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...

Gnocci and turkey and vegetable stew

Wham! Blam! Five of your five a day in one delicious stew. 

Turkey is one of my five a day... right?

This was actually really simple. I won't give you the full recipe, because I think this is the kind of soup where you can just use whatever vegetables you have to hand and it'll probably taste good.

I went for celery, carrot, red onion, spinach and green beans. I also used store-bought gnocci, because what do you think I am?! A cooking blog writer?!

Start off by dicing your meat of choice, then marinate for a few hours with whatever sounds good. I went for salt, black pepper, cumin, coriander and mustard. 

In the mean time, roughly chop your veggies. Heat some olive oil and fry your meat until golden brown.

While your meat is browning, heat a pot on medium high and add a tablespoon of olive oil, a few tablespoons of butter and a little flour. Stir to make your roux, then stir in your veggies. Add in as much boiling water as you want, then as many stock cubes as you need for that much water. Guesstimate!

Add your browned meat into your stew, then add flour to thicken to a desired consistency. Let it simmer for a while to reduce, then add your gnocci and cook until they've risen to the occasion.

And serve! If you make this gnocchi vegetable turkey stew, you could even find...

an extremely happy guest! ♥

Though if she's breaking and entering and you don't know who she is, you may want to phone the police.

And for dessert -

Pear pastries and cream~! And they say I don't spoil them...

Apple and Cherry Turnover

Welcome to A Cup of Charlotte - where we bake delicious pastries, drink copious amounts of brandy tea and chat about fashion.

Today, we're making apple and cherry turnovers.

Ingredients:                                                                                                                Makes 4 turnovers

Puff pastry: store-bought or home-made
2 tbsp butter
1 egg
1 tbsp water

1 apple, cored and chopped

8 cherries, cored and chopped

2 tbsp caster sugar

Icing sugar, to serve

 

 

These turnovers are actually surprisingly easy to make - minimal effort, so more time to enjoy while browsing your website of choice and stuffing your face.

 

Start by tossing the cherries and apples in the caster sugar. Put them in a small baking dish and let them stew in a 200C/400F/Gas 6 oven for 20 minutes. When you pull them out, make sure to keep the oven on - you'll need it soon.

In the mean time, roll out your puff pastry and cut into squares, about 3 by 3 inches. Divide the butter between the 4 squares, then relax and resist taking the fruit out 5 minutes early. Whisk the egg and water together in a small bowl to make an eggwash.

It's all smooth sailing from here. Spoon your fruit evenly between your squares; if you have slightly more foresight than me, use a slotted spoon to drain off the excess juice and avoid a murder on the dance-puff.

With a pastry brush, brush some egg wash along the right and bottom edges of your pastry. Fold the top left corner over to meet the bottom right one, and press along the edges with your fingers. To make sure your fruit doesn't pull a Houdini, grab a fork and gently press along the edges to seal them. Finish up with a good coating of egg wash, and prick a few holes into the top.

Put your turnovers in the oven for 20 minutes until they're golden and puffed, then serve and enjoy! 

Served with whipped cream is the only way to eat these. Double cream? Yoghurt? Try it... I dare you.

--Charlotte