Gammon with an egg

A nice tasty meal of gammon steak, veg and home-made potato wedges. Lovely served with a poached or fried egg on top.

Bacon and vegetable stir fry

One of those meals you make from stuff that's in the fridge, "Ready, Steady Cook stylee".  Bacon and cabbage is a classic combo so why not make a meal of it?

This is a combination of bacon, stir fried with lightly cooked green beans and broccoli, onion, garlic and finely sliced cabbage.

Add a little soy sauce or maybe oyster sauce for a nice savoury kick and enjoy.

A stir fry always seems to make a huge plateful......suits me!

Christmas Mincemeat Cupcakes

Christmas Mincemeat Cupcakes 
Ingredients

175g self raising Flour

100g light muscovado sugar or light brown sugar

1tsp mixed Spice

175g butter, softened

3 eggs

2tbsp milk

140g mincemeat

Icing sugar to dust or to make icing with

Sprinkle if you like

Heat your oven to 190ºC  Gas 5 . Line a 12 bun cake tin with cake cases. 

Put the flour, sugar, butter, spice eggs and milk in a bowl and mix with electric mixer or wooden spoon for 2-3 mins until light and fluffy. 

Put a spoonful of cake mix in each cake case then a rounded tsp of mincemeat. Cover the mincemeat with a spoonful of cake mix and smooth. 

Bake for 15-18 mins until golden brown and firm. Dust with Icing sugar and serve.

I made glace icing for mine, just add a tiny amount of cold water at a time to icing sugar until it is the thickness you like.  Top the cakes and add the sprinkles before it sets.

Soup

Here's three simple soups that I made back in December.  Great for taking to work for lunch.

 Leek and Potato

For this I put onion, leek and potato into a pan of stock, brought to the boil, simmered until the veg were soft and blitzed with a hand blender.  season to taste and enjoy.

Butternut Squash

Similarly, put chopped butternut squash (no need to peel if you don't want to), carrots and onion into the pan with stock. Simmer until soft and blitz with the hand blender.  season and enjoy.

Add chilli or curry powder for a different flavour.

Tomato

Nice and quick, just put tinned tomatoes or a jar of passata into the pan with stock and onion.  Add garlic if you like.  Cook until soft and blitz as before.

Nice with the addition of peppers from a jar (the ones in vinegar), or chilli or ginger.  Herbs like basil are good too, if they are fresh ones, add add the end just before blitzing.

Braised steak dinner

Here's a comforting dish, rich and tasty with tender beef, creamy mash and peppery turnip. (Actually swede, but it's turnip where I come from!)

I use braising steak for this dish, trimmed of fat, lightly browned and placed in a casserole with lightly fried onions and mushrooms.  Add stock, I use one or two oxo cubes, but you can use whatever stock you prefer, season and add herbs if you fancy them eg thyme.

Cover and cook for about 1-1½ hours at about 180ºC Gas 4, until the meat is tender.  You can also do this in a slow cooker, just leave it on low, while you slave away at work!

Once it's cooked, I like to thicken the gravy, use gravy granules or cornflour to do this.

Enjoy.

Turkey Soup

What would the post Christmas period be without Turkey Soup.

Everyone makes it differently and with different ingredients, and what does it matter?  Use up the veg you have left, maybe a tin of tomatoes an add some pulses like lentils and the leftover turkey and "Bob's your uncle".

How virtuous do you feel eating this after the Christmas period?

Amazing Cadbury's Creme Egg Brownies

185g unsalted butter 

185g best dark chocolate
85g plain flour
40g cocoa powder
3 large eggs
275g golden caster sugar
6 Cadbury’s Crème eggs cut in half.

Preheat the oven to 160C and grease a 20 cm square baking tin.

Melt the butter and dark chocolate together either in the microwave or in a bowl over boiling water.

Break 3 large eggs into a large bowl and tip in 275g golden caster sugar. With an electric mixer on maximum speed, whisk the eggs and sugar until they look thick and creamy, like a milk shake. This can take 3-8 minutes. You will know it's ready when the mixture becomes really pale and about double its original volume.

Pour the cooled chocolate mixture over the eggy mousse, and then gently fold together.

Hold a sieve over the bowl of eggy chocolate mixture and sift the cocoa and flour mixture, shaking the sieve from side to side, to cover the top evenly. Gently fold in to the mixture.

Pour into the baking tin and cook for 15 minutes then take out of the over and gently press the Cadburys crème egg halves into the mix, spacing them apart evenly. Put back in the over for another 5-10 minutes.

Leave to cool before removing from tin and cutting into square