Last Weekend's Cooking & Baking - Gooey Choc Chip Cookie Recipe

Hope everyone is having a good week and I'm sure you'll all agree with me that I'm glad to see the back of Storm Imogen. It's a beautiful day here today; clear blue skies and sunshine, just a little chilly breeze too. It's definitely getting lighter in the evenings now too so I can't wait to be able to take Barry on longer evening walks around the fields again rather than having to stick to the village with a torch.

Last weekend I had a good tidy up in my kitchen cupboards. It was a job I'd written on my list of "to do this year" jobs and so I'm impressed I've managed to do it so early on into this year. I'd bought a few little plastic baskets to make it easier to store things in the cupboards, particularly my baking cupboard which is full of sprinkles, flours, sugars and all sorts of sweet delights. While the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it with everything balancing on the sides, I also decided to bake something while all the baking bits were out and the easiest thing to make was going to be choc chip cookies as I seemed to have quite a collection of chocolate!

I've probably mentioned before but I don't really have much of a sweet tooth but do enjoy making sweet things for other people. I do however really enjoy these cookies even if I only manage to eat one compared with Jack who could polish two or three off in one sitting! These cookies are so easy to make, the recipe can be adapted to include anything you prefer (smarties cookies, white chocolate and raspberry are lovely etc.) and they take minutes to cook. I'm not a fan of crumbly cookies, I much prefer the gooey type and so this is how these turn out.

Ingredients:
125g butter, softened
100g light brown soft sugar
125g caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
1tsp vanilla extract
225g self raising flour
1/2tsp salt
200g chocolate chunks (or chips)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Cream the butter and both sugars together until fluffy and then gradually mix in the egg and vanilla. Add the flour and salt to the mixture, followed by the chocolate chunks. Give this a good mix until it becomes a dough, then use your hands to great a big ball of cookie dough.

Create smaller balls from the dough, about the size of a walnut and sit on a greased baking tray a sensible distance from each other to ensure the cookies have room to spread as they bake.
Pop in the middle of the oven for just 7 minutes before removing from the oven. I use a spatula to finish flattening the cookies before transferring them onto another tray or rack for cooling. Be careful if using a wire rack as the cookies aren't quite cooked and so can sink through the rack!
You'll find the cookies are crisp and golden on the outside but have that gooey chewy texture in the middle, yum!
They certainly go down very well in our house!

I thought I'd include a photo of my now organised baking cupboard; one of anyway because I seem to have so many baking bits and bobs!

Nice and tidy once more

 

I also cooked us a nice meal of beef fillet steak; it's the first time I'd cooked fillet steak. It's probably my least favourite cut of steak; it's tender but in my opinion there are far more flavoursome cuts, sirloin being my favourite because I love the fatty bit too! I did however cook these well considering it was my first time and I did them with a red wine and balsamic reduction which tasted lovely. This is one of my New Years Resolutions; to cook at least one different dinner each month following a recipe in the many food cookbooks and magazines I have! I'm actually doing quite well this month because tonight I'm cooking a smoky sausage casserole following a recipe in the most recent Good Food Magazine, looks tasty so we will wait and see...

 

Lovely beef fillet from the local Griffins Butchers in Newbury

 

 

Now that you're all drooling at the thought of cookies and steak, I feel like I've got my own back on all the amazing photos I've seen of pancakes so far today which have been making me very hungry! :-)

 

Em x

 

27th December: Making Meals With Christmas Leftovers

Today I've been quite productive; I popped to the supermarket to get some bargain vegetables for soups etc. and then popped into Newbury to have a wander around the sales. Finally, I spent the rest of today cooking to use up Christmas leftovers.

Turkey, Ham & Leek Pie
This pie is so tasty and my favourite way to use up Christmas turkey leftovers. To make it extra easy (after the stress of cooking Christmas dinner), I buy ready-made puff pastry and I make this filling using the mighty can of condensed chicken soup - the way my mum has always taught me. If you've never used this then you should! It's great for making creamy sauces for pastas and pies.

Ingredients:
Leftover cooked ham, cubed
Leftover cooked turkey, cubed
100ml Double cream
250ml Chicken stock
1 Can condensed chicken soup
3 Tbsp white wine vinegar
2 Leeks, chopped
2 Small white onions, diced
Ground black pepper
Pinch of salt
15g Butter
Ready made puff pastry
1 Egg, beaten

Method:

• Melt butter in a deep saucepan/stock pot, add onions and sweat briefly before adding the turkey and ham. Add the white wine vinegar and allow to simmer.
• Pour the condensed soup into a bowl, add a can's worth of cold water and pop into the microwave for 3 minutes before stirring and adding to the meat and onion mix.
• Add the chicken stock, seasoning and double cream and stir gently. Reduce the heat and allow to bubble gently for 10 minutes. Add the leeks near to the end or they'll cook down to nothing. I usually add these 5 minutes before removing this from the heat and then allow the filling to cool before adding to your pie dish.
• Once cool, cover with pastry, cut two small air holes, decorate if you feel like it with the pastry off-cuts, brush with the beaten egg and then cook in the oven at 200 degrees for 20 minutes or until the pastry is puffed and golden.

Oriental Turkey & Sweetcorn Soup
Usually I make this soup with leftover roast chicken but turkey works too. It's one of my favourite soups and on the odd occasion that we have a Chinese takeaway I always order this. Making it at home is very easy though, not to mention cheap.

Ingredients:
100g Cooked turkey/chicken, shredded
900ml Chicken stock
2 Slices of fresh ginger
2 Garlic cloves, halved
Can of creamed corn
1 Tbsp Chinese rice wine/Dry Sherry
1 Tbsp light soy sauce
Pinch of salt
2 Eggs, beaten

Method:

• Put the stock in a large saucepan/stock pot with the ginger and garlic and bring to the boil over a high heat. Reduce the heat and leave bubbling for a further 5 minutes.
• Remove the ginger and garlic, add the cooked turkey, creamed corn, rice wine, salt and light soy sauce. Stir occasionally over a medium heat for a further 5 minutes.
• Turn back up to a high heat to bring to the boil once more, then gradually pour in the beaten eggs while using a chopstick to stir to create threads. Reduce the heat and cook for a final 5-7 minutes. 

This soup is very easy to make and really tasty and filling thanks to the protein from the turkey and egg. I love the threads of egg in the soup and the chopsticks are best for creating these. I only had dark soy sauce in the cupboard so my soup has turned much darker, so make sure you don't put too much soy sauce in.

I've made plenty of soup to last me the next few lunch times at home, we had pie for dinner tonight and the remaining filling I've frozen for another meal. There's enough turkey leftover for a stir fry tomorrow and so we've done really well from our Christmas leftovers and I'm just glad we haven't wasted anything (cold pigs in blankets are so tasty too!). Any veg left in the fridge I'm going to cook into a nice soup to freeze until I'm back at work and then it can be used for my lunch.

I'm trying to get myself organised and savvy for 2016; lots of New Years Resolutions written down, budgets set and lots of fun planned for next year too. I wonder just how fast 2016 will go considering how quickly this year has flown past. Let's not wish next Christmas too quickly!

Em x

20th December: Honey-glazed Christmas Gammon

As has always been tradition in our family, no Christmas is complete without a huge gammon joint to cook at Christmas that means you're eating gammon sandwiches until it comes out of your ears! This year is no exception just because we're on our own for Christmas; my Nan had given me a big gammon joint which had been taking up a drawer in our freezer pretty much entirely!

Once defrosted, I followed the Hairy Bikers recipe to cook it in my swish new stock pot which I bought on Amazon for a bargain £20! I had seen that Wilko did them even cheaper but had run out in our local shop in Newbury so Amazon was a safer bet. The stock pot came with a lovely glass lid too. The hairy bikers' recipe said to place the gammon joint in the stock pot and cover with cold water, bring to the boil and then pour away the water.

It then said to add two carrots, two celery sticks, two onions, a small handful of peppercorns and 4 bay leaves to the gammon, re-cover with cold water and bring to the boil again. You then needed to reduce the heat and cook for a further 20 minutes per 500g (this joint was almost 4 kg).

 

 

I then removed the gammon joint from the water - the remaining water would make a fab stock base for soup! I cut off the netting and removed the rind really carefully to leave as much fat behind as possible. I then scored the gammon, pressed cloves in (not loads because I don't want the cloves to be too overpowering), drizzled with lots of honey and a sprinkle of soft brown sugar too (not on the recipe but Mum always added this to her gammon joints before the oven stage). It then went into the oven (at 200 degrees) for 10 minutes, I re-basted and cooked for a further 20 minutes, re-basting every 10 minutes.

 

Cloves smell amazing!

 

It tastes absolutely delicious and I hardly waited for it to cool before slicing myself some off! It's nice and juicy and just the right amount of sweetness from the honey too. We have got gammon, duck egg and chips for dinner tonight, gammon sandwiches for lunch tomorrow too and we'll keep eating it so hopefully none goes to waste! I'll also use it in my leftovers pies that I make post-Christmas (turkey, ham and leek pie is my favourite).

 

Hope you're all set for Christmas!

 

Em x

 

4th December: Handmade Gifts No.1 - Homemade Granola

Another daily December blog post and this time with a handmade gift idea; Granola. This is Jack's favourite cereal but one he doesn't have too often because it's not exactly healthy with all the sugar in it, tastes good though.

 

Its nice to have a go at making some gifts if you have the time and this one I love because you can present the granola in a pretty jar and decorate as you like. This recipe is easily adaptable to what you prefer too or whatever you have in the cupboard that's suitable.

 

You will need:

• 4 mugs of rolled oats
• 1 mug of dried fruit (I used half a mug of sultanas and half a mug of dried mixed fruit which included blueberries and cranberries)
• 1 mug of chopped nuts (I used pecan nuts, brazil nuts and almonds - Jack's favourites)
• 1 heaped teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 200g butter (more if you want)
• 2 tablespoons of maple syrup
• Half a mug of light brown soft sugar
• Dark chocolate (cut into small chunks)

 

 

Method:

 

This recipe is nice and easy and totally adaptable to what you prefer or what your family/friends would prefer if you're gifting it to them. An alternative to maple syrup is honey, you could stir in some nutella rather than chocolate chunks and so on. The above ingredients are rough estimates that I used and this filled the large jar shown in the above photo.

 

 

 

Mix the dried fruit into a bowl with the oats before stirring in the ground cinnamon. Add the chopped nuts and any other dried ingredients you may fancy adding (ground mixed spice is also nice for this recipe if you want to give the granola an extra 'gingerbread' taste).

 

 

Melt the butter in a pan and then take off the heat. Add the sugar and maple syrup and mix well. Pour this sticky mixture into the dried ingredients bowl and give it a good mix to make sure everything has been coated well. Melt and add more butter if needed (I did say this recipe isn't healthy!).

 

 

Spoon the mixture onto a lined shallow baking tray and make sure the mixture is evenly spread out. I lined my tray with foil but greaseproof paper works too. Bake in the oven at 150 degrees Celsius, not too high anyway or the top will brown too quickly. I baked mine for about 20 minutes and it was perfectly golden.

 

 

Remove the tray from the oven and allow the mixture to cool for a while. Once cool, use a wooden spoon to break up the mixture into granola clusters or smaller bite-size clusters - whatever you prefer. Add the chopped chocolate to the tray (make sure the granola is cool enough first) and mix into the granola. The granola can then be spooned into your decorated jar!

 

 

 

The granola keeps well for quite a while, though I've not tested how long that is because its gone pretty quick in our house! Enjoy! I've added this recipe to my recipe page for future reference.

 

I hope you've all got exciting plans for the first December weekend, I wonder what the weather will bring. I had some bad news last night; my best friend's mum passed away yesterday and it was a total shock. I'm utterly devastated for my best friend and her younger brother and can't begin to imagine how they're feeling. I'm going to see Jess tomorrow to offer my support and lots of hugs, though it's very hard to know what to say to make it better, but hopefully by being there I will be of some help. We've lived next door to each other since we were born until I moved to Newbury and Jess moved to Suffolk to live with her partner, so our friendship is very strong and I was very close to her family. Life can be so unexpected and sad at times.

 

Em x 

Nan's Coconut Buns (With Recipe)

Morning all!

It's been eight years since my Nan passed away but she's always on our minds. She was very traditional, liked to say it as it was (i.e. "Emma stop tucking your hair behind your ears, they'll stick out), but one thing I loved was her old-fashioned ways. Dinners there would always be some warming stew and lunchtime was always a cucumber sandwich (with a dash of vinegar and cracked black pepper). I'm very grateful to my Nan for showing me how to knit, how to make colourful scrapbooks and giving me some sewing advice too or I might not be half as creative and craft-obsessed as I am now. She was very independent (my Granddad passed away back in 1994 so she had many years on her own) and was still cycling along the busy Cambridge roads well into her eighties. Every Christmas she stayed with us, which meant every Christmas the pennies would come out for a card game of Newmarket before she'd hurry into the living room to have the TV at full volume to watch every single soap on TV! I love recalling the funny memories you have of family members who have passed, it shows that regardless of how much time passes, you'll always remember them and they'll put a little smile on your face as you do something that reminds you of them.

Almost every weekend when we visited my Nan, she would always have a batch of freshly baked coconut buns waiting for us and we'd polish them off pretty quickly (especially my brother!). For many years now I've been meaning to make some coconut buns like Nan's, so imagine my delight when I discovered her hand-written recipe on a sheet of paper tucked into one of her old cookbooks! I made a batch last week and I have to say they tasted lovely, very refreshing thanks to the fresh orange but I don't think they were a patch on the famous Nanny Skinner coconut buns!

Anyway, here's the hand-written recipe should anyone wish to make them; if you struggle to read Nan's writing (I did have to look twice at a couple of words!), then let me know and I'll write out the recipe for you. They were very tasty and very cheap to make (I bought all of the ingredients in Lidl and their desiccated coconut was very nice). Nan's recipe is to make a cake but I did the same amount of ingredients and it made 24 small buns.

 

Here's a few photos of my baking progress, they were all demolished within a couple of hours of arriving at my Parents on Thursday!

 

 

 

 

Always thinking of you Nan and Granddad xx

 

Weekend; So Many Jobs, So Little Time...

I love weekends when we don't have any 'going out and about' plans, so that we can make the most of time at home. We usually look forward to that as it means a bit of relaxing after we've both had long weeks at work, but the jobs at home seem to be mounting up so it feels like we didn't actually sit down all weekend!

I was glad the weather was dry at the weekend and the sun did pop out and say hello a couple of times over the last two days too. We drove Barry to the next village and up to a big car park where the Ridgeway is (it's about a twenty minute walk to the Ridgeway from our house and we were keen to explore another part of it), he wasn't best pleased on the short ten minute car journey but seemed to think it wasn't so bad when rewarded with a nice long walk, muddy puddles and meeting lots of new dogs. It was windy up on the Ridgeway but lovely to see so many people walking, cycling and even in pony traps! We met a lovely couple walking their two Irish Wolfhounds, they really are gorgeous dogs. Having just met a couple of ponies Barry wasn't sure if these Wolfhounds were too equine-related and he hung back while one came and leaned his head against my chest (they're so tall!). We continued through an underpass (under the A34) where lovely paintings and rhymes about The Ridgeway can be found on the walls.

We met a few cyclists and a bouncy Beagle puppy and his owner too and then Barry found the muddiest puddles possible to run and splash through.

Part Jack Russell, part Gazelle? Barry bounds everywhere! Proven in slo-mo!

 

Eventually we headed back to the car after a good few miles walk with a happy puppy in tow. Barry was much happier on the short car journey home and realises the car isn't so bad when he gets an exciting walk at the other end. As soon as we were home I decided to give Barry a bath. The 'Bath' word is worse than the 'Walk' word in our house, Barry goes mental at the mention of a bath, not running the other way but in excitement! He must be one of very few dogs that cries in excitement for a bath or shower. A short while later we had one clean dog and one soaking wet owner (he's a wriggler when I'm trying to dry him).

 

Barry excited for a bath!

 

I spent the rest of Saturday helping Jack with the shed building. This is the first weekend in a while that Jack hasn't been working and I think he's pleased with what he's managed to achieve with the shed. I was on painting duty and also did some gardening once I was done. By the end of the day we were flagging from all the fresh air and hard work so rewarded ourselves with dinner out at Nandos - I had a free whole chicken that we shared with some sides courtesy of my loyalty card after nearly a year of saving the rewards up so it was a very cheap and satisfying meal out.

 

Painting the sides before they were fixed together

 

Yesterday I just seemed to have a million things to do and not enough time. I planned to get started with doing my pickled onions for this year (got a 4kg sack of pickling onions from the farm shop for £6, pretty good value and cheaper than on our local market), also have some apples to cook up and make into crumbles, I wanted to make a nice pasta sauce for Jack's lunch at work this week and I also wanted to make myself another soup for the week. In the end I only managed to do the pasta sauce and make a soup as I got side-tracked tidying the kitchen cupboards and cooking a joint of pork and a whole chicken that were in the freezer and needed using up. That's our dinners sorted all of this week; tonight we're having one of my favourite 'sloppy' dinners: sliced pork warmed up in my homemade pork and apple gravy with mash and lots of veg (I'm veg obsessed, I'd eat a plate of veg with gravy any day!). The crackling on the pork was really good (I'd get the sack if it wasn't!) and we devoured that yesterday with some lovely veg and little Yorkshire puds, but in my haste at doing so many things at once I forgot to cook potatoes (silly woman).

 

Next task is to get pickling...!

 

I made a nice vegetable soup; pretty much made the recipe up though I did take some inspiration from my new soup book but had to work with the veg I had:

2 carrots

2 parsnips

1/4 portion of a large swede

1 white onion

1 leek

White wine vinegar

Seasoning

A few small fresh snips of rosemary

1 1/2 pints vegetable stock

 

I fried the diced onion and leek in a dash of white wine vinegar first to soften them and then added the rest of the ingredients (all chopped up) along with stock and left to bubble away. I fished out the rosemary stalks, seasoned and then blended the soup. It's really tasty, I think it's the parsnip that I can taste the most and it's a lovely yellowy orange colour. I bought a cheap pumpkin at the weekend too so I can try and make a pumpkin soup next. For the last few years I've always cooked a sausage, sage and pumpkin casserole at Halloween and it's delicious, the recipe is here if anyone is interested.

 

I had planned on doing some Christmas card making again this weekend but ran out of time. I did manage to make a start on decorating an old notice board; it's going to be hung in the spare room where I've got a bit of a sewing/knitting theme going on anyway so decided to decorate the edge of the notice boards with two old tape measures. They might actually come in handy for measuring things. I'm in the process of making some little heart shaped pin cushions to hang on the board too, made with some vintage-inspired and sewing-themed fabric. Hopefully I'll have a finished photo to show you soon.

 

 

 

Autumnal Feeling; This Calls For Soup!

Hello from a rainy West Berkshire!

Autumn is definitely here and I'm amazed at just how quickly the leaves are changing colour and falling here. I do think Autumn is a very pretty season, it's probably my favourite season actually for the fact that it's acceptable to wrap up in jumpers and boots, and eat comforting homemade soups and stews. I'm a big lover of proper British food and relish coming home to the smells of the slow-cooker creating a tasty tender stew for us.

I also love making warming soups with all manner of different veg (usually I buy one main ingredient and the rest is leftover veg in the fridge so they work out cheap to make). I got a soup book the other day and it has some great recipes, all very easy to follow too. I didn't own any soup books so this was my splurge this month! It was only £8 when I got it to the tills too, so I'm pleased at that :-)

I love celeriac and it's now in season so I decided I wanted to make a celeriac and leek soup yesterday. Here were the ingredients I used;

• Celeriac £1.30 (when did celeriac get so pricey!?)
• Leek (reduced to £0.30 in the supermarket)
• Carrot (leftover in fridge)
• Onion (£0.60 for a giant one at the local farm shop - half went in soup and half went in a cottage pie I made last night too)
• Fresh thyme (from the garden)
• 2 Bay Leaves (my bay plant in the garden isn't quite big enough to start stealing leaves yet)
• Salt & cracked black pepper (lots of pepper, I love it in soups!)
• 1 1/2 pints chicken stock

When I say a giant onion, I really do mean a giant onion - I'd never seen one this size!

Anyway, I loosely followed one of the celeriac soup recipes I found in my new book but I like making it up as I go along too. I think the recipe wanted me to fry the onions and leek in butter first but I was trying to make this soup as healthy as possible so just chopped everything up and let it cook away in the stock for half hour on a medium heat. It probably didn't even need that long but I was busy making cottage pie portions too.

Celeriac

 

Everything chopped up and thrown in

 

I removed the Thyme stalks and bay leaves once it had finished cooking and then blended the soup. It's quite thick but that's the way I like my soups. It tastes lovely and I've got a flask of it today at work.

 

Finished!

 

Celeriac has a nice creamy flavour as it is but I can see why people like adding cream to these kind of soups. I'm lactose intolerant however so no cream for me! I'm looking forward to making some more soups now that soup weather is here. I'd like to try a pumpkin soup next, but can't decide what else to cook it with... carrot? Any suggestions welcome! I made a lovely parsnip and apple soup last year which was really tasty and froze well too, so I must have a go at that seeing as I have tonnes of apples in the cold cupboard from Jack's Parent's trees.

 

Em x