Fresh Herby Cottage Cheese

4 pints milk

6 tbsp lemon juice

Good quality sea salt

Fresh herbs

– Heat the milk to just boiling in a very large pan.

– Add the lemon juice and stir, the milk will start to separate into white curds and pale yellow whey. If it doesn’t separate or not much then add another tablespoon of lemon juice.

– Pour the curds into a cheesecloth in a sieve over a large pan or bowl.

– Leave to drain and then give a little squeeze to get out the last of the whey.

– Transfer the curds into a bowl and mix in your fresh herbs and salt. I like to use oak smoked sea salt for a nice extra flavour.

Milk and Honey Panna Cotta

6 gelatine leaves

200ml double cream

1 pint milk

75g local honey

1 vanilla pod, seeds reserved

– Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 5 minutes.

– Rinse but do not dry your dariole moulds or ramekins.

– Heat the milk, honey, cream and vanilla in a pan until just boiling.

– Strain into a jug and then pour into the moulds or ramekins.

– Leave to cool then refrigerate until set.

– To unmould warm the outside of the mould in warm water then invert onto a plate.

– Serve with fresh fruit of your choice. Homegrown raspberry coulis was mine!

Chocolate Syrup

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup water

Pinch of salt

Bring to a boil in a large pan, careful, this will easily quadruple in size! Then pour into a bottle, cool and refrigerate.

Add to milk or pour over desserts.

Cheat’s Lobster Macaroni Cheese

500 g macaroni

25 g butter, plus extra to grease

25 g cornflour

125 ml semi-skimmed milk

100 ml white wine

400 g tin lobster bisque

1/2tsp salt

200g grated mozzarella and cheddar mix

125 g cooked king prawns, roughly chopped

⁃ Cook your pasta according to instructions.

⁃ In a saucepan melt your butter, add the cornflour and whisk to remove lumps.

⁃ Add the milk and whisk to combine.

⁃ Add the wine and lobster bisque, stir and then heat until the sauce starts to thicken.

⁃ Add the salt and half of the cheese. Stir until the cheese is melted through and the sauce smooth.

⁃ Heat the oven to ~ 180°C (or use your grill if you prefer)

⁃ Combine the cooked pasta with the sauce.

⁃ Pour into a greased oven dish.

⁃ Scatter the remaining cheese and the chopped prawns on top.

⁃ Heat in the oven until the cheese is melted and bubbling on top.

⁃ Serve.

Parmesan Dumplings

Parmesan dumplings are my new favourite comfort carb. They go well with anything, tomato based or traditional stock based stew. They work great in the slow cooker or in the oven. They’re fantastic!

Makes 8 dumplings

80g unsalted butter

150g self raising flour

1/2tsp salt

50g parmesan + extra for sprinkling

2 tsp parsley

50ml milk

– Rub together the butter, flour and salt.

– Add the parmesan and parsley and mix.

– Add the milk and bring together to form a soft dough.

– Divide into 8 and add to the top of your stew.

– Cook for 2 hours if in the slow cooker, 30 minutes if in the oven.

Pumpkin Spice Muffins/ Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream

I always save the pumpkin flesh from my pumpkins when I’m carving them for Halloween. This is the advantage of growing your own pumpkins as a shop bought pumpkin usually has little flavour but if you can choose your variety you can get the best of both worlds. Although, to be honest, the spice in this mix means this would taste great even with a less flavoursome pumpkin!

These can be treated as either cupcakes or muffins, with icing it’s a cupcake, without it’s a nice, moist spicy muffin. The icing takes it to another level but it’s still delicious without.

This recipe makes an awkward 18 so what I did was make 12 cupcakes and 6 mini brioche shapes, which are great for a nice grab and go breakfast option.

Makes 18 cupcakes (or un-iced it’s a muffin!)

• 2 large eggs

• ¼ cup (59ml) milk

• 1 cup (236ml) vegetable oil

• 50g  butter, melted

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 270g pumpkin puree*

• 200g dark brown sugar

• 90g granulated sugar

• 350g plain flour

• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

• 1 tsp salt

• 2 tsp ground cinnamon

• 1 tsp mixed spice

• ¼ tsp nutmeg

⁃ Heat the oven to 170°C and line a 12 hole muffin tray with paper liners and an extra 6 either cupcakes or a silicone tray if that’s easier.

⁃ Beat together the eggs, oil, melted butter milk and vanilla essence.

⁃ Add your pumpkin and sugars and mix well.

⁃ Add the flour, bicarb, salt and spices and fold in until totally incorporated. Try to to over mix but get all the flour broken down.

⁃ Pour into lined or silicone muffin holes.

⁃ Bake for 20 minutes until the cake is set and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

⁃ Leave to cool before icing.

*Steamed Pumpkin

– Cut your pumpkin flesh into rough chunks the same size and steam them in a vegetable steamer for 15 minutes until a knife inserted goes in smoothly.

– Mash the soft pumpkin flesh with a fork or a potato masher until smooth.

Salted caramel buttercream

• 100g unsalted butter (softened)

• 200g icing sugar

• 1 tbsp milk

• 4 tbsp salted caramel

⁃ Beat together all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl until smooth.

Very Berry Breakfast Muffins

These Very Berry Breakfast Muffins are nothing less than an experiment in how much summer fruit it is possible to cram into a muffin and still maintain structural integrity! (About 300g as it turns out.)

The summer fruits are cropping heavily with cherries, raspberries, strawberries all ready now and the blueberries soon to ripen (confession: some bought blueberries went in here too!)

I am the furthest thing away from a morning person it is possible to be so easy, quick to ‘grab and go’ breakfasts are a must for me. These are packed full of homegrown fruit and the oats add a nice breakfasty touch too! You can whip them up in about 30 minutes start to finish too, which is always nice!

Makes 8

50g dark muscoavdo sugar
125ml milk
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
40g butter, melted and cooled
150g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
~300g mixed summer fruits (can use frozen if fresh not available!)

8tsp porridge oats

8tsp Demerara sugar

– Heat the oven to gas mark 6/200°C and prepare 8 holes of a muffin tin with paper cases. 
– Beat together the sugar, milk, egg and vanilla essence then add the butter and beat again. 
– Add the flour, baking powder and salt into the mixture.
– Fold in gently. 
– Add the fruits and stir in to the mixture to evenly distribute.  
– Divide the mixture evenly between the cases. 

⁃ Sprinkle the top of each muffin with a teaspoon each of oats and Demerara sugar.
– Bake for 25 minutes. (Check after 20)
– Remove from the oven and leave to cool a little in the tin then place on a wire rack to cool completely or serve warm. These will be much less stable when warm but the berries taste amazing!

Orzo Cheese

25g butter

Splash of olive oil

250g orzo

2tbsp corn flour

100ml white wine

1 pint milk

1/2tsp salt

90g mature cheddar, grated

1 ball mozzarella, shredded

3tbsp Parmesan, grated

125g lardons (or chopped bacon)

– Heat a large pan and add the butter and oil.

– Add the orzo and stir so it is coated.

– Add the corn flour and stir well.

– Add the white wine, stir.

– Add the milk and salt and bring to a simmering boil.

– After about 5 minutes add the cheeses. Stir well until the cheeses all melt in.

– Simmer on a low heat until all of the liquid is absorbed and the pasta is just al dente.

– Turn off the heat and leave to sit for 5 minutes.

– Heat a small pan and add the bacon lardons. Cook until crispy.

– Add the lardons to the orzo and stir in.

– Enjoy!

A pan fried chicken breast makes a great addition to this to make it a bigger meal, you could also add other things to the orzo such as spinach, mushrooms or peas to get a veggie in there.

Christmas Pudding

As with the Last Minute Christmas Cake I don’t get to participate with this more than the traditional stir and wish.  However it’s another recipe that doesn’t need to mature or need constant feeding.  You can make it up on Christmas Eve if you want to or in September, it’ll still be great.  In fact I think we’ve been known to make up the 3 puddings and then eat one the next year! I can’t even claim the words for the recipe as my own here so think of it as a guest post from my mum.

Makes 3 average pudding basins

225 g dark brown sugar
400g white breadcrumbs
225g suet
half tsp salt
1 tsp mixed spice
1 kg mixed dried fruit
50g chopped blanched almonds
2 large cooking apples peeled, cored and grated
zest and juice of half a lemon
2 beaten eggs
300ml Guiness/milk stout/dark beer
150ml approx milk

 – Mix all dry ingredients together.  
– Mix in apple and lemon, eggs, beer and anything else in the list and enough milk to make soft dropping consistency.
– Put into pudding bowls with a circle of baking parchment in the bottom of each.
– Cover with greaseproof with a pleat in the centre. 
– Steam for 4-5 hours.
– Leave to go cold and store in a cool place. (I make up the full quantity and freeze the spares.)
– To reheat thaw, if frozen, and microwave for 6 minutes, with a pyrex lid to keep in moisture, or if you are a traditionalist steam again for 2 hours.

Cranberry Loaf

I found this recipe over on Joy of Baking and knew it was just perfect for what I wanted.  It was very simple to prepare as it’s essentially a muffin mixture and it would keep very well for a week, in fact getting better over the week, so perfect for posting for Christmas presents.  It also looks so very Christmassy! 

I wanted to use rectangular foil ‘takeout’ containers so as to ship and transport it easily and these were smaller than the 9″x5″x3″ tin the recipe called for so I doubled the recipe thinking may be I’d get 3 out of it, nope, got 4!  Yum, one spare!  It’s a really interesting flavour too, you have the sharpness of the cranberries with hints of fruity and nuttiness.  The crust also forms this delicious sugary crunch.  A surefire winner this one.  My test subjects of my mum’s office were begging for the recipe!

 

Makes 2 8″ x4″x3″ ‘loaf tins’

460g plain flour
700g golden caster sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
zest of 1 orange
1 large egg
56g butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla essence
360ml milk
100g fresh cranberries (Dried if fresh not available)
90g mixed peel (I used whole preserved orange peels chopped up)
60g chopped mixed nuts

– Heat your oven to gas mark 4 and grease your tins. 
– In a large bowl mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and orange zest. 
– In a large jug mix together the butter, vanilla and milk. 
– Mix the two together and stir well to combine.  (Doesn’t matter if there are some lumps in there.)
– Add the fruits and nuts and stir through. 
– Pour into the tins and bake at the top of the oven for 1 hour.  Cover the top with foil if it gets too brown. 
– Test with a skewer to see if it’s done then remove from the oven and cool completely. 
– Wrap in foil to store for up to a week.