check out my new blog!!

http://beanymum.tumblr.com/

I love it!

I started a new challenge and joined the daring bakers a couple of months ago. I also got a new camera and so i thought it was time for a new blog too! I want to keep this blog alive as its great for me to reference back to things i have made in the past.
Over and OUT!

I feel SO FULL! We have just finished the home made profiteroles I made this morning. Lovely little sweet choux pastry balls, filled with cream and covered in bitter sweet chocolate sauce.
I had originally decided I would make chocolate eclairs as they are my favourite bakery treat. I researched a few recipes and came across the daring bakers who had completed the beautiful Croquembouche last May. I found many blog entries that amazed me but this one caught my eye from Citrus and Candy.

I followed the recipe for the pastry which worked a treat but didn't fancy the palava of making the creme patissiere as we had a few tubs of cream in the fridge that needed to be used. I whipped up the cream with some sugar and piped that inside them instead.

For my chocolate sauce I used 100g of Green & Blacks 85% cocoa chocolate melted in a bain marie with about 25g of butter and a drop of vanilla extract.
Here are the profiteroles filled but before the sauce...


 I feared I hadn't cooked them long enough as the recipe called for 10 minutes in the oven at 220 degrees and then 20 minutes at a lower temperature of 180... after 15 minutes they looked golden brown and ready to come out. I made myself wait another 5 minutes and took them out after 20 minutes in the oven. They were perfect!

DRIBBLE!!!!! I have been really getting into cooking blogs recently. I have spent many many hours dribbling and daydreaming about the creations that other people out there are creating. One of my favourite blogs I have discovered is Sweetapolita a blog by Rosie who is amazingly talented.


I love the look of layered cakes when you slice in and discover layer upon layer of yummy cake!
On Rosie's site, one particular cake stood out to me and it was the Triple Lemon Blueberry Layer Cake!


I rarely partake in the eating of blueberries as when i pick up the tubs in the supermarket they are rarely British and usually from Morocco, but this cake certainly changed my mind! I'll keep in mind now that the UK blueberry season is from June till August so there is a wide window for more of this cake to come!


Here is the recipe I used...

Triple-Lemon Blueberry Layer Cake

I had some lemon curd in the fridge that my friend had made so I used that in the filling, i think if you used the frosting as filling it would be way too sweet and the lemon curd gives it a zingy kick.

This was my first time frosting a whole cake and i really wanted to make an effort. I loved piping the little dots around the base and top and it gave me the confidence to try more! I am looking forward to more icing and more eating!

 

 

 

So, with the boiler broken meaning we have no heating I thought I'd would warm us up tonight with something spicy. As we had a yummy Indian take away whilst in London this weekend I thought it would have to be anything but a curry!

Meatballs came about as we have a lot of odds and sods of pasta packets in the cupboard so i thought i'd better use them up. I love meatballs. There is a lovely Greek cafe in the Royal Square in town called The Petit Greek (well, thats what we call it!) that does a beautiful meatball dish with the biggest meatballs I've ever eaten so i thought these meatballs should be huge in admiration of my favourite greek dish.

I have the time these days to cook meals that are quite quick to prepare but spend a long time in the oven. Ruby has started going to bed by 6pm and Papa bean doesn't get home till 8pm most nights so I have this time to sort dinner out. I like to get in the kitchen as soon as baby bean is in bed and then once its in the oven I can relax until Stephen comes home, what a domestic goddess, (a domestic goddess with a beer in her hands most nights!).

For the Meatballs you will need:

2 x slices of stale bread
500g minced beef
1 small onion finely chopped
2 x teaspoons of mustard (any, I used english as that was all we had)
1 x chilli chopped
Herbs of you're choice (I used fresh basil and dried oregano)

I used a small food processor I have for Ruby's food to chop up the stale bread, put the bread into a large bowl along with half the onion (which i also chop in the processor), and all the rest of the ingredients above. I really wanted to use whole grain mustard but we had ran out so any mustard will do. I like the idea of the whole grain mustard seeds popping in your mouth!

I added fresh basil but dried oregano as my oregano plant out side is looking very sorry for itself with the pretty sudden drop in temperature. It seemed as if summer stopped on November 1st very dramatically. Any herbs you like would be fine, i think Rosemary would work will and Marjoram would be good too.

Mush all the ingredients together in the bowl, use your hands, it not that bad and the best way to mix it all up keeping texture and not over doing it. Separate the mixture into 4 then separate again so you have 8 large meatballs. You could make as big or as small meatballs you like. If you're cooking for kids them maybe make the smaller. Fry the meatballs in a hot frying pan with some olive oil, keep turning the to get brown on all sides, while you're doing this you can make the sauce.

Make up a simple tomato sauce to go with them in a casserole dish, the meatballs will be be so packed of flavor that you wont need a fussy sauce. I fried the remaining chopped onion with some chopped garlic, chilli and some Taste No 5 Umami paste, added an 800g tin of chopped tomatoes and brought to the boil.
Add the browned meatballs, place the lid on and put in an oven heated to about 150 degrees (Fan oven).
Leave until you're ready! I had ours in the oven for just over an hour.

Serve with you're odds and sods of pasta and even add a couple of small basil leaves to the dish for garnish if you're feeling fancy! Enjoy.

I got lucky making jam it seems. We had a massive crop of wild blackberries this year that came in quite early and are still coming out now. We went collecting a few times but i've been lazy compared to the amount we could have stashed in the freezer, plus our freezer is tiny so not much room for half a dozen tubs of blackberries. We have stuck to a modest 3 tubs for winter crumbles and jam making.

Jam seemed pretty easy the first couple of times i set out to make it. (I'd had a previous encounter attempting it without having read ANY recipes or tips and it didn't set but it was for a cake filling so i don't count it unless it is intended for a jar!). I put one tub of blackberries collected that day in a pan with some sugar and a squeeze of fresh lemon and stir on a middle heat until the sugar is dissolved, then once dissolved i blasted in on a high heat until my jam test worked and then i'd take it off the heat and pour into jars.

Jam Test
Stephen's mum Bridget taught me this. Get a cold plate and spoon a small amount of your cooking jam onto the plate, if a wrinkly surface forms on the jam then its ready to go in the jars!

It was very much guessing with amounts of sugar to the amount of fruit. What i'd read online and in Delia's book was that if you're fruit is too ripe there may not be enough pectin for the jam to set. To offset this you add a squeeze of lemon juice as lemons are high in pectin. Unripe fruit also has a lot of pectin so i made sure a picked some slightly under ripe berries too and put lemon in just to be safe.
One tub (take away plastic container you get a curry in) would make 2 jars, i would put probably about 150g of sugar in and the juice of half a lemon in. (You don't taste the lemon at the end).

Overall i was very impressed with my jam (not wanting to toot my own horn of course!), The first lot was too sweet so i made sure i put less in the next time. Trial and error, and error again, its all a learning curve isn't it. I really should start writing down ingredients and amounts though!

Ruby is now 1! How did that happen? All the cliche's are true, time does fly by and before you know it you haven't taken a photo in months and your "wee" one is actually massive and tearing round the kitchen exploring all things they shouldn't!

I thought i'd do a brief post on the Baby Led Weaning side for the curious mums who are starting out and wondering how it goes for some of us.

Well we got to about 7/8 months old and as baby bean was at my mums while i was working part time we decided for easiness that mum would give her a tub of home made or nice organix mushed food spoon fed and her breakfast and dinner was still BLW where she fed herself.
She eats pretty much anything now and will try everything a least once. Its amazing how much a couple of extra teeth can change things too. Ruby now has her two lower and two higher middle teeth but she can do some damaged with them.

Breakfast is usually some toast, in cubes now as she prefers to pick up little bits and then some of mums cheerios when i come down for my breakfast and half a banana.
Lunch is with granny on weekdays and is a tub of baby food and a baby yogurt.
Dinner is mostly left overs from our dinner the night before. Today she had some lamb, potato, leeks and beans with a tub of fruit puree for desert. We've done bolognese, tortilla, sometimes if we've not got anything in she'll have a pot of ready made food, i'm no angel i'm just a real mum in a real world.
She snacks in-between on raisins (now she is one), dried fruits, rice cakes, apples (very entertaining for her!), organix crisps, cheese sticks, cheesy toast, the list goes on...

It seems to be whatever you as a mum are comfortable with. Some people are set against not mix feeding, your child either feeds herself 100% or its not worth doing but i don't think thats the case. Ruby will stop eating when she's full regardless of whether she's being spoon fed or feeding herself. We never force feed her or try persuade her to eat "one more spoonful for mummy, AHHHHH".

Our weaning story will continue but its not a big deal any more, we eat, we drink and we eat some more. It was all such a new experience for both of us mother and child but it feels like we've been doing it for ages now! I am happy to answer any questions from any mums out there whp are feeling as clueless as I was when we first started weaning, just leave a comment and i'll get back to you. I'll leave you with some pictures of Ruby enjoying one of her many apples...