The thing is that recently, I have fallen in love with the Hairy Bikers and have been watching their latest series on BBC2, Bakeaction, avidly. They’re so lovely and friendly and, *sigh*. I think they remind me a bit of my Dad’s friends when I was growing up. I find them very comforting.

On the german leg of their trip these two lovelies made some potato bread, and whether it was the carby imaginings of a fed up dieter, or whether it was just the fact that loaf looked chewy and tasty and keeps for a couple of days, I was set on a course of mixing, kneading, proving, shaping, proving, baking and finally gorging.

To start, I boiled some potatoes and once they were soft, I drained them, reserving some of the starchy water, and mashed them up with some vegetable oil.

Once the potato water had cooled down to a hand hot temperature, I added the dried yeast and sugar and left it in a warm place until it frothed.

It's like magic!

I added the warm, bubbling yeast to the warm oily mash (*drool* God, I really need to sort myself out a love life at some point in the future – this level of sensuality should not be confined to fucking FOOD INGREDIENTS) and mixed them well before adding the flour slowly and gently bringing all of the ingredients together with my hands. *cough*

Once I had a ball of dough I started the kneading process, the bit I was dreading the most. I really enjoyed it! Feeling the dough change from a sticky lump of ingredients to a cohesive, elastic, springy ball of dough was really gratifying.

Surprisingly satisfying and check out those veins in my hand. WORK IT!

So once I’d kneaded for 10 minutes I lightly greased a bowl and some cling film (I use an Olive Oil spray to make it a bit easier. Not that it’s hard to grease a bowl and some cling film, but I thought you might appreciate the tip) and left the dough to prove in a warm spot for an hour.

It is an exciting hour and no mistake

Once the dough had doubled in size, I knocked it back - just because I’m hard, like to make sure that the bread doesn’t have great big massive bubbles in it, and then gazed upon the beauty of it.

Gorgeous, bouncy, fluffy dough

I stretched out the dough into a square which was *technical* about a half a thumb deep.

Check out the elasticy gluten in THIS baby. (WTF is happening to me?)

And then folded the two long sides up towards one another, pinched together, and placed on a lightly greased and floured baking tray (I USED THAT OLIVE OIL SPRAY TO GREASE THE TRAY – It’s a tip, you can take it or leave it) to prove for another half an hour – hour, in a warm place. I went for the little sun trap in the corner of the kitchen.

Leave in warm spot to double in size again

Before baking, slash the dough and sprinkle some flour, before shaking some black onion seeds across the top of the loaf.

It's got that wobble, baby.

I had preheated the oven and so shoved my bread in and baked for 35 minutes.

*watches obsessively*

Now, I know you’re not meant to open the oven too often and blah blah, but I turned the loaf once during cooking time. It needed turning or I would have ended up with half the crust being burnt and the other half being aneamic. It worked for me, but I was using this first loaf as an experiment! I was feeling all arrogant brave, and luckily for me, it worked out ok.

This was my first one

This was my second loaf

The difference is entirely down to leaving the loaf to prove for longer on the second prove.

Anyway, after leaving the loaf to cool for a terribly irritating amount of time filled with “can we cut it now mum?” “”what harm could it do, if we cut it now, it won’t hurt”, “It must be time”

I cut the loaf, and buttered it.

...

To me, as Born Again Baker this whole process is just, well it’s enriching to me in some way. Urgh, I know that sounds ridiculously stupid and wanky and sentimental, but honestly? A bit of flour, a sachet of yeast, sugar, salt and potatoes can make a loaf that has persuaded Tom to have breakfast before school, that’s a pretty amazing loaf of bread.

However, I don’t get on well with bread and should be leaving it alone. I’ve eaten at least half of everything I’ve made thus far.

We’re two loaves down here, I’m scared.

For the recipe – BEWARE!! – Check out the link at the start of this post.

Pray for me…

If you’ve ever read my blog before, then you know how to make flavoured vodka in a dishwasher. I’m trying to remember what inspired me to make a sherbet lemon flavoured vodka, but unfortunately I’ve drunk too much lemon sherbet vodka and it’s melted that section of my brain.

I used four packs of old fashioned sherbet lemon sweets – Sainsbury’s sell the old fashioned “quarter” sweets. These are perfect, four bags of these to one bottle of Sainsbury’s basic vodka (750cl) is my recommended dose recipe

Smashy smashy

So, smash the sweets up and place them all in your kilner jar.

I love this next photo. I clearly felt at this moment that the watermelon and bare breasted statue SAID something

ART!

I think the most we can gather from this is that I was already intoxicated.

Right so – blah blah, add the vodka, stick it in the dishwasher, shake it regularly while it cools. Read the link.

This vodka did not need filtering so while it cooled, I melted four leaves of gelatin in some hot water.

Melting gelatin leaves

This was a disaster! The water was far too hot and the gelatin instantly set, I ended up with a jug of stiff horribleness.

I started again using warm water and poking at it.

Melt, Melt, Melt!

Once I had a jug of soft gelatin leaves I added half a pint of hot lemon sherbet vodka and stirred vigourously.

It's gloopy

I like my jelly shots to be quite hard *face*. Depending on your preference, you could add more vodka liquid to make a more wobbly consistency, 3/4 of a pint to 4 leaves of gelatin would be pretty good.

I poured the jelly into espresso cups. I’m a bit of a wanker, let’s face it!

Hipster

I would love to show you a picture of these babies turned out onto a plate with a dusting of lemon sherbet and a little bon-bon in the front of the shot and OH MY GOD.

I can’t though because I made these and then I tried one and then the rest of my life since is a blur.

Give it a go – or don’t *aggressive*

As I slurped on my green tea, and eyed my snack of a fresh fruit salad mournfully, it came to me in a blinding flash! A chocolate eclair flavoured cheesecake would be utterly brilliant and so, my strange and short lived obsession began.

I flirted with the idea of a digestive base with fudge pieces, a cheesecake topping with fudge pieces and a chocolate sauce with toffee shards, but then I remembered that I had a tin of Carnation Dulce de Leche in the cupboard just aching to be used.

So my plans changed and became…a chocolate biscuit base, a caramel flavoured cheesecake filling with a butterscotch sauce for the top.

NOW WITH EVEN MORE CHOC CHIPS. Yeah. Take that.

I dropped my food processor on the floor a few weeks ago and it has broken in the most annoying manner possible – the tiny little piece of plastic that locks the “bowl” thingy into the “motor” thingy snapped off and now it won’t cut or grate or blend or anything. *technical*

So for the chocolate biscuit base I used a whole pack of Maryland Double Chocolate Cookies and smashed them into smithereens with a rolling pin and a freezer bag. *Old Skool*

I do so love a bit of violent cooking

I melted 90g of butter in a saucepan and stirred in the crumbly biscuit crumbs.

I sprayed a 23cm springform cake tin with Cake Release spray and pressed the biscuit and butter mixture into the bottom of the tin.

Biscuit base

At this point I went a bit mad and couldn’t decide whether to bake the base or refrigerate it. So I baked it for ten minutes and it went all squishy and peculiar so don’t do that – instead just pop the base into the fridge while you get on with making the filling.

I used 750g of philadelphia cream cheese and beat it gently in the mixer to soften. Once soft I added 100g caster sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla essence and a tin of dulce de leche and mixed until well combined.

Seriously.

I then added three large eggs one by one, ensuring each egg was throughly incorporated before cracking the next one in.

I transferred the mixture into the cake tin and there was bloody LOADS of it – honestly it was like the magic porridge pot, and it just about fitted into the tin. *phew*

*blinks*

I didn’t want to use a bain marie to bake the cheesecake, so instead I placed a roasting tray on the bottom shelf of the oven and the cheesecake on the shelf above it. Steam should prevent the cheesecake from cracking. Should. That’s an important word.

Steamy

I baked the cheesecake for one hour on Gas Mark 3. When the topping has firmed up, but still has a slight wobble in the centre it is ready to come out of the oven.

Almost perfect!

I allowed the cake to cool in it’s tin and after 20 minutes I returned to see how it was getting on.

Crack is Wack

So, I don’t know why this happened – maybe I should have gone for the full on bain marie…or maybe there was just too much filling and it just starting collapsing under it’s own weight. Whatever it is isn’t a major big deal as there is still a sauce to go on the top. I did want to pour a thin layer of butterscotch onto the top of the whole cake and then refrigerate which would have been pretty hardcore, but that gaping chasm scared me a bit and I decided to make the sauce and just pour it over individual slices as I served them.

The cheesecake needs refrigerating for a couple of hours, but remove from the fridge about half an hour before serving.

So, a basic butterscotch/toffee sauce to top the cheesecake and give that lovely toffee flavour:

45g dark muscovado sugar

2 x tablespoons golden caster sugar

150g golden syrup

30g unsalted butter

125ml thick cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

I melted the sugar, butter and syrup in a pan.

You can get a toothache just looking at this.

I didn’t stir as I’m pretty sure stirring does something weird to sugar so just sort of swilled it all around a bit and then boiled ferociously for five minutes.

Foamy

Stir in the cream and vanilla and take off the heat. I then allowed this to cool right down to room temperature before serving.

I sliced the cheesecake and drizzled a little sauce over the top, you don’t need to be too heavy handed and the sauce is really, very sweet.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

It was pretty tasty and did evoke the flavour of a Cadbury’s Chocolate Eclair, BUT, not quite chocolatey enough. I think I can improve this by making a toffee base, chocolate filling and toffee on the top…the experiment will continue.

Oh, I invented this recipe so please do use it – and let me know how you get on. You won’t regret it.

I have been baking though, and because I’m not planning on any parties (apart from two dinner parties in March) you’re just going to have to put up with reading about my cakes and flapjacks *smirk* and various weird stuff I’m filling my weekend’s with rather than smoking lovely cigarettes and eating nice food that isn’t vegetable and zero fat.

At Christmas my lovely Nan received a hamper from the Railway Pension People/Old Age Community Centre/Christians (I can’t remember) and in amongst the shortbread and christmas puddings (which was also a waste as Nan was the lucky recipient of my home made Christmas Puddings, which she assured me was the best she had ever tasted) a jar of seville orange marmalade – which she promptly gave to me, even though I hate it.

Seville Oranges are in season now, and although I haven’t made my own marmalade because it’s revolting I decided to bake a marmalade cake. Marmalade Cake has the added bonus of being repellant to me and delicious to the boys, it’s a win/win.

I used a recipe from my latest CoookBook purchase, the fabulous and uplifting “Great British Bake Off” book.

I really should stop using books as mats

So, I made a cake batter by creaming together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy before adding eggs and then folding in the flour and baking powder followed by a blob of bitter marmalade and some milk.

Folding with a metal spoon

After combining all the ingredients to a smooth batter I poured the mixture into a cake tin which had been lined with greaseproof paper and sprayed with cake release spray.

A pointless exercise in smoothing batter. Just give up for Pete's sake.

The oven actually co-operated with me and the cake was baked pretty much according to the recipe – which makes a refreshing change. It emerged from the oven golden and slightly crispier round the edges than it should have been, but a success as far as my cake record is concerned.

The endless smoothing proved pointless..

I then heated some marmalade in the microwave to a bubbling molten goo – be careful, this stuff would eat through your skin and flesh until it reached the bone, at which point it would find tiny chainsaws and powersaw it’s way through – before brushing the cake with the sticky glaze.

I'm surprised it didn't melt the brush

Once I had coated the cake I left it to cool completely.

Top Tip: This cake would make a fabulous fly/wasp catcher in summer months.

SHINY!

This cake calls for a sweet topping to counteract the evil bitterness of the marmalade but that isn’t too rich. This cake is drizzled with a simple runny icing using icing sugar and warm water.

Gorgeous Sticky Marmalade Cake (I'd rather poke my own eyes out that eat it)

After cutting a piece and tasting it, I grudgingly admit that it is a pretty delicious cake for all it’s inherent wrongness. The marmalade in the batter keeps the cake moist and the sugary icing is a delicious contrast to the bitter orange flavour.

Moist and orangy

If you like marmalade, if you like cake, if you fancy making a marmalade cake then why not try this version?

The best beefburgers are made from MEAT without eggs as a binder and onions to add flavour – They do not break up while frying and they certainly don’t become a horrific frying pan full of  mince and egg.

I am taking Heston’s advice and using some high quality mince, combined with some cheaper mince

Meat plus salt plus Cling Film - a class act

To be honest, all mince is available in “lines”(That sounds totally weird).  Heston is big on the “lines” of mince retaining their integrity – I can get on board with that. So I took the premium mince and the less premium mince and placed them onto some cling film before salting both and squishing them together. *Technical*

Twice salted mince - keep all "lines" of mince in same direction

I then rolled up the meat in the cling film to make a Tube O’ Meat

Roll it up!

This then went into the fridge for 6 hours.

Cooking Time!

Remove the tube from the fridge and cut through the cling film and meat to make patties of about an inch thick each.

Cut into the tube o meat

The burgers keep their shape beautifully so you can add them to a pan without fear of the dreaded burger breakup. I brushed the burgers with some oil before adding to a hot dry griddle.

Sizzle those babies

I added some bacon to the griddle and brushed the other side of the burgers with a little oil before flipping.

Yeah baby - it's all beefy/porky

Oh yeah – now for some cheese:

Emmental (holey cheese) plus Kraft (plastic cheese)

Finally added to a toasted  bun.

This is my screensaver. I'm not joking.

Boys = amazed.

Provide some garnish – tomato, onion, lettuce – sauces.

BURGERS!

Me = best mum in universe (as far as the boys are concerned)

This is a non-recipe that is surely worth a try? Some mince plus a sprinkle of salt plus rolling up in cling film for a few hours will get you a mega burger and applause from your family.

Have a go!

To make it up to my poor beleagured boys I made them an American feast on Saturday night and the piece de resistance was a Hummingbird Bakery Chocolate Pecan Pie for dessert.

So, pastry making? Again? Really?

YES. REALLY. I had high  hopes as I welcomed a new addition to my kitchen in the form of Kitty.

Kitty. (IGNORE THE FORLORN KEN IN THE BACKGROUND)

I followed the recipe – once again using softened (and therefore room temperature) butter for the pastry. I’m sure this isn’t right you know?, and I’m positive it’s the reason my results are so crappy (sorry for the spoiler – although if you hadn’t guessed that the pastry was a disaster then I urge you to stop and have a look around the blog; it’s kind of my “thing”)

Actually, I’m going to be honest – the reason the pastry didn’t turn out too well is probably less to do with the temperature of the butter and more to do with my inate clumsiness.

So, gathered the ingredients, blah blah and then added the flour and butter to Kitty and mixed to a fine breadcrumb consistency before adding sugar and and egg. I carried on mixing on a slow speed until a ball of dough formed.

Sweet Pastry Dough

I worked really quickly this time just gently pushing the ball together into a nice ball and covering in cling film before resting in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Quick! Quick! Into the fridge!

After resting, I ran my hands under a cold tap to get them all nice and frigid – just so the pastry didn’t get upset at being touched by “human temperatured” hands and quickly, and gently rolled out the ball.

It's all going well..

I used the old trick of flipping one end of the pastry around the rolling pin to make it easy to place into the tart tin.

..yes, yes, this is working, this is working...

As you can see the pastry is lovely and “short” which should mean it bakes to a lovely buttery and crumbly texture.

I managed to get the pastry into the tin with clean efficiency,

...FABULOUS, Darling!...You did it!

and was feeling very proud of myself. The only thing left to do was to trim the edges of the pastry from the tin and VOILA! I would have not only barely handled the pastry but  also shown that pastry can be made with the minimum of effort.

What I did though was pick up the tart tin and put my hand right through the base of the loose bottom.

My head hurts just looking at this.

I’m sure that some of my readers are starting t think “Oh, man! She’s definitely making this stuff up now. No one can be this incompetent” But I swear on my eyes that I am, actually this incompetent.

The air in the kitchen turned a violent shade of purple for a few minutes and the distant sound of hammering could be heard from the boys’ bedroom as they battened down the hatches.

I scraped the pastry up – inventing a few new swears as I did so – formed it into a ball, rolled it out and tried again.

This time I managed to get the stuff into the tart tin, pricked (with vigour), and trimmed with no further disasters but I must admit that I wasn’t quite as gentle as I could have been. (Understatement). The case then went into the fridge to rest for another 30 minutes.

I blindbaked the case, as per the recipe, for 10 minutes with baking beads and 10 minutes without. This was nowhere near long enough as the pastry still looked “sweaty” and so I gave it another 5 minutes.

I set the pastry case aside to cool and got on with making the filling.

To make the caramel which holds the pecans together, I melted butter, brown sugar and golden syrup over a low heat.

Lovely and easy

and when melted and cool I added this sweet brown mix to some lightly beaten eggs.

I poured roughly chopped pecans and chocolate chips into the pastry case, added the caramel mixture and decorated with whole pecans.

Sweet, nutty, caramelly, chocolatey, PASTRY.

After about an hour in the oven, the pie should be cooked through with a very slight wobble in the centre of the pie. I left the pie to cool down before wrangling it out of the tin.

As I took the base of the tin from the bottom of the pie I noticed that the pastry wasn’t quite cooked through – I am finding this to be a consistent and very irritating problem with the recipes in the Hummingbird book. Of course, each oven is different and the cooking times in recipes are just guidelines but it’s really infuriating to realise that had I cooked the pastry for an extra 15 minutes during the blind bake I wouldn’t have had to try and squeeze the pie BACK into the tin to return it to the oven for additional cooking. Which of course just resulted in the topping losing some of it’s velvetty texture and basically just irritating the shit out if me.

/rant

Anyway – the pie was finally cooked, and cooled and slices were cut.

The boys loved it, I’m not too sure (but to be honest I’m still in quite a lot of pain in my mouth so only had a small taste) but one thing I do know for sure, the pastry is crap.

I’m going to beat you, pastry nemesis, oh yes I will – one of these days.

Anyway, I had a pretty great Christmas and New Year and although I am currently only able to drink wine eat soup through a straw and I’ve also been forced to give up smoking (BAH!) I am unfazed as my eye is on the main prize of 2012. Oh yes, I have booked a holiday to Florida in July and have been researching Man vs Food eateries to visit. *SCREAM*

In homage to this exciting development I have been cooking some traditional American dishes and have started with Tom’s favourite – Hot Sauce coated chicken wings.

I’ve been looking at recipes for a truly HOT hot sauce for a while – our favourite is Louisiana hot sauce but every recipe I found needed the chilli peppers to steep in vinegar for six months in a basement, behind some peaches, at a temperature of 85C.

And then I found a recipe that was far more forgiving of my Not-Yet-Being-In-the-USness…

So I gathered together the ingredients. The original recipe called for four habanero chilli peppers –  I have two hopes of getting hold of habaneros but I have read that scotch bonnets are pretty much on a par heat and flavour wise and these are readily available. I chickened out though and only bought two.

I chopped the red onion into a fine dice and minced the garlic. When chopping the chilli, please make sure to use rubber gloves – those scotch bonnets are vicious. I, of course, used rubber gloves and as I smugly diced the peppers a perfect arch of searing hot juice shot into my eye causing a volcano of swears and violence. So in addition to rubber gloves make sure you have a pair of sunglasses or goggles to hand.

Green and red chilli and the dreaded scotch bonnets

I added the onion to the pan with the olive oil and softened before adding the garlic and chopped chillis

Such lovely colours - they contain FIRE!

I then added three cups of chopped fresh tomatoes to the mix. I used a whole punnet, box, pack of basic tomatoes and did not de-skin them – Life is too short. I then added the vinegar, sugar and salt

Hot Sauce coming together!

Once again the house filled with that horrible vinegary feety smell. This is the major downside of cooking any chutney or sauce with vinegar – it smells vile and makes you want to cough up a lung.

This sauce only needs about 10 minutes now, just long enough for the tomatoes to become mushy and for the vinegar *cough* to evaporate a little bit.

Remove from the heat and allow to cool a little before adding to a food processor

Coo! Look at that chilli!

Blitz the mix until smooth-ish. Then push the mixture through a metal sieve.

*eyes watering*

You then end up with a bowl of excruciatingly hot sauce which can be either added to a plate in the same way as ketchup (but with added agony) or can be used to marinade meat.

It looks so innocent...

I added the sauce to a bunch of large chicken wings (scoring the meat before adding the marinade) and left to sit for a few hours – overnight in the fridge is better; scored, marinaded and frozen for a week is the best.

Soak away my lovelies

When ready to cook, Pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 6. Remove the chicken from the marinade and place on a roasting tray. Brush the wings with a little more marinade before placing in the oven.

Now to cooking times – I roasted these at gas mark 6 for well over an hour – these were large wings and  were nowhere near cooked at 40 minutes (as per usual chicken wing cooking time). Use your discretion and keep cooking and basting with marinade – keep turning the wings until you’re confident that the evilness of salmonella has been burned to death and the wings are crispy on the outside but nice and succulent within.

Baste, Baste, Baste

This recipe gave a yield of enough sauce to marinate about 12 large chicken wings with a jam jar full excess which can be poured over the cooked wings if you like it very hot, or kept in the fridge and used whenever you feel like scaring the shit out of your tastebuds.

I'm surprised the lid hasn't melted

I served the chicken with plain green beans, macaroni cheese, and some random sausages that I had left over in the freezer from Christmas. QUITE the combination I’m sure you agree.

Holy LORD

It was bloody LOVELY.

And so begins my concerted effort to cook bundles of American dishes to acclimatise us all before our big trip. We’re all so excited that I’m sure you, poor reader, will be sick to the back teeth of us soon – either that or you could give some of these recipes a go and become enamoured with American cooking as well.

If you’d like to give the Hot Sauce a go have a look here for the full recipe.

The spectre of New Year’s Eve hangs over me yet and we’re all feeling a bit like this:

I feel rubbish!

If, like me, you have no plans then a quick meal that you can prepare in advance and just leave alone until serving time – with some killer puddings to see the new year in – is just the job.

I’m here to give you my menu for this this NYE.

I am going to be serving my Greek Lamb with Orzo. This is a stew with the pasta added in at the final stages of cooking and fills the house with the warming scent of an array of spices and herbs and tastes just bloody fab.

You’ll need *takes deep breath*:

A splash of olive oil

Stewing Lamb (not too lean, you need some good streaks of fat)

1 onion

2 carrots (or one big bastard) Sliced in half, lengthways

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 carton of creamed tomatoes (or passata)

Tomato puree

2 Cloves of garlic

Dried Thyme and Oregano

Paprika

Cinnamon, ground and a stick

Ground mace

Ground cloves

Lamb stock

Red wine

Orzo

Fresh oregano, rosemary and mint

Feta cheese.

Got all that? Sounds complicated and a bit of a pain in the arse? It’s not, honestly.

Chop your lamb up into bit size pieces

I've used shoulder steaks

and brown in the olive oil in a heavy based large casserole pan (you might need to do this in batches depending on how many you are cooking for).

While you are sealing the lamb, roughly chop the onion and peel the garlic (I’ve specified a couple of cloves but you can decide how much you want to add – it’s up to you) before blitzing to a pulp in a food processor.

Beware the fumes!

Remove the browned lamb from the pan and add the oniony pulp to the fat and gently cook until soft.

Add the spices and herbs (I’ve not given amounts as I do just tend to throw “an amount” in, with the exception of the ground cloves – I’m not terribly keen on cloves so only ever add 1/4 teaspoon) and continue frying for a couple of minutes.

Replace the lamb into the pan (and the juices which will have accumulated in the dish) and add the tomatoes (tinned, passata and a squeeze of tomato purree) stock (about a pint), a glug of wine, the carrots and the fresh herbs. Bring to the boil and then place on the lowest possible heat and leave to bubble away gently for 2-3 hours (or longer).

Simmer, Simmer, Simmer

SO, while the lamb is cooking you can get on with making some dessert.

I ummed and ahhed over which recipe to prepare, One Jug Chocolate Brownies or Ice Cream Cake and plumped for the ice cream cake as it’s stupidly easy and has a party feel to it.

Needs more chocolate

And now, I will ask for a moment of bowed heads and silence as I have some sad news to impart. This will be the final recipe in which Ken, the Kenwood Chef mixer will make an appearance. At the grand old age of 34 (we think) he has finally shuffled from his mortal coil. Which is a bit strange actually as the problem does appear to be with a spring inside him which has finally rusted to the point of no return.

Farewell Ken. You did us proud. *Bravely holds back tears*

Line a springform cake tin with clingfilm, making sure that you have enough to cover the cake at the top.

Leave your ice cream (I went for vanilla, but you could use chocolate I suppose, or cookie dough, or raspberry ripple, or anything at all!) out of the freezer to soften a little, meanwhile take a rolling pin to some bourbon biscuits and smash them into small chunks.

(place in a sealable bag first, HA HA!)

Add your ice cream  to your *sobs* mixer.

Softened ice cream

And add the bourbon biscuits, chocolate drops (I used both milk and white) and honey roasted nuts before mixing. (Keep back about a third of the biscuits and a few chocolate chips for decorating later)

Delicious

Smash up a crunchie bar and add that to the mix (reserving a third of the honeycomb)

A glycemic spike approaches...

Pour the “batter” into your prepared cake tin and smooth the top a little with a spatula.

And that's it!

Wrap the overhanging cling film over the top of the cake and place into the freezer until five minutes before you’re ready to serve.

When you are ready, take the ice cream and chuck the reserved biscuits, crunchie bar and chocolate chips over the cake (and I’d definitely throw some sparklers on the top for some New Year’s Eve glitter and POP!)

This may well give you a sugar hangover. Or at least, that's what you can blame your bad head on tomorrow.

For the full recipe (and also some details about hot butterscotch and chocolate sauces to go with this beauty) check out here

Back to the lamb. After a few hours of gentle simmering the lamb should be soft and the sauce a little bit thicker.

At this point I usually turn the oven onto a low heat (gas mark 2) and add a couple of handfuls of Orzo before giving the stew a final stir and putting the pan, lid on, into the oven to cook for 30 minutes – or until the pasta is cooked.

Make a quick mix of feta cheese, fresh chopped mint and oregano to sprinkle on the top of the stew.

Sprinkle over stew

Serve with green beans and broccoli. I sometimes make some garlic and rosemary roasted new potatoes, but these aren’t really necessary as the pasta in the stew provides the carby bulk.

Kalá hristúyenna!

I wish you all a Happy 2012, may your year be full of parties and happy times!

Obsessed with flavoured alcohols.

At this rate my entire family (including the children) will be completely and utterly spangled by lunchtime of Christmas Day. (HEY! Sounds like a plan)

As my Werther’s Original Vodka winged their way to family members I realised that I was now a couple of gift bottles short – Catastrophe!

The Christmas Pudding Rum lurks maelvolently in the back of the cupboard, refusing to taste like anything other than rum.

Look at it - SINISTER

And so, I decided to try the top tip of speeding up the process of sweetie dissolution via Dishwasher. Oooh. Yeah, that’s right if you have a dishwasher and an airtight jar (Kilner preferably) you too can make some flavoured vodka in a matter of hours!

Amazing!

I decided after a quick twitter poll (@partyspanner) that Chocolate Lime Vodka would go down a TREAT.

Ah, Chocolate Limes – the sweet of elderly relatives and strange men who wanted to show you their puppies.

I bought a cheap bottle of vodka (750 ml) and two bags of chocolate Limes.

WayHey!

I got rid of some pointless aggression by smashing the living crap out of the sweets before adding them to the kilner jar. Quite the therapy I’m sure you’ll agree.

Smashed to buggery

I added the vodka, and now for the genius part. I sealed the jar, gave it a good shake and added to the dishwasher load. I used the bottom rack to make sure the container stayed upright (which will be more than can be said for me come the party season).

Snug and ready to boil

Now, the top tip I had received didn’t specify whether the dishwasher cycle should include soap, but in these financially straitened times I decided to wash my dishes and include the vodka in the load – therefore needing to add a dishwasher tablet. You will need to use your hottest wash cycle – and to be honest it seems not only to make more sense financially to add the jar of alcohol to a full load; but also *earnest face* for the planet, yeah? *wafts patchouli*

I must admit to being a little bit concerned as the dishwasher clanked and bubbled away.

There was no need. Once the cycle had completed I had lovely clean dishes and this:

Steamy!

DON’T make the mistake I made of having a sniff while the liquid is still hot – the fumes will make your eyes water and your BRANE GO RONG.

See that large amount of chocolate limey sediment in the bottom? Do Not Worry.

All you need to do is keep shaking the jar every hour – or half an hour if you can – and the heat of the vodka will continue to melt the sweets and dissolve all the sediment away.

After the first hour:

First Hour after Dishwasher

Second Hour after leaving Dishwasher:

Keep shaking regularly!

Third Hour:

Almost there!

Three and a half hours:

As near as dammit

And after four hours I was ready to filter the stuff.

My record of filtering flavoured alcohol is…sporadic to say the least ..but this one really needed a jolly good filtering. My poor old brain finally worked out that if I emptied the liquid from the jar into a large measuring jar and then placed the funnel and coffee filter paper into the now empty Kilner Jar, I can pour the unfiltered stuff through the funnel and just walk away and do something else until it is finished.

Yes, Yes, I know it's obvious...

It took about 40 minutes to filter the whole batch but it left me with a clear mix which goes down smoothly. Oh yes.

I bottled up:

Sticky! - notice the washcloth ready for any spills.

And now have three bottles (and a small jam jar – don’t ask) of gorgeously chocolatey, evocatively flavoured vodka to give as gifts (and add to my Christmas Day Liquour Tour)

After Resting for an hour

I utterly adore that little seam of chocolate at the top of the bottles and am delighted with the result.

So – if you’ve wanted to take a stab at making some flavoured alcohol, but have either refused to take my previous advice, or haven’t had time, or are stumbling onto my blog for my first time – be of good cheer! You too can have some sickly sweet vodka in just a few hours by following this advice!

Good luck and please let me know of any flavour combinations you come up with.

My mum and I are united in our appreciation of floral flavours. We both get pretty excited at a box of rose and violet creams and so I wanted to bake her a cake for birthday with a pinkily rose taste.

Luckily enough, my favourite cake book has just such an offering.

So here we go with yet another Hummingbird Bakery cake.

Ingredients

Teeth Achingly Sweet

I whipped up a plain sponge and added rose water and some pink food colouring to the wet ingredients before adding them to the dry mixture

Pretty!

After adding the wet ingredients to the dry I added a couple more drops of pink food colouring and poured the batter into two 8 inch tins.

Rose flavoured cake batter

So, I baked the cakes for 25 minutes and after testing they seemed to be cooked.

WRONG! What a mess.

So what went wrong? Sadly I haven’t the tiniest clue.

We’re now into damage limitation and this disaster is going to need some serious buttercream icing, the problem being that Mum is not the greatest fan of icing and sweet sweet cakes, so I’m somewhat limited.

I made a small batch of buttercream adding some more rose water to compliment the cake and also added some pink food colouring…

Oooh, it's like raspberry ripple ice cream

and tried desperately to salvage the birthday cake.

I slathered one of the cakes with one third of the icing…

It. Looks. Horrible.

before getting on with icing the whole cake and decorating with sugar paste flowers

Silk Purse - Pig's Ear

We sang Happy Birthday and sliced the thing up.

*shakes head*

So there you are – It tasted OK, but I wouldn’t rush to bake it again to be honest…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!

enjoy your cake