Ice Cream Cake

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)

My Christmassy Terrine

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.

Taste and Create: Naan

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.

Steak Pie

Marks and Spencer do fantastic food adverts that make me want to eat whatever it is they're advertising, regardless of whether I like it or not. They could advertise smelly sock pie and I'd be craving it! Thankfully they haven't, but recently have been showcasing their Steak Pie. Rob's fancied it too but not the stilton part of it anyways so it only seemed right to make my own version of this pie. I read up on several recipes and then decided to make up my own so here it is....



Steak Pie

Serves 4-6

Ingredients
50g butter
1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves
3 tbsp plain flour, seasoned
350g of diced steak pieces
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp tomato puree
1/2 pint stock
250g shortcrust pastry, store bought
1 egg, beaten
250g puff pastry, store bought

Recipe
1. Mix the steak pieces and flour in a bowl so the meat is coated.
2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the onion and garlic. Cook for 1-2 mins.
3. Add the steak to the pot and cook until browned all over.
4. Stir in the worcestershire sauce, tomato puree and stock. Season with salt and pepper and reduce the heat, leave to simmer gently for 30-45 mins.
5. Roll out your shortcrust pastry and line your 8-9" pie dish.
6. Once the meat has finished simmering pour it into the middle of the shortcrust pastry and spread.
7. Brush the edges of the shortcrust pastry with the beaten egg. Roll out the puff pastry and lay the puff pastry on top of the pie.
8. Press the edges together and cut a few holes in the top of the pie (to let out any steam). Brush the top of the pie with the beaten egg.
9. Bake the pie in the oven at 180˚C for 35-40 minutes.




I loved this pie, the sauce was smooth and creamy, the steak soft and tender, all topped off with a crispy puff pastry..... perhaps I've just created my own M&S ad!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Strawberry Chocolate Ganache

I had bookmarked this recipe for Chocolate Cupcakes with Strawberry Chocolate Ganache from Equal Opportunity Kitchen a while ago with the idea of saving if for making it to mark my Ruthebabes Blog 1 year Blogaversary which happens to be tomorrow so I had fun making these today for that.



I absolutely love strawberry and chocolate together so it was a fab treat. I was tempted not to make the buttercream but I'm so glad I did because it was so tasty and finished these off perfectly.

I got 12 out of my batch and used a cup and a half of icing sugar in the buttercream instead of the 2 or 3 cups the recipe asked for.



Happy Birthday to my Ruthebabes Blog!!!!

Chicken with peppercorns and shredded ginger for 200 posts and Bookmarked Recipes

I can't believe it!!!!! This is my 200th post on Ruth's Kitchen Experiments!!! I was hoping to make a special treat for this occasion however I have a few things to get done for various food events, as well as a big clear out of our house for getting some new furniture and things in and on top of that I'm going to be away from Thursday evening until Tuesday morning at Summer Madness. Don't worry Bookmarked Recipes will still go ahead with a special guest host and I'll also have a couple of scheduled posts to keep you all reading! But back to what I was saying, I was hoping to make a special treat like a cake, or cookies or something, but I'm posting this delicious dinner we had tonight instead.

It's from Anjum Anand's "Indian Food Made Easy" cookbook. The original recipe is for 6 so again I had to reduce the recipe for just the 2 of us and also used chicken breasts instead of joints because it's what I had on hand. I made the marinade for 6 servings for ease with the stock then adjusted the rest of the ingredients.



Chicken with peppercorns and shredded ginger

Serves 2

Ingredients
Marinade
9 or 10 cloves of garlic, peeled
10g fresh ginger peeled
1 tsp garam masala
1 chicken stock cube, dissolved in 3 tbsp hot water

Other ingredients
2 chicken breasts, skinned
1 tbsp vegetable oil rapeseed oil
1/3 small onion 1 shallot, peeled and finely chopped
1 green chilli
5g fresh ginger, peeled and sliced into shreds
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp amchur powder (mango powder) - an addition of mine to this recipe and an ingredient I recently bought in a new Indian food shop
salt, to taste
2/3 cup water This is actually double the reduced quantity but in order for the chicken to cook through properly you need this
1 tsp coarse ground black peppercorns
1/2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp lemon juice
1 handful of fresh chopped coriander

Recipe
1. Blend the garlic, ginger, garam masala and stock together to make a paste. Then cover the chicken with it and leave in the fridge for at least an hour. Bring the meat back to room temperature before cooking.
2. Heat oil in pan and add the onion shallot and sauté for 6-8 minutes until brown. Add the chilli, ginger, ground coriander, amchur powder and salt, leave to cook for about a minute.
3. Add the chicken to the pan and brown each side. Pour in the water and pepper, bring to the boil then lower heat, cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes.
4. Turn up the heat and leave for 3-4 minutes to reduce the sauce.
5. Stir in the garam masala, lemon juice and coriander and serve.


This is my entry for Bookmarked Recipes this week.

Jamican Jerk

Over the past few months I've noticed lots of blogs and tv shows that have been making Jamaican Jerk Chicken, with rice & peas and fried plantain. Anytime I've had jerk chicken I've loved it so it only seemed right to try this complete dish, so I set about trying to find plantain. I hunted and hunted for about 3 or 4 weeks and gave up, just when I did I happened to spot them! The lesson - give up searching sooner and you'll get what you're looking for.

I had bookmarked a recipe from We are never full when I had seen it a while ago so looked it up straight away and got cooking.

Cooking everything was all very straightforward and kept me busy in the kitchen for a bit while Rob was playing some xbox and it all came together at the same time. It was very tasty however the jerk may just have been a little too spicy for my tastes but that's easily fixed in future.



Jamaican Jerk Chicken

SERVES 2-3

Ingredients
2 breasts of chicken, skin on
2 legs of chicken, skin on
2 tbsp. allspice
1 tbsp. dried thyme
1 teaspoon hot paprika
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 scotch bonnet pepper (or other spicy hot pepper)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 cup of cilantro (you can substitute 1 teaspoon coriander seed)
juice of 1 lime
splash of orange juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 scallions
1 teaspoon soy sauce
pinch of salt and pepper

Recipe
1. Grind the spices down with a spice grinder. Then blend all the ingredients together in a blender until smooth. Adjust the amount of oil to make it a thick paste.
2. Rub this on your chicken and leave to marinate for at least an hour.
3. Cook your chicken pieces at 200˚C for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until juices run clear. For the last minute, crisp it up on a hot frying pan.

Rice and Peas

Serves 2-3

Ingredients
1 cup white rice
1 can red kidney beans
1 small onion, minced
1 clove garlic
1 scallion, sliced
chicken stock OR 1 can coconut milk and water

Recipe
1. Sauté the onion and garlic on medium heat for a few minutes then add the rice, scallions and beans and stir together.
2. Pour enough chicken stock/coconut milk & water over your rice that it comes up the width of 2 fingers above the level of the uncooked rice.
3. Bring to the boil and allow to cook down until it reaches the level of the rice, stir ONCE, turn your heat to low and cover. Cook on low for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes your rice will be perfect, give it a stir and enjoy.

Tostones (Fried Green Plantain)

Ingredients
2 Green Plantain
Vegetable oil
salt

Recipe
1. Heat the oil in a pan. It needs to be about 1/2-3/4" deep.
2. Peel plantains and cut on the diagonal, about 3/4" thick.
3. Fry the plantain once for about 2-3 minutes. Dry on paper towels, then give each a smash with a mallet. Return to pan and fry for another 2 minutes.
4. Drain and serve seasoned with a little salt.

Thanks to We are never full for this recipe.

I've used this as my entry for my Bookmarked Recipes food blog event for this week.

Weekly Look at the Cook Book 1: Basic Chocolate Cake

I've decided to make a few "blog features" in order to get through some recipes i've been wanting to try for ages or to try some new ones I come across. This is the start of one of those "features" that I'm calling the Weekly Look at the Cook Book where I'll use one of the cook books I have and create one of the recipes in them every week.

This week I've made Donna Hay's Basic Chocolate Cake from her cook book Simple Essentials: Chocolate. I bought this book half price a few weeks ago and was looking through it when I was at our radio show and the members of my youth group who were there were keen for all sorts of treats from this book. I was planning to make the double chocolate cookies but heard that some of the group were celebrating birthdays this week and so it only seemed right to make a cake and the photo for this one was screaming out to me!

I had to split the batter between 2 smaller cake tins because that's all I had to work with but I sandwiched the cakes together with some Dulce de Leche, then topped the cake with a little DDL and then topped that with the chocolate glaze from the book too as well as some chocolate chips. It was a really tasty cake, but I'm not so sure about the glaze, it didn't come out as liquid as it looked in the book and I think was a little too chocolatey: next time I think I'd use a little less chocolate and a little more cream and use chocolate with a lower cocoa percentage, but it worked well as an icing as opposed to a glaze.

It got great reviews tonight from my youth group who almost ate it all - I had to save 2 slices for me and Rob and we loved it too, I'll definitely be making this again! I've decided to enter this cake in the Tried Tasted and True food event but not the glaze seeing as I didn't think it was as good as it could be.

Here's the recipes for the cake and the glaze from the book.



Basic Chocolate Cake

Serves 8-10 (I got 12 servings out of it)

Ingredients
375g butter, softened
1.5 cups light brown sugar
3 medium eggs
2 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup cocoa, double sifted
3/4 cup milk
1 quantity chocolate glaze recipe (see below)

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 160˚C
2. Place butter and sugar in a bowl and mix with electric mixer for 8-10 mins or until smooth and creamy.
3. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well.
4. Fold in the flour, baking powder and cocoa. Stir in the milk.
5. Transfer the mixture to an 8" round cake tin lined with baking paper. Bake for 1hr 10 mins or until cooked through and a skewer can be withdrawn clean.
6. Cool for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack. Ice with the chocolate glaze.


Chocolate Glaze

Ingredients
150 g chopped dark couverture chocolate
1/2 cup single (aka pouring) cream

Recipe
1. Place the chocolate and cream in a saucepan over a low heat, stirring until melted and smooth.
2. Allow the mixture to stand for 10 minutes to thicken slightly.
3. Pour over a well chilled cake and tap to remove air bubbles. Or refrigerate and serve as a rich chocolate sauce for desserts.

Roast Beef

Today for Easter Sunday I made Roast Beef. Most people have made roast beef and i have but it's always been from pre packaged roasts, so it was fun to get a roast from the butcher and prepare it all myself.

I based this on Elise's Roast Beef, but had to make a few edits:
1. Our roast was 2.5kg so times were reduced and it was ready after 1 hr 25 mins in the oven(including the browning time which was reduced from 30 mins to 20 mins)
2. I trimmed the layer of fat off before roasting.

Thanks for this recipe Elise!!!

I even made the gravy which is a first too!!!! It was delicious, I kind of did it by eye and taste, I wish I kept a note of what I had done, but it was lovely.... just hope I can recreate it. But I used red wine and stock along with the juices from the beef and some corn flour.

Ginger Glazed Gammon

I had watched Nigella Lawson's Christmas show, "Season's Eatings", and was drooling as I watched her making this ham. However I was worried about this recipe slightly as she had used a 5.4kg ham and I was planning to only cook a 0.75kg gammon, so fixing the times and scaling down the ingredients took some calculation and guesstimation and creativity. And it all turned out beautifully!

Ginger glazed gammon


Serves 2-3

Ingredients
750g gammon
1 litre ginger ale (I used light ginger ale, can never be too careful with the calories at Christmas!)
Marinade
1/4 cup marmalade (65ml)
1 tsp ground ginger
3 tsp whole grain mustard
2 tbsp soft dark brown sugar
a pinch of ground cloves

Recipe
1. Place the gammon in a pot and pour in the ginger ale (you can top up with water to cover the gammon). Bring to the boil, then reduce heat so it will bubble gently for 1-1.5 hrs.
2. In a bowl mix all the ingredients for the marinade (this can be done the day before).
3. Remove the gammon from the ginger ale and place in a foil lined baking tray or in an oven dish. Cover in the marinade and place in the oven at 190C for about 20-25 minutes.
4. Serve hot or cold.

I've had some in a sandwich already, just gorgeous!

PS if you're looking for the difference between ham and gammon, check here

Loads a meat!!!!!

My darling dearest husband got excited recently when a friend in his work said he knew a butcher who sells mince beef in big bags for £10 and decided to get himself a bag.

Meaning the following day I spent some time spliting it into different weights for freezing to use at a later date.



But this wasn't all of it, I cooked some at the same time and made some cottage pie at the same time (with a few edits to the recipe described in that link. Gravy was used instead of cottage pie sauce mix, 2 tbsp of cumin was added to the gravy before it was mixed with the mince, and a few handfuls of crushed salted crisps - aka chips in the USA - spread on the top)




The end result was very very tasty! The cumin gave it a nice kick.

Thai style cooking.

I came across a recipe in a booklet produced by the Ulster Pork & Bacon Forum which I got at the supermarket recently and decided I had to try it, however I made it tonight with chicken instead of the whole pork fillet the recipe in the book uses.

It was delicious and we actually had some of it in tortilla wraps - so yummy and very easy once again!

Roasted Thai style Chicken
with sticky coconut rice and a chilli dipping sauce

Serves 2

Ingredients
500g chicken

For the marinade
2 cloves of garlic crushed
3 cms of ginger grated
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp hoi sin sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
1 tsp chinese 5 spice

For the sticky coconut rice
250g long grain rice
400ml coconut milk
Pinch of fresh coriander (cilantro)
1 red chilli (deseeded and finely chopped) (I used a green chilli)

For the dipping sauce
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 red chilli (de-seeded and finely chopped)

Recipes
Roasted Thai style chicken
1. Mix the marinade and cover the chicken. Cover and leave for an hour (or overnight if possible)
2. Place the chicken in an oven dish and cover with foil.
3. Cook for 45-60mins.

Sticky coconut rice
1. Cook the rice in 500ml of boiling water until the water is almost evaporated.
2. Add the coconut milk to the rice and season to taste.
3. Continue to cook until the rice is sticky.
4. Mix in the coriander and chilli.

Dipping sauce
Mix the soy sauce and chilli

Absolutely delicious!

Cooking for 4 days in 1 night

I had a really busy night last night. I'm heading off to Youth Ministry Summer School today and decided to help hubby out by cooking a few things in advance that he can reheat the next few nights while I'm not here.

So firstly I made bolognese in a very straightforward quick way - brown mince beef, add sauce from jar, cook for 10 minutes, fry chopped bacon, mix into mince and separate into containers. Seeing as he isn't keen on spaghetti/pasta and loves mashed potato with bolognese, i boiled some potatoes that he can reheat and mash when he needs it.

After this I made some Irish Stew, which is a great dish and handy for nights when I'm working at home because you really just throw everything into a casserole dish and leave it to cook for a couple of hours. It really looks more complicated and longer than it actually is.

Then after this made sweet and sour chicken - cook chicken til golden, add chopped green bell peppers, stir in sweet and sour stir fry sauce and add chopped pineapple - ready in 10 minutes and delicious!


IRISH STEW

Serves 4

Ingredients
1 tbsp vegetable oil
500g casserole beef steak pieces/lamb pieces
5 medium sized potatoes
2 large carrots
3 medium sized onions
400ml beef/lamb stock
Worcestershire sauce
Salt
Pepper
1.5 tbsp butter
1.5 tbsp plain flour
4 tbsp chopped spring onions

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 190C.
2. Heat oil in a pan and add the meat. Brown for 5 minutes then add to a casserole dish.
3. Chop the potatoes, onions and carrots into chunky pieces. Add the carrots, onions and potatoes (in that order) to the casserole dish.

4. Add a few splashes of worcestershire sauce, season with salt and pepper then pour in the stock.
5. Cover and place in the oven and leave for 1 hour 45 minutes
6. Melt the butter in a pot, then stir in the flour: this mixture is called a "roux". Pour the sauce in the casserole into the roux and mix. When it comes to the boil pour it back into the casserole dish.
7. Add the spring onions.
8. Mix the casserole, mashing up the potatoes slightly as you do.
9. Cover and place back in the oven for 15 minutes.
10. Remove and serve.