My Meatballs

I just made this up on the spot, kind of incorporated Jamie Oliver's sausage pasta recipe into it.

Ingredients (makes 4 large or 6 small meatballs):

• 4 sausages
• 2 spring onions
• 1 tsp garlic, or 1 small clove
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1 tsp herbs de provence (or any mixed herbs)
• 1 slice of bread, toasted
  

Method:

1. Roughly chop the onions and sausages.
2. Blend together all the ingredients in an electric food blender, adding 1-2 tbsp water to bind the ingredients.
3. Separate the mixture into balls and put onto a plate. Cover with cling film and refrigerate for half an hour.
   
4. Cover the base of a non-stick frying pan with olive oil. Place the meatballs carefully into the frying pan and brown them on each side until thoroughly cooked.

Home Cooking

I've only been here 2 days and we've cooked an awful lot already!

Yesterday we made Sachertorte, which is a kind of chocolate cake. In the evening we made our own tapas, my contribution was preparing a salad and making my own meatballs!

 Our tapas! Including (from left):

• Feta salad
• Garlic Mayo
• Fried Battered Calamari (shop bought)
• Fried battered king prawns and squid (home made)
• Meatballs (homemade - recipe to follow)
• Chorizo in a red wine sauce
• Mixed seafood in a garlic and white wine sauce
• Patatas Bravas! Only thing I know the proper name for, basically potatoes in a tomato sauce. We added some left over chorizo to ours.

 Details of my meatballs and Sachertorte to follow!

Ella's Bakehouse

Yours truly, outside Ella's

I finally got to Ella's Bakehouse in Covent Garden, which is Lorraine Pascale's Cupcake Bakery. It was lovely, quaint and cosy with an amazing array of cupcakes. We bought six, I got to choose the flavours and selected malteaser, nutella, peanut butter, red velvet, oreo cookie and banoffee. They were delightfully moist and the icing was so thick and creamy. The only downside is that the flavouring wasn't particularly strong on any of the cupcakes; if I was blindfolded I would have trouble telling them apart except for the peanut butter.

But they were beautiful and delicious all the same, a real treat.

Iced Vanilla Cupcakes

Recipe taken from Baked and Delicious. Silicone bakeware free with the magazine too!

Ingredients - for the cupcakes (makes 12)

125g unsalted butter, softened

125g caster sugar

Ingredients and silicone bakeware

2 large eggs, beaten

125g self raising flour

2 bananas

1tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp semi-skimmed or whole milk

for the buttercream icing
75g unsalted butter, softened
2 tbsp semi-skimmed/whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
225g icing sugar, sifted
food colouring, optional

Method

1)      Line a cupcake tray with 12 cases.

2)      Beat together the butter and sugar in a large glass bowl until they are light and fluffy. You need to ensure the butter is softened before you do this, so best to get it out of the fridge the night before.

Cake mix ready to be spooned into cases

3)      Beat the eggs in a measuring jug and add into the sugar and butter mixture. At this stage add a spoonful of the measured flour to stop the mixture curdling.

4)      Gently fold in the rest of the flour, making sure it’s folded in so that there are no floury patches.

5)      Add the vanilla extract. Divide the mixture between the cupcake cases.

6)      Bake in an oven preheated to 190°C/375°F/gas 5 for 20 minutes, until well risen and golden. Remove from oven and leave to cool on a wire tray.

Icing

1. In a large bowl beat the butter until soft then add the milk and vanilla extract and half the icing sugar. Beat for a few minutes then add the rest of the sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add food colouring if you're using it.
2. Spread onto cupcakes and enjoy!

  

The Final Two

Cupcake Catastrophe

Since the cheesecake seemed to have not gone so well, I thought I would try making some nice, easy vanilla cupcakes. Ha, easier said than done.

I used my new silicone cupcake cases from the Baked and Delicious magazine to which I've subscribed, and I used their recipe too. The first hiccup was when I put in one too many eggs, as I forgot I was meant to be halving the ingredients due to only having 6 cases. But that was easily resolved, I just put in a bit more flour.

Since we have a halogen oven, a regular cupcake tray wouldn't fit, so I popped the cases into a pyrex bowl, thinking this would be fine (even though it only held 3 so I had to do it two batches). However, the silicone cupcake cases need support otherwise they just kind of flop out and don't allow the cupcakes to take a nice, normal form. So the first 3 were demented, and burnt, as the halogen oven seems to be hotter than a regular oven (even though I put it on 190C, just like the recipe said).

So for the second batch I put the cases into some ramekins, for baking mini cheesecakes or sponges in, and that helped with the form, however the fan in the halogen still made them rise up in an odd fasion, causing there to be a random growth on the sides of the cakes. I also turned the temperature down this time, to 175 so they wouldn't burn on top again. When the time was up I inserted a skewer and it came out clean, so, thinking they were cooked, I let them cool.

I then made the icing, putting far too much red food colouring in so that it came out as an angry, vivid red rather than a pretty spring pink. Oh well.

When I went to ice the cakes, it turned out the second batch had gloopy, uncooked bottoms. Brilliant. So of the first batch there were two that had cooked without burning. I had already thrown the burnt one away thinking i'd soon have 3 perfect ones after the second batch.

I had two. And some crappy icing. Nevertheless, I iced the two I managed to save, and they look fine (apart from the weird growth and mishapenness).

So here they are. Angry red food colouring and all.

Peanut Butter and Banana Cheesecake

For Mother's Day.
It hasn't gone spectacularly well and i've yet to see what it tastes like and whether it sets.

Regardless of that, here's the recipe. I made it up from bits and bobs from various other recipes.

Ingredients

• 8-10 digestive biscuits (I used 6 and that was nowhere near enough)
• 3 tbsp butter
• 400g philadelphia cheese (full fat)
• 200g greek yoghurt
• 2 tbsp peanut butter
• 2 bananas, mashed
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Rind and juice of 1/2 a lemon
• About 5 tbsp low cal sugar substitute e.g. candarel
• 1 tbsp muscavado sugar

Method

1. Prepare your cheesecake tin by lining loose bottomed tin with foil. I also greased mine just for peace of mind, I worry a lot about things sticking.
2. Melt the butter over a low-medium heat, making sure it does not burn.
3. Crush biscuits in a food bag with a rolling pin. Make sure they are totally crushed otherwise it will be lumpy, like mine. Combine butter with crushed biscuits and press evenly into the prepared tin. Leave to set in fridge for 30 minutes.

   

   Cream cheese mixture with PB being added

4. To prepare the filling, beat the cream cheese and yoghurt in an electric food mixer until smooth and creamy. Add the juice and rind of the 1/2 lemon, along with the peanut butter. Mix again. Add the mashed banana and vanilla extract. Mix again.
5. Add sweetener and muscavado sugar and, you guessed it, mix. Make sure all ingredients are combined to a smooth creamy texture.
6. Pour over the base and leave to set in fridge, preferably overnight. But if you're like me you'll just leave it till it looks set and then eat it, probably ruining it in the process.

Final cheesecake ready to set

Mother's Day

So, for my first recipe here I will be sharing with you my culinary adventure/disaster of making a cheesecake for Mother's Day.

I'm making it as we speak. Well, waiting for the base to chill in the fridge.

Disaster has struck already, in that I didn't crush up the digestive biscuits enough, and I left them congealing in butter too long while I was faffing around prepared my tin. This is why recipes state to prepare your cooking instruments before you start on the food.

Still, all is not lost, I shall see how it looks and if it's bad, i'll simply start again.

More to come later.