Sunday bakes - ' Bearing gifts' blueberry muffins

On Monday this week I went for a meal with my boyfriend's family. They're a lovely bunch and it's always a lot of fun. Since you should never turn up empty handed I decided to make some blueberry muffins. If you know me you'll know these are my absolute favourite!

Ingredients
4oz plain flour
4oz butter
2.5oz caster sugar
2 eggs
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sweet mixed spice
1/2 tsp vanilla essence4.5oz frozen blueberries

Method
Cream the butter and the sugar before adding in the eggs one by one then the spices and vanilla. Sift in the flour and the baking powder and mix thoroughly. 

Spoon half the mixture into about 6 muffin cases and drop the blueberries onto of the mixture. Cover with the rest of the mixture. The cases should be about 3/4 full. 

Bake at 160 for 30 minutes until the muffins are fully risen and golden. 

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. 

Sunday bakes - 'Packing up the old' Pear and almond scones

It's time for a spring clear out. Perhaps a little early, but if the weather is ready to move on from winter, so am I. I've been boxing and bag things for the charity shop for months and it's time to get it all out of my house and have a fresh start. So to go with my domestic fresh start, here's a fresh recipe that I tasted in Dublin last year at Avoca. I'm not sure of their own recipe, but this is my attempt.


Ingredients
130g butter
400g plain flour

100g ground almonds
1tsp baking powder
65g caster sugar
1 can of pears in juice (not syrup) - chop into cubes
1 large egg, beaten
80ml milk
100ml of the pear juice
1 vanilla pod
a few drops of almond essence
some flaked almonds for the top

Method
Rub the butter, flour and baking powder into bread crumbs before stirring in the egg, sugar, vanilla and almond essence. Add the pears and mix thoroughly before adding the milk and juice mixture a little by little. The mixture can't be too wet so you might not need to add all the milk/juice.

Spoon onto a baking tray and sprinkle in flaked almonds and bake at 170 for twenty minutes until lightly brown. Dust lightly with icing sugar.

Sunday bakes - 'bossy boots' banana bread

I'm having a fairly fruitful January.  I am still working my way through the dates and the banana flour so this week I have made some banana bread, but with no flour and very little additional sugar. I'm again using the dates for sugar and the banana flour instead of real flour. 

Ingredients
120g Stork
140g pitted dates 
140g banana flour
1tsp baking powder
50g caster sugar
3 very ripe bananas
2 eggs

Method
I put everything into the blender and mixed it all up well until it was a sloppy cake mixture texture. Pour into a paper lined loaf tin and bake on a low heat until it has stopped wibbling when you prod it. It is rather gooey, but holds together nicely and it's really sweet. 

Sunday bakes - 'Second Christmas' sweet raw tart

I found a lot of dates. And I do mean a LOT! Tescos were selling them by the (big box) so this week I decided to try out a recipe using dates as both a sweetener and a binder. Dates are brilliant because in their natural unadulterated state they are incredibly sweet and sticky. So whilst not being the healthiest thing to eat (they are about 80% sugar), it is natural sugars and they do also contain fibre and protein. 

So this time I've made an (almost) entirely raw foods tart, which is flour free as well, thanks to another new discovery, banana chip flour. This is a fine powder that I found in my local health foods shop made almost entirely of dried and ground bananas, neat!

Ingredients
300g pitted dates
40g ground almonds
40g banana flour
2 sliced kiwis
1 sliced apricot
2 tbsp lemon curd

Method
Put the dates, the almonds and the banana flour into a blender and blitz into a crumbly paste. Spoon into your dish and press down into a firm crust with your spoon. 

Spoon the lemon curd over the top and spread evenly, then arrange the fruit on top. 

Super easy, and the crust holds together nicely.