Posts in category: Recipes

My Grandad passed away before I was born, and in the last few years I’ve lost my remaining 3 grandparents.  My husband has also lost both his nans in recent years.  And I’m finding myself getting more attached to those little things they all left behind.  The photos we have of them are, of course, so important.  But what I’m really happy to have are the scraps of paper with their handwritten recipes on.  Seeing that familiar writing brings all sorts of memories rushing back.  And there is something special about the idea of cooking a recipe that they used to make.  It feels almost like carrying on a part of them.

Bara brith literally means ‘speckled bread’ and is a cake/bread made with dried fruit, which explains the name!  It’s one of the things, like welsh cakes, that you always see in the shops in Wales, but that I’d never actually had before.  Steve had been on at me for ages to make it though, so I thought it was time to grab his Nan’s recipe and give it a go!

So, on with the recipe!

Ingredients:

• 250g mixed dried fruit
• 110g butter
• 150g brown sugar
• 240ml milk
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarb
• 340g Self raising flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon mixed spice
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Melt the butter, sugar, milk, fruit and bicarb in a large pan.
3. Bring to the boil and simmer for 2 minutes.
4. Cool.
5. Add beaten eggs and flour and mix well.
6. Tip mixture into a greased/lined loaf tin and cook for 1 hour at 180.

A few things to note:

• Top the cake with a sprinkle of brown sugar before you put it in the over for a nice crunchy finish!
• Keep an eye on the cake once it’s in the oven.  If it looks like it’s starting to brown too quickly then you can cover it with some foil.
• If you want you can soak the dried fruit for a bit (or overnight if you fancy) in a mug’s worth of black tea before making the bara brith.

I have a couple of recipes from my side of the family that I want to work my way through, so keep a look out for Granny’s chocolate cake in the future!

Do you have a treasured family recipe?  I’d love to know what it is!

Anyway, I was doing a mental meal plan as I was shopping, working out what we would eat that week and therefore what I needed to buy.  I thought about getting some potatoes, so I could make my slow cooker baked potatoes.  But then spotted a pack of sweet potatoes.

We both love sweet potatoes, but I tend to cut them into wedges and bake them.  I’ve not have them as replacement for baked potatoes before, but thought it had to be worth a try.  Well. what can I say, other than YUM!

• Get some foil or baking parchment and scrunch a few pieces into balls and put them in the slow cooker.  You want enough to cover the base.

• Rub a bit of oil, salt and pepper into the potato skins.

• Wrap them in foil.

• Put them in the slow cooker, on top of the scrunched up foil/baking parchment.

• Cook on low for about 8 hours.

• Remove and top with whatever you fancy – I think chilli would be so tasty with these!

• Enjoy!

There are a few things to note with these:

• The skins won’t be at all crispy.  That’s just the way it is with slow cooking!  So if crispy skins are important to you then you might want to either stick to oven cooking them, or cook them this way then pop them in a hot oven for 5 minutes to crisp them up.

• You really don’t need to add any water to the slow cooker.

• We ended up making sweet potato tuna melts which were so delicious – basically you cook the potatoes as described above, cut them in half and lie them on a baking tray.  Then top with tuna mayo and cheese and pop under the grill for a few minutes until the cheese starts to melt and bubble.  So good!

Sweet potatoes not your thing?  Then check out my recipe for slow cooker jacket potatoes.

This takes a little bit of work in that you have to grate the apple and the carrot, but other than that it is a simple recipe and definitely one you can make with kids.

What you need:

• 150g self raising flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon mixed spice
• 125g softened butter
• 125g brown sugar

• 1 medium carrot, grated
• I bramley apple, half grated, half chopped into tiny chunks
• 50g raisins
• 2 eggs

For the cream cheese icing (if you fancy it!)

• 100g full fat or low fat cream cheese
• 2 tbsp icing sugar

What to do:

1. Preheat oven to 180 (gas mark 4)
2. Put about 15 cake cases on a baking tray (or in a bun tray if you’re feeling fancy!)
3. Sieve the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and mixed spice into a large bowl.
4. Add the butter, brown sugar, carrot, apple, raisins and eggs. Beat together with a wooden spoon until well mixed.
5. If the mixture seems a little too wet (sometimes you get loads of liquid from the carrot and apple), then add another tablespoon of flour..
6. Divide the mixture between the cases and bake for 20-25 minutes until they spring back when pressed.
7. Leave them to cool completely.
8. They’re really tasty just as they are, but if you want to make the icing then just mix the cream cheese with the icing sugar in a bowl then spread on the cakes.
9. Enjoy!

I’ve always known that I’m just like my Mum.  We’re so similar in so many ways; it can get a bit freaky at times!  But every now and then I realise that little bits of my Dad have snuck through too.  Like my slight addiction to chocolate, and needing to know that there’s a stash of it somewhere in the house!

These little biscuits are perfect to make if you need a bit of a chocolate fix but don’t have any actual chocolate bars in the house!  They’re also a great recipe to do with young children as it’s just a case of measuring ingredients, plonking them all in a bowl, mixing, dividing and cooking!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 8oz (225b) margarine
• 4oz (100g) caster sugar
• 8oz (225g) self raising flour
• 2oz cocoa powder
• Handful of chocolate chips

And here’s what you do:

• Mix all the ingredients together (you might need to get your hands in to get it to all come together properly!)

• Divide into walnut size pieces and flatten on a greased baking sheet.  I like to flatten them with a fork to get the pretty lines on them.  Rhys prefers to squish them down with his hands.  Either method works fine!

• Cook in preheated oven at 190 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

• Sprinkle with icing sugar when cool.

These seem to be a little bit better after they’ve properly cooled down – they’re quite soft and a bit cakey and if you eat them straight away when they’re still warm you’ll need a nice glass of water or milk to help wash them down!

Either way though, they’re a fab little chocolate hit if you’re ever in the need of a quick fix!

Now, I know that jacket potatoes aren’t particularly tricky or stressful to cook in the oven or the microwave, but I do still find those methods a bit of a faff!  I don’t think I’ve never actually done them in the oven and I always get annoyed when I microwave them because you get the nasty spot on the bottom that’s just hard and horrible.

So for me, being able to do them in the slow cooker is perfect.  I pop them in the in the morning, prepare toppings in the afternoon, then they’re all ready to serve at dinner time!

• Get some foil or baking parchment and scrunch a few pieces into balls and put them in the slow cooker.  You want enough to cover the base.

• Rub a bit of oil, salt and pepper into the potato skins.

• Wrap them in foil.

• Put them in the slow cooker, on top of the scrunched up foil/baking parchment.

• Cook on low for about 8 hours.

• Remove and top with whatever you fancy – we normally go for tuna mayo, beans and cheese!

• Enjoy!

That’s really all there is to it.  A few things to note though:

• As is the way with slow cooking, the skins won’t be at all crispy, so if that’s important to you then you might want to either stick to oven cooking them, or cook them this way then pop them in a hot oven for 5 minutes to crisp them up.

• You really don’t need to add any water to the slow cooker.

• I’ve never pricked the potatoes and they come out great every time.

How do you like your potatoes?!