New Make/Bake 33 - Sausage Roll Ups

In an effort to cut down on my pointless spending at lunch times I've decided to try and make more lunches during the week. Some days I work from home which means I have full access to a kitchen when making lunch. However if I'm in the office then I only have access to a kettle, fridge and microwave and if I'm out and about at meetings then I just have my car which isn't much help beyond driving me to a supermarket for a sandwich! This means that I am in need of a few quick, easy and tasty lunches which need little to no preparation.

A few weeks ago whilst reading through one of my BBC Good Food Magazines I spotted a recipe for Sausage Roll-ups which I though looked rather tasty. Sausage rolls are one of my favourite lunch time snacks, I know they aren't very healthy but there is something about a lovely meaty sausage encased in hot, flaky pastry that I just can't resist!

Sausage Roll-Ups

Ingredients

• 6 chipolata sausages
• 1 pack of croissant dough- found in the chiller section (usually near the butter)
• 2 tbsp Caramelised Onion Chutney
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
•  1/2tbsp wholegrain mustard
• 1 egg , beaten
•  Sprinkle of sesame seeds 

Method

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Sit the chipolata's in a roasting tin and cook for 15 mins until lightly golden brown and then allow to cool until they are handleable. 
2. Open the croissant packs and unroll the dough and separate into triangles. Mix the onion chutney, tomato purée and mustard, and spread a few spoonfuls over each  triangle. Line a baking sheet with parchment or grease-proof paper. To make the Roll-Ups, lay a sausage along the wide end of the dough and roll it up around the sausage. Repeat until the sausages are all encased with the croissant dough. Arrange them on the baking tray, brush lightly with beaten egg and scatter with sesame seeds. Bake for 10-15 mins until golden.  

 Recipe from BBC Good Food
 

I had two for my lunch straight from the oven - wow they were scrummy. The pastry was great and the chutney made them really sweet but with a slight mustard bite. It took lots of strength to only have two. When M came home he had to test them - to make sure they weren't poisonous or so he said! Apparently  one wasn't sufficient enough for him to fully test them so he of course had to have a second. He then proclaimed that he would take the last two left for his lunch the next day - so much for saving me time and money making my lunch!!

New Make Bake 31 - Mr Happy Birthday Cake

Ages ago I was asked my make mine and M's nephew's 2nd Birthday cake and last week the text came asking if I still was ok to make something. The request came in as Mr Happy themed so after a quick Google looking for inspiration, I send them a choice of possible cakes which I thought were within my limits.

The choice they picked was this one. Possibly the most ambitious of the selection but also the most forgiving if anything went wrong!

I started by making a 9" Madeira Sponge cake. I wrapped the cake in parchment paper and a carrier bag to keep the cake lovely moist and left to cool. I then sliced it into three and filled it with strawberry jam in one layer and buttercream in next . I then crumb coated the cake - this is when you cover a cake with a thin layer of buttercream to provide sugarpaste a base to stick too. For my buttercream I decided to try slightly salted butter as I had read online that it meant the buttercream was less sickly. M LOVES buttercream and I'll admit that I am rather partial to it but I do find it quite sweet and it can give me a headache if I eat too much. I didn't tell M that I had made a change and allowed him to sample some of the left overs which he pronounced as "yummy". Personally I preferred it with the salted butter, it wasn't quite so overpoweringly sweet and I couldn't taste the salt at all.

Whilst the crumb coat dried, I covered my cake board. It's something which I've only started doing recently but I think it makes such a difference and makes cakes look so much more professional. The cake was then covered with chocolate brown (and chocolate flavoured!) sugarpaste and left to dry for 24 hrs to ensure it was a bit more sturdy when I came to adding the details.

To make the Mr Happy model I couldn't use sugarpaste for modelling as it just isn't sturdy or strong enough to hold it's shape on it's on and Mr Happy would not have been very happy for long! You can add powders to sugarpaste (like CMC or gum tragacanth) but as I was on a short time scale I cheated and mixed my yellow sugar paste with Mexican modelling paste as that would enable it to dry hard and quickly. He took me three attempts (the black sugapaste I used left black marks on the yellow - grrr) so I had to learn to handle it quickly and carefully!

The rest of the cake was covered with various sized circles of sugarpaste in green, blue and yellow. This was great as it enabled me to hide any cracks (still haven't perfected that part yet) and made it look lovely and colourful.

The final part was a star-burst of sugarpaste balloons. Typically I didn't plan this bit properly and I bought the wrong thickness of florist wire (I wrongly assumed that the higher the number, the thicker the wire - it's not!) so I had to change my plan quickly. I made small circles and thin 2's in green, blue and yellow sugarpaste (also mixed with Mexican paste so they were keep their shape) to match the cake. I then carefully threaded the wire through the middle and then left them to dry for 24hrs. I wish I'd started them before as the weren't quite set when I picked them up, so quite a few broke which meant I didn't have as many as I planned.

Even with my lesson's learnt, I was actually very pleased with the result and even better was the fact that the birthday boy was just as happy as his cake!

New Make Bake 30 - High-speed Hamburger with Fast Fries

It's been a while since I last blogged. Not because I've not been making or baking new things (I have a backlog to get through!) but because I've been Birthday Cake making - blog to come soon.

M is very partial to burgers (well any meat shaped pattie really) and I wanted to make him a treat as he's working very hard at work at the moment. Usually when I make burgers I just mix mince with seasoning and shape into patties and fry (occasionally I'll chuck in some chopped onion, grated cheese, herbs etc) but seeing as my mum bought me a burger press for Christmas I thought I ought to try it with something slightly fancier for it's first outing. When I opened the burger press I wasn't really sure if I'd use it as I thought it was a bit gimmicky. I can however report that it was great and made quite a different to my burgers - they really held their shape and the results looked quite professional!

For my burger recipe I decided to give one of Nigella's recipes a go "High-speed Hamburger", as the ingredients sounded lovely and a bit different. The burgers are made of lean minced beef mixed with some caramelised onions (from a jar), buttermilk (you could use plain yoghurt if you can't get hold of buttermilk - I got mine in the supermarket near the cream), soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce and seasoned well with black pepper. It's quite a messy mixture so not one for people who don't like to get their hands mucky. Once they were mixed, I divided my meat into two and pressed it into the press.   Once formed I griddled my burgers until they were done to our liking (M has to have his well done, I prefer mine to be medium well).

As the burgers were so quick I served them with Nigella's Fast Fries. The fast fries are made from new potatoes which are crushed by putting them in a sandwich bad and bashing them with a rolling pin.This is very therapeutic after a long day at work! Once crushed, the potatoes are sautéed in vegetable oil until crispy. Mine got a little too crispy as someone (M) was late back from work so I had to keep them warm in the oven!

I served my burger in a toasted muffin, slice of cheese and some salad.

The burger was delicious and full of flavour. The onions and buttermilk gave it a lovely texture and taste to the usual burger which I've found can sometimes be quite dry (usually because M likes his cremated) but these were so moist and juicy.Delicious and quick!

New make bake 28 and 29 - Rice Krispie Chicken and Chicken with Katsu Sauce

A few weeks ago I snapped up a bargain in the Supermarket, Lisa Faulkner's new book - Recipes from my Mother for my Daughter. I'd heard lots of positive things about the book from the blogging world and so I settled down to have a read. Wow, so many lovely things which I wanted to try, I didn't know where to start!

From a quick look online it seemed that there were rave reviews about the Rice Krispie Chicken so it seemed to be a sensible place to start. M wasn't too convinced when I started getting the cereal out of the cupboard so it needed to be good to persuade him to give it a go. The recipe is very simple, you dip Chicken Goujons in mayonnaise and then dip them in crushed and seasoned Rice Krispies. I then baked them in the oven until they were golden and crispy.

I served mine with Baked skinny fries and ranch salad (from the supermarket). The fries were lovely, nice and tasty and yet healthy!

They didn't look as pretty as the ones in the book, some of the coating fell off (I think I used too much mayonnaise) but they were gorgeous. M took one mouthful and declared them as one of his favourite thins I'd ever made - high praise indeed. Very simple but very tasty and so easy to make.

A few days later I wanted to see if my success could be replicated so I decided to give the Chicken with Katsu sauce a whirl. It's Chicken strips coated in breadcrumbs (I used Panko breadcrumbs for the authentic Japanese taste) served with a sweet and slightly curry flavoured sauce. I'm quite scared of spicy foods with a lot of heat so I like the idea of controlling how much "burn" there is. The sauce called for curry powder and tomato ketchup which reminded me of the rice I made back in January and as I had really enjoyed the flavour so I figured this would be a tasty dish. I served mine with some stir-fried rice and beansprouts.

I didn't look the most "Yummy" of dishes due to the sauce but wow, it was divine. So tasty and such a lovely combination of flavours. I only made half of the recipe so it served two, next time I'd make enough and freeze the extra sauce for another time.

I think I'm really going to like this book :D

New Make/Bake 27 - Lamb Casserole with Feta Dumplings

Alas "Something for the Weekend" is no more, boooo. But good news, it has been resurrected in a new format called "Sunday Brunch" over on Channel 4. I've been watching it for a few weeks  before I wanted to share my views and after 2 weeks, I think I'm getting to like it. There are a few features missing which I enjoyed from SFTW (Gadget Roulette and Wayne and his amazing cocktails) but the banter and lovely food are the same which was always my favourite part of the show.

On the very first show Simon Rimmer made a really lovely sounding dish which received great reviews from the guests, Lamb casserole with feta dumplings. As a huge fan of Lamb I thought it would be a great recipe to try.

Lamb Casserole with Feta Dumplings

Recipe by Simon Rimmer, Sunday Brunch

Ingredients

For the Lamb Casserole

• Vegetable oil, for frying
• 450g good-quality lamb mince
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 1 carrot, finely diced
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• Few sprigs rosemary
• 200ml Madeira
• 200ml strong beef or game stock

I added two tablespoons of Tomato Ketchup and 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire Sauce it give it some extra sweetness and depth.

For the topping

• 225g plain flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 100g unsalted butter, cubed
• 175ml sour cream
• 150g feta cheese

(I halved the ingredients so that it served two)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/fan 180°C/gas mark 6. For the filling, heat some oil in a deep heavy-bottomed saucepan and brown the mince. Remove the mince from the pan and set aside.
   
2. To the same pan add the onion, carrot and garlic and fry gently to soften but not colour.
   
3. Add the lamb mince back to the pan, add the cinnamon and tomato purée and cook out for 4-5 minutes.
   
4. Add the rosemary, Madeira, stock and some seasoning, and bring to the boil. (This is where I added the tomato ketchup and Worcestershire sauce) Then allow to simmer for at least 30 minutes.
   
5. For the topping, in a blender pulse together the flour, baking powder, salt and butter. When it looks like breadcrumbs add the sour cream and do the same again. The dough will be very sticky.
   
6. Spoon the filling into individual pie dishes, then spoon dollops of the batter on top. Sprinkle over the feta and bake for 25 minutes until crisp and golden.
   
    
   
   
   
   
   
   I served mine with a baby leaf salad and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.
   
   
   It was delicious, quite sweet and rich (especially the Feta Dumplings) and very yummy. Initially when I was making the Casserole I thought that it wouldn't be enough for two but with the dumpling it was very filling. Next time I'd be tempted to make all of the filling and freeze half for another time.