Sunday bakes - 'Super Easter Sunday' Simnel cake

Happy Easter everyone!

Whether this is a religious holiday for you or not, the beginning of spring is a lovely time for people to get together with their friends and family to share food and enjoy some time together. 

This year I'm going to my parents so I've baked a traditional Simnel cake. It's pretty heavily based on Mary Berry's recipe, but with a few small twists. 

Ingredients
8oz Stork
8oz muscovado sugar
4 eggs
8oz self raising flour
2oz Raisins
8oz sultanas
3oz currants
1oz dried cranberries
4oz glacé cherries
2tbsp apple juice
2tbsp Cranberry juice
1tbsp marsala
2oz chopped candied peel
Zest of 2 lemons
2 tsp sweet mixed spice

Method

Soak the raisins, currants and cranberries in the juice and marsala for a couple of hours. 

Cream the butter and sugar together until light an fluffy. Beat in the eggs one by one.

Drain the fruit and stir into the mixture with the zest, candied peel, the rest of the fruit and the spices. 

Fold in the flour until it's fully combines and pour into a large (tall) cake tin. 

Bake gently at 150 for 2 1/2 hours, until it's firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. If the top starts to get a little brown too soon, you can cover with tin foil to protect it while the rest of the cake cooks. 

Once baked you decorate a traditional Simnel cake with apricot jam covered in a flat layer of marzipan and 11 marzipan balls. 

Sunday bakes - 'Piece of home' - Pasta fagioli

Anyone who knows me, knows my Dad's family is Italian. And anyone who knows Italian families knows that they come with recipes. One of the best loved and most used recipes in my family is Pasta Fagioli, a peasant dish made with both beans and pasta. There are as many variations of this are there are people that cook it, even within my family we all make it a little differently, but it always has to have pasta and beans to make it Pasta Fagioli. This is my recipe.

Ingredients
A joint of smoked gammon
2 sticks of celery
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
5 chestnut mushrooms, sliced
1 tin of butter beans
1.5 cups of pasta (fusilli usually)
1 carrot - chopped into quarter slices
1 tinned of chopped tomatoes
Half a pack of cherry tomatoes - sliced in half
Fresh basil
Half a red bell pepper
dried oregano

Method
Put the gammon in a large pot, half full with water, cover and boil for roughly an hour and a half, depending on the size of the joint. 
Remove the gammon and store the stock water. 
Add a little oil to the bottom of a big pan and heat. Add the chopped onion, celery and carrots. Stir a little then add the garlic. Once the onion is translucent add the stock, the beans, the cherry tomatoes, the pepper, the herbs and the pasta. 
Heat for about 20 minutes, adding water if the levels get too low. 
Chop up the gammon into cubes, as much as you would like to add. It's likely you'll have some left over. 
Add the gammon and the tinned tomatoes and heat for another 5 minutes, add a small amount of fresh basil before serving. 

This dish is salty, smoky and satisfying, a really rich stew that tastes like home and family. 

Sunday bakes - 'Crazy week at work' chocolate chip cookies

This last month has been utter madness at work. Work has been coming out of my ears!

These chocolate chip cookies have been keeping me going and perking me up on my late-night stints. They have literally fueled me for this past week, as my fridge packed up and there was very little else in the house. Not the healthiest of diets I'll admit, but it got me through. Plus they are completely delicious. 

On another note, happy mothers day! Thank you to my lovely mum for this year's ups and downs. 

Ingredients
350g plain flour
1tsp salt
225g Stork butter (it's important to choose stork because real butter makes these cookies a bit too crispy)
175g caster sugar
175g soft brown sugar
1tsp vanilla essence
300g dark chocolate
2 eggs

Method
This is a pretty standard cookie mix up, so combine the butter, sugar and eggs before stirring in the chocolate (cut up into chips), flour, vanilla and salt. 

The mixture will be a little runny, but spoonable. You should leave plenty of space between your dollops on the baking tray because this will run and spread a lot. Try to make your spoonfuls even and spread into a flat circle, but don't worry too much it will melt out. 

Bake at 180 for 20 minutes until golden brown. Eat one warm because it's just heaven. 

Yes, this is really my recipe book. What a mess! You can tell my favorite recipes from the amount of mixture on them.