Coconut Oil Chocolate Chip Cookies

I had a jar of coconut oil that I needed to use before it goes out of date so I was looking up recipes online and found one from Chef Savvy’s blog. This recipe was really easy to follow and most of the basic ingredients you would have in your store cupboards! With her recipe, I would probably reduce the sugar as it was quite sweet already with the chocolate chips. I chilled my dough in the fridge for an hour as we didn’t want a thin biscuit.

In the end, we managed to make 21 cookies, rather than only making 12 cookies! There was only a slight hint of coconut that you can taste but it is more dominated by the chocolate so you can’t really detect it! Very delicious! 🙂

Ingredients:

• Half cup of coconut oil (not melted)
• Half a cup of light brown sugar ( I would use a quarter cup)
• A quarter cup of granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 x tsp vanilla extract
• 1 x tsp baking soda
• 1 and a half cup of plain flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Half cup of chocolate chips (1 packet – 100g)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to GM4. Add the coconut oil and both the sugars into your mixer and mix for 1 – 2 minutes.
2. Add the vanilla and egg. In another bowl, add flour, baking soda and salt and mix it to combine.
3. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture in 2 parts. Fold in the chocolate chips.
4. Portion your cookies, I just used a small ice cream scoop so they are all in the same size.
5. For thicker cookies, chill them in the fridge for 1-2 hours or you can bake them straight away.
6. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes, allow them to cool for a couple of minutes and transfer them over to the wire rack to cool completely. You can store them in an airtight container for 3-5 days or freeze for up to 3-4 months. You can store them raw as well from step 4 and let them come to room temperature before baking them. Enjoy!

Baked Blueberry Cheesecake – Gemma Stafford

I was super excited to receive Gemma Stafford’s Bigger Bolder Baking cookbook as one of my Xmas presents as I have been following her blog and podcast since last year! For one of our family gatherings in Jan, I wanted to make something special for our dessert and I haven’t made a baked cheesecake in years as I have always made the chilled one!

She is based in America and for her cheesecake base, she uses ‘Graham Crackers’, I used digestive biscuits instead and I have made a few adjustments to her recipe. This was really easy to make and it was super rich and delicious! The blueberry cheesecake turned out much bigger than I expected, I thought it was going to come out of my tin when it was baking! lol! The texture is very much like the New York Cheesecake, very smooth and creamy! Really yummy and indulgent! A special bake for a party/friends/family gathering!

Ingredients:

• 200g digestive biscuit crumbs
• 85g melted butter
• 3 x 250g tubs of cream cheese softened
• 200g sugar
• 1 x tbsp vanilla extract
• Grated zest of 1 lemon and juice
• 5 x eggs
• 35g plain flour
• 200g blueberries
• Whipped cream for serving (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to GM4 – 180 degrees
2. In a medium bowl, mix the cookie crumbs and butter and press into a 9 -inch springform pan. Chill for 30 minutes to set.
3. Use your stand mixer, beat the cream cheese and sugar on high speed until smooth. Add the vanilla, lemon zest and juice and beat until combined.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing each until fully blended. Add the flour and fold in the blueberries.
5. Pour the mixture on top of your cookie base and bake for 1 hour and 40 minutes or until the cheesecake is set but still jiggles slightly in the middle. If the top is getting too brown, cover with foil. Leave to cook completely and then put it in your fridge for a few hours to firm up. You can serve this with whipped cream. Store in the fridge, covered, for up to 4 days.

Carrot Cake – Rachel Allen

It was my mum’s birthday last month and I know one of her favourite cakes is the ‘Carrot Cake’. This recipe is from Rachel Allen’s Bake cookbook and it is really simple to make! The longest task was grating all the carrots! I think for next time if I am making a carrot cake, I will just buy the grated carrots in the packets from the supermarkets as I hate grating! :p

For the icing, I would use halve the quantities from the below as suggested from her book as I had so much icing leftover, that there was enough to make another carrot cake! You can also use the icing to decorate your cupcakes.

Ingredients:

• 2 x eggs
• 140ml sunflower/vegetable oil
• 200g soft light brown sugar
• 300g grated carrots
• 100g raisins
• 75g pecan/walnuts chopped up (optional)
• 180g Self-raising flour sieved
• Half teaspoon of bio carbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• Half teaspoon nutmeg
• Half teaspoon of mixed spice
• Pinch of salt

For the Icing (if you don’t want too much icing, then use half of the quantities below):

• 250g cream cheese (from the fridge)
• 50g butter softened
• 1 x tsp vanilla extract
• Zest of 1 orange
• 275g icing sugar sieved

Method:

1. Line the loaf tin and preheat the oven to GM2 at 150 degrees.
2. Whisk the egg first and then add the oil. Pour in the sugar and mix with the carrots, raisins and chopped nuts.
3. Sift in the dry ingredients and bring the mixture together.
4. Pour into the loaf tin and bake for an hour and 15 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean with no crumbs.
5. Leave in the tin to cool for about 5 minutes and then pop it onto a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Make the icing by beating the cream cheese and butter until soft, then add the icing sugar, vanilla extract and orange zest and mix to combine. Once the cake is cooled, spread the icing. It should be smooth and thick. Cut into slices to serve.

Valentine’s biscuits!

Slightly late writing this post as Valentine’s Day was on Monday! But with this recipe, you can make it on any occasion and with any biscuit cutter shape. I wanted to make something with the boy as it’s half term this week and they love homemade biscuits! Gingerbread man is their favourite, I swear they can eat a whole batch of it in one go!!

This is really quick to make, especially when you are doing this last minute as most of the ingredients you should have in your cupboards already. The boys had fun rolling out their hearts and enjoy putting alot of sprinkles! Let’s just say, the biscuits were very very sweet!! 🙂

Ingredients: 175g soft butter, 100g caster sugar, 1 egg beaten, pinch of salt, 1 x tsp vanilla extract and 300g plain flour, plus extra for rolling out.

For decorating, you can use 150g icing sugar and mix with 1-2 x Tbsp of water and any sprinkles.

Method:

1. Place the butter and sugar in a large bowl and beat together until ilight and fluffy. Whisk the egg and vanilla in a separate bowl and mix it with the butter and sugar mixture. Sift in the flour and salt to forma dough. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes.
2. Preheat the over to GM4, line your tins. Roll the dough out on a floured surface and cut out your shapes. Bake for 15 – 20 minutues or until they are golden brown. Leave to cool in wire racks.
3. Sif the icing sugar into a bowl and add some water and mix until smooth. You can also add 1 x tsp of vanilla extract into your icing. You can then use different food colourings to make your biscuits really colourful or you can just add the different sprinkles. The biscuits are quite sturdy to hold so you can even dip them in melted chocolate if you want to be really indulgent! Leave to dry and then enjoy! 🙂

Homemade Vanilla Extract

I always use Vanilla Extract in my bakes and sometimes even when the recipe doesn’t list it, I would still add 1 teaspoon. In my cupboards, I tend to have several bottles of vanilla extract, I never understand why they don’t sell it in a big bottle!

Last August, I saw on Gemma’s blog that you can make homemade vanilla extract with just 2 ingredients! I thought it was a complicated process but when I read her blog post, it couldn’t be simpler! I was amazed how easy this was to make, it is just a matter of really waiting for the vanilla pods to be absorbed. You can visit her blog as she gives you methods of how you make other flavoured extracts.

All you need to buy is a probably 5- 6 vanilla pods, split them in the middle to open up the seeds and then get a bottle with a tight cap/lid and pour the vodka in! It will be a clear mixture but as the weeks goes by, you will see the colour change and it will be a nice brown colour! Shake the bottle a few times during the week to mix it and the vanilla extract will be ready to used to in about 6 week’s time! I was really surprised that it was made of vodka!! My vanilla extract is now ready to use so I can’t wait to try the flavour!

After 8 weeks, I tried it and you can definitely still taste the vodka which was pretty strong! I thought how can this be used to bake but found online that the alcohol would just burn off when the mixture is being baked. So, I tried this with my favorite banana cake recipe and it’s true, you can’t taste the vodka!! The cake was delicious! Can’t believe I made my own vanilla extract with vodka!!

Sausage, Chorizo with Halloumi and Roasted Peppers

Nigella is one of my favourite cook author and I have purchased many of her cooking books! One of my favourite recipe is from her ‘Nigella Express’ book is the ‘Merguez with Halloumi and Flame -Roasted Peppers’. This is such a simple dish to make and prep so I always make sure that I have a jar of roasted peppers in my pantry and have the halloumi and chorizo in my fridge as they have a longer fridge life. I remembered when I first looked at this recipe, I couldn’t find any Merguez which is a spicy sausage so I used Chorizo instead and include a few pork sausages in the dish as well as we love our meats! 🙂 I have made a few adjustments to her recipe.

Ingredients: 1 chorizo sliced up, 6 – 8 pack of sausages of your choice, 1 block of Halloumi cheese, 1 jar of Roasted Red Peppers and 2 x tbs of oil, 1 x tsp lazy garlic, 1 x tsp of mixed herbs and 1 x tsp oregano.

Method:

1. Preheat the oven the Gas Mark 7 and put all the sausages in a big roasting tin with the oil. Cook for approx. 10 minutes so that the sausages are abit browned.
2. Cut the halloumi in to 5mm slices and lay them around the sausages, take the peppers out and put them around the cheese and sausages. You might want to cut them into smaller pieces and drizzle the oil on top of everything and sprinkle all the herbs.
3. Cook for 20 minutes or until when the sausages is cooked. Serve with some crusty bread and salad.

Sometimes, I add some boiled potatoes in the tin and roast them with all the other ingredients. Makes the dish more filling and we have this with bread because there are a lot of juices. We normally have left overs for the next day, and it taste even better as all the flavours are absorbed.

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4 Ingredients – Cheesy Biscuits

We always make sweet biscuits at home, normally ones with chocolate! I saw a post from Gemma’s blog and she made cheese biscuits with her son so I thought we can try out her recipe as I have got all the ingredients at home! Something to make on a rainy day! 🙂

You only need 4 ingredients which are cold butter (115g), grated cheese (225g), plain flour (282g) and water (3-4tbsp). You put all the dry ingredients first in the food processor and add enough water until it turns into a dough. Then, wrap it with clingfilm put it in the fridge to chill for 20 minutes or so. We didn’t have the gold fish cutter so we used cutters that we had at home! Roll the dough as thinly as possible on a floured surface, ours was a bit thick! Cut them out and bake in the oven for 20 minutes until it is golden and crisp at GM4.

What was the outcome? They didn’t like it!!! Typical, they love to eat cheese in their food but not in a biscuit, their response was ‘it’s too cheesy!!’. I must admit, I am not a big fan of savory biscuits but they tasted really light and fluffy. Not sure if they were meant to be crunchy as my batch was quite soft, I think our dough was quite thick! We probably made around 25 biscuits or so which was alot to eat between me and my husband and i did not fancy having it the whole week! Luckily, I was able to give some of the cheese biscuits to my friends as their kids liked it! At least i tried so sweet biscuits next time! 🙂

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Oct 21 – Vegetarian Dish – Beetroot and Feta Pasta

I have been quite lazy lately with learning new vegetarian dishes and cooking the usual food for our ‘once a week veggie’ day like jacket potatoes with tuna or seafood pasta etc.

In my Good Food Magazine, August edition, I saw a recipe using beetroots, I only really eat beetroots in salads and the ones that I buy in the supermarkets are already diced or pickled. I have never used a raw beetroot before so it is a challenge!!! 🙂 I wonder what our kids would think of it as it would pink pasta! 🙂 I can’t wait to see what it turns out like!

Ingredients – 2 x large beetroots, peeled and chopped into chunks, 1 x tbsp olive oil, 2 x onions finely chopped, 4 x celery sticks, finely chopped, 4 x carrots, peeled and finely chopped, 1 small bunch of basil, 2 x garlic cloves finely chopped, 400g wholemeal pasta, 75g of creme fraiche and 100g feta.

Method:

1. Boil the beetroot in a pan of salted water for 5 minutes and use a slotted spoon to take the beetroot out and leave the water aside.
2. Put the olive oil in a large frying pan, add the onions, celery and carrots and cook for 8 mins until softened. Finely chopped the basil stalks and celery tops, and add the garlic and fry for a 1 minute.
3. Tip the pasta in the same water that you used to cook the beetroot and cook the pasta for about 20 mins. Drain and reserve 200ml of the pasta water and tip the pasta back into the pan.
4. Meanwhile, put the beetroot with half of the vegetables, most of basil leaves and crème fraiche into a food processor. Blitz until smooth and add the reserved pasta water to make into a thick mixture.
5. Stir this sauce through the pasta and add the remaining vegetables and season. Divide it up and crumble over some feta cheese on top and scatter with the remaining basil leaves. Enjoy!

It was nothing like I have made in the past, even Dan raised his eyebrow when he saw the dish and Gray kept asking why is it pink!! Lol! It was very delicious and felt extremely healthy to eat!! The pasta sauce is quite thick but really sweet! We had plenty for leftovers and it was more flavorsome the next day!! I would definitely be making this again!! It was just alotnof chopping required!

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Sept 21 – Veg Dish – Chinese Steamed Eggs

From my childhood and still now, steamed eggs has always been a family favourite dish to eat at dinner time. My boys love it too when their ‘Por-Por’ (grandmother) makes it! I have asked my mum for the recipe! It is actually really simple but sometimes it’s still and a hit and miss when cooking it!! Even my mum sometimes messes up the cooking time!!

It basically has 3 ingredients, eggs, milk and water!! Use 3 x eggs and mix it in a measuring jug, then pour warm water approx. 100ml and top it up with milk so that the whole mixture measures up to approx. 400ml. Stir everything and pour into a metal pot for steaming, you can add a pinch of salt to it if you want. My mum’s tip is to make sure the water is boiling hot like bubbling before you pour the eggs in. Steam for 5 minutes on the maximum gas setting, I would normally steam this for 10 minutes and then switch it off and leave the lid on for awhile so that the eggs can set. The eggs should have a bit of a wobble when you take it out and looks set at the top. If it is still liquidly, then steam for another 5 minutes. Add some light soya sauce on top and serve with your other dishes and boiled rice. Also, you can add chopped up spring onions on top but i just leave it plain for the boys!

My boys love this dish as this is their favourite and can eat the whole dish between the two of them!! This is the only ‘Chinese’ dish that I can make from scratch! I know how to cook more ‘Filipino’ dishes!! Although, I am hoping to explore more Chinese cooking in the future as I have got a few cookbooks! 🙂

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Japanese Curry Mix

I went to an Oriental Food shop and I love browsing all the different sauces and mixes as there are so many flavors to explore. Also, I especially love looking at their snacks and sweets. I can spend alot of money as I can’t help myself!

I only had a Japanese curry dish a handful of times in the past and remembered it being a sweet taste rather than a hot Indian curry taste which is spicy!

I brought this Japanese Curry mix for £2.50, I didn’t realise you had to use the whole block! I thought inside would be lots of cubes like when you buy your usual chicken/veg stock. It was a thick block so I guess it would be very flavorsome.

All you need is potatoes, beef, carrots and onions and serve it with boiled rice! I accidently threw the packaging away and I can’t quite remember the exact instructions!! But, it is written on the back of the packaging and from what I can remember, it was really easy to make! Just lots of chopping initially, frying the beef first and then adding all the vegetables with some water and then adding the stock right at the end. It probably took about 30-40 mins to make. It was strange though because I thought you would add the stock first to get the deeper flavoring but it was right at the end that you would do it! I didn’t add anything else to it at all!

The curry was very delicious and the sauce was not too thick or thin. The flavour tasted really authentic so am really pleased with this brand and definitely be buying this again!

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