Traditional Mince Pies

In case you are not already sick of them already, here is another mince pie recipe to add to the collection! I personally love them, and could eat them all year-round. I decided this year to make my own pastry (I know, too much time on my hands!) and since there are so many to choose from, I picked one that was described as 'short and melt-in-your-mouth'. The recipe is a Paul Hollywood one, who I definitely trust, and boy was I right! This pastry is so good, I mean, it literally crumble in your mouth but still holds it's shape. It tastes so buttery too!

Hope you like! I would love to hear which mince pie recipe you rely on each year!

Ingredients
375g plain flour
260g unsalted butter, softened
125g caster sugar
1 large egg + 1 for the glaze
A jar of mincemeat
Icing sugar for dusting

1. Put flour and butter cut into small pieces into a bowl, and rub until at crumb consistency. 
2. Add the sugar and egg and mix until combined into a dough. Tip out onto your surface and do what the French call 'Fraiser', which is basically when you blend the dough together with your hands. Be careful not to overwork it though. 
3. Wrap into cling film and chill for 10 minutes in the fridge. If you leave it for too long it will harden (this is what I ended up doing) and it will take a while to become soft in order to roll it out!
4. Heat the oven to 220c/200fan/gas mark 7. Roll out the dough to 3mm thick and cut out using a round cutter. You need to do big circles for the base of the pie and smaller ones for the lid. You can measure this easily by just placing the cutter over the pan you are going to use, and if it's slightly larger, then that's the one to use! I decided to use my star cutter for my lids!

5. Press your bottoms of the pie into the muffin tin carefully, and then fill with a couple of spoonfuls of mincemeat! 

6. Next you need to get your extra egg and beat it lightly. Use this to glaze the edges of your pies. This also helps your tops to stick, which is the next step: top with your lids! Glaze those as well after, then give them a little prick with a fork in order to let out the steam. You will notice in the next picture that I decided to fill some of mine with leftover jam, as I thought I would make some jam tarts whilst I was at it!

7. Sprinkle with caster sugar and bake for 15-20 minutes. Leave to cool and then dust with icing sugar.

Festive Christmas Biscuits

You've all had them once your life, and they all probably bring back many different memories. For me, it's eating them at primary school. These crunchy, iced biscuits were always a popular one when placed as a dessert on the dinnertime menu. I am however going to jazz them up a little bit by making them Christmassy! Here's how:

Ingredients

100g Unsalted butter (softened)

100g Caster sugar

1 free-range egg, beaten lightly

1 tsp vanilla extract

275g plain flour

400g icing sugar

Sprinkles and food colourings of your choosing (I found my cute sprinkles at Morrisons)

1. Pre-heat oven to 190 degrees (170 fan) and line a baking tray with greaseproof baking paper.

2. Using your beating attachment (or a wooden spoon if you are extra strong!), beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

3. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract gradually.

4. Stir in flour until it looks something like dough. 

5. Tip what may look like a dough onto a floured surfaced, and shape into a ball.

6. Roll your dough out until 1cm thick roughly, and cut out your biscuits with the cutters of your choice! I chose some star cutters which I found at Lakeland recently. A pack of 5 cutters for about £3.99, although I just checked on their website, and it looks like they are on sale! I also chose a heart cutter which was gifted to me recently when I got married :) That one is £4 by Eddingtons, available at John Lewis.

7. Bake the biscuits in the oven for 8 minutes roughly, until golden brown. Do not burn the edges like I did! I'm still not used to my oven, honestly! Leave to harden for 5 minutes before cooling on a rack.

8. Now for the fun part, the icing! Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add enough water (about 5 tbsp) to get to a thick, pipe-able consistency. Divide into separate bowls if you wish to colour, in which case you should only add a few drops and mix in with a spoon.

9. Spoon the icing into a piping bag and snip off the end. Pipe around the edges first and then fill in by drawing lines. To be honest, I'm not that happy with how my icing turned out! I could say that I wasn't really feeling well when doing these (full of a cold!) but I think it's just that I can't ice that well! Not one of my fortes! Oh well, I enjoyed it, and it certainly brought back memories! Hope you enjoy too! 

December Tea Favourites

This time of year is the season when we all get excited about hot drinks, but not just ordinary tea (i'm not a fan) or coffee, but herbal, fruit and spiced teas, and special types of coffee! I must admit, I do have quite a large collection that I have collected over the past few years, but recently I have been discovering some new ones.

T2 Sweet Spiced Loose Leaf Flavoured Fruit Tea

7.50 for 100g.

You may have heard of T2 before, or if you are like me and obviously live under a tea shaped rock, you haven't. The first time I heard of T2 was when at the Taste London festival in the summer, where they had a stand. One of my Australian friends pointed out that it's an Australian company and that they do really good tea, and a lot of it. So when I moved to Cheltenham in August and discovered that they recently opened a T2 shop, I was intrigued!
They stock a wide selection of black, fruit and herbal teas, with some very interesting flavours (Toasted Marshmallow anyone?) 
Since it's nearing to Christmas, I opted for the Sweet Spice tea after trying one of their samples. It tasted very much like mulled wine, so a great alternative to alcohol for those designated drivers around Christmas time!

Here's what it looks like inside

What I love about this tea is that the sweetness comes from the little meringue pieces - how cute! Definitely recommend!

lhttp://www.t2tea.com/sweet-spice.html

Onyx London Orange Cookies Black Tea
£8.28 for 90g.
£13.80 for 200g.

Onyx London is a company that has recently launched by one of my patisserie course friends. A lovely couple who obviously absolutely adore tea! 
This tea was gifted to me by them, and even though I'm not usually a big fan of orange flavours, I didn't find it too orangey at all! I really liked it's light flavours which leaves a hint of spice in your mouth afterwards. This tea is perfect for those times when you just want to curl up on the sofa with a blanket, stick on your favourite Christmas movie and just chill out. They also have a gift option too, so also a brilliant Christmas present for your tea fanatic friends. 

http://onyxtea.london/product/orange-cookies/

Keiths of Cirencester Christmas Coffee
I actually cannot remember the exact price, but I reckon around £5.00 for a bag. They also do not have a website.

I recently mentioned my trip to buy this coffee in one of my previous posts here. I have however since tried it, and am really liking this one. I have bought Christmas coffees in the past (I think my last one was from Harrods) but none have compared to this one. It has a bit of a nutty flavour, and a very light spice to it, whilst still tasting like normal coffee, if that makes sense at all! These flavours are not strong, but I just really like using it for my morning caffe latte. With the milk, the flavours really stand out. A great one for Christmas morning I think!

The shop is located in Cirencester on Black Jack St (GL7 2AA)

My Very Easy American Dinner Party

So as you know, I had my sister and her friend to stay last weekend. Because I love my food, I really like to try and experiment when I have visitors - I never seem to opt for the easy, tried and tested route. And since we are off on our honeymoon to New York on 20th December, I thought what a better theme to have than American, to get us all excited for our trip! 
I didn't want to make the meal too difficult though, as we had planned a day of shopping, so I would have to cook it after we got back, and no-one likes that! 
I had a little search on Pinterest and found two really yummy recipes, which didn't take long to prepare and cook at all! 

Firstly, here's my table all ready (I didn't really go American with the table theme as the plan was a little late notice! Also the only table cloths I own are floral, and the most suitable one was in the wash - doh!)

I decided to start with some simple sticky chicken bites, which are basically chicken pieces wrapped in bacon, that has been mixed into a mixture of brown sugar, chilli powder and cayenne pepper. And OMG they were SO GOOD. They literally went like hot cakes. A very good choice!

Here's the link: http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/2866960-Sweet-and-Spicy-Chicken-Bites?full_recipe=true

Obviously you can't have an American meal without at least one American condiment... (The Beaver sauce was found at Ocado).

For the main, I choice a simple American style, no fuss burger. I know my plate looks a tad messy, but this wasn't a serious dinner party! This is how food actually looks people! Haha. I cheated on the chips and bought frozen Mcains Peri Peri chips, but then I added on some extra Nandos Peri Peri salt. They were quite nice, but not as authentic as Nandos!

The burgers however, I made myself. And boy they were the easiest thing ever to make. Literally, you just shape your mince into balls and then place them into a really hot pan with oil, and as they were cooking, flatten them as much as you can. They should take about a few mins to cook each side. 

As the blog I found this one had stated, if you are going to make a REAL American burger, then you gotta use real American cheese: the processed kind! I usually hate this cheese, but it really went well with this burger! It wouldn't have worked with any other kind of cheese. 

I didn't bother toasting the buns, as that would be more hassle!

Here's the link where I found the burger recipe: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/freddys-burgers/

Italian Hot Chocolate and Peppermint Cookies

It's that time of year again, where the smell of peppermint evokes memories of Christmas' past, of candy canes hanging on the tree.
I personally love peppermint, especially candy canes! When I saw this recipe, I thought what could be better: cookies + candy = Christmas heaven!

So when my sister and her friend arrived last Thursday, I was eager to try out this recipe on them; to see whether they tasted as good as they sounded: they did. They were super soft and really minty, which I surprised about.

Now the only ingredient that gives the cookies their peppermint taste, are actual crushed candy canes. So if you don't fancy using the recipe I used, you could just add crushed candy cane to your cookies dough and bake as normal. The Americans actually use candy cane chips, which we can't find here, but candy canes work nicely too.

I'm not going to copy the recipe down here because since I took it from another blog, It wouldn't feel right. But here's the link if you want to try. 
http://www.momontimeout.com/2013/12/soft-chewy-chocolate-peppermint-cookies/

Also what better accompaniment to cookies than hot chocolate? And thick Italian hot chocolate too! I found the perfect recipe to recreate memories of our recent wedding and holiday in Italy, where we sat by the square, all cosy in our winter jackets, sipping on thick cioccolata calda. 
The mystery ingredient Italian hot chocolate thickness is cornflour, but don't worry, you can't taste it. This recipe is perfect since it's really quick to make and not complicated at all. 
Again, since I took it from another blog, here's the link instead: http://www.bellalimento.com/2012/01/11/how-to-make-italian-hot-chocolate/


Enjoy! 

Tuesday 24th November - Not a great day for food + porridge

I know I'm writing this a few days late, but you'll see why from what I'm about to tell you! 
Tuesday was a write-off when it comes to feeding ones mouth. However it did not intend to be this way. It all started with the usual breakfast of coffee, and then at about 9am I decided (very unlike me) to have some porridge! Now I don't usually make porridge, but it was like as if I knew that my body would need 'extra' feeding today. 

The porridge I made is very simple. All you need is:
Porridge oats
Milk (I used semi-skimmed but just because that's all we had)
Some sort of topping - I used Daylesford Organic Prune Compote, available from Ocado (optional)

1. Fill a saucepan with the amount of porridge oats you wish to consume.
2. Cover with milk. I decided that this is the easiest way. There's no need to weigh out your milk and work out the ratio of oats to milk, as long as it's covered then you're fine, unless you like yours really runny or really thick, you can alter it. 
3. Heat slowly and stir until the milk has soaked into the oats, or to your liking. Mine took about 5 minutes.
4. Finish with a topping of your choice. The most popular are: golden syrup, fruit, compotes and jams. I used a prune compote and then garnished it with some redcurrant. How very seasonal of me!

If you know of any other toppings for porridge that I've missed, or unusual ones, then please let me know!

So back to my day...
After the porridge, and a few hour later, since I knew I was off to the dentist, I decided to make sure I ate some sort of snack, but not a full blown lunch, as I could have that afterwards couldn't I?
My snack of choice were some Quavers. I know. How healthy.
Off to the dentist I went with my wisdom teeth intact, and out I come 2 teeth-less. The dentist suggested I could have these problem wisdom teeth out there and then! I almost chickened out and said I needed to work myself up to it and book the week later, but then as I was leaving I suddenly thought, since it's such a quick procedure, it may as well do it and save me coming back. So I went for it. It wasn't painful, just strange being all numb. I was advised not to EAT or DRINK or even RINSE until after 6 six hours. I was so hungry by this point. I spent the evening curled up on the sofa, thinking of food. All I could eat were cold foods, so after the 6 hours were up I ate: brie (nice and soft), sushi (the most troublesome - I feared that I got a piece of rice stuck in the gap!), and a chocolate M&S sundae (mega yum, apart from the hidden honeycomb pieces which proved also troublesome). 

So yeah... not a good day for food, but I'm glad I was blessed with little pain after, but just a rumbling tum the next morning!

Jess x

The Food Diary - Saturday 21st November - Tom Kha Gai and Cirencester

Hello there!

Hope you are all having a lovely, relaxed Saturday! It's very chilly over here; temperatures have dropped very low and it could snow! Would love the latter to happen, just not next week as my sister is coming to visit. Would not appreciate it then!

Today has been a really good day when it comes to food. The morning started off with the usual, and then after all morning getting ready, Fabio and I went to Cirencester to have a little wander and some lunch. If you've never been to Cirencester, I'd definitely recommend it. It's so cute and quaint, but not too small; it has a wide selection of shops. I actually think it's on par with Cheltenham when it comes to shopping! 

Two foodie destinations we stumbled upon:

Jesse's Bistro: A 2AA Rosette restaurant up a little side street, behind Jesse's Butchers, where the produce comes from. It's quite hidden which just adds to its character. It's fairly pricey, but nice for the kind of afternoon where you fancy a treat, or perhaps a meal with the 'rents! 
Fabio opted for the twice baked cheese souffle. I had a little taste and it was perfectly light and creamy, and very cheesy, but not too overpowering. 
For ours mains I had the whole cotswold Roast partridge with game chips, autumn vegetables and game juniper sauce. The partridge was tender and the veg just right. The game chips were quite something though! At first I thought they were crisps, which they technically were, but they had an oily 'just fried' taste; they were shaped like a criss cross pattern. Never seen anything like them before! Odd, but nice. 

Fabio had the beef burger with Emmental cheese, gherkin, beef tomato and chips, dressed leaves and club sauce. The burger looked so good! And Fabio had high praises for it (he is quite a burger connoisseur). It was the kind of burger that looked like it would be hard to get your mouth around. The club sauce also tasted like pickles, which I found interesting.

http://www.jessesbistro.co.uk

Keiths: OMG, this place is amazing. It's like a tiny (very tiny - it's quite hard to walk through it as it's so popular!) little coffee shop but then it also sells an array of coffee beans (which they will grind to your liking for you) and tea, behind the counter. it's very oldey-worldy, and smells divine. The majority of this 'emporium' is the large stock of European sweets and biscuits they sell. There were many boxes of chocolates and biscuits, from the German Lebuchen to the French Mon Cheri; many bars of marzipan, and also jars of conserves - I felt like I was on holiday in all the countries at once! 
Fab and I picked up a bag of Christmas coffee from behind the counter and I found a sachet of creme brûlée flavoured hot chocolate and candy cane hot chocolate. Apparently it's from Canada, so that'll be interesting to try! 

They don't have a website, but here's an interesting article about it from the Gloucestershire Echo. Echo http://www.gloucestershireecho.co.uk/Keith-s-coffee-shop-Cirencester-institution-40/story-21079610-detail/story.html

Tom Kha Gai

As you know, there other night I experimented with a recipe from Rosa's Thai Cafe and I said I would share it with you. We both were very pleased with this spicy, traditional thai soup as it was very quick to make, yet very rewarding, and warming!

Ingredients

Serves 2

500ml Coconut milk
4 lemongrass stalks (you can find these in Waitrose)
4 slices of galangal (I couldn't find them in veg form, so I used 2 tbsp of the galangal paste - also found in Waitrose)
3 red chillies, sliced
4 coriander roots (left this out because of my coriander dislike)
8 white beech or small button mushrooms, quartered
5 cherry tomatoes, halved
250g chicken breast, sliced into small strips
2 tbsp of Nam Pla (thai fish sauce)
Coriander leaves to garnish (obviously I left this out!)

1. Heat coconut milk until boil. 

2. Add sliced lemongrass, galangal, chillies, coriander root, mushrooms and tomatoes. Make sure you use a big enough pan at the start, as I was lucky all of it fit in the pan I chose.

3. Add chicken and stir over high heat for 2-3 mins until almost cooked through. 

4. Season with fish sauce and lime juice and stir over high heat until cooked all way through.

5. Garnish with coriander, if you're crazy, and serve immediately. 

We served ours with sticky rice. 

The Food Diary - Wednesday 18th November - Scrummy goujons and Madeira cake

Morning all!

How are you all doing on this blustery day? It seems to be brightening up here though, which is good as I was worried about our bin blowing away! 
So I didn't manage to get back to you all r.e what I ate last night, but I will tell you now, it was scrum. Fabio and I went to our local pub quiz night (The Cheese Rollers in Shurdington). The food there is homemade, so I really enjoy it. I chose the chicken goujons, much to Fabio's delight! Usually I find these to be either the frozen kind, or that the batter/breadcrumbs are too hard. These were perfect however. The batter was crisp and light; the chicken was fresh and succulent. They'd obviously just deep fried them (not the most healthiest, I know). I will MOST definitely be coming back for more!

Today I am currently baking my weekly cakes to sell at our local farm shop: Sticky gingerbread loaf and mincemeat loaf. I change the cakes monthly, however the mincemeat one will be here to stay through the months of December too, what with it being Christmas and all (our house knows it - currently I am blasting out the Michael Buble tunes already!)I will share this recipe with you in the days to come. 

So this morning I started off with my usual morning caffe latte with a slice of Madeira cake that I baked on Monday; one of the recipes I was testing for the business. It's proving to be a winner in our house, especially with the coffee! I will leave the recipe down below again for you all (it's a Mary Berry one from her book Mary Berry's Baking Bible. In case you are wondering, yesterdays curry came from her book Mary Berry Cooks.)

I've also eaten so far, a banana. I'm trying not to snack on so many sweet things, as I am always instantly drawn to the chocolate biscuits in our cupboard, but since I've already eaten cake this morning, I was like no. Although I know bananas are full of sugar, but it's good sugar right? 

Tonight I am cooking Tom Kha Gai soup to warm up the cockles of our hearts! It's Fabio's favourite, so he's excited. We will be having it with sticky rice, the only obvious accompaniment! I will be sharing this with you tomorrow, for sure. 

Merry November! (Secretly wishing it was December!)

Madeira Cake

Ingredients 

175g unsalted butter (softened)
175g caster sugar
225g self-raising flour
50g ground almonds
2 large eggs
1 lemon, finely grated

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180c/fan 160c/gas 4. Grease a 7inch (18cm) deep cake tin and line base with baking paper.

2. Measure the butter, flour (no need to sieve), ground almonds, eggs and grated lemon into a bowl. Beat for 1 minute and then turn into your tin and level. 

3. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, or until golden brown and skewer inserted comes out clean. My oven took about an hour, but mine is a VERY hot oven, so I always have to be careful.

4. Leave to cool for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack.

Don't worry if it cracks - it only adds more character. I added a dusting of icing sugar in a star design on top. Why not try this but with a different design?

New series - The Food Diary - Tuesday 17th November

So here I go again. Back to blogging! You can probably tell that the Le Cordon Bleu training took up A LOT of my time..hence why there's a post on my first day and then the writing stops! So sorry. I'm very excited, however, to be starting this blog again, as I do feel that it's good to have some sort of outlet to just talk about how you are feeling and most importantly, what you are eating! 

I hope my new 'series' of blog posts, in amongst others, hopefully, will encourage you to share what you eat in your daily life, as I find this the most interesting. The choices we make, be it a quick snack because you can't be bothered or a full gourmet meal. I tend to hop between those two quite often! I would love to say that I'm one of those who makes healthy choices on a daily basis, but I just don't. I'm human. I like sweet things. I do however try and be conscious of what I eat, and tend to pick at food a little un-often. 

I'm not going to put pressure on myself to post here, as I know when I do, I tend to not do it. I hope to write some other posts on more detailed topics, to provide more of a background to my diary posts, and also to provide you guys with more content to read, if you'd prefer not to listen to me rambling on about my day!

Here goes!

Okay so today I am feeling very hungry. Like constantly. I've so far drunk my morning caffe latte (a mug of milk heated up in the microwave with a spot of brewed lavazza or Ily coffee from the cafetiere). I drunk this a long with a piece of my homemade madeira cake that I made yesterday, when I was testing recipes for my new potential cake business. 

I usually just have coffee, so I can't really explain why I am so hungry at this hour, when I've eaten extra already: I also had a petis filous yoghurt (strawberry) and a paprika rice cracker. It is 12:10 I guess.. which means It's time for lunch! Lunch for me today will be the leftovers of our spiced vegetable casserole from last night. I used a Mary Berry recipe, which I can leave down below for you all, as it was rather nice and lovely and warming on a wintery eve.

Tonight we will be eating at our local pub at the end of our lane, as it's quiz night and we want to make more effort to meet the neigbours! Perhaps I will be back later to document what I had.

Hope you've enjoyed this rather long post. I also hope you are as interested as I am in what other people eat! I just want to know, what did you eat today?

Spiced Vegetable Casserole
Serves 4

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil (the book states vegetable but I much prefer olive)
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed (I didn't have any for mine!)
1 tsp turmeric
1 can of 400g plum tomatoes
1 bag of the Waitrose butternut soup mix (I used this as a substitute for a whole butternut squash, as I hate cutting them)
Half a cauliflower, broken into small pieces
1 yellow pepper, deseeded and cut small
1 can of 400g chickpeas, drained
600ml of vegetable stock (I use unsalted versions)
2 tbsp of Harissa paste (2 tbsp is more than enough for this quantity. The book's recipe serves 10 and uses this amount. I added 2 as I like spice, although it was particularly spicey).
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

I omitted the coriander, as I despise it!

1. Heat oven to 160c/140c fan/ gas 3.

2. Heat oil in a large flameproof casserole dish. Fry the onions until transparent. Add the garlic and turmeric and fry for 30 seconds.

3. Add the tomatoes, squash soup mix, cauliflower and peppers. Stir and then add chickpeas and stock. 

4. Boil and then cover with a lid and cook in oven for an hour.

5. Remove a couple of tbsp of the juice to blend in with the harissa paste. Stir back into the casserole and adjust with seasoning.

6. Serve with rice, and also a couple of slices of buttery sourdough. Perfect!

The beginning of the journey

So the day has finally come. I'm on my way from Canterbury to enrol in one of the finest culinary schools in the world, Le Cordon Bleu. 

The whole of yesterday all I could think about was the anticipation of tomorrow arriving. Now I can't it's here and It's all beginning! Today!! 

I'm currently sat on the train, hoping I have everything with me. I've packed my kitchen shoes, a notebook (actually I packed two) and a few pens, which was required of us. Pictures of these to come later, along with the other goodies I'm hoping to collect today. I've also packed a bottle of water as I don't want to die of thirst, and some memo sticky note things, 'cause you never know! I have my weighing scales with me, because even though they didn't mention to bring them today, I thought I might just incase. I'd hate to be the only one who hasn't! I can always keep them in the locker so I don't have to bring them again, if we are allowed. 

One thing I'm trying not to worry about, after reading blogs about other people's experience of LCB, is public transportation. I know you may think I'm crazy, but I'm totally relying on it to get me to class on time everyday. The reason for my worrying is that if you are 15 mins late, you are not allowed in. If you miss4, you get kicked off! Eek. I hope I'm not ye only one. I expect most people will be living in London and just getting the tube. Although I know that can be unreliable too, but I hope not as I will. need to take it! My journey consists of one high speed train (thank God!) from Canterbury West station to St Pancras International, and then the Picadilly line to Holborn, which is only the second stop, luckily. It's only a 5 min walk from there. I'm glad the high speed train is fast and reasonably reliable as a lot of commuters take in to London, as it only takes 56 mins! 

Today is the day of orientation which starts at 10:30, with first class starting at 3:00pm until 6:00pm. I'll arrive early at St Pancras at 9:20, so I have plenty of time to mull around and get there. 

I'm going to leave it here for now as id love to eat my Bircher muesli yoghurt, which is my attempt to eat breakfast as I normally only drink a cafe latte in the morning! Expect pictures later! And more updates of my day to come! 

Jess x