Posts in category: Recipes

Normally I’ll reach for something chocolatey when I’m in the mood for something sweet, but lately I’ve been really fancying lemon.  Lemon cheesecake, lemon slices, lemon puff biscuits (these come with the added bonus of reminding me of my Nan!).  Anything goes really, as long as it’s lemon.

So after baking chocolate fairy cakes with the kids yesterday I took advantage of all the ingredients and equipment being out and whipped up a batch of lemon fairy cakes, with a yummy lemony surprise in the middle!

So, here we go, my easy lemon fairy cake recipe, with a tasty lemon curd filling.

What you need:

• 2 eggs
• 4oz (110g) self raising flour
• 4oz (110g) caster sugar
• 4oz (110g) butter
• Juice of two lemons
• Some lemon curd

What you do:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
• Pop about 13 cake cases onto a baking tray
• Cream together the butter and sugar
• Mix in the eggs and then stir in the flour
• Stir in the lemon juice
• Put about a teaspoonful of mixture in each cake case
• Add about a third of a teaspoon of lemon curd
• Cover the lemon curd with another teaspoon of cake mixture.
• Bake the cakes for about 12-15 minutes, until they spring back slightly when you press them
• Leave to cool and then sprinkle some icing sugar over the top to pretty them up!

Enjoy!

I don’t know about you, but I love a good piece of rocky road!  For the last few years I’ve made a batch of Baileys rocky road at Christmas, which is so, so good, but is now linked with Christmas in my mind so I feel like I can’t make it at any other time.

So, to get a Spring time rocky road fix, I whipped up this batch of Easter mini/micro egg rocky road.  I can’t see it lasting the weekend, it’s that good!

It’s perfect if you’re like me and can’t resist popping a bag of mini eggs in your basket every time you go to the supermarket at this time of year.  And is a great way to use up any leftover Easter egg chocolate you might have after the long weekend.  Apparently that’s an issue for some people?!

This is a really easy recipe to make, and is fun for children to help with, what with the smashing up of biscuits and the chance to sneakily eat some mini marshmallows and chocolate eggs.

What you need:

• 250g chocolate (I used a mix of dark and milk chocolate)
• 3 tablespoons golden syrup
• 130g butter
• 200g digestive biscuits
• 75g mini marshmallows
• 100g micro chocolate eggs
• Handful of mini eggs
• 50g white chocolate

What you do:

1. Grab a small/medium sized baking tin and line it with greaseproof paper.  You want the paper to hang over the edge of the tin so that it’s really easy to lift the rocky road out later!
2. Crush the digestive biscuits.  You can either pop them in a freezer bag, secure the bag, and then bash the biscuits with a rolling pin.  Or, if you’re like me and don’t have any freezer bags handy, tip the biscuits into a big mixing bowl and crush them with the end of a rolling pin.
3. Melt the chocolate, butter and golden syrup together.  You can do this in a microwave, or in a bain-marie, but personally, I like to just put all 3 ingredients in a saucepan and melt them over a really gentle heat on the hob, stirring pretty much constantly.  I’ve never had any problems doing it this way.
4. Once all the chocolate and butter has melted, take the pan off the heat and stir in the crushed biscuits, the marshmallows and the micro eggs.
5. Tip the mixture into the prepared tin, and press it down well with the back of a wooden spoon.
6. Melt the 50g of white chocolate and drizzle it over the top, and then press in a handful of mini eggs.
7. Put the tray in the fridge for an hour or two to set.
8. Cut into squares and enjoy!

If you like the look of this, you’ll most likely also love my recipe for mini egg chocolate bark!

I normally make a nice simple chocolate cake which is basically a variation of my 2, 4, 4, 4 fairy cake recipe, with a chocolate buttercream topping.  It’s good cake.  But I wanted something a bit more special this year.

So I hit google, and really quickly found this recipe for the best chocolate cake recipe (ever).  And fair do’s, it is definitely the best chocolate cake I’ve ever made!

So here is my take on Robyn’s best chocolate cake recipe:

What you  need (for the cake):

• 250g (2 cups) plain flour
• 400g (2 cups) caster sugar
• 90g (¾ cup) cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1½ teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 250ml (1 cup) milk
• 110ml (½ cup) vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 250ml (1 cup) hot, black coffee water

What you do:

1. Preheat oven to 180º C.  Prepare two 9-inch cake pans by spraying with baking spray or buttering and lightly flouring.
2. Add flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt to a large bowl and mix it all together thoroughly.
3. Add milk, vegetable oil and eggs to the flour mixture and mix together until well combined.
4. Make a cup of hot, black coffee and carefully add it to the mixture.  Mix well.
5. Distribute cake batter evenly between the two prepared cake pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 10 minutes, remove from the pan and cool completely.
7. Cover the cake with Chocolate buttercream icing.

What you need (for the buttercream icing):

• 340g (1½ cups) butter, softened
• 120g (1 cup) unsweetened cocoa powder
• 500g (5 cups) icing sugar
• 120m (½) cup milk

What you do:

1. Add the cocoa powder to a large bowl and whisk it through to get rid of any lumps.
2. Cream together the butter and cocoa powder until they’re well-combined.
3. Add icing sugar and milk to cocoa mixture by adding 100g ( 1 cup) of icing sugar followed by about a tablespoon of milk. Mix it well each time you add some.  Repeat this until you’ve added all the icing sugar and milk.
4. If you think the icing seems too dry, then add a little more milk, and if it seems too wet then just add a little more icing sugar until you get the consistency you want!
5. Sandwich the cake together with just about a third of the icing, then use the rest of the icing to cover the top and sides of the cake.

Things to note:
This recipe does make a lot of buttercream icing, you might not need to use it all!

One carb-heavy dish I really enjoy is risotto, but we don’t tend to have it that much as it can be a bit of a faff to make.   I mean, it can be quite therapeutic, standing and gently stirring a steaming pan of rice and stock, but I don’t often have the time to do that.  And, well, it’s not quite so therapeutic doing that with a toddler trying to climb up your legs the whole time!

So I offer you an alternative – my super simple cheats’ risotto.

So here’s the recipe for my lovely simple risotto:

• 1 cup of arborio rice
• 2 cups of hot stock (about 500ml)
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1 tablespoon of soft cheese (I used the garlic and herb version for extra flavour!)
• Handful of frozen peas

What you do:

• Put the rice and stock in a saucepan, cover the pan and turn the heat on really low.
• Cook the rice for about 15 mins, giving it a quick stir every 5ish minutes.
• At the end of the cooking time, stir in the peas, butter and cheese.
• Enjoy!

It really is as simple as that.  The butter and soft cheese give it the lovely creaminess that is associated with classic risotto, and make it really yummy!

So how about you?  Are you a risotto purist, recoiling in horror at this suggestion?  Or are you happy for any suggestions that might make your life easier!

Ok, I know it’s nearly August, and not really soup season, but it’s been so un-summery the last few days that it felt ‘right’ to be making soup!

I normally make mycarrot and lentil soup but this week fancied something a bit different.  So I had a dig around in the fridge and found some leftover sweet potato and some carrots and we had some leek in the freezer.

So I thought, well, they should all go nicely together!

Here is the recipe I came up with:

What you need:

2 small sweet potatoes
1 medium carrot
1 leek
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock
Black pepper

What you do:

1) Peel the sweet potatoes and carrot and chop into small chunks.

2) Slice the leek into discs about a centimetre wide.

3) Pop all that into the slow cooker.

4) Add a litre of stock.

5) Give it all a stir then add a good dose of black pepper.

6) Pop the lid on and cook for about 8 hours on low, or 4 hours on high.

7) Once it’s all cooked, blend it up to your preferred consistency.

8) Enjoy!

A few things to note:

• This soup is quite sweet, so you might want to add some more black pepper once it’s cooked to balance out the flavours.
• If you want a thicker soup you can always add some lentils when you’re putting everything in the slow cooker.

• As is the way with soup, this is pretty adaptable, so you can easily change the amount of each ingredient that you put in depending on what you’ve got in the fridge!

If you like this, you might also like these!
Slow cooker sweet potatoes
Slow cooker carrot and lentil soup