Fish in Lemon Cream Sauce with Hasselback Potatoes

My mother-in-law came to dinner recently and as she’s vegetarian and I don’t eat a lot of purely vegetarian food, that always involves a bit of thought around menu planning. Then I remembered that she is actually pescetarian, meaning she eats some – but not all – types of fish. She likes white fish and I had some in the freezer.

I don't eat fish as often as I should, as my husband doesn't like it and I find plain fish quite dull, so it needs a proper recipe - and during the week I don't tend to have time to cook complicated recipes from scratch. Of course, the recipes don't have to be complicated, but sometimes even getting out all the ingredients is more bother than I want when I get home from work!

It was a week night when we had my mother-in-law over but I was working from home. I always think that will give me plenty of time to make something a bit more elaborate for dinner but I usually end up logged on to work for far later than my official finish time (who doesn't?) so in the end it's still a bit of a rush. However on this occasion my husband was late home from work so we had quite a late dinner!

That gave me the opportunity to do some potatoes I've wanted to try for ages - have you come across hasselback potatoes before? They look a bit like mini hedgehogs - I think they would be a nice treat to serve on Bonfire Night (instead of jacket potatoes which a lot of people make then) as they are a bit different. They would also go down well at children's parties (so I imagine) - especially if you added little edible eyes to make them look like hedgehogs!

Back to dinner and sensible things.... to make these potatoes all you do is take a fairly large potato (not quite a baking potato size but a large standard potato) and make several slices into it, going two thirds of the way down, spacing the slices evenly apart by about a centimetre or a bit less depending on the size of your potato.

You can see the baked potato in this picture here:

Melt a little bit of butter in a pan or the microwave and brush the potato with the butter, getting into all the cuts you've made. Then put the potatoes on a baking sheet and bake at 180C for around an hour - it will depend on the size of the potatoes. The potatoes will be nice and soft in the middle when they are done and the slices you've cut will have fanned open a little and gone crispy. We really enjoyed these!

For the fish, I used this recipe by Nagi at Recipe Tin Eats - I didn't add the shallots/ spring onions at the end because I wasn't sure if my mother-in-law liked them (though in retrospect I'm sure she does - never mind!). It was a very easy dish to make and tasted delicious.

 

American MidWest Chocolate Cream Pie

My parents came to stay over the bank holiday weekend which was perfect timing for my husband and I to share our news in person. We had my husband's parents over for lunch and told them all at the same time; for that reason I didn't want to be cooking anything where I would have to spend a lot of time in the kitchen!

I made enchiladas for lunch which I was able to prepare that morning then just put in the oven, and my mum and I made dessert the night before.

My husband loves all things chocolate, and doesn't particularly like many other kinds of dessert, so I simply googled chocolate desserts, and came across a website of Mid-West American desserts. My mother in law is a frequent visitor to the US and loves the South, so I thought she might enjoy a dessert from the Mid-West - particularly this one!

It's a chocolate cream pie with a chocolate crust, a custardy chocolate filling and cream on top. The recipe is here on MidWestLiving.com.

I would say this was easy to make but really I have to say it looked easy to make, as my mum did most of it! She made the crust, rolled it out and put it in the tin; you part bake it lined with foil, then remove the foil and finish baking.

The filling takes a bit more effort - you have to be careful not to boil the milk, whisk together the other ingredients and mix it with some of the milk then the rest of the milk. You need to have your chocolate and butter ready to pour the hot mixture over the top and then time it while you stir.

 

After that it's pretty simple -pour the filling into the pie crust and refrigerate overnight. To serve, top with whipped cream and a sprinkle of chocolate - I was going to grate some chocolate but forgot in all the excitement of our baby news and ended up serving this as it was!

 

I'm sharing this with the We Should Cocoa chocolate baking blog challenge hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme and with CookBlogShare hosted by Everyday Healthy Recipes.

Nutella and Frangelico Pancake Bake

This Shrove Tuesday we invited my husband's mum over to dinner, and while I considered making savoury pancakes as the main course I knew I really wanted to do them as dessert. It would have involved me making several pancakes one at a time and keeping them warm and I wondered if there was an easier option - something where I could layer the pancakes together as a dessert.

This recipe for Nutella pancakes from Nigella was just the thing! I decided to make life even easier for myself and buy ready-made crepes, which I spread with Nutella and folded up and poured over some melted butter and Frangelico hazelnut liqueur. My husband doesn't like nuts (pieces of nut, anyway) so I left off the chopped hazelnuts that Nigella recommends sprinkling over the top.

They only needed ten minutes baked in the oven; serve with whipped cream for a delicious decadent dessert!

This is Frangelico, if you haven't tried it before. It's a liqueur made with Italian hazelnuts and its origins are thought to date back 300 years when hazelnuts were distilled by monks (hence the design of the label!). It tastes really nice in cocktails.

Spread the crepes with Nutella and fold and layer in a serving dish

Pour over the cream and Frangelico

Bake in the oven for ten minutes

Serve with whipped cream

Leftovers.... yum!

I'm sending this to CookBlogShare, hosted this week by Hijacked by Twins.

Healthy Spaghetti Carbonara with Spiralized Vegetables

Spaghetti carbonara is an easy go-to dish if I want to make something midweek that's fast and doesn't involve a lot of meat, as I don't think it's good to have a big portion of red meat every day. Since I'm doing Sugar Free September I was trying to think of ideas. Simple (as opposed to complex) carbs are off the menu at the moment, as when your body breaks down pasta or potatoes it converts the starch to glucose. So doing Sugar Free September means no potatoes or pasta, though I have recently discovered gluten-free pasta which your body doesn't convert to glucose in the same way.

My fall-back when I haven't been eating pasta is spiralized vegetables, and I realised I'd never actually made a simple spaghetti carbonara using spiralized vegetables.

 

I decided to use spiralized butternut squash and courgette though you can experiment with any different veg that you like. Chop some bacon and fry in a large pan then add the spiralized veg with a little water and cook for a few minutes until the veg has softened and the water has largely evaporated.

Add either single cream, plain yogurt or even crème fraiche combined with a beaten egg and stir into the pan.

Sprinkle with parmesan cheese to serve.

Peaches and Cream Summer Sandcastle Cake

Copyright Caroline Makes dot Net

I bought a sandcastle cake mould from Lakeland two years ago and only used it once, when I made this pineapple and coconut sandcastle cake. The uncomfortably but beautifully hot weather we've had for the past week or so inspired me to dig it out again and to come up with another summery flavour for the cake. I decided not to decorate it as a lot of fondant or buttercream is not always a great idea in hot weather, and I wanted the natural colour of the cake to reflect the colour of the sandcastle.

I wanted the cake to be light and moist so decided to make it peaches and cream flavour. I used tinned peaches as I had some in the fridge to use up, and it meant I could use the peach juice from the can as well, but if you want to use fresh peaches I'd use three or four peeled and chopped, and for the liquid element, perhaps the Granini Peach Drink that's made using peach puree (available in Tesco and Waitrose) or peach-flavoured squash, made up quite strong.

Peaches and Cream Cake - an original recipe by Caroline Makes, for Caroline Makes.Net

You need:

Cake Release spray for greasing the mould

200g butter, softened

200g caster sugar

4 eggs

1 cup peach juice or squash

about 200g peaches, either tinned or fresh, peeled and sliced if necessary

275g self raising flour

 

 

I used the Lakeland sandcastle silicone mould for this cake, which doesn't seem to be available on their site any more - if you want to purchase one, keep an eye on Ebay, or you can use any shaped cake tin or mould.

Preheat the oven to 150C. Spray the sandcastle mould with Cake Release or similar.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer then mix in the eggs.

Add the peach juice and mix again. Finally add the sliced peaches and the flour and gently fold in.

 Stand the sandcastle mould in a large roasting tin and pour the cake mixture into the mould. Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour.

Allow to cool in the mould and then turn out onto a cooling rack.

 This was a beautifully light and moist cake; so moist in fact it started to break as I took it out of the mould before it was completely cooled, which will teach me to be more patient next time!

 

I'm sending this to Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabberUK; her theme is garden party and this cake would make a great centrepiece.

 

I'm also sharing this with the Food Calendar linky on Charlotte's Lively Kitchen as it's summer holiday season!

 

Eton Mess cupcakes

Last week my friends D and J invited us to their house for a barbecue and to meet their new baby son. It was also J's birthday the following week and the first time we had been to their house since we moved there, so I decided to take some celebratory cupcakes as well as some food to go on the barbecue.

I wanted something a little bit unusual and also quite summery and as I've made some great recipes lately from my Hummingbird Bakery book Home Sweet Home, I had another look and decided their Eton Mess cupcakes sounded great. Eton Mess is a dessert involving strawberries, cream and pieces of meringue, broken up and mixed together.

I was a bit surprised to see the recipe involved making a custard, since that isn't normally part of the dessert. I wasn't going to have a lot of time to make the cakes and the custard part looked like it would take a while, so I decided to leave it out and just make a creamy buttercream instead.

As well as the strawberries that you can see on the top, covered with crushed meringue pieces (bought rather than homemade) there are chopped strawberries and a little bit of cream in the centre of the cake. The cream was my own idea but as I didn't end up actually trying one of these I can't describe what they tasted like - but a few people at the barbecue told me they were extremely good!

You need:
70g butter or margarine, softened
210g self-raising flour
250g caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
210ml whole milk
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
to decorate:
2 strawberries per cupcake - I got 12 cupcakes out of this recipe
about 50g meringue (which equated to two shop bought meringue nests), crushed
for the buttercream:
125g butter or margarine
250g icing sugar
12 tsp double cream

Preheat oven to 170C and line a muffin tin with paper cases - I used red ones with white polka dots to go with the Eton Mess theme.

Beat the butter, flour, sugar and salt together to form a crumb-like consistency. This is different to the way I normally make cakes but it seemed to work!

In a jug, mix the milk, eggs and vanilla and pour gradually into the crumb mixture, mixing well (an electric whisk is easiest). Mix until you have a smooth batter.

Spoon into the paper cake cases and bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until the sponge is still bouncy when pressed gently. Leave to cool.

Use a teaspoon to remove a small core from the centre of each cupcake and set aside. Spoon 1 level tsp cream into the hole and fill with a chopped strawberry - you may need a little less than one whole strawberry as you then need to place the core of the cupcake you removed back on top and make it as level as you can.

Mix the butter and the icing to make the buttercream. Using a piping bag and star nozzle pipe swirls onto each cupcake. Top with pieces of meringue and a strawberry sliced in half.

I'm sharing this with Charlotte's Lively Kitchen for the Food Year Linkup, as next week is National Barbecue Week and these cupcakes are great for dessert at a barbecue.

Mini Kentish Pudding Pies

Back in the winter I was looking for a dessert that my fiancé would like that didn't involve chocolate, but where I could make individual puddings rather than something big like a sticky toffee pudding. I have a book called Desserts by James Martin and found in it a recipe for a Kentish pudding pie - an old fashioned  English dish consisting of a shortcrust pastry base, filled with a set custard made of ground rice and often citrus flavoured and topped with dried fruit and ground nutmeg. It's served cold, often at Easter.

The recipe is available online here.

Here I've brought the cream and milk to the boil and added the whisked eggs and sugar. It looks a little lumpy but it got better as it thickened!

Lining the tarts with the pastry to bake them blind. I got some great little loose-bottomed tart tins from Amazon.

Adding the ground rice, nutmeg and lemon zest and juice to the filling mixture

Ready to go in the oven: the cooled pastry cases filled with the lemon and cream mixture, topped with currants

They only take a few minutes to bake and can be served hot or cold - I preferred them hot

I didn't find these particularly sweet and they certainly weren't my favourite dessert, but an interesting change and a good English classic.

I'm sharing these with Tea Time Treats, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Janie from Hedgecombers. Their theme this month is local and regional recipes - and these originate from Kent, the "garden of England" (and not very far from Surrey where I live).

Vegan Meringue and Pavlova (yes it exists!)

Can you make vegan meringue? Yes you can! I bet you didn’t know that – and I bet you will be surprised by the secret ingredient.

I had a barbecue recently and served up this meringue and cream, and waved it under the nose of my vegan friend… not to tease her, but to tell her that I’d made it for her! The meringue doesn’t contain egg and the cream doesn’t contain cream!

I am ridiculously excited at having found out about this and have been spreading the word; each time I tell someone the main ingredient in the vegan meringue- and the fact that it looks and tastes great – they are amazed.

No, not chickpeas… but the water that is in the tin. It’s called aquafaba and you can read the fascinating story of how people have been looking for egg replacers which work in meringue. It seems to be a relatively recent discovery.

The meringue is really easy to make – just the same as a regular meringue, though the aquafaba did seem to need a bit more whisking than egg whites, so I was very glad of my Kitchenaid stand mixer.

You need:

For the meringue:

liquid from a 400g tin of chickpeas

1 cup caster sugar

1 tbsp arrowroot powder (available in supermarkets in sachets from Dr. Oetker)

1 tsp vanilla flavouring

1 tsp white wine vinegar or cider vinegar

For the cream:

400ml tin coconut milk

Icing sugar to taste

Fresh berries to decorate (optional)

Preheat oven to 140C. Drain the liquid from the tin of chickpeas into a bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer and whisk, starting off at low speed and gradually increasing the speed to high, for several minutes until the liquid foams up and then forms soft peaks, much like whisking egg whites.

Add the sugar and arrowroot powder and mix on medium speed and then high until you have stiff glossy peaks.

Add the vanilla and vinegar and whisk briefly to combine.

Place a piece of greaseproof paper on a flat baking tray and spoon out the ‘meringue’ into a circular shape. Turn the oven down to 120C and bake for 2 – 2.5 hours. Turn the oven off and leave the meringue in the oven to fully cool overnight if you can. At the same time, place the can of coconut milk in the fridge overnight.

The next day, carefully peel the greaseproof paper off the meringue – rather than the other way around – and place on a plate to serve. Mine did break up a little unfortunately!

To make the cream, open the tin of coconut milk – the contents will have separated into a thin water-like liquid and a thick, almost solid, top layer. The tins will often separate in this way even in the cupboard and you can easily mix the two layers together to add to a curry and so on – but for this recipe, you want the solid layer. Carefully spoon it out into a bowl and add icing sugar to taste (add about 3 tbsp initially then taste it). Whisk until you have the consistency of double cream.

Spoon on top of the pavlova and top with fresh berries - I used strawberries and blueberries. And there you have it  - a vegan pavlova!

I'm sending this to Tea Time Treats as they have a theme of summer holiday baking; the strawberries and blueberries make this quite summery and this is a good dessert to have after a BBQ as you can make the meringue in advance then assemble it very quickly. The challenge is hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Jane at The Hedgecombers,

I'm also sharing it with the Vegetable Palette challenge, hosted by Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen; the theme is 'more glorious reds' and she accepts fruits as well as veg.

In addition I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup hosted by Charlottes Lively Kitchen. This would be lovely if you were holding a Breast Cancer Care's Strawberry Tea fundraiser.