The Wandering Pit

White Chocolate Chip Cupcakes for Valentine´s Day

2012-02-11T01:06:00.000-08:00

I´ve been dying to try out my Sugarcraft heart plungers from China,which I bought for Chloe´s Christening cake then never used, so with Valentine´s Day looming up, I thought it was the perfect opportunity! I also had some white chocolate chips from Asda(ordered and brought to me by my mum as you can´t get them here)so thought I´d try out the following White Chocolate Chip cupcakes based on a recipe from my cupcake calender.

I decorated the cupcakes with a simple & quick Glace icing, then coloured some fondant red and set to with the heart plungers,cutting out small,medium and larger hearts,which I stuck on overlapping one another.Once again,very simple but this was more about trying the plungers out etc and I was hoping it would be more striking than it actually turned out! All in all, I was very pleased with the plungers, they were very cheap but did take awhile to arrive, they are very easy to use.My one complaint is that they didn´t always cut the fondant hearts out completely(but then that could just be me!) but I found that if you held the plunger down for a few seconds,you got a neater cut.

Here´s the recipe for the white chocolate chip cupcakes:
Ingredients: (makes about 18 cupcakes)
1 cup butter at room temperature
1 cup caster (superfine)sugar
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup (about 100g) white chocolate chips
1/2 tsp bicarbonade of soda (baking soda)

Method
1.Preheat oven to 175ºc (350ºF) and place 18 cupcake cases (I used cases with red love hearts on to ooze more Valentine Day love) in a muffin tray.
2.Stir all cupcake ingredients together except the chocolate chips for 2-3mins.
3.Stir in chocolate chips.
4. Spoon mixture into cupcake cases and bake for 20mins until toothpick comes out clean when inserted.
5. Leave to cool and then decorate.

Traditional Almond Slices

2012-02-05T07:20:00.000-08:00

Although I´m not a huge nut fan, I do like almonds,especially when they are used in anything marzipan-y and as I had quite a lot of almonds left over after making my Christmas Cake, I decided to make these traditional British cakes to use them up. My Gran used to make them as a little girl and I loved 'em.

Almond Slices are very similar to Bakewell Tarts (another fav of mine and that I´ll also be having a bash at making in the future!) only Bakewell Tarts are topped with icing and Almond Slices are topped with almonds. I polished these off almost single-handedly and couldn´t get enough of them and they were fairly simple to make. Here´s the recipe I used, taken from The Dairy Book of Home Cookery and slightly modified:
Ingredients:

1 packet of Short Crust Pastry (you could use homemade pastry which would be even more delicious but to save time I used frozen ready-made)
2 tbsp good quality raspberry jam (I used Bonne Maman and used a bit extra as wanted it to be nice & jammy!)
100g caster sugar
100g icing sugar (sifted)
175g ground almonds
1 egg
1 egg white
1/2 tsp almond extract
blanched,split almonds to decorate

1.Preheat oven to 200ºC/400ºF
2.Grease a baking tray and roll out pastry to 25x15cm and line baking tray with pastry, pinching long edges of pastry up to form a border.
3. Spread jam over pastry base as shown:

4. Mix sugars and ground almonds together and add egg, egg white and almond extract, stirring to form an almond paste.
5. Spread almond paste evenly on top of jam:

6. Sprinkle split almonds on top to decorate:

7.Place in oven and bake for around 25 mins.

8. When golden brown on top, leave to cool. Then cut into 14 slices.

There you have it...exceedingly good cakes...they almost give Mr Kipling a run for his money! ; )

Birthday Meal at Doña Croqueta, Ciudad Real

2012-01-27T00:17:00.000-08:00

Almost two months ago now,it was my birthday(I told you I had a backlog of things I wanted to post!) and my husband and I managed to go out for a meal to celebrate at one of my favourite restaurants, Doña Croqueta,leaving my mum babysitting. My husband knowing my passion for cakes and cake decorating bought me a subscription to Squire Kitchen´s Cake & Sugarcraft magazine, seeing as at the moment it´s impossible for me to take part in any cake decorating classes.

When you first step into Doña Croqueta, it looks like any other tapas bar but you are pleasantly surprised when you discover the restaurant tucked away. It´s a lovely, modern, brightly-coloured room decorated in bright pink & green ,albeit a little on the small side. You usually have to book this restaurant becuase it´s quite small and immensely popular. The food is Spanish-meets Nouvelle cusine.

Usually we almost always order the same, which includes their "famous" mixed croquettes, a mix of ham & bechamal, spinach, "cocido", boletus mushroom and sometimes fish croquettes. This time we decided to order things we hadn´t tried before. To start, we had grilled Meditterean vegetables in a sweet sauce but which also had flakes of Maldon salt(if I remember correctly),which was delicious.

One of the specials that was on that night, revuelto(scrambled egg) with blue mushrooms(god know what type of mushroom they are) and I think it also had foie in it...good but nothing special in my opinion.

We then had spare ribs in a sweet sauce, I think it was like a caramel type sauce, which were also delicious. Although all their food is delicious,I did prefer what we usually order but it´s good to have a change!

Another reason why Doña Croqueta is one of my favourite restaurants is because their desserts are definitely among the best in Ciudad Real. This is one dish we decided to keep the same. White chocolate truffles with Peta Zeta(popping candy) so creamy that it melts in your mouth and is reminiscent of ice cream, then you get the popping sensation of the candy on your tongue! Sheer heaven! The only thing is that after a couple, they can get a bit rich so we always share them!

I only had 2 glasses of Lambruscco Rosé and I was feeling giddy! I´m such a lightweight now!! All in all a wonderful meal at a great restaurant which I´d definitely reccomend visiting if you are ever in the area and all for a fairly reasonable price!

My Second Christmas Cake & everything is all a bit last minute!

2012-01-08T10:07:00.000-08:00

I don´t know what happened to Christmas this year but before I knew it or I could blink it was all over. I was so unorganised and everything was all a bit hectic and last minute! I was still wrapping presents on Christmas Eve and icing my Christmas Cake on Christmas Day!! I think that part of the problem is that schools and academies finish so late for the Christmas hols...they don´t start till the 23rd December!!!

I did do quite a bit of baking, I make some Christmas biscuits, which unfortunately didn´t get round to blogging, mince pies as per usual but they were also dashed off at the last minute as I didn´t have the filling till my parents arrived on the 22nd December, and then my Christmas Cake.

Although I enjoyed last year´s Christmas Cake I thought I´d try out a different recipe this year and tried the Rich Fruit Cake recipe from my The International School of Sugarcraft Beginners book. As my husband and my in-laws don´t really like fruit cake very much and I don´t want to be the one stuck eating it all up, I made the smallest cake and even halved that recipe and made it in a loaf tin. I was really worried I´d dried it out but I think my Mum saved it by slapping lots more brandy on it for it to soak in and become more moist.

I used Dr Oetker´s roll-out marzipan ,which I stuck on using apricot jam and then some Renshaw´s white Regalice roll out fondant (again stuck on with the apricot jam). I then coloured some white fondant green and using a small Xmas tree biscuit cutter, cut out a green fondant tree, which I stuck in the centre of the cake more or less using edible glue. I then used silver balls stuck on the tree as baubles and a yellow star and voila, a simple, easy and quickly decorated Christmas Cake. I was very pleased with this cake as it tasted pretty delicious and quite professional, even if I do say so myself!

Spa weekend in Seville and two restaurant reviews

2011-12-29T08:13:00.000-08:00

I haven´t been doing much wandering lately since I got pregnant and having Chloe but finally about a month ago now, we managed to escape for a short weekend break at a spa in Seville, taking Chloe with us of course. We met up with my parents in Seville and they also stayed at the spa, Andalusi Park, with us to help look after Chloe while we enjoyed the spa. We also gave them a night and a spa circuit as a favour for them looking after Chloe. The Andalusi Park is a lovely hotel, very clean and modern, with spacious rooms and we were really lucky and had the biggest balcony to sit out on and enjoy!Breakfast was included and comprised of a buffet which you could help yourself to as little or as much as you wanted. The spa, although fairly small was very relaxing and just what I needed after all those sleepless nights after Chloe came along. I´ve never been to a spa before but thoroughly enjoyed it, from the sauna-style room, to the water jets, jacuzzi and massage. My fav part was the jacuzzi and massage and my least favourite was the hot shower followed by a swinging bucket which when you pull the cord, drenches you in freezing cold water. Now why would anyone willingly tip freezing cold water over their heads? I would definitely reccomend this hotel & spa with it only being a hop,skip and a jump away from Seville city centre (about 10mins drive and there is also a shuttle service from the hotel) and it is also a reasonable price, around 65 euros per night with breakfast included.

The first night we arrived, we decided to eat locally at a restaurant within a short walk of the hotel. We ended up at a lovely restaurant, La Alacena (Cabo de Gata, Benacazón), which was decorated really nicely for Christmas.It was quite spacious so there was enough room for Chloe´s buggy. For starters we ordered some seafood bits & pieces (I can´t remember what exactly as I didn´t eat any of it seeing as I don´t like seafood very much) and some ham croquettes, which were very tasty. My mum and I ordered the "presa iberíca",a pork cut from the shoulder blade as far as I can gather with apples and a toffee sauce, which was absolutely delicious. The pork was lovely and tender and the sauce not too sweet or heavy.

My husband had fish and my stepdad had lamb chops. We were all too stuffed to order any dessert. I´m not sure what the bill was but dishes cost between 15-25 euros. Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.

We spent a lovely day in Seville seeing the sights. I don´t know who enjoyed it more, us or Chloe...she loved taking in all the new sights and sounds and hardly slept a wink all day.That evening we decided to go back into Seville and try a Japanese restaurant.I haven´t eaten in many true Japanese restaurants and they don´t really grab my attention much as I don´t like fish or seafood much so sushi is definitely a no-no! It took us awhile to find it but with the help of the SatNav we finally arrived at Sakura (Avda.San Francisco Javier 19). It is a fairly small restaurant with modern decor and Japanese touches such as prints and pictures. I had a meat & vegetable dumpling to start with, which was tasty although I don´t know where the vegetable was as it tasted a bit sausagey! I then had rice and if I remember rightly duck teriyaki. Everything was delicious but the portions were fairly small and it probably cost the same as the previous night but for a lot less food. The food was very nice and I´d reccomend this restaurant if you want something a bit different but for me the portions were a little on the small side. Unfortunately, I didn´t get any photos of the food as I didn´t have my camera with me!

Food Bloggers Unplugged

2011-12-17T00:39:00.000-08:00

I was very excited the other day when I found out that Anne of Anne´s Kitchen had tagged me for Food Bloggers Unplugged- I´ve never been tagged before!!! It is an event created by Susan from on a A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate in order to get to know other food bloggers. The aim is to answer 10 questions about yourself and than tag 5 other bloggers to participate if they want to.

So here goes:
What, or who, inspired you to write a blog?
I started reading blogs such as Anne´s Kitchen and Gourmet Traveller, which I really admired and as I had time on my hands at that moment in time and I was getting more and more into cooking and baking, thought it would be a good idea to start my own blog as a way of pushing myself and honing my skills to become a better cook!

Who is your foodie inspiration?
My wonderful Gran as she was an excellent cook and made the most delicious cakes-she was always baking and cooking and I used to help her with the easy stuff and then licked the bowl clean!! So she was the one who probably sparked my interest in baking and cooking more! Her homemade apricot jam was to die for too!!

Your greasiest, batter-splattered food/drink book is?

Oh, a difficult one as I´m always flicking through all my cookbooks but it definitely has to be a toss-up between Delia Smith´s Complete Cookery Course and Better Homes & Gardens Cook Book, which I bought the first time I stayed in the USA, as all the recipes from it are yummy and usually turn out really well!

Tell us about the best thing you have ever eaten in another country, where was it, what was it?

Another difficult one!! It´s really hard to narrow it down and remember!! I´m going to cheat and say a couple of things as I find it impossible to narrow it down to just one! Roast duck a l´orange in a Portuguese restaurant or roast suckling pig in Spain (particularly good in Segovia!), Eggs Benedict in the buffet breakfast in Niagra Falls (see Discovering Niagra post) and sweet things either the blueberry hotcake at Pamela´s Diner in the Strip District in Pittsburgh or cherry pie in the USA.

Another food bloggers table you´d like to eat at is?

I love Asian food so I´d probably pick something from either Gourmet Traveller´s or Sunflower´s Food Galore table but there are plenty of things I´d love to try on all the blogs I read, visit or follow!!

What is the one kitchen gadget you would ask Santa for this year (money no object of course)?

Probably a Kitchen Aid mixer for all my baked goods!!

Who taught you how to cook?

Apart from helping my Gran and Mum when I was little, I mainly taught myself how to cook using recipe books and I also did a GCSE in Food Technology, which also helped!!

I´m coming to you for dinner what´s your signature dish?

My signature dessert is definitely cherry cheesecake, not sure what my main course signature dish is! Maybe my Don Quijote burgers but since I´ve only made them for me and my OH not sure what everyone else thinks about them!

What is your guilty food pleasure?

I have a really sweet tooth so anything like chocolate etc. I absolutely love marzipan-in fact I used to prefer the icing and marzipan to the fruit cake-still do actually!!

Reveal something about yourself that others would be surprised to learn?

Don´t know! I don´t like coffee, beer or wine! Or maybe that I have lived in the UK, Germany, Spain and the USA!

Anyway,here´s the five I´ve tagged to join in although it´s not compulsory:

Gill at Gillthepainter

Extra Relish

Debs at thespanishwok

The Rambling Chef

and last but not least: Mamacook

Cheesy Mushroom Slice & weaning differences

2011-12-08T01:19:00.000-08:00

I have noticed that there are a few differences in weaning in Spain and the UK. While Baby Led Weaning seems all the rage in the UK, I´m not so sure it´s very popular in Spain. I was given a rough guide from the doctor about weaning, however on this guide it says not to introduce veg till 6 1/2 months whereas in the UK, it is reccommended to start with veg before fruit, due to fruit being naturally sweeter and therefore babies liking it more.Chloe turned 6 months recently and we went along to the doctor´s for her injections and 6 mnth check-up. The nurse was asking what we had given her and when I mentioned that I´d already given her veg such as carrot & sweet potato, one of the nurses asked me why I didn´t give her something more normal! I immediately got annoyed and replied that it was normal to give sweet potato to babies in my country, which it is. In fact, many of the baby food jars have sweet potato & carrot combos! One of the nurses then replied but you´re not in your country, you´re here! I was fuming! Ok, I know the doctor´s have their reasons but if there aren´t any problems for babies in the UK, why would there be any problem for Spanish babies?Especially as I have read that sweet potato doesn´t cause much allergy! I just want her to have a healthy, varied diet so that she doesn´t grow up fussy, like me!!

Anyway, rant over! I made this dish at least a month ago but haven´t got round to blogging it! I´m getting quite a backlog of things I want to blog but haven´t had time to yet! This is another vegetarian recipe from my school days when we did a project about vegetarianism in Home Economics and is one of my favs!

Ingredients (for 2 people)

25g butter or margarine

3 spring onions, sliced

1/2 green pepper, chopped

1/2 red pepper, chopped

167g mushrooms, sliced

3-6 slices of bread

62g Cheddar cheese

3 eggs

1/2 pint milk

1/2 tsp mustard (I used Dijon but you can use English or whichever mustard you like)

1/2 tsp Worcester sauce

Method

1. Fry chopped vegetables in butter or margarine till tender.

2. Cut crusts off bread and cut into rectangles. Place a layer in a greased casserole dish:

3.Spoon fried vegetables on top of bread:

4. Top with another layer of remaining bread.

5. Grate the cheese and sprinkle on top:

6.Whisk eggs, milk, mustard and Worcester sauce together and pour over the bread and mushroom mixture.

7. Bake in a preheated oven for 40 -60 mins at 180ºC or till cheese has melted and the top is a nice golden colour:

Tapearte 2011-Tapeando in Ciudad Real & the joys of weaning!!!

2011-11-20T10:11:00.000-08:00

I´ve been meaning to post this for awhile now but just haven´t managed to get round to it!! I have been doing some baking including a mango and chocolate torte and Custard Pie but haven´t had my camera at hand. I´m also pretty caught up in weaning and homemade purees for my daughter. So far she´s tried baby rice & baby porridge, carrot, carrot & sweet potato, banana and apple. Thankfully she seems to like everything so far, not like her mother!! I´m mainly following the Annabel Karmel website & her recipes. The funniest reaction we´ve had was a disgusted face and then a shudder after trying banana for the first time. Maybe she´s going to be like her mummy and not like banana!

Anyway, on to the main post, Tapearte 2011. This is an annual tapas contest held in Ciudad Real, where restaurants and bars compete against one another to win the title of best tapa and it is voted by you, the general public. Participating bars/restaurants have leaflets or you can pick them up at the tourist office, which list all the tapas and places taking part. You can then visit the bar and try the tapa which you fancy the most for the small fee of 2 euros for a beer or other drink(some allow you to have soft drinks or Salobriña, a red grape & apple juice drink, others you have to pay extra if you don´t have an alcoholic drink!)plus the tapa! This year Tapearte 2011 was from October 12 -October 16. The bar then stamps your leaflet and you mark the tapa on taste, presentation and originality. If you collect 7 stamps, you can also enter a prize draw!

This is the first year that we actually managed to take part in it and I think now it is going to be a regular event that we will join in!The first bar we tried was La Calle in C. Mata, The tapa was pork tenderloin with caramelized onion on a slice of bread in a reduction of sherry (Pedro Ximenez, I think) .It was delicious, especially as the bread had soaked up all the juices howver not very good on the originality and presentation counts! Unfortunately, I didn´t get a photo of this!

The next place we tried was the tapa in Miami Gastro (in Avenida de Rey Santo), unfortunately I can´t remember exactly what it consisted of. I think it was a toast with mushrooms in truffle oil or something. It was good but a bit of a disappointment coming from them as I really enjoyed this restaurant when we went there.

Next we tried Guridi´s (C. Libertad) tapa. Guridi has already won the tapas contest twice before and this year, their entry did not disappoint. By far the winner in presentation at least, the tapa was a mini burger complete with a quail´s egg and served on a poppy-seed bun (the bun was a little dry, I have to say), a potato chip coil wrapped round a flower as you can see in the following photo:

We then went to La Esquina de Hierbabuena, directly opposite Guridi on C. Libertad, whose tapa was a tasty sheep´s cheese Encomienda de Cervera covered in pistachios and spearmint and fried.

We then headed for the main square and tried two tapas in different bars, the first bar we tried was El Portalon, whose tapa was a type of pie, with pastry at the bottom, aubergine and a bechamel sauce, rather reminiscent of a lasange but very tasty even if not very original.

Then, it was on to the bar next door, El Ventero, again can´t quite remember what exactly the tapa was but it invloved mincemeat, cheese and tortilla type bread and was a little spicy if I remember correctly. Another delicious choice but they lost points in my book for charging us extra for the tapa. (Both of these restaurants can be found in the Plaza Mayor).

Finally, we ended our tapas trail in Cafe del Arte (C. del Lirio), where the tapa was made up of a kebab with red & green pepper,onion, cherry tomato and kangaroo meat.Good but the meat was a little tough, the tapa itself was neither very original nor very well-presented.

My three fav´s were La Calle (Pork tenderloin and caramellized onions), La Esquina de Hierbabuena (fried cheese covered in pistachio and spearmint) and Guridi (the mini burger). Still don´t know who won this year´s Tapearte and in the end didn´t get round to entering the prize draw as we lost our leaflets but was fun doing it all the same!!

Belated Halloween Pumpkin Spider Cupcakes

2011-11-08T06:56:00.000-08:00

Although Halloween is long over, I still had some orange and black fondant so I decided to make the Halloween pumpkin cupcakes I made last year as I also had a jar of pumpkin that needed using up too. I actually made these cupcakes last weekend but haven´t got round to blogging it until now!

Using round cookie cutters, I cut out circles of orange rolled fondant and stuck it onto the pumpkin cupcakes using edible glue. I then rolled out the black fondant and using a 16 icing nozzle and a 2 icing nozzle, cut out the head and body for the spider. I then cut thin strips for the legs, which I rolled between my fingers to shape them into spidery legs and stuck them onto the orange fondant-again with the edible glue! I then rolled some small balls of orange fondant for the spider´s eyes. I still have some black and orange fondant left so any ideas of what I can do with it, which aren´t related to Halloween, are greatly welcomed!! Looking forward to next Halloween when Chloe will be able to dress up and join in the fun!!

Halloween decorated biscuits (in a bit of a rush!)

2011-11-01T01:56:00.000-07:00

After ordering the Halloween cutters and the black and orange fondant, they finally arrived and I could set to on making some Halloween decorated biscuits. I made my usual biscuit recipe, the one I used for Chloe´s Christening biscuits but it´s not easy juggling a baby and baking!! It took me all day to make these in between feeding Chloe, having dinner, taking her for a walk etc! Or maybe I´m just slow!!

I was going to decorate the ghosts with royal icing but in the end settled on glace icing as it was quicker to whip up and despite using a spatula instead of piping it on, I think they actually look quite neat!! I made the eyes and mouths with some black fondant and stuck them on with some edible glue. I then rolled out some black fondant and covered the gravestones and bats with black fondant. Using the glace icing, I then piped RIP onto the tombstones, unfortunately as the icing was quite thin, it was very difficult to pipe writing and kept blobbing out and joining up so it was harder to make out what it said(but had to make do as ended up having to rush it all). I then rolled out some orange fondant and covered the pumpkin- shaped biscuits and made eyes for the bats. I then cut out some black triangles and squiggly shapes for the eyes and mouths of the pumpkin and stuck them on with the edible glue again! I think by the time I finished it was 1 am!!

I was planning on doing more detail,like giving the pumpkins green stalks and maybe giving the bats fangs or mouths etc but as it got quite late and I was tired, I didn´t have the energy or the will! All in all though, I don´t think they turned out that bad even though they were decorated in quite a hurried manner!!

Blueberry Muffins with & without Streusal Topping

2011-10-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

I made these Blueberry Muffins last weekend but now with having a baby, finding it difficult to get round to blogging things!! I´ve made various muffin recipes and have been on the hunt for a perfect muffin recipe for awhile now. However we have tough criteria to match as my husband
wants them to measure up to the muffins we had in America and so far they haven´t met that standard. For starters he says they´re too small....time for a new muffin pan, is what I say!! ; )Anyway, this recipe is the closest I´ve found so far and it is actually an American recipe taken from the book Better Homes & Gardens Cook Book!

Ingredients (for 12 muffins)
1 3/4 cup of plain flour
1/3 cup sugar
2tsp baking powder
1 beaten egg
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup blueberries
1/4 cup sunflower oil

Streusal topping (optional)
3tbsp flour
3 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp butter

Method
1.Line muffin pan with paper cases and preheat oven to 200ºC/ 400ºF.
2. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt and make a well in the middle.
3. Stir egg, milk and oil together, then pour into well and mix until combined.
5. Stir in blueberries when batter is almost combined.
6. Spoon into paper cases filling two-thirds full. Sprinkle Streusal topping on top of muffins and place in oven.

7. Bake for 18-20 mins until golden and cool for 5 mins.

Streusal Topping
Mix flour, sugar and cinnamon, then rub in butter till it looks like breadcrumbs the same as you would for a crumble.

And there you have it scrummy blueberry muffins with a streusal topping, I made half with and half without as wasn´t sure if my husband would prefer them plain or with the streusal topping. He liked them both ways but in my opinion the Streusal topping just makes these muffins that bit extra yummy!

Simple Rainbow Quiche

2011-10-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

Yet another baking post but this time with a difference: a savoury bake!! As I mentioned in a previous post, I´m trying to eat more vegetarian dishes as I feel like I eat too much meat and as I had some shortcrust pastry in the freezer, which is a great timesaver, I thought I´d make this recipe.

My love of cooking came about due to helping my Gran bake and then at high school, I chose Food Technology as my Technology subject because I didn´t like metalwork or woodwork or any of the other options. One of the projects we had to do was about Vegetarianism and before that I really hadn´t tried much vegetarian food (and wasn´t really keen to try it either!!). I still have most of the recipes we used today and here is one of my favourites: Rainbow Quiche.

Ingredients (for 2 people)

1 packet of shortcrust pastry
1/2 red or white medium onion, finely chopped
1/4 - 1/2 red/green or yellow pepper, finely chopped
1 tomato, deseeded and chopped
1/2 courgette, finely chopped
2 eggs
1/4 pint milk
a knob of margarine/butter (about 12g)
50g Cheddar cheese (or other if you prefer)

Method

1. Line flan dish with pastry.
2. Beat eggs and milk together.
3. Grate cheese.
4.Fry vegetables in margarine or butter for 5 minutes until tender.
5. Place in flan dish, add grated cheese and egg & milk mixture (season if preferred although I don´t think it´s necessary)
6.Bake for around 30 mins at 190ºC/Reg 5 until all or the majority of the liquid has set.

Easy No-Bake Key Lime Pie (minus the Key Limes!)

2011-09-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

I like a good Key Lime Pie as it´s a bit like cheesecake (at least the ones I´ve tried anyway!) and as I had some digestive biscuits lying around that needed eating up, it was my excuse to make this tangy yet sweet dessert. Key Lime Pie is an American dessert and is usually made with key limes (hence the name) but of course if you can´t get Key limes, ordinary limes will do. They are also usually baked and even though I tagged it under baking, this recipe is super easy as you don´t have to actually do any baking!!According to Wikipedia, it is usually also topped with a meringue topping but again the ones I tried haven´t. So here´s the recipe, adapted from one of the editions of Better Homes & Gardens Cook book, enjoy!

Ingredients (makes about 8 slices)

100g oat digestives (or similar biscuits-I think gingernuts would be great for this recipe if I could buy them!)
50g butter
1/2 cup of lime juice (about 4 limes)
1 cup of whipping cream (2nd cup optional)
1tsp grated lime zest
1 1/4 cups of condensed milk

Method
1.Process biscuits in food processor till very fine crumbs.
2. Melt butter in pan over low heat and add to biscuit crumbs,mix, then press into cake tin to form biscuit base, place in fridge.
3. Mix condensed milk, lime zest and lime juice in a bowl.
4. Beat whipping cream with an electric hand whisk till it forms soft peaks.
5.Fold into condensed milk and lime juice mixture, then spoon on top of biscuit base.
6.Freeze for 2-4 hours. If desired, whip up extra cup of cream and place on top and grate some lime zest on top for decoration.

Vegetarian Paella -style rice

2011-09-24T02:10:00.000-07:00

Now that I´m no longer pregnant and need to eat as much protein as possible, I´ve started cooking some vegetarian dishes again as I was eating far too much meat!! This dish is tasty, quick to cook and low in fat and is quite similar to a paella!The recipe has been slightly adapted from Cocina Vegetariana rápida by Anne Wilson.

Ingredients (for 2)
1 cup long grain rice (I used Basmati)
pinch of saffron
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion or 1/2 large onion, chopped
3 mushrooms, sliced
handful of frozen green beans
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp tumeric
1/2 tbsp sweet paprika
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 litre vegetable stock (you might need to add a little more)-I used veggie Oxo cube
1/2 red pepper, chopped
1/2 tsp salt

Method
1.Place vegetable stock in a pan and add saffron strands.When it reaches boiling point, remove from heat.
2. Heat oil in a large frying pan and fry the onion, garlic, tumeric, paprika, cinnamon and rice until rice is infused with spices.
3. Add vegetable stock, red pepper,mushrooms, green beans and salt.
4. Once boiling point has been reached, lower the heat and cook slowly for 20 minutes until rice is tender.

More Christening biscuits & Chloe´s Christening Cake

2011-09-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

It´s quite difficult having a baby to find time to bake and furthermore blog about it, especially with Chloe´s Christening just around the corner I´d been busy organising it! As tradition states I had saved the top tier of my wedding cake-it´s a fruit cake so keeps very well particularly in the freezer-for the Christening cake. I took it out of the freezer to defrost 4 days before the Christening. I had planned to decorate it completely myself and had bought white and pink fondant, a smoother, edible glue, heart shape cutters and baby feet cutters. Unfortunately, it all went to pot...I did practice making the baby feet a couple of times and they turned out well, however my fondant had gone past it´s expiry date and was rock hard. Although I tried adding butter to it (I can´t buy shortening here!) and Glycerine, which helped it to become more supple and easier to work with, it was still very difficult to work with and cracked a lot. I also had a go at making some baby bootees which I think would´ve turned out if I hadn´t had the problems with the fondant/gumpaste mixture...they just collapsed and broke before I could stick them together. Luckily my mum had asked Amelia, who had made my wedding cake to make me a topper as a backup plan! She made me a beautiful ballerina teddy, a name plaque and some teddies for the side!

So in the end all I did was re-ice the cake with Royal Icing using the peak method (it´s easier than trying to get it completely smooth and time was of the essence!)with the help of my mum, then we stuck the teddies round the side of the cake and placed the teddy on top of the cake and the bootees and name plaque on the cake board and voíla!What do you think? Very cute,methinks! Will have to have some more attempts at the bootees and baby feet for the next one!!

I also wanted to make some decorated biscuits as favours for the guests even though I set myself up for a lot of work!! I made the biscuits on Thursday night, then using the leftover Royal Icing from the cake, I dyed a small quantity of it pink with red liquid food colouring. Using disposable icing bags and two Wilton no.2. nozzles I outlined the biscuits in white and filled in the bottles and the wheels of the prams. I then filled the prams in and the bottle teats with the pink icing, then on the bottles I piped Chloe´s name and simple designs such as lines for the measures and spots in pink and then on the pram spots and Chloe´s name in white. Practice definitely makes perfect as I think these are my best Christening biscuits to date and writing turned out much better than ever before.

To give my biscuits a more professional touch, my parents and I wrapped them in cellophane and tied them with pink ribbon curled at the end (I´m not really very good at doing these creative things so my parents helped me!!) and they turned out really well in the end! I was pretty impressed with myself! I definitely have to speed up though if I want to do this professionally some time!!

Piña Colada Cheesecake & Bricoreposteria

2011-09-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

For all you Spanish, cake-decorating, baking addicts whether you are a novice or amateur cake decorator or baker, I thouroughly reccommend a new(ish) specialist magazine, Bricoreposteria, packed full of cake decorating ideas and detailed step-by-step instructions and photos telling you how to recreate the featured cakes, advice and explainations about different caking tools, icing nozzles etc and recipes of how to make your own edible glue, fondant etc. It comes out bimonthly and costs 4.95Euros...my only complaint is that it is quite hard to find at my local newsagents, which means that I´ve missed out on a couple of issues.

I haven´t got around to tackling one of the bigger or more difficult projects yet.However, I have made the following, simpler Piña Colada cheesecake, taken from the latest issue (No.6)

Here´s a slightly adapted version of the recipe taken from Bricoreposteria:

Ingredients
100g digestive biscuits (I used oaty ones!)
50g unsalted butter
2 coconut yoghurts
250g mascarpone
227g tin of pineapple
100g dessicated coconut*
50g sugar
6 gelatine sheets (you could substitute this for powdered gelatine sachets)
yellow food colouring (optional)

Method
1. Blast the digestive biscuits in a food processor(great time saver!) and melt the butter in a pan over a low heat, then add melted butter to biscuits and mix, till biscuit crumbs start to hold together.
2. Press biscuit mixture into dish and place in fridge.
3. Place 4 gelatine sheets in a little warm water (here is where I got ahead of myself and made a slight both by placing all gelatine sheets in water and then consequently in cheesecake mix but in the end,it wasn´t a big deal and the cake still turned out pretty tasty!) and warm one coconut yoghurt in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water, then add warm yoghurt to gelatine sheets and stir till gelatine dissolves completely.
4. Add the other yoghurt, the mascarpone, the sugar and the dessicated coconut and mix till well combined, then spoon over the biscuit base and put in fridge while you prepare the pineapple part.
5. Separate the juice/ syrup from the pineapple and heat the juice in a pan or in the microwave, add the remaining gelatine and mix till dissolved.
6. Blast the pineapple & gelatine & pineapple juice in a food processor and add a couple of drops of yellow food colouring if desired and place on top of cheesecake.
7. Leave in fridge for 4 hours or until cheesecake has set.

* As I´m not that fond of coconut, I would reduce the amount of dessicated coconut to 50g next time I make this cake or maybe even leave it out all together as I found it very coconutty tasting,plus the dessicated coconut gives it a very grainy texture, which I didn´t find that pleasant.
* Another adaption I might make next time is try making it with fresh pineapple and soak it in rum...then it would truly be a Piña Colada Cheesecake!

Giraffe Number Seven cake

2011-08-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

I made this Number Seven Giraffe cake for my niece´s seventh birthday, which I took the idea for from Tartas de Fiesta Infantiles by Anne Wilson. I was planning on making my Hot Milk Sponge cake but decided to take a shortcut seeing as I have less time now and -horror of horrors!-used a packet cake mix, Mary Lee American Yellow Sponge cake, which was very quick, easy and delicious. I cooked it in two elongated cake tins and then shaped one to make a rounded face. I think I rounded it a bit too much so it doesn´t quite look as much of a number seven as it should! I then cut a triangle off the other to make it neck shaped, then stuck them together with a little raspberry jam!

This time I tried a different buttercream, Hannah Miles´ buttercream recipe from Big Book of Cakes & Cookies, as usually the buttercream recipe I use doesn´t set, which maybe due to the heat. I coloured the majority of the buttercream yellow and about 1/4 cup of it orange using red and yellow liquid food colouring. Using a palette knife I covered the cake with the yellow buttercream as smoothly as possible but still managed to get crumbs mixed in it. I need to learn how to crumb coat! I then filled a disposable icing bag with the orange buttercream and using a 12 " icing nozzle, piped orange blobs for the giraffe´s spots. For the mane and the giraffe´s mouth,nose and eyes I used sweets such as liquorice and blackberries and voíla a friendly giraffe number seven cake!

I think it was a big hit at my niece´s birthday party as it was soon gobbled up and some kids even went back for seconds or thirds! Next year I think I´ll have to make a bigger cake!!

Miami Gastro, Ciudad Real

2011-08-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

Miami Gastro is a very new restaurant which opened recently at Avenida del Rey Santo in Ciudad Real and belongs to the same restaurant group as Miami Park, one of the supposedly most expensive and best restaurants in Ciudad Real. However, Miami Gastro is more of a gastro pub and is more of a place to eat small raciones rather than a large meal!

It is housed on two floors, the bottom floor is a bar area with some seated and standing areas whereas upstairs is a more formal sit-down restaurant area. The whole restaurant is very chic,modern and trendy.

When I went, San Fermines was about to finish so the waitresses were dressed in San Fermin outfits (white clothes with a red bandana) and there was a special menu for San Fermin although we didn´t go off that menu. Apparently there is also a special taster menu for only 20 euros but we didn´t see this at the time. We chose a rocket salad with cheese and a balsamic vinegar dressing (if I remember correctly), chicken sticks, which were long,thin crispy sticks of chicken in filo type pastry with a curry sauce (pictured below)-very delicious!

Mini gourmet burgers of beef/ox (buey) with gorgonzola cheese and rocket salad.I had a plain burger as I don´t like blue cheese although they offered to give me the burger with Cheddar cheese but in the end they didn´t have any! The burgers were very tasty, juicy,meaty and tender. We also couldn´t leave without trying the famous courgette flowers, which are coated in a crispy batter very similar to Tempura and stuffed with goats cheese and herbs, also very tasty but rather on the expensive side as you only get one courgette flower for 5euros!

Everyone went for yoghurt foam with fruit for dessert which came in little glass pots and were apparently delicious. I selected my dessert from the San Fermin menu, which I was luckily allowed to do, and decided on a cherry and almond tart. It was very reminiscent of a Cherry Bakewell tart and was absolutely yummy-one of the best desserts I´ve eaten in a Spanish restaurant.

All in all, I was very impressed with the restaurant, the food was amazing and the service was very helpful, quick and friendly. The only thing I would say is that the portions are fairly small and they are quite expensive,particularly the courgette flower for what it is! It has now become one of my favourite restaurants and I´m looking forward to taking my parents there next week! I also have to add that they do cocktails there but as of yet I haven´t been able to try any yet!

Amaretto Gelato

2011-07-27T05:09:00.000-07:00

I had planned on making all types of ice cream, sorbets and cold desserts this summer seeing as it´s so hot that I never feel like baking or even turning on the oven but that kind of all went out the window since having Chloe as it´s really difficult trying to find the time!!! Anyway, I did manage to grab some time to make this Amaretto Gelato....I absolutely love anything Amaretto flavoured or with Amaretto in it! The recipe is based on a recipe from a Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book. Gelato is Italian based ice-cream which has a lower butterfat content than ice cream but it tastes just as delicious!

Ingredients (about 6 servings)

6 egg yolks (beaten)

2 cups milk

3/4 cup sugar

between 1/8 to 1/4 cup Amaretto

Method

1. Place sugar, milk and egg yolks in a pan and cook over medium heat while stirring, till it coats a metal spoon. Be very careful not to overcook as the mixture starts to look like scrambled egg (I know as this happened to me!). If this happens, place in food processor/blender or use an electric hand whisk and blend or mix till you have a smooth,thin custard-like liquid.

2. Add Amaretto and stir to combine, then place in a airtight container and cover with clingfilm and place in fridge overnight or for several hours.

3. Place in freezer and freeze for about 45 mins, then remove from freezer, stir up gelato to break up ice crystals, then place back in the freezer for a couple of hours until set.

4. When ready remove from freezer and serve (I found that it was frozen solid and was very difficult to serve so I´d recommend leaving it to soften a little before serving) and sprinkle with crushed Amaretti biscuits.

Sabor y Sazón Columbian Restaurant, Ciudad Real

2011-07-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

Since having Chloe I haven´t had much time for cooking & baking or blogging although I have managed to make a salad dressing, one quick chocolate cake which I whipped up in my Kenwood food processor and spaghett bolognese so it´s a start!! However, we have been doing quite a bit of eating out with my parents, trying out or taking them to new restaurants. As my parents have never tried Columbian food, we decided to take them to Sabor Y Sazón. Unfortunately, the restaurant is being sold so I think I must be a bearer of bad luck as the shop I liked, Fabricando Delicias, closed and a shop which was the only shop in which I could find tilapia also closed!

Sabor Y Sazón is a fairly small restaurant,not particularly chic but cozy. The restaurant does a taster menu for only 10 euros per person minus drinks so it´s very reasonable too. We all chose a taster menu, which is comprised of about 5-6 small courses. First of all we had empanadas, a type of cornmeal pasty filled with meat (shown below)

The second course was a fried cornmeal ball stuffed with meat, potato and rice (very delicious but also very filling!) (shown below)

We then had an arepa (a flat,round patty made of corn flour) with cheese on it, followed by two smaller arepas,one with chicken on and the other had tuna on it.By this time, I was full to bursting and yet there was still one more dish! However I couldn´t eat the tuna arepa or the final dish, which is a flat cake or patty made from banana and which was topped with prawns and thousand island dressing. As we were all so stuffed none of us tried a dessert but they also have a variety of tropical juices which you can have with either milk or water. My mum had mango juice with milk, which was lovely and creamy and tasted very similar to a mango lassi and on the waiter´s reccommendation , I tried a fruit juice I´d never heard of with water, lulo (also known as naranjilla) shown below:

Although it doesn´t look very appealing, it´s a greenish colour and is quite lumpy looking so a bit reminiscent of puke really, it has a sweet acidic taste, which was actually very refeshing and pleasant tasting!

As I ´ve never been to another Columbian restaurant before I have nothing to compare this restaurant to but on the whole, it´s a nice restaurant where you can find good, tasty, filling, and reasonable food.

Traditional Victoria Sandwich and a new addition to the family!

2011-06-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

I´ve had a bit of a break from the blogging scene recently since the birth of my daughter, Chloe, the new addition to our family! Things have been hectic and I´ve been busy recuperating from the birth and learning how to be a new mum and any spare time I have, I´ve used it for catching up on all the missed sleep! It´s a good job my mum has been here to help out as I´ve had absolutely no time for cooking and baking or much else.

I made a traditional Victoria Sandwich (my first sandwich cake!) named after Queen Victoria as she was rather partial to it before I gave birth but didn´t get chance to blog it until now. So here´s the recipe.

Ingredients (serves 8)
100g/ 4oz butter at room temperature
100g/4oz caster sugar
2 eggs
100g/4oz self-raising flour
raspberry jam
whipped cream (preferably fresh rather than UHT although I can´t buy fresh cream here!)
icing sugar to dust

Method
1. Grease and flour two sandwich tins .
2.Cream butter and sugar together till fluffy and light.
3. Beat in eggs, one at a time, adding a tablespoon of flour with each.
4. Add remaining flour and mix till well combined, then spoon mixture into sandwich tins.
5. Bake in preheated oven at 180ºC/350ºF or Gas No 4 for 25 to 30 mins.
6. When cakes have cooled, spread raspberry jam and whipped cream on one of sandwich cakes and then sandwich together.
7. Using a sieve, dust icing sugar over the top to decorate.

Restaurante Gabinadas, Ciudad Real

2011-05-17T23:29:00.000-07:00

I haven´t been doing much cooking or baking recently, due to being pregnant and finding it increasingly more difficult to manoever (only about 15 days to go!! Gulp!). My mum is here helping us out with the cleaning, cooking etc and also so that she doesn´t miss the birth!

Anyway, I have been meaning to review this restaurant which we went to last time my Mum came to visit but just haven´t got around to it until now!! Restaurante Gabinadas is situated in C/Alcantara 8 in Ciudad Real. The restaurant is fairly small but decorated in a modern style. It is a fairly new restaurant but we have been three times now, always for lunch.

Usually we order from the Menu of the Day, which costs around 12.50 euros and includes a first course, main course and dessert or coffee and also bread. Drinks aren´t included in the price. One of the reasons I like this restaurant is that it has a wide choice of first and second courses. I had gnocchi with pesto for my starter, which was delicious but maybe a bad choice as I sometimes get a bit bored of this type of dish. Another good thing about this restuarant is that the portions aren´t too big as in some Spanish restaurants, just the first course fills me up! Last time I went to this restaurant I had Piquillo peppers stuffed with meat, which is delicious and I thoroughly recommend.

My husband and his father had Callos (tripe...yuk!), which although good,they said was a little salty or bland-I can´t remember which!

My mum and I chose pork fillet with pastry in a cranberry sauce for our main course, which was absolutely scrumptious (I´ve eaten it twice now!).As with most of the main courses, it was served with a tiny portion of mashed potatoes, a brussel sprout, a cherry tomato and a slice of beetroot (Spanish restaurants don´t really do much in the way of side dishes).

As dessert is one of the most important and my favourite course of a meal, the desserts are a little disappointing. Although the choice is quite wide, there is nothing on the menu that particularly grabs my attention. I had strawberries with cream, which was served in a glass and there is rather more cream than strawberries!

All in all a good restaurant to go for a fairly reasonable but good quality menu of the day,with plenty of choice. However it is important to reserve a table at the weekends as it is very busy and it can be difficult to get a table!

Easy Spinach & Cottage Cheese Pasties

2011-05-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

This is fast turning into a baking blog! However, this time I´ve been baking something savoury and also vegetarian! I´m finally on maternity leave so have more time to make the evening dinner (which is usually a lighter meal, more like lunch for Brits like me!) I had some frozen spinach in the freezer and had bought some cottage cheese so I fancied making these pasties, based on a recipe in Delia Smith´s Complete Cookery Course.

Ingredients (to serve 2)

roughly 112g (4oz)fresh or frozen shortcrust or puff pastry (I used frozen shortcrust pastry to save time)
1 beaten egg

Filling
112g (4oz) frozen spinach
12g (1/2 oz butter
25g (1oz) cottage cheese
20g Parmesan cheese
a small clove of garlic, crushed
splash of lemon juice
1/8 tsp dill
pinch of ground nutmeg
salt & pepper to taste

Method

1. Cook frozen spinach in an uncovered pan until all the moisture has evaporated.
2.Add cheeses, butter and the remaining filling ingredients and cook until butter has melted, leave to cool.

3. Roll out pastry thinly and using a small saucer/saucepan lid (about 15cm in diameter) cut 2 rounds of pastry.
4. Fill one half of the pastry circle with filling, then brush egg around the edge and seal well.

5. Make a small cross in the centre of the pasty and using a fork, press down with the prongs along the sealed edge to decorate.
6. Brush with beaten egg, place on greased baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven at 220ºC (425ºF) for 15 mins.

Torrijas (Spanish Style French Toast) & 6 weeks to go!

2011-04-26T23:59:00.000-07:00

I don´t know whether Torrijas is classed as a cake or a dessert but it´s definitely one of my favourite Spanish cakes or desserts and they are very typical and traditional at Easter time, so I also decided to enter it in the Easter Cake Bake blog event over at A Slice of Cherry Pie (if you click on the above link you will find out all the details about this event and how to enter).

I had a bash at making Torrijas once before and wasn´t very successful.I think it´s because I didn´t buy the right kind of bread (apparently this is the main secret to making perfect Torrijas)and also I put too much bread to soak in not enough milk, so they didn´t get wet enough so this year I thought I´d give it another try. I used Mil Postres recipe for torrijas as a basis for making my torrijas and this time they turned out perfectly and were absolutely delicious (even if I do say so myself!). My mum did the frying though as she didn´t want any hot oil to spit out onto my pregnant belly!

Ingredients (makes 8 to serve 4 people)

8 slices of special bread for torrijas (if you can´t get this bread, you could use brioche, milk bread, French baguette or even normal sandwich bread, however it is important that it is thickly sliced)
1/2 litre (just over 3/4 pt) of milk
100g sugar
1/2 cinnamon stick
peel of 1/2 lemon
2 eggs, beaten
abundant sunflower oil for frying
extra sugar & ground cinnamon (for dusting)

Method

1. Place milk, sugar, cinnamon stick and lemon peel in a pan and heat until warm and milk becomes infused with the flavours. Do not allow milk to boil.
2. When milk has cooled, strain the milk through a sieve and put bread in milk and leave for some minutes (about 10-15) until bread has soaked up the majority of the milk. (as pictured below)

3. Dip bread in beaten eggs and then fry in abundant sunflower oil until golden on both sides.

4. Drain torrijas on kitchen roll to get rid of excess oil.
5. Mix sugar and cinnamon (I eyeballed the amount but there was definitely more cinnamon than sugar as I love cinnamon!)together and then dip the torrijas in sugar & cinnamon mix to coat them on both sides.

We put them in the fridge and ate them the following morning for breakfast.Yummy!

Anyway, the weeks are flying by and I am counting them down...there are only 6 more weeks (well 5 after this week finishes) till I give birth, which I´m looking forward to,well, maybe not the actual birth! ; ) and it´s all very exciting. I´m not sure how consistent my blogging will be up to and after the birth but hopefully will find some time to blog & bake or cook!

Sedgemoor Easter Cake

2011-04-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

More Easter baking that I haven´t had time to get round to blogging as my parents were visiting during the Easter hols! I´d never heard of Sedgemoor Easter Cake before but came across this recipe in an old cookbook (I don´t remember which one, either Miss Read´s Country Cooking or Country Cooking) and thought they sounded pretty tasty! Sedgemoor Easter Cake? I hear you cry. I don´t know why it´s called Easter Cake as it actually looks more like a biscuit!Whether you choose to call it a cake or a biscuit, it´s pretty darn good either way! Sedgemoor Easter Cakes originate from the southwest of England and were very traditional on Easter Sunday where they were given in threes to represent the Holy Trinity.

Here´s the recipe I used:

Ingredients (makes about 12)

4 oz plain flour
2 oz butter (at room temperature)
2 oz caster (superfine) sugar
1 egg
2 oz currants
1/4 tsp mixed spice
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp brandy (I didn´t have any brandy so used Amaretto, which was just as tasty!)

Method

1. Rub butter into flour with your fingertips as if making pastry.
2.Add sugar, currants, spice and cinnamon and combine well.
3. Beat egg with the brandy (or in this case Amaretto) and stir into dry ingredients till well mixed.
4. I found the dough quite sticky so kept adding a little flour till it appeared to be the right consistency.
5. Roll out to about 1/2 inch thick, using a round biscuit cutter cut out biscuits and place on greased baking tray and bake in a preheated oven at 180ºC (350ºF) for 15-20 mins, depending on your oven.

I really enjoyed these biscuits and will definitely be making them again. Next year I also want to try making my first Simnel Cake as I love marzipan and will be able to eat marzipan next year!

In search of a good paella en Ciudad Real-La Arrocería de Picón

2011-04-13T13:29:00.000-07:00

I am trying to bake and blog as much as possible while I can as when the baby is born, I´m not sure how much time I´ll have to spare on the blog. Seeing as I´m not keen on fish or seafood, paella has never been one of my favourite dishes, however I do enjoy it if it is a meat paella. The best paella is said to originate from Valencia but you can find paella throughout Spain. One of the best restaurants for paella in the Ciudad Real area is La Arrocería de Picón (unfortunately the website is only in Spanish at the moment-probably as you don´t find many foreigners or tourists around these parts!) The restaurant is located in the small rural village of Picón and is decorated in a very modern, elegant and chic manner. It is a very spacious restaurant with two eating areas, both of which have water features and with views of the countryside, which makes dining a pleasure. My husband and I went with my in-laws and we shared a paella between the four of us. I think we ordered a Valenciano paella, which contains chicken, rabbit and snails (however we ordered it without the snails for my benefit as I don´t like them) and also has red and green pepper and large white beans (fabes). Although the paella was huge we ate every last morsel and in my opinion it was the best paella I have eaten as of yet! The restaurant also serves other dishes if paella is not your cup of tea as the first time I went to this restaurant I chose lamb chops, which were also delicious.

We had room for dessert too and although the majority of the dessert menu is frozen ice cream-style products, which is a little disappointing, they have a small selection of homemade desserts. I opted for the mango cake (pictured below), which was definitely a good choice. It´s a mango mousse-like cake on a sponge cake base topped with slices of caramelized fresh mango slices. Delicious!

I thoroughly recommend visiting this restaurant if you are in the area although it tends to get very crowded at weekends so it´s better to book a table. One of the down sides about this restaurant is due to it being popular and busy, it can be very noisy and it is difficult to have a conversation.

Easter Egg Nest Cupcakes & feeling hot, hot,hot!

2011-04-10T11:04:00.000-07:00

As Easter is rapidly approaching, there are plenty of Easter bakes I´ve been wanting to try out so hence the following recipe. We were also off to a friend´s house for dinner and I always like to take something and what could be better than cupcakes?

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day with temperatures of about 30ºC.....it seems more like summer than spring! The only thing is, I don´t feel like baking as much, what with the heat of the oven combined with the sweltering heat of the summer-I think I´ll have to start making cold desserts soon! Plus in our block of flats they are still turning on the central heating....which is a complete waste of energy and money as at 30º C, we definitely don´t need it!

This is another recipe from my cupcake calendar but is maybe not the best thing to make on a hot day as all the chocolate kept melting and ended up everywhere!

Ingredients (makes 16-18)

1 cup butter at room temperature

1 cup caster sugar

2 cups self-raising flour

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

decoration

2 tbsp cream

4 1/2 oz chocolate, chopped

grated chocolate (a Flake would be great for this)

Cadbury´s Mini Eggs/chocolate eggs or other candy eggs (As I can´t get Mini Eggs here, I used some chocolate eggs from Lidl)

Method

1.Line 2 muffin tins with cake cases and preheat oven to 175ºC (350ºF)

2. Place all cupcake ingredients in a large mixing bowl and using an electric hand whisk, beat for about 2-3 mins.

3. Bake for 20 mins.

4. While cupcakes are cooling, place chopped chocolate and cream in a bowl in a pan of boiling water and stir till all the chocolate has melted.

5. Decorate cupcakes with ganache, grate chocolate over the top (for the "nest") and place 2-3 mini eggs on top (I only put one egg on top as they were quite big and it looked silly with more than one egg)

Baby Bottle and Pram Decorated Biscuits & the sad news that Fabricando Delicias is closing!

2011-04-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

I offered to make some decorated biscuits for my friend´s baby's Christening for her to give as favours so this was my second practice attempt. The first attempt the biscuits turned out fine and were really tasty but the decorating was a little ham-fisted to say the least. I didn´t have proper icing bags and although I had a go at trying to make them out of baking parchment, they weren´t very successful so the icing was running out very quickly and I couldn´t really control it and they were decorated a bit messily. Last time I used this ready-made royal icing that you have to melt in boiling water but it´s quite difficult to get the right consistency plus when you are piping you burn your hands (unless I just need more practice with this frosting!). I used the biscuit recipe that we were given on the Christmas biscuit decorating course at Fabricando Delicias and in no time, whipped up the biscuits. This time I was armed with disposable icing bags and I decided to use a traditional royal icing recipe, which is made with raw egg whites. I found this much easier to use and handle and although it was a bit thick for flooding, I added a little water to get a thinner consistency, perfect to fill in the biscuits. I tried a couple of different designs for the biscuits to see which design my friend preferred. I had wanted to decorate the prams more elaborately but as it was pretty late by that time and I had run out of icing, I left them quite plain. I think they turned out quite well for a beginner and my friend seemed to like them. I´m a little confused though. Can anyone tell me if it´s ok to use royal icing with egg whites to decorate biscuits if you´re going to eat them? I saw on some British websites that this is the type of royal icing usually used, however some American websites claimed you shouldn´t use this kind of royal icing if you are going to eat it because of the risks of salmonella. Is this just Americans being overcautious? I think if I do end up making these biscuits for my friend´s baby´s Christening, I´ll just use the meringue powder recipe to be on the safe side! Unfortunately, I found out that Fabricando Delicias, the shop where I bought many of my cake decorating products and where I enjoyed and learnt a lot about cake/biscuit decorating in the three or four courses I took, are going to close their doors soon, due to lack of time and illness. This is a great shame as it means I´ll have to try and teach myself or attend courses in Madrid and it won´t be as handy as I will have to plan ahead if I want to make any fondant cakes etc as I´ll have to order the fondant or equipment online! I´d take over the shop myself if I knew anything about running a shop or a business!

Hot Cross Buns (one a penny, two a penny....)

2011-04-02T04:05:00.000-07:00

As Easter is drawing nearer, I fancied having a bash at making some Hot Cross Buns as I really enjoy them and I can´t buy them where I live. My plan is to make them now and freeze 8 of them until Easter to have for breakfast when my parents come to visit. Hot Cross Buns are traditionally eaten hot (hence the name!) or toasted on Good Friday and the cross symbolizes the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

As I´ve only made bread- type recipes 3 times before and the last recipe I made was current teacakes, which are very similar to Hot Cross Buns, didn´t turn out as well as I´d have liked, I was a bit apprehensive as to how they would come out. However, not to worry, the recipe was fairly straightforward and I am quite proud of how they turned out (even if I do say so myself!). The recipe is an amalgamation between Delia Smith´s recipe in the Complete Cookery Course and a recipe I´d saved from Hello or Ok as is as follows:

Ingredients (makes 12)

1 tbsp dried yeast

450g plain flour

2 tsp caster sugar

2 tsp mixed spice (the smell as they were baking was heavenly!)

2 large eggs

Grated zest of 1 lemon 150 ml /1/4 pt warm milk

25g/1 oz butter, melted

75g/3oz currants (I actually used about 90g as didn´t have mixed peel and wasn´t adding the cherries or walnuts as recipe stated-I wanted a more traditional hot cross bun!)

4 tsp plain flour

2 tbsp honey (optional)

milk to glaze

1 tsp salt

Method

1. Sieve plain flour and salt into large mixing bowl, then add caster sugar, mixed spice, dried yeast, currants and lemon zest and stir till combined.

2. Whisk warm milk and eggs in a measuring jug and add warm water till 300 ml/1/2 pt level is reached.

3. Add melted butter and gradually add milk and egg mixture, stirring until all the flour is well incorporated (see below) and forms a dough.

4. Knead until smooth & elastic (I found that my dough was pretty sticky so had to add a little more flour and a tiny bit of milk which I eyeballed until I had the "right" consistency!) 5. Leave for 5 mins, then knead again for 2 mins and divide into 12 equal(ish) flat "cakes". 6. Mix 4 tbsp plain flour with 3 tbsp cold water and pipe crosses on top of the buns (yes sir, I had my piping bag out again this week...I´m going to be a piping expert in no time..I wish!!!!) 7. Place on greased baking tray, brush with a little milk and cut a cross in the centre of each "cake", then cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise for 25 mins (be careful as although I tried a trick of spraying baking spray over the plastic wrap which I´d seen on a baking programme, it didn´t work and the plastic wrap stuck to the buns a little...maybe she used oil!)

8. Bake in a preheated oven at 220º C (425ºF) for 20-25 mins until golden brown and when you tap the bottom of the bun, you hear a hollow sound ( this time may vary depending on your oven..I had to turn my oven down to about 200ºC and only baked them for about 15mins!) 9. If you want, you can then brush them with a little honey which gives them a lovely shininess. Voíla! The finished product-great eaten hot or toasted and smothered in butter!

Pink to make the Boys Wink Cupcakes & My first attempt at buttercream swirls!

2011-03-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was supposed to be participating in another fondant cake decorating course but unfortunately it was cancelled so I decided to make these pink cupcakes instead. Also my husband was away on a course so I had the morning to myself and time to kill! The recipe for these cupcakes is from my cupcake calendar and is very simple:

Ingredients (I halved the recipe to make between 8-9 cupcakes)

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup caster (superfine) sugar
1 cup self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Buttercream
about 1/2 cup butter (I used salted butter so didn´t add any salt but if you use unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt)(I added a bit more butter as it seemed to be very dry so was probably about 2/3 cup maybe!)
1 1/2 cups of icing sugar, sifted
a few drops of red or pink food colouring (I used 3 drops of red food colouring)
Silver balls/sprinkles or other to decorate

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175º C (350ºF) and place cupcake cases in cupcake tray.
2. Place all the cupcake ingredients in a large bowl and stir then using an electric hand whisk, whisk till well combined.
3. Place batter into cupcake cases and bake for 20 mins, then leave to cool.
4. To make the buttercream, whisk butter and icing sugar till it has a creamy texture (I´m not sure but seemed to take awhile, about 10 mins maybe)
5. Add food colouring and stir till blended and all the buttercream is the same colour.

When I took the cupcakes out of the oven, they had risen to a peak or dome in the middle (but apart from that they looked yummy!) Why is it that some cupcakes/muffins come out perfectly smooth and flat and others tend to rise in a peak or a dome? I think that maybe it´s because I put too much batter into each cupcake case and as this recipe contains a lot of rising agents, this caused the peaking!

I decided to have a go at piping buttercream swirls to improve my piping skills and because I´ve never done it before and I have seen how professional your cupcakes can look with this method on other people´s blogs. I used my new Wilton 1G icing nozzle although I had read that the Wilson 1M is the best for piping buttercream swirls. After filling a disposable icing bag with the buttercream, I set to trying to pipe the swirls from memory of what I´d read about buttercream swirls. They didn´t come out too badly but not as perfect as I´d have like so then I printed out the instructions from Cake Journal, which is a fantastic blog full of tips and tutorials about decorating cakes and tried following them. I didn´t have enough buttercream to complete the whole swirls and didn´t even have enough to decorate two of the cakes! Then I sprinkled some silver balls on just to finish them off nicely. They certainly aren´t as perfect or professional looking as I´d like but I think they aren´t too bad for a first attempt! They can only get better!

La Viña Restaurant, Ciudad Real

2011-03-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

When my parents come to visit, we like to take them to different restaurants and my mum´s visit during Carnival was no exception. We discovered this restaurant by accident as due to my timetable I had to eat early and it was one of the only restaurants near the university that I could eat at before 2pm! Needless to say we really enjoyed it and ended up going every Thursday after that!

The restaurant, situated near the University on Rosalia del Castro 1, is half cafe/bar, half restaurant so the restaurant part itself is fairly small but is adequate. One of the things I like most about this restaurant is that the Menu Of the Day has quite a few options which is great for a picky eater like me as I can usually find something I like!However, the day we went with my mum, I found it a little disappointing. I didn´t like any of the starters, Mum had a fish stew and Andrés had fideua, which they both really enjoyed. For our mains, I had lamb chops and chips, which were really tasty, Mum had churrasco (pork fillets) and Andrés had fish with salad.

For dessert I chose homemade yoghurt in an effort to be more healthy and Mum and Andrés ordered this chocolate sponge cake thing. Unfortunately the yoghurt turned out to be banana flavoured and as I can´t stand anything that tastes of banana, I ended up swapping desserts with my mum. I wasn´t that impressed with the sponge cake dessert either so dinner was not a success for me! Serves me right for being such a fusspot!

Despite not having had the best of meals this time, I would reccomend this restaurant as the food is clearly homemade, well-cooked food and the Menu of the Day is quite a reasonable price at 12 euros per person. I have had lovely starters such as stuffed courgette and their white chocolate panacotta is to die for!

Bangers & Champ Mash for St Paddy´s Day

2011-03-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

As tomorrow is St.Patrick´s Day and I´m actually part Irish, in fact my surname should be O´Brian but my Grandmother changed it, I wanted to try out an Irish recipe and settled on Champ as the ingredients are easy to find and it is a fairly quick and simple dish to make. Champ is basically mashed potato with spring or green onions added to it. I used James Martin´s recipe,the only changes being adjusting the amounts so it was suitable for two people and leaving the skin of the potaoes on to add more fibre and save time.

As Bangers & Mash is a very typical dish in Britain and Champ is basically mashed potato, I served it with some pork sausages, which I cooked on a grill (plancha)....that´s why they are very thin and long...I think I squashed them a bit! Anyway, it makes for a simple but tasty dinner, reminscent of pub grub and homemade comfort food. Traditionally Bangers & Mash is associated with the working -class and you can just imagine them coming home from a hard day´s work and tucking in to this hearty dish! Happy St. Patrick´s Day to you all!

Quick & Easy Hot Milk Sponge Cake with Lemon Glacé Icing

2011-03-12T09:16:00.000-08:00

I like to try out new recipes or different recipes for the same thing and decide which recipe I think is the best and I came across this recipe for a Hot Milk Sponge cake in my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. I wanted to make a cake for my friend´s birthday so I thought I´d give the recipe a try.

The recipe was really easy to follow and very quick, ideal for when you need to whip up a cake but don´t have much time to spare. It also looks like the resulting sponge cake is very light and fluffy and it gave off a lovely aroma as it was baking. What´s more it´s only 180 calories so it´s fairly low fat.Here is the recipe for the cake as given in Better Homes & Gardens:

Ingredients

2 eggs (it is better if they have been left at room temperature for around 30 mins as apparently when you whisk them, they will have more volume)

1 cup plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup milk

2 tbsp butter

Method

1.Grease a cake tin (I used a 22/23 cm round cake tin) although the recipe called for a 9x9x2 inch square tin). Mix flour and baking powder together.

2. Whisk eggs together till thick, gradually add sugar and continue whisking till light & fluffy.

3. Add egg mixture to flour and stir till combined.

4. Heat milk and butter in a pan until butter has melted. Add to flour mixture and mix well.

5.Pour mixture into cake tin and bake in a preheated oven at 350º (180ºC) for 20-25 mins.

I decided to decorate the cake with a simple Lemon Glacé icing (adapted from The Dairy Book of Home Cookery)once it had cooled:

Lemon Glacé Icing

225g sifted icing sugar
roughly 1tsp grated lemon peel
2 tbsp of lemon juice ( It seemed a bit stiff so I added a dessertspoon of hot water and about another 1/4 tsp lemon juice)
2-4 drops of yellow food colouring (optional)

Mix all the ingredients together till all ingredients are blended and you get a stiff(ish) but spreadable icing. I only added two drops of food colouring but as you can see on the photo, the icing is a very pale yellow (so pale that it even looks white!) so next time I will double the amount to end up with a stronger yellow. I wanted to use up some of the decorations I already have so I used my chocolate and pink icing pens to write "Happy Birthday" and draw flowers using silver balls as the flower centres. I thought the pink flowers and pale yellow would reflect the colours of spring. It´s quite cute but fairly amateurish....don´t think I would win the Great British Bake Off just yet! I really need to brush up on my piping skills!

Traditional Pancakes for Pancake Day

2011-03-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

This year Pancake Day fell on the 8th March and this year my mum happened to be visiting so we also invited my Spanish in-laws so they could experience this British tradition. Pancake Day, also known as Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday in other countries, is celebrated in Britain by eating pancakes as a way of finishing off all the fats such as eggs, milk and sugar before the 40 days fasting period of Lent. In some cities and towns pancake races are held!

Although the pancake batter is fairly easy to make, it takes a little practice to perfect them (or at least it did with me!). I usually use Delia Smith´s recipe taken from the Complete Cookery Course which always turn out delicious. The secret to making a perfect pancake is to have a good frying pan (preferably non-stick). Heat the fat (I usually use lard) till it´s smoking hot, then drain off the excess fat, then pour in the batter as thinly as possible, tilting the pan till the batter covers all the bottom of the pan. If you have any gaps you can fill them in with extra batter. It´s important to have the pan and the fat very hot otherwise the pancake will stick. After a few seconds flip the pancake over either traditionally tossing the pancake up in the air (v.difficult especially if you don´t want to end up cleaning bits of pancake that have stuck to the ceiling!)or with a wooden spatula and cook the other side till the pancake is a pale golden colour! The traditional way is to squeeze lemon juice and sprinkle sugar over the pancake and then roll it up but you can serve them with golden syrup, maple syrup, raspberry or chocolate sauce, Nutella..the choice is yours!

Baby Feet Cupcakes & my own Kitchen Nightmares!

2011-02-27T10:29:00.000-08:00

One of my closest friends gave birth to her first child last week and I´ve been wanting to make some cupcakes to mark the special occasion so out came the apron and the electric whisk today. Unfortunately, like Alma from the blog Objectivo Cupcake I went to my cupboard only to find it bare, like Old Mother Hubbard....well, not exactly bare but I hadn´t realised that I´d run out of icing sugar. Don´t you just hate it when that happens? As it is a Sunday and all the shops are shut apart from a few little shops that sell basic food stuffs such as the imaginatively named Open Shop (which in desperation I tried but to no avail) there was no getting hold of icing sugar!

In the end I ended up having to improvise and this was the start of my Kitchen Nightmare! First of all I whipped up these basic vanilla sponge cupcakes/fairy cakes from Hannah Miles´s book Big Book of Cakes and Cookies, which is why again I haven´t included the recipe. The cakes seem really airy and light. I really love this book and up to now every recipe I´ve tried has turned out perfectly! So far,so good!

I decided to use some leftover Ballena fondant/royal icing from my Christmas Biscuit decorating course so set about melting it in a glass bowl placed inside a pan of boiling water (somehow the water always ends up boiling over and spilling everywhere). I then filled a disposable piping bag with a nozzle but the icing was so hot it was burning my hands. Plus the icing wasn´t coming out of the nozzle so quickly (I think I used too small a nozzle) plus maybe I made the consistency of the icing too thick and it soon started to set. I scrapped that idea and cut the icing bag and then tried to ice the cakes with a knife but as the cakes are so light and spongy, they started to crumble and break.

I then decided on option c....leftover fondant. As it had been stored in the fridge, it was rock hard and took a lot of working and kneading with my hands until it was workable. I then rolled it out finely and cut circles out to cover the top of the cupcakes, using apricot jam to stick it on. Using a decorating brush I applied some water to the pink baby footprints that my Mum had got me from Whittinghams in the UK to stick them onto the fondant. I tried to use my pink icing witing pen to write Congrats but didn´t like how it turned out so ended up leaving them as they were. Sometimes simple is the best anyway! I think I need a lot more cake decorating practice! It´s a good job I enjoy baking/ cake decorating as I spent almost the whole morning making them! The main thing is that hopefully my friend and her husband will appreciate them!

Easy Sausage, Fennel & Red Pepper Pasta

2011-02-25T06:34:00.000-08:00

I love sausages but they´re something I don´t really eat a lot of: 1) because I miss the big, juicy British bangers and 2) because they aren´t very healthy. Every once in awhile though, it´s ok to indulge. I came across this recipe the other day when wondering what type of pasta dish to make (pasta features at least once a week on my daily meal repertoire) in Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book and I have adapted it slightly. One of my favourite types of sausages which I discovered when I was in the US, are Italian sausages and I miss them as I can´t get them here in Spain. The orginal recipe actually calls for Italian sausage and as I had some leftover fennel, I added it to the dish, which is the next best thing!

Ingredients (for 2)

pasta shells or bow ties for two (I used tricolour pasta shells)
4 (6 oz.) pork sausages, sliced
1/2-1/4 fennel, chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
1/4 to 1/3 cup (depending how much sauce you like) vegetable stock (I used vegetable Oxo stock cube)
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp frozen/dried parsley
1 tbsp olive oil

Method
1. Fry pepper and fennel in olive oil until tender.
2. In meantime, cook pasta in salted boiling water until al dente and drain. Keep warm.
3. Add sausage and cook until sausages are brown or completely cooked through.
4. Add black pepper, vegetable stock and parsley and bring to boiling, lower heat and cook for 5 minutes.
5. Serve with pasta.

Vegetables with Polenta

2011-02-17T12:09:00.000-08:00

I didn´t take many photos as I was making this dish as I wasn´t thinking of blogging it but it looked so tasty(and was) that I´ve ended up posting it. As I eat a lot of meat, I sometimes like to eat a healthier, vegetarian option but find it really difficult to find different vegetarian recipes that I don´t find too bland or boring. I was flicking through my Weight Watchers Made to Measure Cookbook by Ann Page Wood when I came across this recipe and as I had some polenta lurking at the back of my cupboards waiting to be used up, I thought this was recipe was ideal.

Ingredients (serves 2) (adapted from Weight Watchers Made to Measure Cookbook)

1/2 pint (300ml) water
2 oz (60g) polenta (I used quick cooking polenta)
15g Parmesan cheese & 30g grated Cheddar cheese
1 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
4 oz (120g ) leeks, sliced
45 g fennel, thinly sliced
1/2 -1/4 red pepper, cut into squares
2 oz (60g) canned sweetcorn, drained
2 oz (135 g) drained canned chickpeas & 2 tbsp of chickpea liquid
1/2 tin of tinned tomatoes
1/4 tsp dried mixed herbs
salt & pepper to taste

Method
1. Boil the water and add polenta (add salt to taste) and cook for about 15 minutes till polenta thickens and absorbs all the water (keep stirring so polenta doesn´t stick to the saucepan).
2. Take pan off the heat and add all of the Parmesan and some of the Cheddar and mix.
3. Wet a chopping board and spread the polenta on board till about 2cm thick and leave to set.
4. Heat olive oil in a saucepan and add garlic, leeks, pepper and fennel. Cover and cook on a low heat for 5-6 minutes.
5. Add the rest of the ingredients and season with salt & pepper.
6.Cover and cook for about 20 minutes.
7. Place vegetables in a casserole dish and place polenta, cut into triangles, on top and sprinkle remaining Cheddar cheese over everything.
8.Place under a preheated grill until golden brown and bubbling.

* I´m not sure how English this dish is but seeing as it´s in a British recipe book, it´s now British!

Traditional Bread & Butter Pudding

2011-02-06T11:45:00.000-08:00

I´ve just realized that the majority of British recipes on here are dessert or cake recipes. I´ll have to post some more main dish courses but I suppose it´s because what I miss the most about British cuisine and it´s also what I most enjoy cooking -and eating! ; )

This is a great recipe for using up stale or leftover bread but in my case, it was also to use up some of the dried fruit leftover from making my Christmas cake. This recipe is based on how my mum and gran make their Bread & Butter Pudding with a sneak peak at Delia Smith´s version in The Complete Cookery Course for quantities. The end result is a lovely,traditional, stodgy(ish) but delicious pudding, which is ideal for a cold winter´s day or night. Comfort food at it´s best!

Ingredients (for 2 people)

4oz bread (about 5 small slices), with the crusts cut off

butter

1 egg

5 fl oz milk

37g(about 1 1/2oz) sugar

3oz(about 82g) mixed dried fruit (raisins, sultanas & currants)

a pinch of grated nutmeg (optional)

Method

1. Butter bread on both sides ( you could just butter one side or use margarine if you are watching your weight).Don´t worry if the bread tears when buttering as it will all be mixed up eventually.
2. Place bread in layers in Pyrex or other oven proof dish.
3. Sprinkle sugar and mixed fruit on top of bread.
4. Beat egg and milk together and pour on top of bread, sugar and mixed fruit.
5. Mix all mixture together so bread soaks all egg and milk up and mixed fruit is combined (I like the mixed fruit to run all the way through the pudding, not just to be at the top).
6. Place in preheated oven at 180 ºC (350ºF) for 20-30 minutes.
7. Serve with custard or cream.

Cranberry sauce, Red onion and Mozzarella Pizza

2011-02-06T11:28:00.000-08:00

I have the people on the BBC Food Messageboard to thank for the idea of this recipe. I had almost 1/2 jar of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce left over from Christmas and didn´t have any ideas what to do with it. One of the suggestions was pizza with cranberry sauce instead of tomato sauce, red onions and Brie or goats cheese. As I am pregnant and didn´t want to risk eating Brie or goat´s cheese, I decided to use Mozzarella cheese, which I had lurking in my fridge waiting to be used.

The resulting pizza was absolutely delicious...in fact probably one of the nicest I´ve ever made. I only wish I had taken a photo of it for the blog.

Ingredients (for 2)

1 ready made pizza base (I used Carrefour´s)
a couple of spoonfuls of leftover cranberry sauce
1/2 red onion
5-6 mushrooms,sliced
1/2 courgette, sliced
Mozzarella cheese
olive oil

Method
1.Prick pizza base with fork and spoon over cranberry sauce, not too much otherwise it will be too sweet.
2. Fry onion, mushroom and courgette in olive oil till semi-tender, then place on top of pizza base.
3. Finally slice Mozzarella and place on top of the vegetables.
4.Cook in pre-heated oven at about 200-220ºC for about 15-20 mins (cook according to packaging instructions)

Aubergines in Chinese Style-Sauce

2011-02-02T13:24:00.000-08:00

I always find it difficult to find new vegetarian recipes and usually end up cooking the same recipes over and over but when I tried this, I discovered that it was a keeper. It´s based on a recipe in my Cocinar con Wok book by Anne Wilson, which I´ve adapted, mainly as I can´t get some of the ingredients and although it would probably taste more authentic with those ingredients, I think you can still end up with a tasty Chinese style dish without them!

Ingredients (for 2 people)

1 large(ish) aubergine, chopped into small squares of 2cm
1 tbsp of peanut/groundnut oil (if you haven´t buy this, you could just use vegetable or olive oil)
3 spring(green) onions, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
about 1 inch of ginger, peeled and diced
60 ml of vegetable stock (I used 1 vegetable Bisto cube made up with water)
30ml white wine (use rice wine if available)
20 ml white wine vinegar (use rice vinegar if available)
1/2 tbsp tomato puree
5g sugar (white or brown)
20ml soy sauce
1/4 tsp chilli flakes/powder
1/2 tsp cornflour

Method
1. Heat oil in frying pan or wok and when hot, fry spring onions, ginger and garlic.
2.Add aubergine and fry till tender or golden.
3. Add wine, vinegar, sugar, tomato paste, vegetable stock, soy sauce and chilli flakes and cook for a minute.
4. Mix cornflour with 1 teaspoon of water to make a paste and add to pan.
5. Heat till it starts to boil then lower the heat and cook for a further 2 to 3 minutes till sauce has thickened. Add more water if necessary.
6. Serve with boiled rice.

Valentine´s Surprise Cupcakes/Fairy Cakes

2011-01-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

I decided to make these cupcakes/fairy cakes to enter in a Valentine´s Day competition held by Dulce Kitz & in conjunction with Fabricando Delicias.... so wish me luck! I saw the recipe in my Big Book of Cakes & Cookies by Hannah Miles and had been wanting to try it out. As I copied the recipe exactly and didn´t change anything, I´m not going to blog the recipe but I´ll just tell you that the cupcakes contain cocoa and natural yoghurt.

The surprise element is that you place a chocolate-covered sweet or candy in the middle of the cake, which I suppose is supposed to melt,leaving a gooey, sticky centre when you bite into it. I wasn´t sure what kind of chocolate-covered sweets to use(seeing as my book is in Spanish and I wasn´t very sure of the translation). In the end, I found some white chocolate skulls (not really very romantic!) with a strawberry filling which I used. The sweet didn´t melt as I expected it to but still tasted ok in the cake!

I bought some Wilson heart cupcake cases and some heart sprinkles from Fabricando Delicias. After the cakes had cooled, I covered the cake with a chocolate ganache and decorated it with silver balls and the heart sprinkles. Just one idea of what you can make or give to your sweetheart this Valentine´s Day!

Christmas Biscuit Decorating Course

2011-01-14T11:02:00.001-08:00

Just before Christmas I did another course at Fabricando Delicias, this time about decorating Christmas biscuits, however I haven´t had time to blog them until now! The course was held over two Saturday mornings from 10am to 2pm. Fabricando Delicias provided the biscuits to be decorated, which were delicious by the way, and gave us the recipe of how to make the biscuits. The first week was dedicated to decorating the biscuits with Royal Icing. We bought some ready made royal icing, which you add to boiling water and mix until you get the right consistency for piping...so not too thin and liquidy as the icing tends to run and drip off the biscuits more, but at the same time not too thick as it dries out too quickly. José also showed us how to do my favourite thing of all....prepare your own icing bags with parchment paper! I´m getting better at it now after plenty of practice. I´ll be an expert at it soon! We then decorated the biscuits using different colours of royal icing...an angel, a bauble, two Christmas trees, two Santa faces and a snowman. My favourite ones were the snowman and the green Christmas tree. It was much easier than I expected. The most difficult part is getting the right consistency of the ready made Royal Icing and then when piping as it´s hot, you have to work quite quickly before it cools otherwise it dries up and also so that you don´t burn your hands/fingers!

The following Saturday morning was dedicated to decorating biscuits with fondant. This is more fiddly and takes longer as it takes quite a lot of work to colour the fondant the shade you want. If you were good at clay or plastacine modelling, then you should excel at this! I was never very good at either but with patience and practice, plus a good imagination or pictures to base your decorations on, then they will turn out very pretty. First of all we decorated three of the biscuits as the Three Wise Men, then we decorated one as Father Christmas´s face and finally a snowman snow scene. The only thing is that they look almost too pretty to eat!

Turkey Tikka Masala style

2011-01-07T07:57:00.000-08:00

I´m not very good at eating leftovers so after the Christmas Day turkey, we bagged up the leftovers and froze them in different portions. I took a portion out to defrost to make a turkey curry...ok,not very original as that´s what the majority of people do with leftover turkey but why not? Plus I really fancied a curry. This is a curry I made up roughly based on chicken tikka masala, which I made a vegetarian version of but as it was an experiment I didn´t write the quantities down. This time I made sure I wrote the quantities down and although it was very tasty (even if I do say so myself!)it turned out different to the first time I made it!

Ingredients (for 2 people)

1/2 medium to large onion, finely chopped

leftover turkey (not sure how much I used..I just eyeballed it)

4-5 mushrooms, sliced

1/4 red pepper, chopped

1/4 green pepper,chopped

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 tbsp of olive oil (or vegetable)

1 inch ginger, peeled and grated

2 cardamon pods, crushed

5 tsp curry powder (depending on how hot you like your curry, add more)

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp tumeric

1/2 tsp garam masala

1tsp ground cumin

about 1/4 cup of water

about 1/3 cup of cream (when I made the vegetarian version, I used sour cream which gave a thicker sauce)

about 1/3 - 1/2 tetrabrick of tomato sauce/tinned tomatoes (again not sure as I eyeballed it)

Method

1. Heat olive oil in frying pan and fry onion, garlic, mushrooms and peppers till tender.

2.Add grated ginger and other spices and cook till aromatic.

3. Add turkey and heat a little, then add the 1/4 cup of water and cook for a few minutes.

4. Add tomato sauce and cream and cook on a low heat till meat is heated through.

5.Serve with boiled Basmati rice or pilau rice.

* If you like your curries very spicy, you could also add fresh chilies or some chili powder to your curry.

My first Christmas Cake- Part 2 Decorating the cake

2011-01-05T05:55:00.000-08:00

First of all, I´d like to wish you all a happy New Year. With all the Christmas preparations etc plus the fact that I was very behind schedule with everything, I haven´t had much time to blog. I had decided to make my own almond paste seeing as the city I live in Spain doesn´t sell ready-made roll out marzipan. So I set to work making the almond paste using the recipe from the Dairy Book of Home Cookery. It was actually a lot easier than I expected. Unfortunately, the recipe called for caster sugar but as I didn´t have any (again not easy to buy in the city where I live) I substituted it with granulated sugar, thinking it wouldn´t be much of a problem. How wrong was I! The actual taste of the almond paste was nice but it was really gritty as if it contained grains of sand or salt in it!! I ended up throwing it away and asking my mum to bring the ready made roll out stuff.

I rolled the marzipan out into a circle (my mum hadn´t brought enough to cover the whole cake) and then brushed the fruit cake with apricot jam, then placed the marzipan circle on top of the cake.

After leaving the marzipan to dry out for a day, I made some royal icing using Hannah Miles´s recipe from the Big Book of Cakes and Cookies and my new electric hand whisk (an early Christmas pressie!) and then using a spatula iced the cake as smoothly as I possibly could. It was all very last minute...I think I was still decorating it on Christmas Eve!

After leaving the icing to dry out for about a day, I decorated the side of the cake with a pretty silver ribbon I found, using a tiny bit of saved icing to seal the ends of the ribbon together y voila!

I then dusted the cake with some silver pearl dust and coloured some leftover fondant green. Using a holly shaped biscuit cutter I cut out three holly leaves and with a knife tried to make the veins as realistic looking as I could (which unfortunately wasn´t much!) and with a little water stuck them on top of the cake.Then using some leftover red fondant I formed three little balls for the berries, which I placed in the centre of the leaves. Not too bad for a fairly rushed decorating job and for a first Christmas cake!

Curry´s Indian Restaurant Review

2010-12-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

Although things have been pretty quiet on my blog scene lately, I have been doing plenty of cooking but just nothing that was worth blogging about, plus I have been very busy.Last week there was a long weekend and we decided to go to Madrid to do some Christmas shopping. I love Madrid at Christmas with all the pretty Christmas lights and Cortelandia-it just seems so Christmassy and magical. The only thing I don´t love however is how crowded it gets!

Whenever I go to Madrid, I always like to go to a restaurant that you can´t find where I live, such as a Greek, Thai, Indian restaurant etc. This time we decided to go to an Indian restaurant as it´s one of my favourite cuisines and I really miss it!Before going to Madrid we did some research and found two restaurants that were in the centre of Madrid and ended up choosing the nearest, Curry´s Restaurante Hindu, located in C/Silva 16.

From the outside, Curry´s doesn´t look like anything special but when you step into the restaurant, the atmosphere is friendly, clean and warm. We had arranged to have lunch with a friend who lives in Madrid so we don´t see him very often so I wasn´t paying as much attention to the food as usual. He is vegetarian but luckily like many Indian restaurants, Curry´s caters to vegetarians.

There was a poppadom each with mango chutney, mint yoghurt sauce and another sauce, which I don´t know what it was as an appetizer (which I think were free). We ordered the Daal & Aloo Tikki to share as a starter as it was vegetarian and we´d never tried it before. It was like a crispy lentil and potato cake and was delicious although I don´t know where the lentils came into it as I could only taste the potato. I ordered my usual fav dish Lamb Korma, my OH ordered Chicken Tikka Masala and our friend ordered Malai Kofta (I think!) -cheese dumplings in a curry sauce, plus we ordered 2 lots of Basmati rice and some Garlic Naan. At first the portions looked quite small but they were filled generously with meat. The meat was lovely and tender and the sauces were lovely and creamy,not too rich or too spicy. I think my OH would´ve liked his to be a bit spicier though. I managed to polish off the whole lot of curry as did the others but we were too stuffed for dessert.

The food was amazing and far better than the exterior appearance leads you to believe. Plus prices were also fairly reasonable. So if you´re in Madrid and fancy something different or have a hankering after spicy or Indian food, you should give this a try.Unfortunately I don´t have any photos as I didn´t have my camera with me.

My first Christmas Cake-Part 1

2010-11-23T13:41:00.000-08:00

This is the first time I´ve ever made a Christmas Cake so I stuck completely to Hannah Miles recipe from her book Big Book of Cakes and Cookies so therefore I haven´t included the recipe on this blog post. Usually the dried fruit in the Christmas Cake is soaked in brandy but in Hannah´s recipe, amaretto (which I absolutely love) is used instead. The smell of the fruit the following morning was heavenly, both Christmassy and almondy at the same time!

Many of the ingredients Mum had brought over from England for me but I had overlooked a couple of the ingredients such as mixed spice and self-raising flour so I had to make my own. I just used normal flour and added about a 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder. I found the following mixed spice recipe on the BBC Good Food website, which I used to make up my own mixed spice (I had to leave out the mace as I didn´t have this spice and it´s not a spice that´s easy to find in Spain but it hopefully shouldn´t make too much of a difference).

After cooking the cake for 2 1/2 hrs, I let it cool, then wrapped it in baking paper and tin foil. It think it looks quite good, don´t you? I thought it was burning so turned the oven down a little but Christmas Cake usually has quite a dark colour. Every week I need to pour Amaretto over it to keep it moist and then nearer to Christmas, I´ll get down to decorating it.

Halloween Pumpkin Cupcakes

2010-11-07T08:28:00.001-08:00

These Halloween cupcakes are well overdue now as I made them on Halloween itself for our Halloween party. They are slightly adapted from my cupcake calender and despite the decorating part being a bit fiddly, they went down a treat. With the cupcakes containing pumpkin puree and the addition of spices such as cinnamon and allspice, they are definitely a taste of autumn and Halloween!

Ingredients (makes around 16 medium sized cupcakes)

1 300g jar of pumpkin pieces (it´s very difficult to find here in Spain, I found it in Aldi but nearly ended up having to leave the pumpkin out which wouldn´t have been the same!)(use all pumpkin pieces but only added a little of juice from the jar)

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1tsp ground cinnamon

1tsp baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)

1 tsp baking powder

1tsp allspice

1 1/4 cups sugar (preferably caster)

1/2 cup olive oil (mild is best so doesn´t affect taste of cupcakes)

2 lightly beaten eggs

1/2 cup milk

orange & black fondant

Halloween cookie cutters

apricot jam

Method

1. Puree the pumpkin pieces with a little of syrup/juice from jar in a blender-should make about 1 cup.

2.Preheat oven to 350ºF (175ºC) and place cupcake cases in muffin tray.

3. Mix all dry ingredients together.

4. Beat oil, eggs and milk in a large bowl and add pumpkin puree.

5. Gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir till well combined.

6.Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for 20-30 mins (depending on your oven).

7.When cool, brush with apricot jam. Cut out black and orange fondant circles using cookie cutters and stick on top of cupcakes.

8. Using Halloween cookie cutters cut out Halloween shapes in orange and black fondant. Brush with apricot jam and stick on top of fondant circles and voila you have some cute, scary(ish) Halloween cupcakes!

I used some Halloween cookie cutters I got at Target when I was in the USA, which were great for this project.However, it was a little fiddly as you had to cut out the eyes, nose and mouth with a knife so patience was definitely a virtue! Also, the cupcakes didn´t rise very much so I´m not sure if this was due to using olive oil but they tasted great,which is the main thing!

(Not quite Mickey) Mouse Birthday Cake

2010-11-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

I decided to make this cake for my niece´s third birthday, based on a cake in my Tartas de Fiesta Infantiles recipe book by Anne Wilson, as she really likes Mickey Mouse and although it´s not quite Mickey, it´s near enough!! I made a plain White sponge cake, following a recipe taken from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. I then made a simple buttercream to which I added red food colouring to 1/3 cup (although I couldn´t get it to turn out a red colour no matter how much food colouring I added and instead ended up with a dark pink/purpley colour!) and yellow food colouring to the remaining buttercream.

I then covered the top of the cake with the yellow buttercream and then with a chocolate icing pen I had, I piped the outline of the face, the eyes, mouth and eyebrows. I then used chocolate hundreds and thousands/sprinkles to fill in the hairline. Not an easy job as they tended to fall wherever, not where you wanted them to fall! Using a piping bag, I outlined the mouth with the red buttercream and then coloured in the mouth. I then completed the face with large jelly beans for the eyes ( looking back really I think they were too big for the irises!), a marshmellow for the cheek and a blackberry sweet for the nose. The ears were a bit tricky to assemble too. I used 3 digestive biscuits for each ear,which I tried to stick together using the chocolate icing. I also tried to stick a toothpick between the biscuits which I then inserted into the cake, which didn´t work too badly but not as well as I had hoped!

Pork & Peach Kebabs

2010-10-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

I made this awhile ago but just haven´t got round to blogging about it until now. Unfortunately, I only have the one photo as we were starving and it was all we could do not to gobble it up, then and there! This is a recipe adapted from quite an old book, which I found in the library, called Miss Read´s Country Cooking and I think it´s a British recipe.

Ingredients: (to serve 2)

1/2 lb (around 230g) pork fillet/tenderloin,cubed

1/2 green pepper, chopped into thick squares

about 2-4 canned peach halves, quartered

1/8 pt peach juice (from canned peaches)

4-6 button mushrooms

1/8 pt water

juice from 1/2 lemon

1/2 tbsp of soy sauce

salt & pepper to taste

1/2 tbsp cornflour/cornstarch

4 wooden skewers

Method

1.Soak skewers in water to prevent them from burning. Chop all ingredients.

2. Blanch mushrooms and pepper in boiling water for about 5 mins.

3. Thread pork, peach halves, pepper and mushrooms onto skewers. Brush with olive oil and place in oven under the grill for about 20-30 mins. During this time baste with oil frequently and turn kebabs to cook them evenly.

4.Heat peach juice, water, lemon juice & soy sauce.

5. Mix cornflour with a little water and peach juice to make paste.

6. Pour peach & soy sauce mixture into paste and mix, then return it to the pan and cook for 5 mins, stirring continuously till sauce thickens. Season with salt and pepper.

7. Serve kebabs with rice or potatoes and vegetables and drizzle peach sauce on top of the kebabs.

Buttercream Cake-Decorating Course

2010-10-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

I took part in my second cake-decorating course held at Fabricando Delicias, this time about Buttercream. Our instructor was Jose, one of the owners of the shop, who is a very patient teacher and gave us very clear explanations and demonstrations. The course was held over two Saturdays from 10am-2pm and cost a reasonable 50 euros,plus materials.

In the first lesson, José showed us how to prepare buttercream to various consistencies depending on the type of decorations you were going to use it for (recipes are also included in the instruction booklet to accompany the course). He then showed us how to make icing bags out of baking paper...a little tricky as I´ve never been one for handicrafts! We then learnt how to use the icing bags to pipe stars, a wavy line, tight zigzags, dots and figure piping using plastic templates which we were allowed to keep (great for further practice). We made a face although I didn´t get very far with the hair! He also showed us how to pipe a heart although I didn´t have time to try piping a heart. We also had a go at piping writing, which was also fairly tricky. We were given a muffin ,which we could decorate with buttercream and quite a few of us had a go at using the grass effect nozzle, then decorated the muffins with the faces we´d piped (as you can see in the final photo).

The following Saturday we had to bring a cake with us to decorate. I just made a plain Yellow Sponge Cake but unfortunately I had a bit of a disaster and the cake stuck to the bottom of the cake tin. It was a new cake tin so not sure if that had something to do with it so it was a bit uneven. We also had to prepare Buttercream of two different consistencies but I had another disaster and only brought one kind. I made the stiff consistency to the recipe given in the instruction booklet but it ended up looking like breadcrumbs so I added 2 tbsp milk and it seemed better. However, José said it was too still dense and added water to it till it was much more manageable. I think my problem was that I didn´t leave the butter out of the fridge long enough before making the buttercream.

José showed us how to level off our cakes using a cake leveler and then we piped on the buttercream, then used the spatula to smooth it over. We then practised piping star flowers (for me perhaps one of the easiest things so far!)and swirl flowers, shells (which are also fairly complicated). Using a flower nail, we stuck some sticky tape and baking paper over the nail and practiced making cone shapes, then once we had a half-decent cone, José showed us the next steps of how to pipe a rose. It is really difficult and hardly any of us accomplished a complete rose. You definitely need lots of practice and plenty of patience!

We then went on to decorate our cakes, a bit on the rushed side as time was running out. With piping gel, which is much easier to pipe than buttercream, we traced the outline of a Hello Kitty template and then placed it on top of the cake and using a wet paintbrush went over the lines till the pattern was traced on the cake. Then, with chocolate or black buttercream we piped the outline. As we were running short of time, I also piped the eyes and nose in chocolate buttercream. Then, using the star nozzle and pink buttercream, I filled in the dress and flower with pink stars and voíla a fairly impressive Hello Kitty cake for a novice cake decorater (as can be seen in the first photo above)! The middle photo is of the teacher, José´s cake! Using a piping bag is very difficult as I´ve found out and my common problem was that I often held the bag too high up, which meant I had to use more force than necessary to squeeze out the buttercream. My hand and wrist were often aching by the end of the course! Or maybe I just need more strength!

I took part in my second cake decorating course at Fabricando Delicias

Shan: Possibly the best Asian restaurant in Ciudad Real or even in Spain!

2010-10-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

I love Asian food and have been to quite a few Chinese/Asian restaurants in Spain, particularly in Ciudad Real.However, I have often found Chinese/Asian restaurants to be quite disappointing in Spain as they tend to be seen as a cheap alternative for eating out and the quality and choice of dishes can be very limited compared to in the UK. I tend to find Chinese or Asian food in Spain has been adapted significantly for the Spanish palettes or that many dishes are simply not on Chinese restaurant menus here and I find it less authentic.

Until I discovered, Shan Cocina Asiática restaurant that is! Shan restaurant can be found in the city centre on Avda de la Mancha 5 in Ciudad Real. It is a spacious restaurant, very clean and nicely-decorated. It is an Asian restaurant, as opposed to a Chinese restaurant, which means that as well as the usual typical Chinese dishes, it also does some dishes from other Asian cuisines, such as sushi, Thai red curry, Vietnamese spring rolls etc.

All the food is of good quality, flavourful and authentic tasting. Our favourites include the restaurants speciality dish of chicken or beef in Thai red curry, beef in Tien-Ban sauce, ham knuckle or hock Shan-style (with a lovely tasting sauce made from five-spice I think...it reminds me a little of crispy duck too),Wok-style rice noodles (with a lovely spicy Thai-style sauce). We went last night for dinner and ordered some of our favourite dishes, the Vietnamese spring rolls as a starter, fried and bursting with mince pork, carrots, cabbage, Chinese mushrooms, agar-agar, served on a lettuce leaf with a sweet-sour sauce. Then, we had the Thai Wok-style rice noodles to follow and tried a new dish, Sizzling Duck of the house. The Sizzling Duck consisted of a lovely tender and juicy duck breast cooked to perfection, with crispy skin in a brown sauce and onions, served on a sizzling hotplate. Absolutely delicious!Even my husband, who is not that keen on duck, thoroughly enjoyed this dish. We have never had a bad meal or dish at this restaurant.

I´d reccomend fried ice-cream for dessert if you fancy something sweet. The restaurant usually throws in free prawn crackers and an after-dinner chupito (shot). Service is very good, the waiters/waitresses are very friendly and the food is very prompt. It is also very reasonably priced with dishes costing between 4.45 euros to the speciality dishes and duck ,which although slightly more expensive are still very reasonable, from 8.25 -10.95 euros. If you prefer to eat at home, you can also choose to get a takeaway or order it over the phone and have it delivered to your door!

My only concern is that this wonderful restaurant is often empty, which I cannot understand as it is definitely the best Chinese/Asian restaurant I have eaten at in Ciudad Real and maybe even in Spain! Do people just not know about it or is it too authentic tasting for Spanish palettes?I really would find it a great shame if this restaurant were to close.

Fondant Cake Decorating Course

2010-09-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

Last week I took part in my first fondant cake decorating course held at Fabricando Delicias. The course was held on Wednesday evening from 5pm to 9pm and Saturday morning 10am -2pm for four hours. It was well worth the money as it cost 50 Euros for the course although you had to pay for the materials apart. Luckily I had quite a few of the decorating equipment & tools already so I didn´t have to spend a fortune.

Unfortunately I had to work on Wednesday evening so missed the first two hours of the course during which they made a snail and a frog....I intend to make these myself at home to practice. We then made a dog and an angel but time flies so quickly when you´re having fun that we didn´t have time to finish the angel and give her wings and hands. We also ran out of time to make the clown, which we could do at home if we wanted. Here are my efforts:

We made the figures out of modelling paste and it was a lot more difficult than I imagined because the modelling paste kept cracking and drying very quickly so you have to work as quickly as possible and keep kneading it to keep it soft and supple and more like Plastaline. I think they look quite cute, don´t you? Obviously I need a lot more practice though! It took me ages to colour the modelling paste at home and even though I wore gloves I still ended up with icing food colour all over my hands and my clown became a little smudged. He looks a bit like a snowman as he´s so white...I still need to give him a hat and a tie and maybe give him some more colour or stripes on his body so he looks less like a snowman!

On Saturday morning we learnt how to make fondant roses, a daisy like flower and a carnation. I think the rose and the daisy turned out well but the carnation was a disaster. More practice definitely needed! We also had to bring a cake to decorate and as I didn´t have time to make one I just bought the sponge bases from the supermarket. We learnt about different fillings you can use in the cakes. I just used raspberry jam to fill my sponge layers like a traditional Victoria sponge cake and then covered the cake in apricot jam to stick the fondant. We also learnt how to work the fondant before rolling it out, how to roll it out and cover the cake. One of the biggest problems was that the fondant tended to stick to the Roll n´Cut Mat and because of this my fondant seemed to tear or crack more easily. However, I think for a first attempt it was not bad. Here´s a photo of my cake with the rose, the daisy (you can just make it out) and the angel on it.

Below is another of the student´s cake decorated with her clown, which was very good and artistic.

The course was very informative and the teacher was very helpful. I´d definitely reccomend anyone interested in cake decorating to do a course. I´m looking forward to the next one about buttercream, which I´ve already signed up for!

Don Quijote Burger

2010-09-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

My inspiration for this burger was during my time in the States, I often liked to watch the Food Network Challenge and one day there was a burger cook-off. It got me thinking about what kind of burger would represent the region where I´m living in Spain (Castilla-La Mancha). As the lamb here is famous for being very good, there was no doubt that the burger had to be a lamb burger. I also decided to add one or two other typical regional delicacies and here is the recipe I came up with and it turned out to be pretty tasty even if I do say so myself! I named this the Don Quijote burger as Don Quijote is set in Castilla-La Mancha and almost everything here is named after him!! Here in Spain it is very difficult to find lamb mince and I had to ask the butcher to mince a bit of a leg of lamb and he wanted to mince it with a bit of pork, apparently so it didn´t get stuck in the machine and make the mincer taste of lamb! Unfortunately I didn´t write down the amounts of what I used but this is more or less the amount I used.

Ingredients (for 2 people)

1 loaf of rustic bread, cut into two rounds or 2 rustic bread buns
200g minced lamb
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
a pinch of salt & pepper
1-2 tsp of frozen or dried parsley
1/4 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
about 1/8 cup of fine breadcrumbs
half a beaten egg
flour to coat/bind
4 slices of Manchego cheese
2-4 tbsps/dollops of ready-prepared or homemade asadillo (if you can´t buy asadillo where you live, I´ll try and post the recipe asap although I used store bought asadillo to save time)
abundant olive oil for frying

Method

1. After chopping the onion and garlic, add to mince.
2. Add salt, pepper, parsley, rosemary,breadcrumbs and egg and combine.
3. Form into two patty shapes about 1-2 inches think. It will probably be a bit sticky so roll in flour to coat till patty is firm.
4. Fry in abundant olive oil till burger is cooked through.(this could also be grilled maybe to make it more healthy)
5. While burger is cooking, toast buns/ bread rounds.
6.Place burger on bun, place 2 slices of Manchego cheese on top and then 2-4 big dollops of asadillo.
7.Enjoy!

Easy Chocolate Refrigerator Cake otherwise known as Tiffin

2010-09-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

I felt like cooking this the other day as it was one of my favourite treats when I was a child that my Gran made me...In fact, this is actually her recipe. It´s also a treat which is great to make with children due to its easy preparation and it is also very safe as it doesn´t entail too much work with hot ovens or sharp utensils such as knives. Choc-a -block with hazelnuts, raisins,biscuits and chocolate, it´s perfect to drive away those sugar cravings.

Ingredients

6oz (about 170g) crushed digestive biscuits

2oz (about 56g)hazelnuts, chopped

2oz (about 56g) seedless raisins

2oz (about 56g) plain chocolate

2tbsp golden syrup

3oz (about 85g) butter

Method

1. Melt chocolate, syrup and butter in pan over a low heat as shown in the photo:

2. Take off heat, add biscuits, nuts and raisins and stir till combined.

3.Press into a square 7 inch tin, cut into squares, place in fridge and leave to harden.

I think you could maybe try using different types of nuts, dried fruit eg cranberries and different biscuits as variations of this recipe.

Snake Sixth Birthday Cake

2010-08-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

I have been a bit lazy on the blogging and cooking front lately-what with the heat and holidays and everything but the other day I made a 6th birthday cake for my niece. As she´s not really that keen on cake, I decided to bake a plain sponge cake, Yellow Cake which had a subtle hint of lemon and vanilla. I got the idea for the cake from a book called Tartas de fiesta infantiles-I don´t think it´s bad for a first attempt at a more "elaborate" cake!! However, I still need plenty of practice at cake decorating.

The recipe called for a round cake tin of 20cm but even though I looked everywhere could I find one, could I heck so had to settle for a 26cm cake tin. In order to save time, I used a bought Swiss roll for the arm of the six and only baked the round sponge. I then made a simple buttercream, reserving 1/2 cup of it, and experimented with food colouring to make a nice green colour and iced the cake. I ran out of buttercream though and had to make up some fresh buttercream, then use more food colouring till it was the exact same colour as the first. I started to rush towards the end as the party had already started and I still hadn´t finished the cake so it got a bit sloppy towards the end, it wasn´t as smooth as I´d have liked!

I also cut off part of the Swiss roll for the snake´s head. I then used dyed 2 teaspoons of the 1/2 cup of remaining buttercream violet (although it looked more black) and used the piping bag to pipe the eyebrows. I then dyed the remaining buttercream a lighter green and again using the piping bag(for the first time in my life!)piped a kind of V shape for the snake´s scales. They were a bit blobby in places but not too bad for a first attempt. I then used liquorice sweets for the eyes, tongue and for further decoration.

The cake seemed to be quite a success even though I´m not sure if my niece tried it but some kids went back for seconds! There wasn´t much left of it so it must have been ok! It took me almost all day to make it and I was exhausted by the time I´d finished it!!The kitchen also looked like a bomb had hit it!!

Touring Vietnam & discovering it´s cuisine Part 2- Hoi An & Hue

2010-08-09T04:44:00.000-07:00

After Halong Bay, it was back to Hanoi to catch a plane to Danang and then on to Hoi An.It was a long day especially as we were both still recuperating from the previous night´s upset stomachs! I forgot to mention that near Hanoi there are restaurants which serve dog.However, we didn´t come across any of these restaurants luckily as I don´t think I could eat a poor little dog. Mind you, we do eat little lambs and piglets (roast suckling pig) so I suppose it´s not so different!

Hoi An is a sharp contrast to Hanoi with its much quieter and laid-back streets full of little shops. We visited the Japanese Covered Bridge, the Assembly Hall of the Fujian Chinese Congregation, Tan Ky House and then wandered round all the shops stopping of course at Yaly, one of the more famous shops, which makes tailored made-to-measure clothes of any design and with the material of your choice. I settled for a black and white flower patterned dress. We also took in the sights and strange smells of the market of all the local delicacies from dried shrimp and other dried fish to all kinds of exotic fruit.

In the evening we found a lovely restaurant called The Secret Garden, which our guide had told us about, but it was definitely very secret as it is hidden away down a side street and is very difficult to find. However, it was worth searching for as the restaurant is set in a sort of terrace outside in a beautiful garden with a pond.It is very beautiful and romantic especially at night when it is all lit up. There is also traditional live Vietnamese music playing while you are eating. We opted for a set menu for 2, which if I remember correctly consisted of: white rose (Bánh Bao Bánh Vạc)-a kind of dumpling filled with meat and prawns or toppd with them (delicious), Rice Pasta Rolls ( Bánh Cuon) -a type of spring roll filled with pork and mint and coriander (very fresh tasting due to the mint and coriander but not my favourite) and beef curry (CaryBò). The beef curry was divine, melt in your mouth tender beef, star anise, potato, carrots and some other vegetable or something which could have been taro.The flavours combined to make a really tasty dish. However, it wasn´t a curry as I know it as it wasn´t at all spicy, to me it was more reminicscent of a type of beef stew but anyway the main thing was that it was absolutely delicious! Dessert was a more simple affair of pineapple and watermelon. For me, this was one of the best restaurants we went to on our trip to Vietnam. The Secret Garden also does cooking courses but unfortunately time was short otherwise I´d have loved to have had a lesson in Vietnamese cuisine.

We also visited My Son, the ruins of an ancient Cham temple and the Marble Mountains. On route we stopped at a farm where they made rice pancakes and the owner showed us how she made the pancakes and we were even given the opportunity to have a go!

After Hoi An, we then travelled to Hue, Vietnam´s former imperial city, where we visited the Citadel, the impressive and beautiful Imperial Enclosure and went on a boat trip on the Perfume River. We were going to eat at this floating restaurant on the river, very near the bridge but everything we asked for, they didn´t have so we decided to go somewhere else. We found a lovely (but empty) restaurant set in a beautiful garden again . I think it was very late by the time we wanted to eat. We weren´t very hungry so only ordered a salad and banh khoai, a typical speciality from Hue, which consists of a rice flour pancake filled with prawns,pork and bean sprouts and fried. The food in the restaurant was of high quality and was quite expensive for usual Vietnamese restaurant prices. The banh khoai was absolutely delicious but very filling however I think because we weren´t that hungry we weren´t as keen on the salad and couldn´t eat much. I think we ate the banh khoai again during our time in Hue but the one from Rendezvous was definitely the best. We didn´t realize until we went in that the restaurant belonged to the Morin hotel but I´d definitely reccommend this restaurant as the food was exquisite and again a lovely and romantic setting. It was just unfortunate that we weren´t very hungry and didn´t like our choice of salad. We also ordered beef with lemongrass which was also delicious but we were just so full we couldn´t eat it. Unfortunately we don´t have any photos of the banh khoai.

I can´t remember what this is-prawns in a crispy panko type batter with a cute penguin/snowman made out of cucumber that we ate in a different restaurant!

Touring Vietnam & discovering its cuisine-Hanoi and Halong Bay

2010-07-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

Originally we had booked to go to Thailand for our honeymoon but after all the trouble with the Red Shirts in Bangkok, we decided to change to Vietnam as it was still Asia and it also meant we could use our flight.

We booked a guided tour for 13 nights,which started in Hanoi and ended with a couple of days to relax on the beach in Nha Trang. I hadn´t tried much Vietnamese food before our trip so was looking forward to trying this unknown cuisine. As we had chosen to go on a guided tour, lunch in a restaurant, usually with a set menu,was often included in the day´s visit. I however think that this was a more Westernized version of Vietnamese food as during our whole visit, we didn´t even get to try one of Vietnam´s most well-known dishes, Pho!! I really enjoyed Vietnamese food and its fresh, herby, sour and sweet blend of flavours and the next few blog entries will be about my experiences and food discoveries. Hopefully in the future I´ll also include some Vietnamese recipes as I couldn´t resist buying a Vietnamese cookbook!

When we arrived in Hanoi, we had the first day to ourselves to explore so after dropping our stuff off at the hotel, the first thing on our agenda was to find somewhere for lunch.We found a little café,which unfortunately I can´t remember the name of, and ordered a sausage sandwhich and braised beef. Both were delicious especially the braised beef which was really tender. One of the main things that hits you when you first arrive is the amount of traffic especially motorbikes in Hanoi that there is and also how chaotic it is. Crossing the road is definitely an adventure and an experience-I was pretty scared each time I had to do it!

We wandered around the Old Quarter taking in the sounds, smells and sights of Hanoi. One common sight is women carrying all kinds of strange fruit or other things in special baskets hung on a wooden pole carried across their shoulders. You can also see motorbikes which are completely laden with products, like in the following picture:

The following day we visited the typical sights of Hanoi, such as Ho Chi Minh´s Mausoleum, One-Pillar Pagoda, the Museum of Ethnology, the Temple of Literature etc. In the evening, we ate at a lovely restaurant,Dinh Lang Thuy Ta, which overlooked the Hoan Kiem Lake. Although expensive by Vietnamese standards, it is worth it for a romantic meal with beautiful views, the wonderful food and service and also traditional music while you eat. We shared a lotus flower stem salad which had a crunchy texture from the lotus stems and the peanuts (pictured below)

I chose steamed chicken with lime leaves-the meat was lovely and tender and the overall dish had a nice taste although I wasn´t too keen on the lime leaves which seemed to overpower the dish a little.

My husband chose a beef dish, hot and sour I think (sorry I´m so bad with the names!!) which was delicious and I actually preferred it to my dish!

We took the waiter´s advice for dessert and chose lotus seeds and dried longans in a syrup . The lotus seeds had a nutty, almost white chocolatey taste which wasn´t too bad and the longans were a bit like raisins.

We also tried agar-agar with dried longans in syrup. Neither of us were too keen on either of the desserts unfortunately but of the two, the lotus seeds were the best. You have to try these things!!

After a couple of days in Hanoi, we made our way to Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We stayed aboard a typical junko and took in the breathtakingly beautiful scenery of more than 2000 rocky islands jutting out of the sea.

As the food on the boat was mainly fish and seafood which I´m not that keen on we ordered something different for me. I got mainly meat dishes but one dish in particular looked a bit green around the edges but tasted fine. Unfortunately that night I started with bad stomach pains and both me and my husband, who had also eaten some of this meat, spent the vomitting and with diahorria!

Fabricando Delicias-all things sweet!

2010-07-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

I´m finding it hard to be motivated to blog or even cook or bake in this heat, despite having more time on my hands. I thought I´d include some of my favourite foodie places, taking a closer look at some shops as living in a rather small Spanish town, it´s very difficult to find certain foods and ingredients and am constantly on the lookout for places where I can get hold of these things.

A new shop has recently opened in my city called Fabricando Delicias which sells all things connected to cakes, baking and cake-decorating, my new-found passion. Someone has already beaten me to it as I had the idea of opening a cake shop but with no business sense and not being totally convinced if this kind of shop would be successful in a little town I didn´t risk it. They have a wide range of silicone and metal cake moulds, muffin cases, cake racks and other baking and decorating equipment. They also sell prepared fondant, sugarpaste, vanilla extract, glycerine etc from the well-known American brand, Wilton. I was very surprized to find this shop where I live as I didn´t think fondant cakes, cupcakes etc were very well-known here so am hoping that it does well and doesn´t go out of business!I have already bought some Wilton´s Pure Clear Vanilla Extract and some Wilton´s Gum-Tex! Although the shop is really handy, its products are fairly limited and tend to be a bit on the expensive side compared to shops in England (mainly because there´s more competition I think!)so will still be getting quite a bit of stuff online.

They also are going to do some cake-decorating courses, one about Buttercream and another about Fondant/Pastillage. I´ve signed up for both but am waiting for other people to sign up too although with August coming up, the city tends to be a ghost town as everyone is on holiday and lots of shops close. Unfortunately, this is when I have more time so I hope I can still do the courses as if they end up being in September, I might not be able to do them because of work obigations.

My beautiful wedding cake

2010-07-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos, courtesy of Amelia (who made my cake) of my beautiful wedding cake- she really did us proud and made a wonderful job of it. It was delicious too. My wedding cake was a typical traditional fruit cake with marzipan and icing. I was really worried about how it would arrive to Spain from Portugal after a long car journey with quite a few curves to go round. Luckily, it arrived without any problems, only for my boyfriend to trip up when my stepdad and him were transfering it from the car to a room in Casa Pepe!!! Fortunately, they didn´t drop the cake and it was unharmed!

Casa Pepe-Wedding Reception Dinner

2010-07-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

I´ve been absent lately due to getting married and the honeymoon. The day turned out to be absolutely perfect, exactly as I had imagined it and everyone enjoyed it. We held the wedding reception in a hotel & restaurant,Casa Pepe (unfortunately their webpage is only in Spanish), located on the Ctra. of Carrión de Calatrava in Ciudad Real, which is famous for weddings especially the quantity and quality of their food. The hotel has two salons for weddings, one larger salon which holds up to 450 guests and a smaller room,which can seat up to 250 guests. As our wedding was only a small affair, we were in the small salon. However, they also have a wonderful restaurant, which is worth visiting if you are in the area.

This is the meal we chose as our wedding dinner:

Welcome Cocktail:

Appetizers: Mini regional tartelets filled with pisto (the Spanish version of ratatouille)
Iberian ham
Manchego cheese
Roasted Almonds
Mini regional tartelets with Lomo de Orzo (pork loin in olive oil)
Mini cornets of cod brandade
Chinese style tuna

Drinks: Choice of Beer, Wine, Soft drinks, Cava & orange or Martini cocktails

Three-dimensional starter: Octopus kebab with cream of cauliflower soup
Mini salad of goats cheese & cured venison
Cod Carpaccio with hake sushi

First Course: Lobster salad with truffle vinaigrette & tropical fruits

Main Course: Choice of: Roast suckling pig confit served with roast apple & chestnut purée
Sea bass loin in a Jerez sherry sauce

Dessert: Pineapple Carpaccio with tropical fruit and yoghurt ice-cream

After-dinner: Coffee, Cider, Cava and Liqueurs

Wine Cellar: Requiebro Verdejo
Barbarrosa Rosado
Altozano Tinto

As I am a fusspot and I´m not keen on fish or seafood, I had a special menu apart, which differed only slightly: in the three-dimensional starter I had the goats cheese salad, mini cornets of paté, porcini risotto and for my first course I had ricotta cheese and spinach ravoli. Everything was delicious but unfortunately due to nerves or excitement, I couldn´t really eat much!

My first sugarcraft lesson

2010-05-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

I had my first sugarcraft lesson last weekend with Amalia, who´s making my wedding cake. She´s Portuguese I think but has lived in South Africa and Mozambique. Apparently South Africa is a very good place for cake decorating and all other types of crafts as they have loads of guilds for each craft.

She started off the lesson by showing us all the equipment and explaining what it was for and why we needed it. You need a hell of a lot of equipment especially if you want to make sugar flowers so it is quite an expensive hobby is all that I can say!

At one point I asked if it helped to be an artistic person as I don´t really have an artistic bone in my body. Amalia´s reply was that she couldn´t draw but later she showed us this beautiful ostrich egg which she had decorated-it was amazing!! My arse, she can´t draw!!!

I´d love to say that I made the flower above but unfortunately the course wasn´t as hands-on as I´d hoped but it was still very interesting! We took some icing sugar and an egg and Amalia showed us how to make our own flower paste. I didn´t get to take many photos as my hands were too dirty after preparing the flower paste plus I was too busy trying to take notes about making a rose bud. Amalia showed us and explained how to make a rose bud and other tips about making flowers. Three hours flew by! I had thought we were going to start with more basic things like different types of icing and how to make them, icing a cake and piping but it looks like we´re just jumping straight into the more advanced stuff of flower making, which is fine by me. Now I just need lots of practice and patience although I can´t do anything until I have all the tools!! Amalia also recommended a book called Sugar Flowers which explains how to make different flowers with the help of illustrations!

English Muffins

2010-05-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

As I can´t buy English muffins where I live I thought I´d have a go at making them myself, plus I was also dying to try out making some homemade bread. I´ve only attempted making bread once before, which turned out quite successfully.I´m not a big bread fan, however there is something about fresh homemade bread which definitely beats mass-produced bread. Believe it or not, I first tried English muffins as part of Eggs Benedict in a breakfast buffet in a restaurant in Niagra Falls and they became one of my staple breakfast foods during my stay in the States!

As this was my first attempt at making English muffins, I followed Delia Smith´s recipe (I took the recipe from her Complete Cookery Course book but this is almost exactly the same)to the dot. The only difference is that I used normal sugar as I´d run out of caster sugar and I didn´t use 2 0z of lard...I only used the tiniest amount just to grease the frying pan. The recipe turned out to be a great success (as you can see in the photo below!) so I will definitely be making them again!

1. Milk, water, sugar and yeast mixed to form frothy head

2. Forming the dough

3. After kneading (top-left
hand corner) 4. Risen dough (top-right
hand corner) 5. Muffins covered in clingfilm to rise
(bottom left)

The finished muffins after light frying! Delicious!

Goat´s Cheese and Cranberry Salad

2010-05-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

I´m so excited as this is the first time I´ve taken part in a blog event! Nuría over at Spanish Recipes is hosting a new bimonthly event Eating Good Feeling Good which will look at a different ingredient from the Food Pyramid in each event. The first ingredient of this month´s event is olive oil and I knew as soon as I saw it I knew which recipe I would be submitting!

Living in Spain I have been converted to olive oil and use it every day in my cooking from frying to salad dressings.I even use it for Chinese stir-frys!! My favourite ways to use olive oil is for frying and in salad dressings. However, I still can´t get used to putting it on toast in the mornings for breakfast and I prefer a mild olive oil as it doesn´t have quite as strong a taste as Extra Virgin Olive Oil, so it is more versatile and can be used in all types of dishes. Although olive oil is very good for your health, it is still a fat and I only use a little when frying-one bottle lasts me for at least a month!I believe that olive oil is good for your health because it is rich is monounsaturated fats which lower the risk of coronary heart disease and it actually lowers the cholesterol in your body.

Anyway, although olive oil is not strictly the main ingredient in this recipe, it is a very important ingredient in the recipe. As the days are starting to get warmer (at least they were!) sometimes it´s too hot to be slaving over a hot oven, so a salad is just what you need. And what could be healthier than a salad? The idea for this salad came from a recipe I saw for Goat´s cheese and Cherry salad in Allrecipes which I adapted to what I had in my fridge at the time and it has become a firm favourite. I think the flavours just blend together really well, the tart sweetness of the cranberries and pear with the crisp tang of the lettuce leaves and the creamy bite of the goats cheese.

Ingredients (serves 2 as a main dish)

85g bag of mixed salad (baby leaf salad is particularly good)

1 medium/large ripe Conference pear, peeled and chopped

1/3-1/2 cup dried cranberries

55g goats cheese, chopped or crumbled

a couple of slices (smoked) ham or turkey, chopped (optional)

pinch of salt to taste

about 1 tbsp mild olive oil

about 1 tsp red wine vinegar

Method

1. Place ingredients in a bowl.

2. Season with salt and dress with the olive oil and red wine vingear. Toss to cover salad completely with the dressing.

Cherry Sauce with Vanilla Mascarpone Cream

2010-05-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

After making my Easy Cherry Cheesecake last week I had some cherries and mascarpone cheese left over so I decided to make a simple dessert based on a Black Cherry Sauce in my WeightWatchers Made to Measure recipe book. I also whipped up a vanilla mascarpone cream after looking at various recipes. Although not my favourite dessert in the world, the end result wasn´t too bad. Next time though I think I´d add a little cream to the mascarpone cream to give it a creamier texture and texture as I found it a little heavy.

Black Cherry sauce (adapted from Weight Watchers Made to Measure)

Ingredients (Serves 2)

383g pitted cherries and juice

about 3/4 of 1/4 cup of red wine (roughly about 45ml)

2 inch piece of cinnamon stick

2 inch strip of lemon peel

20g sugar

2 tbsp water

1/2 tbsp cornflour

Vanilla Mascarpone Cream (for 2 people)

leftover mascarpone cheese (about 100g roughly?)

1/4 tsp vanilla essence

1 tbsp sugar

Method

1. Place cherries & juice in a saucepan with the red wine, cinnamon stick and lemon peel (as shown in the photo above), cover and simmer for about 10 mins on a medium/high heat.

2. Stir in sugar and remove from heat.

3. Mix the cornflour with the water to make a paste, stir into the cherries and put back on the heat.

4. Bring to boil ,stirring all the time and boil for a minute (as shown in the photo below),then remove from the heat.

5. Leave cherry sauce to cool and chill. Remove lemon peel and cinnamon stick before serving.

Vanilla Mascarpone Cream

Method

1. Whisk mascarpone cream till fluffy, add vanilla essence and sugar and beat till combined and has a creamy texture.

Serve cherry sauce with a dollop of vanilla mascarpone cream and you have a fairly light and easy dessert to use up the leftovers. Unfortunately, I don´t have any final photos because it wasn´t the most attractive looking dessert I´ve ever made!

The Art Of Sugarcraft: Basic Skills DVD: A Review

2010-05-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

As promised,here is the review of the DVD The Art of Sugarcraft:Basic Skills. This DVD may not feature a very famous cake decorator as far as I know but it is still a great bargain as you can find it on Amazon for under 3 pounds. Unfortunately, the supplier I bought it off didn´t send it to Spain so I had to get it sent to a UK address and my mum picked it up for me when she went to the UK.

The DVD is hosted by Jenny Harris and Sara Carter, who are both International Gold Medal Winners. They show you a variety of basic skills and techniques needed for cake decorating which includes marzipanning and coating a cake in sugar paste, crimping, piping, etc. Their explanations are clear and very informative, almost as if a friend were giving you a class in their own home. This DVD is a great starting point for those who want to learn how to decorate cakes as a hobby. I can´t wait to get started and try out all the things I´ve learnt from this DVD although some things seem quite complicated even though they´re supposed to be basic skills!! Plus, it looks like you need a lot of equipment for decorating!

The only down side to the DVD is the filming seems to be quite amateur. It almost seems more like a homemade video production than a professional production due to its poor quality. That being said, I´d still recommend it as you can´t beat the price and it is a great place to start if you are a novice cake decorator like me! It´s much cheaper than doing a cake decorating course!

Easy Penne Pasta with Sun-dried Tomatoes and Salami

2010-05-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

This is a post without any photos as it was an experimental dish that I just kind of threw together. I didn´t bother taking any photos as I wasn´t sure how it was going to turn out. I fancied some pasta and was thinking of a vegetarian tomato sauce style pasta dish, but I had some salami which needed using so I thought why not chuck it in as well. It actually turned out to be a really tasty dish. Here´s more or less what I did but as I just eyeballed everything and kind of chucked it all in, I´m not too sure about the measurements. I´d bought a packet of sun-dried tomatoes the day before and was dying to use them so I thought I´d add a few of them too! A quick, easy and tasty meal!

Ingredients: (serves 2)

around 250g penne pasta (I just guessed the right amount for 2)

1/2 red onion,finely sliced

about 1/3 cup white wine

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

about 1/2 cup of tomato sauce (I used all that had been left over from another day)

3-4 sun-dried tomatoes, finely chopped

leftover salami, around 20-30g? (preferably containing fennel) (finely chopped)

1tbsp olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

Method:

1. Place pasta in pan of salted,boiling water and cook until al dente.

2. Fry onion and garlic in olive oil until tender.

3. Add sun-dried tomatoes and salami and cook for 2-3 mins.

4. Add wine, tomato sauce and salt and pepper to taste and cook for a further 3-5 mins.

5. Serve the tomato sauce on top of the pasta with garlic bread and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Burn Baby Burn

2010-05-01T11:45:00.001-07:00

Is it a new form of modern art sculpture or is it a plane? No, it´s actually all that remains of my very handy measuring teaspoon. It somehow ended up in the oven when I was making some Caramelized Red Onion and Goat´s Cheese Tarts (I have absolutely no idea how it got there!) In fact, my boyfriend only discovered it when he opened the oven to put in a pizza, so he got landed with the lucky job of cleaning it up!!

Mixed Mushrooms in a Thai Red Curry Sauce

2010-04-23T06:16:00.000-07:00

I´ve made this dish a couple of times and always mean to blog it but have never got round to it or taken a picture of it. I really wish I had though!! It´s a simplified version of a recipe from a recipe book called Cocina Asiática Vegetariana by Anne Wilson, as there are many ingredients which I simply can´t get hold of where I live. However, I think this adaped, simplified version is probably just as good as the original version. It´s also a very easy and quick dish to prepare.

Ingredients (Serves 2)

A packet of mixed Asian mushrooms (around 200g) (shiitake, enoki and beech mushrooms for example)
an inch of ginger, finely chopped
1-2 tsp red curry paste (depending on your spice threshold level!)
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
80ml (1/3 cup) vegetable stock (I used Oxo veggie stock cube)
1/2 cup of coconut milk/cream (this time I used coconut powder, about 65g powder mixed with around 125ml hot water to make a thicker milk)
1/2 tbsp lime or lemon juice (whatever you have in the fridge!)

Method:

1. Fry curry paste and ginger together for 3-4 mins till it becomes aromatic.
2. Add vegetable stock, sugar, soy sauce, coconut cream or milk and lime/lemon juice and lower heat (to around 4 on an induction electric hob) and simmer for 3-4 mins until the sugar dissolves.
3.Add the mushrooms and cook 3-5 mins until mushrooms are cooked.
4. Boil some Basmati rice in the meantime to serve with the mushrooms.

Bilbao-style meatballs (Albóndigas a la bilbaína)

2010-04-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Although this picture doesn´t do the meatballs much justice and I can´t say much for my presentation here, but it is a delicious dish, trust me!! There are so many meatball recipes and this is my latest favourite. It is adapted from a recipe from the book Las 1000 Mejores Recetas de Cocina.

Ingredients (serves 2)

250 g pork &veal/beef mince (I had just under 200g)
1 slice of bread (made into crumbs) or 25g breadcrumbs
1 egg, beaten (only use half of it)
2 garlic cloves,finely chopped
oil
1tsp dried or frozen parsley
salt & pepper to taste
flour
1tbsp milk
Sauce:
1/2 medium sized onion,sliced
1-2 carrots, finely sliced
1tbsp olive oil
20g tomato sauce
1 (Oxo)beef stock cube made up to 1/4 cup
1/4 cup white wine
salt and pepper to taste
1tbsp flour

Method:

1. Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk, then place mince, breadcrumbs, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper and egg in a bowl and mix until combined.
2. Form into round balls of equal size and roll in flour.
3. Fry onions and carrots in 1tbsp olive oil till soft.
4. Mix the tablespoon of flour to the beef stock and add to onion and carrots.
5. Add tomato sauce and wine and season with salt and pepper-cook on a medium heat for 15-20mins till sauce thickens as shown in picture below:

6.While sauce in cooking, heat abundant olive oil in a small frying pan and when hot, add meatballs until browned.
7.Drain meatballs in kitchen roll to get rid of excess oil and then add to the sauce.
6. Cook for a further 20 mins in sauce until meatballs and carrots are cooked through.
7. Serve with potatoes, pasta or rice.(I´m not sure if traditionally these meatballs are served with anything in Bilbao but I like to eat it with one of the aforementioned carbohydrates!) Enjoy!

Look out for my upcoming posts about Mixed Mushroom Thai Red Curry and my review of a Sugarcraft DVD!

Baby Cupcakes & Glace icing

2010-04-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

I´m on a baking roll at the mo!! I saw these cute baby shower cupcakes on the Internet and thought they didn´t look too difficult to make so I thought I´d have a bash at making them for some friends, who´ve just had their second baby, a baby boy. I found some blue paper cupcake cases in the Chinese shops and made a simple vanilla cupcake (if you want I can post the recipe). I was a little disappointed as the cupcakes didn´t have as strong a vanilla flavour as I was expecting them to have, maybe it has something to do with using aroma de vanilla (I´m not sure if it´s exactly the same thing as vanilla essence or extract but it´s the closest I can get where I live!) I´ve come to the conclusion that I need some a muffin pan as the one I have is better for fairy cakes.

Glace icing is one of the easiest frosting for cakes however I´ve only made glace icing a few times and usually I´ve never had enough to cover the whole cake/s. So, this time I referred to the Internet but my icing turned out too thin so I added more icing sugar and a little water until it had the perfect consistency. This is my recipe for glace icing:

200g icing sugar
2tbsp and 1/4tsp water
Mix until it reaches right consistency and spreadability.

After consulting the Internet once again about how to obtain a skin-coloured icing, I added one drop of red food colouring and two drops of yellow food colouring (which you can now also find in the supermarket Eroski!!).I think my skin tone colour turned out pretty realistic even if I do say so myself. Using the chocolate icing pen, I drew a little curl for the hair, the eyes and mouth. For the dummy, I used gummy sweets. I used red euro style gummy coins although I had wanted something with a more oblong shape but couldn´t find exactly what I was looking for! On the website where I first saw these baby cupcakes they used Lifesavers or you could also use fruit Polos but seeing as I couldn´t get either of these in Spain, I saw some gummy sweets with a plastic dummy holder, which were perfect. I pulled off the gummy sweets and made a slit in the gummy coins and inserted the plastic dummy holders into the gummy coin, then stuck it into the cupcakes and vóila, you have some easy and really cute baby shower or christening cupcakes!

Low-fat gingernuts

2010-04-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

Baking is my new passion and as they say practice makes perfect! However, as I´m getting married soon and don´t want to put on weight, I opted to make these low fat gingernuts using a recipe from my trusty Weight Watchers Made to Measure recipe book. I used to be able to buy McVities gingernuts in the local Mercadona but they stopped selling them and this homemade version is just as good if not better! Usually when I bake biscuits they never turn out right but I have to say these are the best biscuits I´ve ever made! Although the biscuits were quite small, they were quite thick and chunky with a nice crunchy base. I didn´t alter the recipe as it didn´t need it and at only 80 calories per biscuit, what more could you want ?

Gingernuts (makes 12) according to Weight Watchers recipe book

Ingredients

2 tsps ground ginger

120g (4 oz) self-raising flour

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

60g (2oz) margarine

1 tbs honey

30g (1oz) soft brown sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC, 350ºF,Gas Mark 4

2. Sieve flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl.

3. Heat the margarine, honey and sugar in a small saucepan until the margarine has melted and the sugar has dissolved.

4.Pour into flour and mix well.

5. Divide mixture into twelve equal pieces and form into balls as shown in the picture:

6.Flatten biscuits slightly with the palm of your hand:

7. Bake in oven for 15-20 mins till biscuits turn a golden brown colour.

Once cool, you can enjoy them with a nice cup of tea!
Tip: I once read or heard a tip from Jaime Oliver or someone to get honey or golden syrup to run off your spoon, run the spoon under hot water for a couple of minutes and then the honey/syrup should run off the spoon easier.

Cake Decorating-Marbled Honey & Chocolate Cake

2010-03-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

I´ve always loved baking ever since I used to help my Gran, who´s a great cook, when I was a little girl. Although my passion for baking has increased, I still have a lot to learn especially when it comes to the decorating part!! I usually make cakes for my boyfriend´s birthday and my friend´s birthday but usually either I haven´t made enough icing or it doesn´t turn out very smooth so I am particularly proud of my latest cake as it´s the prettiest cake I´ve ever decorated!

I chose to make a Marbled Honey & Chocolate cake but I haven´t included the recipe as it was from one of my recipe books "Chocolate Cakes & Slices" and I followed the recipe to the letter. The resulting cake though was very tasty and really moist. Armed with my new gigantic sized spatula, I set to work icing the cake with a chocolate honey flavoured icing, which as you can see turned out pretty smooth for once!

This is the before picture. I found some sugar stars and a pink icing pen (I think I would rethink the pink icing on chocolate next time-alhough the icing pens only came in the choice of two colours: pink or chocolate!)in the supermarket, which I thought would jazz up the cake and make it look prettier. I placed the stars around the outer edge of the cake alternately, white, yellow, white, yellow, then using the icing pen wrote the message, which was a little splotchy but not too bad for a beginner!Here´s the cake after I´d finished decorating it! It was a belated cake for my friend´s 30th birthday!

Pork Stroganoff

2010-03-10T13:08:00.000-08:00

(Just added a photo to this post after making this dish again!)

I´d taken a pork fillet/escalope out which had been left over and was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with it seeing as I was only cooking for myself. In the end, I decided to use up some of my leftovers and although I wouldn´t say that I´m a very creative cook, I came up with this pork stroganoff dish without using a recipe,which turned out to be rather delish, even if I do say so myself! Unfortunately, I didn´t get a photo of it as I was so hungry that it hardly lasted two minutes on the plate before I had wolfed it down! This is roughly what I did!

Ingredients (Serves 1)

1 small pork fillet/escalope (it was so small I actually added the green pepper to bulk out the meal and add more veggies to the meal)

1 small onion or 1/2 a medium onion, chopped

1/4 green pepper, chopped

3 small mushrooms, sliced

1 tbsp plain flour

1/4 cup cream ( the remainder in my case)

salt & pepper to taste

1/4 cup of cider (also left over from other pork recipes)

olive oil or butter

Method

1. Chop pork fillet into thin slices.

2. Fry onion, mushrooms and green pepper till tender.

3. Add pork & season with salt & pepper and fry till browned.

4. Mix flour and cream together.

5. Add cream and the cider and cook till sauce thickens and pork is cooked through, about 5-10mins.

6. Serve with pasta or rice.

If the sauce reduces too much, add a little more cream (or milk in my case as I didn´t have any more cream). If anyone decides to make this recipe, I´d love to hear your feedback and any suggestions of how to improve it & make it even more tasty!

Cooking with kids:Traditional Flapjacks

2010-02-26T11:50:00.000-08:00

Every Sunday my niece comes to play,speak and learn English so I thought it´d be nice to try a spot of baking with her, bearing in mind this was my first time trying to bake with kids!! A disaster waiting to happen almost!! As I am getting married this year and don´t want to put on any weight, I´m trying not to do too much baking or eat too many biscuits and cakes so I went for a recipe from my Weight Watchers recipe book. I decided to make traditional flapjacks as I thought it would be a fairly easy recipe to do with kids. Maybe not the most kid-friendly recipe as you have to stir the mixture over the heat most of the time and there wasn´t a lot that a child, especially if they are quite young, could actually do. She got to add the sugar and oats etc but it was got a bit messy as some of the sugar and oats ended up on the floor, on the hob, everywhere!! Or maybe it was just my own inexperience of baking with kids!! Anyway, we had fun doing it and next time, I´m hoping I´ll learn and pick a more kid-friendly recipe. Unfortunately, my niece doesn´t like sweet things and wouldn´t even try any of the flapjacks. I´m hoping I can eventually bring her round to the sweeter things in life.

Here´s a link to the recipe I used from Weight Watcher´s seeing as I didn´t tweak or change anything....the only slight difference was that I used a mixture of butter and margarine....so much for trying to bake something low-fat!! If you can´t find golden syrup, you could replace it with honey. You could also dip the flapjacks in chocolate or add nuts, raisins or other dried fruit.

Weightwatchers flapjack recipe (maybe not the best photo and next time I´d take them out about 5 mins earlier!)

Prawn Toasts

2010-01-19T12:05:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year and all the best for 2010! I made these prawn toasts for a buffet style meal (at least I thought it was)for New Year´s Eve as it´s something I´ve been wanting to try for awhile now.Also, it´s one of the only things I eat which contains prawns as I am not keen on fish or seafood.

Prawn Toasts (Makes 12)

137g prawns, desfrosted (or you could use fresh)

1/2 spring onion, finely chopped (white part only)

10g water chestnuts

1/2 beaten egg

1 tbsp cold water

3 slices of bread (I used bread with no crusts, if it has crusts cut them off)

enough oil for frying (I used olive oil)

1/4 cup of sesame seeds

Method

1. Blitz the spring onion and water chestnuts in a food processor.

2. Add the prawns, egg and water and again blitz in the food processer till you end up with a paste.

3.Spread the bread with prawn paste and cut into 4 triangles and dip into sesame seeds.

4. Fry in abundant hot oil with the sesame seed side facing up until it is golden and crispy and you have an easy,quick Chinese starter or party snack!

Food & Don Quijote (El Mirador de la Mancha)

2009-12-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

I have been doing some cooking but due to my hectic schedule, I don´t have much time to experiment or get too creative...barely have time to get something on the table and eat it,never mind take a photo of it and blog about it!I will be blogging about one of my Gran´s recipes,once I´ve tweaked it a bit and perfected it!!

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago so my parents came to visit and we had a lovely weekend stuffing ourselves. We went to Villarubia de los Ojos with my parents and my boyfriend´s parents to a lovely restaurant called El Mirador de la Mancha, which is completely made of wood and is very cosy. It is nestled at the top of a hill in the sierra with windows overlooking the valley below so you have great views while you eat your meal. The first thing you see as you make you way to the restaurant is a giant Don Quijote made of wood and some great lookout points. There are plants and a little waterfall and the surroundings are stunning. The restaurant also has cabañas (wooden chalets) and a swimming pool so would make a lovely escapade for a weekend in the country.

We ordered various typical starters from the region (Castilla-La Mancha)which included migas -a dish made of breadcrumbs, garlic, green peppers,chorizo and sometimes grapes, duelos y quebrantos -a dish which is a bit like scrambled egg with Iberian ham and chorizo in it (I´m always a bit dubious about this dish as I think it sometimes also has brains in it!!)-, gachas- a paste made from flour ,with a consistency similar to porridge, with small bits of chorizo in it and goats cheese with caramelized onion (probably not so typical of the region but divine anyway -definitely my fav of all the starters!)

Most of us chose either cochinillo (roast suckling pig), which was accompanied by roasted red pepper and potatoes or paletilla de cordero (lamb shoulder)which was also accompanied by potatoes and red pepper,if I remember correctly. I went for the cochinillo, which was tender and succulent on the inside and had a golden,crispy skin on the outside-perfect! The portions were fairly generous and unfortunately I was too full to do it complete justice. We skipped dessert as we were all too stuffed! The main dishes were reasonably priced too, at 15 euros each. Definitely worth a visit if you are ever passing through Castilla-La Mancha! There is also a little chapel a little farther up from the restaurant which is good to visit for the views (the chapel itself was closed when we went so I can´t comment on whether it is worth entering!)

AWOL

2009-10-25T10:33:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to explain my recent AWOL! I have been very busy these past months what with trips, job hunting, moving to a new flat and working at the new jobs that it hasn´t left me with much time for blogging. Plus, I still haven´t got Internet in my new flat yet....although we´ve been waiting for almost a month now! Things move very slowly in Spain! Although I´m hoping to have Internet by the end of the month and then will get back to blogging hopefully!! I have an account of my trip to New York pending and also some new recipes I´m dying to try out!

Taking a bite of the Big Apple

2009-10-09T11:53:00.001-07:00

Let´s see if I can remember with it being so long ago!! When my boyfriend´s parents visited us, we also went to New York for four days. It was our first time there and everything was amazing. We did the usual tourist attractions, going up the Empire State building around dusk to see all the city lit up, the Rockefellar Centre, Times Square with all the neon lights flashing. It´s definitely an unforgettable sight. Unfortunately, we didn´t make it to a Broadway show (all the more reason to go again!) but for a slice of real Americana and the next best thing, is the Stardust Diner. It´s a typical diner from the 1950's, evoking memories of Grease and Happy Days. The food is all American comfort food and family favourites, from hamburgers, meatloaf, reubens to milkshakes, pies and ice cream sundaes and floats. I think my boyfriend and I had hamburgers and fries and shared a slice of cherry pie with ice cream (my new fav pie/dessert). The food is hearty and homemade and certainly fits the bill if you are looking for a real American experience. Throughout the meal, the waiting staff put on a good show, constantly bursting into popular songs, such as Man I Feel Like A Woman, in between serving, and creating a feel-good vibe.

We also took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and walked the grounds of the Statue of Liberty, then boarded the ferry to Ellis Island and visited the Museum of Immigrants, which was very interesting. We then walked round the Financial District and Wall St, and paid our respects at Ground Zero. We also visited Chinatown and saw a strange-looking fruit, a Jack fruit, which I´ve never seen before (pictured below).

I didn´t get round to trying it though. Chinatown is also home to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory and I couldn´t resist trying one. Among the many exotic flavours were green tea, black sesame and lychee and after a difficult decision, I finally settled on the lychee flavoured ice cream. It was delicious although I couldn´t really taste the lychees, it tasted just like vanilla ice cream to me! We also passed through Little Italy, apparently very reminiscent of scenes from the Godfather.

We had our evening meal in an Italian restaurant called Pasta Lovers or something similar, which was quite close to our hotel (We were very near Times Square, which was very handy!). I had pasta (of course) with Italian sausage and a tomato based sauce. I can´t remember what everyone else had but everything was pretty tasty.

In my opinion, the best meal of all was a little French-style bistro(I think it was called Balthazar ) in SoHo we came across. It was a very popular place as it was crowded and we had to wait to be seated. The worst thing about it was the noise, it was far too noisy. You could hardly hear yourself think. We had snails to start (well, I couldn´t quite bring myself to eat more than one, so I just mopped up the garlicy juices with the French style breads they brought to accompany it!), I had duck confit with potatoes and my boyfriend had halibut en papilotte (if I remember correctly!) We shared a tarte tatin between us. Everything was absolutely delicious and definitely has my thumbs up, just try to go on a less busy night!

Discovering Niagra

2009-07-30T14:48:00.001-07:00

My boyfriend's parents came to visit us in Pittsburgh for about 10 days in July so we did plenty of eating out. The first day we showed them round the Cathedral of Learning, Oakland and Downtown and took them to Gullifty's (Murray Ave, Squirrel Hill),a restaurant famous for its award-winning desserts. Food here is the usual American fare of burgers,ribs etc and is tasty but the main reason to come here is for dessert and also the live jazz music and relaxed atmosphere. Unfortunately though the live music is only twice a week and we went on a night that there was no music. I had a veggie wild mushroom pasta dish served with garlic bread and my boyfriend's dad had the BBQ ribs. Although I was pretty full, I couldn't say no to a dessert especially as that is the whole point of coming!! I went for a Key Lime Pie, which had just the right amount of citrus tartness and sweetness to counteract it!

We then drove to Niagra Falls(the Canadian side) stopping en route at Volant to see the Amish (unfortunately we didn't see any!) Our hotel was the Hilton and we snuck a peek at the restaurant, which looked lovely and had a great view of the Falls and then went up to the bar, for a drink. I'd totally reccommend it as it also has great views of the Falls and is very tastefully decorated....it'd be very romantic at night! However, prices are fairly steep. The Falls are very impressive in themselves and we bought an adventure pass which includes the 4 main activities and is definitely worth the money: Thunder Behind the Mist(you go behind the waterfalls and can hear the thundering noise of the falls), Maid of the Mist (a boat ride which takes you up close to the Falls-an amazing experience), the White Water Rapids walk (the most dangerous rapids in the world) and the Fury(a multimedia interactive show). We also managed to squeeze in a couple of other sights such as the Spanish cable car which crosses the whirlpool rapids.

, We also got to witness two firework displays.We didn't know when we arrrived that it was Canada Day so they put on a firework display, then the following night we saw fireworks from the American side.I think they were having an early Independence Day celebration!

As we had already been to Niagra Falls before and knew some good restaurants, we ended up going back to many of the same restaurants. One of which was Coco's Steakhouse, Pizza bar & Lounge, which always has a wonderful aroma of a wood-burning stove and meat spit-roasting wafting through the air. We usually went there just for breakfast though as they do a great buffet style breakfast for only $14-$15! You can get toast, coffee and tea, cereal, fresh fruit, bagels, bacon, sausages, scrambled egg, pancakes and maple syrup and Eggs Benedict(which is delicious and is actually where I first tried it!). The only problem is that I tend to eat too much!!

The final night in Niagra we had dinner in the Skylon Tower,which has a revolving restaurant with great views of the Falls and the rest of the city. The food is delicious too and it's really romantic, great if you're just a couple! I had pork chop with veg and potatoes with a Peach cocktail. The cocktail comes in a special Skylon Tower glass which you get to keep as a souvenir. I can't remember what the others had and nobody had dessert as we were so full. Plus, due to the views it's pretty expensive but again worth it for that special moment!

Low-fat carrot cake cupcakes

2009-06-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

I´m aware I haven´t posted for quite awhile and all will be explained soon but as I am waiting for some photos for my previous post and I´m pretty impatient, I thought I´d post this first so I´m sorry about the delay in posting. I´m trying to use up my baking ingredients without buying more stuff as soon I´ll be off back to Spain and when I saw this recipe I thought it was ideal as I conveniently had most of the ingredients in my cupboard. Plus, I liked the fact that it was "low fat" especially after the indulgence on the California road trip(all will be explained in the next post!)So, this is another cupcake recipe,slightly adapted from my Cupcake calendar that hopefully you can enjoy without feeling guilty!

Low-fat carrot cake cupcakes(Makes 12)

Ingredients:(measurements using American measures)

2 cups self-raising flour

1tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1tsp ground cinnamon

3/4 cup soft light brown sugar

1/2 cup grated carrots(about 2-3)

1/4 cup chopped walnuts (I´m not a big nut fan so halved the amount of the original recipe so it was just the right amount of nuttiness for me but you can double the amount if you prefer!)

Grated rind of 1 orange

2 lightly beaten eggs

2/3 cup of sunflower oil (I ran out of sunflower oil so ended up being a mix of sunflower oil and mild olive oil!)

Cream cheese icing:

1 cup fat-free or light cream cheese

1 cup icing sugar, sifted

1 tsp vanilla extract

12 walnut halves, to decorate

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF(175ºC).

2. Mix all the cupcake ingredients in a large bowl and beat until combined(by hand or by an electric mixer)If using an electric mixer, set it to a low speed.

3. Place 12 paper cake cases in a muffin/fairy cake pan and spoon mixture into the cases.

4. Bake for 20 mins and then remove from oven and leave to cool for 5 mins.

5. Mix the icing sugar, vanilla extract and cream cheese together until combined and it is smooth and creamy.

6. Decorate cupcakes with the cream cheese icing and place a walnut half on the top.

Note: Next time, I´m thinking of adding some orange juice or plain yoghurt to the cake batter to make them moister as due to lack of kitchen equipment here, I didn´t have a cake tin to store them in and they dried out pretty quickly. Here´s the finished product, hope you like them!

Road Trippin´ California style- I am back!

2009-06-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

I´m finally back and firstly, I have to apologise for my infrequent posting recently. One of the reasons being that I haven´t made anything worth posting recently and the other main reason being that, I was on a road trip in California for two weeks!

I had wanted to do a (gourmet) food trail suggesting various foodie places and restaurants, however as there was a big group of us,we were all on pretty tight budgets and often had to eat on the go, we sometimes ended up in cheap chain restaurants or roadside eateries. So foodwise the trip was a little disappointing, however we did find some great and affordable places. The scenery and places we visited more than made up for it though.

Our California road trip was more than a little ambitious. We started off in San Francisco for 3 days, where we visited the different neighbourhoods, toured Alcatraz by night and biked over the Golden Gate bridge. We did lots of walking and as San Francisco is very hilly, I think we must´ve ended up pretty fit after this holiday! We found a great seafood restaurant on a pier in Fisherman wharf, Pier Market with reasonable prices. My boyfriend had the clam chowder, an apparently typical dish in San Francisco, which came in a sourdough bread bowl, which according to him was very tasty. As I´m not too keen on fish and seafood, I had a pulled BBQ pork sandwich with fries, which was delicious. The pork was so tender,it melted in your mouth and had just the right amount of BBQ sauce. I tried a little clam chowder and found it to be quite nice,not too fishy, to my surprise! We shared an Apple Crisp for dessert which was also exquisite.

Our next stop was Yosemite National Park and more walking but worth it for the breathtaking and stunning scenery. I couldn´t believe the squirrels were so tame that they would take food right out of your hands(despite the signs saying Don´t feed wild animals, lots of tourists do!)Didn´t see any bears though, fortunately! We stayed in Santa Cruz and then travelled along Highway 1, which is a lovely drive following the coastline and making stops at Monterrey, Piedras Blancas to see the elephant seals and Santa Barbara.

We had lunch in Monterrey, again on the pier in a restaurant which had lovely views of the sea.Unfortunately, I can´t remember the name of the restaurant to reccommend it but the lunch menu was again very affordable. As it was another seafood restaurant and didn´t really cater for those who don´t really like fish or seafood, I had no choice but to eat fish. I went for the coconut encrusted Tilapia with veggies and rice. It was really nice and presented beautifully with a decorative flower on the top as you can see in the photo. My only complaint would be that the rice needed a sauce.

Dinner was in Santa Barbara and as it was late, it was difficult to find anything still serving food. We stumbled across this great bar/restaurant The Sandbar serving Mexican food, which had an outdoor terrace complete with a fire and with modern, trendy but at the same time comfortable decoration. Again, I didn´t take any photos of the food unfortunately. I shared a beef burrito and a meat taco which came with refried beans, guacamole and rice with my boyfriend and was really tasty.

We visited LA and the typical things, then spent the day at Newport Beach & Huntingdon Beach, visted Malibu, Santa Monica and Laguna Beach and San Diego for a day. We went to Las Vegas, we wanted to visit the Mojave dessert en route but got a puncture so ended up going straight to Vegas. With all the car trouble and by the time we had eaten, it was 11pm so we hit the casinos and went from casino to casino visiting them (not gambling!) Most of us didn´t know how to play blackjack,roulette etc! It was 3pm before we knew it so we tried to get into a club but no luck, they were all about to close. So much for Las Vegas all-night partying! So unfortunately we didn´t really"experience" Vegas to the max! We were all so exhausted from travelling by this point though and the following day we slept till qbout 1pm!We had lunch in the Stratasphere Tower which has a rotating restaurant with excellent views of Vegas. Perfect for a romantic meal for 2! The food is pretty good too, it´s slightly more expensive due to the views but good value. I had chicken with pasta and peppers and courgettes in a garlicy-oil sauce and my boyfriend had veal escalope stuffed with proscuitto ham, veg and roast potatoes.

We then made our way to Flagstaff, pausing to see the Hoover Dam on the way. The following day we went to the Grand Canyon, which was very impressive and stayed in the Grand Canyon Village. We had our evening meal in Yippee-ei-oh (pictured above)which takes you back to the Wild West as the decor is all cowboy-orientated, with saddles and all the waiters are wearing stetsons. I shared a Outlaw´s dinner (if I remember correctly!) with my boyfriend, which was a good job as it was huge. It consisted of 1/2 portion of BBQ ribs and BBQ chicken, corn on the cob, baked beans and a jacket potato. It was also supposed to be served with prickly pear jelly but I realised after that you were supposed to ask for that if you wanted it. Everything was delicious and for me it was one of the best meals of the trip although my curiousity wasn´t sated as I would´ve liked to try the prickly pear jelly. Oh well, maybe next time! For dessert, I had warm cherry pie with vanilla ice-cream which was the perfect ending to a wonderful meal and I think is one of the best cherry pies I´ve ever eaten!

Easy Cherry Cheesecake-my best cheesecake ever!

2009-05-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite desserts is cheesecake and I really fancied one the other day plus I had some mascarpone that needed using up so decided to go ahead and make one. I remember when I first started making cheesecakes and having a few disasters with them not setting properly, probably due to not using the correct amount of gelatine or not following the instructions 100%. The presentation was awful, like a big gloopy mess but the taste was ok but I seem to have got the knack of making a perfect cheesecake now.

Cherry is one of my favourite toppings for cheesecakes and as there are no fresh cherries in the shops at the moment, I decided to use ready made cherry pie filling/topping, which is great if you don´t have time to make your own. I´ve never used mascarpone in my cheescakes before but as I had some left over, I thought why not and added it and believe me, it was definitely worth it but unfortunately I didn´t weigh it so I´ll have to make a rough guess. I´ll let you know next time I make it how much I use as I´ll definitely be including the mascarpone again. The cheesecake is just so light yet creamy....certainly the best cheesecake I´ve ever made. I guarantee if you make this for your partner/family/friends, it´s going to be a big hit and everyone will be left wanting more. The recipe is loosely based on this Raspberry Ripple Cheesecake recipe from the Cookery club but here is my version:

Cherry Cheesecake (Makes about 12 portions)
Ingredients:

340g cream cheese (such as Philidelphia)
100ml (just over 1/3 cup)double cream
90g (just over 1/3 cup) caster (superfine) sugar
leftover mascarpone *1/3 cup of mascarpone*
1/4 tsp vanilla extract (or 1/2 tsp vanilla essence, I´ve heard that vanilla extract is stronger so put less)
1 sachet of gelatine
90g/3oz butter
220g/8 oz digestive biscuits
Topping:
1 595g/21oz can of cherry pie filling/topping

Method:
1. Melt butter in a pan, taking care not to brown.
2. Crush biscuits into crumbs using food processor, blender or place in plastic bag and use rolling pin to bash or roll the biscuits (be careful with the latter method as bag may split and crumbs will go everywhere!)
3. Combine butter and biscuit crumbs and then spread evenly into a 9inch, 22.8cm cake tin and place in fridge.
4. Beat cream cheese in a medium sized bowl.
5. Beat in cream, sugar, mascarpone and vanilla extract till smooth.
6. Prepare gelatine according to instructions on packet (in this case add 1 cup boiling water to gelatine and stir till completely dissolved, about 5 mins)
7. Add gelatine to cheesecake mixture and slowly beat in, the mixture will appear very liquidy, like cream.
8. Spoon on top of the biscuit base and refrigerate for 2-3 hrs, until set.
9. Open can and spoon cherry topping over cheesecake, refrigerate until serving.
10. Enjoy!

A taste of Thailand, "Bangkok Balcony", Pittsburgh

2009-05-08T16:17:00.000-07:00

I haven´t tried much Thai food believing it to be too spicy for me. I have fond memories of my parents making Thai Green Curry(a milder version especially for me) and ending up with my eyes tearing up, my nose running and a totally numbed mouth due to the spicy heat....I couldn´t even taste the food, my mouth was that numb! However, thanks to my recent discovery of Thai red curry and Anne´s Kitchen´s Creamy Prawn Curry, my interest and my appreciation of Thai food is growing! So much so, that I´ve been wanting to try this restaurant, Bangkok Balcony, for awhile unfortunately I forgot to take my camera so that´s why I´ve given you the link.

Bangkok Balcony doesn´t give the impression of being such a nice restaurant from the outside, in fact you might even walk past it without noticing it as it is just seems to be stuck on the end of some shops. However, when you get upstairs and enter the restaurant, it´s a pleasant surprise. The restaurant is medium sized with modern decor an artistic objects which reflect the Thai culture. You are greeted by friendly staff which lead you to your table.

Every Thursday and Sunday night you can also watch Thai dancing while you eat. We were lucky enough to catch this as we went on a Sunday.The girls were dressed in typical Thai costume and it was interesting to see the way they danced, there were a lot of hand movements. My only complaints is that it was quite difficult to see them properly due to the waiters taking orders as I don´t think the restaurant lent itself to such a purpose because of it´s size. Also, that the dancing was over so soon!

I heard a lot about the Thai samosas as I was checking out other reviews about the restaurant so we decided to share those as a starter, seeing as most people seemed to be raving about them. The Thai samosas consisted of crispy deep fried filo pastry triangles with a soft Thai sweet potato filling -a perfect contrast of textures. They were served with a fresh cucumber sauce or salsa. I thought they were delicious but found it a little disconcerting as it was so sweet. In fact, the filling reminded me a little of marzipan!. I wasn´t sure whether it should be a starter or a dessert. My boyfriend chose a Basil leaf dish, which was made up of your choice of meat(beef in his case), red and green peppers, and of course basil leaves in a spicy garlic sauce and I chose a pineapple curry, again with my choice of meat, which was also beef. The restaurant has a spiciness scale from 1-10, which is good if like me you can´t eat too hot a curry. My boyfriend chose 3 on the spiciness scale and I went for 2. My beef pineapple curry was lovely and creamy and hit just the right amount of spiciness for me, however I preferred my boyfriend´s choice as it was full of flavour. Both dishes were cooked to perfection and the meat was really tender. I would definitely go back there again and am now a fully-fledged convert to Thai food. We decided to skip dessert as nothing really appealed to us although I would have liked to try the green tea ice cream if it hadn´t been for having a cold and a sore throat!

The Bangkok Balcony is an average priced restaurant which is worth a visit to sample the delicious food and due to the friendly,quick service. It is also has won awards for being one of the top Thai restaurants in Pittsburgh so I would definitely reccomend it! It is located on Forbes Ave in Squirrel Hill.

Time for Tapas! (Spanish Tapas competition)

2009-04-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

In Pittsburgh there is a group of Spanish people losdepatanegra who meet up every Thursday, the majority of which are living here permanently and every year they hold an annual tapas contest.I would definitely reccomend any Spanish people moving to Pittsburgh to visit this group. Although my Spanish friends and I don´t usually meet with them, we were lucky enough to be invited to come and participate in this event.

I have never taken part in any cooking competitions so I was very excited and nervous at being involved.However, this is not your usual "serious" Blue Ribbon Cookoff (there are many cooking competitions held by various companies such as Pillsbury or Crisco or food magazines throughout the USA )this competition is more about friends getting together and having a bit of fun. And of course the TAPAS! There were four categories: Best Tapa, Second Best Tapa, Best Presentation and the best dessert or sweet tapa. I decided to do a dessert due to the complications of a hot tapa and the logistics of getting it to the event warm and as a true British person chose to make something that reflected my culture and background: Delia Smith´s Traditional Trifle. I doubled most of the ingredients though as I made quite a large one (apparently it´s quite strategic as the bigger your tapa/dessert is, the more people will be able to try it and hopefully vote for you) apart from the raspberries (it was a little short on them) and I left the banana out as I don´t like bananas. I decorated the trifle with grated Galaxy chocolate as you can see in the photo although maybe my presentation could have been better.

The contest was held at someone´s house and garden. Luckily, it was a beautiful day otherwise it might have been a bit crowded and even though most people were in the garden, it was pretty packed. There were about 120 people at least! I didn´t realise there were so many Spanish people in Pittsburgh!There were lots of beer, coke, lemonade etc which you could help yourself to. As you arrived you had to write down your name and the name of your tapa and then you had to pose for a picture with your tapa. There was plenty of competition as you can see in the following photo.

There were many tapas I didn´t even try because many of them contained fish or seafood. Some I wanted to try, such as the Pinchos Morunos (a type of kebab), I didn´t even see before they were all gone in the stampede to try all the tapas (and the crowd!) However, I managed to sample a fair few including our friend´s, Zarangollo, typical from Murcia,a scrambled egg type of affair with onion, courgette and peppers, Bob´s Polenta, spinach meatballs and my personal favourite, El Logroñes, toast topped with goats cheese, apricot jam and pine nuts.

I went more to town on the desserts and sampled almost all of them including my trifle. Tarte tatin, strawberries in a cream, tiramasu, mini cupcakes with poppy seeds and cherry were just some of the competitors hoping to win. I voted for the tarte tatin although I secretly thought my trifle was a pretty close second (even if I do say so myself)! The standard was very high and everything I had was delicious....there are definitely some very talented cooks out there! Some of the dishes were presented beautifully especially a chocolate flan which was decorated with forest fruits and another dessert, tocino de cielo, which even had the Spanish flag on it.

Finally, after a slideshow recap to cast our votes and the counting of the votes which seemed to take forever, the winners were announced and the prizes were given. Silvia La Cabra won the best tapa (think it was toast with ham, blue cheese and a bit of olive oil on top)won Best Tapa, Second Best Tapa was Montaditos de Bacalao (toast with a cod spread). Best Presentation was won by the Coctél Castellano (lentils) mainly because the guy was wearing a women´s top or something (I didn´t even notice or see him!) and the tapa that won best dessert was Crema Catalana, which is similar to Creme Bruleé, I think. Apparently, it wasn´t even that good someone told me, they just voted for it because it´s quite elaborate to prepare. I didn´t try any of the tapas that won as I didn´t like them because they had blue cheese, lentils, fish so it just shows that one man´s heaven is another man´s hell!

As for not winning, well I was a little disappointed but you win some, you lose some.Maybe if I ever get to enter another cooking competition, I´ll do better next time! All the winners were from the Patanegra group (surprizingly enough).None of our group of friends were among the winners. It was definitely a lot of fun and as the old saying goes, it´s not winning that´s important, it´s taking part that counts.

The Strip District, Pittsburgh

2009-04-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

If you ever visit Pittsburgh, one place you have to see before you leave is the Strip District, especially if you are a foodie as it´s a paradise for foodies! It is one of my favourite parts of Pittsburgh and I never get tired of going there. The Strip District is a street in Downtown Pittsburgh which is full of restaurants, bars and specialist food shops from Asian grocery shops, Italian bakeries and delicatessens, to a Mexican specialist food shop and specialist butcher selling all types of meat from the typical to the more exotic, such as rabbit, buffalo etc. You name it, you can probably find it in the Strip District!

At the weekend, The Strip usually comes alive especially on a nice,sunny day and is a hustle and bustle of people. You can find a lot of street stalls selling food from the shops,like this one of Wholey´s Fish Market cooking Alaskan salmon etc and also others selling Steelers merchandise, soap, sunglasses etc. Usually you find more of these stalls on a Saturday than on a Sunday. I don´t even like fish and used to hate walking through the fish market when I was a child due to the smell but most of the photos are taken in Wholey´s Fish market, which has a wide range of fresh fish. So fresh in fact that you can even choose your own (see photos below)

Wholey´s is not only a fish market it is also a normal supermarket. There are a couple of Asian supermarkets, the largest and probably the best in my opinion being Lotus, where you can find everything from tofu to burdock sticks, noodles to water chesnuts and many things I´ve never even seen before,never mind tasted.

There is also a chocolate shop, Mon Amiee Chocolat, which I discovered to my delight, sells a lot of Cadbury´s chocolate and some other British goodies such as shortbread etc as well as selling many other famous international brands of chocolate. The problem was choosing which Cadbury´s chocolate bar to choose.In the end, I opted for a Wispa and another favourite of mine, German "Dominosteine"-Christmas chocolates made of three layers, one layer of biscuit( like Lebkuchen), an orange jelly type layer similar to the middle of a Jaffa cake and topped with marzipan, then covered in chocolate! After a hard day of shopping, you can treat yourself to a well-deserved rest and lunch/brunch at one of the many restaurants or food stalls although you might end up having to queue for the most popular places, some of which have appeared on the Food Network or the Travel channel. We chose a typical American diner, Pamela´s, decorated in bright pinks and greens and with all the typical black and white photos, Betty Boop etc memorabilia. The food although cheap is very good although if you´re looking for something healthy,I wouldn´t recommend it. All in all, the Strip is definitely an experience and a must for all foodies!

Honey chicken drumsticks

2009-04-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

Spring finally appears to be here, the daffodils and other flowers are blooming and the trees are blossoming. Everything looks beautiful especially the magnolia trees-there are some photos below . The weather is a little crazy though....it was snowing a couple of days ago!

I´ve been pretty busy these past few weeks which is why I haven´t been blogging too much although I have been trying out lots of recipes from other blogs and trying to come up with some of my own creations...so keep an eye out! Meanwhile, I thought I´d share this recipe for Honey chicken drumsticks from BBC Food with you as it´s really easy to follow, tastes really good , almost tastes like it´s from a restaurant and is also fairly economical and at the same time healthy. I used the breadcrumbs as didn´t have any sesame seeds and I also left out the chives but apart from that followed the recipe to the letter. I didn´t make the Waldorf salad as me and my boyfriend aren´t too keen on celery and as I had other leftover salad ingredients, I threw together a salad comprising of lettuce, cucumber, pear, goats cheese and walnuts with a little ready-made bottled ranch dressing to accompany the drumsticks, which made for a healthy,light but delicious meal!

Roald Dahl & Food: Memories with Food at Gipsy House

2009-04-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

I´ve always been a bit of a bookworm and enjoyed flicking through cookbooks and as I don´t have my cookbooks at hand and there is a large collection of cookbooks at the Carnegie Library(there´s even a foodie bookclub!)I decided to browse some of their collection. As I´ve been a big fan of Roald Dahl since I was a child,when I came across this book, I just had to read it!

This book is more than just a cookbook. It is full of anecdotes and memories contributed by Roald Dahl´s family and friends about their times at Gipsy House and you learn a lot about the famous author and his family. One of the most interesting facts in the book is that Roald Dahl is related to William Wallace as William Wallace´s family fled to Norway(Roald Dahl´s parents are Norwegian). The book is illustrated with beautiful colour photographs by Jan Baldwin and some drawings by Quentin Blake, who illustrated Roald Dahl´s books. The recipes themselves sound delicious and some are very innovative and unusual such as the Rose Petal Sherbet or the Krokaan Ice Cream while at the same time including some of the traditional and popular recipes of all cookbooks eg. Onion Soup, Thai Chicken or Oxtail Stew. Unfortunately, I haven´t got around to trying any of the recipes out yet so don´t know how successful it´d be when following them! The book is divided into the usual catergories: First Courses, Main courses, Vegetables and Salads, Puddings, Preserves and Cordials, Scones and Biscuits but also includes other sections such as Wine at Gipsy House and one very interesting section is The Hangman´s Suppers in which famous people state what they´d eat as a last supper if they were to be hanged the following day.

This is a delightful and interesting book and a must for any Roald Dahl fan and I´d definitely recommend it.

Blueberry & Lime Cupcakes (20th March '09)

2009-03-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

This is another recipe from my cupcake calendar, taken from the book 500 Cupcakes. As these cupcakes are made with fat free or skimmed milk and contain blueberries, which are rich in nutrients and antioxidants, you could say that these are a slightly healthier version of cupcakes.However, that´s not quite the case especially seeing as I used butter instead of margarine. The cakes though have the lovely tang of blueberries combined with the acidness of the lime which combates the sweetness of the cake batter, making this a perfect combination. All cup/tablespoon/teaspoon measurements are American.

Ingredients (makes 18)

1/2 cup(4 oz.) butter/margarine,softened

1 cup (about 7oz) caster(superfine) sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp vanilla essence(extract)

1/2 cup (about 118ml) skimmed/fat-free milk( I used 2% milk)

2 cups (about 8 oz.)self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup blueberries

1 tbsp. grated lime rind

Glaze

1/2 cup (about 3.5 oz) caster (superfine) sugar

2 tbsp grated lime rind

3 tbsp lime juice

2 tbsp boiling water

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350º F (175ºC)

2. Cream butter & sugar together until fluffy, then add eggs gradually and stir until combined.

3.Beat in the vanilla & milk.

4. Sift flour and baking powder into batter and mix well.

5. Fold in the blueberries and grated lime rind, spoon into cake cases.

6. Bake for 20 mins, then cool for 5 mins.

7. Mix sugar, lime juice, grated lime zest and boiling water in a saucepan. Simmer over a medium heat and stir until sugar dissolves.

8. Simmer for 5mins.

9. Cool slightly and using a spoon, drizzle the glaze over the cupcakes.

Beef Olives (13th March'09)

2009-03-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

I am always interested in discovering and trying recipes especially if they are traditional British dishes and I have seen versions of this recipe in various old-fashioned cookbooks, although it seems to have been forgotten about, I definitely don´t ever recall eating this in my family or anywhere else. I stumbled across the following version of this recipe in Mrs Manders Cookbook, which I borrowed from the library. My curiousity was aroused and I just had to try out the recipe and was definitely worth it. This is probably one of the more complicated dishes I´ve tried to cook although it is actually quite simple. The trickiest part is tying up the meat so the stuffing doesn´t ooze out as I´ve never done it before. Don´t think I did such a good job of it as the filling did start to ooze out a little but as they say practice makes perfect!

Here´s my tweaked and updated version of Mrs Manders´ recipe:

Ingredients (for 2 people) (all teaspoon/tablespoon/cup measurements use American measurements)

2 sandwich steaks or beef rump (I´m not sure I bought the correct cut of meat as was a little tough)

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 small button mushrooms, finely chopped

1/4 tsp dried parsley

1/4-1/2 tsp grated lemon rind (I just guessed!)

1/2 of a 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs

1 cup of minced pork or ham (you can use less if you want as I was just using up what was leftover)

1/4 tsp dried oregano or thyme

salt & pepper

1/2 of beaten egg

2 tbsp butter

1 cup (240ml) of stock (I used Bisto gravy granules)

1/2 cup (120ml) white wine

1/2 tbsp plain flour

Method

1. Mix onion and mushroom with pork, parsley, lemon rind, oregano and breadcrumbs.Season with salt and pepper and add egg.

2.Place mixture in beef slices and roll up, tie with cooking twine to secure the sides and prevent filling from leaking out.

3. Preheat oven to 350º F(180ºC)

4. Melt 1 tbsp butter in casserole and brown beef rolls.

5.Add stock and wine,cover and cook in the oven for 30-45 mins.

6.Remove beef rolls, cut twine and keep warm. Meanwhile, make gravy by melting 1tbsp butter in a pan, add the flour till thickens and add sauces and juices from the casserole dish, stir until bubbling.

7. Serve beef rolls warm with gravy and your choice of vegetables and potatoes.

As you can see, I served my with roast potatoes but unfortunately they didn´t crisp up as much as I´d have liked!

Mincemeat & Apple Pie (7th March, 09)

2009-03-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

I´d been wondering for awhile what to do with my leftover mincemeat after Christmas....it was a huge jar....and came across a recipe for Mincemeat & Pear flan in my mum´s Mary Berry's Desserts & Confections. This is a slightly adapted version of the recipe but is definitely a great way to use up that leftover mincemeat and is sure to be a success. Again, had a few struggles with the pastry as was fairly sticky so added a bit more flour, then when attempting to put it in the pie dish it kept breaking but eventually managed to get it in, in one piece. All cup and teaspoon/tablespoon measurements are American.

Ingredients (Serves 8-10)
Pastry
175g/6 oz (1 cup)plain (all-purpose)flour
30g/1oz (2 1/2 tbsp) caster (superfine) sugar
120g/4oz butter (1 stick)
1 egg
Streusel topping
30g/1oz(4 1/2tbsp)plain (all-purpose) flour
20g/2/3oz ( 1 1/2 tbsp)light soft brown sugar
30g/1oz (2 tbsp) butter
Filling
leftover sweet mincemeat
1-3 apples,Fuji best as you don´t need extra sugar, peeled and thinly sliced, depending on how much mincemeat leftover(as I only had a little mincemeat about 1/4 jar, I used 3 apples to fill the pie
lemon juice
cinnamon

Method
1. Sift flour and mix together with sugar in a bowl and rub butter into flour till it looks like breadcrumbs.
2. Add egg and mix until dough holds together(if very sticky add a little more flour). Roll into ball and refrigerate for an hour.
3. Mix together flour and brown sugar in a small bowl and rub butter into flour till it looks like breadcrumbs for the streusel topping. Refrigerate.
4. Roll out the dough using a floured rolling pin on a floured surface till it´s slightly bigger than the 22cm/8 in pie crust.
5. Line pie dish with pastry crust and trim the edges, then crimp the edges.
6. Spread a layer of mincemeat and then place the layers of apple on top fanning out in an attractive way (see before pic. below)

7. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the apples to stop them from turning brown and sprinkle a little cinnamon over the apples for flavour and then sprinkle streusel topping on top.
8. Bake in a preheated oven at 220 degrees C (425 degrees F) for 25-30 mins, taking care that pastry does not burn.(see notes)
9. When pastry and streusel are a nice golden brown colour, take out of the oven and serve hot with cream or ice cream.

- I´d suggest either cooking the apples a little before placing them in the pie or cook the pie at a lower temperature for a longer time as my apples were a little undercooked but the pastry was ready and I didn´t want it to burn. It still looked and tasted great though!