Cooking up a storm!

 This weeks recipes have been pretty successful, I even experimented in making up one myself!

22nd - 28th April

Easy Crispy Chicken from 'The Hairy Dieters - Dave Myers & Si King'
Another book I bought in an effort to eat healthier but also because I just love those hairy guys enthusing about food and riding around on their motorbikes.  I like to think they are the modern version of the Two Fat Ladies!

mmm chicken!

Recipe - Serves 4 (or 2 hungry people!)
4 slices of white sliced bread
4 tsp dried mixed herbs
2 tsp flaked sea salt
25g Parmesan cheese, grated
4 tbsp low-fat natural yoghurt (I needed more like 5)
1-2 tbsp plain flour
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (mine were really huge boobies!)
Black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200*c and grill the bread in the oven until golden.  (I skipped this and just used the toaster, apparently the oven is better as it dries the bread rather than toasting it but it worked for me.)  Leave to cool then remove the crusts.  Blitz the bread in a food processor into crumbs, tip them into a bowl and add the herbs, salt, cheese and season.  Put the crumb mixture onto a plate, the yoghurt onto another plate and the four onto another.

Dip the chicken into the flour, then yoghurt then coat in the breadcrumbs until it is pretty thick.  (This is quite a messy bit and you end up crumbing your fingers too but it is really fun!)  Put each breast onto a lined baking tray and bake in the oven for 22-25 mins (mine took a little longer as they were really big breasts!) leave to stand for a few mins before serving.

I served mine with green beans and potato wedges which I didn't make as I had run out of potatoes.  We had two each and were stuffed full, I could have happily eaten one but I was too greedy!

Sweet Potato & Cheese Frittata from 'Hamlyn 200 Low Fat Dishes'

I forgot to take a picture of this one, but it combined some of my favourite ingredients, goats cheese and sweet potato.  I knew Sam would not be too in to this so I used cheddar cheese on his portion and cooked some bacon to go with it so he didn't reject the veggie option out of hand.

Recipe - serves 4 (hmm we ate this between the 2 of us for lunch!)
500g sliced potatoes
1 tsp olive oil
5 spring onions, sliced
2 tbsp fresh coriander (I left this out as I didn't have any)
4 large eggs, beaten
100g goats cheese (I just the milder crumbly kind as it is my favourite)
Pepper

Peel and slice the sweet potato and boil for 8 mins and then drain.  Heat the oil and fry the onions and potato for 2 mins.  Stir the coriander into the beaten eggs and season then pour into the pan.  Arrange the goats cheese on top and cook until almost set.  Put under a hot grill at the end to melt the cheese in totally.  (My grill isn't working so I just cooked it on the hob and added the cheddar cheese to half and goats cheese to the other half.)

Stuffed Peppers with Goats Cheese - by me!

I wish I had made more!

I had quite a few vegetables and other things left over from cooking this week so I decided to make something up with them myself!  This is what I came up with and I absolutely loved it!

Recipe
1 sweet red pepper
2-5 chestnut mushrooms
2-3 vine tomatoes
2 spring onions
Crumbly goats cheese
2 tsp green pesto
Knob of butter

Cut the red pepper in half and de-seed, then brush with oil and bake in the oven for 10 minutes around 200*c.  Melt the butter in a small pan, chop up the mushrooms and fry until most of the water has come out of them.  Add the chopped onions and tomatoes and stir until cooked through.

Fill the roasted pepper with the veggie mix, spoon the pesto over the top and add some crumbled goats cheese.  Return to the oven for 10 minutes then serve.

I hope everyone has had a lovely week!  I had a fair bit of time to cook during this second week though the same cannot be said of this week!

Cooking up a new resolution

I have a confession.  I can't stop buying cook books.  I love them.  The shelf in my kitchen is currently so full that they keep falling off as I now have 22 books sitting on it!  Perhaps this isn't a bad thing if I actually used them but 60% have never been used and out of the remaining 40% I have only made one thing.  This strikes me as a waste so instead of buying more books, my resolution is to actually use the ones I have.  So here is my resolution me-made-may style!

"I, Sarah of Sorbet Surprise gets sew crafty, swear to use at least one recipe from a cookbook I already own once a week from 15th April to 15th May."

I know this is back dated by a week but I have already started this resolution I have just been unable to detail it due to working a 9 day straight!  (Which involved moving over 92 shelves, yes I counted them!)  Also we may be moving house soon and we don't own are own cooker so I will just go for a months resolution this time.  If it works well though, I may extend it.  So here is a little catch up of what I have made.

Week One - 15th - 21st

Tuna Enchiladas from 'Hamlyn 200 Low Fat Dishes'
I bought this cookbook in an effort to eat healthier as I have been finding that recently I have been living on 'freezer surprise' as we like to call it e.g. frozen chips, nuggets, fishfingers, all those things Jamie Oliver tells you not to eat.

I have a tendency not to stick to the recipe or to substitute things so I have written where I made changes.  Also I do not stick to portion sizes.  I am pretty bad and I know that myself and Sam eat much bigger portions than we are supposed to so I have written what the recipe suggests and how much we actually ate!  Haha!  I wasn't sure about sharing recipes from books online, when I searched it said so long as the original book was credited and it wasn't a direct copy it should be ok.  I am going with that as I don't really think this would stop someone buying the book, in fact if I saw a recipe from a book on a blog I liked, I expect that book would end up on my shelf too!

Recipe - Serves 4 (I made 5 enchiladas which served 2 in reality)
2 tomatoes, chopped (I used 4 vine tomatoes which are smaller)
1 red onion, chopped
1 tbsp lime juice
8 chapattis (I used tortillas and only used 5)
300g tinned tuna
150g low fat cheddar (I used regular, it tastes better!)
Salt and Pepper
Fresh coriander (I didn't have any)
(I added 1 sweet red pepper )

Chop up the tomato, onion (and red pepper) and mix with the lime juice and season.  Spoon the mixture down the centre of each wrap, top with tuna and cheese.  Roll each wrap and place it in a dish (I only had room for 5 in my dish so I made 5 quite fat wraps.)  Sprinkle over the remaining cheese and salsa.  Cook for 15mins at 200*C and garnish with coriander.

Victoria Sandwich from "Merry Berry 100 Cakes and Bakes"
I love this book, it is pretty much my staple for baking as you can't go wrong with Mary Berry and I have 3 books by her.  I have been using her recipes since I was making cupcakes as a child as my Mum always swore by her too.  I am very happy she is getting so much more recognition after the Bake Off.

I made this cake for Sam's birthday as I didn't have much time and I know it is always a winner.  I have used the recipe before so although it is not new to me, it did make me get the book out again.

Recipe
225g butter
225g caster suger
4 large eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
(I added 1tsp of orange essence but should have made it 2 as you couldn't really taste it)

Preheat the oven to 180/160*C, grease and line 2 20cm loose-based sandwich tins.  (I just used 1 square tin as I didn't want to make a layer cake as Sam is not too keen on butter icing.  I know, crazy right?)  Cream the butter and sugar together, then add all the other ingredients to the bowl until mixed.  Plop into the tins and make the top smooth with a spatula.  Bake for 25mins until risen (It took me about 35 to have it cook through but I was using a single tin)  Leave to cool in the tin and then use the loose bottom to pop it out.

Once it was cool I juiced 1 lemon and added icing sugar and food colouring to it and decoratively splashed it about over the top.  This is quite a strong lemon tasting icing but Sam loves lemon so I made it that way on purpose.

There we go, week one down and 2 recipes done!  Yay!  If you would like to join in, please feel free, just link back to me and start your month of recipes from today's date.

A Late Christmas Present!

I'm back from my trip to see friends and we exchanged presents from Christmas, it is a bit of a tradition for us to give our presents late, mainly because we are both craft procrastinators!  Kylie loved her Dorothy top and wore it all day, I was really happy that it fitted and she loved it so much.  She gave me a cute crocheted bag and this lovely Primrose Bakery Cookbook.  I am a sucker for cook books.

We made these cinnamon cupcakes with marshmallow icing and they were delish!  The icing is really easy and tastes just like gooey marshmallow.  The cakes were supposed to be the Nutella cupcake mix but the oven was dodgy and burnt the Nutella on the top of the mix.  I am def going to try them again though at home with my own oven.

 

Next we tried the triple chocolate layer cake with caramel buttercream icing.  The sponge was really lovely but we found the icing was a bit sickly and the whole batch hardened up so quickly it was hard to spread on the cake.

 

I am really glad to have this book, there are so many really lovely recipes in it that are based around different flavours rather than just different ways to decorate cakes like some books.  I recommend it!