Hoorah for Bank Holidays!

Congratulations to the Prince and Princess, and may we all have a jolly good weekend!

PS: To enjoy some of your own Royal Wedding Cake, check out this post.

For the recipe, see Celebration Cupcake

Potato Cakes

This recipe is another from the book, the British Food Bible. Potato Cakes are delicious for a snack, with bacon for breakfast, or as a nice change with dinner, served with some lamb. It's also a handy way of using left over mash from the night before. According to the book, for a truly perfect potato cake you must use fresh, piping hot mash, but I've done otherwise and it still tastes gorgeous to me!

Ingredients:

550g mashed potato
25g butter
Seasoning
1 egg (optional)
115g plain flour

Instructions:

Whip your mash (either hot or cold) with the egg, butter and seasoning.

Mix together with the flour.  Add 100g of flour at first and keep adding flour when necessary going till you get a good doughy texture.

You could take an opportunity now to mix in an optional extra or two - such as small bits of crispy bacon or some spring onion. I've used some tiny bits of chopped leeks here to match in with the rest of our dinner.

When it has all formed a dough, place onto your work top, which should be well dusted with flour, and sprinkling the rolling pin with flour to give you a helping hand - roll out till the dough is 2cm thick.

Use a pastry cutter to cut into the sizes you desire - larger for a snack on their own, smaller if you wish to serve them breakfast or dinner. If you are preparing these for a dinner party you can make them in advance, dust them well with flour, and place them in between sheets of baking paper. Leave in the fridge till you're ready to cook & eat them.

To cook (from freshly made or chilled and waiting) -  oh a high heat, preheat a griddle (or a frying pan) and sizzle off a small dash of butter.

Cook each potato cake for 2 minutes on both sides, till they turn golden brown. Serve straight away.

Sugar Crusted Lamb

This recipe is delicious and quick to prepare for a dinner party - and pretty unique too. This lamb generally comes out pink > a teeny bit undercooked so be cautious if you're thinking of serving it to a fussy eater. And a small advanced warning about getting an urge to sprinkle sugar on all your dinner - I'm sure it wont taste as good!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

8 lamb cutlets - 700g

Seasoning

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

2 large sprigs of rosemary

2 tbsp demerara sugar

A smearing of olive oil

Instructions:

• Preheat the grill to high, and place a baking tray underneath it to heat up
• Prepare the lamb by seasoning with salt and pepper
• Strip the rosemary sprigs by stripping the leaves off and discarding the stalk
• Mix the lamb with the rosemary and mustard - ensuring it's well coated
• On a separate plate, spread out the sugar and dip each side of the lamb cutlets onto the sugar
• Take out the baking tray from under the grill, quickly place the cutlets on and return to the grill for 10-12 minutes. Or as long as you can stand the smoking! The sugar does burn - but don't worry, it does not taste burnt.

Recipe is adapted from BBC Good Food, which is a fantastic resource.

Easter Birthday Cake

My niece's birthday practically coincided with Easter this year so she requested a mash-up Chocolate Fairy Easter Birthday Cake!  We've been DIYing* all week so to save time I cheated and used this Devil's Food Cake with chocolate fudge icing.

To decorate I used:

• A Fairy Topper from her last birthday cake
• Some official Fairy glitter-dust
• Dotted sugar flowers
• A few chocolate cornflake nests
• And teeny-tiny eggs and chicks from Tescos. Too cute!

*Disclaimer: Due to DIY projects this cake may/may not taste of paint!

Beef Stew with Dumplings

You can make this recipe easier on yourself by just making the stew with 600ml of stock and 200ml red wine and just leaving it in the oven for 2 - 2½ hours, served with a potato side-dish, but my husband and I have quite a soft spot for a good dumpling! This makes a lovely thick and very warm-your-bones stew, and is a great way to use some cheap cuts of beef - the long slow cook makes it very tender. Recipe is slightly adapted from the British Food Bible.

Serves 4-6


Ingredients for the Stew
3 tbsps olive oil
2 medium-large onions, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1kg casserole steak (or braising steak), trimmed and cut into pieces
2 tbsps plain flour
Hefty sprinkle of seasoning
1 litre beef stock
300ml red wine
1 bouquet garni (I use a dried one from Tesco)

Ingredients for the Herb Dumplings
115g self raising flour
55g suet
1tsp mustard
1 tsp finely chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp finely chopped fresh sage
A little seasoning
4 tbsp cold water


Instructions

• Preheat oven to 150°C
• I use a flame-proof casserole dish, but if you don't have one of these, use a frying pan first, and transfer to an oven-proof casserole dish with a lid
• On a medium heat on the hob, heat 1 tbsp of the oil and fry the onion and garlic until soft and golden. Remove from the pan
• Turn the heat up, use the remaining 2 tbsps of oil and quickly brown the meat all over
• Sprinkle in the flour and stir well
• Turn the heat down to medium, pour in 300mls of stock, stirring well to blend it together
• (At this point, move all the cooked ingredients into the casserole dish if necessary)
• Add the cooked onions, bouquet garni, seasoning and and 200ml of red wine, mix together.
• Cover and put into the oven for an hour
• After an hour, take the casserole dish out and check liquid levels - I find the original recipe quite dry, so at this stage I have taken to adding a further 200-300ml of stock, and if necessary a dash more wine
• Cover and put into the oven for an additional hour, when the hour is up - leave the oven on, and leave the stew in whilst you start making your dumplings
• Place the dry dumpling ingredients into a bowl and mix well
• Add the water to the mix a bit at the time till you create a firm, but soft dough. Use a bit of flour and your hands to shape them into 10-12 dumplings
• Take the stew out of the oven, remove the bouquet garni, add a bit more liquid if you need (the dumplings will soak up some liquid)
• Add the dumplings and push down under the liquid. Cover, and return to the oven for a further 15 minutes till the dumplings double in size

Cookbook Review: British Food Bible

A definite 10 stars - a truly great book, and amazing value. I find so many cookbooks are filled with fancy food that I don't want to cook, or they skip past the basic food in favour of something impressive sounding. This book is a wonderful mix of regional British dishes and clear instructions. Everything I've made from it so far has worked very well.

To give you a couple of examples of Chapters and Recipes -

English Breakfasts: traditional Porridge; Kedgeree
Meat, Game & Poultry: Game Pie; Steak & Kidney Pudding; Toad in The Hole
Vegetables & Salads: Pan Haggarty; Colcannon; Glazed Turnips
Tea Time Treats: includes Crumpets, Tea Cakes and Lemonade

I really didn't need another cookbook, however I bought this book for a friend at Christmas, and at buy-one-get-one-free from Tescos - I simply had to add a copy to my ever-blossoming collection of recipes! I've written this review mainly because I was going to link to it for the Beef Stew with Dumplings post, but I can't find a copy of it in an online bookshop anywhere, even using its ISBN.

There are found 4 copies for sale on eBay at £10 including delivery.

But it was still available to buy last week from our local Tescos, at a billy-bargain price of £5!

Secret Scones

In many ways, home-made scones are the epitome of British Baking. There's nothing quite like a warm scone, fresh from the oven served with some home-made Smug Strawberry Jam, a hefty dollop of clotted cream and a nice cup o' tea. 

Enjoy them straight out of the oven when a friend calls round for a cuppa. Selling the house? Forget brewing coffee, it's so 90's darling... Plate up some of these for an instant welcoming feel. 

Go vintage, go retro - go get your scones on.

So why are they called Secret Scones? 

    Because, shhh....

They're from a packet. 

I'm a firm believer that not everything is best being home-made. Just ask our local take-away for a start. With this Tesco scone mix, you still get the satisfaction of kneading the dough, rolling it out, getting messy with some dusting flour. It's still much cheaper than buying ready made scones (this packet is only 60p). And importantly - they avoid any uncertainty over what they'll taste like. You're guaranteed perfect scones every time.

For variation, you could try cherries, or make them savoury with some grated cheese sprinkled on top. I'm tempted to make my next batch with sultanas and a try of some lemon zest.

See Also: Jam