Birthday Blueberry Treats

I'm about to blaspheme, but this blueberry pancake recipe is actually ... better than Nigella's. I have been using Nigella's American Pancake recipe for several years and always found the mix not quite right, though they tasted good. Perhaps just a bit too heavy. These little pancakes are excellent and light and fluffy. The best bit is the fact that the blueberries burst a little while cooking, and as you eat them, providing a wonderful juicy taste. I served them with maple syrup - didn't need that much which was nice - and the rest of the fresh blueberries. I bought far too many blueberries so I'm going to be eating them for days now, not that I'm complaining. They went down well with the birthday boy, and Rob joined us for a few too. Next time I'm going to try some raspberry ones or maybe even strawberry :D

Happy birthday to you

May I present Arlo's birthday cake! A wonderful strawberries and cream concoction, which would be the perfect addition to a Wimbledon time tea party. Rob, my flatmate, and I shared the whisking task for the cream topping and filling, and was rewarded with the task of eating the remaining cream left in the bowl. 

The cake is, yes yet another, BBC Good Food recipe from Olive magazine. I couldn't find any of the pink sugar that it suggested you use, so I just adorned it with strawberries. Also, as someone else suggested, I have placed strawberries inside the cake. I'm hoping this turns out well! I had a little cream and jam explosion at one point due to being a bit to generous near the edges. I must recommend that if you try this recipe use a good fruity jam, especially if you are not adding the extra strawberries. Bonne Maman Strawberry is a personal favourite of mine and I have slathered the cake in it. Because I only had the one tin, I had to the make the halves one at a time. I simply used half the amounts it suggested for the full cake each time, rather than having to split the cake mix in half later on.

 

I can be - reasonably - safe in the knowledge that Arlo will not check anything online before he leaves thus ruining his cake based surprise. He is driving up to Liverpool as we speak. Tomorrow is a day of weddings and cake and new people to be friends with and looking attractive. I'm fairly sure cake and keeping trim do not go together well...

Veggie Fritters

Who said healthy food had to be boring or hard to make? Well, I don't know if anyone ever said that. But these are healthy and cheap and yummy.

Best veg to use are either fresh courgettes - have to be fresh or they start getting too watery - or a squash like this. If you use squash, be sure to remove all the pithy bit in the middle where all the seeds are. 

Ingredients 

2 courgettes/half a squash

2-3 tbsp self raising flour

1 egg

25g of parmesan

Grate the vegetables up and then mix with the flour and parmesan. Leave this to stand for a few minutes until some of the liquid from the veg has been absorbed. Then add the egg and mix thoroughly. Put a wok/frying pan - preferably non stick - on maximum heat with a little oil. Once it is really hot, drop tablespoon fulls, or small shaped patties, of the mix into the frying pan. Fry on each side for 30seconds to a minute, until lightly browned, then reduce the heat and let them cook further for about another minute on top. Serve with hummous and fresh veg!

The second carrot cake this week

This is probably the point where I should stop making carrot cakes. But I had already peeled a carrot when I made one the other day and I had 4 eggs to use up... so yeah. Another one. This one is slightly different, in that I followed a different recipe - this one - but missed out the pineapple, lemon, orange and walnuts as I didn't have any (turns out I did have a few walnuts, grr), so added a tonnes of sultanas like in the original recipe I used. I used the icing style from that one too, as it was much more fun. Though just vanilla icing as I have no orange juice either. I hope this cake is nice. It looks good and has risen well. It only has taken an hour, and a tester comes out clean so I'm happy with that. This is the cake:

Update: This cake is so good. I don't think I want to share it, but I will.

Carrot Cake

This week I delved into the world of carrot cake. I had planned to make one earlier in the week as my flatmate, Rob, had mentioned something about leftover carrots. But long story short, work got in the way and I never got round to it. Until about 10.30pm last night. I was baking my usual Chocolate Coca Cola cake, thanks to Nigella naturally, for my friend's little sister who got 4 A's in her AS levels and was coming to stay that evening. While I was doing it I thought, right I have all the ingredients, let's get cracking.

The recipe I used was this one. I only used 100ml of olive oil, as that was all I had left, so I improvised with a little melted butter to help moisten it up. Also I didn't have any orange peel so I used a splash of orange juice, which has worked out quite nicely. I was going to ice the carrot cake, but once Arlo and I unwrapped it at his house and decided to "have a little nibble" that idea was thrown out the window. It works very nicely without the icing, which would have also had a splash of orange juice in it.

Here is the result:

I'm thinking of making ratatouille tonight for Arlo and myself - mostly because every time we come here we resort to easy food, like chips and tinned spaghetti and I eat too much and barf because of all the fats I'm not used to any more. The only thing that I am not susceptible to is McDonalds and that's because I've built up immunity to it from working there! Seems quite easy and all we need to find is an Aubergine and two little courgettes in Prestatyn. I'm hoping this is quite easy.

On another note, I'm doing more things to prevent revision from my maths exam, like trying to learn "But for Now" on the piano. Got all through the melody at the start and into the chorus, and my chords were keeping up. Once I got to the chorus however, my poor memory of reading music kicked in and it all went pear shaped.

Ooh ideas

I have finally decided what this blog is going to be. It's going to be a recipe blog. I'm going to put up all the nice yummy things I make onto here, and it'll be more of an incentive for me to cook more things. I know its been done before, but hey, now its my turn.

First up is the yummy scrummy meal I made the other night. Mushroom, courgette and mozzarella tart. I decided to make this after buying a pot of mushrooms for a whopping 47p at Tesco and having a variety of odd vegetables in my fridge. So I typed in mushroom and courgette, as those seemed like closest to the ends of their happy lives, and voila I found this little gem. Very very easy to make and very nice. It turns out like a little posh pizza. Also, for those people who like day old pizza, you'll love this. I keep picking at it, because its so lovely! Simple and reasonably cheap. It can be quite easily manipulated for other left overs I feel. Good for students like myself.

I figured I should probably do something cooking wise. I love cooking and entertaining. Cooking for other people is one of my favourite things - seeing their faces when I've made them something scrummy. I'm still quite a novice and as I'm a student I'm always having to look for cheap ideas. But it's always nice when you cook lots of food and can tuck into a meal like this:

After making my little Japanese style banquet Arlo, my boyfriend, remarked that I was a wonderful little women. D'aww.
This consists of Tonkatsu, Ginger Pork, Courgette Tempura (not the most successful of tempura so far), Garlic fried Beansprouts and Rice seasoned with Star Anise.