Researching for an 80’s theme party…

I think I’m going to keep an ongoing list of nibbles that I can create for this birthday party. I know I have a fair bit of time to do it all in and a quick google now has already thrown up these gems!

Ritz crackers spread with primula cheese

Cheese and pineapple on sticks

Egg and sausage plait

Avacado stuffed with prawns

(Though I’m going to adapt that to make little ice gem lettuce leaves stuffed with mashed avacado and prawns laid on top so it’s not fiddly to eat.)

mini hotdogs (is that 80’s?)

Cheetos from Walkers

Devilled eggs

Cheese straws

Club sandwiches

tinned fruit salad and evaporated milk! (Not a party food but funnily enough we had this a lot!)

mini hamburgers

Indian nibbles

Quiche

Vol-au- vonts

Also quite a lot of other food forums talk about how food was constantly served with parsley and that is so true! I just remember the curly stuff being put on everything you ate. Suffice to say I hate the bloody stuff!

Anyway, I’ll keep the list going though I doubt I’ll be making much of the above…

B x

Muffins chocolate and blueberry but not at the same time!

Last week whilst shopping with my sister at Morrison’s we decided to venture down the baking isle and see what we could see. Helen spots a ready made chocolate muffin kit by Betty Crocker with all the bits in the kit including muffin cases and all you need to do is add water.

So this kit has sat at home and it is only today (the hottest of the year so far I might add!) that I think it’s a great idea to bake these muffins with Elliot, my son. Well we had fun doing that and they came out great, however the kit was £1.20 to make four and with us trying to budget I wanted to compare this against baking my own from scratch.

Que Delia’s recipes for Blueberry and pecan muffins (here is the link to the recipe) and I’ve managed to make seven muffins for pretty much the same money. It needs a little more sugar so if you make them, add 60g of castor sugar instead of 40g, especially if your blueberries are sour and a dash of cinnamon or mixed spice wouldn’t go amiss either imo.

But overall a lovely light variation of the Betty Crocker muffins and Elliot had more fun cracking eggs into the kenwood than just pouring powder so I believe it has a kids thumbs up too!

My next attempt will be scones…I have an uneasy relationship with them and well my nanna (bless her!) has given me a tip on how to get them soft and crumbly but not dry so I’m going to try that and if it works write about it here!

Flapjack

It’s a funny one is flapjack, most people I would assume think it’s fairly straight forward but more often than not it tends to be over cooked or full of stuff that shouldn’t even be in it! I know my first few attempts went horribly wrong and I had to chip it out of the tin. I nearly gave up but I found in one of Stew’s mum’s old cookbooks a Scottish recipe with a magic ingredient. Tate and Lyle’s golden syrup! Now I could wax lyrical about golden syrup till my teeth fell out as I love it. (Especially on some thick slices of hot buttered bread) but in all the low fat recipes it tends to be omitted, but this recipe is so far removed from healthiness but it works and now I make it quite a lot.

So here is the recipe (again I’ve adapted it to fit with what I like).

Ingredients

150g best butter at room temp (you won’t get the rich buttery taste if you use marg)

4 tbsp of Tate and Lyle’s Golden Syrup

150g muscavardo or brown sugar

300g of porridge oats

1. Melt butter and syrup in a pan then remove from heat.

2. Add sugar and oats to the mixture and mix well.

3. Grease and line an 18cm tin

4. Spread mixture into tin and bake on Gas 4/350f/180c for 20 minutes. (Even after 20 minutes it looks gooey still bring it out of the oven as it hardens.)

5. Remove from oven and leave to cool in  tin for 5 minutes.

6. Cut into strips whilst still warm (makes it easier to cut) and store in an airtight box for up to 4 weeks. The flavours develop the longer you leave it.

This adapted recipe comes from The Complete Farmhouse Kitchen Cookbook published by Yorkshire Television.

I’ve found that butter works so much better than marg and don’t skimp on golden syrup. I tried using Tesco Value syrup and it’s awful, the texture, the taste – it’s not good old Tate and Lyle’s! My flapjacks never see the end of the week so if anyone manages to make them last longer then I’d love to know how the flavour develops.

Bec x

Dim Sum adventure

Of recent I’ve spent quite a fair bit of time cooking Chinese cuisine and I caught the bug by visiting the local Chinese supermarket in Leeds that was recommended by the owner of our local takeaway. So I tend to visit a couple of times a week and have found that my food bill budget has been cut in half and I’m being more experimental in my cooking. So tonight I wanted to use up the bits in the fridge and dug out some wanton wrappers, bought some Tiger prawns and then with some inspiration from google, went on a merry adventure!

I used a site called recipes for you that had speciality Dim Sum dishes for bamboo steamers (I got one for a fiver!) So I adpated the recipes to make Gow Gee, Pearl Balls and prawn toast. Have to say that all came out lovely and I was very surprised at how it all came together! Normally I just make basic pork, prawn and mushroom dumplings and bung them in a wonton soup.

Anyway, it all went down very well with the sprog as he cleared his plate! So the uncooked left overs have gone into the freezer for next time. Btw, you can find the recipes on the above website if you click the link. I just adapted it in terms of veggies I had available, just pork instead of pork and prawns and things like that.

I love how making chinese food is all about preparation and what you think is the most important part (the cooking) tends to be an almost secondary thing. I think I’ll have to start testing these recipes out on guinea pigs next, I did crispy duck last week and that went extraordinarily  well! Any takers?

Bec x

The Black Forest adventure

Ok so today I’m at a BBQ even though it is pissing it down with typical British weather! So when the invite came through I thought I’d make desert as my contribution to the food. On another note, I’m doing the catering for my mum’s 50s birthday next year and she has requested an 80’s party so I’m trying out old school recipes and thought I’d give the Black Forest Gateau a run through.

This recipe is an adaptation of Anthony Warroll Thompson’s, Cooking made perfect (an 80’s cookbook!) and some advice from my mum. (My parents were chefs.)

Ingredients:

340g Castor sugar

340g butter

6 eggs

240g self raising flour, sifted

100g cocoa powder, sifted

2 large jar of morello cherries in syrup (they must be in syrup as it’s an essential ingredient)

8 tbsp Kirch or Cherry Brandy liqueur

2 pints of double or whipping cream

2 large bars of 50% + plain chocolate

(Optional – about 20 whole fresh cherries with stalks on and another two bars of plain chocolate.)

1.Heat the oven to Gas 3

2. Line and grease then lightly dust with flour an 8 inch or 20cm loose bottom tin.

3. Cream the butter and sugar together until they are very light and fluffy

4. Beat the eggs in one at a time until incorporated fully. (I find at this point that by adding a tablespoon of flour for each egg added at the same time stops the mixture from curdling.)

5. Fold the flour and cocoa into the mixture.

6. Pour into the tin and bake for 30-45 minutes until springy. (I split the mixture into two so that I had two sponges which made a four layer cake.)

7. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

8. Meanwhile, drain the cherries but retain the syrup in a seperate jug or bowl.

9. Add 4 tbsp of kirch to the syrup and the other four to the cherries and leave to marinate.

10. When the cakes are completely coolled slice them in half horizontally to make 4 cakes.

11. Place the cakes on plates and drizzle each with the syrup and kirch mixture and leave to absorb.

12. Whip the cream so that it is very stiff.

13. Then start to assemble the gateau by placing the bottom layer on a plate, covering with cream and spreading a layer of cherries over the top. The add the next layer and so forth until you’ve reached the top of the cake.

14. When complete then cover the entire cake in cream, sides and top. Now you can either cover the top with some left over cherries or dip the fresh cherries in melted chocolate, leave to set and then place on top of the gateau.

15. Cover the entire cake with the grated plain chocolate and done!

The cake went down a storm last night and on reflection I think I need to add more cherries to the recipe so have upped the ingredients list to 2 jars of cherries for future

Bec x

The start of sugar and spice

Ever since my son was born, I started to change the way in which I ate and my whole approach to food, I’ve gone on to learn how to really cook. I don’t just mean basic cooking but things that I always felt were out of my skill set.

So the past two years I’ve collected recipes, had some fantastic disasters yet some amazing successes and it was by the recommendation of my husband that I start putting it all down somewhere. So here I am!

A little corner of the internet to start my cooking homage!

Bec x