Tempting Tuesday: Dumplings

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

I make stew on a very regular basis, but I've never made dumplings before. I don't know why. Anyhoo, some random thought led me to google them and I discovered that they are incredibly easy to make.

I was making stew anyway, with what I had in the fridge, which happened to be half a butternut squash, sweet potato, 2 carrots, potato and 2 sticks of celery. I put in a chicken stock cube and a tbsp of onion gravy granules too. Basic I know, but we're living on the cheap at the moment.

I used brown wholegrain flour after the great indigestion battle I fought last week with the pastry, to see if the over processed white flour was the culprit and I can now report that these did not kill me in the same way. Yay!

Makes enough for 4-6 people depending on your portion size.

Ingredients:

250g self raising flour

125g butter

seasoning/herbs of your choice

Method:

Put flour and seasoning into a large bowl.

Grate butter using a cheese grater, straight into the bowl, then rub it all together using your fingertips.

Add tiny splashes of cold water until it all binds together well enough to make little balls.

Form it into 8-12 balls, depending on how many people you're feeding and how large you want them.

When your stew is 20 minutes away from finishing, make sure it's got enough liquid to cope with the sponge like dumplings and that it is boiling, then add the dumplings, pop the lid on and do not remove it for the whole 20 minutes.

Definitely going to always do dumplings from now on. Easy and yummy and filling.

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Tempting Tuesday: Veggie Pie

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

I made a pie!

Pastry has scared me too much to brave it until now. I've gone for the 'rustic' look as I was struggling too much to make it tidy.

The contents is basically what I had in the fridge; sweet potato, butternut squash, potato, carrot, celery and onion, all mixed with a cheese sauce made using butter, flour, milk and cheese.

I baked it at 180°C for around half an hour.

I tastes great, perfect with mash potato and broccoli but sadly it turns out pastry gives me horrendous indigestion. I'll try different flour next time and see if the over processed white flour is the problem.

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Tempting Tuesday: Apple related fail

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

I haven't baked anything lately. Actually to be honest I haven't done much of anything lately. A little bout of the baby blues kicked in and I've been feeling utterly miserable. After a few shitty weeks, I finally realised that at the core of it was the fact that my little baby, who is probably my last baby, is about to turn one. The year has flown by and I've tried to relish the time but I always feel like maybe I didn't relish it enough. Ah, c'est la vie. Time to crack on.

So, my local supermarket had puff pastry on offer this week. I bought it with no real idea as to what I was going to make with it. I was going to make apple crumble but it turned out we didn't have enough flour in the house when I went to start it, so I made this instead. It didn't really work but it very tasty. Think danish gone wrong. Not pretty but hey, it's pastry and sugary apples, covered in more sugar...how bad can it be?

Thanks to the lovely people who hand me bags of apples every Autumn, which get chopped up and cooked up and placed in my freezer, there is always apples when I need them.

I defrosted a chinese take out pot full of apples in the pan, threw about half a cup of brown sugar in and stirred until it was defrosted. It was mostly apple puree with a few solitary lumps in by then.

I spread the whole lot over my sheet of puff pastry but it must've still been a bit too warm because that is when it started to go a bit awry. I rolled it all up like a swiss roll and tried to cut slices off to make something similar to cinnamon rolls (but with apple in obviously) but the pastry must've been too soggy as it just wasn't working.

This is the result of my slices once baked...

I baked it in the oven at 180°C for about twenty minutes. Then once it was all cool, I drizzled icing over the top. 

It was really yummy but super messy to slice up and crazy messy to eat. Next time I'll actually try to make them danish sized before putting the apple anywhere near the pastry...just talking about next time is making me hungry...

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Tempting Tuesday: Minecraft Cake Cake

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

Ed turned 9 on Sunday asked for a Minecraft cake. There was a moment where I nearly launched the whole freakin thing when trying to put the icing on the top and it fell apart, but I'm glad I persevered. He was so thrilled! And it was very tasty.

It is vanilla sponge, whipped cream filling, chocolate butter icing with white regal icing cut to shape on the top with red regal icing squares just like on Minecraft.

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Tempting Tuesday: Chocolate & Marshmallow Ice Cream

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

Warning: this recipe contains raw egg.

Useful info: you do not need an ice cream maker.

My favourite ice cream in the world ever is of course Ben & Jerry's Phish Food, so, after the toffee ice cream success (as in; we didn't die) I thought I'd make my own.

Makes enough to fill a 1 litre tub.

Ingredients:

3 eggs, separated,

75g icing sugar

300ml double cream

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

2 tbsp marshmallow fluff

2 tbsp nutella

chocolate buttons

toffee ice cream sauce

Method:

Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

Add icing sugar a bit at a time, whisking until stiff each time.

In another bowl, whip the double cream until it holds it's shape, but is still a bit floppy.

In a cup, lightly beat the egg yolks with the vanilla.

Add them to the cream along with half of the whites and gently fold it all together.

Being even gentler, fold in the rest of the whites then, just before you transfer it to a plastic tub, slowly swirl in the rest of the ingredients, saving the toffee sauce to squidge all over the top.

Chill overnight, or at least 6 hours.

Can't even tell you how yummy this is...

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Tempting Tuesday: Banana Cake

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

This recipe is incredibly easy and marvellous when you've got some bananas going brown in the fruit bowl, especially as you can be pretty certain you've already got the other ingredients in the cupboard. It's lighter than I expected and so fluffy. I bet it would be yummy with custard too (it was all gone before I had a chance to try).

Ingredients:

3 small bananas

1 tsp lemon juice

100g butter

100g sugar

2 eggs

225g self raising flour

 Method:

Preheat oven to 200°C.

Mash bananas with lemon juice.

Blend butter and sugar.

Add eggs, then bananas.

Sift in flour and mix well.

Turn into a greased tin and bake for about 40 minutes.

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Tempting Tuesday: Chocolate Fudge (Not)

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

As you can see, my attempt to make chocolate fudge hasn't been that successful.

It's super tasty, but I'm not sure it's fudge.

Saying that though, having left it in the fridge overnight, it is muchly improved.

he problem was that I couldn't find a straight forward recipe that wasn't in american cup quantities or used the ingredients I fancied using.

So I made it up.

Ingredients:

a tin of sweetened condensed milk

a 200g bar of dark chocolate

50g butter

pinch of sea salt

a handful of chopped pecans

Method:

Throw it all in a heavy bottomed pan, heat slowly until combined and a little bit longer to thicken it up.

Plonk it all in a greaseproof lined tin, try and spread it evenly but good luck. It's sticky and gloopy.

Leave for an hour or two in the fridge.

I found that it just didn't set.

So I scraped it all off the paper, but it back in the pan, melted it down again and added 100g icing sugar. I would have whisked it in but I didn't want to smash up my nuts, so I had to stir carefully.

I then put it back in the fridge for two hours (in new greaseproof paper, same tin).

When I came to slice it up, though it was much better than before, it was still really sticky and not how you think fudge should be, as you can see from my photo.

Most recipes seem to use twice as much chocolate, but I just don't have another spare bar and I'm unwilling to sacrifice one for something which might fail.

After it's night in the fridge, it was much firmer and more slice-able.

Oddly though, I managed to mould the edges I trimmed off back into squares. I'm pretty certain fudge shouldn't be mouldable.

After sharing, I think the general concensus is, it's tasty, but it's not fudge. I don't know why but it isn't.

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Tempting Tuesday: Chocolate Marshmallow Christmas Trees

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

Marshmallow, good. 

Chocolate, good. 

Chocolate covered marshmallow, goooooooood.

I was going to colour the white chocolate red and green to decorate the trees with but apparently this is what happens when you mix in the colour, so I gave up and just went with white.

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Tempting Tuesday: Rice Crispy Christmas Trees

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

Really easy to make but these definitely tested my icing skills, or at least my icing making skills as I was so terrified of it being too runny I made it too thick.

Ingredients:
25g butter
100g marshmallows
75g rice crispies

Method:
Heat marshmallows and butter in a heavy bottomed pan until all is melted and blended.
In a large bowl, stir the goo with the rice crispies until it's all lovely and even.
Squish it all in a shallow (buttered/lined) baking tray and chill.
Decorate with green icing, then once it's set, slice into tree shapes.

Decorate it more (tinsel, stars, baubles) and store in an airtight container.

Things I learnt;
Don't bother trying to dye the rice crispy mixture green, you'll use half a bottle of food colouring and still won't make a difference.
I repeat: store in an airtight container.
I really need to practise getting icing consistency right.
It takes a lot of icing to cover a tray full of rice crispies.
Red food colouring tastes weird.

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Tempting Tuesday: Pear & Cardamom Tart

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

My love for a good frangipane inspired this recipe. Think I just love ground almonds, and therefore bake with them as much as possible.

Ingredients:

Pastry case

15 cardamom pods

100g butter

100g caster sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

Juice of ½ lemon

3 eggs

100g ground almonds

35g flour

2 small pears

 Method:

Preheat oven to 180°C (170°C fan).

Crush cardamom pods with a pestle and mortar.

Remove the shells and grind down the seeds. Warning, this is painstaking.

Blend butter, sugar, lemon zest & cardamom seeds together. Add eggs, one at a time, then flour and ground almonds.

Pour the mixture into the pastry case. I made my own (I admit, I'm a bit of snob and have yet to buy a pre-made pastry case, but I kind of suck at making it still).

Peel and core both pears, slicing them into quarters. Score the tops, length-ways to make stripes.

Put pears into a small bowl with lemon juice and mix up so they are all covered in juice.

Arrange the pear pieces around the top of the tart. The original recipe had way more pears, but I couldn't squeeze them all on. It also had three pears which were to be left uncored, with the stalks still on (basically for show) which I was having none of. Can you imagine biting into that? Or at least having to faff with your pudding. No. Just no.

Bake for about 30 minutes, until the middle is almost firm.

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Tempting Tuesday: Orange Butterfly Cakes

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

I think I found this recipe in an Asda magazine one Easter. Never tried it until now.

As it stands, it only makes enough for 8 nicely sized cupcakes, which is not enough for my house. I'll be doubling everything next time.

Ingredients:

125g butter

125g sugar

2 eggs

Zest of 1 orange

125g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

Curd filling:

Zest & juice of 1 orange

40g sugar

2 eggs

50g butter

 Method:

Heat all curd filling ingredients together in a pan very gently and stir until thick. Just like with lemon curd, do not stop stirring.

Leave to cool.

Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C  fan).

Blend butter, sugar, eggs and zest together.

Then sift in flour and baking powder and mix well.

Bake in cupcake cases for about 20 minutes.

Once cool, cut out the tops, add curd filling and gently place the ‘butterfly’ tops on.

I totally baked mine too hot. The tops burnt before the insides were done. And the curd filling recipe originally had the juice of half a lemon, leaving it super runny, which meant that it didn't sit nicely on the tops.
Also, I decorated mine with candied orange peel, but if you want to do that, for goodness sake just freakin' buy some. I've spent days on a whole batch of the stuff and it's still rather inedible. No idea why.

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Tempting Tuesday: Lemon Curd

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

This one took a few attempts. Mostly because I'm really good at getting distracted and if there's one thing you don't want to do when making lemon curd, it's get distracted.
This is what happens...

It was a bit of a catalogue of errors. I hadn't stirred it enough, so the egg white cooked first which left it with some delightful white lumps. I tried to whisk them out (unsuccessfully), but then it was almost a mousse, so I popped it back to the stove, but then forgot about it and ended up with that black mess.

Never mind. Attempt two, with some lessons learnt, was much more successful.

This makes enough for almost two jars. Have them sterilised and ready.

Ingredients:

zest of 1 lemon

juice of 2 lemons

2 eggs, lightly beaten

50g butter

175g castor sugar

Method:

Put all the ingredients in a heavy bottomed pan and heat very gently on the stove, stirring the whole time. A silicone whisk is great for this. 

In twenty minutes it should be lovely and thick. 

Pour the hot stuff carefully into the jars and put the lids on. 

When they're cool, store them in the fridge.

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Tempting Tuesday: Toffee & Nut Ice Cream

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

Warning: this recipe contains raw egg.

Useful info: you do not need an ice cream maker.

Being a huge ice cream fan, it's genuinely shocking I haven't tried to make my own yet, but then I don't have an ice cream maker. Thankfully, this recipe doesn't require one - yay!

Makes enough to fill a 1 litre tub.

Ingredients:

3 eggs, separated,

75g icing sugar

300ml double cream

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

75g pecans, chopped

30g butter

100g brown sugar

Method:

Melt the butter in a pan, then add the pecans and stir.

Add the brown sugar and stir until its all melted.

Leave it to cool, preferably on a non stick tray (because it will stick to everything as it sets), then crumble it all up.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

Add icing sugar a bit at a time, whisking until stiff each time.

Whip the double cream until it holds it's shape, but is still a bit floppy.

Lightly beat the egg yolks with the vanilla, then add the toffee nut concoction and mix thoroughly.

Then gently fold the toffee/egg mixture and a third of the whites into the cream.

Being even gentler, fold in the rest of the whites then transfer to a plastic tub and chill overnight.

Even my pickiest child helped polish off this yummy stuff.

Uber success!

More flavours to come...

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Tempting Tuesday: Ghost Meringues

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

You know the posts full of Pinterest fails you see on Facebook? I really thought, as I was making these that this photo would end up on one of those. 

But, having taken them to a party, and having eaten a few of them myself, I don't give a damn. 

They were tasty and they are all gone.

Saying that though, because the tubes of icing I thought I had turned out to be gel food colouring and I didn't have time to make some icing, I decided to use the food colouring regardless, which could have gone horrendously wrong, but it was...okay.

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