Nuggets of Gold

These cheesy bites are a tasty savoury treat.

Cheesy and bitesize.

Flour, butter, cheese.  Yes, you might expect these from cheesy nuggets.  Add mustard, paprika and onion and things are looking a little different.  Something between a pastry and a scone, these little guys are as tasty as they are confusing!

Best fresh, they do keep fairly well and would probably be awesome with a garlic dip.  But they are a tasty little bitesize snack.

Who made it: Anna.

Recipe: “Baking making and sharing” by Susan Over, page 54.

Marbled Chocolate Loaf

Yum.  Chocolate.

Marbley chocolatey goodness.

This is a pretty tasty cake recipe.  The usual marble loaf concept, you dollop in dark and light mixture alternately and then bake.  The white chocolate on top is awesome and the only sad thing is that there isn’t any in the middle!  There is white chocolate in the light mixture too, for extra sweetness.  Mmm…

We had something of an incident making this – we’d followed the recipe for a 2lb loaf, as our tin works for another 2lb recipe.  But I don’t think it is actually that big – perhaps 1.5lb.  Halfway through cooking we had a lovely risen loaf, and eruptions of dribbly chocolate goodness spewing out of the side.  Not a problem as it just went on the and into the bin, but a sad loss of perfectly good cake!  At least it didn’t spoin the main event.  And it is demonstrably the largest we could possibly have made the cake…

Also, notice how Anna cunningly made the shape of a pair of high heeled shoes in the cross-section?  Vengance for a few geeky conversations yesterday I suspect!

Who made it: Anna and Dan jointly.

Recipe: Hallelujah! Chocolate! by The Chocolate Squad, page 24.

Blueberry Muffins

This post is here as a warning: these were not that great.  We had some blueberries and thought muffins would be nice, but sadly they were not quite sweet enough, not quite cooked in the centre, and a little burnt on top.  The last two are obviously a problem with using our oven (it does that if you forget to take measures) but the first is a problem with the recipe.  I just like sweeter muffins.

No photos – we made these when I was very busy and I had no time.  They looked fine – more cupcake sized than muffins but otherwise as expected.

Who made it: Anna and Dan jointly.

Recipe: Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book, page 235.

Cashew Nut Curry with pullao

Continuing with the curry theme we have a recipe based around “Chicken in a cashew nut sauce” and “pea and mushroom pullao”.

Sadly, you can't taste photos.

This sauce is thick and creamy, because everything gets blended except the chicken.  Being a vegetarian, I modified this using some tofu pieces and some unblended vegetables as well – Anna had chicken.  The flavouring is based around “garem masala”, a particular blend of spices that you can buy pre-mixed.  We had the spices separately so had to make it up as we went along (and actually we tried some pre-mixed mixture a second time and preferred our own efforts).  We also were lacking the yogurt which turns out to be important for bulking out the sauce.

The pullao is a gentle blend of spices with the rice cooked with peas, and yes. mushrooms.  It does add to the flavour and is one to try again in the future.

All in all this was very tasty and we’d have it again.  Unfortunately it doesn’t photograph so well because we don’t have any of those great little metal serving dishes, so you’ll just have to believe me on that!

Who made it: Anna and Dan jointly.

Recipe: “Indian” by Shezhed Husain and Rafi Fernandez, page 44 (cashew sauce) and page 206 (rice) .

Samosas, Bhajias, potato cakes

Mixed Indian starters today:

(right) samosa, (top) bhaji, (left) potato cakes.

Some fun with Indian cooking: how authentic can we get it?  Turns out, when following a good recipe we can get quite authentic indeed.

All of these are fried in fairly deep oil and are about as unhealthy as it gets.  The samosas were awesome – we added butternut squash instead of potato and it worked amazingly.  The bhajias were exactly as they taste in a restaurant – complete with that strange tangy taste that is unique to them.  (Its the asafoetida, a bitter but very interesting spice).  The potato cakes we were less thrilled by – they were just a bit plain.

The samosas are made with spring roll pastry, which is cheap from eastern supermarkets and really easy to work with.  You just make up whatever you want inside, wrap, and fry – what could be easier?  We were really impressed with how the Bhajias turned out – its just a whole bunch of spices mixed in with enough flour to get them to stick together with some onions, then fried. Quite a messy procedure in practice but very much worth it!

Who made it: Anna and Dan jointly.

Recipe: “Indian” by Shezhad Husain and Rafi Fernandez.  Bhjajias: page 14, Potato Cakes: page 23, Vegetable Samosas: page 34.

Tiramisu

Tasty yummy tiramisu.  What can be said about it?

Lite cake gone mad...

Well, its sponge fingers soaked in coffee and marsala, with cream that is also flavoured by marsala and mascapone.

That is that, really.  Its very tasty and very easy.  Also, the recipe makes about 4 times more than it claims to feed, evidence that perhaps there is divine support for the pudding.

Who made it: Anna and Dan jointly.

Recipe: “cheescakes, pavlovas and trifles”, by Woman’s Weekly.

Chocolate Orange Cake

This cake is very chocolaty, very orangey, and very sweet.  Perhaps not to everyone’s taste, it is neverless going to be a hit for those with a sweet tooth.

Nice symmetry.

We took this cake on the barge holiday, where it competed with Francis’ cake which was much larger and less sweet.  It was just a little too sweet for me, which meant that small slices were what you wanted – lucky, as we were sharing between a lot of people!

Mmm, cake.

Who made it: Anna.

Recipe: Hallelujah Chocolate! by The Chocolate Squad, page 17.