I had another problem though. I put it in to bake I went upstairs to make some phone calls and took my egg timer with me but forgot to go take the tart out of the oven when the buzzer went during my phone call so when I did go down it ended up looking like this.....

.... oops. So I ended up carving the carcinogen off....

..... and tucking in!

A yummy tart/pudding. I'm sure I'll do this again.

Peach and Apricot Bakewell Tart

Sweet shortcrust pastry

Prep time: 15-20 minutes
Resting time: 30 minutes (minimum)
Equipment needed: bowls, box grater, cling film

225g (8oz) all purpose flour
30g (1oz) sugar
2.5ml (½ tsp) salt
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, cold (frozen is better)
2 (2) egg yolks
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract (optional) (I used vanilla extract)
15-30ml (1-2 Tbsp) cold water

Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Grate butter into the flour mixture, using the large hole-side of a box grater. Using your finger tips only, and working very quickly, rub the fat into the flour until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Set aside.

Lightly beat the egg yolks with the almond extract (if using) and quickly mix into the flour mixture. Keep mixing while dribbling in the water, only adding enough to form a cohesive and slightly sticky dough.

Form the dough into a disc, wrap in cling and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes (leave no longer than one day)

Place the chilled dough disc on a lightly floured surface. If it's overly cold, you will need to let it become acclimatised for about 15 minutes before you roll it out. Flour the rolling pin and roll the pastry to 5mm (1/4”) thickness, by rolling in one direction only (start from the centre and roll away from you), and turning the disc a quarter turn after each roll. When the pastry is to the desired size and thickness, transfer it to the tart pan, press in and trim the excess dough. Patch any holes, fissures or tears with trimmed bits. Chill in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Frangipane

Prep time: 10-15 minutes
Equipment needed: bowls, hand mixer, rubber spatula

125g (4.5oz) unsalted butter, softened
125g (4.5oz) icing sugar
3 (3) eggs
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract (I used vanilla extract)
125g (4.5oz) ground almonds (I used 100g)
30g (1oz) all purpose flour (I used 55g)

Cream butter and sugar together for about a minute or until the mixture is primrose in colour and very fluffy.
Scrape down the side of the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. The batter may appear to curdle. In the words of Douglas Adams: Don’t panic. Really. It’ll be fine.
After all three are in, pour in the almond extract and mix for about another 30 seconds and scrape down the sides again. With the beaters on, spoon in the ground nuts and the flour. Mix well. The mixture will be soft, keep its slightly curdled look (mostly from the almonds) and retain its pallid yellow colour.

Assembling the tart

One quantity sweet shortcrust pastry
Bench flour
250ml (1cup (8 US fl. oz)) jam or curd, warmed for spreadability
One quantity frangipane
One handful blanched, flaked almonds (I left this out)

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Remove shell from freezer, spread as even a layer as you can of jam onto the pastry base (I added a layer of peach slices over the top of my apricot jam layer)

Top with frangipane, spreading to cover the entire surface of the tart. Smooth the top and pop into the oven for 30 minutes. Five minutes before the tart is done, the top will be poofy and brownish. Remove from oven and strew flaked almonds on top and return to the heat for the last five minutes of baking.

The finished tart will have a golden crust and the frangipane will be tanned, poofy and a bit spongy-looking. Remove from the oven and cool on the counter. Serve warm, with crème fraîche, whipped cream or custard sauce if you wish.

When you slice into the tart, the almond paste will be firm, but slightly squidgy and the crust should be crisp but not tough.

Marmalade Chicken

2009-06-25T09:18:00.003+01:00

Sorry!!!!!! I've been such a bad blogger lately but life has just been mental and though I would have had time to blog it would have burned me out so I apologise for not being around much lately - and haven't visited other blogs either so I've that to catch up on too!

I'm getting back into the swing of things with a great quick simple dinner - marmalade chicken. A one dish dinner which everyone will love (except my weird husband lol).

Marmalade Chicken
Source: Tesco Magazine (can't remember the issue)
Serves 2

Ingredients
2 medium sized white potatoes
3 shallots, peeled and cut into 6ths
1 red pepper (I used a mixture of peppers), sliced into strips
2 chicken breasts
4 tbsp marmalade

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 175˚C
2. Peel the potatoes and cut into 1.5cm cubes. Spread evenly over the base of a baking dish and spray with oil.
3. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.
4. Spread the shallots and peppers over the top of the potatoes and spray with oil.
5. Place the chicken breasts on top and place back in the oven for 15 minutes
6. Glaze the chicken with the marmalade and return to the oven for a final 10 minutes.

Voila! Delicious chicken dinner!!!!

Daring Cooks 1: Ricotta Gnocchi

2009-05-29T08:00:00.000+01:00

Drumroll......... "Presenting the first ever Daring Cooks Challenge.............. Ricotta Gnocchi!!!!!"

Yes I'm like 2 weeks late posting this but life took over then sickness did so I'm only getting to post this now.

Ricotta Gnocchi

Ingredients
For the gnocchi:

1 pound (454 grams/16 ounces) fresh ricotta (2 cups)
2 large cold eggs, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon (1/2 ounce) unsalted butter
2 or 3 fresh sage leaves, or a few pinches of freshly grated nutmeg, or a few pinches of chopped lemon zest (all optional)
½ ounce Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated (about ¼ cup very lightly packed)
about ¼ teaspoon salt (a little more if using kosher salt)
all-purpose flour for forming the gnocchi

For the gnocchi sauce:
8 tablespoons (227 grams/1/4 pound/4 ounces) butter, sliced
2 teaspoons water

Recipe

Step 1 (the day before you make the gnocchi): Preparing the ricotta.
If the ricotta is too wet, your gnocchi will not form properly. In her cookbook, Judy Rodgers recommends checking the ricotta’s wetness. To test the ricotta, take a teaspoon or so and place it on a paper towel. If you notice a very large ring of dampness forming around the ricotta after a minute or so, then the ricotta is too wet. To remove some of the moisture, line a sieve with cheesecloth or paper towels and place the ricotta in the sieve. Cover it and let it drain for at least 8 hours and up to 24 hours in the refrigerator. Alternatively, you can wrap the ricotta carefully in cheesecloth (2 layers) and suspend it in your refrigerator for 8 to 24 hours with a bowl underneath to catch the water that’s released. Either way, it’s recommended that you do this step the day before you plan on making the gnocchi.

Step 2 (the day you plan on eating the gnocchi): Making the gnocchi dough.
To make great gnocchi, the ricotta has to be fairly smooth. Place the drained ricotta in a large bowl and mash it as best as you can with a rubber spatula or a large spoon (it’s best to use a utensil with some flexibility here). As you mash the ricotta, if you noticed that you can still see curds, then press the ricotta through a strainer to smooth it out as much as possible.
Add the lightly beaten eggs to the mashed ricotta.
Melt the tablespoon of butter. As it melts, add in the sage if you’re using it. If not, just melt the butter and add it to the ricotta mixture.
Add in any flavouring that you’re using (i.e., nutmeg, lemon zest, etc.). If you’re not using any particular flavouring, that’s fine.
Add the Parmigiano-Reggiano and the salt.
Beat all the ingredients together very well. You should end up with a soft and fluffy batter with no streaks (everything should be mixed in very well).

Step 3: Forming the gnocchi.
Fill a small pot with water and bring to a boil. When it boils, salt the water generously and keep it at a simmer. You will use this water to test the first gnocchi that you make to ensure that it holds together and that your gnocchi batter isn’t too damp.
In a large, shallow baking dish or on a sheet pan, make a bed of all-purpose flour that’s ½ an inch deep.
With a spatula, scrape the ricotta mixture away from the sides of the bowl and form a large mass in the centre of your bowl.
Using a tablespoon, scoop up about 2 to 3 teaspoons of batter and then holding the spoon at an angle, use your finger tip to gently push the ball of dough from the spoon into the bed of flour.
At this point you can either shake the dish or pan gently to ensure that the flour covers the gnocchi or use your fingers to very gently dust the gnocchi with flour. Gently pick up the gnocchi and cradle it in your hand rolling it to form it in an oval as best as you can, at no point should you squeeze it. What you’re looking for is an oval lump of sorts that’s dusted in flour and plump.

Gently place your gnocchi in the simmering water. It will sink and then bob to the top. From the time that it bobs to the surface, you want to cook the gnocchi until it’s just firm. This could take 3 to 5 minutes.
If your gnocchi begins to fall apart, this means that the ricotta cheese was probably still too wet. You can remedy this by beating a teaspoon of egg white into your gnocchi batter. If your gnocchi batter was fluffy but the sample comes out heavy, add a teaspoon of beaten egg to the batter and beat that in. Test a second gnocchi to ensure success.
Form the rest of your gnocchi. You can put 4 to 6 gnocchi in the bed of flour at a time. But don’t overcrowd your bed of flour or you may damage your gnocchi as you coat them.
Have a sheet pan ready to rest the formed gnocchi on. Line the sheet pan with wax or parchment paper and dust it with flour.
You can cook the gnocchi right away, however, Judy Rodgers recommends storing them in the refrigerator for an hour prior to cooking to allow them to firm up.

Step 4: Cooking the gnocchi.

Have a large skillet ready to go. Place the butter and water for the sauce in the skillet and set aside.
In the largest pan or pot that you have (make sure it’s wide), bring at least 2 quarts of water to a boil (you can use as much as 3 quarts of water if your pot permits). You need a wide pot or pan so that your gnocchi won’t bump into each other and damage each other.
Once the water is boiling, salt it generously.
Drop the gnocchi into the water one by one. Once they float to the top, cook them for 3 to 5 minutes (as in the case with the test gnocchi).
When the gnocchi float to the top, you can start your sauce while you wait for them to finish cooking.
Place the skillet over medium heat and melt the butter. Swirl it gently a few times as it melts. As soon as it melts and is incorporated with the water, turn off the heat. Your gnocchi should be cooked by now.
With a slotted spoon, remove the gnocchi from the boiling water and gently drop into the butter sauce. Carefully roll in the sauce until coated. Serve immediately.

Taste and Create: Orange Cake

2009-05-28T18:00:00.000+01:00

I'm slightly late in posting this (and like a million other things!!!!!!!) but life has been rather busy the last few months and I've not had time for blogging, but have been baking and cooking when I get the chance.

So this is my post for this month's Taste and Create hosted this month by Min and Shell at The Bad Girls' Kitchen.

I was paired with Tasty Treats by Poornima - a blog I hadn't come across and one I enjoyed having a sift through deciding what to make. I love orange flavours at the minute and I love baking so I had to make this....

Orange Cake
Source: Tasty Treats

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
3/4 cup oil
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp orange essence (you could add a few drops more according to your taste)
a little orange colour
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
Candied orange peel
~~Chopped mixed nuts for topping~~
Orange Flavoured Chocolate shavings (My addition to the recipe(

Recipe
Grease and line a ~~9"x5" loaf tin~~ bundt tin.
Preheat the oven to 350F/ 180C.
Sieve the flour and baking powder together and keep aside.
Beat the eggs and sugar together in a for 5mins on high.
Add the oil, orange and lemon juice, essence and colour and beat for about 2mins till well combined.
Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed just until combined.
Spread the chocolate shavings and some candied peel around the tin
Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
Bake for 25mins or til done.
Unmould and cool on a wire rack.

Daring Bakers 15: Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

2009-04-30T12:55:00.004+01:00

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

I'm a little late posting this despite having made the challenge the day after it was announced! I need to get more organised.

When I read that this month's challenge was to be baked cheesecake I have to admit I was a little sad - I'm not a big fan of baked cheesecake. However I was excited by the ability to use whatever flavours etc you wanted, I had been in the mood for some banoffee at the time and thought why not combine the 2? so I did.

I looked back to the caramel cake recipe the Daring Bakers made a while ago and made the caramel syrup. I added some of this to the cheesecake batter and poured a little layer between the biscuit base and the cheesecake. After it had all been baked I topped with some dulce de leche, sliced banana and pecans.

I just made a third of this recipe because it would only have been me eating and I didn't want to turn into a banoffee cheesecake myself so I divided it all out into 3 ramekins to make baby cheesecakes.

The Daring Bakers recipe went as follows:

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

Ingredients
crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you're looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don't want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won't crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

Pan note: The creator of this recipe used to use a springform pan, but no matter how well she wrapped the thing in tin foil, water would always seep in and make the crust soggy. Now she uses one of those 1-use foil "casserole" shaped pans from the grocery store. They're 8 or 9 inches wide and really deep, and best of all, water-tight. When it comes time to serve, just cut the foil away.

Prep notes: While the actual making of this cheesecake is a minimal time commitment, it does need to bake for almost an hour, cool in the oven for an hour, and chill overnight before it is served. Please plan accordingly!

Don't forget to check out the new Daring Kitchen website

Taste and Create: Twice the Spice Chicken

2009-04-24T20:29:00.005+01:00

I owe you all a big apology. I haven't been blogging the last fortnight because I've been a little distracted with work and by our second anniversary celebrations!

About a month ago Rob and I decided to plan surprises for each other to celebrate so on Sunday when I got home from work, Rob told me to pack my bags and surprised me with a trip to Paris for a couple of days!

I'm surprising Rob tomorrow, but it won't be anywhere near as exciting as Paris!!!!

For now though I'm cutting it tight on posting this month's Taste and Create entry. I was paired with In the Garden of Eatin' - a fun food blog filled with recipes for every day healthy cooking on a budget.

I decided to make twice the spice chicken. A quick tasty dinner for sure!

Twice the Spice Chicken
Source: In the Garden of Eatin'

Ingredients
1.5 lbs Chicken (I used diced chicken breast)
1/3 cup Canola Oil (I used rapeseed oil)
1/2 Tbsp Chili Powder
1/4 Tbsp Onion Powder
1/4 Tbsp Season Salt
Spicy Garlic Wing Sauce (I've never heard of this before, so used Jerk/BBQ sauce)

Recipe
1. Heat grill pan (or normal pan) to medium high heat.
2. In a large bowl combine oil, chili powder, onion powder and season salt (this is your first spicy layer). Toss chicken to coat.
3. Transfer chicken to the grill pan and cook through.
4. When the chicken is done cooking stir in the sauce and cook for 2-3 minutes.

Rainbow Cake from Scratch.

2009-04-10T11:50:00.002+01:00

I'm often unsure whether or not to be complimented when you serve something and people ask "where did you buy this from?" which has happened at least 5 times recently. Do you take it positively because they think what you've offered is so good they think it has to be done by a professional? Or do you take it as an insult because the person doesn't think you're capable of making something so nice?

Either way, I was asked this about this cake when I remade it for youth group, but most of them were just in awe of the colours.

I decided to redo this recipe only without the boxed cake and icing mixes, so here's a "from scratch" version for you - and it's just as fun the second time making this. I was also in shock at how many comments and links and emails I got about the Rainbow Cake I made for Taste and Create I just felt I needed to do it again.

Rainbow Cake from Scratch

Ingredients
175g butter or margarine
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
250g self raising flour
little milk (optional)

Butter Icing
75g butter or margarine
225 g icing sugar, sieved
2 tbsp milk
food colouring (optional)
sweets/hundreds and thousands to decorate (optional)

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C and grease two 17cm cake tins
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy.
3. Mix in eggs one at a time, then fold in the flour. If the mixture seems dry add a little milk.
4. Split the batter into 6 and add the different food colourings.
5. Pour half of the first batter into each tin in the centre and tap it out to spread. Repeat with every other colour.
4. Bake for 25 minutes until form to touch and golden.

5. To prepare the icing, beat all the ingredients together until fluffy and light.
6. Leave the cake to cool on a wire rack, then ice and decorate.

Basic White Rustic Loaf

2009-04-08T10:00:00.000+01:00

I love it in restaurants when they give you a basket of different breads along with some butter and oil for nibbling before your meal so I decided to make some bread when my family came for dinner one night.

This was a great simple recipe I found on channel 4 from delicious magazine.

I split the dough into 3 and made a loaf with sundried tomatoes in the middle, a loaf with black olives in the middle and a plain one. The baking time was half what the recipe below states because of this split.

Basic White Rustic Loaf
Source: channel 4 from delicious magazine.
Makes about a 750g loaf/12 slices

Ingredients
500g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tsp fine salt
7g sachet fast-action dried yeast
300 ml warm water
1 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for greasing

Recipe
1. Mix together the flour, salt and yeast in a bowl. Create a well in the centre and slowly mix in the water and the oil until the dough comes together – if the dough is very dry, add a little more water.
2. Knead the dough for 5 minutes, until smooth, on a lightly floured surface.
3. Shape like a rugby ball and put onto an oiled, large baking sheet. Leave to rise in a warm place for 40 minutes or until doubled in size.
4. Preheat oven to 220°C. Make slashes with a sharp knife in the top of the dough and dust with flour. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until risen, golden and cooked. Cool on a wire rack and slice to serve.

The Sweet 100

2009-04-07T12:00:00.001+01:00

Inspired by the omnivore's 100 (my results are here), Cakespy has created the sweet 100!

1) Copy this list into your site, including the instructions!
2) Bold all of the sweets you've eaten--or make them a different type color.
3) Cross out any of them that you'd never ever eat.
4) Consider anything that is not bold or crossed out your "To Do" List.
5) Optional: Post a comment here linking to your results--or just post a comment letting us know how many you've tried, or what you're going to try next!

41 out of 100 - not bad!

Red Velvet Cake
Princess Torte
Whoopie Pie
Apple Pie with sharp cheddar
Beignet
Baklava
Black and white cookie
Seven Layer Bar (also known as the Magic Bar or Hello Dolly bars)
Fried Fruit pie (sometimes called hand pies)
Kringle
Just-fried (still hot) doughnut
Scone with clotted cream
Betty, Grunt, Slump, Buckle or Pandowdy
Halvah
Macarons
Banana pudding with nilla wafers
Bubble tea (with tapioca "pearls")
Dixie Cup
Rice Krispie treats
Alfajores
Blondies
Croquembouche
Girl Scout cookies
Moon cake
Candy Apple
Baked Alaska
Brooklyn Egg Cream
Nanaimo bar
Baba au rhum
King Cake
Sachertorte
Pavlova
Tres Leches Cake
Trifle
Shoofly Pie
Key Lime Pie (made with real key lime)
Panna Cotta
New York Cheesecake
Napoleon / mille-fueille
Russian Tea Cake / Mexican Wedding Cake
Anzac biscuits
Pizzelle
Kolache
Buckeyes
Malasadas
Moon Pie
Dutch baby
Boston Cream Pie
Homemade chocolate chip cookies
Pralines
Gooey butter cake
Rusks
Daifuku
Green tea cake or cookies
Cupcakes from a cupcake shop
Crème brûlée
Some sort of deep fried fair food (twinkie, candy bar, cupcake)
Yellow cake with chocolate frosting
Jelly Roll
Pop Tarts
Charlotte Russe
An "upside down" dessert (Pineapple upside down cake or Tarte Tatin)
Hummingbird Cake
Jell-O from a mold
Black forest cake
Mock Apple Pie (Ritz Cracker Pie)
Kulfi
Linzer torte
Churro
Stollen
Angel Food Cake
Mincemeat pie
Concha
Opera Cake
Sfogliatelle / Lobster tail
Pain au chocolat
A piece of Gingerbread House
Cassata
Cannoli
Rainbow cookies
Religieuse
Petits fours
Chocolate Souffle
Bienenstich (Bee Sting Cake)
Rugelach
Hamenstashen
Homemade marshmallows
Rigo Janci
Pie or cake made with candy bar flavors (Snickers pie, Reeses pie, etc)
Divinity
Coke or Cola cake
Gateau Basque
S'mores
Figgy Pudding
Bananas foster or other flaming dessert
Joe Froggers
Sables
Millionaire's Shortbread
Animal crackers
Basbousa

Marmalade cake

2009-04-06T12:00:00.001+01:00

About a month ago I was away for the weekend with the youth group. Heading out my car was loaded with food, most of which was devoured, but often there's things left over like some biscuits, milk, bread, crisps, cereals and marmalade. We end up dividing the leftovers among the group because there's no way I could use it all up on my own. When it came to sharing it out this time though nobody wanted the marmalade!!!!! What's wrong with marmalade? So I took it and decided to make a marmalade cake for them as well as enjoying it on some lovely golden toast.

I hunted through all my bookmarks and remembered the lovely Rosie blogged on her old blog about Marmalade Cake. (You can catch Rosie over on Baking Cakes Galore now). How could I resist?

I made mine in 2 victoria sandwich tins and put them one on top of the other with about 2-3 tbsp marmalade in between then topped off with the icing (which turned out a little too orange when I added too much red colouring the the yellow).

Marmalade Cake

Ingredients
Cake
175g (6 oz) self-raising flour, sifted
175g (6 oz) softened butter
175g (6 oz) soft brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
Grated zest of 1 orange
Juice ½ orange
2 tbsp thin-cut marmalade
Icing
200g (7 oz) icing sugar, sifted
Juice of 1 orange
Orange edible food colouring (optional)
A few sprinkles (optional)

Recipe
1. Grease two victoria sandwich tins. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3. Add a little of the egg at a time until it's all mixed through. Then mix in the marmalade, OJ and zest.
4. Fold in the sifted flour gently folding.
5. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tins and level the surface off.
6. Place into the preheated oven to bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool for 5 – 10 minutes in the tin before removing to cool on a wire rack.
7. To make the icing; add the sifted icing sugar a little edible orange food colour (optional), and enough orange juice to make a spreadable icing for coating the top of the cake. Spread over the top of the cake and add sprinkles if using.

Post 300! Chocolate puddings

2009-04-04T19:30:00.001+01:00

(Photo by Shawn Cunning)

This is my 300th post!!! Isn't that mad? I need to mark the occasion with something special and what better than chocolate right?

This is another recipe from Nigella Express. You know the more I make from this book the more I want to make from it because everything I've made from it has been delicious so far!

I've made these chocolate puddings a few times now and love them more and more each time. The spongy chocolate, the gooey chocolate sauce and then the honeycomb on top to finish it off - perfect!

"Glitzy" Chocolate Puddings
Source: Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson, p221
Serves 8

Ingredients
PUDDINGS
100g dark chocolate (70%) (I used 50%)
100g soft unsalted butter
200g sugar
4 large eggs
50g plain flour
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
GLAZE
150g dark chocolate (70%) (Again I used 50%)
45g unsalted butter
2 "Crunchie" chocolate bars or honeycomb broken up into crumbs

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C.
2. Break up 100g chocolate and place in a bowl with the 100g butter. Melt together either in a microwave or double boiler. Once melted, leave to cool a little.
3. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until thick, moussy and pale. Then fold in the flour, soda and salt.
4. Gently fold in the slightly cooled chocolate, then divide the mix between 8 ramekins. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes.
5. Prepare the glaze by melting to chocolate and butter together and whisk to make a glossy mixture for spooning over the puddings, then top them with some crunchie.

Taste and Create: Rainbow Cake

2009-03-31T19:00:00.001+01:00

It's Taste and Create time again. This month I was paired up with Tara from Eat, Be and See who is a woman after my own heart being a Harry Potter Fan and by having this cake on her blog that I have made for this month.

Rainbow Cake!!!! Check out Tara's (on her funky Harry Potter plate -

How could you not be excited by that?

So the recipe calls for a box of cake mix. I haven't used cake mix in ages and ages so I'm in the shop trying to figure out what might be best and I forget that plan when I spot that the Barbie cupcake mix includes pink frosting and a strawberry decorating tube so just have to buy that!!!!! It makes 12 small cupcakes worth of batter but that's fine because it'll only be me eating this cake anyways.

I loved this challenge, the smells of the cake mix reminded me of birthday parties when I was little and the white icing mix turning pink entertained me

Rainbow Cake
Source: Eat, Be and See

Ingredients
1 box of Green's Barbie cupcake mix
A mix of food colourings

Recipe
1. Make up cake mix according to packet instructions and split into 6.
2. Mix in the colourings to the 6 cake mixes.

3. Pour the batter into the centre of your greased cake tin one colour at a time.

4. Bake according to packet instructions - however mine had to bake a little longer because I obviously didn't make the Barbie cupcakes.

A slightly thin cake but good seeing as only I will be eating it.

5. Make icing according to packet instructions.

6. Decorate cake.

7. Slice in and taste the rainbow.

Daring Bakers 14: Lasagne of Emilia Romagna

2009-03-29T11:16:00.000+01:00

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

There's big news in the world of the Daring Bakers.

1. There is a brand spanking new website up and running - The Daring Kitchen is a fab new resource for people who take up the challenges or not, there's a great forum there with plenty of people ready to advise and generally just gossip the world of food, some great history on how the Daring Bakers came to be and has grown and details on DB in the press.

2. As well as this new site and forum there are new icons and "superheroes"

How cool are they, huh?

3. Finally, there is a brand new food event starting next month - the Daring Cooks! I've signed up to see how it goes but I'm excited for the first challenge. Each month the DB challenge is announced on the 1st and the DC challenges will be announced on the 17th of each month so the post dates are spread a little through the month.

Right, so on with this month's write up.

I was excited about this month's challenge because I've made lasagne before but never with pasta I've made myself. I was also excited because I've wanted to try making my own pasta for ages so this was perfect.

Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna (Lasagne Verdi al Forno)
(Serves 8 to 10 as a first course, 6 to 8 as a main dish)

Preparation Time: 15 minutes to assemble and 40 minutes cooking time

10 quarts (9 litres) salted water
1 recipe Spinach Pasta cut for lasagna (recipe follows)
1 recipe Bechamel Sauce (recipe follows)
1 recipe Country Style Ragu (recipe follows)
1 cup (4 ounces/125g) freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (I used cheddar instead - I just love it in lasagne)

Ragu
I used my own recipe for the ragu, it went as follows.

oil
1 onion, finely sliced
3 garlic cloves, skinned and minced
500g mince beef
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
2 x 400ml tins of chopped plum tomatoes
worcestershire sauce
salt
pepper
bay leaf

- Heat the some oil in a saucepan and cook the onion and garlic for 4-5 minutes until softened
- Add the mince beef and cook through
- Stir through the basil and oregano and add the tomatoes, along with a few splashes of worcestershire sauce, some salt and pepper and the bay leaf.
- Leave to simmer for 15-20 minutes

Spinach Pasta
Preparation: 45 minutes

2 jumbo eggs (2 ounces/60g or more)
10 ounces (300g) fresh spinach, rinsed dry, and finely chopped; or 6 ounces (170g) frozen chopped spinach, defrosted and squeezed dry
3&1/2 cups (14 ounces/400g) all purpose unbleached (plain) flour (organic stone ground preferred)

Mixing the dough:
- Mound the flour in the center of your work surface and make a well in the middle.
- Add the eggs and spinach.
- Use a wooden spoon to beat together the eggs and spinach. Then gradually start incorporating shallow scrapings of flour from the sides of the well into the liquid.
- As you work more and more flour into the liquid, the well’s sides may collapse. Use a pastry scraper to keep the liquids from running off and to incorporate the last bits of flour into the dough. Don’t worry if it looks like a hopelessly rough and messy lump.

Kneading:
- With the aid of the scraper to scoop up unruly pieces, start kneading the dough. Once it becomes a cohesive mass, use the scraper to remove any bits of hard flour on the work surface – these will make the dough lumpy.
- Knead the dough for about 3 minutes. Its consistency should be elastic and a little sticky. If it is too sticky to move easily, knead in a few more tablespoons of flour.
- Continue kneading about 10 minutes, or until the dough has become satiny, smooth, and very elastic. It will feel alive under your hands. Do not shortcut this step. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and let it relax at room temperature 30 minutes to 3 hours.

Stretching and Thinning:
- If using an extra-long rolling pin work with half the dough at a time. With a regular-length rolling pin, roll out a quarter of the dough at a time and keep the rest of the dough wrapped.
- Lightly sprinkle a large work surface with flour. The idea is to stretch the dough rather than press down and push it. Shape it into a ball and begin rolling out to form a circle, frequently turning the disc of dough a quarter turn.
- As it thins outs, start rolling the disc back on the pin a quarter of the way toward the center and stretching it gently sideways by running the palms of your hands over the rolled-up dough from the center of the pin outward. Unroll, turn the disc a quarter turn, and repeat. Do twice more.
- Stretch and even out the center of the disc by rolling the dough a quarter of the way back on the pin. Then gently push the rolling pin away from you with one hand while holding the sheet in place on the work surface with the other hand. Repeat three more times, turning the dough a quarter turn each time.

- Repeat the two processes as the disc becomes larger and thinner. The goal is a sheet of even thickness. For lasagne, the sheet should be so thin that you can clearly see your hand through it and see colours. Cut into rectangles about 4 by 8 inches (10 x 20 cm). Note: Enza says that transparency is a crucial element of lasagne pasta and the dough should be rolled as thinly as possible. She says this is why her housekeeper has such strong arms!
- Dry the pasta at room temperature by draping over a cloth-covered chair backs, broom handles, or specially designed pasta racks found in cookware shops and store in a sealed container or bag.

Bechamel Sauce
Preparation Time: 15 minutes

4 tablespoons (2 ounces/60g) unsalted butter
4 tablespoons (2 ounces/60g) all purpose unbleached (plain) flour, organic stone ground preferred
2&2/3 cups (approx 570ml) milk
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Freshly grated nutmeg to taste

- Using a medium-sized saucepan, melt the butter over low to medium heat.
- Sift over the flour, whisk until smooth, and then stir (without stopping) for about 3 minutes.
- Whisk in the milk a little at a time and keep the mixture smooth.
- Bring to a slow simmer, and stir 3 to 4 minutes, or until the sauce thickens.
- Cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes, until the sauce thickens. Season with salt, pepper, and a hint of nutmeg.

Assembly
Assembling the Ingredients:
- Have all the sauces, rewarmed gently over a medium heat, and the pasta at hand.
- Have a large perforated skimmer and a large bowl of cold water next to the stove.
- Spread a double thickness of paper towels over a large counter space.
- Preheat the oven to 350˚F (180˚C).
- Oil or butter a 3 quart (approx 3 litre) shallow baking dish.

Cooking the Pasta:
- Bring the salted water to a boil.
- Drop about four pieces of pasta in the water at a time. Cook about 2 minutes. If you are using dried pasta, cook about 4 minutes, taste, and cook longer if necessary.
- The pasta will continue cooking during baking, so make sure it is only barely tender.
- Lift the lasagne from the water with a skimmer, drain, and then slip into the bowl of cold water to stop cooking.
- When cool, lift out and dry on the paper towels. Repeat until all the pasta is cooked.

Assembling the Lasagne:
- Spread a thin layer of béchamel over the bottom of the baking dish.
- Arrange a layer of about four overlapping sheets of pasta over the béchamel.
- Spread a thin layer of béchamel (about 3 or 4 spoonfuls) over the pasta, and then an equally thin layer of the ragu.
- Sprinkle with about 1&1/2 tablespoons of the béchamel and about 1/3 cup of the cheese.
- Repeat the layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with béchamel sauce and topping with a generous dusting of cheese.

Baking and Serving the Lasagne:
- Cover the baking dish lightly with foil, taking care not to let it touch the top of the lasagne.
- Bake 40 minutes, or until almost heated through.
- Remove the foil and bake another 10 minutes, or until hot in the center (test by inserting a knife – if it comes out very warm, the dish is ready). Take care not to brown the cheese topping. It should be melted, creamy looking and barely tinged with a little gold.
- Turn off the oven, leave the door ajar and let the lasagne rest for about 10 minutes. Then serve. This is not a solid lasagne, but a moist one that slips a bit when it is cut and served.

Buttermilk Chicken

2009-03-27T10:00:00.000Z

I'm absolutely loving the Nigella Express book I got in the January sales. I'm pretty sure I've made loads more out of it than any other cook book I have.

I found some chicken drumsticks in the freezer and immediately thought of this recipe and I'm glad I did, because it was beautifully juicy and tender and full of flavour. Thank you again Nigella!!!

Buttermilk Chicken
Source: Nigella Express, Nigella Lawson, p274

Ingredients
12 chicken drumsticks
500ml buttermik
60ml vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, skinned and bruised
1 tbsp crushed peppercorns
1 tbsp sea salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Recipe
1. Mix together the buttermilk, 60ml oil, garlic, pepper, salt, cumin and maple syrup.
2. Place the chicken in a ziplock bag and pour in the mixture. Squish everything around to marinade
3. Leave to marinate in the fridge for at least 30 minutes but if possible overnight
4. Preheat oven to 220˚C. Place chicken pieces in a roasting tine lined with foil, shaking off the excess marinade
5. Drizzle the 2 tbsp oil over the chicken and roast for 30 minutes.

Pan fried glazed pork chops

2009-03-25T12:00:00.000Z

I was given Jamie Oliver's "Ministry of Food" book for Christmas and have only recently been making stuff from it. There's some great recipes in it and a lot of the book suggests varieties on each recipe too to help with learning and trying new things.

This is a straightforward recipe and a really delicious one and with some variety in the choice of glaze. I used mango chutney but you'll see some other ideas in the ingredients list.

Pan fried glazed pork chops
Source Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food, p 230

Ingredients
2 pork chops
olive oil
salt and pepper
apple sauce/mango chutney/apricot jam/maple syrup/honey to glaze
lemon juice (optional)

Recipe
1. Trip the skin off the edge of the chops and cut into 2 long strips.
2. Rub the pork chop with salt and pepper and heat a little oil in a pan.
3. When the pan is hot add the strips of skin and move about. Remove when crispy and golden.
4. Lay the chops in the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes on each side, turning every minute.
5. Spoon a large spoonful of your glaze over each chop and keep turning to be sure both sides are evenly glazed. Cook until golden red.
6. Remove from the pan and leave to rest for a minute before serving.
7. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the top to balance out sweetness

Monthly Triplet: Raspberry cottage cheese cake

2009-03-23T09:00:00.000Z

This is the third part of February's monthly triplet of recipes from magazines and next week I'll get into March's triplet.

I was caught by the photo of this recipe in the magazine, it was a blueberry cottage cheese cake but I had a bag of frozen raspberries I was dying to use so I subbed out the blueberries, but I think I may just try this sometime with blueberry because it was a great cake and fun to make. I also halved the recipe and baked in a sandwich tin instead of the 9.5" tin. I think this would be perfect with some afternoon tea sitting out in the beautiful sunshine we've been having here over the past week.

Heres the recipe using my halved measurements

Raspberry cottage cheese cake
Source: Easy Food magazine February 2009, p65

Ingredients
butter, for greasing
2 eggs, separated
70 g brown sugar
125g cottage cheese, beaten until smooth
75g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
100g semolina
1/2 tsp lemon rind
2-3 handfuls of frozen raspberries
2 tbsp caster sugar
~~25g flaked almonds~~ (I thought I had some when I started making this but it turns out I didn't)

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C and grease your cake tin.
2. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl, add the sugar and whisk until the mixture is light and creamy.
3. Mix in the cottage cheese.
4. Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl then stir into the cheese mixture. Fold the semolina and lemon rind in.
5. Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff, then fold into the cake mixture.
6. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and sprinkle the raspberries over the top along with the caster sugar ~~and almond flakes~~.
7. Bake in the oven for 1 hour (because mine was smaller it took 40 minutes)

I twittered about how I've been blogging too much cake lately and worried that you all think I ONLY eat cake so I'm going to blog a few non cakey things this week to try and convince you!

Pork and Mango Stir Fry

2009-03-20T16:39:00.003Z

My hubby, Rob, is working in Liverpool these days which means there are loads more options for me for dinner. I threw this together for myself and absolutely loved it!

Pork and Mango Stir Fry

Serves 1

Ingredients
1 tbsp vegetable oil
150g pork pieces
2-3 tbsp mango chutney
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp soy sauce
pinch of dried chili flakes
handful of mixed vegetables (I used broccoli, red pepper, onion and peas)
2 rings of fresh pineapple chopped up
Add to wok noodles for one.

Recipe
1. Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan and add the pork. Stir fry until cooked through (about 5 minutes)
2. Add the mango chutney, oyster sauce, soy sauce and chili flakes and stir through. Cook for 1 minute.
3. Add the vegetables and pineapple and cook for 3-5 minutes.
4. Stir in the noodles and cook for 1 minute and serve.

When Irish eyes are smiling

2009-03-16T19:31:00.004Z

Tomorrow is the holiday celebrated by everyone else more than the Irish themselves - it is St Paddy's day!

I've had several emails asking about recipes for corned beef and cabbage which honestly I have never had or even seen in real life before! So here are some links to a few of the actual Irish recipes I've made in the past:

Irish Tea Loaf
Irish Apple Cake
Soda bread
Potato bread
Irish Stew

There are loads of other good Irish food blogs to check out for some actual Irish recipes too.

A Plaice for Everything
A Random Walk Down Grub Street
Bandon Farmers’ Market
Beer Revolution
Bibliocook
Bubble Brothers
Cafe Paradiso Blog
Cake Creations
Chew on That
Conor’s Bandon Blog
Cookzors
Conor's Bandon Blog
Cork Food
Dine and Wine Club Cork
Dublin Gobbler
Eat Drink Live
Eaters Regret
Eating Out Ireland
Eat Me Drink Me
English Mum
Fairy Cake Heaven
Food and Drink Ireland
Food For Life - Kevin Thornton
Food Lorists
Gastronom.ie
Geeky Pants
Glenisk Organic Dairy
Grannymar
Ice Cream Ireland
iFoods Video Recipes
I Just Love Food
Irish Whiskey Notes
Irish Wine Contemplations
Italian Foodies
Letters on Lunches
Lidl Eats
Little Bird Eats
Martin Dwyer
Messy Chef
Munster Pubs
Myfood.ie Blog
Ollie’s Place
Ommnomnom
Organico
Organic Yum-Yum
Our Grannie’s Recipes
Peppermint Tea
Pink Whisk
Quirky Kitchen
Robert Francis Wine Blog
Rocking Grass
Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments
Simon Tyrell
Sour Grapes
Stuff Yer Bake
Sunday Lunches
Superyacht Chef
Tast.ie
The Daily Spud
The Food.ie
The Fruity Cook
The Good Mood Food Blog
The Humble Housewife
The Natural Foods Bakery
Truly Scrumptiousness
Ummera Smoked Products
Val’s Kitchen
Vinca’s in the Kitchen
Well Done Fillet
What the Waiter Knows
Where’s the Salt

This list has been taken from Tast.ie - the spicendipity blog

Happy St Patrick's Day!!!

Monthly Triplet: Basic Lemon Curd

2009-03-12T15:28:00.003Z

This is my 2nd of 3 recipes bookmarked for February. In my last post for February's monthly triplet (which I've just decided is the name for this'feature') I mentioned how there weren't many recipes in February's magazines that I wanted to try out, but there were 2 recipes, which doesn't work well for a 3 recipe feature but here is the first of the 2 magazine recipes - Basic Lemon Curd.

I've never really had much lemon curd but I've spotted another recipe I'd love to make which requires lemon curd so I thought why not try and make it too.

I didn't take a photo of it cos it's lemon curd, how exciting a photo are you going to get? But if you really want to see photos of lemon curd check out the Google Image search for "lemon curd".

Basic Lemon Curd
Source: Easy Food Magazine, February 2009, p 62

Makes about 500ml

Ingredients
125g butter
Juice of 4 large lemons
250g caster sugar
4 eggs

Recipe
1. Melt the butter, lemon juice, and sugar in a saucepan over a low heat. Take off the heat and set to the side.
2. In a bowl whisk the eggs until mixed together.
3. Pour half of the lemon/sugar/butter mix in with the eggs and whisk until smooth.
4. Pour the egg mixture back into the saucepan with the lemon mixture. Bring this to the boil, stirring continuously, the reduce the heat and gently simmer until the mixture is thick and glossy.
5. Pour into sterile jar or container and leave to cool before covering and refrigerating.

Whole Orange Cake

2009-03-10T17:28:00.003Z

In January I made a little "vow" to make at least 3 recipes a month from the food magazines I have bought that month. Well February's mags weren't too great for me so I ended up making some recipes I have bookmarked in cookbooks instead and this is one of them - Whole Orange Cake.

Really simple to make and very tasty - especially seeing as it was topped off with chocolate ganache.

Whole Orange Cake
Source: Simply Essentials: Fruit by Donna Hay

Ingredients
2 oranges
175g butter
1.5 cups caster sugar
3 eggs
3/4 cup ground almonds
1.5 cups plain flour
2 tsps baking powder

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 160˚C
2. Wash oranges and place in saucepan of water on a medium heat. Bring the water to the boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Leave for 30 minutes or until soft.
3. Take the oranges out of the water and leave to cool a little. Chop coarsely.
4. Process the oranges in a food processor until finely chopped.
5. Add the butter, sugar, eggs, ground almond, flour and baking powder and process until smooth and mixed through.
6. Pour into a greased 9" cake tin and bake for 1 hour or until cooked through.

Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients
3/4 cups single cream
100g dark chocolate, finely chopped
70g milk chocolate, finely chopped

Recipe
1. Bring the cream to a boil in a saucepan over a medium heat.
2. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate.
3. Leae to melt slightly and then stir until the mixture is glossy and smooth.

Red Velvet Cake

2009-03-02T09:59:00.006Z

Red Velvet Cake has been one I've read loads about on various blogs and have been meaning to try making for the longest time, so when Sio at Cake Creations and I decided to meet up to bake some stuff together we ended up making the Daring Baker's flourless chocolate cake and this red velvet cake using a recipe on Equal Opportunity Kitchen. Thank you Sio for coming and making this with me. (You can read Sio's write up on the cake here and see some of the step by step pictures too)

This was fun to make but awkward for trying to keep the red food dye off everything - I unfortunately have a red stain on my nice wood chopping board now. We ended up making 3 layers from the huge amount of batter which worked out ok cos there's a huge amount of cream cheese frosting in this one too, however there was a little problem with the frosting in that we added almost triple the icing sugar to thicken it up (probably because the butter was too soft at the start) and it was still rather runny, which ended up making this a self icing cake:

Red Velvet Cake
Source: Equal Opportunity Dinner who sourced it from More From Magnolia by Allysa Torey

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp white vinegar
3 large eggs
1 (1-ounce) bottle liquid red food colouring (tasteless variety)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk

Recipe
1. Beat butter at medium speed with stand mixer (paddle attachment) or electric mixer until fluffy.
2. Gradually add sugar, vanilla and vinegar, beating well.
3. Add eggs, 1 at a time beating until blended after each addition.
4. Add food colouring, beating until combined.
5. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Add to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed until blended after each addition.
6. Pour into 2 greased and floured 9 inch round cakepans.
7. Bake at 350F for 20 - 22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 5 minutes; remove from pans and cool on wire racks.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients
1 (8 oz) package cream cheese at room temperature
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 (16 oz) package powdered sugar (2 cups) but we used almost 6 cups
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (if you want your icing to stay pure white use clear vanilla extract)
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Recipe
Beat cream cheese and butter until creamy; gradually add sugar and vanilla, beating well.

Layer the cakes and frosting then cover the tops and sides with frosting and decorate.

This is my entry to Bookmarked Recipes for next Monday's round up. Check out this week's round up now!

Daring Bakers 13: Flourless Chocolate Cake

2009-02-28T08:41:00.007Z

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Last February was my first ever Daring Baker challenge - it's been great year and a very challenging year too but it makes me look forward to what's next even more. I was looking forward to making this month's challenge from the moment I first read about it..... I mean who doesn't love chocolate cake????? Well my hubby, but that's not really anything to go by. And ice cream too???? A fantastic challenge.

I've made a similar cake before, Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake, which did have a little flour and some sugar in there too and just tasted incredible so remembering my thoughts of this and my youth group's love for that cake I was excited to make this month's challenge.

I set about making the ice cream first and used Dharm's recipe. So tasty and creamy, I love it.

Dharm's Ice Cream Recipe
Classic Vanilla Ice Cream
Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Recipe comes from the Ice Cream Book by Joanna Farrow and Sara Lewis (tested modifications and notes in parentheses by Dharm)

Ingredients
1 Vanilla Pod (or substitute with vanilla extract)
300ml / ½ pint / 1 ¼ cups Semi Skimmed Milk – in the U.S. this is 2% fat (or use fresh full fat milk that is pasteurised and homogenised {as opposed to canned or powdered}). Dharm used whole milk.
4 large egg yolks
75g / 3oz / 6 tbsp caster sugar {superfine sugar can be achieved in a food processor or use regular granulated sugar}
5ml / 1 tsp corn flour {cornstarch}
300ml / ½ pint / 1 ¼ cups Double Cream (48% butter fat) {in the U.S. heavy cream is 37% fat)
{you can easily increase your cream's fat content by heating 1/4 cup of heavy cream with 3 Tbs of butter until melted - cool to room temperature and add to the heavy cream as soon as whisk marks appear in the cream, in a slow steady stream, with the mixer on low speed. Raise speed and continue whipping the cream) or use heavy cream the difference will be in the creaminess of the ice cream.

Recipe
1. Using a small knife slit the vanilla pod lengthways. Pour the milk into a heavy based saucepan, add the vanilla pod and bring to the boil. Remove from heat and leave for 15 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse
Lift the vanilla pod up. Holding it over the pan, scrape the black seeds out of the pod with a small knife so that they fall back into the milk. SET the vanilla pod aside and bring the milk back to the boil.
2. Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and corn-flour in a bowl until the mixture is thick and foamy. 3. Gradually pour in the hot milk, whisking constantly. Return the mixture to the pan and cook over a gentle hear, stirring all the time
4. When the custard thickens and is smooth, pour it back into the bowl. Cool it then chill.
5. By Hand: Whip the cream until it has thickened but still falls from a spoon. Fold it into the custard and pour into a plastic tub or similar freeze-proof container. Freeze for 6 hours or until firm enough to scoop, beating it twice (during the freezing process – to get smoother ice cream or else the ice cream will be icy and coarse)
By Using and Ice Cream Maker: Stir the cream into the custard and churn the mixture until thick (follow instructions on your ice cream maker)

Earlier this week I had my good friend Sio from Cake Creations round to the house for a bake-a-thon and we made the cake together.

One of the criteria for this month was that we made this with our favourite chocolate. I used Belgian chocolate (about 50% cocoa), which while it isn't my favourite chocolate for everyday consumption, I prefer a chocolate cake to be that taste of somewhere between milk chocolate (about 30% cocoa) and dark chocolate (about 70% cocoa).

Another of the criteria was the option to make it a true Valentino - heart shaped. Thank you Sio for bringing your heart shaped tin. We had enough batter for making the heart shaped cake and a few little round muffin sized ones.

Flourless Chocolate Cake
Preparation Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

Recipe
1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

Taste and Create: Caramel Filled Chocolate Cookies

2009-02-23T18:40:00.007Z

It's that time again - Taste and Create time and this month I was paired with Cooking in an Apron. It was really tricky deciding which recipe to make from this blog because as I went through it I had noticed about a dozen that I'd love to try and a few I think I will after this anyways but I decided to make the caramel filled chocolate cookies mainly because I haven't made cookies in forever!

These were so fun to make and incredibly delicious to eat - especially when they're just out of the oven. Check out that just fresh from the oven gooiness.....

Then the final product with some melted white chocolate drizzled on top....

I love these and having bought way too many rolos I'll just have to make them again - or else just scoff them!

Caramel Filled Chocolate Cookies
Source = Cooking in an Apron
Makes 40-48

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup sugar
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup margarine or butter, softened
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 cup chopped pecans (I left these out)
40-48 Rolos, unwrapped (from 13-oz. pkg.)
1 Tbsp sugar(Left this out)
4 oz. vanilla-flavored candy coating, if desired I used melted white chocolate

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 375˚F/190˚C
2. In medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa and baking soda; mix well.
3. In large bowl, combine 1 cup sugar, brown sugar and margarine; beat until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and eggs; beat well. Add flour mixture; blend well. (Stir in 1/2 cup of the pecans.) If necessary, cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate 30 minutes for easier handling.
4. For each cookie, with floured hands, shape about 1 tablespoon dough around 1 caramel candy, covering completely.
(5. In small bowl, combine remaining 1/2 cup pecans and 1 tablespoon sugar. Press one side of each ball into pecan mixture. Place, nut side up, 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.)
6. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes or until set and slightly cracked. Cool 2 minutes; remove from cookie sheets. Cool on wire rack for 15 minutes or until completely cooled.
7. Melt candy coating in small bowl in microwave, stirring constantly until smooth. Drizzle over cookies.

Soy Honey Cocktail Sausages

2009-02-18T19:38:00.005Z

Last Sunday was a manic day. to start with little Stewie (our wee dog) had to get taken to the vet - he had a run in with a tree at the park the day before. After that I had to rush to church then to the shop to pick up some bits for the afternoon. Shortly after getting lunch we had to go pick up a drugged up Stewie from the vet and then straight after that I had to get back down to church for a band rehearsal for our youth service so I was kept busy at the rehearsal, then the service and then we had our youth group meet after that too!!!!! What a day of running here there and everywhere, and in the middle of that I had to make dinner for our band! So I had some cocktail sausages, oven chips and a Nigella recipe to use.

Unfortunately after making them I only got to have one but it was so good I've bought in some more cocktail sausages with the plan of having them all to myself! And I also wasn't able to get a photo because they were all scoffed so quickly so I'll add a photo when I remake this one.

And here's a photo of the second batch.... still sooooo good! And with perfectly well again Stewie craving over them in the background!

Soy Honey Cocktail Sausages
Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson, p322
Ingredients
1kg (75) cocktail sausages (I had a pack of 60)
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
125ml honey

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 220˚C. Separate sausages if linked and spread over a roasting tin
2. Mix together the honey, soy sauce and sesame oil. Pour over the sausages and mix well to cover.
3. Roast for 25 minutes and turn half way through.

I'm sending this to Giz and Psychgrad for the Tried,Tested and True 3 event.

I'm also sending this into the blog event I started and still run with the help of some excellent guest hosts every week - Bookmarked Recipes. This week Maggie from Doghill Kitchen is hosting.

Blog Review 2008 (a bit late)

2009-02-16T12:00:00.000Z

I only just realised that this wasn't posted at the turn of the new year, so apologies for the delay but here's my review of 2008 highlighting a couple of my favourite recipes from each month.

January
Balsamic Grilled Chicken - simple recipe, but fantastically delicious!
Jamie Oliver's Mince Pies - this brought a huge amount of traffic to the site over December 08 and I can tell why, they're delicious!!!!!

February
Cook Yourself Thin Brownies - how can you not love the sound of this?
Chicken Paella - a great tasty one dish dinner

March
Pizza dough/Calzone - this has become a regular feature at the dinner table in our house and even after trying other dough recipes this one still wins.
Sweet pepper pasta sauce - I love making batches of this and freezing for quick meals.

April
Lamb and Apricot Stew - an improved version of an earlier blogged about recipe and also my entry to RTE's Cook of the Year competition
Strawberry Cupcakes with "Champagne" glaze - these were just soooooo good!

May
Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake - another favourite on the search engines and a huge hit with my youth group
Chocolate and orange meringues - a great recipe for successful meringues!

June
Sweet bacon and chicken bites - require a little bit of prep but well worth it
New and improved Malteser buns - this is another popular recipe that people seem to do a lot of searches for and a fantastically delicious traybake!

July
Orange and poppy seed cake - what my youth group refers to as "druggy cake" cos of the opium in poppy seeds, but a definite hit
Green chilli chicken - a bit of an experiment of mine and a successful one.

August
Vanilla Fudge - what's not to love about fudge?
Chocolate cupcakes with strawberry chocolate ganache - a tasty treat to mark one year blogging over at Ruth E Babes Blog

September
Crash Hot Potatoes - a great side dish
Victoria Sandwich Cake - a cake I can't help but make over and over and over.

October
Garlic and Chili Chicken with Basil - this dish is jam packed with flavour
Only one post for this month because we were away on holiday for most of it!

November
Gordon Ramsay's Lasagna al Forno - I was so excited to be making this and have loved making it since too
Steak pie - a deliciously comforting dish for this time of year

December
Lemon cake with passionfruit syrup - beautifully tasty cake
Irish Tea Loaf - perfect for snacking on

A belated happy new year to you all!

Almost Anti-Valentines Post

2009-02-14T08:00:00.001Z

Well it's Valentine's Day today so I hope everyone who is doing something to mark the occasion has a great time. Rob and I don't really celebrate Valentines, we are making sure to spend time together but that's because Rob is away from home Mondays to Fridays now so our time together has just fell on Valentines. This is unfortunate because we had hoped to go out for dinner together but everywhere is going to be more expensive than usual and cheesed up with Valentines stuff so we'll probably be having a take out or I may just be cooking, whatever we're doing we'll be supporting this little project as we do it:

'Turn me on, Turn it off’, asking the nation what’s green and sexy this Valentine’s. See Britain Unplugged for more details.

This is the brainchild of The Energy Saving Trust who are on a mission to turn Valentine’s Day green.

Here are a couple of thoughts from our friends at Britain Unplugged to get you in the mood:
- Add some spice to your relationship…add extra chillies to your meal and turn down the thermostat by one degree this February 14
- Pick up a cook book and turn off the TV chef to get inspired for your Valentine’s Day meal. If all couples in the UK turned off their TVs this Valentine’s Day, it would save them nearly £780,000 and almost 3,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

For more tips and stories see here

Happy Valentines Day and I hope you enjoy ‘Turn me on, Turn it off’ as well!

Support Fairtrade

2009-02-13T12:27:00.003Z

I received an email asking for a plug, well actually I've received quite a few recently, I want to share this one with you today because I think it's a worthy one so here's the details.

"There's a photography exhibition starting yesterday (12th February) at Bewley's of Grafton Street. It will run for 2 weeks.
It's a celebration of Fairtrade Fortnight and there are images of people who work on the Fairtrade farms that supply Bewley's.
It's free. Anyone can drop in and check it out.....

That in itself would be pretty boring, so here's more:

1. Bewley's is giving away a free trip to Nicaragua including flights, accommodation, and guide.
2. Bewley's is also giving away free afternoon treats for two every day throughout Fairtrade fortnight.
3. There are also some rather stylish bags to be had made out of hession sacks used for coffee.

It's incredibly easy to win the afternoon treats... all you have to do is visit the Bewley's Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bewleys/60778327564#/pages/Bewleys/60778327564?ref=nf), become a fan, and post your answer to the question on the wall and you're in with a good chance to win!"

I've also another thing to plug tomorrow as it's Valentine's related so come back to hear about that too.

Thai Chicken Noodle Soup

2009-02-12T22:05:00.005Z

I had decided that in an effort to make more of the recipes I bookmark that I should do 3 recipes a month from the food magazines I buy. I've done one better and made a fourth - Thai Chicken Noodle Soup

Thai Chicken Noodle Soup
Easy Food Magazine, January 2009, p37
Serves 2

Ingredients
200g chicken breast, diced
1/2 tsp cornflour
2 tbsp oil
1 tbsp red curry paste
1 tsp ginger, grated
120ml chicken stock
400ml coconut milk
1/2 lime, juice
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
300g straight to wok noodles
2 spring onions, finely sliced
fresh coriander, to garnish

Recipe
1. Mix the chicken and cornflour.
2. Heat the oil in a pot and gently fry the curry paste and ginger for 1 minute.
3. Add the chicken and fry til browned.
4. Add the stock and simmer for 3 minutes.
5. Add the coconut milk, lime juice, oyster sauce and soy sauce.
6. Cook the noodles in a pan for a minute or two then stir into the soup.
7. Serve the soup topped with spring onions and coriander.

Lemon and Blackcurrant Cake

2009-02-08T18:00:00.001Z

I really need to learn to read recipes better before trying to make them. I'm good at reading what ingredients I need but beyond that I'm quite hopeless. I had planned to make a cake on Sunday for youth group but when I was about to start discovered it needed a bit more prep than I had time for so I'll know for next time to start sooner. So I had to rustle up something else and came up with this idea rather quickly as I looked round to see what else I had to hand.

Lemon and Blackcurrant Cake

Ingredients
250g butter, softened
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tbsp lemon rind
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup milk
2 cups self raising flour
1/4 cup blackcurrant jam

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 160˚C and grease a 9" cake tin.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl
3. Gradually beat in the eggs one at a time.
4. Stir in the lemon rind, lemon juice, milk and flour.
5. Spoon half the mixture into the cake tin then spread the jam over the top.
6. Cover with the rest of the cake mix and bake for 55 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

Daring Bakers 12: Tuilles

2009-01-29T23:21:00.005Z

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

I'm a little last minute in getting this posted - I completely forgot about it until this morning and have rushed doing it today so they aren't as good as they could be.

Tuilles

Ingredients
65 grams / ¼ cup / 2.3 ounces softened butter (not melted but soft)
60 grams / ½ cup / 2.1 ounces sifted confectioner’s sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar (7 grams or substitute with a dash of vanilla extract)
2 large egg whites (slightly whisked with a fork)
65 grams / 1/2 cup / 2.3 ounces sifted all purpose flour
1 table spoon cocoa powder/or food coloring of choice
Butter/spray to grease baking sheet

Recipe
Oven: 180C / 350F

Using a hand whisk or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle (low speed) and cream butter, sugar and vanilla to a paste. Keep stirring while you gradually add the egg whites. Continue to add the flour in small batches and stir to achieve a homogeneous and smooth batter/paste. Be careful to not overmix.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to firm up. (This batter will keep in the fridge for up to a week, take it out 30 minutes before you plan to use it).

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease with either butter/spray and chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. This will help spread the batter more easily if using a stencil/cardboard template such as the butterfly. Press the stencil on the bakingsheet and use an off sided spatula to spread batter. Leave some room in between your shapes. Mix a small part of the batter with the cocoa and a few drops of warm water until evenly colored. Use this colored batter in a paper piping bag and proceed to pipe decorations on the wings and body of the butterfly.

Bake butterflies in a preheated oven (180C/350F) for about 5-10 minutes or until the edges turn golden brown. Immediately release from bakingsheet and proceed to shape/bend the cookies in the desired shape. These cookies have to be shaped when still warm, you might want to bake a small amount at a time or maybe put them in the oven to warm them up again. (Haven’t tried that). Or: place a bakingsheet toward the front of the warm oven, leaving the door half open. The warmth will keep the cookies malleable.

If you don’t want to do stencil shapes, you might want to transfer the batter into a piping bag fitted with a small plain tip. Pipe the desired shapes and bake. Shape immediately after baking using for instance a rolling pin, a broom handle, cups, cones…

Check out how the rest of the DBers did via the blogroll.

In other news I found my camera that I had lost with the photos of last month's daring baker's challenge so here it is....

Birthday Cake from Dunfanaghy Market

2009-01-26T23:20:00.000Z

As part of my pledge to make at least 3 of the recipes I bookmark in magazines each month I have now made my third recipe, again from Easy Food Magazine.

This month's magazine featured the winners of Easy Food's Country Market Awards with a great recipe for Birthday Cake by Dunfanaghy Market. I couldn't help but try out this birthday cake and last week was Stewie, my wee pup's, birthday so I had a birthday to celebrate anyways!

I'm glad I made this a real easy cake and beautifully delicious. I'm sure though it would be more delicious with the butter icing but I had to leave it out seeing as hubby and doggy aren't keen on it.

Birthday Cake from Dunfanaghy Market

Ingredients
175g butter or margarine
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
250g self raising flour
little milk (optional)

Butter Icing
75g butter or margarine
225 g icing sugar, sieved
2 tbsp milk
food colouring (optional)
sweets/hundreds and thousands to decorate (optional)

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C and grease two 17cm cake tins
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy.
3. Mix in eggs one at a time, then fold in the flour. If the mixture seems dry add a little milk.
4. Bake for 25 minutes until form to touch and golden.
5. To prepare the icing, beat all the ingredients together until fluffy and light.
6. Leave the cake to cool on a wire rack, then ice and decorate.

PS Don't forget to check out bookmarked recipes on the new blog.

Taste and Create: Naan

2009-01-24T22:21:00.001Z

I love Taste and Create, I've said it before and I'll say it again. It's just fantastic! The idea is you sign up for a month and get paired with another blog then you recreate one of the recipes on that blog and they do one from yours! Simple and so much fun.

This month I was paired with Pavani from Cook's Hideout who has a great blog with recipes full of healthy fruit and veg. If you're a regular reader of my blog you'll know that hubby has "issues" with things that sprout from the ground so it was tricky deciding what to do until I found a recipe for naan bread something that I have been wanting to try make for a loooooooong time! How could I resist?

Indian Naan Bread
Sourced from Cooks Hideout
Makes 6

Ingredients
4 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 x 7g active dry-yeast packets
1 tsp sugar
2/3 cup milk, lukewarm
2 tbsp oil
2/3 cup plain yogurt
1 egg, beaten (optional)

Recipe
1. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a mixing bowl. Stir in the yeast and sugar. Make a well in the center. Pour in the milk, oil, yogurt and beaten egg (if using). Beat well, gradually incorporating the surrounding flour to make a dough.
2. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 10 minutes. Place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with oiled plastic wrap and set in a warm place for about 1 hour, until doubled in bulk.
3. Put a pizza stone on the lowest rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 475°F.
4. Knead the dough lightly again and divide into six pieces. Roll each piece into a tear-drop shape, brush lightly with oil and slap onto the hot pizza stone.
5. Bake the naan for 3 minutes, until puffed up, flip and bake for another 3 minutes.

Rob's 'Lasagna'

2009-01-23T12:03:00.001Z

I've said about a million times on this blog... well maybe not a million but a lot anyway.... about how my hubby, Rob, is a picky eater. He's not a fan of pasta, cheese, vegetables, fruit, sausage, cream and much more. The last time I posted about making lasagna in Gordon Ramsay's cookalong I mentioned it too. However, it got me thinking about how I could make lasagna for myself and still have a dinner for Rob so I experimented in substituting some sliced par boiled potatoes for the lasagna sheets and leaving the cheese out of the white sauce.

I'm glad I did this cos hubby liked it meaning when I make lasagna I'll do a real one and Rob's one. I suppose I'll have to keep thinking of other tricks to use in future.

I've been nominated!

2009-01-21T11:41:00.004Z

Last year I was a finalist for the 2008 Irish Blog Awards and this year I've been nominated again! The longlist this year is a huge one with some incredible blogs included - check them out....

Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments: http://justaddeggs.blogspot.com
Well Done Fillet: http://welldonefillet.blogspot.com
Sour Grapes - An Irish Wine Blog Covering Wine In Ireland, Wine Tasting, Wine Facts And Wine Recommendations: http://sourgrapes.ie
Italian Foodies: http://italianfoodies.wordpress.com
Forkncork: http://forkncork.com
Cheapeats.ie: http://cheapeats.ie
Ifoods.tv: http://ifoods.tv/blog
Food Culture West Cork: http://foodculturewestcork.wordpress.com
Food And Drink: http://foodanddrinkireland.blogspot.com
Bubble Brothers - Cork Wine Merchants: http://bubblebrothers.com/blog
Ice Cream Ireland: http://icecreamireland.com
The Good Mood Food Blog: http://thegoodmoodfoodblog.com
The Daily Spud: http://thedailyspud.com
Curious: The Curious Wines Wine Blog: http://curiouswines.ie/blog
Messy Chef: http://messy-chef.com
A Food Journey In Korea.: http://macs-foodkorea.blogspot.com
Olliesplace: Organic Food, Farming, Research, News & Views With Oliver Moore: http://olivermoore.blogspot.com
Little Bird Eats…: http://littlebirdeats.wordpress.com
Cookzors: http://cookzors.com
Messy-chef » Recipes And Reviews: http://messy-chef.com/blog
Robert Francis Wine Review, Wine Newsletter, Free Newsletter, Wedding Wines: http://robertfranciswine.ie/wordpress
The Other Black Stuff: http://theotherblackstuff.ie
Tast.ie: The Spicendipity Irish Food Blog: http://tast.ie
Bibliocook: All About Food: http://bibliocook.com
Lidl Treats - How To Shop And What To Buy In Lidl Ireland: http://lidltreats.com
Eater’s Regret: http://eatersregret.wordpress.com
Cully And Sully - Super Soups And Pies!: http://cullyandsully.ie
Vals Kitchen: http://valskitchen.com

You can see the rest of the nominations for each category here

Bookmarked Recipes 37

2009-01-19T22:00:00.000Z

The round ups are now being hosted over at the brand new Bookmarked Recipes Blog. Check it out!

Flourless chocolate brownies - with strawberry

2009-01-16T08:00:00.002Z

I'm sure like most other food bloggers I love getting a new cookbook. I've been longing for Nigella Lawson's book Nigella Express so when I spotted it in the January sales reduced from £25 to £7 I just couldn't resist!!!!

As soon as I got home I got my little post its out and tabbed every recipe I want to try, which ended up being almost every recipe in the book.

I've made and tried her pancake mix and loved it. It's handy having the mix sitting ready to use and actually knowing what's in it compared to what you get in a shop.

The second recipe I've tried from this book is the flourless chocolate brownie one only instead of adding walnuts I added sliced strawberries which turned out delish! I spread the batter into a bigger pan than Nigella suggested and ended up with 24 thinner brownies that the 16 that would have resulted from using the proper sized pan so that I was able to take the brownies to youth group where they were pretty much swallowed whole!

I was able to save one for bringing home for myself to have with ice cream and chocolate sauce and I'm so glad I did because it was simply fabulous!

Flourless chocolate brownies - with strawberry
Sourced from Nigella Lawson's 'Nigella Express'
Makes 16 squares

Ingredients
225g dark chocolate I used half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate
225g unsalted butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
200g caster sugar
3 large eggs, beaten
150g ground almonds
~~100g chopped walnuts~~ 10 big strawberries, sliced

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 170˚C.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a saucepan over a low heat
3. Take the pan off the heat and mix in the vanilla and sugar. Leave to cool a little.
4. Beat the eggs into the mixture then stir in the ground almonds and strawberries.
5. Spread into a 24cm square baking pan.
6. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the top is set but it will still be soft in the middle - but it will firm up as it cools.

Maple Syrup and Mustard Chicken

2009-01-14T12:00:00.000Z

As part of my effort to make at least 3 of the recipes I bookmark in food mags each month this is recipe 2 for January.... maple syrup and mustard chicken.

This was so tasty and VERY easy. I'll definitely be doing this again.

Maple Syrup and Mustard Chicken
Sourced from Easy Food Magazine Jan 09 p 21
Serves 2

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts
4 bacon rashers
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tsbp wholegrain mustard

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 190˚C. Mix the maple syrup and mustard together.
2. Wrap each chicken breast with 2 rashers of bacon - one across the width and one lengthways.
3. Place the chicken breasts on a roasting tray and cover by brushing with the maple syrup/mustard mix.
4. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes then serve.

This is my entry for this week's bookmarked recipes.

Bookmarked Recipes 36

2009-01-12T19:02:00.009Z

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!
I'm looking for people to help with hosting. I'll host occasionally but I'll mostly be sorting out who's hosting each week - Dell has kindly agreed to help me with coordinating hosts for each week (thank you Dell!) however would love to make this more of a community event by involving the people who have been taking part more by having them host when they can.

If you're interested in hosting for a week, send me an email at bookmarkedrecipes [AT] gmail.com and let me know which date you would like to host.

I'm also setting up a new blog just for the round ups - it's not live yet, but I'm hoping next week's round up will be hosted there.

So keep on recreating bookmarked recipes and sending them in for the round up every Monday

It's time for this week's Bookmarked Recipes round up....

Chris starts the round up for this week with caramel baileys chocolate truffles from Real Epicurian

Navita Hakim has made Khasta Kachori by eating several kachoris and guessing all the ingredients and the dish was very forgiving and tasty.

Holler is getting back into the swing of blogging again by making brownies with dried fruit from Lisa's Kitchen

Usha has recreated curried black eyed peas (chawli curry) from Lisa's Food and Spice.

Ashwini joins the round up with Egg Puffs from a cook book for her hubby who was asking for them.

Susan is new to the round up with Hazelnut Financiers using a recipe from Patricia Well's Bistro Cooking.

Dell has made moroccan pasta from family circle mince recipes.

And I've made fragrant asian chicken curry from the January 09 Easy Food Magazine.

Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers.

Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Also if you want to host don't forget to email saying which week you would like to host.

Fragrant Asian Chicken Curry

2009-01-11T22:59:00.004Z

I regularly fold pages over in my Easy Food magazines, but so often forget about the recipes. I'm trying to make a bit of a resolution to make at least 3 of the recipes from the magazine for the month that it has been published.

The first one I've made from the January 09 issue is "Fragrant Asian Chicken Curry". It was an easy recipe to put together, with lots of different flavours in it. I couldn't help but add in some of my own additions to the recipe too.

Fragrant Asian Chicken Curry
Easy Food Magazine, January 2009, p 43
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 tbsp oil
1" fresh ginger, peeled and grated
2 red chilis, deseeded and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 shallots, finely diced
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp tumeric
1 tsp hot curry powder my addition to the recipe
4 chicken drumsticks (I used diced chicken breast and reduced the simmering time)
1/2 tin coconut milk
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp fish sauce my addition to the recipe

Recipe
1. Heat the oil in a pan and sauté the ginger, chili, garlic and shallots for 3 minutes
2. Stir in the ground spices and sauté for 1-2 minutes
3. Add the chicken and fry for 5-8 minutes until sealed, stirring to coat in the spices
4. Pour the coconut milk in with the lemon juice and fish sauce. Simmer until the liquid has thickened.
5. Season, garnish with fresh coriander and serve with noodles or rice.

Bookmarked Recipes 35

2009-01-05T18:17:00.005Z

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!
I'm looking for people to help with hosting. I'll host occasionally but I'll mostly be sorting out who's hosting each week - Dell has kindly agreed to help me with coordinating hosts for each week (thank you Dell!) however would love to make this more of a community event by involving the people who have been taking part more by having them host when they can.

Only one person has volunteered to help with the hosting yet since this new format was announced, so pretty much every Monday is still available for guest hosts.

If you're interested in hosting for a week, send me an email at bookmarkedrecipes [AT] gmail.com and let me know which date you would like to host.

I'm also setting up a new blog just for the round ups - it's not live yet, but will be in the new year.

So keep on recreating bookmarked recipes and sending them in for the round up every Monday

It's time for this week's Bookmarked Recipes round up....

Becke kicks off the round up with kartoffelsalat mit wurstchen from East Meets West blog.

Elizabeth recreated ricotta leek pie from Dee's blog "choos and chews".

Navita Hakim has sent in Cheesy Herb Challah inspired from a cookery show on Discovery TV.

This week I've made Turkey Fricassée from the Cooks Academy Cookbook

Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers.

Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Also if you want to host don't forget to email saying which week you would like to host.

Turkey Fricassée

2009-01-02T20:49:00.006Z

Early September I got an email asking if I would like a "review copy" of a cook book put together by the Cooks Academy in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland. Of course my answer was yes!!!! The book arrived in the post the day before we went to Egypt and was forgotten about until a couple of weeks ago (oops!!!!). So here I am blogging about it now.

I liked the idea of this book because it's a collection of recipes that Academy uses in their teaching that have proven to be popular with the students. It's also full of down to earth every day recipes and a lot of the great basic recipes like mac and cheese, lasagne and the one I'm blogging about here - turkey fricassée. However my only complaint about the book is the lack of photos: I always like seeing a photo of each recipe as part of the temptation to making it and also to know what it should look like instead of my attempt!

With so much surplus turkey over Christmas I couldn't help but make this a few days afterwards to use some more up. The only thing I did differently was to leave out the mushrooms for fear that the hubster would be poisoned.

Since I've still not found my camera I had to take pictures with the phone! If only I'd lost it before Christmas and could have asked for a new one as a gift from someone. Ah well - maybe I'll find one in the sales.

Turkey Fricassée
From Cooks Academy Cookbook by Vanessa Greenwood
Serves 4

Ingredients
600g cooked turkey
3tbsp olive oil
(250g button mushrooms, sliced)
3 smoked rashers of bacon, cut into small squares
1 medium onion, diced
200ml white wine
250ml chicken stock
25g butter
1 tbsp flour
400ml milk

Recipe
1. Prepare the white sauce by melting the butter in a small saucepan then stirring in the flour. Cook for 1-2 minutes then gradually add the stirring to avoid lumps. When the sauce thickens and bubbles remove from the heat.
2. Heat half the oil in a pan and sauté the bacon (and mushrooms) for 5 minutes, remove to a plate.
3. Heat the rest of the oil in the pan and sauté the onion for 5 minutes. Add the wine and leave to simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Add the turkey, bacon, (mushrooms,) stock and white sauce. Season and simmer on a low heat for 20-25 minutes.

Bookmarked Recipes 34

2008-12-29T20:49:00.007Z

NEW ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!
Two weeks ago I announced that Bookmarked Recipes was coming to an end, but I got emails and comments asking if people could take it over. I was touched that bookmarked recipes has meant something to people - I had only started this to keep myself trying new recipes!

I've rethought stopping the event and decided to keep it on, but I'm looking for people to help with hosting. I'll host occasionally but I'll mostly be sorting out who's hosting each week - Dell has kindly agreed to help me with coordinating hosts for each week (thank you Dell!) however would love to make this more of a community event by involving the people who have been taking part more by having them host when they can.

If you're interested in hosting for a week, send me an email at bookmarkedrecipes [AT] gmail.com and let me know which date you would like to host.

I'm also setting up a new blog just for the round ups - it's not live yet, but will be in the new year.

So keep on recreating bookmarked recipes and sending them in for the round up every Monday

Also..... apologies for no round up last week but I lost track of the days after doing an all nighter with my youth group the weekend before and then it was Christmas and blah blah blah. Sorry everyone!

It's time for this week's Bookmarked Recipes round up....

Katerina from Athens, Greece kicks off the round up with brownies from a Greek book called Lessons of Sweet Alchemy by Stelios Parliaros a very well known Chef of Sweets in Greece.

My contribution this week is Cheesecake Brownie.
Nic has made Cheesecake Brownies and got the recipe from BlogChef.

Deeba is back to the round up with Coffee Butter Cake using a recipe from The Australian Heritage Cookbook, page 104.

Navita Hakim sent in Blueberry and Papaya Syllabub. The story behind Navita making this is - "I got the name of this recipe from an English friend who now lives in Georgia..we were chatting online about various desserts, when she mentioned syllabub...got me curious and after much discussion and research I came up with this dish!"

Dell recreated Hoisin Ginger Pork from Bill Granger's book Holiday!

Usha sent in quick and simple milk fudge adapted from a recipe I found on Uma's Essence of Andhra.

Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers.

Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Also if you want to host don't forget to email saying which week you would like to host.

Daring Bakers 11: French Yule Log

2008-12-29T20:27:00.004Z

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.
They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand

I have to be honest and say that when I first saw this month challenge I was scared - scared because it was a huge recipe with 6 elements (each with it's own choices) and scared because this gauntlet was laid down in the busiest month ever!!!! I really wasn't sure I'd have the time to complete it but was able to squeeze it in with a bit of a rush - mind you another problem was who I was going to feed it to and as usual the youth group at church ended up tucking into it.

French Yule Log
1) Dacquoise Biscuit - with orange flavouring
2) Mousse - Vanilla flavoured
3) Ganache Insert - Milk Chocolate
4) Praline (Crisp) Insert - I made it with the rice krispies
5) Creme Brulee Insert - Milk Chocolate Creme Brulee
6) Icing - Dark Chocolate

Unfortunately I've misplaced my camera which has all my photos of my French Yule Log - once I find it I'll add them. But until then you can see the rest of the Daring Bakers' results here. Or enjoy a pic of Marion's test log -

Lemon Cake with Passionfruit Syrup

2008-12-20T13:22:00.004Z

I made this cake a while ago and forgot to blog about it until someone asked me could I give them the recipe because they wanted to make it for Christmas day instead of Christmas Cake or Christmas Pudding. A good idea I thought because it would complement the Christmas dinner well and be a nice and tasty treat for finishing off the meal.

From what I remember it was a beautifully moist and soft cake, the lemon and passionfruit working well together.

Lemon Cake with Passionfruit Syrup
Recipe from Donna Hay's Simply Essentials: Fruit

Ingredients
125g softened butter
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tbsp grated lemon rind
2.5 cups self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

passionfruit syrup
2/3 cup passionfruit pulp (about 4 passionfruit)
2/3 cup caster sugar
1 cup water

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C. Grease and line a 9" cake tin.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together.
3. Add the eggs and beat.
4. Mix in the sour cream, lemon juice, rind, flour and baking powder. Pour into the cake tin.
5. Bake for 40 mins or until cooked
6. Leave to cool for 5 minutes, before removing to a rack over a plate.
7. To make the syrup, place all the ingredients in a saucepan.
8. Cook over a low heat, stirring, until all the sugar is dissolved.
9. Increase the heat and boil for 4-5 minutes or until it thickens a little.
10. Pour half the syrup over the top of the cake and save the rest for serving with the cake.

Mum's Christmas Cake

2008-12-19T14:35:00.009Z

I'm a big fan of Christmas cake and every year Mum would have bought me my own cake to nibble away at. This year I decided to make it myself and used the recipe from Mum's cook book. I had a load of fun making this, and half way through realised I didn't have a big enough bowl to mix the cake batter and fruit mix together so rushed out to Tesco and bought an 8 litre bowl for £2!!!! Bargain. I'm excited to use it for making big batches of rice krispie buns and things! I know I'm like a child.

Anyways on with the recipe....

Mum's Christmas Cake

Ingredients
1/2 lb sultanas
1/2 lb currants
1/2 lb raisins
1/4 lb candied peel or green glacé cherries
1/4 lb red glacé cherries
2 oz shredded almonds
2 oz ground almonds
grated rind of 1 orange or lemon

1/2lb butter
1/2 lb soft brown sugar
5 eggs
1/2 lb plain flour
1 tsp mixed spice
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
pinch salt
Splash of spirits (or if you're like me some orange juice)

Recipe
1. Line and grease an 8" round tin (or 7" square tin).
2. Mix the sultanas, currants, raisins, candied peel, cherries, almonds and orange/lemon rind in one bowl and set aside.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together but not so much because the fruit may sink if there's a lot of air)
4. In a separate bowl mix the flour, mixed spice, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
5. Mix an egg into the creamed butter, then some flour, then an egg, then some flour - keep alternating until all the eggs and flour have been mixed in.
6. Mix the batter and fruit mix together well, stir in the spirits (/orange juice) and pour into your cake tin.
7. Just before baking sprinkle a little water on top.
8. Bake in the oven at 325˚F for 1 hour
9. Bake for a further hour at 300˚F
10 Bake for one more hour at 275˚F. (During the baking try not to open the oven)
11. Leave to cool in the tin before removing it.

I covered mine with marzipan and white icing but it's fine without and can be stored in a cool place, wrapped in greaseproof paper and foil.

For some other Christmas recipes check out my posts from last year:
Jamie's Mince Pies - which I've made this year again
Traditional Mince Pies
Ginger Glazed Gammon/Ham
Sage, Sausage and Apricot Stuffing
Christmas Roast veggies

Bookmarked Recipes 33

2008-12-15T23:15:00.000Z

NEW ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!
Last week I announced that Bookmarked Recipes was coming to an end, but I got emails and comments asking if people could take it over. I was touched that bookmarked recipes has meant something to people - I had only started this to keep myself trying new recipes!

I've rethought stopping the event and decided to keep it on, but I'm looking for people to help with hosting. I'll host occasionally but I'll mostly be sorting out who's hosting each week - Dell has kindly agreed to help me with coordinating hosts for each week (thank you Dell!) however would love to make this more of a community event by involving the people who have been taking part more by having them host when they can.

If you're interested in hosting for a week, send me an email at bookmarkedrecipes [AT] gmail.com and let me know which date you would like to host.

I'm also setting up a new blog just for the round ups - it's not live yet, but will be in the new year.

So keep on recreating bookmarked recipes and sending them in for the round up every Monday

It's time for this week's Bookmarked Recipes round up....

Gloria made Appleauce Raisin Cake from recipe on Dlife

Tigerfish made Jamie Oliver's Baked Snapper Fillet

Tara sent in a great Christmassy Turkey, Leek & Cranberry Pie from Issue 12 of Donna Hay Magazine

Dell has made Easy Fried Rice from Fresh Living magazine.

Finally I've made Chicken and Pea Casserole from a recipe on Market Kitchen

Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers.

Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Also if you want to host don't forget to email saying which week you would like to host.

Irish Tea Loaf

2008-12-13T08:00:00.001Z

I absolutely love the world of food blogging. There's such a great community to be found with it, each spurring others on to try new and exciting things. Ning over at Heart and Hearth tagged me recently for Breadline Africa after making some moist pumpkin quick bread for the event herself.

With our support, Breadline Africa can convert shipping containers into locations for food production and distribution to the poor people in South Africa. These sustainable community kitchens will not only provide foods such as bread and soup to those in need, but also opportunities for skills development within these poor communities. So, they are not only aiming to give them bread, but also to teach them skills so that they will be able to earn their own bread as well.

Breadline Africa launched the Worldwide Blogger Baker Bake-Off Challenge aiming at raising $ 1 M in funds. This bake-off gives us baking bloggers the power to make a difference in this world. What do we do? Bake bread. Give Dough. Feed Africa. Vals says, "You can sign up for the campaign, make a donation, upload your bread recipes and document your culinary adventures in the media center to spread the word. You don't have to donate money but simply just mention the campaign and create awareness."

The rules for bloggers are outlined below:
1. If you are tagged, copy and paste the rules into your post.
2. Bake bread, do something you wouldn’t normally do, and blog about it. Upload your picture and recipe.
3. Give dough, donate to Breadline Africa and help us end poverty.
4. Tag five bloggers, and ping us so we know you’ve done so.

It turned out that when Ning tagged me for all this that I had been craving some fruit loaf but resisting to buy any. Then at J's funeral there was fruit loaf and then a few days later in planning for a Christmas Eve service for church fruit loaf was mentioned again. I had a look at my online bookmarked recipes and there was a link for Delia's Irish Tea Bread which I just happened to have bought all the ingredients for in preparation for making Christmas cake and decided that I really was destined to make some fruit loaf.

Delia says on her site, "It's always hard for me to believe that this simple little fruit loaf can taste so good. When we were testing recipes, this one disappeared the fastest – none of us could resist just one more little bit. It's good all by itself or spread with butter, and it's quite brilliant toasted." and I have to agree 100%. This bread was so simple to prepare and utterly delicious, I couldn't resist a slice shortly after I took it out of the oven and it was divine. I'll definitely be making this one again. In fact I may make the 2 that Delia makes in the original recipe and freeze one like she suggests! This time I only made the one, so here's Delia's recipe halved and only very slightly adapted.

Irish Tea Loaf
This recipe is taken from How to Cook Book One and Delia's Vegetarian Collection.
Makes 1 small loaf

Ingredients
4 oz raisins
4 oz currants
4 oz sultanas
2 oz whole candied peel, cut into ¼ inch (5 mm) pieces
4 oz demerara sugar
5 fl oz (275 ml) Lapsang Souchong, Earl Grey or any other hot tea
~~2 oz (110 g) pecan nuts~~
1 medium egg at room temperature, lightly beaten with 1 tbsp milk
1 cup glacé cherries (my addition to the recipe
1/2 lb self-raising flour

Recipe
1. Line a loaf tin with parchment paper.
2. Place all the fruits, including the candied peel, in a bowl, then dissolve the sugar in the hot tea, pour this over the fruits, cover the bowl and leave it overnight so the fruits become plump and juicy.
3. The next day, pre-heat the oven to 170°C
4. Add the beaten egg mixture to the bowl containing the fruits and add the cherries. 5. Sift in the flour, and mix well.
6. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 1¼-1½ hours, until they feel springy in the centre.
7. Loosen it straight away with a palette knife and turn out on to a wire rack to cool.

So now to tag 5 people....
1. English Mum
2. Lynn
3. Dell
4. Mr Orph
5. Tina

I've also been tagged for various awards recently too, which have really meant a lot to me and encouraged me, but I've lost track of who all has awarded me things since I got my new computer so sorry to any I haven't blogged about. However, Dell awarded me The Butterfly Award & The Perfect Blend Of Friendship Award. Thank you Dell!!!

Chicken and pea casserole

2008-12-11T14:00:00.002Z

I was flicking channels one lunch time a few weeks ago when I came across Market Kitchen - I'm a bit of a sucker for cookery shows so I just had to stop and watch. They were making minted gnocchi with chicken and peas when I tuned in so I missed the start of it but the result looked beautiful so I just had to look it up and give it a go.

The next day I was in the kitchen, I had bought all I needed and went for it. All was going well I had been in the kitchen for about 2 hours preparing when all of a sudden I could smell burning - it was the bottom of the pot and it ended up taking the dinner with it. I needed to be a little more attentive to this next time I planned to make it. The gnocchi turned out well though for my first time making it!

I got all the ingredients again and tried it this week, paying closer attention to it all and ended up with a beautiful and delicious meal. I skipped on the gnocchi this time and served with boiled anya potatoes.

Chicken and pea casserole
Adapted from Market Kitchen
Serves 6

Ingredients
3 tbsp Olive oil
1 whole chicken, on the bone, about 900g – 1kg, cut into 10 pieces
1 onion, finely sliced
1 bulb Garlic, cut in half around the middle
1 bunch lemon thyme
1 unwaxed lemon, rind only, peeled into strips
1 large glass White wine
1.4 litres chicken stock
1 tin of drained peas
Dried sage, to serve
100g grated parmesan, to serve

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 180˚C
2. Heat the olive oil in a large flameproof casserole, cook the chicken pieces in batches over a high heat until well browned.
3. Remove the chicken pieces to the side and add the onions, garlic and sage to the casserole. Tie the lemon thyme and lemon peel together with butcher’s twine and add to the pot.
4. Turn down the heat to minimum and slowly sweat the vegetables until the onions are softened but not browned. Turn the heat up to high to steam off any residual vegetable juices.
5. Return the chicken to the pot and add the wine: the liquid should sizzle as it hits the bottom of the pot. Boil until the wine has evaporated, then add the stock to cover the chicken. Bring to a simmer and cover with a lid. Put in the oven to braise until the chicken is still moist but falling off the bone (about 1 hour). Check the level of stock from time to time and top up if a little low.
6. When cooked, transfer the chicken pieces to a bowl with a slotted spoon. Set aside to cool for 20 minutes.
7. Lift the garlic and the bouquet of lemon thyme and lemon rind out of the casserole before placing over a medium heat. Simmer the stock until reduced by half and thickened. When nearly there, add the peas and cook for 10 minutes.
8. Strip the chicken from the bones. When the sauce is ready, return the chicken to the casserole. Season to taste.
9. Serve with sage and grated parmesan cheese.

This is my bookmarked recipe for this week.

Bookmarked Recipes 32

2008-12-08T19:18:00.013Z

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!
It's with regret that I have to announce that Bookmarked Recipes is coming to an end. I have loved hosting and taking part in this event however recently I've become busier and often I'm rushing to write the round up. I will keep the event going until the end of this month, but 2009 will not see a round up anymore. I will still be recreating some of the recipes I have bookmarked and blogging about them, but from the end of 2008 I will no longer be hosting the event or writing a round up.

Thank you to everyone who has taken part, supported and followed Bookmarked Recipes, I hope you all continue to recreate your own bookmarked recipes too!

It's time for this week's Bookmarked Recipes round up....

Patsy got a recipe from Stephanie's Kitchen for mini frittatas

Tracy has made Gingerbread Popcorn from Culinary in the Desert

Jen copied a recipe from Bean's Bistro for black bean cakes

Sarah has recreated mustard roasted potatoes based on a recipe from Smitten Kitchen

Laura has made Chickpea Pumpkin Curry from the blog The Days Are Just Packed.

Amanda has sent in Cinnamon Raisin Bread & Cinnabutter made from FamilyCorner.com

Ning has sent in Kokoras Krassatos - Stewed Chicken in Red Wine with Homemade Pasta taken from Kopiaste, to Greek Hospitality

Teresa found a recipe for Pan Sauteed Chicken and Mushrooms with Garlic Spinach from Dinners for a Year and Beyond

Gloria has bookmarked a recipe for Meditteranean chicken pasta from the Food Network website.

Jescel got a recipe for Apple and Horseradish Glazed Salmon from Cooking Light.

Tara copied Tandoori Chicken Burgers with Beetroot Couscous from the November issue of Super Food Ideas magazine & the June issue of Delicious magazine.

Michelle made crockpot peanut (not brittle) candy from A Year Of CrockPotting

Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers.

Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Bookmarked Recipes 31

2008-12-01T21:10:00.000Z

Are you ready for the Bookmarked Recipes round up? Well here it is..

The Daily Spud joins the round up with Chickpea, chili and coriander cakes from Delia's "How to Cook, Book 3" also found on her site here.

Shaheen from Ambrosia made Thyme roasted Pecans from A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen

Vicki from A Work in Progress is new to the round up and has sent in zesty braised chicken with lemons and capers based on a recipe from Eat. Drink. Think.

Happy Cook has sent in Hummingbird Cake from an Australian Women's Weekley Cookbook called Sweet old fashioned favourites.

Sarah from What Smells So Good? submitted Baklasagne from Heidi at 101 Cookbooks.

Christine has recreated Cranberry Cheese Tart from the Wilson's Farm Cookbook.

Tina has sent Double-Cheese Macaroni into the round up based on a recipe from Taste of Home.

Tara from Should You Eat That? is new to our round up and just getting back into the swing of blogging again by sending in Eggplant Pasta Bake w/ Spinach & Ricotta copied from Su Yin of The Journal of a Girl Who Loves to Cook

Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers.

Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Daring Bakers 10: Caramel Cake with Caramel Butter Frosting

2008-11-29T08:00:00.003Z

I'm on time this month!!!!! Yaaaaaaaaaay! OK enough celebrating, on with the post.....

The Daring Bakers challenge this month has gone back to being a sweet baking challenge after the more savoury challenges we've had the last 2 months. Dolores, Alex and Jenny were the hosts this month and brought us the challenge of making Caramel Cake with Caramel Butter Frosting, with the optional extra of making Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels. I passed on the caramels with time pressures and all that, but the cake I was able to make all the components in about 2-3 hours and then assembled it all the next day with ease. Another great challenge that was devoured by my youth group!

Caramel Cake with Caramel Butter Frosting
Recipe from Bay Area Bites by Shuna Fish Lydon

Ingredients

Caramel Syrup
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
1 cup water (for "stopping" the caramelization process)

1. In a small stainless steel saucepan, with tall sides, mix water and sugar until mixture feels like wet sand. Brush down any stray sugar crystals with wet pastry brush. Turn on heat to highest flame. Cook until smoking slightly: dark amber.
2. When color is achieved, very carefully pour in one cup of water. Caramel will jump and sputter about! It is very dangerous, so have long sleeves on and be prepared to step back.
3. Whisk over medium heat until it has reduced slightly and feels sticky between two fingers. {Obviously wait for it to cool on a spoon before touching it.}

Note: For safety reasons, have ready a bowl of ice water to plunge your hands into if any caramel should land on your skin.

CARAMEL CAKE WITH CARAMELIZED BUTTER FROSTING
10 Tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
1 1/4 Cups granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 Cup Caramel Syrup (see recipe above)
2 each eggs, at room temperature
splash vanilla extract I used the insides of a vanilla pod
2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup milk, at room temperature

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F/170˚C
2. Butter one tall (2 – 2.5 inch deep) 9-inch cake pan.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter until smooth. Add sugar and salt & cream until light and fluffy.
4. Slowly pour room temperature caramel syrup into bowl. Scrape down bowl and increase speed. Add eggs/vanilla extract a little at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down bowl again, beat mixture until light and uniform.
5. Sift flour and baking powder.
6. Turn mixer to lowest speed, and add one third of the dry ingredients. When incorporated, add half of the milk, a little at a time. Add another third of the dry ingredients, then the other half of the milk and finish with the dry ingredients. {This is called the dry, wet, dry, wet, dry method in cake making. It is often employed when there is a high proportion of liquid in the batter.}
7. Take off mixer and by hand, use a spatula to do a few last folds, making sure batter is uniform. Turn batter into prepared cake pan.
8. Place cake pan on cookie sheet or 1/2 sheet pan. Set first timer for 30 minutes, rotate pan and set timer for another 15-20 minutes. Your own oven will set the pace. 9. Bake until sides pull away from the pan and skewer inserted in middle comes out clean. Cool cake completely before icing it.

Cake will keep for three days outside of the refrigerator.

CARAMELIZED BUTTER FROSTING
12 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 pound confectioner’s sugar, sifted
4-6 tablespoons heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2-4 tablespoons caramel syrup
Kosher or sea salt to taste

1. Cook butter until brown. Pour through a fine meshed sieve into a heatproof bowl, set aside to cool. Pour cooled brown butter into mixer bowl.
2. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, add confectioner's sugar a little at a time. When mixture looks too chunky to take any more, add a bit of cream and or caramel syrup and vanilla extract. Repeat until mixture looks smooth and all confectioner's sugar has been incorporated. Add salt to taste.

Note: Caramelized butter frosting will keep in fridge for up to a month.
To smooth out from cold, microwave a bit, then mix with paddle attachment until smooth and light

Check out the other Daring Bakers' results