Pineapple & Lemon Upside-Down Pudding and my new page

Sunday has officially now been declared as Pudding Day in my house! My daughter isn‘t accustomed to eating desserts, apart from fruit and yoghurts, and I thought it would be nice to have a dessert once a week. Any excuse to have a dessert, right?At the same time, I also get to practice and improve my baking skills...and in fact to stretch my baking skills I´ve also decided to bake each of the technical bakes from the hit TV baking programme, The Great  British Bake Off. I´ll be posting about my experiences baking the technical challenges!
Anyway though back to the Pineapple and Lemon Upside-Down Pudding...I decided to make this because I just happened to have all the ingredients lurking in my cupboard,waiting to be used up and I was also hoping that it´d encourage my daughter to eat pineapple!What a great choice of pudding!! It was lick the bowl and spoon delicious....me and my husband devoured it in one sitting and my daughter didn´t even get a look in (no, we did try to give her some and she had a little nibble but I think she was too full from her lunch for any dessert....all the more for us!!!)

Before I get onto the recipe, one of the reasons I haven´t been posting too much on here is because I´ve set up a page ....yes,now you can follow me on Facebook too!!However, it´s not completely related to this blog but more to baking and above all,cakes, so you will see many of the cakes,biscuits etc(including this pudding!)from the blog and others that I haven´t got round to posting and may never get round to posting! You can find my page, Sweet Tooth Bakes, on Facebook...please come and have a look and at the same time press like ; ) The other reason is finding time to blog along with everything else!!!

Here´s the recipe adapted from The Dairy Book of Home Cookery.

Ingredients:(for 2-3 people)
base: 25g butter
       25g soft brown sugar
       1 small can of pineapple rings
Sponge Pudding: 100g self-raising flour
                          1/8 tsp salt
                           50g butter
                           50g caster sugar
                          Grated rind of 1/2 lemon
                          1 large egg
                           2-2 1/2 tbsp cold milk
Method
1. Prepare the base by melting butter and sugar together and pour into a greased Pyrex bowl and arrange pineapple rings on top of the base and around the sides of the bowl.
2. Sift flour and salt into a bowl and rub the butter in until it looks like breadcrumbs.
3.Add sugar and lemon rind and combine,add the milk and egg  and mix to form a soft batter.
4.Place in a preheated oven of 190ºC/375ºF and bake for 30 minutes, then lower the temperature to 180ºC/350ºF and bake for a further 35-45 minutes until a wooden cocktail stick comes out clean,when inserted.
5.Leave in dish for 5 minutes before turning it out onto a plate and serve with cream, ice-cream or custard!
                     

                         

Char Siu Pork

I love Chinese and funnily enough one of the things I miss from good old Blighty is good Chinese food as Chinese food here in Spain is somewhat lacking in taste or in quality although it is cheap!One of my favourite dishes is Char Siu Pork, a dish which so far has proved impossible to find here (the Spanish don´t know what they are missing!!!)so when I came across the following recipe on fellow blogger Debs´s blog The Spanish Wok, I thought I´d give it a try.

Oh Boy,am I glad I tried it!Deb´s recipe is simple and easy to follow and the result is tasty, succulent pork oozing with  flavours such as five spice and hoisin sauce, really reminiscent of your local Chinese takeaway back in the UK!! I teamed the Char Sui pork with Annabel Karmel´s Vegetarian Nasi Goreng and this is a winning dish that everyone can enjoy,even my daughter loved it!!This will be a regular dish in our house from now on!

Dublin Coddle for St. Patrick´s Day

Over the St.Patrick´s Day weekend,I decided to make something typically Irish and despite never having heard of or having tried Dublin Coddle, thought it sounded pretty tasty and since I had all the ingredients to hand, went ahead and made it.

Although maybe not the healthiest meal, it is certainly a very tasty one and it is a pretty easy and fairly quick meal to prepare. It is also suitable for toddlers and my daughter really enjoyed it, particularly the sausages, which she wolfed down. This is yet another dish that I will be adding to my monthly repertoire (the only reason  it won´t make a more frequent appearance is due to it not being the healthiest of meals!)

I adapted the recipe from the book Cocina Irlandesa by Anne Wilson and tried to make it a little healthier.  
I´m not sure how traditional this version of the recipe is!Apparently, it was traditionally eaten on a Saturday night.

Ingredients (for 3-4 people)
 7-8 pork sausages
4 rashers of bacon (I used smoked bacon)
1 onion, finely chopped
1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 medium-sized potatoes, thinly sliced
1/4 tsp dried sage
a pinch of ground black pepper
3/4 cup of chicken stock
2 tbsp frozen parsley
olive oil

Method
1. Cook the sausage and bacon on a non-stick griddle pan,brushed with a little olive oil,till a golden brown colour.
2.Fry the onion and garlic until tender and add the bacon,cut into strips.
3.Place the potatoes in a shallow casserole dish and add a layer of garlic,onion and bacon.
4.Sprinkle the pepper and sage over it and then pour the chicken stock over everything.
5.Place the sausages on top and add the parsley.
6.Cook in a preheated oven at 180ºC for an hour until potatoes are cooked through and serve warm.Enjoy!

Cooking Spain Region By Region: Andalusia: Polea or Gachas Dulces (Andalusian Sweet Porridge?)

When doing a little bit of research into typical dishes of Andalusia in order to choose which ones to try and cook, I came across this dessert, Polea,which I´d never heard of before. I decided to have a bash at making this dessert as it seemed unusual,what with having croutons in it etc plus it piqued my curiosity. I was a little bit apprehensive at the same time too as I wasn´t sure whether I´d like it because I´m not too keen on  savoury gachas. However, I´m soooooooo glad I decided to make it as it is absolutely delicious, even if I do say so myself! ; )

It has a lovely lemony, milky,cinnamon flavour with a hint of aniseed and is surprisingly light. I served it warm but I think it´d be nice both hot and cold. I´m so pleased I found this dessert as it has quickly become one of my favourite Spanish desserts and I prefer it to flan,natillas or crema catalana. I really don´t know why this isn´t on more restaurant menus for dessert!!I will definitely be making this on a regular basis...in fact I am thinking of making it for a Father´s Day meal for my hubby as he really enjoyed it too but unfortunately my daughter didn´t get round to trying it...maybe next time!!It is really quick and easy to make too, despite being  a fairly easy dish to prepare for some reason,it didn´t thicken up and was still quite thin and liquidy...probably because I didn´t mix the flour in the milk.I ´ve adapted the recipe from the original recipe from Gallina Blanca.

Ingredients (for 2)
 1/2 litre of milk
1 tbsp mild (suave) olive oil
2 1/2 tbsp sugar
grated rind of 1/2 lemon
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp of dried aniseed or fennel seeds (I didn´t have aniseed so used fennel seeds as they still have that aniseed flavour)
ground cinnamon
ready made or home made croutons (I used ready made croutons,just to save time)

Method
1. Heat the olive oil and add the aniseed or fennel seeds and cook for a couple of seconds over a low heat, making sure they don´t burn.
2. Dissolve half of the flour in the milk and then add to the pan.
3.Add the sugar,the rest of the flour,the grated lemon rind,the cinnamon stick and a pinch of cinnamon and cook over a low heat till it starts to thicken, stirring the whole time.
4. Once thickened, remove from heat and pour into serving dish and add the croutons and sprinkle with ground cinnamon according to your taste.
5.Serve and enjoy!

Traditional Queen of Puddings

 I´ve been on a bit of a baking roll lately, trying to hone my skills and bring a taste of home to my kitchen so Sundays have now become dessert day!!

I´ve never tried Queen of Puddings before and had planned to make one of my favourite desserts,Sticky Toffee Pudding, but as I didn´t have enough soft brown sugar and I had all the ingredients on hand for this dessert,Queen Of Puddings it was!!I really enjoyed it too as the sponge has a lovely lemony kick to it and it is quite a light pudding. Plus it meant I got to practice my piping skills a little!!

                                                     The recipe is taken and adapted from the book, The Dairy Book of Home Cookery. I halved the original recipe so that it only served two.

Ingredients (for 2)
37g fresh white breadcrumbs
12g caster sugar
grated lemon rind of 1/2 lemon or about 1/2 tsp
225ml of cold milk
12g butter
Yolk of one large egg
1 tbsp warmed raspberry jam
White of one large egg
                                                      25 -37g caster sugar
                                                     
Method
1.Place breadcrumbs,sugar and lemon rind in a bowl and mix.
2.Place butter and milk in a pan and cook over a low heat until the butter has melted.
3.Pour onto breadcrumb mixture and stir till well combined and leave to stand for 30 mins,then beat in the egg yolk.
4.Place in a small glass bowl and place in preheated oven  at 160ºC/325ºF and bake for around 30 mins until sponge is a light golden colour.
5.Prepare the meringue topping while sponge is cooking by whisking egg white until stiff and peaky and when the bowl is placed upside down,it doesn´t fall out.Fold in the caster sugar gently and spoon into a piping bag.
6. Pipe meringue peaks on top of the pudding,then return to the oven and bake for a further 30-40 mins or until meringue is a pale golden brown colour.

Simple and Quick Garden Insect Cake

 I offered to make my friend´s daughter a birthday cake but didn´t want to make a cake that would take too long or be too complicated to make, especially the decorating part,seeing as I have relatively little time to bake.Also the lack of fondant etc played a fundamental part in my idea for this cake.

I chose to make Delia Smith´s All-in-One Sponge (this is more or less the recipe I used minus the butter icing), which I flavoured with lemon rind and juice and then filled the cake with raspberry jam and fresh whipped cream. I then made a Lime Velvet Frosting and had a slight disaster,which I managed to rectify and coloured it a mint green colour to represent the grass. I iced the cake with a spatula and tried to get it as smooth as possible. I blasted about 5 Oreo cookies in a food processor for a couple of seconds till they were crushed and looked like "soil". I then sprinkled the "soil" over half the cake,then placed some worm sweets in the soil and some chocolate ladybirds on the grass and there you have it,a very simple and quick birthday cake that looks pretty.

Cooking Spain Region by Region:Andalusian Style Chicken (Pollo a la Andaluza)

I have been inspired by the blog Global Table Adventure and also by my desire to learn more about the Spanish cuisine and cook more Spanish meals,mainly so that my husband and daughter can enjoy this part of their culture. I am a particularly fussy person and there are many Spanish dishes that I am not particularly keen on but also there are many Spanish dishes that I don´t know or haven´t tried before so my aim is to cook two main courses and a dessert from each region of Spain.

I decided to kick this exploration of Spanish cuisine off by cooking each region in Spain in alphabetical order,much like in Global Table Adventure so the first region we are starting with is Andalucia. I came across this recipe for Andalusian Style Chicken or Pollo a la Andaluza  in the recipe book,Las 1000 Mejores Recetas de Cocina,liked the sound of the recipe and decided to have a go at making it.It was definitely a good choice, all of us enjoyed it and my husband even paid me the very high compliment that it was "in the top five dishes".it reminds me a little of Pollo a la Pepitoria.This recipe is a keeper and one that will be made again and again although probably at weekends as it takes a bit more preparation than other dishes.So,without further ado,on to the recipe:

Ingredients (4-6 people)
1 whole chicken,already chopped into pieces
1 onion, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
4 cloves of garlic
2 hard boiled eggs
1 bay leaf
1 small glass of wine (I used white cooking wine)
1 cup of chicken stock (I used an Oxo cube)
a handful or two of toasted almonds
a generous pinch of saffron
about 1 tbsp of fresh or frozen parsley (I used frozen)
salt and pepper to taste
 olive oil
*My recipe is a bit vague so I had to kind of guess the quantities of almonds, parsley etc but it turned out pretty tasty anyway!

Method
1. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.
2.Place in a heavy based pan with abundant olive oil and fry the garlic cloves whole until golden brown and remove.
3.Brown the chicken in the same oil and remove.
3.Fry the onion in the same oil, then add the tomato. When softened,place the chicken back in the pan.
4.Add the wine and cook on a medium heat.When the wine has reduced,add the bay leaf and chicken stock,add more salt if needed.Simmer.
5.While chicken is simmering,put garlic cloves,egg yolks,toasted almonds, parsley and saffron in a pestle and mortar and grind together and add a little water.
6.Add to the chicken and leave to simmer till chicken is cooked thoroughly, roughly about 1hr-1hr 20 mins
** This recipe is supposed to be for 4 people, it did 3 of us for 3 meals(I froze the leftovers into two batches)although I suppose my daughter only counts as half a person!!!

When I was looking up typical Andalucian dishes, one of the main dishes that kept cropping up was Oxtail or Rabo de Toro and as this is one of my husband´s favourite meals, I am thinking of tackling that dish in the future and as for the dessert,I still haven´t decided yet,some of my choices are alfajores, amarguillos or poleá but would love to hear from any of my Spanish readers and what they´d reccommend.