Zesty cocoa praline!

Hey guys,

Here's a little something I've just made and it took less than 10 minutes to make!
Using some old bananas, cocoa powder (unsweetened), cashew nuts and the zest of an orange, you get a delicious, healthy little treat that's packed with tons of nutritional value and magnificent flavour! Woo!

To start off, break up the bananas into small chunks, throw them into a bowl and zest an orange onto a plate. Bash up the cashews until they're quite powdery and keep them to one side. Mash up the banana with a potato masher, add the cocoa (as much as you want - I used two or three table spoons with 2 bananas and it was perfect), mix with a spoon, add the cashews, mash some more, add the zest and mix it all up.

Now heres the choice, either pop it in the freezer for a few hours for a nice, chilled praline-like mousse... or leave in the freezer overnight for a frozen treat!

I like it either way, it's up to you!

Byee

Poached eggs!

Hello everyone,

So to begin my mastery of all things eggy, I decided to learn how to make poached eggs. Poached eggs are a little bit similar to fried eggs except they're cooked in very hot water without any fat, salt or other things. Pure eggy-ness. Egg-tastic. Tired of the egg jokes yet? Too bad I'm afraid, more to come!

So I got this idea after my mum mentioned she read in a cook book that you can poach an egg in a very stylish way by creating a sort of vortex/whirlpool in the pan with a whisk, and then pouring the egg quickly into it.

Now this next bit is speggtacular. The whirlpool allows the egg white to wrap around the yolk and cook in a sort of ball-like fashion. After 2 - 4 minutes you can take it out, wipe the ugly froth from it, place it on a bit of kitchen roll to absorb the excess water, and enjoy a magnifeggcent, runny yet well cooked egg!

It's important that before putting the egg in the water, you add a dash or so of white wine vinegar to the pan. Trust me it does not effect the taste at all but something in the vinegar allows this process to work properly. Think of it as a splash in the ocean; you won't notice it at all.  

Equally, don't add any salt to the water! It breaks down the egg protein and stops it from poaching properly. If you want salt, add it once it's out the pan. 

Just because I think it's easier with some sort of visual reference, here's a video of chef Gordon Ramsay demonstrating this same technique.

Thanks for reading!

Important Lessons... with Brownies

Hello everyone!

So as I said, I decided to make brownies today for my friend's birthday.

Now, I got the recipe of BBC Good Food. And it's a great recipe. Unfortunately however, my girlfriend dropped the brownie as it came out the oven and now it's really a chocolatey crumble (delicious though, I might add!).

So, although it did not go quite to plan, this was my first time making brownies and I'm happy that they taste good... even if they're squashed and very ugly. For this reason, I will show you how I made them, but I'm afraid the end result was not photographed.

So here is the recipe:

• 185 grams of Unsalted Butter
• 85 grams of Plain flour
• 40 grams of Cocoa powder
• 50 grams of White chocolate
• 50 grams of Milk chocolate
• 3 Large eggs
• 275 grams of Golden caster sugar

Here are some step by step pictures, I hope you enjoy them! 

For the actual methods and original recipe, click here

 

I hope you try out the recipe! Although mine were broken up they tasted great!! 

Thanks guys, next time I'll be learning to master eggs!

This weekend...

Hello everyone!

So I've had this blog for nearly a week now and it's been fantastic! It's got a few views and some followers which is brilliant - I'm very happy! I'm so excited and hope that more people come and enjoy this blog, its really fun knowing that people enjoy what I'm writing. It's also very encouraging whilst learning to cook, and quite social too.

So this weekend I'm going to be celebrating my friend's birthday. We've always enjoyed baking things together so I wanted to make something special! I've decided to make him some of the best brownies he'll ever have.

Tomorrow the operation commences, I'll show you how it goes!

Talk soon

Peeling the ginger...

Hey everyone,

Here's a quick post to share a very handy technique I read about recently. When I started making my Chinese-style chicken soup I had a real problem with peeling ginger. If I used a knife, I'd lose too much of the ginger, if I used a peeler... well, it just didn't work out for me.

So this is a much more ideal, less wasteful method I learned!

The idea is to use a small spoon and, using your thumb, gently scrape the peel off. It works really well and is incredibly time efficient.

Thanks guys, until next time!

Chinese chicken soup

Hey everyone!


So this is a recipe I've been working on for a chinese-style chicken soup! Personally I think it's quite good, friends and family seem love it so I presume something's going right! In fact, having just made a load of it for this blog, my sister has arrived home and is very pleased to see that there's some left!

So the thing I like about this soup is that 1. It's dead easy 2. It takes about 30-40 minutes to make and 3. It can easily be modified to suit different tastes.

So without anymore waiting, here's my recipe.

Ingredients:

I do love garlic...

• 1 Chicken breast

• 3-4 Spring onions

• 3-4 Mushrooms of any kind. I went for Chestnut mushrooms today

• 1 or more Garlic cloves - this really comes down to preference. As I love garlic, I used 3

• About a thumb sized portion of Ginger root. 

• Chicken stock and roughly 900 milliliters of water

• Soy sauce - I used dark, but feel free to use any. Dark is very high in Sodium (I think) so be cautious if you're trying to lower how much you consume.

So to start off, your ingredients will look rather like this...

So once you're all set up and have your ingredients on the chopping board start by preparing everything before actually cooking (I learnt this the hard way).

• Chop the mushrooms into fine slices (not too thin though)

• The spring onions need to be shredded - this means you slice them vertically and fairly finely

• The ginger must be peeled and chopped into tiny bits

• The garlic must also be chopped into tiny bits

• Boil the kettle and add 900 millilitres of the water to a jug, along with the chicken stock and around a tablespoon or less of soy sauce

• Add the stock to a large saucepan

• Add the chicken, ginger and garlic and then bring it to boiling

• Partly cover and reduce it to simmer for about 20 minutes

• After this, remove the chicken to a plate or chopping board, and shred it with a fork. Basically tear it into bite-sized chunks.

• Add the torn chicken, spring onions and mushrooms to the saucepan and simmer for about 5 or 6 minutes

Optional - You could then boil some noodles and add them to the soup, if you like. I didn't as I don't enjoy the starchy element they bring to the dish

So that's it!

Some ideas for modifying the recipe:

• Add fresh chilli or chilli flakes

• Replace chicken with tofu to make it vegetarian

• Add a handful bean sprouts (unfortunately I've run out today)

• Add fresh mint and raw spring onion for a much more refreshing and energising soup

These aren't the most exciting suggestions, but they all make quite a difference to the final outcome.

Thanks for reading this post, I hope you enjoy it! 

Crazily delicious carrot cake

So it was my girlfriend's birthday the other day and I decided to make a cake, usually I make a bog-standard sponge cake; either vanilla or chocolate. However in the spirit of my new ambition I decided to expand my cake knowledge by attempting to make a... Carrot cake!

Firstly, this is not my own recipe. I got this from the BBC Good Food website and do not take credit for it. I highly recommend the website and it's fantastic recipes.

That said, I made a couple of minor changes. I seriously mean it when I say minor changes.

Right, now that's out the way lets get this going!


The ingredients for the cake are as listed:

• 300 grams of plain flour 

• 2 teaspoons of cinnamon (I used 1 and a half tablespoons)

• 1 teaspoon baking powder 

• Half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda  

• 200 grams of soft brown sugar (the one I used was also light by the way, from what I've been told dark brown sugar is more appropriate for things like treacle)
• 4 eggs - the ones I used were medium sized

• 250 millilitres of oil - when I first read this I was confused as I've always used butter in cakes, but I used vegetable oil and it worked amazingly well! Don't use olive oil though... seriously, do not use olive oil. 

• 1 orange, zested 

• 1 lemon, zested

• 200 grams of carrots, finely grated (really go for it; as finely as possible - imagine a wet stringy carrot mush... yummy) 

• 150 grams of walnuts, chopped (actually, I put them in a bag and battered them with a rolling pin until they were more dusty lumps than chopped. This comes down to preference though, I do not like cake with chunky walnuts in it!) 

• 227 grams of tinned pineapple pieces, well drained and chopped. This is entirely optional and as I dislike pineapple greatly, I did not include it in the cake I made. 

And for the cream cheese frosting:

• 125 grams of unsalted butter at room temperature

• 250 grams of cream cheese - go for something full fat and not too tangy

• 50 grams of icing sugar is what the original recipe states, however this was not enough for me. I used something closer to 75 grams. Honestly I would just add the 50 grams and then add until you're satisfied with the taste. 

Method: 

Firstly, the most important thing to remember here is that once the wet and dry ingredients are added, you really need to act fast and get it in the oven literally as fast as possible otherwise the cake will not rise properly!

• Heat your oven to either 150C/130C for fan/Gas 2.

• Line a 20cm by 10cm deep cake tin with baking parchment to prevent sticking. 

• Sift the flour, cinnamon, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda together and stir in the lovely brown sugar

• In another bowl beat the eggs with the oil and citrus zests

• Stir in the grated carrots and gently fold everything into the flour mixture. Remember not to take too long during this stage, get it in the oven fast!

• Fold in the walnuts and pineapple (if you're using them) 

• Spoon the mixture into your tin and bake for about 1 and 20 minutes. My cake didn't take quite as long though, so after an hour keep checking it with a skewer every so often; if the skewer comes out clean then it's ready! 

• Once out of the oven allow it to cool, it will probably take a fair bit of time as it's a rather dense cake!

• For the cream cheese frosting beat the butter and icing sugar together until smooth, then add the cream cheese and beat until creamy. Chill the mixture in the fridge until it's thick - not solid 

• As for spreading the frosting, do it however you like. I followed the advised method of spreading a thick layer on the top, nothing in the center. Again, down to personal preference!

This is genuinely one of the nicest cakes I've ever made, it went down so well with everyone who tried a slice that they've all begged me to make another! If you're a fan of carrot cake you absolutely must try this!

I hope this works out for everyone and thank you for reading my first recipe post!

The original recipe can be seen by clicking here.