Becca Jane St Clair

Tim and I spent this weekend with our friends Nicky, Dave R, and Pete. The five of us have decided to get together at least once a month – they provide the pizza, we bring along a pudding (US: dessert). Last time we got together, I took an apple and blackberry crumble along. This time, I wanted to do something different.

I made a black forest cake (Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, see? It is related to the Austria/Germany trip!) back at the beginning of August for our friend Dave B’s birthday. It was delicious – we didn’t even have a single piece left of it! Nicky and I were going through my food pics over IM and I said I thought I might make that for this weekend. To make a long story short, her brother (Dave R) made a joke about how I needed to make 5 cakes – one for each of us. Originally I had said that I thought a cupcake version of this would be too messy….but then I had to rise to the challenge, especially after someone on one of the cooking/baking communities I read posted a link to Bake it in a Cake. If that person can bake loads of things into cupcakes….I could do a black forest version. I even modelled my recipe off of their cherry chocolate cheesecake recipe.

The first attempt I made was a half-failure, I’ll be honest. I knew I wanted to take 10 cupcakes with me this weekend (2 cupcakes per person), which meant that would leave two “extra” – just enough for Tim and I to taste test them. The first batch tasted GOOD, but they were too gooey. The cupcakes were spilling out over the top of the liners, the paper stuck to the cakes, and there was just no way that the cupcakes could be eaten without a fork. The filling leaked through the bottom of the paper liner (AFAIK, they don’t sell aluminium liners in the UK) making the liner soggy. I looked back at the cheesecake recipe, and noticed that they gave their cupcakes a crust. Black Forest Gateau sometimes has a biscuit base, so I thought “why not?” and since I had plenty of batter left, attempt number two was made. I am pleased to say that the addition of the bicsuit layer helped to keep it less of a mess!

So, here’s how to make them! This recipe will make 24 Black Forest Cupcakes. I didn’t half the recipe because of the possibility of making a mistake, but when I make these again, I will probably cut the recipe in half and only make 12.

You will need:

200g biscuits (I used 100g plain digestives and 100g chocolate biscuits) (US: cookies)
150g butter, melted

125g plain chocolate (US: baking chocolate), melted*
225g butter, softened
295g sugar
3 eggs (mine were medium sized)
2 tsp vanilla extract
300g flour (I happened to have self-rising, but plain will probably work, too)
4 TBS unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
3 tsp bicarbonate of soda (US: if using baking soda, only use 2tsp**)
1/4 tsp sea salt (regular salt will do fine)
320ml milk
2 tsp cherry brandy (optional)

1 can cherry pie filling
1 jar maraschino cherries
1 packet dream topping/whipped topping (US: Dream Whip or Cool Whip) or cream for whipping if you’re good at that
good quality chocolate, about 25g (for garnish)

cupcake tin
cupcake liners

hint: To melt your chocolate without worrying about it overcooking if you don’t have a double boiler (I don’t!), place a bowl filled with the chocolate in a larger bowl filled with boiling water. Be careful the water doesn’t get in the chocolate.

hint: If you have cookies/biscuits the same size as the bottom of the cupcake tin, don’t worry about the butter. Just place the cookie directly in the bottom of the paper case. An Oreo (with the filling scraped off) might work well!

hint: to make the whipped topping whip better, chill the bowl and the beaters for at least an hour before you make it.

Preheat oven to 175C and put the liners in the tin.
Melt 125g chocolate.

Make the biscuit layer by crushing the biscuits until they are a fine powder. Combine biscuits with 150g melted butter and spoon into cupcake liners. You’ll need about a teaspoonfull per each cupcake. Use your fingers to make sure the biscuit mix covers the bottom of the cupcake liner. This does not need to be super thick.

Cream together sugar, 225g butter, vanilla, and eggs. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, salt, cocoa powder, baking powder, and bicarb. If you don’t have a sifter (I don’t), either mix it together really good or push the ingredients through a strainer. Add melted chocolate to the butter mixture. Alternate adding milk and flour mixture, beating until smooth. If you have cherry brandy, add it at this time. Your batter should look light and fluffy.

(Please note, that picture is from the first batch. DO NOT fill your cupcakes that full!) Spoon 1-2 teaspoon’s worth of batter in each liner and spread the mixture so it covers the biscuit base. Then, spoon a teaspoonfull of the cherry pie topping into each liner (make sure you have at least one cherry in each cupcake). Cover the cherry filling with another teaspoon or two of batter. You shouldn’t be able to see any cherry filling.
Bake 30 minutes and allow to cool completely.

Drain maraschino cherries and make dream topping. Take your 25g of good quality chocolate and use a vegetable peeler to shave it into curls.
Put one spoonful of dream topping on each cupcake – just enough to go nearly to the edge. Top with 1-2 maraschino cherries and sprinkle with the chocolate shavings. There will be plenty of topping left. Just freeze the extra for another treat!

*I used a combination of plain chocolate, 85% cacao “good quality” chocolate, and 5 Cherry Cordial Hershey Kisses
**For unknown (and un-googleable) reasons, UK bicarbonate of soda is not as powerful as US baking soda. I’ve noticed I have to add 50% – 100% more in most of my recipes to get them to rise the same as they would have in the US.

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Every year after a holiday involving turkey, my aunt would make Turkey Tetrazzini and she would always invite my mom and I over for dinner because it “made a lot”. Each time, we’d go and I’d eat it, but I never really enjoyed it. It just never appealed to me, and I can only speculate on why. It had nothing to do with my aunt’s cooking – she’s a fabulous cook, and many of my recipes come from her. The recipe called for tinned mushrooms, and I’m just not a huge fan of mushrooms. Maybe it was the mushrooms that turned me off, I don’t know.

I was flipping through my Betty Crocker Cookbook and I came across the Chicken Tetrazzini recipe, which as far as I can tell is the same recipe my aunt always uses. A lot of my family recipes as it turns out have come straight out of Betty. That’s not a bad thing, it just shows to me that Betty’s recipes really are good. I decided there had to be a way to make this taste good to me, so I set about changing a few things to make it taste better and to make it healthier. The first thing I did was swap out those mushrooms for peas!

So here’s my take on this Betty Crocker classic.

You will need:

200g whole wheat spaghetti, broken into quarters
2 TBS butter
30g whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
230ml chicken broth or stock
230ml milk
3 TBS red wine
225g cooked cut-up chicken
110g frozen peas
50g Parmesan cheese
50g bread crumbs

Dutch oven

Preheat oven to 175C. Cook pasta according to directions on packet.
In the Dutch oven, melt butter over low heat (if you don’t have a dutch oven, you will need a regular sauce pan and a casserole dish).
Stir in flour, salt, and pepper and cook until smooth.
Add broth and milk, bring to a boil and boil for one minute. Sauce will be creamy and thick.
Drain pasta and add to dutch oven along with chicken, peas, and red wine. Stir until coated in sauce. If you don’t have a dutch oven, transfer the mixture to a casserole dish.
Combine bread crumbs and parmesan cheese and sprinkle over top of dish.
Place uncovered in oven and bake 30-45 minutes until hot and bubbly. Check your dish after about 20 minutes. If the cheese on top is starting to burn, put the lid on.

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I read a lot of food blogs because I love to try new ideas in the kitchen, and one of the best foodie blogs out there is probably Serious Eats. Some of the posts aren’t relevant to me when they review restaurants across the US, but I still always find it interesting. SE has several recurring serials, including one called “French in a Flash“, a series of easy French recipes.

About a week or so before the super bowl, an entry appeared for Hot Dog Vol-au-Vent. The creator of the recipe describes the dish as similar to Saucisson en Croûte, which is similar to a UK sausage roll. You know what I call it? Posh (American) Pigs in a Blanket.

The reason I add the “American” marker is because UK Pigs in a Blanket are different from US ones. In the UK, most people when they describe making Pigs in a Blanket are referring to sausages wrapped in bacon. I myself made these at Christmas when I had my “rescued Christmas” dinner as they are a staple on the UK Christmas table. In the US, however, Pigs in a Blanket are usually made from hot dogs or “little smokies” and involve a tube of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls.

When I spotted the Vol-au-Vent recipe, I was curious and thought I would give it a go, but the recipe calls for onion (which I’m allergic to) and something called fleur de sel. A quick google search revealed that fleur de sel is French sea salt. I did not have any French sea salt, but I did have a canister of Saxa sea salt, so that would just have to do. As for the hot dog part – please don’t buy hot dogs in a can. At least go for the ones sold in the cooked meats aisle, like Hessey’s.

Here’s how you make my version of Posh Pigs in a Blanket.

You will need:

One sheet of puff pastry, thawed and unrolled (I bought a “light” version from Tesco)
16 pieces of hot dogs (you can cut 8 in half, or cut 5 into thirds and only make 15 – I did this and wrapped up the spare bit of pastry with just some mustard. Yum.)
Your favourite mustard (ours is Estragon Senf we brought back from Austria)
1 egg
poppy seeds
sea salt

Preheat the oven to 200C.
Take your sheet of puff pastry, and cut it in half horizontally (I used my pizza cutter), then cut each half into 8 strips.
Give each strip a dot of mustard (however much you’d like), and then roll each strip around a piece of hot dog. Place the wrapped hot dogs seam side down on a baking sheet.
Give the egg a whisk and use a pastry brush to give the tops an egg wash.
Sprinkle with poppy seeds (I used about 2 teaspoons) and sea salt.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until pastry is golden brown.

My husband enjoyed these so much he informed me that I had to make them again!

When I first visited the UK and heard the phrase “Banoffee”, I thought it meant Banana Coffee, and was immediately turned off by the idea. Then, I found out that the -offee in the name comes from toffee. Again, I wasn’t impressed, as I do not like English Toffee. Over a year later, I discovered that what the US food industry call English Toffee is not what toffee is like in the UK. Most toffee in the UK is more closely related to caramel – I’ve even seen the words used interchangeably. This, I could get behind. I’m not a super huge fan of caramel, but I like it a lot better than English Toffee!

With Tim’s promotion, I promised him any treat he wanted. We don’t do sweet treats often unless we have guests over or on special occasions. Tim picked his all-time favourite pudding (US: desert), Banoffee Pie.

I scoured the internet and my cookbooks and came up with a recipe that is Tim-approved. Ironically, this recipe also has coffee in it!

You will need:

3-4 bananas (depends on the size. I’d start with three, but have an extra just in case)
375ml can condensed milk (or caramel)
150g digestive biscuits (about half a pack)
300ml cream (or a pack of dream topping)
75g butter (melted)
1tsp coffee (instant)
1tsp sugar (I used Splenda)
1 bar good quality chocolate
water

pie plate
vegetable peeler
zipper top bag
rolling pin
electric mixer

Time saving tips:
When you’re doing your shopping, look in the condensed milk aisle. You might see a product called Carnation Caramel Dulce de Leche. Buy this instead of a can of regular condensed milk and save a step.

Pick up a pack of Bird’s Dream Topping (they even have a no added sugar version) instead of fresh cream to save on calories and for faster whipped cream (especially if you have problems with whipping cream like I do).

Directions:

Put your mixing bowl for the whipped cream in the fridge along with your beaters (this will help your whipped cream whip better).

If you haven’t found a can of caramel, you need to make it. Boil a pot of water and put the unopened can of condensed milk in the pan. boil for 3 hours, then let the can cool before you open it.

While that’s boiling, make your crust.

Put the biscuits into a zipper top bag and go over it with a rolling pin until the biscuits are a fine powder. Pour crumbs into the bottom of your pie plate and pour over the melted butter. CAREFULLY (it will be hot!) stir until the crumbs are moist and spread over the bottom and sides of your pie dish. If it looks a little dry, add some more melted butter.

After your can is cooled (or if you bought a can of caramel), open the can carefully and spread the caramel on top of the crust mixture. If you used the boil method, put the pie in the fridge for an hour or so to let it cool before the rest of the steps. You don’t need this step if you bought a can of caramel.

Slice the bananas and layer them on top of the caramel. Add as many bananas as you’d like, saving some to garnish the top.

Next, make your whipped cream or dream topping. Once it’s fully whipped, add in the instant coffee and sugar and mix until blended. Spoon this on top of the bananas.

You can make chocolate shavings to garnish by taking your bar of chocolate and running a vegetable peeler over it or by using a cheese grater. Top with some extra banana slices.

Put the pie in the fridge for at least an hour to get it to firm up.

I made mine with a can of caramel and a packet of Bird’s Dream Topping and put the whole thing together in less than an hour.

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In a few weeks, Tim and I will be travelling down to Brighton to stay with his friend Nick, and to help Nick and his dad out at a model engineering show. We’ll be staying at Nick’s house for 4-5 days. Without going into personal details, Nick is on some serious pain killers that leave him with no appetite. And I mean, no appetite. Tim told me that one time Nick prepared a trip itinerary and neglected to put in lunch and dinner breaks! So…we’re on our own if we want to be fed at all that weekend.

We don’t want to eat out for the entire weekend because a) that’s expensive and b) that would be unhealthy. Plus with my onion and garlic allergy it can make eating out “interesting”. This goes double for trying to buy ready meals or tinned soup!

We also have one other issue to deal with — Nick doesn’t have a stove. No oven, no hob, no grill. Just a toaster, a kettle, and a microwave. I only use our microwave for 5 things – defrosting meat at the last minute, cooking vegetables, heating up cups of cold tea, making rice, and making a quickie “baked” potato.

Lunch should be pretty easy – we’ll be at the show all day and I can make us some sandwiches in the morning to pack along. Breakfast also is pretty easy – cereal and toast. It’s making sure we have a good dinner that’s proving to be a problem for me!

We DID decide to take the car down. Originally, we were going to rail it the whole way, but then we remembered that we probably need to bring along some additional bedding, as we discovered the last time we were there that the small duvet doesn’t quite cover the both of us. This means, I could bring along the crock pot or the George Foreman grill…or even both. I might just do that, since I know I can cook with both of those, even if it’s just using the GF as a panini press.

So, with no stove…what can I cook? I don’t want to rely on tinned stuff or ready meals, but obviously I won’t be able to cook meat or anything like that. I could buy pre-cooked meat products to then heat up, or I could pre-cook some things at home and take them down in the cooler.

If I DO pre-cook meals and pack them into plastic…what meals re-heat better than others? I suppose I could pre-make pasta sauce and then do “baked” potatoes. Or do a roast and cut it up to be reheated along with some veggies? Should I do lots of pre-cooking and package things into individual homemade ready meals like I do for Tim’s Lunches? (well, he always gets leftovers)

I feel like this is worse than camp-cooking, because at least camping I had the gas camping stove.

Ideas/suggestions….please?

(for those of you who are here for things OTHER than food related posts, real posts are coming! I promise!!)

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I thought I might join Organized Junkie this week and actually post my meal plan as it’s Menu Plan Monday. Thanks to some last minute plans to visit friends several nights last week, I had some things leftover that I was able to plug into different meals this week, spending only £37 online at Tesco today, and that included splurging on some 2 for £4 hot chocolate mixes and scoring loads of things on special offer, including 2 loaves of bread for £1.50 (like getting the second loaf for 25p!). At the end where it tells you what your order is, It told me my savings were over £9. Woo.

This week, Tim’s on “long weekend” – He should be going back to work on Wednesday, but he has his new medical on Wednesday, so doesn’t actually go back until Thursday. Then, he works the early meal relief turn Thursday-Saturday, followed by a 12-hour Sunday day shift. Ew.

On with the meals…

Monday (er, that was today) – We wound up with pizza, because I was feeling kind of tired
Tuesday – Chicken Tetrazzini (Modified slightly to be lower fat)
Wednesday – Vegetable Soup in the crock pot (which really comes down to toss a bag of frozen veg in it the AM with some broth and seasoning, then add pasta when we get home)
Thursday – Pork and Apple Burgers
Friday – Roast Vegetable Pasta (again, with modifications)
Saturday – Grilled Chicken salad with fresh croutons
Sunday – Lemon and Herb Crock Pot Roast Chicken (with modifications) with all the usual trimmings (Yorkies, roasted spuds, carrots, parsnips)

Of course, who knows what can happen and if I will actually stick to it this week!

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Since I’m a housewife and one of my main responsibilities is cooking for my family, I like to post the new recipes I come up with and find to help out other people who might be struggling for meal ideas, and since I also am a bit of a frugal cook, my meals are often cheaper than going out! So today, I offer several recipes by request. No photos, though.

Barbecue Chicken Wings

Buffalo wings are pretty synonymous in the US with Football, and with the Super Bowl coming up, I thought this would be a good recipe. Wings also go with pizza (in the US), so I made a batch this weekend when Tim and I were over at our friend’s house for a night of Pizza, booze, and Wii.

Buffalo wings hail from Buffalo, NY, but there are several stories and bars claiming to be “the original”. Typical buffalo wings are very spicy. My stomach doesn’t tolerate spicy food too well, so I created my own recipe that still has some kick to it.

You will need:
Chicken wings, about 2lbs
Heavy duty foil
cooking spray
disposable trays (optional, but save on mess!)

For the rub:
1/2 TBS chili powder
4 TBS paprika (if you’re daring and want them to have a kick, try smoked paprika)
1 TBS cinnamon
1/2 TBS red pepper flakes (in the UK, this is called crushed red chili)
1 TBS basil
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt

For the sauce:
one bottle of your favourite barbecue sauce (we use HP Honey Mustard)
2 TBS Splenda or brown sugar

Preheat oven to 200C (400F).
Mix together rub ingredients on your worktop.
Line whatever you’re cooking the wings in with TWO layers of foil and spray with cooking spray.
Dip wings in rub mixture and turn, coating wings on both sides. Arrange in a single layer in your baking tray. Lightly spray tops of wings with cooking spray.
Bake for 12 minutes, turning halfway.

Mix together 1 1/2 cups of your barbecue sauce with the Splenda or sugar.
Brush wings on both sides with barbecue sauce mixture
Bake for 15 minutes, turning halfway.

Because I was taking these over to a friend’s house and I wanted them to stay warm, I used my crock pot to keep them warm and moist. I lined my crock pot with some heavy duty foil and sprayed it with cooking spray before I put the wings in. I also emptied the rest of the bottle of barbecue sauce into the bottom of the crock pot. Then, I sprinkled a little Splenda over the tops of the wings, filled the barbecue sauce bottle halfway with water, gave it a shake, and poured it over the wings. We left this on low at my friend’s house for about 6 hours and the wings were fine.

Apple and Bramble Crumble – No Added Sugar

This recipe is posted by request of the friends I made this for! The original topping recipe came from the US. I never bothered converting it to metric, instead I just grab a smallish mug and use that as my “cup”. It also helps for adjusting the recipe based on how much fruit you are using.

You will need:
3-4 large Bramley Apples, cut into chunks (or Granny Smith)
a handful or two of blackberries (more if you want)
butter (I used Stork to cut on fat content)
3/4 cup Splenda
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup porridge (rolled oats)
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp nutmeg

zipper-top bag
casserole dish

Preheat oven to 190C. Butter the bottom and sides of your dish.
Sprinkle apple chunks and blackberries (and whatever other fruit!) in dish.
In a zipper-top large bag combine 4 desert spoonfulls of butter with the dry ingredients.
Close up the bag and squeeze to mix it all together.
Carefully open the bag and spoon topping ontop of apples/blackberries.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until topping is brown and fruit is hot.

Homemade Chicken Nuggets

I didn’t measure anything out for this since it all depends on how much chicken you have. I also sometimes add other spices to the coating to give the chicken nuggets a flavour. Tim is fond of having Tikka spice added to his, but I prefer adding basil and thyme to mine.

You will need:
Chicken breasts, cut up/diced into however large you want your nuggets to be
equal parts flour, breadcrumbs, and cornmeal
pepper

baking tray
cooking spray

Preheat oven to 220C (425F) and spray a baking tray with cooking spray.
combine flour, breadcrumbs, and cornmeal on your work surface. Sprinkle a little pepper on.
Roll nuggets in flour mixture, making sure nuggets are coated.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.

For a crunchier coating, shallow fry the nuggets in a few centimetres of oil.

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I don’t get homesick. Honestly. But I do on occasion miss things from the US, and it gives me something to experiment with in the kitchen when what I miss is food.

For ages, a friend of mine kept telling me I could get something similar to Steak-Ums* at Iceland**, but I never spotted them, so I had kind of given up on the idea of trying to make a cheesesteak sandwich. But last week, I really wanted a chicken cheesesteak hoagie (sometimes also called a California chicken cheesesteak). I could practically taste it, I wanted one so badly.

When is a cheesesteak a hoagie? When you add onto it mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato (sometimes also oregano and pickles, depending on the shop). Now, some people will argue that chicken does not belong on a cheesesteak. To them I stick out my tongue. I have never been a fan of beef, being unable to properly digest it most of the time, so I tend to avoid it (I even was vegetarian for many years because of my dislike of meat, too).

Last week, I ordered an item from Tesco called “pork for stir-fry”. It turned out to be small strips of pork, so I thought if I bought chicken for stir-fry, it would hopefully be the same style. I checked the Tesco website, and it isn’t. Chicken for stir-fry comes as cubes, not strips. Back to the drawing board for ideas. My second thought was to order some “mini fillets” – if I pounded them down a bit flatter I thought it just might work. I even went so far as to wonder if sliced chicken lunchmeat would work!

But then, I was at ASDA on Saturday with my MIL and SIL and in the poultry section they had something called “turkey steaks”. I know, I know “steak is supposed to be beef”. But the package looked interesting, and the “steaks” looked the same way regular steak looks, just made of turkey. I thought I’d give it a go and purchased 2 submarine rolls along with lettuce and tomato. Don’t ask me what kind of cheese I used, though. I have a big block I got on offer at Tesco a few weeks ago that I just keep shredding whenever something calls for cheese. Sadly, no Cheeze Whiz (though I understand it is available in some ASDA stores).

Today was the day. I was going to attempt this, and if it didn’t work, Tim and I would be screwed for Lunch.

I decided to grill the steaks on the George Foreman. There wasn’t much fat in them to begin with, but I just like the way things come out on the George. The steaks only took about 8 minutes. I wound up slicing the steaks (though not nearly as chopped up as an authentic cheesesteak) so they would fit easier in the rolls. Topped the steaks with a small bit of shredded cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a small sprinkling of cheese, then put them under the grill*** (the regular oven’s grill) until the cheese was melted and the bread was toasty.

Served them up with some chips (US: fries) and a can of Dr Pepper Zero. While not authentic, they were really good on their own, and I can see myself making it again. Tim liked it too, which is always important when I play around in the kitchen. Next up? Trying to make soft pretzels. Okay, maybe not, but now I’m on this Philly food kick…

Sadly, no photo. I thought about it after I was almost done the sandwich!

*Steak-Ums, for those of you unfamiliar with them are very thin bits of steak you grill or fry and then put in a sandwich to make a homemade steak sandwich.

**No, not the country. There is a shop called Iceland that primarily sells inexpensive frozen items.

***In the US, I would use the broiler.

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For Christmas, Tim’s aunt gave me a cast iron dutch oven! I’m over the moon, as I’ve wanted one for ages and could never quite justify the price of one. It’s only a small one, but it’s the perfect size for us.

Tonight, I had planned on making Herbed Chicken Traybake, something we hadn’t had for a while and then I was looking up instructions on how to clean some black spots off my Corningware dish and I stumbled upon some cast iron dutch oven recipes, including one for Braised Herbed Chicken Thighs . I thought it was pretty similar to my traybake recipe, so I decided to combine the two recipes.

You will need:

1 large zipper top bag
dutch oven
1 TBS olive oil
2 TBS Flour
2 tsp Paprika
1 tsp Lemon Pepper (if you don’t have lemon pepper, use 1tsp pepper and the zest of one lemon)
2 tsp Thyme
1 tsp Oregano
Jamie Oliver’s Lemon Thyme, Bay, and Salt grinder OR 1 bay leaf and 1/2 tsp salt
skinned chicken thighs (I used 4, but had to cook them 2 at a time)
about 300g vegetables – I used a combination of Swede, Carrot, and Parsnip
400ml chicken broth (or stock)
250ml wine (great way to use up leftover Christmas wine!)
1 TBS corn flour

First things first – remove the skin from the chicken legs. It’s really not too difficult, even if it is gross! I discovered that as long as you can cut the skin at the bottom of the leg, the rest of the skin peels right off. You could probably also leave the skin on, but since the skin is supposed to be bad for you, I took it off anyway.

Step 2: Put the olive oil in the dutch oven, and heat over medium heat. Next, combine the flour, herbs, salt & pepper in a zipper top bag with a few clicks of the JO grinder. If you don’t have the JO stuff, hang onto the bay leaf for now, but add the salt. Add the chicken to the bag and shake until chicken is well-coated.

Step 3: Put the chicken (and whatever remains of the flour mixture) in the Dutch oven and cook chicken for 3 minutes on each side to lightly brown the chicken. Dissolve the corn flour in the chicken broth, and add to the chicken along with the wine and vegetables (and bay leaf, if you need it at this stage). Bring to a boil (with the lid on) and then simmer 30-40 minutes or until chicken and vegetables are done. Remove the lid the last 10 minutes or so to help the liquid thicken.

If I had been thinking when I started this, I would have tossed some potatoes into the oven to have roast potatoes, but instead, I made baked potatoes in the microwave.

I also received a ceramic Le Creuset from Tim (for oven use only), some mini glass pyrex dishes from Mom (perfect for mini pot pies) and a silicone giant cupcake cake pan from my SIL, who has informed me she wants me to bake her a giant cupcake for her birthday in February. Better start practising! Sadly, no one picked up on my hints for a new apron/pinny.

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I meal plan pretty much every week for Tim and I, but it’s not always on Monday, so this is my first time participating in Menu Planning Monday. I also have meal planned the rest of the month, since my Mom arrives for her visit on Thursday and she leaves on the 30th. I didn’t want to take time away from our visit with meal planning, and I had to get my order into Tesco to ensure delivery next week, too!

So, here is it..

Today – Chicken Pot Pie made with the leftovers from Sunday’s roast
Tuesday – Homemade Fish and Chips
Wednesday – Leftover Pot Pie
Thursday – Mom arrives! Crock Pot Indian from A Year of Slow Cooking
Friday – Toad in the Hole
Saturday – Fish Pie – This is an excellent recipe if you’re just learning. I’ve since modified it to fit our needs, but this was a great recipe to learn from.
Sunday – Kitchen Barbecue
Monday – Sweet and Sour Chicken Stir-Fry (with homemade sweet and sour sauce)
Tuesday – Turkey (yes, even though Christmas is Saturday)
Wednesday – Dinner out – Trip to Edinburgh for the day!
Thursday – Turkey Leftovers (leaning towards tetrazinni)
Friday – Vegetable Soup
Saturday – Crock Pot Breakfast Casserole; snacks for Lunch; Christmas dinner at in-laws
Sunday – Ham and Potatoes
Monday – Captain’s Casserole
Tuesday – Fish and Chips (from the chippy)
Wednesday – Chicken Tacos

I usually try one new recipe a week, but I’m not really experimenting while my mom is here. The Toad in the Hole recipe I’m using will be a new to me recipe, but I have made it before (as mini toad in the hole).
I’ve got a couple of recipes I want to post, too. I’ll see if I have time to post them before Thursday, or at least to schedule them for later posting!

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This is an adaptation of a crock pot breakfast recipe my mom and I always make for Christmas morning, only made in a frying pan in about 20 minutes.

Potato Scramble

This recipe can easily be scaled up or down, depending on how many people you are serving

You will need:

3 slices of bacon per person, diced
1 potato per person, diced
1 small tomato per person, diced
25g frozen peas per person (optional, I really only added it for colour!)
handful of shredded cheese per person
2 eggs per person
splash of milk
oil

I used my wok because it was the largest frying pan I had.

heat oil in a large frying pan. When oil is hot, add potatoes and fry for about 5 minutes.
add diced bacon, fry for an additional 5 minutes, longer if you want crispy bacon (or do in reverse order)
add peas, fry for 5 minutes
add tomato
whisk eggs and milk, add to fry pan and continually stir to scramble egg, about 5 minutes
top with cheese, cook until cheese melts.

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[If a Lincolnshire publication would like to reprint this, just contact me!]

Lincolnshire is famous for several kinds of food. There is Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese – a sharp, biting cheese, Lincolnshire Sausage – a sausage seasoned with herbs, and another famous Lincolnshire food item is Lincolnshire Plum Bread.

No one seems to know exactly when people started making Plum Bread, other than that it is “centuries old”. Several local bakeries that have been in business since the early 20th century claim Plum Bread as one of their first specialities, so we do know that Plum Bread has been around for at least over 100 years, possibly even 200 or 300.

We also know that “plum” doesn’t refer to plum fruits or even to prunes (dried plums). “Plum” simply is a reference to dried fruit, such as calling a Christmas Pudding a “Plum Pudding”. The word “Plum” for dried fruit originated during the Middle Ages, when dried fruit was used to help preserve meat. This type of preservation continued and the recipe was modified into what we now call a Plum Pudding or a Christmas Pudding.

The use of the word “bread” to describe this food item is a bit of a misnomer as well. You wouldn’t want to use this for sandwiches. Lincolnshire Plum Bread is traditionally served at breakfast time or tea time. In medieval England, the words “bread” and “cake” were used interchangeably, and they still are today. Take for example, banana bread. Banana bread is surely more closely related to being cake, yet we call it a bread. Banana bread did not formally enter kitchens until the 1930s in America, though there is speculation that it may have been invented in the late nineteenth century by American housewives. Either way, it’s still a long way away from medieval England when either word could be used.

If Lincolnshire Plum Bread is not a bread and does not actually have plums, what is it? Lincolnshire Plum Bread is a sweet, almost cake-like cinnamon-flavoured bread with dried fruit in it – sultanas, currants, and fruit peel – that has been soaked in cold tea to help the dried fruit “plump” up.

There are several bakeries in Lincolnshire that claim to be “the original”, but perhaps the most famous brand is Myers. in 1977 a loaf was given to the queen at her silver jubilee and Myers Lincolnshire Plum Bread is served on British Airways in their first class cabin. Other brands also exist and the loaves retail for about £2.50. You can purchase Lincolnshire Plum Bread throughout Lincolnshire in small bakeries and at the co-op.

If you’re outside of Lincolnshire, hope is not lost. There are many recipes floating around on the internet for Lincolnshire Plum Bread, and I will include my own recipe, modified for a bread machine, below.

Lincolnshire Plum Bread

First, you will need some cool strong tea. The easiest way to do this is to take a glass measuring cup, put 2 tea bags in it, and fill it halfway with water from the kettle. Then, forget about it for about 5 minutes and let it get nice and dark. Remove the tea bags and add cold water to cool it down quickly.

Add about 300-400g dried fruit (sold in grocery stores as “dried mixed fruit” or use a combination of dried currants, sultanas, raisins, and peel) and let it sit until the fruit is nice and plump.

Meanwhile, get out your bread machine and add to it:

100g butter (melted)
120ml warm milk
2 eggs
450g bread flour
100g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
1 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast

Follow the instructions on your bread machine for what order you should add ingredients. Mine calls for all the liquid to go in first, which includes the eggs. I also save time by microwaving the butter and milk together – an extra bonus is it keeps the butter from exploding all over the microwave.

Set your bread machine to a 1KG loaf (2lbs), medium crust, and use the sweet setting (on my machine, this is setting 4).

Start your bread machine.

Follow your machine’s instructions for adding fruit. Most machines will beep when they want you to add fruit, so wait for the beep, drain off the tea, and pour in the fruit. You might need to keep an eye on it for a few minutes and use a spatula to make sure all the fruit gets mixed in.

Let the bread cool in the pan for about 20 minutes before turning out. I find it’s easier to cut the bread if I let it cool completely, but by all means serve it warm!

Traditionally, Lincolnshire Plum Bread is served with butter and cheese. Give it a try, you might like it!

This bread has the seal of approval from several Lincolnshire born & raised men and women! 😀

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When you’re a kid, you don’t really think about where food comes from. An adult (usually a family member) puts a complete meal in front of you, and you eat it. Pretty simple. As you get older, you might even start helping to prepare those meals, doing small tasks like mixing or pouring. You still don’t really give much thought about where the food actually comes from, again, you just eat it when it’s placed in front of you. The same thing happens when you are away at college/university. A cafeteria worker puts food in front of you. You know that somewhere behind the buffet line there is a kitchen and staff who make things, but you hardly give it any thought.

Eventually, you might move away from your family, and into your own home. You’ve entered the “real world” and you’re probably spending too much time at work to really think about preparing food. Purchasing pre-made meals sounds like a good idea. You don’t know who made them, or how much work went into them, but they’re good.

So here I am, married, and for the first time cooking every single day. I don’t use pre-made meals and I try to make most things from “scratch”. Sometimes we buy a loaf of bread, but I most often put to use the bread machine we got as a wedding gift. I make things like spaghetti sauce and sweet & sour sauce from base ingredients. I don’t even buy pre-formed hamburger patties, preferring to mix my own mince and shape the patties by hand.

Tim got this brilliant idea that we should have a burger party sometime and make mini burgers out of all the types I make. Of course, mini burgers require mini buns, and I decided I might like to try my hand at making my own buns. I searched all over the internet, and most of the recipes seemed a bit too involved for a beginner. I don’t count my bread machine as experience at all, and the only other bread items I’ve made on my own have been things like banana bread and blueberry muffins. Nothing that involves kneading and punching and rising at any rate. I did finally stumble on a “no knead” roll recipe that I might like to try, but it involves 12 hours of rising! Which means that I either have to wake up really early in the morning to mix it together, or I need to stay up late at night to mix it together. Neither of which really appeals to me, but I still might give it a go one week when Tim’s on the overnight shift (since I never seem to sleep on those) and I need something to do.

A few days ago I was reading my Betty Crocker cookbook looking for ideas for meal planning and I stumbled on a recipe for regular dinner rolls. Now, this wouldn’t be interesting, except that there were directions for making cloverleaf dinner rolls, and as I looked at the picture in the cookbook I had one of those childhood epiphanies – this is where the Thanksgiving rolls my Aunt Beatie makes come from. Her rolls are slightly sweet, perfectly shaped, and pull apart into thirds giving you extra room for butter. She makes them ahead of time at her house in MD, and then heats them at Aunt Janie’s house before we eat.

Well, I just had to try this out for myself. Since I have a bread machine, I followed the directions for making the dough in the bread machine, and I even left the dough in the bread machine to rise (since it calls for a warm place!). Here’s the recipe. I copied it off of the Betty Crocker website, so it uses US measurements. I keep a handy chart inside my kitchen cabinet for easy converting, but I also keep a set of US measuring cups.

1 cup water [cookbook calls for room temperature]
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1 egg
3 1/4 cups Gold Medal® Better for Bread™ flour [used regular bread flour]
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons bread machine or active dry yeast [The cookbook only calls for 2 1/4]
Butter or margarine, melted, if desired

1. Measure carefully, placing all ingredients except melted butter in bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select Dough/Manual cycle. Do not use delay cycle.
2. Remove dough from pan, using lightly floured hands. Cover and let rest 10 minutes on lightly floured surface. [this step was not in my cookbook. Cookbook advised to let rise for 1 hour, then if you could poke it and not have the hole fill in, you punched it down, then did step 3]
3. Grease large cookie sheet with shortening. Divide dough into 15 equal pieces*. Shape each piece into a ball. Place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Cover and let rise in warm place 30 to 40 minutes or until double. (Dough is ready if indentation remains when touched.)
4. Heat oven to 375°F. Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown. Brush tops with melted butter. Serve warm, or cool on wire rack.

For cloverleaf rolls, use a cupcake/muffin pan and divide roll into 45 pieces, then put three pieces in each cup.

Here’s what my rolls looked like:

Not quite as perfect as my aunt’s, but close enough!

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Tim said he loves my burger combinations, because it’s an adult update to a favourite kid meal. Tonight’s meal was Turkey Pizza Burgers.

No pic, but here’s the recipe:

500g minced turkey (ground turkey)
2 TBS green pesto sauce (I used Bertolli)
2 TBS tomato sauce (not ketchup, sauce that comes in a jar. I used leftover pizza sauce)
handful of shredded cheese
1 egg
1/4-1/2 cup breadcrumbs (start with 1/4, if it’s still too wet to shape, add the second 1/4)
salt & pepper
sprinkle of oregano

Mix all together and shape into palm sized patties. Cook until done (on the George Foreman this takes 4-5 minutes). Serve on rolls with lettuce, tomato, and fresh basil leaves.

I am well on the way to becoming the burger queen :). Next up? Trying my hand at creating sweet and sour burgers.

I know I keep posting recipes instead of blog content, but I love to cook and I love experimenting with new recipes and twisting them into my own, so here’s three recipes I’ve been playing with recently – Roasted Tomato & Spinach Quiche, Cranberry Turkey Burgers, and Lemon Herb Chicken Traybake.

Roasted Tomato & Spinach Quiche

I found this recipe on the LJ cooking community, but I modified it slightly…or a lot, depending on how you look at it.

This was enough to make two quiches – one in my quiche dish, and the other in an 8-inch pie plate.

You will need:

300 grams baby plum, cherry tomatoes, or regular tomatoes (if you use regular tomatoes, chop into pieces about the same size as cherry tomatoes would be)
1 package frozen spinach, thawed and drained (I stuck mine in a colander in the sink, then pressed a tea towel over it to push out some of the water)
50g Feta cheese, crumbled (or “reduced fat greek salad cheese”)
300g crème fraiche (or sour cream)
300g milk (yes, I realize milk is a liquid and can’t be measured in grams, but I used the Crème fraiche container to measure the milk)
8 eggs
salt & pepper
2 shortcrust pie crusts

1. Roast the tomatoes – spread tomatoes on a cookie sheet and brush lightly with olive oil. Roast for 15-20 minutes at 200C. When they are done, lower the oven to 190c.
2. Mix together eggs, creame frache, milk, salt, and pepper.
3. line 2 quiche dishes or pie plates with crusts.
4. Divide tomatoes, spinach, and feta between the two dishes
5. Divide the egg mixture as evenly as possible between the two dishes and bake for 45 minutes

My second recipe is for Cranberry Turkey Burgers. Again, I found the recipe online as a link from a blog I regularly read, though right now I can’t remember which blog it was (if it was you, remind me so I can link you)!

So…my version!

Cranberry Turkey Burgers

You will need:

1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 tbs dried Sage
500g turkey mince (ground turkey)
1 cup dried cranberries
1 egg
Salt & pepper
Handful of grated cheese (optional)

Combine all ingredients and shape into patties. Again, I made them about the size of my palm and got 10 out of the mixture. Grill until done. I did it on a George Forman and they only took about 4-5 minutes in batches of four.

I served it with cranberry ketchup and fresh salad leaves from my garden. The recipe for the ketchup was on the blog I found the link on, and it was quite simple. Just combine equal parts cranberry sauce with ketchup. Again, if it was your blog, please leave me a comment so I can give a link!

And the last recipe was created this morning. I had wanted to make the Spiced Chicken Traybake recipe I clipped out of Prima magazine, but when I tasted the spice mix after mixing it, I decided I didn’t like it, so I created my own spices as I already had everything else ready!

Lemon Herb Chicken Traybake

You will need:

Chicken legs (I bought a pack of 4)
Diced swede (I wound up with a bag of “root vegetables for mash” that also had parsnips and carrot)
Cauliflower
3 TBS olive oil
2 TBS fresh thyme (I used lemon thyme)
2 TBS fresh oregano leaves
1 TBS dried basil (If I had fresh, I’d have used it)
1 TBS dried sage (ditto)
1/2 TBS lemon pepper (if you don’t have lemon pepper, use regular pepper)
1 lemon or lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 220C. Boil the swede/root veg for about 5 minutes (just to get it slightly tender). If you used fresh cauliflower, boil that too.
2. De-skin the chicken. I didn’t do it this time, but I will in the future as there was a lot of fat in the bottom of the pan, and most of that comes from the skin.
3. Combine herbs and olive oil
4. Spread swede (root veg) in the bottom of your roasting tray and arrange chicken on top. Put cauliflower in the gaps between chicken.
5. Brush oil mixture on chicken and exposed veg, cut and squeeze lemon over dish.
6. Bake for 45 minutes, or until juices in chicken run clear.

Serve with gravy and roasted potatoes. Gives a roast dinner a new spin!

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[This post also appeared on the LiveJournal cooking community]

Tim just called tonight’s meal “The Best Burgers Ever”. He might be biased, of course.

I had a package of pork mince in my freezer. It, along with a pack of minced turkey was supposed to be Swedish Meatballs out of the new Jamie Does… cookbook. BUT, when we had Ben and Marie over for Tea on Saturday, Marie requested spaghetti. Since I made spaghetti with meatballs that night, I decided we probably didn’t want meatballs quite yet. But we still needed dinner.

Turkey mince lends itself to all sorts of other Italian dishes and assorted “hamburger helper” type skillet meals…but I wasn’t in the mood for that. I was in the mood to experiment with the pork. So I asked myself, “what goes with pork?” and came up with – Apples. Porkchops and Applesauce, Pork Stew with Cider, etc. etc. Tim likes pork and apples together. So…here’s what I came up with!

You will need:

500g package of pork mince
1 apple
1/2 tsp cinnamon
handful of fresh parsley
about a half cup breadcrumbs
1 egg
Worcestershire sauce
pepper (I cranked my rainbow grinder about 30 times)
handful shredded cheese (optional, I just happened to have some leftover)
rolls
handful spinach leaves/rocket/watercress/lettuce/whatever
tomato (sliced)
applesauce (I used homemade, I’m sure jarred would be fine).

1) Peel and shred apple, then use your hands to squeeze out as much juice as you can (I squeezed mine into a glass to drink! LOL)
2) In a large bowl, combine pork, breadcrumbs, parsley, cinnamon, the egg, the shredded apple, and the shredded cheese. Season with pepper and add a dash of Worcestershire. Use your hands to really mix everything together. If the mixture feels too wet, add more breadcrumbs (I wound up adding part of a stale baguette).
3) Shape into patties about the size of the palm of your hand. I have small hands, so I made 10 burgers

I cooked these on my George Foreman. Time varied between 6 to 8 minutes, depending on how thick the burgers were. I topped the burgers with the lettuce and tomato, and then a spoonful of warm applesauce along with some HP (aka “brown sauce”) Sauce for Tim, ketchup for me.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished burgers, but here are the six I have leftover to freeze for the future:

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I don’t have a picture of this, but I made this on Saturday when Tim’s brother and brother’s gf were over for Tea and it went over well. As usual, I tweaked the original recipe a bit…

Lemon and Poppy Seed Drizzle Cake

200g flour
200g caster sugar (Yes, I went to the trouble of going out and buying a small bag of caster sugar instead of using regular)
2 tsp baking powder
Juice and zest (grated peel) of 2 lemons
1 egg
1 TBS water
125ml buttermilk*
2 TBS poppy seeds
2 TBS caster sugar

1. Line an 8×8 cake tin with parchment paper and preheat oven to 180C.
2. Mix together flour, caster sugar, and baking powder
3. Beat together lemon zest, egg, and buttermilk and slowly add to buttermilk mixture.
4. stir in poppy seeds. Bake for about 45 minutes
3. Mix lemon juice with 2tbs caster sugar to make a glaze. As soon as you take the cake out of the oven, poke holes in the top with a fork and immediately drizzle glaze.

*To make buttermilk – Using a 1 cup glass measuring cup, put 1TBS lemon juice or vinegar in it and then fill it to the 1 cup line with milk. Let stand for 5 minutes, then use as you would buttermilk.

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Recently, we started ordering organic vegetables from nearby Woodlands Farm. It seemed like such a great idea – having vegetables delivered, especially when we’re trying to lose some weight.

However, I’m starting to run into problems. We pay (well, as of next week when the new rate kicks in) £13 for a “Small Mixed Box”, which is a box with both fruit & veg. They have a section where you can state your dislikes (in my case, allergies), and if a dislike is on the list for that week, they will substitute with something else. Two weeks ago, both Leeks and Onions were on the list and as substitutes, we were given celeriac and cabbage. Neither of which I really have a use for, and so I’ve spent the week looking up ideas. I still haven’t found one for the celeriac.

We also received loads of potatoes, jerusalem artichokes, carrots, and parsnips. We use those veg all the time, but that week, not so much. Now that the second box has arrived (on Wed), I have even MORE carrots and parsnips than I know what to do with.

This week also brought a huge bunch (is it called a bunch?) of celary, bok choy (other than stir fry, no clue what to do with this, either), and TWO heads of broccoli (as subs for onions). Which is great, except that we had to throw out last week’s broccoli because we didn’t use it in time and it got fuzzy.

We do seem to go through the fruit in the boxes, though. And anything that’s made for going into a salad gets eaten.

So I’m at a conundrum. Do we…

– cancel the orders all together
– switch to a fruit box
– switch to a smaller mixed box
– switch to a “salad box”

The small fruit box costs £9. Next week’s box contains: mandarins, oranges, bananas, grapefruit, pears, apples, kiwi. With the exception of the grapefruit, all fruits I like, and fruits that would make my aunt’s fruit salad recipe.

The large salad box ( £13) will have: onions, apples, kiwi, celery, carrots, celeriac, lettuce, fennel, broccoli, and tomatoes.

The basic mix box (£9.95), which is smaller than the small mixed will have: potatoes, apples, pears, aubergine (eggplant), carrots, leeks, broccoli, onions, lettuce, bananas, and celeriac.

And I just can’t decide what to do. On one hand, the prices do seem a bit high. They claim to be competitive with getting organics at the grocery store, but if we’re getting veg at the grocery store, we don’t usually seek out the organics. On the other hand….we really want to support small local business!

If anyone has any suggestions on what we should do, I welcome the input.

*

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Tim and I really struggled on what to do for Valentine’s Day. It was our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple, and really, our first Valentine’s Day to spend together, since last year he had to work 2pm – 10pm on it. Last year I managed to surprise Tim with a heart shaped cake* and a bunch of valentine’s on the front door. This year…we were stumped. We thought about going away for the weekend to one of the bed & breakfasts we enjoyed staying at, but then thought it might be crowded. We thought about going out to a nice dinner, but again, the crowded factor came into play. Instead we decided to just stay home, and I cooked a meal for us.

(there was steam coming off the food!)

For Tim – he had a steak grilled on the George Forman, steamed broccoli/cauliflower, roasted potatoes/sweet potatoes, and a side salad.

For me – I had prawns (shrimp), roasted asparagus, some of the potatoes and steamed vegetables, and a side salad.

I had never cooked a steak before, but apparently it was edible!

We tried grocery shopping at Morrisons this week (when we usually go to Tesco), and I didn’t know where anything in the store was. After two trips around it looking for the baking aisle, I gave up. This was our dessert:

I made butterscotch sauce (all you do is cook butter & sugar on the stove, remove it from the heat when it boils and add vanilla), and served it over ice cream and bananas. It was tasty, but not what I had been expecting to make for the day!

And Tim and I even dressed up for the occasion:

I even had a new dress! Tim’s granddad gave me some money for Christmas, and this dress was on super low clearance at BHS (marked down to £10!), so I picked it up intending to wear it when we went out…since we didn’t go out, I decided to wear it anyway.

Hope you all had a great Valentine’s Day!

*To make a heart: bake one square cake and one round cake. Cut the round cake in half. Set the square cake on a diagonal, and use the round halves to make the top part of the heart.

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On our first trip to the library when I got my library card, I borrowed Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food. I had watched his Christmas cooking specials this past December and loved his recipes and his style of cooking, so I thought his cookbook(s) would be worth checking out. I decided to borrow this one from the library that way if I decided I didn’t like it, I wasn’t out any money.

And I love it.

I learned how to make poached eggs!

A few weeks ago, Tim asked me if I could make poached eggs for breakfast. I did a bit of umming and ahhinng, because the only way I knew how to make poached eggs involved a three-piece special pan. But as I was leafing through Jamie’s cookbook, he had a whole section devoted to cooking eggs, and I learned that poaching was pretty easy –

Bring water to a boil, and gently drop the egg into the water (Jamie recommends putting the egg in a cup first). Boil for 2 minutes for a runny yolk, 4 for solid. Remove with a slotted spoon and boom – you have your poached eggs.

Jamie also taught me how to make a British staple – Yorkshire Pudding.

Again, this was one of those recipes that to read it, you’d have thought the author was insane and you’d write it off as something a bit too complicated, but it really wasn’t bad at all. See?

Jamie’s recipe:

Set oven to it’s hottest temperature possible and pre-heat your muffin tray in the oven. Whisk together: 285ml milk, 115g flour, eggs, and a pinch of salt. Set aside for 30 minutes. Spoon vegetable oil (his original recipe called for 1tbs/cup, but I plan on reducing it in the future to 1/2 tbs) into the hot muffin tray and place it back in the oven for 10 minutes to heat the oil. Quickly spoon batter into hot oiled cups (best to do this while the tray is still in the oven). Bake 15 minutes. Don’t open the oven door to check on them or they won’t get puffy. I then removed the puddings from the trays and placed them on a wire cooling rack with a paper towel underneath to drain off some of the oil (since I really think I used too much!). I even checked other recipes online to see if I really had to do the pre-heating thing, and you do. The only difference between this recipe and others out there are the amounts of flour/eggs/milk.

I also learned how to make roasted potatoes that are crispy. This is something that is a staple for Tim’s family instead of serving potatoes mashed, so I wanted to learn how to do them (though I probably can’t do them with a roast until I get a double oven or bigger oven) – boil potatoes for 10 minutes, drain and shake colander. Bake in a roasting pan drizzled with olive oil for 1 hour. Pretty straight forward and the potatoes were good. Not as crunchy as I had hoped to make them, but it was still good for my first try!

And of course, my recipe last week for cranberry muffins also came from Jamie Oliver.

My beloved Betty Crocker might have to share some limelight with Jamie Oliver.

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