A little Christmas Cooking

Having grown a slightly larger, I feel now is the time to put up a couple of pictures! Sorry about the lack of recipes, but the Gingerbread House is just a recipe for ginger bread men, and the stars are shortbread dipped in chocolate!

Gingerbread House

Sabi and myself decorated this with Royal Icing, and midget gems! Note the moose peeking out!

Chocolate Shortbread Stars

I feel a little cheeky putting these up as I only helped put the chocolate on them - Mum baked them!

I hope you all have a good year!

Pork Fillet with Mushrooms

For how easy this dish is, and the time it takes it's extremely tasty, and easily doable in a rushed evening!

Ingredients: 

500g Pork tenderloin fillet

300g Mushrooms

1 Lemon

300 ml Creme Fraiche

Green / Red / Yellow Peppers

Courgette

Onion

Couscous (Enough for however many people are eating, it will say on the packet) 

How to:

Vegetables for the Couscous

- Chop up the peppers, courgette and onion, and pop them in the frying pan to soften them all up.

- Slice the pork into 5mm slices, and in a heated frying pan brown on both sides, which should take about 3 minutes for each side. Remove from the pan and pop into a bowl for later. 

- Slice the mushrooms (I just chopped mine in half apart from the really large ones) and fry in the pan for about 3 minutes. Remove and put in with the pork in the bowl. 

- Slice the lemon and brown ever so slightly, and remove and put in a different bowl. 

- Boil your kettle, and add enough water just to cover the Couscous, and cover with a lid or a chopping board. This will take about 5 minutes for the Couscous to "cook". When it has add in the vegetables and a little oil or butter, and stir in nicely. Add seasoning to taste.

- Return the pork and the mushrooms to the frying pan, now on a low heat, and add in the creme fraiche and stir, reducing slightly.Add seasoning to taste.

Ready to add in the creme fraiche

- When reduced, pop the lemons back in and stir in very gently. Serve alongside your Couscous and enjoy!

The finished dish.

Marble Cake

Initial Mixture

Ingredients:

100g self-raising flour
½ tsp baking powder
40g plain chocolate

125g caster sugar
2 eggs
1–2 tbsp milk
30g ground almonds (They make the mixture slightly richer)
125g  butter

How to:

- Heat oven to 180 degrees c, grease/line your loaf pan. Sift your flour, with your baking powder into a large bowl.

- Cream the butter until it's kind of fluffy, beat in the 1st egg, then half of the flour, then the 2nd egg, then the rest of the flour. Fold in the ground almonds, and add enough milk to give it a thick consistency so that it just drops off of the spoon.

This mixture stays as it is!

- Spilt the mixture into 2 bowls, evenly. Melt the chocolate in a glass bowl over a boiling, adding a very slight amount of butter to help it. Mix the chocolate into one of the bowls

This is the chocolate mixture!

 - Spoon the mixture into the into your loaf tin, 1 large spoonful at a time.

On the next layer, spoon the light mixture over the dark mixture

- With a sharp knife, draw it through the mixture gently to swirl it, don't go too overboard else you will just get a medium-colour cake!

Swirled mixture ready to roll

- Bake it for 30-40 minutes, or until you can poke it with a skewer, and for it to come out clean.

Finished!

 If you want to ice it, melt 60g plain chocolate over a boiling pan like before, then stir in 30g unsalted butter and 1 tbsp double cream, then when the cake has cooled, spread it on, let it set. Then eat it!

Mozzarella Burgers

Burgers mid production!

Following on from my older post about burgers, these are a slight evolution of them! Same recipe for the burgers! Make the patties slightly smaller (and thinner) so you have 2 patties per burger, thinly slice a block of mozzarella cheese leaving approximately 1cm gap around the edges so you can seal it! Slightly oil your hands, then gently pinch the edges of the 2 patties over the cheese in the middle. 

I didn't manage to get any pictures of these after cooking as I was off to a friends for the BBQ, however here are some ready to rumble!

Burgers being put away for later!

 Serve in a bun as normal, a little sauce if you feel like it, and don't worry when the cheese starts to come out of the sides!

Vegetables!

Ok, this isn't a recipe but here are the first potatoes (and onion) I've ever grown!

Vegetables!

Peasant Girls in the Mist (Apple crumble and cream layered dessert)

This is something that myself and Sabi had when we were in Grebbestad, Sweden, and at the time of ordering we only knew it was a dessert!

Ingredients: Serves 4

- 2 cooking apples

- 3 TBSP Caster Sugar

- 100g Breadcrumbs

- 25g Butter

- 50g Brown Sugar

- 1/2 TSP Ground Cinnamon

- 300ml Double Cream

- 4 TBSP Icing Sugar

Method:

- Peel and core the apples, and put in a a saucepan with some cinnamon, the caster sugar and a couple of tablespoons full of water. Heat gently and cook until quite a mushy consistency. Leave to cool.

Apples cooking to a mushy consistency

- Melt the butter in a frying pan, and add in the breadcrumbs, brown sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon and cook until they're browned. 

Browning the breadcrumbs

 - Whip up the cream and add the icing sugar, and then start to layer the apple mixture, crumbs, cream a couple of times in a glass.

The finished product!

A Swedishy Starter

This one is mega easy, the only bit of cooking is boiling some eggs!

Ingredients:

- Knäckebröd (You want about a pizza-slice size for each person you're making it for)

- 1 Egg per 2 people

- Cream Cheese

- Smoked Salmon

- Kalles Kaviar

Method:

- Boil the eggs until nearly hard boiled and then peel, and slice in half

- Break knäckebröd into pieces about the size of a slice of pizza and place on a plate

- Take off slices of Smoked Salmon, and put approximately a tablespoon of cream cheese on one end, then roll up, and place on knäckebröd

- Scoop the egg yolks out of your halved eggs, and place in a bowl. Add the Kalles Kaviar and mix together, and then replace in the yolk holes, and place on the knäckebröd.

Finished starter