Rosemary Chicken

This is one of the first things I learnt to make and feel very proud of. I've adapted the original recipe some what and a lot of the time it's a case of seeing what I have in the fridge. In fact - one variation was Lemon Thyme Chicken, which I think may even have been superior, but I couldn't dare to part with dear old Rosemary. A lot of people may find this quite dry, but I quite like that. This dish does have some orange in it, but for those like me, who hate a savoury orange flavour - do not be alarmed, it's barely noticeable.

Serves 2 - 4 depending on how greedy you are

Ingredients
4 chicken breasts
150g carrots, sliced
3-4 tablespoons of olive oil
A few sprigs of rosemary
10 cloves of garlic, peeled (a scary amount of garlic, but they go sweet and not stinky I promise)
500g baby onions, peeled
500g small new potatoes
1 orange, and the juice of 2
A big dash of salt and a small smidgen of pepper

• Instructions
• Preheat the oven to 180°C
• Prepare your vegetables
• In a large baking dish, place your carrots, garlic cloves, onions, new potatoes and bits of rosemary
• Drizzle over the oil, salt and pepper and mix together
• Place in your chicken breasts in the baking dish, getting them coated with the oil, and leave skin side down
• Halve 1 orange, and cram into your dish
• Put into the oven and cook for 15 minutes
• Take the chicken breasts out for a moment, and give the vegetables a good mix up and turning over before putting the chicken back in, skin side up this time
• Return to the oven and cook for a further 10 minutes
• Take out of the oven again, and mix in your orange juice. Give everything a good stir
• Return to the oven for a further 10 minutes
• Plate up, and drizzle what sauce there is over the chicken breasts

To make it cheaper, you could use different pieces of chicken, like thighs - but you will have to increase the cooking time by about 20 minutes. To make it a bit posher, use shallots rather than baby onions, and use whole baby carrots.

Rocky Road

By now, most people in Britain will have tried some of Nigella's Rocky Road, and if you haven't - make some. And if you've tried some, make some for yourself. And if you have already made some - then just go and make it again.

You only need to look at the raw ingredients to know you're onto a good thing. Chocolate... Marshmallows... Biscuit...

This is great for lunchboxes... To take to a party... And it's especially lovely when it's just you and a cup of hot chocolate.

I've never found much success with Nigella's quantities - the chocolate ratio makes mine crumble, so mine is adapted slightly. I also use a 30cm x 20cm baking tin.

Ingredients

175g of rich tea biscuits

300g milk chocolate (or dark, if you want it richer)

75g small marshmallows

45ml golden syrup (3 tbsps)

125g soft butter

Instructions

• In a large bowl, crush your biscuits with a potato masher. The bigger the bits the chunkier your Rocky Road, so mash to suit
• Melt the chocolate, butter and golden syrup slowly together
• Mix the chocolate into the biscuits - but leave behind 150mls worth of chocolate (enough to cover the top later) 
• Then mix in the marshmallows and push it all firmly into the baking tin
• Drizzle over the remaining chocolate, especially into the sides and corners to hold it all together. Smooth over.
• Leave in the fridge to cool. Cut into pieces, and enjoy.

When I made this, I didn't temper the chocolate properly, so it looked awful when it had chilled. Sprinkle over some icing sugar and voila - instant fix!

Swap the Rich Tea biscuits for Digestive biscuits, and the marshmallows for sultanas and you've got yourself a Fridge Cake. Change around at will - variations could include dried cranberries or some chopped nuts. But fruit? Nuts? Sounds a bit too healthy to me!

And in related news from the Royal Wedding...

Picture from the Daily Mail

Smug Strawberry Jam

Making your own jam is mainly for the smug factor, so you can say to people "The jam's home-made by the way" whilst waiting for the adulation to pour in. There are a lot of other benefits too, but oh, the smugness is definitely the best part. And it's so easy to do... All you need is right here:

A pack of sugar, 2 punnets of strawberries, half a lemon and only 4 minutes of boiling. Amazing.

The quantity is enormous - the last bunch lasted in my fridge for about a year - and I gave half of it away at the beginning.

Makes 1 litre of jam (2 of these)

Ingredients
2 or 3 punnets of strawberries (between 800g - 1kg)
The same weight in Jam Sugar as strawberries
Half a lemon

Alright, so maybe that's all you need in ingredients, but it's a fairly common belief  you need a lot of equipment right? Not really, as I discovered after I bought a lot of preserving stuff. Whoops! It's a simple as a wooden spoon, a large saucepan, some jars. And a lot of kitchen roll, 'cause making jam's messy and sticky!

I don't want to scare you with how difficult it seems - so here are the basic instructions to show you how few steps there are:

Quick Instructions

• Hull your strawberries
• Place into a pan with the lemon juice and sugar
• Heat gently till all the sugar has melted
• Bring to the boil and keep stirring for 4 minutes till set
• Leave to cool for 15 minutes, then remove the scum
• Pour into jars - leave to cool.

However, if you've never made jam before you might want a little bit more information - so here are the same instructions with a bit of advice and information from me.

Instructions for beginners

• Put a small side plate into your fridge or freezer for testing the setting point of jam. 
• Hull, and slice your strawberries to size. It depends how many fruity bits you like in your jam and how large your strawberries are. I find Tescos to have huge strawberries which I halved and sometimes cut into thirds. But greengrocers generally have smaller, sweeter strawberries. I let the smaller strawberries go in whole. Bigger pieces of strawberries and whole strawberries = more fruity bits.
• Weigh your strawberries and then weigh your sugar. If you've eaten some of my latest jam - you'll know it's far too sweet, that's because I couldn't bear to throw 200g of sugar away so I may have slipped a little more in. Next time I'll buy 3 punnets of strawberries.
• Juice the lemon half, and place into a large saucepan - the wider the saucepan the easier it is.
• Throw in the sugar, and the strawberries and put the pan onto a medium - low heat
• Stir, stir, stir, till all the sugar has melted
• (Are you sure it's all melted? It's not grainy at all?)
• Turn the heat up, bring to the boil and leave to simmer for 4 minutes while stirring regularly!
• Get your plate out and test the setting point - keep cooking and testing till it's ready.
• Then take off the heat and leave to cool for 15 - 20 minutes
• While it's cooling, sterilise your jam jars
• You're going to need to remove the 'scum' from the jam now. Scum is impurities from jam and sugar, and it's easy to spot. The more 'scum' you remove the clearer your jam will be. All the fruit had risen to the top of mine, and mixed in with them were some white frothy bits - aka scum. I found the easiest way to get rid of them was a large sharp edged metal spoon to pick them out, and put them into kitchen roll. You're not going to clear all the scum this way unless you have an hour to spare- but just remember, a little bit wont effect the taste, just the look of the jam.
• Then, pot your jam, and seal the jars. Leave to cool.

See Also: Scones

Egg Bread

Making egg bread (or French Toast as some call it) is hardly baking; and neither is it something that most people would need a recipe for - but I love it. When you're looking for something satisfying to make, often you need to look no further than simple, buttery, egg bread.

Serves 2

Ingredients:
3 large eggs (If you're only making this for one person, use 2 eggs)
4 slices of thick bread
Splash of milk
2 pinches of salt
Butter, to suit
Dash of oil

Instructions:

• In a wide, shallow bowl, with a fork beat together the 2 eggs, add a small splash of milk and a sprinkling of salt
• In a frying pan, melt together a knob of butter on a medium - high heat, and a tiny bit of oil. The butter browns your bread, and the oil stops it burning
• Halve your bread, and soak each half in the egg mixture for a few seconds, turning over and coating thoroughly before transferring it to the hot pan 
• When the bottom of the slices turn golden brown, turn the heat down, turn the slices over and add a few more dots of butter throughout the pan.
• Plate up, and sprinkle over a little more salt, and to be extra sinful, a little bit more butter.

The richer the butter, the thicker the bread and the longer you soak it - the nicer you make it. Enjoy!

Sausages with Caramelised Onion Gravy

I may have called this blog British Baking - but it's more than that. I spend a long time finding great recipes, and then wandering off to find more - and forgetting the ones I have made, and loved. I want this website to host Great British Food - whether it's cakes, bread - or some lovely stodge like this dinner :) It's a bit of a faff, in time more than cooking skill - but well worth it.

Ingredients:
2 medium - large onions, about 300g (I used 1 red and 1 white onion)
20g butter
1 tbsp sugar (I used demerara - but use what you have in your cupboard)
1 tbsp thyme, finely chopped
400ml beef stock
6 sausages (I used Tesco Finest Linconshire, yum!)
Handful of mushrooms

Instructions:

• Peel the onions and halve (from root to tip, not along the middle). Cut into thin, half moon slices
• Put a pan (with a lid) on medium heat; melt the butter and add the onions
• With the lid on, cook for 10-15 minutes till the onions have softened
• Remove lid, add sugar and cook for a further 15 minutes - stirring regularly
• In the meantime, start to cook your sausages and mushrooms in a separate pan until cooked
• To finish off the gravy - add the thyme and beef stock to the onions and bring to the boil
• Simmer for 5 minutes
• Plate up together and enjoy!
  

As you add the stock, you could add a little bit of red wine, or Worcestershire sauce just to change it up a little bit.

Icing

Forget a cherry on top, there's only one way to finish off a cake or a cupcake and that's with even more sugar! Here is a quick run through of some of my favourite icing.

Buttercream (as seen here)
Mix together 115g of softened butter with 170g of icing sugar.
Use a wooden spoon to beat well together for a thick, rich butter cream.
With an electric whisk you can create a much lighter icing - in texture and in colour. This is what I use to pipe onto cupcakes, add a drop of food colouring to suit.

Glacé Icing (for example)
Difficult for me to describe the quantities you might need for a batch of cupcakes - I've just gotten to the stage where I add it into a bowl and make it up as I go along.
Start with about 3 tablespoons of water in a bowl, and add a tablespoon of icing sugar at a time - stirring thoroughly. Keep going (with lots and lots and even more icing sugar) till you get the texture you desire, and add more water if it looks like you need a bit more quantity.
This is very easy to make with lemon juice instead of water for lemon flavoured icing, orange juice for... You get the idea!

Sugar Crush
Glacé icing will get you a lovely smooth topping. If you wanted something with a bit more crunch and crumble, like you would find on top of a lemon loaf - you need to change the sugar. Try a combination of caster sugar and granulated sugar. When you make it, it appears quite watery - but it will dry out and granulate again.
I saw a recipe the other day for a raspberry and orange crush cupcake. Make a batch of cupcakes with some crushed raspberries folded through., and when cooked top with an orange sugar crush... Definitely the next one on my list!

Chocolate Fudge (pictured at top, with Barbie Sprinkles)
OK, guilty secret alert, but ever since I tried Betty Crocker's Chocolate Fudge Icing I've stopped trying to make my own. It tastes divine! It's a wee bit expensive so I do intend to find a home-made version, but I keep saying "Next time!"


See Also: Cupcakes; Cakes

Celebration Cupcakes

What makes them celebration cupcakes? Cupcakes are perfect for every occasion - and if you don't have a special occasion to make them for... Bake them anyway and celebrate the fact that you have cupcakes! 

The recipe is from this book and very easy to make and adapt for different flavours.

Ingredients:

150g softened butter

150g caster sugar

175g self raising flour

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract 

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 180°C
• Fill cupcake tin with with 12 cupcake cases
• Mix all the ingredients together, with an electric hand whisk if possible
• Divide equally among the cases and bake for 18- 20 minutes
• Cupcakes are done when they are firm to touch, and a knife/skewer inserted comes out clean

See Also: Icing