Category Archives: Recipes

Mince Pie Cake

A great way to use that left over mincemeat that you’re never sure what to do with.

Ingredients

  • 70g brown sugar, soft
  • 50g butter
  • 150g self raising flour
  • 1 egg
  • splosh of rum or whiskey, or whatever tipple you fancy
  • 100g mincemeat (you can add more depending on consistency of cake mixture)

Method

Preheat oven to 160°C

Mix the butter, sugar and rum (or alternative) together.

Add the flour and egg, and then finally add the mincemeat. Add more mincemeat so the mixture is firm but still sticky.

Add to a greased tin or silicone container.

Spread a thin layer of mincemeat over the top.

Bake for 30 mins. (But keep checking, might need more or less, depending on your oven).

Mmmm. Enjoy.

Pineapple and Banana Cake

Ingredients

  • 50g butter
  • 75g brown sugar
  • 150g self-raising flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1 banana, mashed
  • Slices or chunks of pineapple to top with (fresh or tinned in juice – thoroughly dried with kitchen paper)
  • A couple of generous dollops of golden syrup

Method

Preheat oven to about 180°C.

Mix butter and sugar together to form a paste. Add the banana, egg, and flour and mix thoroughly.

Turn out into either a pre-greased cake tin or a silicon one.

Top with pineapple, and a liberal dosing of golden syrup

Cook for about 30 minutes, but turn after 15 minutes and keep checking.

Allow to cool in the tin, and then turn out.

Lock the doors, close the curtains, hide behind the sofa and enjoy.

Chocolate and Banana Cookies

Ingredients

  • 115g butter, melted
  • 40g sugar
  • 40g banana milkshake powder
  • 250g self-raising flour
  • 100ml golden syrup
  • 150g chocolate left in large squares

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4.

Mix the butter, banana powder and sugar together.

Add the remainder of the ingredients. If the mixture isn’t very stiff, add more flour.

Form into balls and place on either a greased baking tray or silicon sheet. There should be one piece of chocolate to each ball. (Or put extra in if you’re feeling abundant…)

Bake for about 10 minutes – but feel free to keep checking, hey, every oven’s different.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool for a few minutes, the chocolate will still be melted and the biscuits will be warm. Serve with a glass of milk.

Bean and Pear Pie

Ingredients

  • Filo pastry
  • Beans – mixture of butter beans, cannellini beans, lentils, black turtle beans, anything you can find
  • 2-3 pears, chopped
  • Aubergine, chopped
  • Onion, chopped
  • Cream cheese
  • Milk
  • Sesame seeds
  • Spices and herbs (I used mint and ground coriander, but whatever you fancy is fine)
  • Vegetable stock cube

Method

Preheat the oven to about 180°C.

Mix vegetables and cheese in a pan, heat gently and add the stock cube and a splash of milk. Mix together to make a creamy sauce. Once the sauce is made you can turn the heat up a bit (but not too much) until it starts to bubble.

Once the vegetables are slightly sloftened, pour into a casserole dish.

Separate the filo sheets. Hold one by a corner, and with the sheet on the work surface, start turning the pastry so that it twists into a loose rose shape. Put on top of the mixture in the casserole dish. Repeat for all of the sheets of filo until the whole mixture is covered in pastry.

Sprinkle over the seeds.

Cook for about 20 minutes or until the pastry is nicely browned. (Keep an eye on it though!)

Yorkshire Cake

Ingredients

  • Strong cup of tea (Assam would do nicely)
  • 100g mixed dried fruit (raisins, cherries etc)
  • 50g butter
  • 75g brown sugar
  • 150g self-raising flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1tsp ground mixed spices (allspice, cinnamon, ginger, or whatever you like)

Method

Pour the cuppa over the mixed fruit and leave to soak for about 12 hours.

Preheat oven to about 180°C.

Drain the fruit but reserve the tea, just in case.

Add the fruit to a large bowl, chuck in the rest of the ingredients and mix well. If the mixture seems quite dry,  add the tea a tablespoon at a time until the consistency is stiff but cakey, rather than biscuity.

Turn out into either a pre-greased cake tin or a silicon one.

Cook for about 40 minutes, but turn after 15 minutes and keep checking.

Allow to cool in the tin, and then turn out.

Ideal to serve to friends with a cuppa, and some good conversation. Enjoy.

Roasted ‘Gettes with Chestnuts

This makes a nice side dish, great for barbecues – and helps to prevent the vegetarians feeling like they’ve been forgotten. It’s also an interesting filling for baked potatoes.

Ingredients

  • Courgettes, sliced as thinly as you can
  • Chestnuts (the vacuum packed sort are perfect)
  • Olive oil
  • Sherry or balsamic vinegar, whichever you have
  • Ground coriander,
  • Smoked paprika
  • Dill
  • Oregano
  • Lime juice

Method

Chuck it all in a casserole dish, stir it up and cook it on a low-ish heat, about 150°C until tender.

Thursday Night Pasta

Yummy comfort food – and even better, it’s super quick!

Ingredients

  • Pasta, cooked
  • tin of chopped tomatoes
  • mozzarella ball
  • 70g smoked cheese
  • herbs to taste
  • smoked paprika
  • ground chillies
  • coarsely ground black pepper

Method

Once the pasta is cooked and drained, return to the pan, roughly chop the cheese and add to the pasta, reheat and add the tomatoes and the rest of the ingredients except for the black pepper.

Heat through. When piping hot, share between plates and sprinkle with black pepper, and a some fresh herbs if you’re feeling fancy.

Peanut Hotpot with Couscous

Ingredients

  • Aubergine
  • sweetcorn
  • onion
  • pepper, chopped
  • allspice
  • peanut butter
  • chilli powder
  • 2 vegetable stock cubes
  • water
  • tinned chopped tomatoes
  • tomato purée
  • carrots
  • herbs to your taste
  • couscous

Method

Chop the vegetables and cook together with some boiling water and the stock cubes in a large pan until slightly softened.

Add the tomato purée and tinned tomatoes along with the peanut butter, herbs and spices. Gently simmer.

Add boiling water sparingly to the coucous and then gently fry, this makes the coucous light and fluffy and not stodgy and heavy.

Serve together with maybe some fresh bread.

Banana Curry

Ingredients

  • Small aubergine, chopped
  • 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
  • Can of coconut milk
  • 1 dessert apple, chopped
  • 4 bananas, sliced
  • 100-200g cashew nuts
  • Turmeric
  • Cumin
  • Dried chillies
  • Pint of vegetable stock
  • A little oil for frying

Method

Lightly fry the onions and cashew nuts. When the nuts are browned, add the remainder of the ingredients, and the spices to taste.

This is a remarkably quick meal to make, once you’ve chopped the vegetables. If your curry is too runny, you can thicken it with flour (any type will do).

Serve with rice and/or flatbread.

Figger Rolls

Ah, fiendishly simple, and unlike the shop-bought fig roll originals, these babies aren’t getting any smaller! Hurrah!

Ingredients

  • Filo pastry
  • Dried figs
  • Black treacle, honey or golden syrup, you choose.

Method

Preheat the oven to about 180°C.

Open out the filo pastry. Chop the figs and sparingly add the treacle/honey/syrup – make a thick paste.

Spread the mixture over the pastry, and roll up.

Cut into slices.

Place on a greased or silicone baking tray and bake until crispy. Put the timer on for 12 minutes, and keep checking after that until they’re done to perfection.

Get a glass of milk, crack open the Ker-plunk and enjoy!

Almond, Fig and Orange Cake

Ingredients

  • 175g butter (softened)
  • 175g brown sugar plus extra for topping
  • 225g self-raising flour
  • 2 eggs
  • Vanilla essence/extract
  • 8 dried figs, chopped into little bits
  • 1 orange, grate the zest and slice the rest
  • 150g marzipan, cut into chunks
  • Carton of double cream
  • 2tbsp honey

Method

Preheat the oven to about 160°C

Mix the flour,  sugar, butter and eggs with some vanilla extract/essence and the figs, marzipan, and orange zest.

Spread into a cake tin (grease if they’re not silicon).

Top with the sliced orange.

Bake for about 40mins  (but remember to keep checking). When you think it might be done poke a fork into the middle; if it comes out clean of cake mixture, it’s about done (but there’s no substitute for common sense and a trained eye!).

While it’s cooking, whizz the cream and honey together.

When the cake is cooked, allow to cool for a few minutes before attempting to remove from the tin.

Serve with the honey cream, and put your feet up.

Baked Squash

This is a tasty little side dish and has a variety of textures; it looks good, and tastes expensive.

Ingredients

  • 1 butternut squash, in coarse chunks
  • 1tbsp peanut butter
  • 2tbsp honey
  • 1tbsp olive oil or groundnut oil, or similar
  • Liberal scattering of seeds (I use a combination of poppy, sunflower and pumpkin seeds)
  • Spices (cumin, ground coriander, chilli powder or flakes)

Method

Mix them all together in a casserole dish, and bake for about 40 mins or until tender. Every 10-15 minutes, check it’s doing OK, and give it a stir round to coat the squash with the honey, oil and peanut butter.

Serve it with pretty much anything.

Cranberry Sauce

There’s nothing like proper cranberry sauce – and this stuff is dead easy to make and tastes expensive! Buy a punnet of cranberries, it will make a lot of sauce, but it seems to be OK frozen if there’s a surplus (but maybe use it up before the next year’s festivities!) It takes a while to do, but it’s low maintenance,  so get it started and have it bubbling away at the back of the stove while you start chopping the veggies.

Ingredients

  • Fresh cranberries
  • Red wine
  • Apple juice
  • Spices, such as cinnamon, allspice, freshly ground black pepper, chilli powder (if you’re feeling fiesty)

Method

Put the cranberries into a pan, add a fair old slosh of red wine and about the same of apple juice – enough for the berries to be bobbing around in it, chuck in the spices as well, to taste. Put on a low heat and allow to bubble away with the lid on until there isn’t much liquid left, then add another slosh of wine and apple juice. Keep adding the wine and juice as required.

Eventually the cranberries will have exploded and become soft, and the liquid will become more like sauce and less like punch. By the time it’s done, it’s likely that you’ll have used almost half a bottle of wine, and about the same volume of apple juice.

Serve it with anything you like.

Chunky Oaty Biscuits with things in

Ingredients

  • 100g ReadyBrek (or ground oats)
  • 100g butter (softened)
  • 100g sugar
  • 100g brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • A generous dash of vanilla extract (or essence)
  • 120g self-raising flour
  • 200g of things to put in the biscuits – plain nutty chocolate is nice, or chunks of fudge, or whatever you fancy

Method

Preheat the oven to about 190ºC.

Mix all the ingredients together.

Form into balls, and place on either a greased baking tray or a silicone one.

Cook for about 12 minutes, but do keep checking after about 8 minutes.

Resist the temptation to eat them before they’re cool.

OK, now you can eat them.

Desert Island Cake

Just make sure you go to the gym first.

Ingredients

  • 175g butter (softened)
  • 175g sugar
  • 260g self-raising flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 bananas – mash 2 with some rum, reserve the remaining banana for the topping
  • 150g or thereabout of dark chocolate
  • Raisins soaked overnight in rum
  • 1 carton of double cream
  • 1 small can of coconut cream
  • 100g desiccated coconut

Method

Preheat the oven to about 150°C

Mix the flour,  sugar, butter and eggs with the raisins, bananas and chocolate.

Spread into a cake tin (grease if they’re not silicon).

Slice the remaining half banana and arrange on the top of the cake.

Bake for about 40mins  (but remember to keep checking). When you think it might be done poke a fork into the middle; if it comes out clean of cake mixture, it’s about done (but there’s no substitute for common sense and a trained eye!).

Whip up the cream, coconut cream and desiccated coconut altogether.

When the cake is cooked, allow to cool for a few minutes before attempting to remove from the tin.

Serve with the delicious coconut cream.

Try not to think about how many calories you just ate.

Toffee Apple Cake

Ingredients

  • 175g butter (softened)
  • 175g brown sugar plus extra for topping
  • 260g self-raising flour
  • 2 eggs
  • Vanilla essence/extract
  • 2 apples (Cox’s are best) (slice one for the topping and peel and grate the other)
  • Handful of chunks of dairy fudge
  • Raisins/sultanas
  • Lemon (grate the zest, and reserve juice)
  • 1tsp Allspice

Method

Preheat the oven to about 160°C

Mix the flour,  sugar, butter and eggs with some vanilla extract/essence and the fudge, raisins/sultanas, grated apple, allspice, and most of the lemon zest (reserve some for the topping).

Spread into a cake tin (grease if they’re not silicon).

Top with the sliced apple, remainder of the zest, and sprinkle liberally with brown sugar.

Bake for about 40mins  (but remember to keep checking). When you think it might be done poke a fork into the middle; if it comes out clean of cake mixture, it’s about done (but there’s no substitute for common sens and a trained eye!).

When the cake is cooked, allow to cool for a few minutes before attempting to remove from the tin (particularly if its a loose-bottom tin, they’re lethal).

It’s fine to eat as it is (particularly still hot from the oven), but it’s also nice with some rum or brandy cream…

Blackberry and Apple Crumble

Ingredients

  • Flour (I used self-raising)
  • Butter
  • Brown sugar
  • Blackberries
  • Bramley apple
  • Allspice or ground cloves (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to about 180°C or thereabouts.

Grease the bottoms of your dishes, and spread the blackberries out in them. Peel and chop the apple and add over the top.

Make the crumble topping: the amount of fruit and personal taste will determine how much crumble you need. General rule is you use twice as much flour as butter and sugar. Add the spice in as well  – it makes for a particularly autumnal taste.

Spread the crumble over the fruit, sprinkle with brown sugar on the top.

Bake in the oven for about 40 minutes; different ovens vary, so keep checking – when browned on top and you can hear the fruit bubbling, it’s ready to eat!