The bank holiday weekend was a sociable occasion for us, with different groups of friends round for afternoon tea and cake on Friday and Monday.  So there was a LOT of baking going on in our house over the past week or so.  Somewhere between Friday and Monday I came to the realisation that it was probably pretty pointless for me to be starting to exercise to lose my baby weight (starting easy with the Davina post-natal DVD) if I was then stuffing my face with cake two hours later. But, given that I’m breast-feeding, I’m not quite ready to give up my cake habit just yet…

So, I dug out my old trusty Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache written by the slightly irritating Harry Eastwood, from Channel 4’s ‘Cook yourself thin.’ I went through a spell of using this book a lot (probably when I was trying to lose weight after my last baby!) but it has been languishing on the shelf for a while now and to be honest I’m not sure why.

This book is fab! It’s chock full of recipes for cakes, scones and other sweet delights but instead of using butter or oil these recipes all use some sort of veg to add moisture. And not just your usual carrots, but beetroot, courgette and butternut squash all feature in some recipes. This isn’t a new idea by the way, when I showed the book to one of my older guests on Monday, she informed me that cakes were routinely made using potato during the war when rationing was in place. There’s nothing new in cookery as they say.

I tried 3 recipes from the book over the weekend and they were all without doubt scrummy. The brownies use beetroot to provide moisture and that lovely squidgy brownie texture. The book recommends roasting beetroot yourself but I used pre-packed, pre-cooked beetroot (not the stuff in vinegar obviously) and the brownies suffered no ill effects.

The white chocolate, fruits of the forest and cinnamon blondie uses butternut squash – I’ve made this before and it’s lovely, a bit different from the normal cake / brownies that I usually make. The white chocolate provided sweetness against the tartness of the fruits of the forest and again, I made life easier (and cheaper) by using frozen fruits of the forest rather than fresh.

The rest of the squash went into the delightful ‘light chocolate cake’. Now I have to admit there is butter in the icing, but there’s also mascarpone, making it a tad healthier than normal butter icing. It  produced a fabulous chocolate cake, really moist, chocolate-y and lovely, definitely on my ‘make again’ list.

As I make more of the recipes again, I’ll share them with you – and look forward to more healthy eating recipes in coming months, plus fitness DVD reviews too!

I wanted to do the same thing again this year but as baby no4 (and yes, I am looking forward to the day when this child is no longer a number but has an actual name) is due towards the end of March and we’ll be relying on freezer meals after that, I’ve decided to bring it forward.

This was our first week, starting on Saturday 5th Feb and overall it’s been a great one:

Saturday: Vegetarian Pizza
Sunday: Jamie Olivers Fish Pie
Monday: Jacket Potatoes, Beans & Cheese
Tuesday – veggie paella
Wednesday – Creamy Tomato Mascarpone Gnocchi *
Thursday – cheese, onion and potato pasties
Friday – Fish Fingers & Chips (the adults are out for dinner!)

*This was a batch cook, so I’ve got some frozen for lazy tea!

Review

Jamie Olivers fish pie was a winner,  it’s just so rich and creamy, we had friends round for lunch and it was clean plates all round.

On Tuesday we tried a version of the Ottolenghi Veggie Paella.“>  Their recipe included fennel (which I couldn’t find when I went shopping) and artichokes which I’m not fussed on.  So I swapped them out and included an extra pepper and a large tub of mixed olives and sundried tomatoes from Sainsburys.  It was gorgeous, but we increased the ingredients by half again and it and made enough for D to take some to work with him for lunch the following day.

Wednesdays meal was a slightly different version of the Creamy Tomato Mascarpone Gnocchi recipe which I found on the waitrose website.  I changed it to make standard potato gnocchi instead of sweet potato because I have a bag of spuds needing to be used up.  I also doubled the recipe so I’ve got some in the freezer for a lazy meal another night.

D, A and I all really enjoyed this but no2 son point blank refused to touch it (to be fair he had been unwell) and J sucked the sauce off the gnocchi and didn’t eat them. Hey ho.

It’s only the second time that I’ve made gnocchi and I used a different recipe without eggs – these ones were definitely lighter and more fluffy.  It’s quite easy if a bit time-consuming to make gnocchi but here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

• Potatoes (I had about 1.2kg of flesh once I’d scooped them out of their jackets)
  Plain flour (about 300g)
  Seasoning

Method

• Cook potatoes in their jackets in the oven for about 1 hour at 190c
• When cooked, scoop flesh from potatoes and either mash or put through a ricer / sieve
• Sift flour onto the potatoes and mix to combine to a dough – be gentle here!
• Roll pieces of your dough into a sausage and then slice to form small pillow shapes
• Cook the gnocchi until they float in a large pan of salted boiling water – you’ll need to do these a batch at a time.
• If you’re not going to use the gnocchi immediately, place them individually onto a floured tray and cover until needed.
• The gnocchi also freeze well like this – freeze them on the tray and once frozen you can put them into a freezer bag or two.
• To use, cover with sauce and bake in a pre-heated oven at 180c for 30 mins or so.

Hopefully this will give some of you some inspiration to try more meat-free meals. If you do, be sure to let me know!

My problem was, which cake to choose? Obviously I LOVE a bit of chocolate cake (Nigella’s sour cream chocolate cake is just fab), victoria sponge is always good too ad I’ll never say ‘No’ to a brownie. But my favourite cake has to be coffee cake as it’s just a bit more grown-up (or coffee and walnut if I happen to have some around).

This recipe is a doozy. I’m not a huge fan of sickly buttercream, but this filling is gorgeous, not too sweet or too rich. It’s based on the ‘Coffee Cream Mousseline’ a la Delia and is a little bit trickier than standard buttercream but I *think* I can show you where it might go wrong. It took me 10 attempts and some googling to work out why it sometimes worked for me and didn’t at other times. Thank god for google.

Ingredients (ideally all at room temperature)

• 225g butter or marg (I use Stork, prefer the light texture and don’t notice much difference flavourwise. Plus it’s MUCH cheaper)
• 225g caster sugar
• 225g eggs (4 large or 5 small/pullets approx)
• 225g self-raising flour
• 2 tbs coffee essence (I use Camp coffee essence)
• 2tbs (ish) milk
• 2 x 20cm sandwich tins with removable bases

Method

• Preheat oven to 180c, grease your sandwich tins thoroughly
• Cream butter/marg and sugar until light and fluffy with either a handheld electric mixer, or freestanding one.  This takes a good 8 minutes, so be patient it makes all the difference to your finished cake.
• Add an egg, plus 1-2 tbs of flour to your mixture and beat until combined.
• Repeat until all your eggs are included.
• Sift in remaining flour, along with coffee essence and milk. Mix until combined.  Your batter should be loose-ish, dropping consistency.
• Divide the batter between the two cake tins and cook for 25 minutes (until the cake has started to come away from sides of the tin)
• Leave to cool for 10 minutes, the remove from tins and allow to cool completely before icing.

Icing

Ingredients

• 60g caster sugar
• 4 tbs water
• 2 large (or 3 small) egg yolks
• 150g butter (room temperature)
• 2 tbs camp coffee essence

Method

• Put the water and sugar in your smallest saucepan and slowly bring to the boil, making sure all the sugar is dissolved completely before it boils
• Simmer gently for 12 – 15 minutes (temp on a cooking thermometer should be 103c – 105c)
• Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl, then pour the sugar syrup onto the eggs whisking all the time.  It’s REALLY important here to pour directly onto the eggs, not onto the beater or the bowl sides as the sugar syrup will solidify and it won’t work.  It took me a long time to work out why this was happening!
• Whisk the butter in about 25g at a time until you have a smooth fluffy cream.
• Lastly whisk in the coffee essence.  You can use the filling to sandwich and top your cake and it looks pretty decorated with walnut pieces.
• Slice and enjoy with friends!

Here are the other recipes in this Cakes and Cookies Carnival:

Nova at Cherished by Me gives us her Cherry, Coconut and Marshmallow Traybake.

Kelly at Domestic Goddesque posts her recipe for heart-shaped jammy-dodger-style biscuits in Baking with a heart!

Heather at SAHMLovingIt gives us her Scrumptious Beetroot Seed Cake Recipe.

Jules at I Need Curtains for the Window in my Head posts her recipe for Almond Macaroons.

Gemma at HelloitsGemma’s Blog posts her (easiest) Banana Cake (ever).

Sian at Pumpkin and Piglet posts her Chocolate Digestive Biscuits.

Jax at Making It Up gives us her recipe for gingerbread.

Cass at The Diary of a Frugal Family posts her Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Clare at Seasider in the City gives us her Mars Bar Cake.

Bod for Tea shows us how she makes Iced Animal Biscuits.

Maggy at Red Ted Art has a guest post from Maison Cupcake’s Sarah showing us how to make Love Heart Cookies.

Rebecca at twobecomefour gives us her recipe for Beck’s Banana Bread.

Jenny at Gingerbread House gives us her Gingerbread cupcakes.

Tiddlyompompom shares the fun she has making cakes with her daughter in Have your cake and eat it.

Because I like to eat a really good variety of food I try a LOT of different recipes. The problem is, sometimes I try one and like it but then sort of forget about it? So this year I’ve decided to keep a menu diary and I’ll share it with you once I’ve cooked everything and can highlight the ‘goodies’.

My January to date list is below – there’s not as many recipes as days because once or twice a week we have ‘freezer surprise’ which is just one of my batch cooked meals reheated. If I’ve used an online recipe, I’ve included a link to it, if it was a batch meal I’ve put an asterisk beside it.

Some of the recipes are annotated ‘K’ – these are from the Kitchen Revolution cookbook, generally the first recipe is a ‘Big Meal from Scratch’ Sunday dinner type thing, and then the following two recipes are made from left-overs of that meal.

I’ve done a few comments at the bottom for recipes which we particularly liked!

Lastly, heads up that I’m planning ‘meat-free February’ this year instead of meat-free March. This is because bubs is due to arrive towards the end of March and I’ll be relying on batch cooked frozen meals for a while after that and they tend to be mostly meat based!

Meals to date:

Thai beef casserole*.

Cream of chicken soup, lemon & tarragon

Roast chicken, chicory, bacon. K

Chicory bacon pasta. K

Chicken pie. K

Pasta puttanesca*

Sundried tomato creamy Chicken casserole*

Roast butternut squash Soup

 Jacket potatoes

Braised Oxtail (I didn’t make the dumplings)

Texas Burgers & Ranch dressing

Paella

Pizza

Shepherds pie

Warm lentil feta salad

Jacket potatoes cheese beans

Highlights

The texas burgers were fabulous, I made triple the recipe and got no1 son to help with making a load of burgers up so we could freeze them.  It’s definitely worth making the ranch dressing to go with them as it’s so tasty, the dill in the dressing is just yummy.  Brucie bonus is that the kids LOVED the burgers (sort of obviously, after all it is a burger, but you never know with kids).

The other one worth mentioning is the roast chicken with chicory and bacon.  I’ll be honest here, I’ve never cooked with or eaten chicory before.  I’d heard of it of course but never actually used it.  This is a kitchen revolution recipe, where  you roast two chickens with lots of bacon, shallots and chicory, plus some white wine and tarragon.  It’s served with roast carrots and parsnips so it’s an easy one to make too and not that much washing up (for a roast dinner!)

I liked the chicory although it is a bit of an acquired taste and the children weren’t too impressed by it.  We had a whole roast chicken left over which I stripped as soon as it had cooled.   This made the yummy chicken pie and also some very tasty soup too.  The left-over chicory/bacon/shallot mixture made a beautiful chicory and bacon pasta sauce with just some creme fraiche added.   I chopped the chicory up a bit for this and the kids seemed to enjoy it more this way than with the roast dinner.  I’d still make it again though, for a change….

Let me know what you think….

It’s also a one-pot wonder as the only cooking involved is for the lentils but it still manages to taste great. Even my slightly fussy 6 year old likes it (although the three year old is less keen). It also makes a great lunch box salad for my husband.

Ingredients

• 400g puy lentils (the small black ones)
• 200g feta cheese
• one red onion
• cherry tomatoes (one small punnet, about 250g)
• small bunch of herbs (parsley, basil, tarragon are all good)

Dressing

• 4 – 5 tbsp olive oil
• 1 lemon
• wine vinegar to taste
• salt and pepper (very important)

Method

• Wash lentils, place in saucepan and cover with plenty of water
• Do not add salt at this stage as it can make your lentils hard
• Bring to boil and then simmer for 35 – 40 minutes until cooked
• While the lentils are cooking, put all the ingredients for the dressing into a jam jar and shake until combined. Taste and add wine vinegar and seasoning to taste
• Chop tomatoes roughly and either slice finely or chop onions, depending on how you prefer them
• Peel leaves from herbs and chop roughly
• When lentils are cooked, drain and return to pan
• Stir in the chopped herbs, tomatoes and onions
• Add the dressing and mix well
• Taste and correct seasoning if necessary

Eating anything with lentils always makes me feel virtuous, no idea if this is justified by this dish or not, but it does taste good, so no matter!

Here are the other entries in the Friday Club One-Pot Cooking Carnival:

Clare at Seasider in the City gives us her Sausage Casserole.

Cass at The Diary of a Frugal Family gives us the perfect pudding for winter, her Rice Pudding.

Nova at Cherished By Me posts her Herby One Pot Chicken.

Jax at Making it Up posts her Prime Number Vegetable Stew.

Cara at Freckles Family posts her Pot-luck Goulash.

Ella at Notes From Home posts her Rice Pudding.

Ingredients
- 450g dried apricots
 - juice and zest of organic or unwaxed lemon
 - 1.8kg granulated sugar
 - 6 almonds, peeled and split

Method
• Chop the apricots into quarters and place in a bowl.
• Add the lemon zest and juice and 1.8litres of warm water.
• Cover and soak overnight.
• Next day, pre-heat your oven to 180c, then warm your sugar for about 15 minutes.
• Put the apricot mixture into a wide greased saucepan, then add the warm sugar.
• Heat gently and stir until all the warm sugar is dissolved.
• Increase the heat and boil rapidly for 20 – 30 minutes until setting point is reached. The almonds can be added half way through cooking to give a nutty flavour which is very yummy.
• To test for setting point, put a tsp of jam onto a plate which has been in the freezer and then pop in fridge for a few minutes. When you take it out of the fridge, see if it wrinkles when you touch it – if it has, you’ve reached setting point.
• Fill into sterilised pots (heated at 180c for 5 mins) cover and store.

 Have a fantastic Christmas & New Year everyone!

I’m enough of a food snob that I couldn’t bring myself to nip to Tesco’s for a packet of mince pies – and besides this was cheaper and I had all the ingredients in the cupboard!

I’ve made some more for the teachers pressies and it looks very pretty, but bear in mind that after a few days it gets a bit sticky so best made at the last minute. Not that this is a problem, it takes about 5 minutes to make and 2 hours cooling time.

I’ve tried a few different recipes but recently was watching Masterchef Australia and they had a couple of brilliant tips which I think make it fool-proof.

Ingredients

• 200g sugar
• 4 tablespoons golden syrup
• 1 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
• A BIG saucepan
• A 2 litre pyrex bowl & greaseproof paper / silicone paper

Method

• Put the sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan and mix together off the heat.
• Place on the hob and heat gently until the sugar dissolves, then heat for a further 4 or 5 minutes.
• While the sugar mixture is heating, line your pyrex bowl with either greaseproof paper or silicone paper
• As soon as the sugar starts to change colour at the sides of the pan, take it off the heat and stir in the bicarbonate of soda.



• The mixture will foam up, pour it into your lined bowl and leave to cool for 2 hours.
• Lift the set honeycomb out of the bowl and peel away the greaseproof paper / silicone paper.
• Place the honeycomb back in the bowl and break into shards (I used the end of a rolling pin).

You’ll be left with lots of shards and some honeycomb dust, which is fabulous stirred into melted chocolate or sprinkled on vanilla ice cream!

Vanilla Sugar

I can’t believe the price of vanilla sugar! It works out at more than £15 a kg which is outrageous given that you can buy 20 vanilla pods for £6, so a kilo of home-made vanilla sugar works out at about £2! It makes fantastic ice-cream and custard as you get to appreciate the pretty speckles of vanilla all through it.

Ingredients
1 kg granulated sugar
4 juicy vanilla pods

Method

• Put the granulated sugar into your food processor with the blade fitted.
• Split vanilla pods and scrape out seeds, add to food processor.
• Chop vanilla pods roughly and add to food processor.
• Blitz until fine.

Fennel and Lemon Salt

This lovely fennel and lemon salt is great with fish…

Ingredients
Coarse Sea Salt
Lemons – 1 lemon for every 100g salt
Fennel Seeds 1 tbs for every 100g salt

Method

• Peel Lemon rind with a potato peeler.
• Dry strips of rind in the oven at 160 c for 10 minutes
• Put salt and lemon rind into feed processor and blitz a little (not too much!)
• Add fennel seeds and bag / store in jar

Lemon & Chilli Salt

Use this to add a kick to just about anything!

Ingredients
1 lemon per 100g salt
2 dried chillies per 100g salt (or to taste!)
salt

Method

• Peel Lemon rind with a potato peeler.
• Dry strips of rind in the oven at 160 c for 10 minutes
• Put salt, lemon rind and whole dried chilli into feed processor and blitz a little (not too much!)
• Store in bag or jar

It wasn’t marriage, or the birth of any of my three lovely children which helped me pass this momentous milestone, nor even finding myself in an expectant state with no4.

This year, for the first time ever, instead of asking my Mum to make an extra Christmas pudding for me, I asked her to give me the recipe! How about that for daring? My Mum’s christmas pudding is fabulous, more pudding-y than fruity and much lighter and less dense than standard christmas pudding. Traditionally there isn’t any alcohol in the pudding itself, but it is served with as much brandy butter as you like which gives it a kick.

It’s really easy to make, and doesn’t have to be made a month in advance, in fact you could make it on Christmas Eve, no problems. If you do make it in advance as I have, it freezes really well, just cut each pudding into quarters, wrap in greaseproof paper and a bag and freeze individually. It can then be microwaved a portion at a time, meaning no hassle on Christmas Day.

I didn’t plan to made our Christmas Pudding in advance but used it to pass the time with eldest son as we were snowed in, so I’ve varied my Mum’s recipe. The ingredients list below shows what I actually used in brackets.

Ingredients

• 8oz brown sugar (I used 5oz dark brown and 3oz light brown sugar)
• 8oz butter (I used 5oz butter & 3oz margarine)
• 2oz plain flour
• 4oz grated apple
• 1/4 tsp mixed spice (I didn’t have any mixed spice so made the other spices heaped 1/4 tsps)
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 beaten eggs
• 12oz sultanas / raisins (9 oz sultanas & raisins, 3oz dried apricot)
• 6oz breadcrumbs (I used brown, Mum uses white)
• pinch salt
• Orange or Lemon rind, grated

Method

• Cream butter/ marg and sugar together until fluffy.
• Add baking powder and spices to flour.
• Add alternating spoonfuls of flour/spice, egg and apple to the and mix, mixing them in well.
• Add the breadcrumbs, dried fruit and orange/lemon rind. Stir well.
• Place the mixture into a well-greased pudding bowl. I used a plastic one and as the pudding mix didn’t come right to the top I placed a layer of greased, greaseproof paper on top of the mix before I put the lid on. My Mum uses a pyrex bowl, but places two layers of greased, greaseproof paper on top and ties them on with string.
• Steam for several hours, making sure to keep your steamer well topped up with water. I took this to mean about three.
• Remove carefully from steamer, leave to cool, then remove carefully from cooking bowl. Serve or freeze as appropriate.

If you try this recipe, let me know, would love to hear what you think (and so would my Mum!)  Mum, hope I’ve done your pudding justice!

I have to say that it’s a bit of a fluke that I’ve made this as a christmas gift because the main ingredient, tomatoes, obviously aren’t in season. And because we timed our house move poorly this year we didn’t get to harvest all the tomatoes we’d grown in the garden.

However when I popped into my new favourite local farm shop the other day they had VERY ripe tomatoes on clearance, at £2 per kilo. So I grabbed a kilo, some ginger and chillies and knocked up 5 pots of this lovely savoury jam. The chillies I used were the standard red chillies rather than birds-eye ones so the jam has a nice kick without being too hot. It’s great with cheese sandwiches, potato wedges and goats cheese!

This recipe is based on one from Darina Allens Ballymaloe Cookery Course however I’ve tweaked it slightly as the original recipe used golden caster sugar. I only had soft brown sugar and standard sugar available, so used equal quantities of these instead.

Ingredients

• 1 kg tomatoes
• 8 red chillies
• 2 inches of peeled ginger, roughly chopped
• 8 cloves garlic
• 60ml fish sauce
• 200ml red wine vinegar
• 550g sugar (golden caster, or mix soft brown / granulated)

Method

• Place chillies, garlic, ginger & fish sauce in food processor and process into a paste.
• Put vinegar, sugar, tomatoes and chilli mixture into a saucepan and heat gently until sugar crystals.
• Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes – 1 hour.
• Once cooked, store in sterilised jars. Ready to enjoy immediately!