Category Archives: cooking

Apple & Blackberry Pasties – Recipe

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This recipe is for Apple & Blackberry Pasties and is to serve 4 people.

Ingredients

  • Icing Sugar (To Dust)
  • 425g Pack of Ready Rolled Shortcrust Pastry
  • 2 Bramley Apples, Peeled, Cored & Chopped
  • 2 tbsp Light Brown Sugar
  • 150g Punnet of Blackberries

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What to do

  • Heat the oven to 200*C/Fan 180*C/Gas 6
  • Dust worksurface with icing sugar, then unroll the pastry and cut 4 rounds using a saucer or small side plate as a template.
  • Combine the apples, sugar & blackberries and put a small pile on each of the pastry circles
  • Dampen the edge of the pastry, then fold over to encase the fruit and press with a fork along the edges to make sure they are sealed. Slash the tops 3 times on each pasty and put on a baking sheet.
  • Bake for 20mins or until puffed and golden.

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Fajitas They Make Me Happy

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This past week we were sent this amazing package from Discovery

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Well luckily enough one of our favourite meals is Fajitas so this was a winner with us. Below is the recipe we use for our meal.

Ingredients

  • 300g Quorn Chicken Style Pieces
  • Sliced Red and Yellow Pepper
  • Sliced Onion
  • 1 Discovery Fajita Kit
  • Discovery Soured Cream
  • Grated Cheese

Fajitas1

What To Do

  • Fry the Quorn pieces in a deep frying pan or wok over a medium heat in a little oil.
  • When the Quorn is slightly browned add in the onion and peppers and fry for roughly 10mins
  • The add the fajitas seasoning and mix together and fry until the onions and peppers are cooked.
  • Quickly heat the wraps up in microwave for 50seconds then serve.

Fajitas2

Normally I don’t have Soured Cream on mine but as they had sent some of their new Garlic & Herb Soured Cream and oh my gosh what a difference it makes, it adds a cool herby sensation to the spices of the fajitas. We will also be using this with a chilli next week.

We were sent these items for the purpose of this review and recipe but all thoughts are our own

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Raspberry and Coconut Cupcake Recipe

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Raspberry and Coconut Cupcake Recipe

Cupcake

Ingredients

  • 175g self-raising flour
  • 140g caster sugar
  • 50g desiccated coconut
  • 140g butter , softened
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs
  • 4 tbsp milk
  • 140g raspberries , fresh or frozen

FOR THE FROSTING

  • 280g icing sugar
  • 85g butter , softened
  • raspberry juice from
  • a little shredded coconut , to decorate

What to do

  1. Heat oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with deep paper cases or a 15-hole bun tin with cake cases. Tip all the cake ingredients except the raspberries into a bowl and beat for 1-2 mins until light and fluffy. Gently fold in the raspberries.
  2. Divide the mixture between the cases and bake for 18-20 mins (add a couple of extra mins for deep cases), until golden brown and firm to the touch. Leave to cool.
  3. Beat together the icing sugar, butter and raspberry juice to make a light, fluffy icing. Spoon onto the cakes and sprinkle with coconut.

Raspberry and Coconut Cupcake

Cheesy Biscuit Shapes Recipe

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Cheese Biscuits

Over the Easter weekend the girls made these brilliant cheesy biscuit shapes that we’re fun to make and also tasted good.

Ingredients

  • 100g/4oz Plain Flour
  • 100g/4oz Butter
  • 100g/4oz Mature Cheese (We used 1/2 mature cheddar and 1/2 red Leicester)

What to do

Pre heat the oven to 180*c

Mix all of the ingredients together to make a dough

Roll out and use pastry cutters to make the biscuits (we made about 12)

Place the biscuits onto a baking tray covered with baking paper and cook for about 10mins or until golden brown

Leave to cool on a wire rack

Easy Slow Cooked Roast Chicken

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Slow Cooked Chicken

A few people on Twitter namely @The_Moiderer and @JennyPaulin have tweeted about doing various roasts in the slow cooker and I really wanted to given this ago.

This past Sunday we had family round so I thought this would be perfect to try out especially as we don’t have the largest of ovens and it came out perfectly.

I bought a 1.5kg chicken which was enough for 5 adults and I had some left over for a sandwich the next day.

All you need to do is place the chicken in the slow cooker for 7-8 hours on medium.

I put mine in at 10.30am on high for one hour then turned it on to medium until 5.30pm and it was cooked perfectly. All I would say is be careful when it comes to removing it from the cooker as it pretty much fell apart and hardly needed any cutting.

If the dinner guests weren’t so fussy I would have cut up a onion and placed that around the chicken and also used some paprika on the skin.

This was so easy to do and the meat was very moist I’ll always do my chicken like this from now on.

#MealPlanningMonday – 14th Jan 2013

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I hope everyone’s had a good week and people have stocked up for the little snow we’re bound to get.

I tried to make this week cheap but it really didn’t work. We have a few different items on the menu this week.

Salmon with a Garlic Butter Breadcrumb top with rice and Mediterranean grilled vegetables

Jacket Potatoes with smoked mackerel and spring onions

Quorn Tacos

Quorn Chilli Con Carne with hot bread rolls

Pigs in blankets with roast potatoes and green vegetables

Quorn Curry with garlic naan bread

I hope everyone has a good week and I look forward to seeing everyone else’s menus.

Please make sure you check out everyone else’s menu at Mrs M
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Slow Cooked Gammon Recipe

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This is a very simple recipe for slow cooked Gammon and tastes amazing.

Ingredients

Gammon Joint

To start with soak the gammon joint in water over night, this allows the salt to come out.

Next place the joint in the slow cooker on its own. Cook the gammon on a low heat for 8 hours.

After 8 hours remove the gammon and place on a plate for a few moments to allow any excess fat and juices to run off.

Then cut the meat up. It really shouldn’t take much to cut up and should almost fall apart.

I served mine with potato wedges, green vegetables and bread sauce.

The gammon I used was oak smoked and I think this helped add to the flavour.

Meal Planning Monday – 13th August

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Welcome to another Monday and I hope you’ve had a good weekend. The Olympics are over and I think everyone should be proud of everyone who took part.

Hopefully everyone has read My Fitness Week where I mentioned I was trying to bulk up a little so hopefully this week I will increase my overall calorie intake. With that in mind here are the meals for the week.

King Prawns, couscous, courgettes and new potatoes.

Whole rack of spare ribs with wedges. (Laura – Quorn Stir Fry)

Courgette Bake with new potatoes. 

Quorn Meatballs with rice

Paprika Chicken with chips (Laura – Pasta)

Tuna Wedge Bake (Didn’t have it last week as went had a salad instead)

As you can tell the new potatoes and courgettes are ready to eat from the garden hence why they are used every other day.

I look forward to reading everyone else’s and make sure you pop over to Mrs M to see them

Meal Planning Monday – 30th July 2012

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Hope everyone has had a good weekend?

This weekend has flown by and the shopping this week was very much a rush job as you will be able to tell.

Levi Roots Meal

Jacket Potatoes and baked beans and sausages

Quorn Stir Fry

Meatballs with Rice

Chicken Burgers and chips

Tuna Wedge Bake

I did warn you it was quick.

This is possibly the first week in months that some form of salad isn’t on the menu mainly because we have managed to eat everything that has been growing in the garden.

I hope everyone has a good week and we keep getting this nice weather.

Please make sure you pop over to Mrs M to see the more impressive Meal Plans.

Meal Planning Monday – 23rd July

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I hope everyone has been enjoying this lovely weekend and the start of the school holidays.

We was on a bit of a money saving week and this is shown in the meals many of which are boring but cheap.

Tuna and Egg Salad

Quorn Stir-Fry

King Prawns, Courgettes and CousCous

Pizza

Bangers and Mash

Quorn Curry

I haven’t set the world alight with those meals but they’re quick simple and cheap.

I’m sure there are many better Menus at Mrs M so please hop over.