Slow Cooker Butterscotch Pudding

I use my slow cooker quite a lot but never really for desserts. I have a book called The Slow Cooker and it has a section at the back on cakes and desserts and decided a little while ago to try a butterscotch pudding.

It's not very healthy - full of sugar and cream - but as an occasional treat I think it would be OK! I reduced the quantities to serve two, and definitely wouldn't have been able to get six ramekins into my slow cooker at the same time. You cook the puddings in a water bath so they set like a custard - they taste really good.

To serve two, you need:
1 tbsp. butter
pinch of salt
137g soft brown sugar
150ml double cream
85ml milk
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

Melt the butter in a small pan and mix in the sugar and salt. Pour in the cream and milk and heat until just simmering but don't allow the mixture to boil.

Put the egg yolks into a bowl and pour in the cream mixture slowly, whisking as you go. Stir in the vanilla extract and pour the mixture into two ramekin dishes.

Put the ramekin dishes into the slow cooker and carefully pour water into the slow cooker, taking care not to get any water into the puddings, until the water comes half way up the sides of the ramekins.

Cook on low for about two hours or until the puddings are set.

Cool the ramekins on a wire rack for 15 minutes then cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Top with whipped cream to serve

These are very sweet as you might imagine and I could only eat half of one- but I couldn't have made them smaller as these were the only ramekins I have! My husband had no problem polishing one off anyway!

I'm sharing this with the Slow Cooked Challenge, hosted by Lucy at BakingQueen74 and also Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat the Baking Explorer.

Slow Cooker Ham and Potato Soup

Just before Christmas I made slow cooker ham in Cherry Coke which was delicious. I deliberately cooked too much ham so I would have some left for another recipe the next day; if you have leftover ham from Christmas this is a great way to use it up (and any leftover potato and veg you have as well).

 

The quantities are easily adjusted depending on how much leftovers you have to use and how many people you are serving so my recipe is more of a rough guide.

I used:
2 cups leftover cooked ham, chopped
1 pork stock cube (you could also use chicken or vegetable)
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped (I used a raw carrot but you could use leftover cooked veg)
1 cup leftover mashed potato, cooked (you could also use leftover boiled or roast potatoes, or raw potatoes cut into small cubes)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream (you could also use leftover single or double cream)

Place all the ingredients in your slow cooker apart from the milk and cream, and add enough water to cover the veg.

Cook on high for 3 hours or medium for 5-6 hours.

When ready, take about half the soup out of the slow cooker and blend until smooth in a food processor.

 Return to the soup and mix in so it still has some chunks of meat and veg. Add the milk and cream and serve. You can add more water if you want the soup to be thinner but I liked it as it was.

I'm sharing this with the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Lucy aka Baking Queen 74 as the theme is Christmas.

I'm also sending this to the No Waste Food Challenge hosted by Jen's Food as this recipe uses all sorts of leftovers.

Slow Cooker Ham in Cherry Coke

I've made a ham in Coca-Cola in the slow cooker before and thought it would be a good dinner in the week before Christmas - quite festive and also easy as you just put it in the slow cooker and forget about it.

 

I only had Coca-Cola though but I figured that would work - but this time rather than adding cloves, onion, carrots and bay leaves to the cola 'stock' I decided to just do it straight, in nothing but the cola, but then make a glaze from brown sugar and honey at the end.

So essentially that's all I did - I used two small gammon joints as I wanted this to do a second meal as well - I made ham soup the following day which was really good (recipe to follow!) and covered them in Cherry Coke. I put the slow cooker on high for 3-4 hours and when the joints were cooked, I removed them from the stock and put them in a roasting pan.

I mixed brown sugar with honey which I spread over the ham and then baked it in a hot oven for 20 minutes. I served it with a mixture of mashed and boiled potatoes and vegetables - the ham was very good and had a slightly sweet flavour from the stock and the glaze, and fell apart at the touch of a fork, in texture a lot like pulled pork.

I know for a lot of families it's traditional to have a ham at Christmas either alongside the turkey or to serve cold on Boxing Day so I highly recommend this recipe!

I'm sending this to the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Lucy aka Baking Queen 74, as the theme is Christmas.

 

 

I'm also sending this to Cook Once Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice, as I made soup from this the following day.



Easy Slow Cooker Spicy Pulled Pork

Pulled pork in a bread roll is one of my boyfriend's favourites. I've made it before but there are many different recipes; last time I made a spice rub which I rubbed over the pork, and made a liquid broth that it sat in inside the slow cooker; at the end you can reduce the sauce in a saucepan to serve with the pork.

There is also this much quicker recipe which cooks the pork dry. It comes from The Slow Cooker recipe book and is a recipe for Spicy Pulled Pork.

To serve 4 generously, you need:
2 onions
approx. 1.5kg boned and rolled pork shoulder
2 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp. mustard, American or Dijon or similar
2 tbsp. tomato ketchup
1 tbsp. cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
salt, pepper
bread rolls and lettuce to serve

 

The recipe says you should slice the onions but you will actually be resting your pork shoulder on top of them; without a liquid the pork would otherwise stick to the bottom of the slow cooker. So instead I recommend slicing the onions in half, and slicing off the root so they sit flat and then resting the pork on top.

Mix all the other ingredients in a bowl and spoon the sauce over the pork, getting it right inside the folds.

Put your slow cooker onto slow for 6 hours or your closest setting and that's it!

It was lovely coming home to the pork already cooked; all I had to do was carefully lift it from the pan and shred it, and fill the bread rolls. OK and cook some chips as well!



I'm sending this to the Slow Cooked Challenge, hosted by Janice at Farmersgirl kitchen, as her theme this month is spicy.

Slow Cooker Baked Potato

I haven't used my slow cooker for a few months since I moved in August, so was inspired by the Slow Cooker Challenge on Farmersgirl Kitchen to dig it out. Janice, aka Farmersgirl, has an open theme this month so I had a look around on other blogs to find something that would be fairly easy. I came across a couple of recipes for jacket potatoes done in the slow cooker - it never occured to me to bake them like that. Jacket potatoes take a good 1-2 hours in the oven depending on size (I like to choose the biggest potato I can find) and in a slow cooker they take pretty much all day: about 4 hours on the high setting, or up to 8 hours on the slow setting, which the other bloggers recommended. However, I wanted a baked potato for lunch and wasn't getting up that early in the morning, so I did mine on the high setting.

One useful tip I came across was to wad up little balls of tin foil and place them on the bottom of the slow cooker, and the potato (wrapped in foil) on top. This stops the bottom of the potato from being in contact with the base of the slow cooker and developing a brown spot.

I rubbed the potato with a little oil before I wrapped it in foil but that was all I needed to do. Four hours later I had a beautifully soft potato. The skin didn't crisp up which I do quite like, but then sometimes in the oven I find the skin crisps too much and is inedible (I really enjoy the skin of a baked potato though I know a lot of people don't).

I was in the mood for a sour cream and chive filling but didn't have any sour cream or any chives. Instead, I had a little pot of blue cheese salad dressing so I mixed some of that with a spoonful of mayonnaise and two spoonfuls of fat free natural yogurt, and added some chopped parsley (the only fresh herb I had) on top. It tasted lovely!

I wouldn't normally bake a jacket potato in the slow cooker over doing it in the oven if I was at home, but the beauty of the slow cooker is that you can put it on then go out all day. So if you want a baked potato with your dinner but don't want to wait an hour or more after you get home from work (if like me you aren't home until 7pm) rather than having to do it in the microwave I would definitely recommend doing it in the slow cooker. And the blue cheese and parsley filling was very tasty!

As already mentioned, I'm sending this to the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Janice at Farmersgirl Kitchen.

Using a slow cooker is also more economical than using the oven and potatoes are cheap as chips (literally) so I am sending this to Credit Crunch Munch, the thrifty cooking challenge hosted by Hannah at A New Addition on behalf of Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla at Fab Food 4 All.

Slow Cooker Beef in Orange

This started out as a boeuf bourgignon but I didn't have any red wine so I made it up as I went along, using white wine from a bottle that was already open and throwing in half an orange I had in the fridge from a previous recipe. It tasted delicious!

Here's what I did:
To serve two: take a packet of cubed casserole steak and brown in a frying pan. Chop a few rashers of bacon and fry as well. Then place the beef and bacon in the slow cooker along with some chopped onion, red pepper if desired,  a squeeze of tomato puree, 100ml white wine, 250ml beef stock (made from a stock cube), a dash of orange juice or the squeezed juice from half an orange, and an entire orange half. Cook on high for about 3 hours - depending on the settings of your slow cooker, you could also put this on the lower setting for a longer time.

When the dish is cooked, strain the cooking liquid into a small pan and mix with 1 tsp cornflour. Bring to the boil, stirring, until the sauce has thickened. Pour over the beef and serve - this goes well with mashed potatoes and green veg.

I'm sending this to the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Janice at Farmersgirl Kitchen.

Slow Cooker (Crockpot) BBQ Chicken

I got a slow cooker (crockpot) for my birthday back in April and I've been enjoying trying out different dishes. I really like the fact that I can put it on in the morning and come home from work to find my dinner cooked. I have a slow cooker recipe a book (two now, in fact) but have also been looking online for recipes. I can't find where I got this recipe from any more but it's very straightforward.

To serve two, you need: 

4 chicken thighs (they shrink when slow cooked)

1 cup ketchup

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

2 tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 pint chicken stock

Put the ketchup, mustard, brown sugar and soy sauce in the slow cooker

Add the chicken stock and mix

Add the chicken breasts - you don't need to brown them first.

The heat and timer settings will depend on your slow cooker; I have a setting called "keep warm" which cooks on high for 3-4 hours then keeps the food warm until you turn it off, so it's ideal for making when I am at work. I came home to beautifully tender chicken and a tasty sauce.

The chicken definitely shrinks when you cook it for this long and slow cookers are probably better for larger joints of meat but I still think this turned out well.

Serve with vegetables and mashed potato. If you want or have time, you can reduce the sauce in a saucepan and add a little cornflour to thicken it, and serve over the chicken.

I'm sending this to the slow cooker challenge, hosted by Janice at Farmersgirl Kitchen, as her theme this month is barbecue.