Apple Muffins with Cinnamon Butter

Today I made the most delicious apple muffins using this recipe and we ate them warm with cinnamon butter. To make the cinnamon butter I used about 100g of butter, mixed with 60g of icing sugar with 1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon. It was amazing, although probably a bit too much for the number of muffins I made!

I used my lovely new silicone muffin trays that Ian bought me as a surprise sale present, and I didn't use cases. I think that would have been fine if I had let the cakes cool down before trying to extract them, but as we wanted to eat them hot I think it would probably have been wiser to use cases. As my new muffin trays are extra-deep ones I am going to experiment with making my own cases out of greaseproof paper next time I make these.

I recommend you all try baking these asap - but best done when you have people round, as they are EXTREMELY moreish and otherwise you might end up eating the whole batch on your own!

Super Tasty Healthy Muffins!

After my exertions for our Hallow'een party I was rather butter-creamed out (I know, I can hardly believe it myself!) and my usual sweet vanilla cupcakes were not really inspiring me to bake - I also had a friend around who recently commented that her little girl was 'getting a sweet tooth', which left me thinking about how my baking habits might be affecting my lovely little man, who is always extremely appreciative of my efforts (unless they are savoury - see Pizza Pinwheels as an example!). So this week I decided to go for something a little more healthy. I had some bargain bananas bought for us by my sister when she was visiting that needed using up, so I adjusted a recipe for banana and white chocolate muffins that I found in my trusty Baking Magic cookbook - I really recommend this book for anyone wanting to bake cakes and cookies!

Here is my recipe:
1 cup plain flour
1 cup wholemeal flour (you can just use 2 cups plain if you prefer)
1 tbsp baking powder (yes, tablespoon!)
2/3 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup sunflower oil
3 small ripe bananas
handful of fresh berries - I used raspberries and blueberries

Preheat oven to 200 centigrade. Grease/line muffin tray.

Combine the flour and baking powder and sift. This is really important!

In a separate bowl (I did this in the KitchenAid) combine sugar, milk, egg, oil and bananas. Mix in the berries.

Stir together until just combined. DO NOT OVER MIX! A rubber spatula is best for folding in econmically and quickly. You need to keep in the sifted air from your flour.

Spoon big dollops into the pan. Don't worry about being tidy, these aren't delicate little cupcakes, they are big, floury, airy muffins.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Yum. Great for breakfast!

Chicken Korma and Peshwari Naan

When I made curry, I was rather pleased with my culinary efforts and so was the husband, so I thought I'd note it down for posterity.

As I have previously stated, I am in no way, shape or form any kind of domestic goddess. I tend rather towards the 'lazy', particularly in my less liked tasks. One of which is definitely cooking. I will never quite understand why I can so heartily detest the art of cooking when I find baking therapeutic. Some might say that they are closely related, but I can tell you now, cooking practically brings me out in hives, and baking calms me right down so...

This is one of the reasons, perhaps, why I don't mind this meal as much. Like the ubiquitous homemade pizzas, this meal retains a little of the baking goodness - I guess anything that uses the KitchenAid is a good thing (of course I am going to have to state here that you can also knead the dough by hand, but I'm also going to try to subconsciously ignore that fact, as doing all this stuff by hand kind of suggests I don't need the KitchenAid, when I quite obviously do!)

First I made the naan bread dough - a few hours before the meal as that was when I had a spare moment. I turned to the BBC recipe pages, which I generally find quite good (and usually pop up quite early on Google, haha). I used this recipe, although I only used half and didn't really measure the liquids - just chucked in some milk and oil until I could scooch my dough hook around in the bowl to make some recognisable dough. I left it to knead itself and played with my son in the garden. (Thank you KitchenAid, what a much better mother you make me! Let's ignore the fact I fed him 'breakfast' for dinner last night, shall we...)

After proving I decided I wanted to concoct them into peshwari naan. To do this, I got out my block of Creamed Coconut - this is a store cupboard essential as it also features in the curry sauce. I heard a little rumour that coconut fats are really quite healthy, so that makes it much healthier than the 'cream' option suggested on the curry jar. I'm not going to research it just in case I am proven wrong - but feel free to do so yourself if that floats your boat. You will also need raisins and I put in some ground almonds because I had some.

Mix together the coconut, about half an inch of the block, a handful of raisins and a sprinkling of ground almonds. When your dough has proved, split it into 2 (remember, I halved the attached recipe). It should stretch quite satisfyingly and be quite fun to work with. Flatten/stretch it out - I didn't roll, I just used my hands - into a roughly circular shape and place your filling in the centre, folding over like some kind of exotic pasty. I did this a good couple of hours before cooking and it didn't seem to have any adverse effects. I followed the recipe for the cooking part. Do remember to heat up the baking tray, as that is how the bottom gets cooked. I didn't 'serve with butter' - too much faff for me!

I use a little jar of Korma Curry Paste to make my curry. I basically follow the instructions on the jar to start with - soften the onions, add the paste, brown the chicken (I usually use thighs rather than breast), add some water. However, I don't add cream, as it isn't something we keep in and using a third of a pot in a curry sauce just means we scoff the rest - or, as we aren't great pudding eaters, it goes off. Instead, just crumble in about an inch of creamed coconut to add the creamy-ness. It suits us anyway, and it's a great tip I picked up from my mum who is the queen of store cupboard cooking. What I like about this meal is I have everything in to make it, and just have to pick up the chicken (or keep some in the freezer) so it makes it super easy.

And here is where I wish I'd taken a photo to add to the post... sorry guys. My naans looked like naans though, which is quite a triumph I think!

Happy Eating!

Bacon Pasta Recipe

OK, so this is probably all second nature to some people but I am always envious of my friend Sarah (a.k.a. the true Domestic Goddess) who can whip up a tasty sauce for pasta in no time. Luckily Harry, Archie and I get over there once every couple of weeks and are always provided with a yummy lunch (and some inspiration on the side).

Recently I've been thinking about 'pairs' of meals to avoid food wastage. We are only a family of 3 meal-eaters (Archie, sorry, you  are too little for food!) and that means that I can sometimes have food left over, so I try to figure out tasty ways to use it up. For instance, when we have Roast Chicken, we will usually have home made Chicken Pizzas the following week (thanks, KitchenAid!) I find that meal planning each week is a great way to figure this out. Before I planned out meals I used to find we had a lot more wastage because I'd forget all about using that last bit up.

When Club Sandwiches are on the menu I only use half a pack of bacon so Wednesday's meal this week is Bacon and Tomato Pasta and this is how I do it:

Ingredients:
3-4 rashers of bacon (I like streaky and smoked, which also works well in our Club Sandwiches)
1 onion
1 tin chopped tomatoes
Tomato Puree

I literally just fry off the bacon and onions and chuck in the tomatoes, but the real key to this recipe is to leave it simmering for a good 20 minutes or half an hour if you have time. I find it really needs this time to sweeten up and when it has had that time it is a really sweet, tasty sauce. While it's simmering, cook up whatever pasta is your favourite, and serve either stirred together or with sauce on top. Oh, and don't forget the grated cheese ;-)

Neopolitan Cake

Firstly, I'd like to apologise because I got my inspiration for this cake from a blog I read the other day, but I can't for the life of me remember which blog it was! So if it was yours, or you know whose it was, please comment and I will edit this post.

Edited: The blog I was looking for was  The Organised Penguin - also looks like this is where I first saw Lakeland's Duo Piping Bags I link to below - so thanks on both counts :-)

So, I read this amazing blog post about neopolitan cupcakes and I thought YUM! Off I went to the shop to buy pink colouring and strawberry flavouring - I had everything else I needed. I really *should* have visited the local cake decorating shop to buy my colour as I usually buy the gel colouring from there when I want to colour cakes. I find that the liquid colour you can usually pick up in supermarkets is OK for icing but you can never get a vibrant cake colour with it. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I nipped into Tesco to find Silver Spoon 'Colour Creator' in pink (and lilac, which I might well be going back for - another step in getting all my rainbow colours!) for just 79p. That's a lot cheaper than the gel stuff I usually buy.

Making this cake was a great excuse to use the magnificent KitchenAid, which whizzes up cake batter in a matter of seconds, enabling you to grease trays, lay out cupcake cases and begin tidying up whilst your cake mix is getting beaten. I chucked in all the ingredients - I'm a bit lazy and tend to use a VERY easy recipe from Baking Magic by Kate Shirazi - I even use the 'cups' version as it's even easier - I have these amazing russian doll cup measurers from Fred I got for a present once. That company is a great one to turn to for funky kitchen gadgets if you ever need a present for someone who likes baking/cooking!

After whizzing up the mix (as I said I am a lazy baker and figure extra whizzing makes up for things like sieving the flour - I don't think I am GBBO material just yet ;-) ) I separated it out into 3 parts, adding a spoonful of cocoa powder to one, vanilla essence to another and both strawberry flavouring and pink colour to the third.

I decided that instead of cupcakes I would make the cake in a loaf tin to add to the 'neopolitan' style. I carefully spooned the mix into the tin in stripes. I added the cocoa first as the mix was firmest due to the added cocoa (this recipe does give quite a firm cake batter, which helped), then the vanilla, then the strawberry. GBBO-ers would no doubt have fished out the piping bag to make this step a little smoother. As you can see, in typical lazy baker style I am using a silicone liner to save me from having to grease the tin.

My only problem was timing the bake. I find that loaf cakes take so much longer than you expect to cook - and this usually makes me turn bake to my trusting cup cakes or tray bakes which cook in about 12 minutes. I seemed to be waiting forever for this one.

It turned out looking quite good, although as you can see from the picture I clearly didn't split my mix quite evenly. The cake itself was also a little dense, although I think that was my fault for not beating it enough. This was my first time using the KitchenAid to make cakes, so that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

I think it would look great with nice tidy piped rows of buttercream icing on top, but decorating is not my forte really. Especially as this was just an experiment to be eaten at home - not sure we really need the extra sugar to be honest! Later I made cupcakes which turned out much lighter and still had a really good effect but what I really need to get my decorating on is one of the Lakeland Duo Piping Bags - or ideally for this bake one that does 3 colours - how cool would that look!

Diaries of a Domestic Goddess...

Yesterday I was a domestic goddess - well, as close as I am ever likely to get anyway, ha ha! Of coure, first priority was having fun so we spent the morning at the Children's Centre playing, then came home for lunch and nap when I IRONED my BEDLINEN! I can't remember the last time I used the iron, but I suddenly had the urge to do it, as it was very crumpled after the wash. It looked nice and felt nice, but I fear the crispness will have worn off tonight. Oh well, once in a blue moon makes it all the more special, yes?

On the meal plan was homemade pizzas. It was time to face the KitchenAid - the most extravangent and wonderful birthday present from my gorgeouss husband (you may have seen them featured on the Great British Bake Off last night - first step pizza dough, second step miraculous piles of meringue... maybe).

Luckily with my powerful Google-Fu I was able to find a recipe here http://www.acouplecooks.com/2012/01/pizza-doughstand-mixer-method/ as my trusty-baking-friend is currently away on holiday (how selfish! Just when I need her most!) Equally luckily the recipe mostly consisted of 'Chuck all ingredients in and leave to prove' - this is my favourite type of recipe (hmm, on reflection maybe not yet ready for miraculous meringue concoctions a la GBBO).

After proving for an hour it was time to drag Harry out of the garden to construct the pizzas. The dough was super-cool to play with. I pretended I was a Pizza Express Chef by chucking it in the air and spinning it around between my fingers. Fun! Then we spread on the tomato and chose our toppings - we had a choice of mozzarella, cheddar, ham and chicken. Yum yum! Harry really enoyed this part, although he was a little stingy with the cheese so I had to help him out there.

Just in case you were wondering, the hand washing after we came in from the garden was rather, um... enthusiastic. Hence no t shirt.

I popped them in the over and they came out looking like golden pizza-y piles of yum. Which was the look I was going for, so hooray! I had forgotten to put salt in the dough though so it was a little bland but it was miles better than the non-yeast types of base I've made in the past and I am SO looking forward to making dough balls next time. I is buying garlic butter in bulk from work so we will be able to have the full pizzeria experience in our own home. Harry's looked like this - you'll have to excuse the quality of the photos, they are just quick snaps from my phone.