Sweet Factory

On last week of term I made these tempting delights for five of my friends because I'm moving on to secondary school - wow!

Firstly I attempted making some honey fudge (a different recipe to the only time I've made fudge before). The result was a delicious but unset mess!

I boiled it again and it set slightly better but still quite sticky, so I cut it into small squares and dipped some in melted chocolate and put the others in truffle cases. I thought that the contrast between the sweetness of the toffee and the slightly bitter taste of the dark chocolate covering went really well.

Next I made some peppermint creams (which are almost entirely icing sugar!). They would have been really easy to make but I was wearing special nail varnish to stop me biting my nails (it was specially designed to taste disgusting) so I had to wear rubber gloves to knead the mixture. Then I half dipped them in melted chocolate and piped patterns on to them, I even wrote a message (below).

Ruth I will miss you!

Finally I made some origami boxes out of wall paper and lined them with tissue paper.

Orange Blancmange

Later on in the school holiday my other aunt (Kate) came down from London with her kids - Freddy 4 and Sophie 1. So of course I took charge of the dessert...

I made seven orange blancmanges from scratch. I followed the 'cook' magazine recipe. I made my own orange jelly and sandwiched a layer of home made blancmange with it.

As you can see from the pictures everyone enjoyed it!

Campfire cooking

Hello sorry I haven't blogged in a while I just haven't got round to it (plus every time I try to go on the internet our broadband crashes!), with year 6 SATS and half term and things (if you have recently suffered from GCSEs I wish you luck in your results). Anyway, for the first weekend of half term I went camping with my mum, dad,  two sisters, aunt, uncle and four year old cousin near the Oxfordshire Ridgeway. 

The first night I hollowed out oranges and filled them with muffin mixture, I placed them in the hot ashes of a previous campfire. On the recipe I followed, it said that they will take just 20-25 minutes but they weren't half done after a whole hour so I put them in the ashes of a small barbecue and left them overnight.

My uncle with my sister and cousin purposely falling off their chairs!

 With a bit more cooking in the morning they were scrumptious for breakfast! The next evening we had a lot of toasted marshmallows delicious! The same evening I made a batch of chapati dough and left to prove overnight. 

The next day I lit this thing called a  Cobb (it is a low metal cylinder with a grey disc made from coconut shells inside that you light with a blowtorch). Then I rolled out about 10 chapatis and cooked them one at a time on a metal plate above the Cobb. We ate them like pancakes full of golden syrup and crystallised ginger - they were unbelievably tasty (miles better than pancakes)!

Look how red the sun made my hair go!

I hope you are all enjoying the summer!

Crispbread

This is just a quick post requested by my friend, she tried some of my crisp bread and wanted the recipe so I've left a link here (just scroll down the website a bit).

Catching Up Again!!!

Sorry I haven't been blogging for ages; I've been too busy actually cooking rather than writing about it, so I'm doing another 'Catching Up' post to update you on what I've been cooking for the last four weeks!

Mini Quiches

These are the last things I made before breaking up for Easter, I have made these before just without a cheesy sauce, but it tastes better with one.

For the filling, I cooked some homegrown leeks and red onions together without any water or oil which made the combination look appetisingly fresh and colourful.

When I had blind baked the pastry and divided the vegetables in to the pastry cases, I whisked together some eggs, grated cheese and creme fresh and poured it over the top.

I found they were just as tasty cold as hot and perfect for a packed lunch!

Birthday Cake

On 3rd April it was my little sister's 6th birthday and I (of course!) took charge of the cake: I made two Victoria sponges, one with a tablespoon of coffee and one with 80g of cocoa powder and 80ml of milk.   

I put them together by sandwiching the first chocolate layer and the first coffee layer together with cream on one plate and did the same on another plate with the other two layers to make two two-layer cakes. I then sandwiched the two two-layer cakes with a chocolate icing, iced the top stuck some candles in and my most complicated cake ever was complete!

It was so complicated that at one stage I had to take it apart and rebuild it!

Counting the layers!

I was pretty impressed at how each slice looked - like a zebra- with a glacé cherrie on top!

Cooking Dinner

As soon as I got home from a week's walking holiday in Wales I decided to make dinner for me and my sisters. I made haddock wrapped in bacon with asparagus on toast in a home-made lemon mayonnaise. Oh and I forgot - a mango and orange smoothie as well! "The mayonnaise was really nice and creamy," said Abigail, my 8 year old sister.

I found haddock quite salty wrapped in bacon but with the greenness of the asparagus on the side the dish was altogether delicious!

I have also made two Lebanese dips (one brown lentil and one roasted peppers), 17 chicken rakakats (spring rolls) and a coffee and chocolate volcano birthday cake for my Grandma!

Baked Sambusaks

Sambusak is a type of Lebanese pastry made with honey or sugar. These baked sambusaks are full of potato and cheese.

I made the pastry and found it quite doughy which explains why it ended up looking like bread!

My little sister, Emmeline had one with chutney the first time; she didn't think she'd like the pastry, she thought the chutney would disguise the taste, but she came back saying the chutney ruined it!

I forgot to put the feta in but it turned out fine because I used a lot of mozzarella. 

I also rustled up an lemony Victoria sponge with lemon curd in the middle and it tasted scrumdidiliumptious so I took some photos. 

Bacon and Egg Pies

I keep thinking about making these pies but you can't buy quails' eggs in Tesco! Luckily I saw them in Sleaford  Farmers' market. Spring's arriving so I took some spring themed photos, I hope you like them!

Our chickens have been laying tiny eggs recently so I used a few of those as well.

Instead of using butter and wasting bacon fat I fried the shallots and bacon in it's own fat.

Here's a photo of half one: if you look closely you can see the egg on one side and the bacon on the other.

They taste best cold with a bit of mustard for dipping in, delicious!

Sweetcorn Cornbread

I made this cornbread last year and since we still have bags and bags of our home-grown, frozen sweetcorn sitting at the bottom of the freezer I had another go. I hope you like the photos, it's a nice day so I went outside for them.

I made it in the way you normally make bread: made a hollow in the dry ingredients, poured in the wet ingredients and mixed it together.

A sweetcorn, a chilli and an onion arranged in a face

Onion, chilli and sweetcorn

Here is the finished product (unfortunately by the time it was cooked the sun had gone in).

 When I poured it into the tin it was very shallow but because it had a lot of bicarb and baking powder it rose about three centimetres!

Posh Sausage Roll - Recipe

This is a special request from my friend in America: Elisabeth. She saw my last post and asked me to give her the recipe I used, my mum found it on the internet for me so here it is:

  

A delicious mixture of minced pork, spices, apricot and nuts is baked in pastry and served with braised cabbage with apple and tamarind sauce. A meal in itself, or it can be served alongside the turkey as part of the Christmas dinner!

Ingredients

For the sausage roll

• 1 medium onion, chopped

• 2 garlic cloves, chopped

• 6 slices smoked streaky bacon, diced

• 75ml/2½fl oz Calvados

• 600g/1lb 5oz minced pork

• 200g/7oz sausage meat

• 4 sage leaves, chopped 

• 2 tbsp chopped parsley

• pinch ground ginger

• pinch nutmeg

• 50g/1¾oz of toasted pistachios, chopped

• 20 dried apricots, diced

• salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 2 large free-range eggs, beaten

• 50g/1¾oz of bread crumbs

• 1 sheet all-butter puff pastry rolled to a 1cm/½in thickness, 50cm/20in length and 25cm/10in width                        

For the winter cabbage salad

• butter, for frying

• 1 medium onion, chopped

• 2 large pears apple, peeled and diced

• 1 medium Savoy cabbage

• ½ large pomegranate, seeds only

• squeeze of lime juice

• salt and freshly ground black pepper 

• pear sliced on a mandoline, to garnish

• chutney, to serve

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.

2. In a frying pan, gently fry the onion, garlic and bacon. Add the Calvados to flambé the pan - take care to avoid the flames. Scrape any cooked-on food from the bottom of the pan. Place the mixture into a bowl and leave to cool.

3. Place the minced pork and sausage meat into a large bowl. Add the sage, parsley, ginger, nutmeg, pistachios and apricots, and season with salt and pepper. Add the onion mixture to the bowl along with two of the eggs and the breadcrumbs. Mix together to create your filling.

4. Dust a surface with flour and lay out the rolled pastry. Place the filling onto the pastry and make a sausage shape off-centre. Brush the edges of the pastry with the remaining egg. Fold the pastry over to create the sausage roll. Seal around the edges and brush with the egg. Using a sharp knife, slash the top of the sausage roll to create lines in the pastry. Finish with a grind of black pepper.

5. Place in the oven and cook for 10 minutes at 200C/400F/Gas 6, then turn the oven down to 170C/340F/Gas 3½ and cook for a further 10-15 minutes.

6. For the winter cabbage salad, in a frying pan, melt a knob of butter and gently fry the onion until soft. Add the pear and cook until soft. 

7. Blanch the Savoy leaves in a large pan of boiling water for two minutes. Remove the leaves and refresh in iced water. When the leaves are cool, remove the stems and shred.

8. Add the cabbage to the onion and pear and fry gently until soft. Add the pomegranate seeds and juice and squeeze of lime juice. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from the heat.

Let me know in the comments if you tried to make it.

Posh Sausage Rolls

I made these two giant sausage rolls on Sunday but I forget to do a post about them. I couldn't be bothered to make my own puff pastry so I cheated and used bought pastry. We didn't have any dried apricots so I replaced them with figs.

When I had mixed all the filling ingredients together I rolled them up in pastry.

I slitted them with a knife to let the steam out. 

They turned out too big to fit a baking tray so I had to bend them into a horse-shoe.

They turned out really well but next time I will put less figs in because they tasted quite odd with the meat!

Pepper Dip and Scotch Eggs

On Sunday I made a pepper dip out of our Comptoir cookbook.

Basically I just roasted the peppers, skinned them, added them to the roasted nuts and gave them a quick whizz in  the food processor with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil.

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While the peppers and nuts were roasting I got a bit bored so I decided to make something else. I flicked through supper with Rosie and found a recipe on scotch eggs.

Here's how I made them: obviously, firstly I boiled the eggs and let them cool.

Next I mixed up the sausage meat, chilli and spring onion. The recipe said to roll them into a circle that's 10cm in diameter, but that later turned out pretty small when I had to wrap them around the eggs, so I suggest rolling them out bigger! 

Next was the fun bit; I made a five part production line!

The first part was shelling the eggs, the second part was rolling them in flour, the third part was wrapping them in the sausage meat, the fourth part was rolling them in the beaten egg and the last part was rolling them in bread crumbs.

You're supposed to fry them but I baked them and they were fine - in fact they were delicious!

I accidentally made too much bread crumbs - maybe even three times the amount I needed!