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

Budapest Length or Budapest Roll

This month's theme for the Clandestine Cake Club was "cakes named after a place, or with a place name in the title".  I discounted the obvious such as Dundee Cake and Boston Cream Pie and set about finding something a little more unusual.

I used a recipe I found on a Swedish website, translated by google.

This is it:

6 egg whites
3 cups caster sugar (I used American cups)
4 tbsp custard powder or cornflour
100g ground hazelnuts

Filling
1 x 250ml pot double or whipping cream
1 tin mandarin oranges, drained of juice or syrup

Set the oven to 175ºC Gas 4.

Line a roasting tin with baking parchment.

Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks.  Gradually whisk in the sugar, a little at a time.

Fold in the custard powder or cornflour and the hazelnuts.

Pour or more likely dollop the mixture into the roasting tin and spread out evenly.

Bake for 15-18 minutes.  Leave to cool slightly in the tin.

Place another piece of baking parchment onto a board large enough to take the cake. Turn the cake out onto this new paper.  Carefully peel off the paper you cooked it in.  Leave to cool.

Whip the cream and once the meringue is cold, spread the cream over it and top with the mandarins.

Using the baking parchment to help you, roll the cake up from one of the widest ends. It may crack a little, but this adds to the appeal.  Sprinkle with icing sugar or drizzle melted chocolate on the top.

Serve this cake fairly quickly as the meringue will go soggy the longer you keep it.

Just as an aside, I made Lemon and Lime Curd with the leftover egg yolks. My recipe:

http://betterbellyburst.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Lemon%20Curd

So what did everyone else come up with for the meeting:

Bakewell Tart Cake

Schokogugelhopf

Boston Cream Pie

Battenburg, with Liquorice

Mississippi Mud Pie Cake

Double Expresso and Brazil Nut Cake

Sri Lankan Love Cake

Whitley Bay Chocolate Ginger Cake

Yorkshire Parkin

Norfolk Fruit Cake

Dorset Apple Cake

Russian Cake

Dundee Cake

Jaffa Cake

A good night was had by all.

Spiced fish tacos with warm slaw and creamy avocado and coriander chutney

This is an adaption of a recipe from delicious magazine.

300-350g white fish, cut into 5cm slices or pieces
flour tortillas

Marinade

100g natural yogurt
2-3 tsp tandoori spice mix

Chutney
80g fresh coriander
2 ripe avocados
1 fat garlic clove, halved
3 tsp lemon juice
1-2 green chillies, halved

Warm Slaw
1 tsp veg oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp nigella seeds
160g red cabbage, thinly sliced
80g carrots, finely sliced
1 small red onion, finely sliced

Mix the marinade ingredienets and add the fish. Marinate in the fridge, ideally for 30 mins.

Whizz the chutney ingredients until smooth, season to taste.

Cook the fish on a griddle or grill until cooked, 8-10 mins.

Heat 1 tsp oil in a large pan and add the seeds.  Cook for 1 min then add the veg.  Cook over high heat for 3-4 mins, stirring then take off the heat.

Spread each tortilla with chutney, add the slaw an top with the fish.  Roll up and eat.

Would be nice made with chicken, beef, pork or lamb.

Cupcakes

It's a while since I've posted.  Work just seemed to get in the way, not good.

I'm not generally a lover of cupcakes, like the fairy cakes of the "old days" but with too much icing for my liking. I'm sure I would have loved that much icing as a child when I preferred icing to cake, but now I prefer cake.

Still, once in a while I will make some cupcakes, or my version of them. So here are a couple I made recently:

Gingerbread Latte Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

I found this recipe online.  There are few versions around.

Makes 12

1¼ cups plain flour
1½ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cardamom
pinch ground nutmeg
½ tsp allspice
¼ tsp salt
½ stick butter (60g)
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup unsulfured molasses (I used black treacle)
1 large egg, lightly beaten
½ cup very strong hot coffee
1 tsp baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)

Frosting
8 oz cream cheese , eg Philadelphia
1½ cups icing sugar
½ tsp vanilla
1 tsp finely grated lemon rind
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp thinly sliced crystallised ginger. (I didn't have any of this so I use the preserved stem ginger in syrup, drained of the syrup)

Gingerbread man shaped sprinkles

Mix flour, ground ginger cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, allspice and salt in a bowl.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add molasses/treacle and the egg and beat until smooth.  Combine the hot coffee and baking soda and stir until dissolved.  Add to the molasses mixture.  Combine this mixture with the flour mixture, stir until well combined.

Fill cupcake liners halfway. Bake o the middle rack of the oven 180ºC Gas 4 for approx 15-20 mins until a skewer poked into the middle of a cake comes out clean.

Cool the cakes on a wire rack. Completely cool before frosting.

Mix the ingredients for the frosting together and then spread or pipe onto the cooled cakes.  Top with the gingerbread sprinkles.

Now it's getting closer to Christmas, so here's some cupcakes with a mincemeat filling.  

Mince Pie Cupcakes

175g / 6oz self raising Flour

100g / 4os light muscovado sugar or light brown sugar

1tsp mixed Spice

175g / 6oz softened butter

3 eggs

2tbsp milk

140g /5oz mincemeat

Heat oven to 190ºC  Gas 5.

Line 12 bun cake tin with cake cases. 

Put 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.

The suggestion was to sprinkle these with icing sugar to serve, but I wanted to use my Christmas sprinkles so I topped them with glace icing and sprinkles.

Today I realised I had a pack of Light Mozzarella that needed using up. I decided to do a stuffed marrow. This is how I did it. I've propointed it for the WW amongst us.

Stuffed Marrow

Serves 3

5 propoints per serving

1 marrow

250g extra lean minced beef

1 onion chopped

1 clove garlic crushed

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp chilli flakes (or to taste)

2 tbsp tomato puree

1 beef oxo

125g Mozzarella light

Cut marrow in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds and discard. Set aside.

Heat the oven to 200'C Gas 6

Dry fry the mince in a non-stick pan and once browned, add the onion and garlic and cook for 2-3 minutes until the onion softens. Add the tomatoes, oregano, cumin, chilli flakes, tomato puree and crumbled oxo. Simmer for approx 10 mins until the mixture is dryish and thick.

Spoon the mince mixture into the marrow and place in a roasting tin with a little water around it. Cover with foil and bake until the marrow is tender, approx 30-40 mins.

Remove foil and cover the top with the mozzarella......either sliced or pulled off into pieces. Return to the oven and cook a few more minutes to melt the cheese.

Serve.

Using butternut or other squashes, or courgettes or even aubergines, will not affect the propoints.

Add kidney beans to make it more like a chilli, but add the extra propoints.

Greekish Prawns and Feta

Another of my made up as I go along teas, loosely based on a Greek dish.

To make this, I gently heated a carton of chopped tomatoes and herbs with garlic, marjoram, chopped red pepper, a chopped red chilli, a tsp sugar, salt, pepper, a splash of balsamic vinegar with a squeeze of tomato puree. (Not very technical on the tomato puree and balsamic fronts, but I reckon it was about 1-2 tablespoons). 

When the sauce had thickened and the veg had softened, about 20 minutes give or take, I added some peeled raw prawns and cooked 2-3 minutes until they were pink and cooked.  You could use cooked prawns, just cook until they are heated through or they will go rubbery.

I served this concoction with pastini which is very like orzo, but rice or pasta would be just as good.  Serve the sauce over your choice and top with cubes of feta cheese.  Delicious if I say so myself !