Filed under: ageing, children, growing up | Tags: birthday cake recipe, Birthdays, children, Food, getting older, growing up
It was my youngest 8th birthday on Friday , it feels so strange that this cute, weird kid has been in my life for eight whole years!
I don’t know if it’s just me but time seems to pass so quickly once they get to school . I wish I could capture just a second of each passing year and keep it somewhere safe so I never have to say goodbye to him being a kid. It’s not that I don’t want him to grow up its just sometimes I wish I could slow it down so I could savour it a bit.
I guess that’s just part of life, my mum’s 60 in a couple of weeks and I know she has struggled with that one. When I was younger I imagined that the person you were just got old like your body but I don’t believe that anymore. I think if your lucky, time just makes us wiser not older.
I ended up baking Jack a giant cake for his birthday.I started by baking one cake, but it didn’t seem big enough so I baked another one and stacked it on top, iced it and covered it in smarties (very retro!) it was well worth the effort and everyone was amazed by its sheer girth! It tasted pretty good too…
If you want to try it out I’ve included the recipe. The butter icing part is just an estimate as i had to go to the shops half way through for extra icing sugar and butter , but you basically just have to keep making the stuff until the cakes covered. I think I used roughly a box and a half of icing sugar and a whole packet of butter. YUM!!
Jack’s Big Birthday Cake
LAYER ONE-
4oz self raising flour (110g)
1 teaspoon baking powder
4oz of soft butter (11og)
4oz caster sugar (110g)
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
LAYER TWO -
repeat layer one
FOR DECORATION-
Butter icing -
1 and a half boxes of icing sugar
1 packet of butter
splash of milk to blend…
5 tubes of smarties.
Pre heat the oven at 180oc and grease a large round cake tin (I used a 22cm tin)
Put the sugar and butter into a mixer and blitz, then add the sifted flour, cocoa, baking powder and eggs and blitz again.
Pour into the tin and bake for around 30mins or until cake looks brown and the centre is bouncy to the touch, then put on a rack to cool…
Do the same thing again for the second layer of the cake…
When both layers are cool, make the butter icing by mixing the soft butter with the sifted icing sugar and a little milk or warm water (there is usually an exact recipe on the sugar box) I had to do this in batches as I don’t have a giant bowl and find it easier to mix a little at a time.
Cut the rounded top off the first cake so its flat and spread a layer of butter icing on top then place the other cake on top and cover the entire cake with the butter icing. once this is done decorate with whatever you like, I used 5 tubes of smarties coz I like the colour combination but you could use dolly mixtures, buttons, dark chocolate shavings, the only restriction is your imagination!
Helenx
Filed under: Food, cooking, recipes | Tags: chef, cooking, Food, pizza, recipes
Pizza Rustica: You know how you get bored of cooking and eating the same things?
Well I was feeling particularly uninspired the other day so I decided to go through my cook books in search of something different, as usual nigella Lawson came up trumps with a recipe called Pizza Rustica ( its from her “how to be a domestic goddess” book which is quite old, but great by the way! ) So I had a quick scan through the ingredient’s, mozzarella – check, Parmesan-check, flat-leafed parsley-check, prosciutto- urm na… mortadella- urm again, na… now I know its probably because I am just a simple country girl but I really have no clue what these things are !
But rather than abandon the whole idea I decided to improvise with stuff I had in my fridge and below is the results, it maybe not authentically Italian but it sure did taste good ….
P.s, Just googled mortadella and its aparently – Mortadellapronounced /morta’dɛl:a/ is an Italian cold cut (salume) made of finely hashed/ground heat-cured pork sausage , and prosciutto is – Prosciutto is the Italian word for ham. In English the word is almost always used only for dry-cured ham which has not been cooked, …ohwell, there ya go!
FOR PASTRY…
9oz plain flour
4 and a ½ oz cold unsalted butter cut into 1cm cubes
2 tablespoons cold water
2 egg yolks
1 heaped teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon caster sugar
22cm springform tin buttered
FOR THE FILLING…
3 mild Italian sausages (skin removed) I use Salisbury’s Pancetta and Parmesan ones
3oz chorizo sausage (cut into small chunks)
1 tablespoon olive oil
250g tub ricotta
1 large chicken breast cut into 1 cm pieces
125g mozzarella grated
50g freshly grated Parmesan
½ clove garlic
2 good pinches chilli powder
2 eggs lightly beaten
good grind black pepper
1 heaped tablespoon dried breadcrumbs
FOR GLAZE…
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoon milk
pinch of salt
Method
First, put the flour and butter in a bowl and deep freeze for 10 Min’s (sounds strange but I think it helps with the pastry later on).
Stir together the egg yolks, water, and salt in a cup, and put in the fridge. Then, when times up, tip the flour and butter into a food processor, add the sugar and pulse until the mix turns into a cross between sand and porridge oats . Bind with the egg mix, and when the pastry looks like its just about to come together, stop…
Then tip the pastry out and wodge it together with your hands.
Divide into to 2 lumps, one larger than the other, wrap in clingfilm or foil and leave to rest in the fridge, meanwhile…
FOR THE FILLING…
Pre-heat the oven at 200oc put baking sheet in oven, Fry sausage insides (sound mad but will taste great!) in oil for about 5 Min’s, breaking it up with a wooden spoon as it cooks, then transfer to a bowl and let cool. Then fry off chicken and chorizo for 5 Min’s until cooked. At which time, add all the other ingredients apart from the breadcrumbs and mix well.
Roll out larger of the two pastry rounds and line the bottom of the tin (you will have to role it out quite thin but don’t worry if it breaks slightly I always patch it up with a little extra pastry, so no panic! ) , sprinkle the bread crumbs on bottom and then add filling.
Roll out other pastry round to fit pie top and turn over edges together and fork around edges to form nice border.
prick top and glaze. Cook in the oven for 10 Min’s at 200oc then turn down to 180oc and cook for 45 Min’s until golden brown.
Let the pie stand for around 15 Min’s and then just before you dig in , stand back and admire your creation. Its a real proud accomplishment of a pie!
Also great cold the next day, if there’s any left!… 
Helen x
Being as its cold outside I have gone into comfort cooking mode. I’ve been experimenting trying to make the perfect fish pie recipe, and I think I might have finally cracked it! I first had this delightful dish in Wells Next the Sea (one of the loveliest places on earth by the way!) on a cold spring day last year, we were holed up in this gorgeous little sea-side pub waiting for the drizzle to clear and Jay ordered fish pie for lunch . When it came I was immediately jealous and wanted his plate instead of mine ( I always do this to Jay’s great delight, not!) anyhow… he let me have a fork full and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, it was a lovely mix of cod, salmon and king prawns in a velvety cream sauce with black pepper and the slightest hint of warm paprika and finally a halo of buttery mash potato, I know it sounds like I’m over romancing what is only fish pie but it was sooooo good! If you want to try it you’ll find the recipe page on mydish.co.uk, just search for hi fi (thats me) on the comunity page under users and groups.
It ended up being such a lovely day, and everytime I make fish pie it gives me that cosy by the sea on a wet day feeling that is super comforting!
I have been having loads of ideas about painting the sea at the moment, Iv started art for the kitchen incorporating my love of food, maybe its time for bathroom art incorporating my love of the sea… mmm watch this space for that one!
Helen x
Oh how i am loving the bright chilly weather at the moment, its great to see the sun after so much gray and feel the bite in the cold air!
i have discovered a love of cooking this winter and it got me thinking about how my cooking habits have changed during the years. i come from a family of cooks, my mum was always baking something when i was young. The highlight of her baking year would be our harvest festival when she would bake our school center piece, it was a giant bread creation in the shape of a wheat sheaf ( a bit bizarre i know) and when i was very small i would be immensely proud carrying this giant thing down the church isle where it was surrounded by all the other children’s offerings of veg and tins of fruit! but i remember as i got older the whole thing became less cool until in the end when i used to secretly wish it would get burned in the oven or that I’d drop it on the way to school!
But now i have my own kids i get what mum was doing it for, that nurturing feel-goodness of cooking something special for your family or freinds brings out the domestic goddess in us all , there is no longer an anti-coolness about cooking something from scratch in-fact i think its now the opposite. Cooking seems to be everybody’s thing at the moment, with the very sexy nigella selling her wonderful brand of guilt free domestic bliss, i love the way she devours the food in her fridge at the end of each show!, its refreshing to see a sexy women on telly enjoying her food so much!
Oh all this talk of food has got me thinking of tea, maybe I’ll go rustle up a giant pan of toad in the hole. I can start the diet tomorrow!
Helen Fry
