To celebrate my brother’s promotion, I’ve decided to make chocolate coffee cupcakes with whisky buttercream. No fear, I’m making chocolate buttercream for the kiddos because this isn’t England where the legal drinking age in a private home is 5 yrs old. (Seriously, check Wikipedia, I’m not making this up.)
I’ve taken my favourite 1 bowl chocolate cake recipe and instead of making a 9-inch cake, I made 24 cupcakes.
Preheat oven to 180C/350F
Ingredients:
2 cups All-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1.5 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda/bicarbonate of soda (depending on what you call it)
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 cups sugar (I prefer brown, but white is also fine)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup oil
1 cup hot coffee
2 eggs
pinch of salt.
(The above order of ingredients ensures dry ingredients are measured first so you can then use the same measuring cups to do the wet ingredients without having to clean them in between.)
Mix all of the above ingredients in 1 bowl with a whisk or wooden spoon. No beaters/mixers required!
Either grease and line a 9-inch cake pan or line a muffin pan with cupcake cups.
Cooking times:
9-inch cake: bake for 40 mins, then start checking with a skewer until it comes away clean. The original recipe for this said to bake for an hour but it was a brick at that length of time. Start checking from the 40 min mark and go 5 extra mins at a time after that if needed.
If you’re doing cupcakes, 15 mins is all you need for the skewer to come away clean. If your oven is slightly cooler, check every 2 mins after 15 mins mark.
Buttercream:
2 cups unsalted butter, beat until fluffy
Gradually add in 4-5 cups of icing/confectioners sugar, beating after each addition until mixed in completely.
At this point I split the frosting into 2 bowls, to 1 bowl I added 2 tbsp of cocoa powder and mixed in completely with a hand mixer.
To the other bowl I added 4 teaspoons of whisky and mixed in. The mixture was a bit runny so I added a bit more icing/confectioners sugar to stiffen it up.
The kiddos are getting chocolate icing and the grown-ups are sailing into cupcakes decorated with a divine 12-yr old single malt. Because that’s how we roll!
Cupcakes sprinkled in cookies and cream with edible pearls
It’s been too long since I spent a day cooking. It’s been a shite week and in the interest of everyone else’s safety and my sanity, my phone is off for the weekend. I’ll deal with the world on Monday.
A few weeks back I mentioned I was seeing a nutritionist and for the most part, I’ve been able to stick to her food guidelines. Bonus is 12 lbs. have found a loving home elsewhere and 15 to go! The challenge is keeping the food interesting and not defaulting to comfort foods that are ‘off-menu.’
Although it’s the middle of summer and the air outside feels suspiciously like Satan’s sauna, I need comfort food. It seems to be where the road leads when I’m stressed beyond reason. The challenge is making it taste like comfort food but without the inevitable calorie bomb that comes with the deliciousness.
My mom makes a kickass meatloaf in the slow cooker so I’ve found a traditional Scottish meatloaf recipe cooked in the oven that I’m going to attempt to tweak to fit both my eating plan and morph into a slow cooker recipe. Basically, I’m winging it and hoping for the best. The bonus with meatloaf is that it can be served hot or cold so with a salad, it is a great dish for a scorching summer.
Ingredients:
2.5 lbs Angus beef mince (ground beef)
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp mixed herbs (Italian seasoning for me)
1 tsp each of Cumin seeds & Oregano
2 eggs
2/3 cup of seasoned breadcrumbs
2 gloves of garlic, finely chopped (I use more which is probably why I’m still single….)
Ground black pepper and salt to taste.
(I tossed in a 1/3 cup of grated Parmesan cheese because why not, oh and 1 tbsp of crushed red chili flakes because I eat that with everything, but both are completely optional.)
Toss all the above ingredients into a mixing bowl and mush them together with your hands, (or a wooden spoon if you’re squeamish but seriously, driving a spoon through that consistency will take more elbow grease.)
Time to get your hands dirty mixing up the ingredients
I’m a weirdo and eat raw ground beef so I taste to make sure I like the flavour and tweak if needed. Most people would put this in the ‘you’re going to die of salmonella’ category so taste or not, it’s up to you.
Take a fair sized piece of aluminum foil and fold in half lengthwise. (Pictures included to show what I mean). This goes into the slow cooker lengthwise and slightly up the sides. It makes it dead simple lifting the meatloaf out of the cooker without having to dismantle it. Because of the weight of the meatloaf, you need to fold it double or it will just tear and you’ll lose your mind. It also traps most of the juice so clean-up is a breeze!
Fold in half lengthwise, doesn’t matter whether shiny side up or down.
I shape the mixture into a loaf shape in the mixing bowl so I can get one hand under it to move it to the slow cooker.
Roll it up into a loaf shape in the bowl to make moving it to the slow cooker a bit easierInto the slow cooker and ready to go!
Pop it in the slow cooker, 6-8 hrs on low or 3-4 on high.
Instead of putting the liquids into the meatloaf, like you would for a traditional oven loaf one, I keep it aside and use as a glaze for the last 30 mins of cooking time.
Glaze ingredients:
1/3 cup of ketchup (I use jalapeno ketchup/tomato sauce)
1/3 cup Dijon mustard (or whatever mustard floats your boat.)
1 tbsp Worchestershire sauce (Lea & Perrins of course, because the Empire runs on this stuff)
Mix together in a bowl and pop in the fridge while the slow cooker does its thing.
Meatloaf glaze
You can add 2 tsp of brown sugar to the glaze but because this is Murica, the ketchup already has a metric ton of sugar in it so I leave that out. But again, taste and see if you would prefer it sweeter and toss some in if you need to. Dijon mustard has a vinegary tang to it so you might prefer a slightly sweeter taste. Cooking is more intuitive rather than strictly to a recipe so wing it. You’ll be fine.
Spoon the glaze over the meatloaf about 30 mins before the end so it can warm through. It makes it look delicious because meat in a slow cooker can look very pale. The glaze fixes that right up.
Final product after the glaze is spooned on
Meatloaf is great on mashed potato but because it’s 8 billion degrees outside (and my eating plan frowns on potato) it’s going to be salad for me.
You’d think that cooking a meatloaf in a slow cooker without adding in liquid would make it dry but it comes out surprisingly tender without that sometimes sawdust texture that meatloaf has. Give it a go. Who knows? Maybe it will become a simple family favourite.
There’s a Vietnamese food place a block from the office and the last 2 weeks have seen me inhale copious amounts of beef pho. It’s heaven in a bowl with just the right amount of spicy to make my tummy do a happy dance. The problem is the cost of buying lunch downtown tends to add up after a while.
In an attempt to solve this problem I found a YouTube tutorial by Mrs Nguyen on how to make beef pho from scratch. It’s a somewhat lengthy process if you’re doing the stock from scratch but it’s Sunday so all I have today is time.
The quick trip to the store ended with me drenched and running through the car park barefoot because during the 10 minutes I was shopping, Thor lost his mind and unleashed hell and 2 inches of rain in that general area. So slapped my shoes in my bag and hoofed it barefoot in ankle-deep water to my car. Probably not the smartest thing to do in a thunderstorm but hey ho, those little rubber soles weren’t going to save my arse if lightening struck anyway so why ruin a good pair of shoes?
As ridiculous as this sounds, it felt great running through puddles barefoot while everyone else was standing in the doors of the store waiting for the mayhem to pass. Sometimes you have to be the weirdo because this stock isn’t going to cook itself and Thor doesn’t exactly publish timetables for his mood swings. I haven’t got all day.
Looking at Mrs Nguyen’s stock pot, I needed one and thankfully my store is just the place for a cheap one of those so I’m now the proud owner of a monster pot that won’t fit in any of my cupboards. I’ll also be the proud owner of about 1.5 gallons of beef broth in 6 short hours.
Oh man, I wish you could smell how good this is! The star anise, cinnamon and ginger smell incredible and I cannot WAIT to stick that pho in my face for dinner! I’ll be sure to provide a delicious rating later.
Mrs Nguyen’s beef pho – delicious!
In the meantime my OCD is in the mood to spring clean so I’d best go and work that out of my system.
You don’t always have to be in the same place to have dinner with some mates. Today was a Skype dinner with the 2 friends in the UK. They had their dinner while I scoffed lunch 6 time zones in their past.
On the menu for me was toad-in-the-hole, mashed potato with mixed veg and gravy and a glass or 3 of Merlot.
In hindsight it’s hilarious that I actually spent money on Yorkshire pudding mix in a box when I lived in England considering there’s really nothing complicated about making it from scratch.
For those who aren’t familiar with English food, toad-in-the-hole is simply sausages cooked in puffy batter. You can make one big one or individual ones in a muffin pan, which is the option I went with today.
To make 12 individual toads, you’ll need:
24 cocktail sausages, browned off in a bit of oil
150 ml plain flour
1/2 teaspoon of mustard powder *optional
150 ml milk
3 beaten eggs
Salt & pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 450F (220C).
Brown off the cocktail sausages by putting 2 sausages into each muffin cup and drizzling with a bit of oil. Put them into the oven for about 15 mins, turning the sausages over about halfway.
While they are browning off, put all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, making a well in the middle for the eggs.
Mix the eggs in well, then slowly start adding in the milk, mixing well between additions. The batter is a bit runny so don’t panic.
Take the sausages out of the oven once they are browned and turn the oven down to 400F (200C). Pour the batter into the hot muffin pans *for the love of God, don’t burn yourself!* to about 2/3 full, covering the sausages – see below:
Baby toads before going in the oven
In the oven they go for 15 minutes. The muffin pan needs to be hot when you pour the batter in or they won’t rise properly and will end up a tad doughy. Cold batter, hot pan – those are the rules.
While they’re busy doing their thing, whip up some mashed potato and steam up some mixed veg. I mixed a teaspoon of mustard powder into the mashed potato and it was delicious!
Once the toadies come out of the oven, plate them up immediately, slather on some gravy and grub’s up!
Almost as good as a pub lunch!
It’s a pity people don’t cook much anymore. Life got too convenient I suppose. There’s surprising pleasure sitting down to a meal with people you care about, even if they are a million miles away, noshing on some good simple food. This really needs to happen more often.
Today’s menu is a spin on a traditional British oxtail soup. My spin is I’m turning into a stew instead.
Oxtail is one of those things that pops up in my grocery store every now and then. It’s sort of a ‘your luck on the day’ situation and when it’s there, I buy a pile of it!
The idea of oxtail soup appealed so it was off to Google to find a recipe and I came across one I fancied. The only problem is halfway through the recipe it calls for discarding the veg. That doesn’t appeal. I quite enjoy smooth soups but much prefer chunky bits so with a bit of rejigging, I’m hoping this will be a stew instead.
First off put a knob of butter into a biggish saucepan and brown off roughly 1 kg (2 lbs.) oxtail in the melted butter.
Remove from the pot and put aside. To the same saucepan, add:
2 large carrots, chopped
1 large onion, halved with 4 cloves pressed into it.
1 small turnip, roughly chopped
1 large leek, chopped
1 bay leaf (I used 2 small ones)
Salt & pepper to taste and for good measure, I tossed in a few whole peppercorns.
Sweat off the veg in the saucepan then put into a slow cooker. Top the veg with the browned oxtail pieces, add a cup of beef stock and a cup of red wine. I used a Pinot Noir but I’ll leave the choice up to you.
Toss in a few sprigs of fresh thyme for some extra flavour.
Slow cooker loaded up and ready to go
If you’re doing this on the stove top, you might need to add a bit more stock. Slow cookers tend to make more liquid as the food cooks so take care not to overdo it on the initial liquid amount.
Cook on low for 7-8 hours until the oxtail is fall-off-the-bone tender.
For the last 30 mins, remove a cup or so of the liquid from the slow cooker and mix in a tablespoon of gravy granules. Return this to the slow cooker and switch to high. This will thicken up the liquid to make gravy.
South Africans love rice so serving a stew on rice is not unusual. It turns out it’s unusual for everyone else so I sometimes opt to serve it on mashed potato because let’s be honest, thick stewy gravy on mashed potato is heaven on a plate. Tonight rice won the toss and it was GOOD!
That meat was so tender – worth waiting 8 hours for it!
Or you could just serve it with green veg, whatever floats your boat.
The plan tomorrow is a traditional Shepherd’s Pie with a salad. I have a friend coming over for lunch so a bit of home cooked comfort food should take the edge off the fact the weather is headed back into the freezer after 2 days of bliss.
Here’s a recipe for shortbread that I got from a friend in South Africa many moons ago. Her dad is Scottish so this was their go-to recipe for shortbread. Thank you Jeannie for passing this on, I’ve loved every bite over the years!
I made a batch over the weekend and have inhaled every last biscuit on that plate. No, I didn’t share. Don’t be ridiculous.
Scottish Shortbread
Ingredients:
120g (4 oz) plain flour
60g (2 oz) cornflour/cornstarch
60g (2 oz) caster sugar/baker’s sugar
120g (4 oz) salted butter (don’t use margarine, for the love of God I beg you!)
Sieve the flour, cornflour & caster sugar together.
Add the butter and mix in with your fingers to make a dough. The longer the better.
When you’ve got a smooth dough, sprinkle some cornflour onto a work surface and roll out to roughly ¼ inch (6-7mm) thick.
Shape as you please, and lay onto a lightly greased baking sheet. Don’t position them too close together as they do rise a bit.
Bake @ 350F/180C for 15 mins.
***Please note, there is a VERY fine line between done and overdone when making shortbread***
The darker brown ones are overdone (I rolled them too thinly.) You’re looking for slightly darker yellow but NOT brown
It will turn a slightly deeper yellow and slightly risen when it’s done. Brown = overdone.
Start monitoring from about 10 mins onwards. Bear in mind, if you roll the dough too thinly, the cooking time will need to be reduced or the shortbread will burn. Don’t make the mistake I did of putting thinly rolled and thickly rolled biscuits on the same baking tray. That’s asking for trouble.
Allow to cool slightly before removing from the baking tray or they will break.
**As a random side note: one thing I’ve come across over the years are people who flat out refuse to share a recipe. Yes, this is a personal choice but seriously, the greatest compliment you can get is someone asking for your recipe.
Anyone who wants a recipe of mine is welcome to it. It’s makes me smile knowing I’m ‘at’ their dinner table every time they make it. Life is meant to be delicious and if someone thinks your food is worthy of repeating, then that’s saying something. Be nice.
What better way to spend a bank holiday than making yummy food smells?
Today’s menu is Cauliflower and Bacon Soup. The soup is dead simple and takes less than an hour end to end.
You’ll need:
1 small cauliflower, chopped into florets.
2 medium potatoes, chopped.
1 large onion, chopped.
8 rashers bacon
2.5 cups (600 ml) vegetable stock
1 cup milk (250ml)
Salt and pepper to taste.
Extra bacon to garnish *optional*
A few simple goodies can make magic!
Gently fry bacon and onion in a saucepan big enough to hold all the ingredients. The bacon fat will melt and make fat to fry the onions so no need to add oil.
Once the onion is translucent, toss in the potato, cauliflower, stock and milk and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the cauliflower is tender.
Pop in a blender and liquidise. Season to taste. I have a heavy hand when it comes to pepper. If you use salty bacon please taste before adding more salt. It’s impossible to unsalt a dish.
Fry up a few extra rashers of bacon to sprinkle on top as a garnish and serve with hot buttered toast. Delicious!
Cauliflower and bacon soup with hot buttered toast
Depending on your concept of portion size, this recipe makes 4 generous portions of soup or 6 normal people portions.
Back in January when the New Year was still fresh off the shelf, the plan was to find balance and harmony in my life. Since being back at work post-surgery the balance and harmony have been shot to hell.
Right. That’s enough. It’s time to go back to the starting line and try this again, shall we?
As I’ve mentioned before, the world’s most comprehensive collection of cookbooks reside on my kitchen shelf so today it’s time to dust one of them off and cook some comfort food.
My Nana used to make a sublime minestrone soup. That woman could burn water 87 ways and according to my Dad, he didn’t know cabbage was green until he met my mother. Nana either deep fried EVERYTHING or boiled it to death, and then just a little bit longer to be sure. Hers was British cooking the way it’s historically been known to the rest of world. Bland with no adventure.
Despite this, her sausage rolls, Cornish pasties, scones and minestrone soup were incredible. Sadly I never paid attention when she tried to teach me how to make these things and those recipes are now cremated with her and scattered around Ennerdale Water in Cumbria. *As a side note here, learn from your parents and grandparents. There will come a day when you’ll be racking your brain trying to remember something that was meaningless to you years ago. It’s gone.*
With it still being winter and more than just a wee bit chilly outside, it tastes like a beef stew and Colcannon kind of day. Colcannon is a traditional Scottish dish made of mashed potato and cabbage and beef stew is well, beef stew!
Colcannon
Beef stew is traditionally made with dumplings but I’m going to go renegade today and serve it on Colcannon instead. We’ll hold the dumplings for another day.
After a trip around my favourite ethnic market for fresh veg, with the world’s squeakiest trolley (shopping cart for Americans) I definitely contemplated the cliche of ‘the squeaking wheel gets the grease,’ but that’s a problem for another day.
After a cup of coffee and a long chat to my crazy mate in London, which ended in hysterical laughter, it was time to try something new.
This is the recipe I used courtesy of Food.com. *So once again, did not use a single recipe book on my shelf… dammit woman!*
A word to the wise. Read the recipe properly. I made the mistake of chopping up the potato in their skins and then boiling it, rather than boiling whole. Getting the skins off little bits of potato was a pain in the arse but that was my dumb mistake. Don’t make the same one!
There were a few recipes in my cookbooks for beef stew, none of which really appealed. *Yes, I’m fussy.*
So again, to Food.com and found this one which looked simple enough. I opted to serve with Colcannon so the dumplings didn’t happen.
There’s something therapeutic about cooking something from scratch; chopping, peeling, stirring.
When browning the meat for the beef stew, I used a lot more butter than the recipe called for. The smell of melted butter… yum! Calorie counting isn’t on the agenda today. It wasn’t done back in the day and it’s not happening today. *Feel free to lose your mind about it if you want. Makes no diffs to me.* I also substituted the canned tomatoes for fresh ones.
The finished product – grub’s up!
Keeping it old school today left me with a pile of dishes and in the spirit of keeping it traditional they were washed by hand. I unpacked all the stuff in the dishwasher and washed those too. Don’t ask…
The odd thing is when I start cleaning, there’s really no off button. It goes on until there’s nothing left to clean. The kitchen fell victim today; everything from my pantry to the fridge/freezer. It turns out I have a mystery collection of fancy strawberry jams I knew nothing about. *I should make scones… maybe tomorrow.* Condiments so far out of date I’m not convinced I was in the country at the time they were bought.
Frozen foods I can no longer identify and preserves. A bottle of pickled beets that looks really questionable. Really?! Tossed the lot.
Roll up your sleeves and tackle your kitchen. You’ll be glad you did. My spice collection is much larger than I thought it was and order has been restored on the shelves. There’s finally a clear view of what’s there and what isn’t.
The stew is in the oven making yummy food smells, so while that’s doing its thing and I’m in the mood it’s time to tackle the endless piles of paperwork and filing. My filing box is fit to burst and I’m willing to go out on limb and say every receipt I’ve touched since 2010 is in that box.
Order will be restored before my head hits the pillow tonight if it means staying up until the wee hours getting it done *aided by Scotch, of course.*
