Valentine Chocolate Bliss Balls

It’s Valentine’s Day next Tuesday so you can make a batch of chocolate bliss balls! So simple to make and you can always coat them in chocolate once you have made the balls and put them in the fridge to set and then add your sprinkles to them. My boys loves this recipe with desiccated coconut as their favourite topping!

Ingredients: This mixture makes approx 28 balls.

• 6 x Tbsp Date Paste
• 1 – 2 x Tbsp coconut butter
• 5 – 6 x Tbsp oat flour
• 2 x Tbsp Cocoa
• 2 x Tbsp icing sugar

Different Toppings Suggestions: Desiccated coconut, drinking chocolate powder, freeze-dried blueberry/strawberry powder, mixed seeds, chia seeds, the list is endless!

Method – Mix the dates paste with the coconut butter so that it is abit softer, then add the oat flour, icing sugar, and lastly the cocoa butter. You will need to use your hands to make the truffle mix and split it into small balls. If the mixture is too dry, add more coconut butter, if it is too wet, add more oat flour. The texture should be semi-firm but still soft enough to stick the toppings on. With your small balls, roll them into the toppings of your choice and then place them in your fridge to set (1 – 2 hours) and then enjoy!

Happy Chinese New Year – RABBIT 2023

Chinese New Year has come extremely early this year as it is on Sunday 22nd January, normally, it is around February time. So, it is the year of the Rabbit and I was looking for some bakes with a rabbit theme. I came across this blog and thought it was an easy recipe to follow.

My rabbits look like little mice as they didn’t look as plumped, still cute though! It took more time to shape the bunnies and ears and decorating than to make the actual mixture itself! All the ingredients can be found at home in your store cupboard so the only thing you might need to buy is some red food coloring gel to make the pink dough. Also, I didn’t use chocolate for the eyes as I have got some edible ink pens to draw the faces.

Ingredients – 360g Plain Flour, 150g Caster Sugar, 227g soft butter, 1 egg, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1/4 tsp of salt, and red/pink food coloring gel. Edible ink pens or writing icing pens.

Method: Cream the butter and sugar until soft and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract to make the mixture smooth in your mixer. Add the salt to the plain flour and then add this to your mixture. Turn the dough out and knead gently until it is smooth. If the dough is too sticky or soft, put it in the fridge for 15 minutes so that it is easier to handle. Take 1 tablespoon of the dough and add a few drops of the red gel to make the mixture pink. These are for the ears.

I used a tablespoon of the dough per rabbit and shaped it like a pear and then with the pink dough, I rolled it into a string to make the tiny ears. It is quite fiddly trying to stick the ears on the rabbit. When you have made the rabbits, put them in your fridge for about 15 minutes and preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4 – 180c, and bake for 15 minutes. Let it cool and then afterward you can decorate the face with edible pens/icing pens and enjoy! 🙂

Happy Chinese New Year to all my family and friends!! Wishing you all good health and happiness for 2023!!!

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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July 21 – Veg Dish – Vegetable Lasagna

I really like lasagnas, when I go to Italian restaurants, I always order a pasta bake or lasagnas! I don’t like making lasagnas because I find it too fiddley! You have to make two different sauces and then when it comes to assembling it, I never know which order to do it! We have found the best lasagna to buy is from Lidl, (meat version), the texture is really nice, not soggy and it has alot of beef! It’s one of our favourite dish to eat for our dinner!

My brother in law made us a veggie lasagna a couple of months ago and it was really delicious so I asked where he got the recipe from. He got it from the BBC Food’s website. I love it when it says ‘preparation time is less than 30 minutes’ as in reality, it took me over 40 minutes to prepare everything, I must be an extremely slow chopper! LOL!

I followed this recipe and the lasagna was huge!! The only difference with this set of instructions, I put the spinach right at the bottom rather than mixing it in with all the other vegetables. I found that I didn’t have enough layers as per the instructions, I am not sure whether it was because my oven dish was too big so I didn’t have enough fillings to make up the layer! I always don’t know how to do the layering and get confused with the instructions! my husband rightly said to me, why I didn’t check it out on youtube! LOL! Next time!

The veggie lasagna was delicious, power packed with all the vegetables and extremely filling and we had leftovers for the next day! Took me ages to make so maybe I would make this again if we are having friends round because it is a nice dish to share! 🙂

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