Warming Winter Stew

This is a bit of a chuck everything in recipe so no real skill involved. Still tastes yummy though :D




Ingredients

3 carrots sliced
1 courgette sliced
1 white onion diced
100g quorn mince
1 stock cube
1 tbs beef gravy granules (I use bisto as its vegetarian, but it makes the quorn taste a bit meatier)
8 dumplings (feel free to make from scratch, I went for packet mix cos this is a lazy dinner!)

Preheat the oven to 180c
Dissolve the stock cube and gravy granules in 500g of boiling water.
Chuck all of the ingredients (veg, dumplings and stock) into a casserole dish with a lid and cook in the oven for 45 minutes.
I recommend serving with mash potato.

Can you get any easier? Perfect for warming up now the weathers turned icy.

*~Fairy Cakes~*

Is there any food cuter and more kitch than the fairy cake? They are one of the first things I ever learned to bake and years later still hold the same charm.
The real fun is in the decoration though. I cant do anything that fancy (if you want to see some professional like cakes look at Nanci's on the intrepid fatty, wow!) but a little butter icing goes a long way :)

125g unsalted butter, softened
125g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g self-raising flour
half teaspoon vanilla extract
12-bun cake tin lined with 12 cake cases

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl using an electric whisk or food processor.
Spoon into 12 cake cases.
Bake for 15-20 minutes.

I separated my mixture before baking and added a teaspoon of coco powder for chocolate fairy cakes.
For the icing I mixed 50g of butter with 100g of icing sugar and a teaspoon of warm water.
I added half a teaspoon of vanilla extract for the vanilla fairy cakes. For the chocolate cakes I did the same again except I added a tablespoon of nutella instead of vanilla. For the bug cakes I did the same for a third time and added a teaspoon of green food colouring. I then decorated with icing bee's and ladybirds.

Mushroom and Ricotta Pie

Winter is here and to celebrate I'm bringing out the hearty food! I love pies, the possibility's are endless, yet manufacturers seem to think no meat must mean cheese and onion filling and nothing but?
I went for mushroom and ricotta this time. The mushrooms have quite a subtle taste, nothing like the earthy pocini's. This pie is creamy and rich but not overpoweringly so, I quite easily went for a second slice (as did my mum and cousin Martha who were over for dinner) :)

500g shortcrust pastry
200g ricotta
3 large free range eggs
1 punnet of button mushrooms sliced
1 small red onion diced
2 cloves of garlic crushed
cracked black pepper
a handful of mature cheddar

1.Roll out the pastry and line a medium sized cake tin (or whatever sort of dish you like to bake pies in). Then cook in a preheated oven at 200c for 10 minutes.
2. Meanwhile fry the onions over a medium heat for five minutes, then add the garlic and mushrooms and fry for a further two minutes until all is soft.
3. In a bowl mix the eggs, ricotta, mushroom mixture and the season generously with black pepper.
4. Pour mixture into the pastry and sprinkle the cheddar over the top.
5. Cook in the oven (still at 200c) for 45 minutes.

Kooky Courgette and Chocolate cake!

Another wonderful Nigella recipe here. It is a rather mad one though and my version was over the top decadent. The courgettes themselves are not odd, I found they worked very well (as carrot does in carrot cake). It was more the combination of raisins, cream cheese icing, a nutella middle (its supposed to be lemon curd but I was all out so I improvised :S) and flaked almonds on top. As you can imagine there was A LOT going on in the taste department.
Still we should all have room for a bit of decadence in our lives and it tasted fab. I will put Nigella's recipe down but if you'd like to go with mine just replace the lemon curd with nutella, miss out the lime from the icing and sprinkle with flaked almonds.

large handful sultanas
2 medium-large courgettes grated
2 large eggs
125ml vegetable oil
150g caster sugar
225g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 sandwich tins, greased & lined

filling - good quality lemon curd with some lime juice to taste

icing:
200g tub organic cream cheese
100g icing sugar, sieved
juice of 1 lime

Preheat oven to 180 C
Grate courgettes.
Combine eggs, oil and sugar in bowl.
Sieve in flour, bicarb and baking powder and beat until well combined.
Stir in courgette and sultanas.
Pour into tins and bake for 30 minutes until slightly browned and firm to touch.
Once cool, sandwich with lemon curd in middle.
cream cheese icing on top - firm in fridge if preferred.

serves 8 people

Sweet potato with Marshmallows

I dont know why but the moment I saw a picture of this in Feast I had to try it. I'm not a huge fan of marshmallows but I eat lots of sweet potato and thought it was time I branched out from making them into wedges.
The result was good, the mash was divine. The marshmallow topping I'm still undecided on, you certainly have to have a sweet tooth. I would be happy to have it without the topping but any mellow fans out there would no doubt love it.

Sorry, the recipe is a bit of an essay!

# 3 kg sweet potatoes
# 6 tbsp vegetable oil
# 4 tbsp fresh lime juice
# 2 tsp ground cinnamon
# 75 g butter
# ½ tbsp salt
# 280 g marshmallows

# Preheat the oven to 220C, 425F, Gas 7.
# Prick or puncture the sweet potatoes with a fork and put them each on to a piece of foil large enough to wrap them in. These cook best in individual parcels, on average for this weight you will have 8-9 potatoes in one go, so be prepared to make a lot of them.
# Divide the oil between the foil sheets and then rub or turn the sweet potatoes in it and wrap into baggy but well sealed parcels. Put them onto a baking sheet or two and roast until the potatoes are soft and cooked through, approx 1-1½ hours. This way of cooking the potatoes, apart from being very easy means that you get maximum, un-watered down flavour.
# When the sweet potatoes are cool enough to handle, strip away the skin and fork or squeeze and pick the skin into a large bowl. Pour in any syrupy juices from each of the foil parcels. Add all the other ingredients except for the marshmallows, and mix together to make the mash.
# Spoon the sweet potato mash into an ovenproof dish (approx 34 x 20cm). Smooth the top of the mash and cover with the mini marshmallows.
# Bake in the hot oven for 10-15 minutes by which time the marshmallows will have coloured on top and melted together, like a rippled, bronzed duvet.

Fettuccine with King prawns and Avocado

This dinner is lush, please whoever reads this, you have to try it! Prawns and avocado may sound a bit weird but its an amazing combination of flavours and easy easy easy to make. There is no excuse not to!
And you can easily use tagliatelle in place of the fettuccine as its easier to get hold of.

Serves 4

300g fettuccine
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove crushed
150 ml single cream
200g cooked and peeled king prawns
1 avocado, diced
Black pepper

1. Fry the onion and garlic in a large pan until soft. Then stir in the cream, prawns and avocado and allow to simmer for a couple of minutes until cooked through. Season with the black pepper.
2. Meanwhile cook the pasta.
3. When the pasta is cooked drain and place back in the pan. Then add the sauce and stir in till all the pasta is coated.

Serve and enjoy!

Banana and Apple Loaf

One of the first recipes I put on my blog was a banana cake, and very good it was too. So I'm not suggesting this one is better, its just different. Its much heavier (as you'd imagine with a loaf) but still incredibly moist and moreish. It also feels quite guilt free as there's such a large fruit content.
I got the recipe from Tana Ramsay's cookbook. I pretty much followed it to the book apart from adding some raisins and doubling the spice.

Makes a small loaf

150g light muscovado sugar
85g unsalted butter softened
2 large free range eggs beaten
4 meduim sized ripe bananas mashed
1 apple grated
1 large handful of raisins
250g self raising flour
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 180c. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin.
2. Cream together the sugar, butter and eggs.
3. Stir in the mashed banana and apple and raisins. Sieve in the flour, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt.
4. Once well mixed tip into the loaf tin and bake for 40-45 minutes.
5. Remove to a wire rack and cool in the tin for 20-30 minutes.
pinch of salt