Sticky Sausage, Carrot and Cous Cous Bake

Sausages are a great family food at this time of year, perhaps due to the association between bangers and bonfire night. It's also nice when you can just throw things into a pan in the oven at this time of year and enjoy some warming flavours.

I came across this recipe on the Tesco website for sticky sausages with carrots and couscous - not things I would have thought to combine, but it was really good and something I will definitely make again.

To serve 4 (or fewer, depending on how many sausages you want per person) you need:
8 pork sausages
150g Tendersweet carrots, halved lengthways - I used regular carrots though Chantenay carrots would also be good
1 red onion, sliced
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp clear honey

for the couscous:
200g couscous
1 tbsp. fresh mint leaves, chopped
1 tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped
1 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 lemon, juiced

For the harissa yogurt

1 tbsp harissa paste

150g pot natural yogurt

 

Preheat oven to 200C. Line a roasting tin with foil and put the sausages, carrots and onions in the pan and toss with the cumin, coriander and oil. Roast for 30 minutes, turning halfway, until cooked through.

 

 

 

Make up the couscous according to pack instructions and leave to stand until all the water has been absorbed. Mix in the herbs, oil and lemon juice.

 

To make the harissa yogurt, mix the harissa paste into the yogurt. When the sausages are cooked, drizzle over the honey and toss the sausages and vegetables until they are coated. Serve with the couscous and harissa yogurt on the side.

 

I'm sharing this with Charlotte's Lively Kitchen's Food Calendar challenge as it was British Sausage Week when I made this recipe.

Spooky Halloween Doughnuts

I wasn't going to do any more Halloween baking this year but saw a video tutorial from Wilton, the US cake decorating brand, on Facebook for doughnuts and realised I had the doughnut tin that they used in the recipe. So I made a quick batch of baked doughnuts - they are quite easy to make as you bake them in the oven, so no hot oil to deal with - and decorated them as spider webs and pumpkins. Easy to do, and fun for the kids to join in with. You can even hand these out to any trick or treaters who come knocking!

I used this recipe from the Wilton website. Translated for UK bakers (we don't have 'cake flour' over here, you need:

2 cups (300g) plain flour
3/4 cup (175g) caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup (175ml) buttermilk
2 tbsp. butter, melted

to decorate:
icing sugar
water
black and orange food colouring (gel works best)

Preheat oven to 220C. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl and then beat in the buttermilk and butter until you have a thick batter.

 

 

 

To decorate, lay some kitchen towel or newspaper under your cooling rack as the icing will drip through. Mix icing sugar with a few drops of water, adding a few more drops until you have a thick and slightly runny consistency, that drops off the spoon but isn't liquid. Separate into three bowls with two containing more icing than the other - the smallest bowl is the one you will leave white.

Add orange food colouring (I used Wilton gel colour) to one bowl and black to another and beat in. Use a teaspoon to drizzle the orange icing over half the doughnuts. If you like you can add a green stalk for the pumpkin or even edible eyes if you have them or want to make them from fondant!

Cover the remaining doughnuts with black icing. While it is still tacky, spoon the white icing into a piping bag and snip off the end so you have a small opening. Pipe concentric white circles onto the black doughnuts. Take a cocktail stick (toothpick) and drag lines through the icing from the outside to the inside; this will give a spiderweb effect. Leave the icing to set and enjoy!

Grease a doughnut pan with Cake Release or similar and fill the holes until 3/4 full. Bake in the preheated oven for 7-9 minutes until risen and springy. Allow to cool in the pan for 5 minutes then cool on a cooling rack.

 

I'm sending these as a last-minute entry to the Food Calendar challenge hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

Cauliflower Tikka Masala, Diwali and Memories of Gwalior

This weekend is Diwali, the Festival of Light, celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, so what better time for a vegetable curry recipe?

Diwali celebrates the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil; people clean and decorate their homes, put on new clothes and light lamps and candles both inside and outside their homes, praying to Lakshmi, the goddess of fertility and prosperity. Gifts are exchanged and Indian sweets are eaten - we had some in the office at work for people to try.

The festival has a different origin for other religions, and when I was reading up on it for an article I wrote for the intranet at work, I discovered Sikhs celebrate Diwali as marking the release of the Sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind, from a prison in Gwalior, India. The reason I was so fascinated by this is that I have actually been to Gwalior!

 

In 2008 I went to the wedding of two friends in Bhopal, India. Both bride and groom lived in the UK but both had families in India so they had a ceremony in England but the wedding itself was in India. A group of my university friends decided to go - I remember doing a lot of the planning, booking train journeys so we could fly into Delhi, visit the Taj Mahal and make our way down the country to where the wedding was taking place. While looking for somewhere to stop on the way we came across Gwalior and spend a day walking around the fort and a night in a hotel there. We had a fantastic time - looking back at the photos now I was struck by the majesty of some of the sights we saw (and then by how different I looked eight years ago!).

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe from the Sunday Times magazine - possibly quite some time ago. I'm not sure as I tore the page out and kept it in my recipe clippings folder. The recipe involves roasting a whole cauliflower but I wanted to make this a quicker, easier recipe so cut the cauliflower into florets. I actually steamed them rather than roasted as well to speed up the process so the flavour of my dish was undoubtedly different to the intended recipe, but I did use the recipe to make the sauce, which involved quite a lot of ingredients and a bit of effort.

This is the version I did with steamed cauliflower rather than the whole roasted one:
To serve 4, you need:
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
3 fresh red chillies
2 thumb-sized pieces of ginger, peeled
2 tbsp. garam masala
1 tbsp. sweet smoked paprika
1 bunch fresh coriander
75g flaked almonds
2 tbsp. tomato puree
groundnut oil
2 onions
400g tin light coconut milk
400g tin tomatoes
1 whole cauliflower

 

Toast the cumin and coriander seeds in a dry pan then put in a food processor. Trim two of the chillies and add to the food processor with one of the pieces of ginger, the garlic, garam masala, paprika, most of the coriander and almonds. Pulse until you have a smooth paste, add the tomato puree, season and blend again.

 

Finely slice the remaining ginger with the onion and remaining chilli. Put a casserole pan over a medium heat and add some oil. Fry the ginger, onion and chilli for ten minutes. Spoon in the spice paste, turn down the heat and fry for ten minutes. Meanwhile cut the cauliflower into florets and steam.

 

Add the coconut milk and tomatoes, bring to the boil then simmer until thickened.

 

Toast the leftover almonds in a dry pan. Mix the cooked cauliflower with the curry sauce and top with the toasted almonds and rest of the chopped coriander. Serve with rice.

 

I'm sharing this with the Food Calendar at Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

Jammie Dodger Cupcakes

We had a bake sale for Macmillan at work recently and even though I wasn't going to be in the office that day, I wanted to take part. I decided to make cupcakes as I was going to have to do them mid-week after work, and I don't get home that early thanks to a long commute.

When there is a lot of choice in a bake sale, the things that go first tend to be the more indulgent-looking or more unusual. I remembered ages ago seeing some Jammie Dodger cupcakes online and knew there was a recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery book .

The recipe in the  book explains how to make your own Jammie Dodger-style biscuits, which might be a fun thing to do one day, but I didn’t have time for that, so I bought a packet of mini Jammie Dodgers to use on top of the cupcakes. I remembered how good my cupcakes were that have an Oreo biscuit base and a Jaffa Cake base and decided to use a full-size Jammie Dodger in the base, before the batter was cooked, and also add a spoonful of jam in the middle of the cake after it was baked, which isn’t part of the recipe and is my own adaptation.

 

 

Here’s what I did

Makes around 15 cupcakes

 

For the cake:

15 Jammie Dodger biscuits

70g butter, softened

210g plain flour

250g caster sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

210ml whole milk

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

15 tsp strawberry jam (about 200g)

 

 

For the frosting:

15 mini Jammie Dodgers

500g icing sugar, sifted

250g butter, softened

 

Preheat oven to 180C.

 

Mix the flour, butter, sugar, baking powder and salt with an electric mixer. Normally I would cream the butter and sugar first then add the eggs; this way gives you a breadcrumb-like texture which I think gives a more biscuity-flavour somehow, which is just right for this recipe.

 

Pour the milk into a jug and beat in the eggs and vanilla, and gradually pour the liquid into the dry ingredients, mixing slowly as you go. Increase the speed of the mixer until you have a smooth batter.

 

 

Line a cupcake or muffin tin with large cupcake cases. Place a Jammie Dodger – with the heart facing up – in the bottom of each cake case, then spoon the cake batter on top until the cake cases are almost full. Bake for 20-25 minutes then leave to cool.

 

 

When the cakes have cooled, use a teaspoon to remove a little of the centre of the cake, retaining the part you removed in one piece. Add a teaspoon of strawberry jam to each cupcake, and replace the 'lid'.

 

 

 

To make the icing, beat the icing sugar and buttercream until smooth. I had intended to pipe swirls onto the cupcakes but ran out of icing (I thought I had more but didn’t!) so ended up spreading it on top to make it go further. Top with a mini Jammie Dodger.

 

 

I'm sharing these with Charlotte's Lively Kitchen as she runs the Food Calendar challenge, and this month was the Macmillan Big Coffee Morning.

 

 

Tiramisu Cupcakes - coffee cakes for people who don't like coffee

These cupcakes taste just like the real thing - like you are eating tiramisu!

I made them for a family party with my in-laws; my mother-in-law and husband both love coffee cake but I really don't like it. I wondered if there was a way I could incorporate coffee into a cake so it would still be enjoyed by someone who doesn't like coffee; I've got a great recipe for chocolate cake that uses coffee as one of the ingredients to give depth of flavour but it doesn't actually taste of coffee at all. Then I remembered a dessert that I love, that uses coffee - tiramisu!

The Marks & Spencer recipe book 'Easy Cupcakes' has some really imaginative recipes - it's a very good little book that I've had for about five years but only used a handful of times. It has a recipe for tiramisu cupcakes - in true Caroline style, I didn't read the ingredients list properly and was half way through before I remembered I didn't have any masala or sweet sherry, but I did have crème de cacao and this worked perfectly. Here's what you need to do: the recipe says this makes 12 but I only got 8 (large) cupcakes out of it.

You need:
115g unsalted butter or baking spread like Stork
115g light brown sugar
2 eggs
115g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp coffee granules
25g icing sugar
4 tbsp. water
for the frosting:
225g mascarpone cheese
85g caster sugar
2 tbsp. marsala or sweet sherry, or in my case crème de cacao
cocoa for dusting

Preheat oven to 180C. Beat the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder in a bowl until smooth and creamy and spoon into paper cup cases in a muffin tin.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until risen and firm to the touch.

Place the coffee granules, icing sugar and water in a pan and heat gently until the coffee and icing sugar have dissolved. Boil for one minute then allow to cool.

Brush the coffee syrup over the top of each cupcake while the cupcakes are still warm. Then leave the cakes to cool.

For the frosting, beat the mascarpone, icing sugar and masala in a bowl and spread on top of the cupcakes. Sprinkle with a pinch of cocoa powder.

These cupcakes tasted gorgeous - just like eating tiramisu!

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat at the Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi.

 

Charlotte at Charlotte's Lively Kitchen runs a blog challenge called the Food Calendar and there are several things happening this month that these cupcakes would be great for, including National Cupcake Week from Sept 12-18, International Coffee Day and the Macmillan Coffee Morning.

Chocolate and Merlot Red Wine Cupcakes - Wilton Shot Tops Kit

I've long been making cocktail cupcakes and bundts, experimenting with recreating the flavours of my favourite tipples in the form of cake. So I was really excited when I went to the Lakeland product launch in July and saw this Shot Tops kit from Wilton - and even more excited when they gave me one to try.

The set contains little plastic pipettes in the shape of either wine bottles or cocktail glasses; you fill them with alcohol (or any liquid) and insert them into the top of the cake, for people to squeeze the liquid into or over the top of the cake as they eat them. I'm sure I remember someone doing something similar on the Great British Bake Off but having to use 'proper' pipettes, I don't think they were sold for home baking at the time!

The kit I received also contained a small recipe book, and there were some great-sounding recipes for cocktail-based cupcakes in there, but disappointingly not all the recipes actually involved the pipettes. I wanted to make one of the recipes that did, and also thought about inventing my own cocktail recipe, but decided that to review the kit properly I should make one from the book.

I was going to stay with a good friend down in Devon over the August bank holiday and she enjoys various cocktails but is a particular connoisseur of red wine -she actually helped me pick the wine we had at my wedding. So I decided to make a rather unusual sounding chocolate and merlot cupcake - not strictly speaking a cocktail but apparently chocolate and red wine go together. Wilton says: "The concentrated, rich taste of merlot wine and not-so-sweet dark chocolate is a natural match when combined in these intensely flavoured cupcakes."

The cupcakes consist of a chocolate base, buttercream with red wine reduction and pipettes containing red wine that you drizzle over the top.

The recipe says this makes about two dozen cupcakes, but I got 16 large ones out of it. You need:
2 cups plain flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup granulated sugar (I used caster)
1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup sour cream

for the icing:
2 cups merlot wine
1 cup butter, softened (the original recipe says to use half butter, half shortening, but as that's basically lard I didn't want to)
4 cups icing sugar

for the infusion:
1 1/2 cups merlot wine
Wilton Shot Tops infusers

Preheat oven to 180C, 350F. Beat the sugar and oil with an electric mixer in a large bowl then add the eggs one at a time, mixing well.

In a separate bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Add some of the flour mixture, alternating with the sour cream, until it is all mixed in.

Place cupcake cases in a muffin tin and divide the batter evenly between the cases.

Bake for 16-19 minutes in the oven and allow to cool.



Bring the wine to the boil in a small saucepan and simmer until it has reduced to a couple of spoonfuls. Allow to cool completely.

For the buttercream icing, beat the butter and icing sugar in a large bowl. Add the reduced wine and beat again.

Pipe or spread onto the cupcakes.



Cut a small opening in the tip of each Shot Tops infuser and place in a cup of wine; squeeze to draw the liquid into the pipette and when you stop squeezing, it should stay inside. Insert into each cupcake and when you serve, squeeze the Shot Top to infuse the cupcake with wine. You can taste the wine in the middle and it gives the centre a nice moist texture. I don't expect I will use these Shot Tops that often but they really are a great idea!

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat at the Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi.

- And also with We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme.

Charlotte at Charlotte's Lively Kitchen runs a blog challenge called the Food Calendar and there are several things happening this month that these cupcakes would be great for, including National Cupcake Week from Sept 12-18, International Chocolate Day and the Macmillan Coffee Morning.

Mary Berry's Lemon Drizzle Traybake Cake for Picnics

Copyright Caroline Makes dot Net

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I went to Castle Combe in Wiltshire, where there is a racing circuit. This was a special event where you could drive your own car around the track - it's not like some events where you can go as fast as you like and need a helmet and special race day insurance, as there is a pace car that sets the speed, no overtaking is allowed and you stay in the order you start in.

Once or twice we got up to 90mph in my husband's Aston Martin - we were there with the local branch of the Aston Martin Members Club - but we were following behind a lady who sometimes drove at 90mph and sometimes at 25mph. Which might have been understandable on the corners, but this was on the straight. She was very erratic which didn't make for a pleasant drive!

The next time we got to do a few laps, the Lotus car club went first, and then just after we started, I wondered aloud why there was a Lotus at the front of the group of Astons. My husband said it had been part of the group in front but was so slow, they had all finished and it was now sat in front of our group, holding everyone up. The Lotus did a nice sedate 30mph all the way around the track for three laps. I'm not a speed freak and was gripping the side of my seat as we got up to 90mph earlier, s the fact that even I was frustrated and shouting at the car to hurry up - since nobody was allowed to overtake - was saying something!

As I knew it would be a long day out I had taken some food with us, and the day before baked this lemon drizzle cake from a Mary Berry recipe.

 

The recipe is available on the BBC Good Food website and is very easy to follow. You only have to mix a few ingredients...

 

Spread it in a tin and bake.....

Make a lemon and sugar syrup which you then drizzle over the cake while it is still warm

The drizzle meant the cake was incredibly moist and very lemony; I don't think I've ever made a simple lemon traybake before and I can't understand why not as it was so good!

 

I'm sharing this with Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat the Baking Explorer as 'anything goes' this month.

 

 

I'm also sending it to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage, as the theme is afternoon tea.

 

 

August is national afternoon tea week so I'm also sending this to Charlotte's Lively Kitchen as she hosts The Food Calendar linkup.