Blog Archives
Halloween Hamburgers and Hot Chocolate Pudding
Can’t be bothered to make witches hair spaghetti or pumpkin soup from scratch?
I feel your pain.
If you want to nod your head towards Halloween for the children without the endless sweaty toil at a hot oven, and you’re not a totally organic lentil weaving wholefood maniac (not that I have anything against being a provider of decent food for the majority of the year), why not have a go at making some Halloween Hamburgers followed by some awesome hot chocolate for pudding?
Don’t panic, we’re not even going to MAKE the burgers from scratch. Oh no! Just buy some decent (or not, it’s your call) ones from the supermarket and cook them as you will. (I prefer frying – hence my gargantuan hips) While you’re doing that, pick up some of that extraordinarily orangey, bouncy processed cheese slices and some jacket potatoes. Chuck some whipped cream in a can, hot chocolate, mikado biscuits and a flake in your basket for good measure, oh! and a bottle of decent red wine.
About an hour before you’re going to put the burgers on, preheat the oven to gas mark 7 and place a roasting tray with some oil (olive or vegetable) in to heat up. Chop the potatoes into wedge shapes, soak in water, refresh, and dry throughly – for spicy wedges, dredge some cajun spice plus a little cayenne over the dried potatoes – before tipping the wedges into the roasting tray (stepping back to avoid fat spattering)
While the burgers are sizzling in the pan, or spluttering under the grill, get some of that amazingly awful cheese out of the fridge (although judging by the colour, texture and taste of the stuff you could probably keep it in a cupboard under the stairs for 40 years before it even started to think about going off) and push a cup into it to make a circle of plastic
Cheesy. If cheese were made from melted lego.
Let your creativity take you where it will – as long as that will is to make the cheese look like Jack O Lanterns.
You can eat those little cut out bits if you want. You probably DON'T want - but I bet you do it anyway
When the burgers are cooked, pop the little cheese pumpkins onto the top so they start to “melt” a bit (um this shit don’t melt, it just sweats a bit)
and serve with the potato wedges, some ketchup and maybe a veggie of some description – corn on the cob would be good, or a small tomato and cucumber salad..
Beefy, cheesy, easy
So for pudding?
If you can’t be arsed or don’t have the time to make my fabulous Halloween cupcakes then you can make an HAYMAZING hot chocolate drink which is laden with enough sweet stuff to class it as a pudding. (This always worked with my two when they were small – and still does the trick now when they’re ravenous teens)
My ingredients - Feel free to pick and choose and create your own family recipe
Choose your cups and fill three quarters full with milk. Transfer the milk into a jug and then pop it into the microwave. Adjust your settings according to how modern and fantastic your microwave is; mine is 1000000 watt (or thereabouts) and I give it about three minutes on high for three cups. You want the milk to be very hot but not boiling.
You can do this on the oven top - obviously. Also, my microwave needs cleaning.
While the milk heats up, place a couple of marshmallows (OMIGOD my homemade marshmallow would be frighteningly good in this) in the bottom of your cups.
One of each colour. We're gender neutral in this house
Once the milk is hot enough whisk your instant hot chocolate into the milk. I always add an extra teaspoon per person than the recipe on the side of the carton dictates.
Because this drink will also be a “pudding” feel free to add some extra chocolate at this point. I like to crumble some Flake into the mix, but have also used Bournville in the past or Mint Aero.
Hmmmmm
Whisk thoroughly again and then pour the hot chocolate liquid onto the marshmallowed cups
ZOMG!
The next bit needs to be completed quickly so get everything ready. You’ll need, the canned cream, the M&M’s, the mikado biscuits as “stirrer” and some flake to sprinkle on (You could use canned cream, malteasers and forget the “stirrer” – Just use whatever you have to hand) At this point open your bottle of red wine.
Quickly squirt the cream onto the hot chocolate it will start to sink immediately, so work fast…
SQUIRRT
Add decorations
The cream is sinking! SINKING ALREADY!
And serve.
*sigh*
An easy way to celebrate Halloween without the complicated recipes – what more do you want from me?
Oh yeah, pour a glass of your red wine into your fanciest glass…sniff…and take a sip. You deserve it.
Cola Cup Cakes and a longing for a Sodastream
I treated myself last week to the latest Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. Time was that a “treat” would have been something a bit more…hedonistic, but age appears to have caught up with me.
As Oliver was having some friends over for the day, and Tom was off to a birthday party for a couple of girlfriends (girls who are friends, yeah? Not girlfriends. *grunt*) I decided to kick off with their Cola Cupcakes.
Deliciousness
These cute and hyper sweet little beauties would make a good addition to any party (for adults and children alike) and would be especially great as part of a Willy Wonka Party
The addition of Cola Syrup is genius, and I managed to get hold of some very easily in my local supermarket alongside the Sodastreams. A Sodastream. Oh! how I longed for one when I was a child. The ten year old inside me (I mean my inner child as opposed to something entirely more disgusting) reached a sweaty paw out to add the Thing Of Wonder device to my shopping trolley. The 38 year old me simply looked at the price, and then at the cost of CO2 cylinders and slapped the ten year old round the face.
To reward the 38 year old me, and to punish the stupid profligate 10 year old me, I bought a flour sifter. That’s right. A FLOUR SIFTER. To be honest I should probably not be allowed out on my own with plastic money. I do hate sifting flour with a sieve though, it’s so time consuming and boring and annoying.
My lovely new flour sifter makes the job slightly less boring. So, eight quid well spent. *face*
BEHOLD!
I found the recipe fairly easy to follow – I was interested to find that there’s no creaming together of the butter and sugar, and instead the butter is added to the flour and sugar and mixed to a breadcrumb texture before having the wet ingredients added, but I decided to trust in the Hummingbird.
Different Method
I filled the baking cases with an ice cream scoop’s worth of batter (a brilliant tip from the book) and popped them into the oven.
Using an ice cream scoop ensures each case has the same amount of filing
The cakes emerged, after a little more baking time than recommended and were fluffy and looked almost fizzy.
I let the cakes go completely cold before attempting to ice them. I have learned, through bitter experience, that to do anything else is just a total waste of time.
So after about an hour of cooling, I iced the cakes with buttercream icing (with cola syrup) using a pallette knife. The results were a little rough around the edges, but I’m sure with practice I will get better at achieving a nice smooth finish.
Hmm. Need some practice
I decorated each cupcake with a cola bottle
Unbelievably tasty
Tom took cakes as small gifts for the girls throwing the party
Cake in box
and Oliver and his pals tucked in.
YUM!
They really were delicious. The sponge was light and yet satisfying and although the buttercream was sweet, it wasn’t jaw achingly so.
A new addiction is born, and on that note I am determined to bake every single recipe in the cookbook.
I will report back.
Triple Layer Coconut Cake with Lemon Filling and Boiled Icing. Sounds Dangerous.
I had a coconut left over from the Totally Tropical Beach Party.
I decided it would be a crying shame to let it go to waste and so off I went to google to find a recipe that used fresh coconut.
I stumbled upon this:http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/fresh-coconut-cake-with-a-lemon-cream-cheese-filling-and-boiled-icing-recipe/index.html and my saliva glands went into overdrive. I was frothing (and if you’ll read on you’ll see that frothing at the mouth is somewhat of a theme while making this mission of a cake)
So the morning dawned. It was a Sunday, but a special Sunday – It was a bank holiday which means that Sunday is actually Saturday and Saturday is like a Friday, but a Friday that you’ve booked off work.
ANYWAY.
I cracked open the coconut.
YUM!
It was rotten to the core.
That cake though, that sweet, sweet cake had burrowed it’s way into my brain and I was determined to make it. A rotten coconut was not going to beat me. Oh No.
So I went shopping and got some desiccated coconut.
This recipe is HARDCORE. It requires 3 layers of cake. This is a challenge for me as I only own two 8 inch tins, I do have a third tin which just about fits the bill but I was a bit nervous about not using matching tins. Honestly, my naivety at this point is, with hindsight, touching.
I preheated the oven (my oven needs to start at gas mark seven in order to ignite) and got on with creaming the butter and sugar together
That's a half cup of vegetable oil waiting to get into the mix
I continued on with the recipe. Adding flour, oil and buttercream to the mix
Cake Batter.
I then whipped the egg whites into stiff peaks before folding them into the batter (I’m starting to feel slightly pissed off by this point, this is the sort of recipe which requires the use of every single bowl and spoon in the kitchen)
FFS
I folded the egg whites into the batter and poured the mixture into the pre-prepared cake tins. Into the oven they go..
Have you turned down the heat?
I forgot to turn down the heat.
I’M COOKING THESE BABIES AT TWICE THE HEAT THEY SHOULD BE AT.
I didn’t even notice, I was so busy getting on with the next level of madness (the lemon and creamcheese filling) that it was only after about 10 minutes and a really STRONG smell of cake burning cooking that I realised my mistake.
This could have been a very different blog if I had waited even 3 minutes more, but with a quick application of tin foil and a swift reduction of the heat, I managed to salvage the situation. (I might have also said the word FUCKING FUCKKK about 17 times.)
Three is the magic number
I move onto the lemon filling. This goes without incident, and is butter, creamcheese, lemon zest and lemon juice whipped together.
The cakes are cooling and before I can spread the filling, I have to make the icing.
At this point I realise that I have to make a sugar syrup which is meant to then be whipped into stiffened egg whites. Brilliant. This recipe might as well ask me to conjure a a robot army out of the dirt in my back garden, FOR FUCK’S SAKE. This is also the moment that I realise that NOT reading recipes before embarking upon them can turn me into a snarling, slathering BitchBeast.
"Take your eyes off me for a moment...that's right..glance over there at something for a second...I'm going to BOIL OVER NOW! MWAHAHAHAHA"
After I had cleared up the unbelievably quick-cooling-dries-to-a-crack-glaze-all-over-the-hob sugar syrup and poured it, with fear in my heart, into the whipped egg whites I got on with filling and icing the cake.
The cakes could have done with cooling even more before adding the filling, hence the dripping
The icing is amazing, like a frothy cloud. Desiccated coconut added to decorate.
This cake weighs in at an impressive 955 calories per tenth of an 8 inch diameter cake.
Oh. My. Hips.
Ain't it beautiful though?
And it tasted like eating a coconut and lemon cloud of diabetes coma, ie: delicious.
What can we learn from this post? READ THE RECIPE, you idiot, and if it sounds too much like hard work, it probably is. (but this was totally worth it)
