Toasted Teacakes

Every Sunday we eat toasted teacakes. I think the tradition came from the local coffee shops offering them as a cheap and filling hot breakfast alongside a caramel latte coffee. They weren’t available the other week so I bought hot cross buns which are similar but felt too like Easter for me.  I’ve also recently gotten better at making bread (it finally proves and rises and everything) so I figured I’d have a go at making homemade teacakes.

 

Ingredients:

 

120ml milk

350g bread flour (I had white in)

2 tsp white sugar

50g butter

1 sachet of yeast

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

100g fruit (I had raisins in)

1 egg beaten

Small spray of oil

 

Method:

1. Slightly warm the milk and add the butter
2. Take off the heat and add the yeast and sugar whilst still a little warm
3. Mix together and add the rest of the ingredients except the fruit
4. Knead into a smooth dough (takes about 5-8 minutes)
5. Leave to rise in bowl with a damp tea towel over it for about an hour
6. Add the fruit to the dough and shape into balls placing on a baking tray
7. Cover again and leave to prove for about 30 minutes
8. Brush with beaten egg or milk making sure to cover the whole surface so you don’t get stripes on the side like I did
9. Bake at 180 degrees c for circa 45 minutes

 

Mine kept for a few days in a tin. Serve as you would normally sliced; toasted and with butter

 

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Perfect Carrot Cake with Cream Frosting

Last weekend I went through a phase of making homemade soups. I go through this phase fairly often when I have a load of vegetables leftover or it’s cold outside. I’ll add some soup recipes soon. Consequentially I had a load of carrots left over so figured I’d ruin the healthy eating and make a carrot cake. For whatever carrots you have leftover adjust the proportions below as long as you keep the wet and dry ingredients in proportion to each other.

Ingredients:

Cake

300g plain flour

150g brown sugar

100g white sugar

3-4 large eggs dependent on their size

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp salt

300 ml sunflower oil

300g carrots peeled and grated

Topping

100g full fat cheese (I like Philadelphia)

30g butter

200g icing sugar sieved

100g walnuts (I keep whole)

100g caster sugar

(or buy the cheat’s version from my link below)

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees and line a tin
2. Beat everything together with a wooden spoon and transfer to the tin
3. Cook for 40-45 minutes until firm and a skewer comes out clean
4. Allow to completely cool (really important when using cream cheese frosting!)
5. Mix the topping together with an electric whisk. It will go really light fluffy after about 5 minutes
6. Spoon on the top and top with walnuts

Tips:

• You can change the quantities as long you keep the proportions of wet to dry ingredients
• Grate some walnuts and add them to cake mix to add some extra flavour
• The mixture will look really moist but that’s great as the cake will be too
• Adding more spices or fruit can make it more Christmassy so you can use it in place of a traditional fruit cake recipe if your family doesn’t like it

Some materials to buy if you want to copy:

Rectangle tin

https://amzn.to/3Cvr9TL

Cheat’s icing if you don’t want to make it

https://amzn.to/3rTa29s

Walnuts

https://amzn.to/3yD8HHT

Cheeseburger Egg Rolls

I love Disney. I’m sure you’ll see in some of the previous blogs there are Disney influences in my Minnie Mouse converse trainers and there’s definitely an influence of American food from my various US travels. Recently I was watching one of my favourite vloggers and they were eating Cheeseburger eggs rolls at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando Florida. I’ve eaten these before and immediately started writing down and researching recipes on how to make these gorgeous snacks. I mean what could be better.. the taste of hamburger; cheese, fried food in snack size form. So here’s my final recipe and they do taste just like the ones at Disney.

Ingredients:

Samosa/Egg rolls/Spring roll papers (frozen)

500g mince meat

Handful of burger gherkins sliced into small pieces

1 tablespoon mustard (I used French)

1 tablespoon of tomato ketchup

¼ large white onion grated

Handful grated cheddar cheese

Pinch of salt and paper

Sunflower oil for frying

Optional: 1 teaspoon burger sauce

Method:

1. Brown the mince and onions in frying pan until cooked
2. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly
3. Put a tablespoon of the mix in an egg roll wrapper and wrap up like it’s a baby in a blanket or a burrito
4. Wet the edge of the wraps if they won’t stick back down
5. Fry each wrap in the sunflower oil on medium heat for 5-10 minutes until golden brown. The mince is already cooked so you don’t have to cook them too long
6. Drain well on kitchen paper and serve with burger sauces for dipping

Tips:

• You can get the egg roll papers from most major supermarkets or if you an Asian supermarket or minimarket in your town you’ll definitely get them there. Or if you get stuck you can order them direct from Amazon (https://amzn.to/3g0x0ca)
• If you really like mustard; ketchup or gherkins in your burger normally then add more or less of these items to make it just like your favourite burger
• I like putting the mix in the centre of the wrapper then I pull up one of the corners and then the opposite corner, the roll over the opposite sides

Slow Cooker Chilli (Chilli Nachos)

Over the past week we’ve stayed in a couple of hotels and consequentially eaten out a lot at day and night. One of the items we ordered was from a standard bistro style pub in the hotel lobby which consisted of some standard nachos topped with the most amazing chill (and cheese and soured cream!). It was such a nice light meal to share and I haven’t had chilli for such a long time I decided to try and make a standard chill in my slow cooker to see how it would turn out. Then I could use the chilli to top nachos; baked potatoes or simply serve with rice.

 

Ingredients

1 splash sunflower oil

500g lean mince

1 can of chopped tomatoes

100ml of water

2 cloves of garlic, minced or I use the squeezy garlic tubes

2 chillies; chopped and de-seeded or use the squeezy tubes (or frozen/dried version described in tips below)

1 large white onion, chopped finely

1 can of kidney beans (rinsed in cold water)

1/2 beef stock cube

1 squirt of tomato puree

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon sweet, smoked paprika

1 teaspoon chilli powder

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon onion powder

Salt and pepper

 

Method

1. Brown the mince in a frying pan; add the onions and garlic at the end to slightly brown over a medium heat
2. Add the mince and all of the other ingredients to the slow cooker and set on high
3. Cook for 4 hours
4. I took the lid off for the last 20 mins to boil off some of the water
5. Serve a big blob over nachos and sprinkle with cheese

 

Tips

Use less water if you want it thicker as slow cookers don’t allow the water to boil off so it becomes more liquidy the longer you cook it

When I have too many chillies I either hang them to dry out or chop them an put them in a blob of oli in the freezer so they don’t go off

I know people add a small block of high quality cooking chocolate to their chilli recipes but I’ve never made this work as all I can then taste is chocolate. If anyone has any tips of this I’d be grateful!?