Lemon (and lime) drizzle cake - part 1!

My dear friend Sarah's 20th birthday was yesterday, and as part of her gift I decided to make her a birthday cake. I thought I'd  be a little adventurous, and so began my foray into the world of royal icing!

Candied limes (or any other fruit):

Ingredients:

•  Limes (or other fruit)      
• 1 cup water                      
• 1 cup white sugar            
• 2 tbsp caster sugar          

 Start out by slicing your fruit in thin discs or cubes. 

For citrus fruits, blanch them - drop them in boiling water for 30-45 seconds, then plunge them into ice cold water.

In a pan, boil enough water to cover all of your fruit. Add in 1 cup of sugar (or more if you're using a lot of fruit) and all of your fruit, then let it boil for 10-15 minutes until the pith (white bits) are starting to look a bit more translucent and the center is almost totally translucent.

Boil boil boil! Don't worry if it starts to bubble up - just ignore it, or take it off the heat for a few seconds if it starts to bubble over. Try not to disturb them too much; you don't want the sugar to crystallise.

Lay the fruit out on a wire rack to cool. Be careful -  hot sugar can cause nasty burns!

I don't have a picture of the next step, because my hands were absolutely covered in sugar, but essentially:

Get a small saucer, and add a few tablespoons of caster sugar. Pick up your fruit one at a time, coat them well in the sugar on both sides and lay it back down on the rack. You might need more than 2 tbsp, depending on how much sugar you feel like and the fruit you're using. 

Don't worry too much - just go crazy.

Wrap the rack up with cling and let everything cool and set in the fridge.

Tune in soon for the next post - making the lemon drizzle cake!

♥

Forest fruit strudels

It is no small secret that I love whipped cream. 

I also have a really bad habit of buying too much pastry because it's on offer...

So, today we are going to use some filo pastry to make some delicious fruit strudels!

You will need:

• Filo pastry (any multiple of 2 sheets)
• Fresh or frozen fruit - I used frozen forest fruits, but anything will work
• A few tablespoons of butter
• Brown sugar, Stevia or any other sweetener

 If you don't have any forest fruit berries to hand, you could always try...

Apple and sultana

Kiwi and blackberry

Peach and mango

Or whatever else you have lying around. If you have a fruit that browns, you'll also need some lemon juice.

Melt a few tablespoons of butter in a plastic container. I did one at a time, but I wasn't sure how much I'd need.

Lay out one sheet of pastry on your counter top, and brush it liberally with butter using a pastry brush.

Lay another sheet directly on top of it, and brush the top sheet with butter.

Cut your fruit into chunks, or if you're using berries, grab a handful. Make sure to toss browning fruit with lemon juice so it doesn't oxidize and go a funky colour.

Place a small handful of berries on your pastry, leaving a space at the bottom and sides. Coat with your sugar or sweetener - about a teaspoon should do.

Fold the two sides in on each other, and then fold the bottom up. Press gently to seal, and then...

Roll em up! Give them all a good brushing with butter on top and bottom, then dust with your sweetener and some cinnamon (my dusting skills leave much to be desired).

Pop them in a preheated oven at 200C until they're a nice golden brown - about 12 minutes, though it could take longer. Make sure you keep an eye on them in case they explode and leave a juicy mess everywhere.

And you're done! Let them cool on a wire rack, or eat one straight away with a healthy squirt of whipped cream. I was so excited, I didn't even take a whipped cream photo :(

You can have a photo of my dogs butt to compensate. 

♥

Thai green chicken curry

Today I found out that green beans and potatoes are great in Thai green curries!

While I admit to using jar sauce (curry for the lazy, and coconut milk is expensive!) it is delicious and easy to whip up pretty much any curry if you know what to put in it. 

It's a great use for any leftover veggies you have, and it'll usually taste pretty good no matter what you throw in.

What is your favourite type of curry?

♥

Food bonanza with Greg!

My wonderful Greg came to visit me last week! 

As thanks for him traveling so far to see me, I made him lots of yummies. To start with, I made delicious meatball marinara and spaghetti for when he arrived!

I will probably add a recipe for this at some point - it was really good!

A satisfied (and slightly surprised) customer!

For our romantic anniversary meal, we had baked salmon risotto. This plain fillet of fish was transformed into...

A wonderful dish! Greg ended up eating my tomatoes though... yuck :(

For dessert, I made surprise Dota 2 cupcakes with white chocolate and raspberry icing.

I miss him very much already! Food is a wonderful way to show your love.

♥

One potato, two potato, three potato, four!

Pork chop... and potato wedges!

Steak... and chips!

Twice baked stuffed... potato!

and a Superman 'movie snack'...?

Raspberry and chocolate cake

A friend of mine, Billy, is moving away to Australia to live with his girlfriend for a bit. When his sister (also my friend) invited me to his leaving 'do, of course I said yes! I wanted to have a nice catchup and see people.

Any excuse for a cake, eh? ;) 

It was a good job I brought one, too - I didn't know all that many people at all, but cake is an instant friend-maker. It went down a treat!

My tools of the trade: raspberries, some chocolate fudge ganache and two 24cm chocolate cakes.

I slathered the bottom of the bottom half (say what) with my ganache...

then made a huge mess with a piping bag and the rest of the ganache and some swirls!

The piping bag kept getting all... air-y? And then instead of coming out in a nice pattern it came out like spaghetti! I tried to cover it up.

The ganache was a pain in the butt to make. I accidentally forgot to use my whipping cream, so it was all... lumpy...

I didn't take a picture of that for good reason. It was grim.

Sooo I used the rest of the whipping cream with nowhere near enough chocolate, and it wouldn't set! I ended up putting another whole bar of dark cooking chocolate in, and it set into a nice fudgey chocolatey cream. 

Pop em together, whack on some raspberries and a little dusted sugar and wham! Delicious fancy looking cake.

It was wonderful and moist and everybody loved it, especially Billy! Fancy looking cakes don't have to be difficult, especially if you put swirls on it (even if they're a bit wonky). 

♥

Tuna sliders

 

Everyone keeps cans of tuna in their cupboards.They're a kitchen staple; the 'empty cupboard standby' food.

Sadly, canned tuna isn't the most appetising thing to look at. Especially not when it's all brine-y or oily, stuck together in clumps peering out at you like a soggy towel.

But! With a few household ingredients (which, if you were raiding the cupboards and could only find tuna you may not have), you can turn your soggy towel tuna into something delicious.

Kitchen mess is the best type of mess, especially when you don't have to clean up afterwards.

Ingredients:

Makes 5 mini burgers

1 spring onion

1 rib of celery

1 can tinned tuna

2 cloves garlic

1/4 carrot, peeled

1/2 red pepper

Salt and pepper, parsley, crushed chillies and paprika

2 tbsp cream

1/4 cup breadcrumbs

1 egg

All purpose flour

Olive oil

Start by finely chopping all of your vegetables. Don't go crazy with this. If you have a food processor, feel free to throw them all in there and let it do it's thing.

Throw all your veggies except the celery and garlic into a medium bowl.

Fry the celery and garlic in a little olive oil for a few minutes, until it's heated through but still crunchy. 

This is where it gets messy.

The best way I can describe this is just - throw everything else into the bowl (except the flour and no more oil), and just have a party.

Disco balls and everything. Don't hold back.

Mix until everything is combined, and chill in the fridge for about 10 minutes to let it firm up.

During that time, you might want to start making your sides to serve your sliders with.

After 10 minutes is up, take the bowl out of the fridge. Dust a surface with flour, and set a pan to heat to medium-high with some olive oil. 

Grab small handfuls of the mixture, then form them into balls. Don't worry if it feels like it's falling apart; it might. If it does, cry onto your dusted surface and give in cooking forever.

As long as you give it a good coating and slop it straight into the pan, you shouldn't have to worry too much about it falling apart. When you've got all of your balls in the pan, flatten them down with a spatula so they look vaguely burger-shaped.

You can see mine were cracking a little. That there in the pan? That's not oil. That's tears.

Just kidding! After 4-5 minutes, give them a flip.

They should be nice and golden brown. If not... flip em back over! A few minutes on this side should be enough, and then you can serve with your sides!

Whipped cream sadly didn't go with this, but a nice squirt of BBQ sauce did me just fine ♥

Key Lime Pie

Here in the UK, avocados are pretty expensive. We're talking about £1 for a medium-large sized one.

Lucky little me found some for 39p (!) in Lidl, along with some cheap juicy limes. This pie was pretty much a no-brainer.

Armed with this baby, I set off into the wonderful world of experimentation!

Weirdly enough, I've never actually eaten avocados before. They taste kinda funky on their own, but when you pour copious amounts of sugar in it - winner winner, chicken dinner!

I kid; this post is under the 'healthy' tag after all.

Limes are actually a really pretty fruit, too. Not so pretty when you squeeze the juice into your eye.

You can tell I was tired when I made this, because after I took this photo I put the lid on and turned the blender on without taking the spoon out.

This delicious green mess is:

2 medium-large avocaods

2 limes, juice and zest

2 tbsp single cream

1 tbsp stevia

4 tbsp flour

I got to this by trial and error... I knew I wanted creamy, limey and a little sweet (is limey a word?), but I'm trying to keep it low on the sugar and saturated fat. Healthy is good ♥

In the mean time, I mixed oats, melted butter, cinnamon, chopped nuts and a few assorted raisins together. Just do whatever looks good, in a quantity big enough to cover your dish about half an inch thick.

Due to the obscenely large pie dish I have (it's bigger than my head) mine is a little thinner than I would've liked, but I made do.

Bake it in a 190C oven for about 10 minutes, then let it cool.

Schoooooop in your filling, chill and serve!

 ...Whipped cream? Whipped cream.

Happy Hanukkah! Er, Kwanzaa? Hmm...

Happy birthday Grandpa~

Birthdays are a special time for everyone. And when it comes to celebrating, nothing beats a delicious home-made sugar bomb, right?

Well, unluckily for me, my grandpops is diabetic - which makes baking delicious treats a bit more troublesome. And by that, I mean nigh on impossible.

There's two things my grandpa really likes - our dog Harold, and sweets. He's always had an awful sweet-tooth, so the diagnosis of diabetes was understandably distressing for him.

He's so cute. Who could resist that face? Looks like he has no legs though... awkward.

Bam! Wham! Stencil'd.

I painted a quick copy of Harold's face in Photoshop, printed it out and traced it out with a craft knife. This took an obscenely long amount of time but was totally worth it. If you're going to do this, I'd strongly recommend using card or something a bit stiffer if you want to use it more than once.

I whipped up a quick chocolate cake using Stevia instead of sugar, and as little oil and butter as possible. I was going for healthy here.

 

 

I recently managed to acquire a springform cake tin; I've been after one for ages! They are absolutely wondrous. I failed miserably using the baking parchment though, and opted for greasing with butter.

I baked this with the intention of cutting it in half. However, the tin was much bigger than I expected...

So I baked a new one! Which was too flat, because I ran out of flour :( Baking problems are the worst type of problems.

I spread one half with soft cream cheese, and the other with low sugar strawberry jam.

Squish! I panicked here because it looks ridiculously out of proportion, then remembered it's my family and they won't really care as long as it tastes good. Phew.

I may have gotten excited and forgotten to take progress pictures. :(

I layered the stencil over the cake, and then dusted caster sugar (because I forgot to buy icing sugar) over the top. I accidentally a huge amount in one spot though, so I grabbed a paintbrush and cleaned up the lines a bit.

I made some icing with cream cheese and cocoa powder mixed, and used that to stick the strawberry halves onto the cake. Healthy and delicious! Well, as healthy as cake can be, anyway.

A happy customer! ♥

Everyone loved the cake, and grandpa was super excited. He was so excited, he didn't actually notice that his dogs face on the front of it...