Tag Archives: easy

Dutch Apple Cake

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Dutch Apple Cake 3

I think it’s fair to say that any apple dessert, cake or tart goes down well in my house and while I adore an apple tart I am pretty hopeless when it comes to making pastry so I only make them occasionally. (Promise I will share my most reliable tried and tested recipe for apple tart in a future blog post!).  This Dutch Apple Cake is an absolute winner – delicious, beautifully light, moist and fluffy and can be served warm with some cream, custard or ice cream for dessert or with a cup of tea or coffee.

The recipe is from the same book as last week’s Chocolate Biscuit Cake recipe (Darina Allen’s Easy Entertaining) – gosh did I enjoy that cake last week. At the end of a busy day I would wait until I was on my own, put the kettle on, make a mug of tea, cut a very small sliver of the cake and savour every mouthful. So, so good. Continue reading →

Walnut & Treacle Bread

Posted in Bread by

Walnut & treacle bread 2

I just adore this bread which is low in saturated fat and oh so simple and uncomplicated to make. Rich, dark, soft with little bits of walnut throughout to add delicious texture and taste. There is nothing nicer than a slice of this, buttered(not too much!) with a mug of tea, guaranteed to provide instant comfort and brighten up any damp, cold, dreary day. God knows we have had a lot of those recently. If I am honest it is really a cross between a bread and a cake. My daughter adores it too and every time I turn around she is scoffing a slice! An added bonus is that it is so so easy to make – mix the dry ingredients together, mix the wet ingredients together, combine the two and that’s it, could not be easier!

PS – It also freezes very well.

Makes 2 x 1lb loaves or 1 x 2lb loaf

Ingredients
225g / 8oz plain flour
225g / 8oz coarse wholemeal flour
50g porridge oats
1tsp salt
50 g sugar (reduce this to your taste if you wish)
3 tsp baking powder
1½ tsp bread soda
1 egg
500 ml milk
2 handfuls walnuts
100ml black treacle

  • Preheat oven to 160°C fan, (325°F / gas mark 3)
  • Grease tin(s) lightly (or use a ready-made loaf tin liner).
  • Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, oats, salt, sugar, baking powder, bread soda and walnuts) together in a large mixing bowl.
  • Combine milk and treacle (heating the mixture in the microwave for 30 seconds will make this much easier)
  • Whisk the egg into the milk and treacle mixture
  • Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix well (the mixture looks most unpromising at this stage i.e. wet and sloppy, not to mention the colour, but keep the faith and bear with it!)
  • Place the mixture into the tin(s) making sure to leave at least 1cm at the top to give the bread room to rise. Be warned – DO NOT FILL THE TIN TO THE TOP or the mixture will overflow and apart from making a mess, it will be impossible to get the bread out of the tin! (I speak from experience!)
  • Bake in the oven for approx 50 minutes – you know it is cooked when you tap the underneath of the loaf and it sounds hollow.
  • Turn onto a wire rack to cool.
  • Put the kettle on and enjoy!

NutritionLabel

Divine chocolate mousse cake

Posted in Sweet Treats by

chocolate mousse cake 3

A slightly later than usual blog post this week which almost didn’t happen as I have just gone back to work after a wonderful year off.  This has upset my routine (just a little!) and trying to get this dish made and photographed after a day’s work has given me a few headaches. (Think it’s a bit too soon to ask for time off during the day to take my food pics!) However, I just had to share this absolutely divine chocolate recipe with you  – just the delicious chocolatey smells coming out of your oven when it is cooking will have you and anyone else in your house drooling and waiting impatiently to dig in when it comes out. Dark, moist, delicate, pure chocolate heaven. It is unbelievably light as there is no flour in it so gluten-free as well. I normally wouldn’t recommend sharing this under any circumstances but given the weekend that is in it share it with someone very special if you must but only if you absolutely have to! So go on and indulge yourself – a glass of something bubbly with it and life won’t get much better.

The recipe is really really simple –  equal quantities i.e. 150g of dark chocolate, butter and sugar and 3 eggs. That’s it!

Serves 6 (or one big serving!)

Ingredients

  • 150g dark chocolate (60/70% cocoa solids)
  • 150g softened unsalted butter (plus extra for greasing)
  • 150g caster sugar
  • 3 eggs separated
  • Icing sugar for dusting

Pre-heat the oven to 160° C / 325°F or Gas 3.

  • Grease a 20cm / 8in springform cake tin (an ordinary cake tin will work as well once it is well greased) and line the base with greaseproof paper.
  • Melt the chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, making sure the bowl isn’t touching the water. Leave to cool.
  • Beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks, one at a time, then fold in the melted chocolate.
  • In another bowl whisk the egg whites until they stand in soft peaks.
  • Stir 2 large spoonfuls into the chocolate mixture to loosen it slightly and then gently fold in the remainder.
  • Put the mixture into the tin and bake for 1 hour or until a crust has formed on top and there is no ‘wobble’ in the middle.
  • The cake will rise up dramatically during the cooking but will sink once you take it out of the oven. It will also crack and this is perfectly normal.
  • Leave to cool on a wife rack, and remove from the tin.
  • Serve the cake dusted lightly with icing sugar and cream, ice-cream, raspberries and / or chocolate sauce.

 

Avocado Chocolate Mousse

Posted in Fit Food, Sweet Treats by


Avocado choc mousse

Avocado and chocolate in the same sentence??? Kind of hard to get your head around isn’t it? Can you think of any nicer way to eat something healthy and good for you than in a chocolate mousse??? Bring it on, I hear you say! Any time I mention the words avocado and chocolate in the same sentence, people turn their noses up BUT they are people who have never tried it. It is also possibly the quickest, simplest and healthiest chocolate mousse there is. Continue reading →

Chicken & Vegetable Soup

Posted in Dinner, Fit Food, Lunch by

Chicken & Veg Soup 2

I am not one for making New Year resolutions as I find it hard enough to get through the dark and dreary month of January without making it even tougher. Anyway most resolutions tend to be based on things we feel guilty about like eating and drinking too much over Christmas. (Why do we do this to ourselves?!) I would encourage anyone who is considering going on a diet now to scrap the guilt and instead consider being kind to yourself by cooking and eating real food and cutting back on sugar and processed foods. However, making wholesale changes to eating habits can be overwhelming and difficult to do all at once so another approach is to  start gradually by focussing on one meal in the day for a start e.g. for the first week / month resolve to eat a good, healthy breakfast or lunch each day.    Continue reading →

Mini Chocolate Christmas Pudding

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Chocolate Xmas pud

This is a recipe from Darina Allen’s Easy Entertaining cookbook, a cook I admire and trust and whose books will always be in my cookbook library.  They are a cinch to make and a delicious, easy alternative to Christmas pudding for dessert as they are light, perfectly sized, take just 6 minutes in the oven and can be prepared in advance. What’s not to love about that!   Continue reading →

Gingerbread Men

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Gingerbread Men 2

These cookies are worth baking for the smell alone that will fill your house while they are in the oven. There is nothing like the scent of cinnamon and ginger to put you right in the Christmas mood. They are easy and fun to make and have a lovely crisp texture and gingery taste. I tested these out successfully on my Spanish classmates, on some of my swimming friends (yes they ate them at breakfast!) and also at a Book Club gathering and I promised everyone I would share the recipe. Everyone adores Gingerbread Men so they would make a great homemade Christmas gift. The mixture is made in a food processor so the only real work is in the rolling and cutting out and of course the decoration (which is the real fun bit!). They are great for children to make too as very little can go wrong with them. You can have lots of fun decorating them with icing sugar, silver or gold balls, raisins or edible gold or silver dust.

Continue reading →

One-pot roasted pork fillet with apple and sage

Posted in Dinner by

Roasted Pork Fillet

Don’t you just love one-pot dishes, less effort,  less washing up plus you can go and relax while it all cooks away undisturbed in the oven. I love this particular recipe as it only takes around 30 minutes in the oven and 15 minutes to prepare so it can be on the table in an hour. Perfect for either a weekday or weekend dinner. It is cooked in a roasting tin like the one in the picture and once everything is prepared just pop it in the oven and leave it to mind itself. What’s not to love about that!   Continue reading →

The Perfect Lemon Drizzle Cake

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Lemon Drizzle Cake 2

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like this cake, it is universally popular more so I think than chocolate cake, and that is saying something. I gave some friends of mine a sample of this cake recently by way of a kind of  ‘roadtest’ and the feedback was great. What I like most about the recipe is that it is so reliable – the cake comes out perfect every time. There is a nice short list of ingredients and equal quantities of butter, flour and sugar which make it really, really simple to make.    Continue reading →