dandelion and burdock version one

I spent a while looking up recipes on the Internet and cobbled this one together. Although it made a very nice moist almost fudgy textured tasty cake, it wasn't quite what we were after. But no one is complaining eating our efforts.

Ingredients
225g plain flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs 125g butter
30g natural yogurt mixed with 100 ml milk
175 ml of dandelion and burdock drink
2 tbs cocoa powder sifted

beat the butter with the sugar until pale and fluffy, add in eggs one by one until combined.

sift together the flour, bicarb and cocoa powder and add a third, when combined add the yogurt/milk mixture.  Then add third more of flour then carefully add the dandelion and burdock, which will make mixture looks curdled but it's OK honest.  mix in the rest of flour mixture and pour into a greased lined 9 inch tin. Cook in preheated oven at gas mark 4 for 45-60 minutes until a cake skewer or small knife tip comes out of the cake clean.

Dandelion and burdock cake

I've been experimenting with making cakes with the fizzy drink. So far have made 2 but not tested them as still need to make icing. Will let you know tomorrow how they went and recipe for best one

This was first one fresh out of the oven

cheesy orzo and roasted asparagus

Tonight's meal was pretty simple, but a few favourites of my 9 year old.  First up was the asparagus. Luke loves asparagus with a passion.  He also discovered he likes balsamic vinegar recently at an Italian market. I mixed up a tablespoon of balsamic and olive oil together with one clove of finely grated garlic and seasoned, poured this over prepared raw asparagus and roasted in the oven at gas mark5 while I prepared the pasta. 

The pasta in our house is simply called cheesy pasta and beats mac and cheese any day for us. I make it with Orzo pasta ( looks like large grains of rice) Or broken spaghetti or pasta shapes broken up.  Simple and fairly quick. melt a knob of butter in a pan and add your pasta, and stir often, I used 250 grams. The pasta wants to end up quite toasted and about half of it is browned.

 

You can go a little darker than the picture above.  For this amount I added 600 ml of vegetable stock, chicken stock is better but I had a vegetarian to feed. Stirring let it come to the boil and then let simmer stirring occasionally.  The pasta wants to end up absorbing most of the stock. make sure it does not catch on bottom of pan and add more boiling water if needed.  When tender but slightly al dente remove from the heat and stir in grated cheese, Parmesan if you have it but cheddar works just as well.  Chopped parsley is great.  My boys have an aversion to 'green bits' though ;o/

 

For us meat eater I chopped up a few slices of back bacon and fried until crisp and added to the pasta after I had served up the vegetarian portion.  Added some cucumber and sliced tomatoes, drizzle of olive oil and a few grinds of pepper and a simple meal was ready.

The asparagus was ready at around 13-15 minute mark and I took out of the oven just before I dished everything up.

June already

Hard to believe we are coming up to almost half way through the year.  I have been in a bit of a slump in most departments of life and blogging has suffered a little.  So I am going to use June to try and blog once a day just to get back into the habit of it all again.  It might not all be cooking but it will be blogging at least

So this evening I decided to share with you what we had for our tea/dinner. Sausage kebabs

I made a discovery some years ago (not saying how many) that my children would eat most things if it came on a stick. There were a fair few fruit kebabs years ago. Grapes all lined up on a stick and frozen was a popular summer snack for both adults and children.

A few days ago I was watching I can cook on cbeebies. They made something similar using rosemary stalks as skewers. But when Luke asked me for sausages I decided to do these with veg left in the fridge so it was orange pepper and chestnut mushrooms and pork sausages cut in thirds.  to add a little more flavour I mixed some Dijon mustard and runny honey in equal measures and painted onto the kebabs.  In a moderate oven while I boiled my pasta and made a basic garlic and tomato sauce for it, so around 20-25 minutes.  Kids loved it 9 years old and 7 month old ate it all with no complaints, and 3 lots of their 5 for fruit and veg :o)

Springs waiting just round the corner

We had a lovely walk this morning.

one a penny two a penny, Hot Cross buns

Easter time is almost upon us. Every year I buy hot cross buns and am always disappointed with them.  Bun to dense or cardboard like, fruit to hard or to soggy.  Someone always hates the fruit in our house, someone always moans about the mixed spice flavour etc.  Well enough!  Mixed spice hater has left home so we didn't need to worry about that one at least ;o)

I had a list of things we wanted,

Soft bread dough but firm enough to be a Hot cross bun
Fruit wasn't exactly loved here so we wanted a different flavour there, decided on dark chocolate and stem ginger
needed to find out what made that slight crust on top of the buns
and importantly a cross that was a cross and not pastry laid on top and cooked.

So first thing first I looked in my books and decided to base first attempt from the fabulous baker brothers recipe.  This made 16 and we didn't need that many so I halved and played around a bit. Me being me made one mistake and instead of halving the egg used a whole one, little extra flour sorted me out though.  So I started with.

340g strong white flour (plus handful if using whole egg)
5 g salt
7g dried yeast
50g white sugar
40g soft butter
7 g mixed spice
100 ml tepid whole milk
75 ml tepid water
1 egg (supposed to be half but worked well with little extra flour)

I put this all in my trusty mixer and left to knead for 10 minutes,  It turned out to be a very soft but not sticky dough.
while dough was kneading I chopped a knob of stem ginger into small lumps and weighed out 50 g of dark chocolate chips. Which I kneaded into dough once ready and fairly evenly mixed in. Back into bowl and covered in clingfilm and left until doubled, which was 40 minutes and a cup of tea with mum.

Then I tipped out onto a board and divided into 8 and formed into roll shapes and put in a greased tin so there was small gap between each one, covered again until doubled. next bit is the crosses.  Leap of faith here but it works. whisk together

50g strong white flour
pinch of salt and sugar
little knob of butter
50 ml water

needs to be smooth and almost like very thick glace icing.  pipe this onto the buns

I had preheated oven to gas mark 6 and they went in until tops and bottoms were golden!!!!!! around 20 minutes i think it was. just before coming out mixed up the bun wash

1 egg cup full boiling water
2 tsp sugar
1 pinch mixed spice

this was generously brushed on buns as they came out of oven, didn't use it all but it made a lot of difference to final bun :o)

and an inside shot, choc wasn't as even as i hoped but still delicious

and look how the still slightly warm chocolate smears with the butter

Definitely more to be made. choc was great and ginger didn't overpower.

hassleback potatoes

 These are potatoes I remember my Mum cooking for us when we were younger. They are so simple and can be done with any sized potatoes from new to bigger baking potatoes.  I started with preheating the oven at gas mark 7.  Butter the base of a cooking tin and peel some rooster potatoes.  I have done these with all sorts of potatoes and red rooster potatoes were what I had today.
Trick to slicing these almost all the way through is to place a wooden spoon behind the potato you are cutting through and you should cut them in thin slices about thickness of a pound coin I would think. I lost a few ends but no harm done. The wooden spoon stops the knife cutting all the way through. If you do cut one in half then don't fret you just have smaller ones

Melt some butter, I did mine in a mug in microwave, then using a pastry brush brush the butter over and if possible between the slices by easing them open slightly and gently. I usually do this with olive oil but was inspired to use butter from a recipe I saw.  Then season with salt and pepper and place in the oven for 45 minutes

.

After 45 minutes the potatoes are just beginning to brown and are not quite but almost very nearly knife tender. Different sizes of potatoes will obviously take more or less, so keep an eye on them.  I decided to grate some mature cheddar and
put back in the oven for the final 15 minutes.

At this point they were ready to serve up. Those brown cheese bits in the tin were served up to.  crispy shards of crunchy cheese.  Got to be good ;o) So here you have it a family favourite.
A friend on twitter says she is going to give it a go using garlic butter.  Sounds brilliant, will have to try it myself next time I think to.