Crockpot Beef Casserole

This is a very easy meal to prepare. It takes about ten minutes of your time in preparation and then you can throw it in the crockpot and be done for the day. Alternatively you can cook this on a low/medium heat in the oven for about 2 hours.

The following ingredients are really a guide. You can throw whatever you have handy into this casserole.

I used:

1lb cubed stewing beef (use something cheap, it'll taste much better)
Two large carrots
3 small leeks
1lb mushrooms
About 2 pints of beef stock (cubes are fine)

3-4 tablespoons cornflour
1 tablespoon mustard powder
salt and pepper to taste

I was planning on adding the potato into the casserole as well to save me bothering later but the hubs and daughter wanted mash with this. So be it.






Place the cornflour, mustard powder, salt and pepper into a plastic bag along with the beef and shake well to coat.




Chop all the ingredients. I used my V slicer, it isn't a necessity but when we went through a phase of eating a lot of stir fry it made life easier.




Soften the leaks in a little oil and butter over a low heat for a few minutes,

Add the beef to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes just to seal with edges,

Transfer the beef and leaks to the crockpot, add the carrots and mushrooms and pour over stock. You don't really need to cover the casserole with stock, because no liquid evaporates from a crockpot as it does with other forms of cooking, if you completely cover with liquid, then you'll have to do something to thicken the sauce once its cooked. As it is there should be enough cornflour on the meat to thicken this amount of stock.

I cooked mine for about ten hours on low, although it was cooked before this (it smelt too good and I had to have a taste) so eight hours on low should do it.

Serve with steamed veg and mash or whatever takes your fancy.

I sincerely apologise

I do, I really do.

For some reason I haven't receiived any email notifications of comments left here and I'm very sorry if it seems as though I've been ignorant.

Pink Panther Birthday Cake

I have no idea why but this cake really took it out of me, compared to the monstrosity I made last year (which took over a week to make).

This barely took a couple of hours from pulling out the kitchen aid to throwing all the dishes in the sink, but it felt like a lot longer.

Anyway.

I started with my simple sponge recipe. I wanted to fill two 10 inch cake tins so I grabbed six eggs, weighed them and measured out the same weight of butter, SF flour and caster sugar.




Usually I throw everything in the bowl, turn on the machine and walk away but this time I pain stakingly creamed the butter and sugar before adding the eggs one at a time followed by the flour...




Ahem...

You should end up with a pale fluffy cake batter.




Toots asked if the cake could be strawberry so I added three large spoonfuls of seedless strawberry jam (which didn't change the colour at all) and a couple of drops of food colouring paste.




I divided the batter between the two cake tins and proceeded to make a well in the centre of the cake, smack the pans off the counter and say a silent player that the cakes would come out flat. I hate to trim cakes before decorating them. It seems to me that the structural intergrity of a cake is in the crust and if you have to remove it before adding a fair amount of weight in frosting, well it has just always ended in disaster for me.




In the end the cakes did come out reasonably flat. They had a very slight dome on the top but I fixed that by cooling the cakes upturned which flattened out the slight dome. I wouldn't recommend doing this if the cakes have a large domed top because forcing that amount of cake down on itself will ruin all of the lovely lightness you've worked so hard for earlier on.




I used to decorate my cakes on an upturned plate, but at the end of the day you still have to move it to a cake board or cake plate and there just isn't any point in tempting fate when there is a much better way.

In this case I was using a cake board so I grabbed the board and cut four, four inch wide strips of greaseproof paper. Arrange the greaseproof around the edges of the cake board, you will have a square of unprotected cake board in the centre which the cake will comfortably cover, then plonk the cake in the middle.

I spread a thin layer of seedless strawberry jam on the bottom layer of my cake to try to help that strawberry flavour along a little bit.




I then added a layer of buttercream (250g butter/500g icing sugar/tsp clear vanilla) before placing the second cake on top.

If you plan to completely cover a cake in buttercream then you want to add a bit more buttercream in between the layers than you think you need, once you have the second cake in place press down slightly so that the buttercream is pushed out between the layers.

A little bit of buttercream overflow will make covered the sides a hell of a lot easier, trust me.




Then completely plaster the cake with buttercream. Make sure sure your buttercream goes right down on to the greaseproof paper. Don't worry about making it look too pretty at this stage, just get a good centimetre or so thickness of buttercream over the entire cake.

I always start at the top of the cake and add enough buttercream so that I can spread it right to the edge and then push it a little further to create an overhang of buttercream all around the edge of the cake, then when you come to frost the sides there is very little chance of catching the edge of the cake and pulling any crumbs off.

The trick is to make sure your pallet knife doesn't run dry. Stop spreading about an inch short of where you think you should stop, you'll still have buttercream on the knife and won't risk pulling any crumbs off the cake.

Then put the cake in the fridge for about 20 minutes to chill.

Have a cup of coffee, you deserve it.

Once the cake has chilled a little, get a cup of boiling water, a drying cloth and your pallet knife ready. Alternate holding the knife in the water to heat the blade, drying it off and using it to smooth the buttercream. This method works very well and I prefer it to applying two layers (a crumb layer and a final layer) of buttercream.




I used a little picture of pink panther to decorate the cake (you can just see it in the photo below).

I dyed the leftover buttercream a dark pink and used it to draw the outlines of his face and write Happy Birthday. I still had some left so I added the little swirly bit around the edge.

Then I mixed up some plain icing using icing sugar and a little milk. I used this to make the three different shades of pink, the yellow and the black which I just poured in between the buttercream outlines and allowed it to flow out and fill the gaps.

Then I just whipped the greaseproof paper out from under the cake to leave a lovely clean, splatter free board and called it a day.

I just hope its what Toots had in mind.

Lemony Delight

I am a complete sucker for fairy cakes and these little lemony explosions are no exception.

They're such dainty little things without looking too fussy or "worked at".

As usual I stuck with my Simply Sponge Recipe.

I started with two eggs which weighed 110g still in their shell. I added 110g each of self raising flour, butter and caster sugar. I then added two heaping teaspoons full of lemon curd.

Preheat oven to 180C (350F)



Before beating with my hand held beater until the batter was light and pale. This takes a minute or two, but it beats the 20 solid minutes of bicep bashing it would take to do it by hand.



You'll end up with quite a thick batter, which can be very easily spooned into a lined bun or muffin tin. I used my small bun tin which produces little two or three bite sized buns. This recipe will make fourteen buns of this size. It will make eight or nine muffin sized buns. You'll have to excuse the slightly battered bun tin. I've had it years and I've grown very attached to it. I do have a silicone muffin pan, but I can't stand silicone.



Once you have all of your batter divided amongst the liners, put them in the oven and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. You don't need to test these with a skewer although if you prefer to by all means do. I find it much easier with small cakes to just press the top of one of the cakes slightly. If it bounces back its ready



These little cakes are feather light and have a delicious subtle lemony flavour.

I always prefer buns with a good golden colour to them. Its the reason no silicone will ever be harmed in the making of any baked goodies in my kitchen. I find that silicone produces a very patchy, insipid looking colour on baked goods. Its handy for some things, just not baking.

Don't they just look too good.

Not too good to eat obviously. This one had to be sacrificed for the sake of a good photo and it quickly became the cook's treat.

I made a very quick little icing to cover these fairy cakes.

Just about two thirds of a cup of icing sugar, with a teaspoon of the lemon curd and enough lemon juice to make a thick icing. It is roughly the consistency of toothpaste for desperate want of a better word.

I used slightly less than a teaspoon of icing to cover each bun, gently swirling the back of a spoon over the icing to push it towards the edges.

And enjoy.

Golden Scottish Shortbread

I love homemade shortbread and I have a recipe which I have used for years, however when I went to make my usual recipe this week I realised at the last minute that I was short on icing sugar.

So I tinkered.

And it was better.

I tinkered a little more.

And it was great.

I give you the new improved recipe.



125g plain white flour
30g rice or corn flour
50g caster (fine) sugar
100g regular salted butter or 100g unsalted butter and a pinch of salt.
Preheat oven to 160C (300F)

Place all ingredients in a bowl and either rub the fat into the flour and sugar or, if like me you have a life, simply grab your little hand held electric beater and let that do the work for you.

It doesn't come together as a dough but you should end up with something resembling breadcrumbs or wet sand.



Once you get to this stage, tip the contents of the bowl into a 8 inch loose bottom cake pan, give it a quick shake to level it slightly and then press the crumbs into the bottom of the cake pan. Don't press too hard, you don't want to lose any of the lovely lightness, but be firm enough that it will hold together. Best of all, you don't need to bother preparing the pan in any way. No lining, no greasing, nothing at all.

Once you have it pressed into the pan, bake for 15 to 20 minutes. It took exactly 20 minutes in my oven, but bear in mind that my oven is getting on in years. If your oven is newer check it from from about 13 to 15 minutes.

Once the shortbread is baked, remove it from the oven and place it, still in the pan, on a cooling rack for about 5 or 10 minutes.

You'll notice that there really isn't that much colour change. It's a very pale golden colour all over with slightly more colour just at the very edge.

After about 10 minutes, the shortbread will have had a chance to firm up ever so slightly. At this stage, sprinkle the shortbread with a teaspoon or so of caster sugar. I tend to throw it on in a haphazard fashion and then shake the pan from side to side to cover the top of the shortbread with a thin coat of sugar. Then cut the shortbread into either 8 or 16 wedges whichever you prefer. I tend to cut mine in 8. I find if I cut into 16 I still eat two pieces, although those long slender wedges do look a bit more impressive.




Once cut, leave the shortbread to cool completely in the pan before turning out, drooling all over the camera because you had to photograph it and then enjoy a dense crumbly wedge with coffee, ice cream, dipped into fool or mousse or just naked as it is.

Fifteens - No bake recipe

Fifteens are delicious but beware they are sweet and a bit rich.

It is one of the simplest tray bakes to prepare.

Combine;

Fifteen digestive biscuits, crushed,
Fifteen large marshmallows, quartered,
Fifteen glace cherries, halved or chopped,
One small can of condensed milk (160ml)

Mix these ingredients together in a large bow until you have a soft dough like consistency.

75 g flaked or desiccated coconut

Spread out a layer of coconut on a sheet of aluminium foil or greaseproof paper and using your hands form the dough into a long sausage shape, short and fat for big portions or long and thin for bite sized pieces. Roll the dough back and forth until reasonably well coated in coconut and then use the foil or greaseproof to wrap the sausage.

Chill for at least an hour or overnight and then slice into pieces about an inch thick.

Enjoy.

Guinness Cake

Forget Nigella's "throw chocolate in and people will buy it" attitude. This is the original and best (IMHO) Guinness Cake.

8oz softened butter
8oz dark brown sugar
4 large eggs
10oz plain flour, sifted
1-2 teaspoons ground mixed spice
8oz each of raisins and sultanas
4oz chopped glace cherries
4 oz chopped mixed peel
4 oz chopped walnuts
1/4 pint Guinness

Cream the butter and sugar together until creamy.

Beat in eggs one at a time.

Fold in the flour, mixed spice, fruit, nuts and peel and 4 tablespoons of Guinness.

Pour into a greased and lined 8inch cake tin and bake at 160C (325F) for one hour, reduce oven temperature to 150C (300F) and bake for another 1.5 hours.

Cool in the pan and then turn out onto a flat surface.

Prick the base of the cake and feed with the remaining Guinness.

Store in an airtight container for at least 10 days before eating. It produces a dense, moist fruit cake.

A good recipe to make a couple of weeks before Christmas to serve to guests.