Gingerbread cupcakes

 













Tanya's thoughts:

So I had this brilliant idea to make gingerbread muffins but in cake cases (as i find a whole muffin too filling sometimes) and then added a lovely cream cheese icing on top (and this is the really exciting bit) then added some gingerbread men sprinkles!! they tasted of cinnamon to be honest but looked great. If any of my family are reading this - I may make these again for Heather's buffet.

Jack's birthday beer cakes

 















Tanya's thoughts:

Ok, so I used a Mrs Beeton recipe for cider cake and substituted the cider for ale. Then made a butter icing with more ale - the icing was lovely and frothy like a beer! A decorated the cakes with pints of lager sweets.

(I was going to ask Jack for his 'thoughts' but then realise why bother when a picture says a thousand words - insert funny photo of jack eating cake)

Cinnamon swirls

Tanya's thoughts:

This was a recipe from the 'Hairy Bikers 12 days of Christmas' book and they were lovely! Bit fiddly for a breakfast I grant you, as it is essentially making bread and I could have done a better job at rolling it together. But it smelt amazing when they were in the oven and they tasted divine. As we were eating this a celeb on a kitchen program said her food hell was cinnamon. There must be something mentally wrong with her.

James's thoughts:

"A surprise treat and extremely tasty."

Chick-chick-chicken pie

 












Tanya's thoughts:

This was Jamie's 30 minute chicken pie. Not really much to say except it was quick and easy to make and tasted lovely! liked the consistency and the sauce was rich with the mustard and crème fraiche. MUST make again. Roger that.

Hot schnocolate

 

















Tanya's thoughts:

This is from Nigella's Christmas book. it is proper hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps or in my case creme de menthe as have tried to buy the schnapps for years and have given up. So technically it's not hot schnocolate but I refuse to denounce the name as that was the main reason for trying this recipe :p I admit the whipped cream and crushed peppermint candy canes were a naughty extra but hey ho it is Christmas!


James's thoughts:

"This rocks"

Heavenly hot chocolate

Tanya's thoughts:
If angels could only drink one thing - this would be it. Nigella's hot chocolate (who else?). Basically milk with chocolate, brown sugar, honey, Cinnamon, vanilla essence and dark rum = the taste of heaven. Nigella's recipe uses dark chocolate which was too rich/bitter for my taste so I substitute plain chocolate and it the result is divine. In fact we've had this every winter for quite a few years now so the taste is not only lovely but familiar too.


James's thoughts:
(he said he can't do this anymore) :/ Well at least he's drinking it if not commenting on it ;p

Winter grub

Beef ale stew with caramelised onion dumplings

Tanya's thoughts:
I'm determined to find the perfect stew this winter and this one was pretty good actually. Beef, onion, leek, carrot, parsnip, cut up dried prunes (that last one was recommended by my friend Nicki and was a great addition) and thyme cooked in an ale for 3 hours in the oven. The ale was 'Tetley' (no not the tea silly) and  it made the stew smell almost perfume like. It tasted lovely. The dumplings were a nice surprise as seemed quite simple - frying the red onion in groundnut oil until golden and mixing them into the rest of the dumpling ingredients (including mustard powder and chives). The only criticism was Delia (actually this stew was a hybrid between Delia and Jamie recipes) advised after cooking the stew for hours to remove from oven, top with dumplings and then return to oven without the lid - but I found this dried up the stew - big time. Maybe some people like their stews this way? I prefer a nice gravy personally. A lesson for next time.

 
James's thoughts:
"Very sumptuous"

Let them eat cake!

Chocolate soldier cake & Pizza cake

Tanya's thoughts:
The soldier creation was chocolate sponge (with chocolate extract to make it REALLY chocolatey) sandwiched together with a chocolate *frosting and again swamped with it all over the cake, almost creating a chocolate moat around the cake. The cake was lovely and surprisingly not too heavy. Obviously I'd recommend the decoration for a young boy's birthday cake or in my case - a grown man's birthday cake :p
James's thoughts: .....

Tanya: James's can't talk right now, he's busy with his Fortress game clan :/






 

The pizza cake was plain sponge (cooked in a pizza pan (11ins), and was actually gluten free (yes the flour worked in this recipe)) with red *frosting (cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and red food paste), grated white chocolate (the cheese) then some fruit imitating pizza toppings. In our case we used 'pepperoni', 'olives', pieces of 'mozzarella'. Actually tasted really nice and quite light - the fruit made it feel light a light summer's cake. Presenting it in a Dominoes pizza box made it look the part and served it with a pizza cutter - great.
Jason's thoughts: "Needs moar garlic bread. No seriously, was enjoyable cake, different yet scrumptious. 8.5/10"
 











 

*Apologies for using the term 'frosting' I know it's American, but icing just conjures up a really thin silver spoon icing.

Toffee apple crumble

 











Tanya's thoughts:
Of course this had to be done for a fireworks night dinner! Eaten after a hearty cheesey chilli and the crumble was served with cream and as you can see from the photo - indoor sparklers. I think the excitement was too much as when the sparklers finished (after a very reluctant start) i felt extremely disappointed :p

This was a recipe found in a Brighton magazine about local food. you basically make a dark toffee sauce with dark muscavado sugar, butter and double cream which you pour over the slightly fried apples. Once cooked the sauce becomes a golden rich colour. The crumble mixture also has ground almonds which gave it a rich flavour (as if that was needed). Lovely and gooey.

James's thoughts: 
Very tasty but let down by sharp apples.

Classy cupcakes

Tanya's thoughts:
So next time you have Dorian Green pop in for a cup of tea you know what to serve with it. (Anyone remember birds of a feather?) Yes these cake cases are uber tacky but I think they look gorgeous :p the inner chav in me has unleashed itself obviously. I realise I've only described just the appearence so had better mention the taste. Lovely. Chocolatey and rich. What more do you want?

Friend's thoughts:
Well Andrew ate three so they must be good and Lauren's looking very naughty in this photo so presumably must be a 'naughty but nice' treat. Asked James what he thought of these cakes, to which he responded "I helped make them". That's nice dear.

The Soup Off! Blue Pumpkin VS Roasted Butternut Squash

 

Tanya's thoughts:

I like pumpkin soup, I like butternut squash soup - but which is better? :p Actually this is incredibly easy as we didn't like the pumpkin soup :( I followed Tana Ramsey's recipe for pumpkin soup where you fry then boil the chunks of pumpkin with garlic and rosemary - once it was cooked, blended etc - it only tasted of rosemary :( Very disappointing as it looked exciting (although it wasn't blue inside - obviously that would have made it more exciting!) and the texture was lovely and silky.

I've made this butternut squash soup recipe a few times before - again by Tana Ramsey (didn't even click that both recipes were hers until writing this). And it's lovely. Roasting the squash first just really brings out the sweetness of the vegetable. It's a time consuming soup - well over an hour to make it. But the real winner in all of this was the cheese scones I made as an accompaniment for this soup. I found a recipe online: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8877/cheese-scones and it uses vegetable oil rather than butter to make it healthier. Anyway who cares - they tasted lovely and rose really nicely.

James's thoughts (Well I'll write on his behalf)
He said that the pumpkin soup smelled like weed :/ And he obviously liked the squash soup and scones as took leftovers with him to work. :)

Fancy a bit of crumpet?

Tanya's thoughts:
Firstly - yes homemade crumpets taste amazing and nothing like the store bought ones.
Secondly and regretfully I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I can't believe I of all people would say that when it comes to baking. Basically it starts off with a bread making process which is fine but of course waiting for it to rise etc is time consuming. Then it's fiddly and takes time cooking them all. Yes I only had a couple of crumpet rings that slowed everything down but unless you have 5 frying pans on the go with 5 crumpet rings in each it's always going to take a bit of time. I started making these at a reasonable hour of 9am on a Saturday morning and think we were eating them just after 11am :/ Or later but can't really remember. That traumatic, perhaps I blocked it out :p
Maybe if someone asked me to make these as a dying wish I would consider it. I said consider :p

Easter cakes!

Tanya's thoughts:
Ahem. It's only a few months after Easter? Surely we all remember what we did for Easter?? :/ yes I'm playing catch up on my blog but really wanted to add these in as I had fun making them for a little tea party on the bank holiday Monday after Easter. Classic birds nests and butterfly fairy cakes, where I dyed the butter cream to match the nestle mini eggs. Yes even with food I like to colour co-ordinate.I also emptied some eggs so I could decorate them for the Easter table spread. Aren't they cute?

Chicken, apple and rosemary pie

Tanya's thoughts:
Have you ever being stuck for a dinner idea and just googled the ingredients you had in the fridge? well this was how i stumbled across this gem of an idea/recipe. I would never have thought these ingredients married together so well. here's the recipe: http://elseachelsea.typepad.com/frolic/chicken-apple-rosemary-pot-pie.html. In fact I can't believe I haven't made this since? I didn't make my own pastry as had some puff pastry that needed to be used up. (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).

The best peanut butter cookies ever

(and I don't say that lightly!)

Tanya's thoughts:
Sad as I am, I've tried many different recipes for this but now have found the winning one. I think it was Rachel Allen's? I did add chocolate chunks and then that was it - a miracle was born. Anyway they were delish and have made them several times and it's the one biscuit that everyone has HAD to come back for more. Oh yes, they're that good.

Cheese, coriander, spring onion Quesadillas

Tanya's thoughts:
I've always loved quesadillas and have experimented in the past with these but this is the best recipe for them ever. Such a good combination of flavours and a good vegetarian lunch/dinner. Always good as my mum is a vegetarian. This is another recipe by.....James Oliver (how did you guess?) http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetarian-recipes/quesadillas-with-guacamole And this is the one photo I was disappointed with - it doesn't look great but believe me tastes fantastic - have put my photo next to the one that was in Jamie's book - see practically no different?? :p


 









James's verdict:
(I'll ask him later, he's too busy geeking it up :p)

Kat's Popcorn Bday Cakes

Tanya's thoughts:
Who said that good food presents itself? I'm not entirely sure I agree with that (ask me on a day when my food looks like a shambled lump on a plate and I may say something different again). As these were simple fairycakes that I added some buttercream to on top, then stuck marshmellows on. I had a light bulb moment when in Asda to use the bags you get from the pick n mix for the 'popcorn bucket'. ANYWAY they looked fab and Kat couldn't be more pleased. In fact that link's nicely to.....:

Kat's verdict:
(I'll let her photo speak for itself!) :)