2016: Year in Review and Top 10 Posts

Well, it's been quite a year for me - how about you?

2016 had some major highlights - I got married in June, went on honeymoon to the Galapagos Islands and I gained a niece - my sister had a baby in November. On a sadder note we lost my grandfather this year.

From a blogging perspective, I really enjoyed sharing the details of my wedding with my readers - you can see photos from the day here.

 

My sister and I made my wedding cake between us (we didn't know she was pregnant when she offered to do it originally!) and I loved the way it turned out.

 

Mrs Cowe and her cow cake

This mascarpone orange streusel slice from the movie Burnt was probably the most complicated thing I made all year; I won't be doing that again in a hurry!

 

 

I was very proud of these Halloween pumpkins I carved in October:

 

 

I was even more proud that I managed to do sugar-free September!

 

So are you curious to see what my top ten most popular posts were in 2016? I certainly was, so looked back through the stats and these are the ones that had the most hits. Check them out if you didn't see them - and let me know if you had any particular favourites on my blog in 2016!

 

In reverse order:

 

10: Slimming World Cauliflower Rosti Pie. View the post.

I've found that recipes labelled with Slimming World do quite well, even though I am not actually counting Syns or following Slimming World any more.

 



 

9: Eton Mess Cupcakes. View the post.

I made these for a summer barbecue and they were very popular.

 

 

8: Mary Berry's Lemon Drizzle Traybake. View the post.

Mary Berry is always popular these days thanks to the Great British Bake Off, and if memory serves I made these right before the episode of GBBO where the contestants were asked to make a drizzle cake, which I think led to people searching for this recipe.

 

 

7: Ferrero Rocher Cupcakes. View the post.

These mimic the flavour of Ferrero Rocher chocolates and contain a whole Ferrero Rocher baked inside the cupcake!

 

 

6: A review of Provena Gluten-Free products and a giveaway. View the post.

The popularity of this post surprises me a bit but it was retweeted by Provena and everyone likes a giveaway!

 

 

5: Chocolate Easter Cupcakes. View the post.

These were very simple but tasted great and decorated with Mini Eggs which are always popular.

 

 

4: Floating Anti-Gravity Mini Egg White Chocolate and Lemon Cake. View the post.

I used Lakeland's anti-gravity cake kit to make this cake, which was amazing. The cake itself was delicious too.

 

3: Slimming World Creamy Coriander and Minted Chicken. View the post.

As I said before, Slimming World posts are popular. This is a great dinner recipe that's really easy to make.

 

2: The Alphabakes Challenge, April 2016. View the post.

Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker and I ran the Alphabakes challenge for over 4 years, and are currently taking a break. This was one of the final times we ran the challenge and the letter this time was T. It didn't attract that many entries but a lot of people have obviously visited the post and looked at the recipes!

 

And at number one, the most popular post on Caroline Makes in 2016 was....

 

1: my amazing Jaffa cake cupcakes. View the post.

These cupcakes taste just like eating a Jaffa cake - they have a real Jaffa cake at the bottom, then a sponge cake the texture of a Jaffa cake base, an orange marmalade filling, chocolate frosting and a mini Jaffa cake on top. They were so good!

 

 

 

So that in a nutshell was the year for Caroline Makes - I hope 2017 is another good one!

Chocolate Fondue Bundt Cake

This recipe is from an idea I saw on The Pink Whisk and I want to give a giant nod to her and encourage you to visit her site. It’s such an original idea I can’t claim any credit for it, but it was so good I wanted to make it and share a picture with you all. This is a great recipe to share with friends particularly if you are having a dinner party on new year’s eve.

 

The idea is relatively simple but something I would never have thought of! Bake a bundt cake – a ring with a hole in the middle – make a chocolate ganache, and pour the liquid chocolate into the hole in the middle of the cake. Slice off chunks of cake and dip into the chocolate, fondue style!

 

If you cut around the cake working from the outside in, you can leave a ring of cake that will keep the chocolate ganache contained. I also added marshmallows for dipping which looked pretty around the cake as well.

 

I used my own recipe for this and following a friend’s suggestion did a marble cake; I had some oranges to use up so decided to make a chocolate orange bundt cake. I can't quite remember where I got the recipe from but these are the quantities I used:

 

Chocolate orange fondue bundt cake

 

3 1/2 cups self-raising flour

pinch of salt

225g butter, softened

2 cups caster sugar

4 eggs

1 cup sour cream

zest and juice of 3 mandarin oranges (as I had some that needed using up - you could alternatively use one large orange)

1/2 cup cocoa powder

 

To make the chocolate ganache:

150g milk chocolate, chopped

200ml double cream

To serve: marshmallows

Grease and flour a bundt tin and preheat the oven to 180C.

Cream the butter and the sugar, and beat in the eggs.

Fold in the flour and sat and then the sour cream.

Separate half the mixture into another bowl and add the orange zest and juice to one and the cocoa powder to the other; mix well.

Place a spoonful of each mixture in turn around the bundt tin and repeat until all the mixture has been used.

 

Bake for around 45 minutes, checking with a skewer to see if the inside is cooked through. When cooked, remove from the oven and leave to cool then turn out of the tin.

 

 

Make the fondue by bringing the cream to a simmer in a saucepan and adding the chocolate. Stir until it melts and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile find a flat serving plate that the cake will sit on neatly and trim the bottom of the cake if necessary so it sits flat. Arrange marshmallows around the base of the cake along with anything else you want to dip into the fondue such as strawberries.

 Pour the chocolate ganache into the centre of the cake and serve!

 

 

 

 Dip the marshmallows into the fondue and slice the outer ring of the cake, leaving enough of the cake to form a ring to keep the fondue in the middle, and dip the cake in the chocolate as well.

 

 

 

This makes a great talking point and sharing dessert and is a great idea from The Pink Whisk!

 

I think this cake would be perfect for new year's eve so I'm sending it to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

 

 

 

Slimming World Fakeaway Chinese New Year Meal

 

 

Happy Chinese New Year! It’s the year of the goat or sheep, which means it should be an important year for people born in 1979 such as myself!

 

I wasn’t specifically planning to celebrate Chinese new year but we were having some people over to dinner and it seemed a good opportunity to make Chinese food. At least, if you ignore the fact that one person doesn’t really like Chinese food (though he’s so fussy there isn’t much he likes, which makes dinner parties hard!), one was vegetarian, two don’t really eat vegetarian food (being big meat eaters and quite picky about vegetables) and the other two eat pretty much anything.

 

Despite all that I thought I could make a few variations on the same dish to keep everyone happy. I’ve got a great Slimming World recipe book called ‘Fakeaway’ – i.e. how to fake your favourite takeaways and make them much healthier. Chinese food isn’t as unhealthy as some anyway – there are a few dishes like duck which are fatty, and if you go to a takeaway that does deep-fried sweet and sour balls (yum!) that will rack up the calories, but a lot of Chinese restaurants do a more upmarket sweet-and-sour dish which doesn’t involve batter and the deep fat fryer. At the same time, you need to watch the oil and the fattening sauces when you are stir-frying (not to mention the prawn crackers!).

 

I picked a few recipes from the book and spent a good half hour chopping, preparing, mixing sauces and marinating meat. I lined everything up in rows so I knew which ingredients were for which dish – you can see here them all ready to go!

 

First of all I made chicken chow mein. Mix soy sauce, Chinese rice vinegar, garlic, ginger and five spice powder in a bowl and coat 1 chopped chicken breast per person. Leave to marinade for 20 minutes.

Stir-fry with Fry Light until the chicken is cooked, then add the vegetables to the pan: julienned carrot, sliced mangetout, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots (unfortunately I couldn't get hold of either of those so had to leave them out), sliced red pepper, baby sweetcorn (though the supermarket had sold out of that too), sliced spring onions, beansprouts and finally I added a whole bag of straight-to-wok noodles.

 

 

Pour over 1 tbsp. oyster sauce mixed with 2 tbsp. soy sauce and 1/2 tsp oil and stir-fry until the vegetables have softened to your liking.

 

At the same time I made a dish called speedy vegetable noodles with tofu. Again make the sauce first, mixing soy sauce, garlic, ginger and five spice powder. Spray a wok or large frying pan with Fry Light and stir-fry mangetout, mushrooms (which I forgot to buy - not doing well here!), red pepper, spring onions, pak choi (left out as the vegetarian doesn't like it so I added courgette instead) and cubes of tofu. Add noodles, 1 tbsp. sweet chilli sauce and 2 tbsp. soy sauce and stir fry until cooked.

 

 

I cooked extra noodles and also decided to do egg fried rice, though this was less of a success. I used microwave rice to make my life easier so cooked that, then placed it in a saucepan with peas and spring onions, soy sauce and a beaten egg. But I got sidetracked speaking to my guests and the rice started to stick a bit on the bottom of the pan! It wasn't too bad when it came to serving at least.

 

 

 

Finally for my boyfriend who doesn't like stir fry I made chicken satay, from a recipe on the Slimming World website. Marinade one diced chicken breast per person in a mixture of soy sauce, sweetener, garlic and ground cumin and when you are ready to cook, just fry the chicken in Fry Light.

 

 

Make the sauce in another pan: you need peanut butter, water, garlic, sweetener, soy sauce and fromage frais. Simmer until the mixture thickens and serve with the chicken - I thought this tasted really good and luckily so did my fussy boyfriend!

 

I had some lovely sets of chopsticks I bought in Kuala Lumpur and some fan-shaped paper napkins; the prawn crackers were put out in bowls for the guests to nibble on while I finished cooking and we had quite a feast!

 

 

 

 

 

 

As this is a really healthy meal I'm sharing this with the Spice Trail challenge, which has as its theme this month 'temple food'. The challenge is hosted by Vanesther at Bangers & Mash.

 

As I used courgette in the vegetarian dish I can send this to Anyone Can Cook, this month hosted by Catherine at Cates Cates as the theme is zucchini and marrows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Memory Jar for those Special Moments

 

 

 

I saw these for the first time at New Year, when people were posting them on Facebook and elsewhere on the internet and thought it was a lovely idea, if a little cheesy. But sometimes cheesy is good!

 

It's a jar full of memories - you write notes on scraps of paper, such as funny things that happened, nice surprises, memorable moments - and then at the end of the year open them all and remind yourself of what happened over the past year.

 

You can style it as family memories, or things you did as a couple, or solo achievements - and I think that as well as opening it at the end of the year, you could dip into the jar whenever you need a little lift.

 

I'd been meaning to do one at the start of the year but hadn't gotten around to it so thought it would make a nice Valentine's gift for my boyfriend (which I gave to him early because we are going away this weekend and there was no point taking it with me).



 

 

You can make and decorate this however you like but I wanted to use a pretty glass jar - like an old fashioned sweet jar. This was half price (£4.25) in the House of Fraser sale. I bought the 'memories' Jolee sticker (for card making or scrapbooking) from Ebay; it was bigger than I expected as I had been planning to make a tag with the word on, but instead I stuck the letters around the jar, which looked really good.

 



If you have children you can get them to help decorate this, or you can do whatever you like with ribbons, labels, tags, stickers etc- personalise it to your family.

I made a tag with the 'instructions' for the jar which I typed on the computer in a pretty font. You can also use whatever wording you like. I wrote:
Memorable moments
Good things that happen
Laugh-out-loud funny
Secret smiles
Daily blessings
Happy surprises
The things that keep you sane when the going gets tough
Write them on pieces of paper
Pop them into this jar and open
At the end of the year -
Or whenever you need a smile

I've seen some on the internet with different wording, and some which list 'surprise presents' as the first thing but to me this isn't about celebrating material goods, in fact quite the opposite. You could also write things like 'children's achievements' or 'family milestones' if you have a baby who is learning to walk and talk for instance.

To finish it off I threaded the tag onto a piece of ribbon which I tied into a bow around the top.

I've already started filling my jar with scraps of paper and think it will be really nice to look back o everything at the end of the year. I'm not sure where this idea originated - obviously a lot of people did this at the start of 2014 as they were opening them at the end of last year - so this is my take on it.

New Year's Resolutions 2015

It's been a pretty good year for my blog - I've been to some events and met some great people, been sent a few nice things to review and I'm up to over 742,000 hits on my blog and ranked 228 in the Foodies 100. My most popular blog post to date is my pigs in mud cake, which has now had over 40,000 hits - nearly twice as many as my second most popular post, this strawberry and cream fraisier. I wonder what my most popular posts will be in 2015?

Last January I set out a list of new year’s resolutions – and promptly forgot about them. Before Christmas I thought it would be nice to write a new year resolution blog post to publish today, and idly wondered if I’d had the same idea last year. Turns out I did, and I wrote quite a long post, and haven’t looked at it since! So clearly one resolution this year is going to be to actually keep on top of my resolutions…. But before I set out my list of blog-related goals for 2015 I will look back at what I wanted to achieve in 2014 and whether I actually did.

- Redesign my blog. I spent a bit of time doing this and thanks to my boyfriend buying me my own domain name as a birthday present I migrated my blog across but still use the blogger template. It needs a lot more work.

- Improve my ranking in the Foodies 100. I was almost in the top 100, at 108, when they changed the way the metrics were calculated, and at the same time I changed my web address I fell several hundred positions.

I was back at 228 at the last count but that is still some way off my best position. But I’ve realised that I just don’t have the time to faff around on Kred and Klout and now that Instagram is part of the metrics, I’m not sure I can be bothered any more. Working full time in an office where I can’t access social media – or even use my mobile in the office – means that I can keep up with Facebook and Twitter but that’s about it.

- Figure out and start using the likes of Kred, Klout etc - I probably need to do this to achieve the above resolution, though so far it's been hard to find the time.

See above – I’m not going to worry about this any more.

- Reach 400,000 blog hits. I was at 290,000 at the end of last year after two years of blogging so decided 400,000 was a good target to aim for by the end of this year. But I've actually got to more than 735,000!

- Make better use of Facebook to promote my blog and start using Google Plus. I think I do OK with using Twitter to promote blog posts but I could definitely be better at replying to tweets.

I could still be better at using Facebook to promote my blog; to be honest I usually just forget. I’m not sure that many people are really using Google Plus or that it would make much difference to my blog.

- Work out how to get on more company/PR mailing lists for product reviews and so on.

I’m doing OK on this front but increasing my number of Twitter follows would help as I was recently turned down for a project and told it was purely down to my number of Twitter followers.

- On which note, make more of an effort to reply to comments on my blog.

I do the best that I can in the limited time available but I don’t think people necessarily expect replies to their comments – if I leave a comment on a blog I don’t go back to that post to see if there has been a reply unless I have specifically asked a question. Or would you all prefer that I replied?

- Take a cooking or cake decorating class - I'd already signed up to an 8-week evening class in royal icing and piping, starting in January, and before the end of the year I wanted to do something else as well.

Unfortunately the royal icing and piping class was cancelled and the college forgot to tell me – I only found out by ringing up the day before to find out what I needed to bring! I then signed up for a wedding cake course at the same college in January this year - and exactly the same thing happened again! I am getting a bit fed up with them really. I have found another college offering the same course but it's not as convenient to get to, which is a shame. I took some amazing classes in 2014, chief of which was my Christmas present last year. In April I spent a full day with Tom and Henry Herbert, aka the Fabulous Baker Brothers, which was wonderful.

- Sort out my cake decorating cupboard that has gotten into a complete mess again!

Well, in 2014 I actually moved house, so I have more space – but haven’t finished unpacking properly so my cake decorating and baking cupboards are still a mess!

In 2014, I wanted to eat at:

- Hawksmoor
You can read my glowing review here

- Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium - which is hopefully opening soon! I've got a voucher for afternoon tea for two already as I contributed to the crowdfunding scheme to help the place open - I am a little bit feline-obsessed!

Did this one as well - review here.

- Bubbledogs - I wanted to go here in 2013 but never managed it
I still didn't manage it in 2014! I did intend to but when I got there it was full with a queue outside. I don't really like restaurants where you can't book (Bubbledogs accepts reservations for groups of six or more) and decided it wasn't worth the wait.

- The Lazy Cow in Salisbury (my home town)
Still haven't been here - when my parents eat out they prefer pubs, and when I go to Salisbury it's to visit them so we don't eat out in restaurants otherwise.

- Bubba Gump's, if and when it finally opens in the UK (there was meant to be one opening in London in November but it has all gone quiet)
The restaurant finally opened in December, about a year later than expected, so I am hoping to go in early 2015!

- Anywhere in Cambridge - I've wanted to take my boyfriend there for a long weekend for a while and so far we haven't found the time. He's never visited Cambridge, and it's where I went to university and where a lot of my friends still live, so it means a lot to me.
We were so busy in 2014 and spent so many weekends looking at houses, packing, moving, unpacking and redecorating, we couldn't find time for a weekend away. I think this might go back on the list for 2015!

In 2014, I wanted to cook:

- Salmon in a dishwasher - apparently it's a good method of cooking fish, and other things!
Never got round to this, as my boyfriend doesn't eat salmon and it never seemed worth doing just for myself as I think you need a fairly large piece of salmon to do it. But I am planning to make it soon!

- Bread: I've never made bread (apart from the bread sticks I made at Christmas) other than using my breadmaker so want to try out some proper Paul Hollywood recipes
I learnt how to properly make bread on my Fabulous Baker Brothers course and have had a go a few times since then, including when I made this classic white loaf.

- Heath bar pie
These mini Heath bar pies were delicious!

- something to use up a lot of the ingredients that are nearing their use-by date, including candy I brought back from America
I made various things but my boyfriend's mum went to America again and bought me back another haul!

- something to try out some pieces of baking and cake decorating equipment I have bought but never used, like the Wilton heart-shaped tasty fill pan
I used it to make an engagement cake for a colleague which was a big success.

- Giant cupcake - I've tried a couple of times but it's never turned out that well so I really want to get to grips with it this year.
I think I've got the hang of it now, check out this giant raspberry cupcake.

- Something using the Lakeland R-evolution Cuisine kit I got for my birthday and haven't used yet
I used it last year and thought it was interesting but I had mixed views on the results!

- a proper cream pie like the one I had in Wyoming
I haven't tried to do this yet but have no idea what type of recipe I would need!

- a really good approximation of a Cheesecake Factory cheesecake; the recipes I've tried before haven't quite tasted right.
I've made quite a few cheesecakes over the past year which I was really pleased with but this epic five-layer chocolate cheesecake was just amazing.

- Something from my Artusi cookbook even though it is in German so will take me longer to figure out
I still haven't gotten around to using it.

- Homemade mozzarella sticks, as my boyfriend loves the ones you get in TGI Friday's
I forgot I wanted to make these!

- Try out a couple of the Great British Bake Off technical challenges that I haven't already made - perhaps angel food cake or doughnuts.
I have made a few things that were GBBO technical challenges but I've still never made either of these.

- More "food from fiction" - often when I read a novel I am transported by the description of food and there are some books in which food and meals play a large part. I am occasionally inspired to make something based on the book but haven't done so for several months so I want to get back into it, as I have several books in mind! I do regularly take part in Food n Flix, which has a similar idea of making food based on a movie, but the films are chosen by someone each month and I want to make some of my own ideas.
I've made a lot of these as you can see!

- I want to try out some meals with 'hidden veg' as my boyfriend and I are very fussy eaters, but there are plenty of recipes I could try - like a pasta sauce - where I can add things we wouldn't normally eat and hopefully not notice! I think I will also need to make some more freeze-ahead meals too.
I've made a few recipes with hidden veg which you can see here.

So overall I've done a lot of the things I've resolved to but there are also quite a few things I've not managed to do, in some cases because I forgot!

 

On to my new year’s resolutions for 2015:

 

-          Improve the overall look of my blog, including tabs to take you quickly to different types of recipes and improving the layout

-          Spend more time meal planning rather than just grabbing for ideas and old favourites on a Sunday night

-          Remember to take business cards when I go to events

-          Find a way of increasing my Twitter followers – I’ve been turned down for some PR opportunities purely for not having enough Twitter followers. One way of doing this might be to connect with large brands as I’ve found I’ve picked up followers that way – e.g. when I replied to a tweet from PETA about vegan food and then gained some followers.

-          Invite people round to dinner more often. The main problem is that all my family and friends live too far away, but I have a couple of friends who aren’t too far who I have never invited over for dinner, and most of my boyfriend’s friends and family are local. Now we have a lovely house, big kitchen and brand new dining table there is no excuse!

-          Lose some weight… food blogging and baking and weight loss were never going to go hand in hand, and I always point out that just because I post some calorific recipes doesn’t mean I consume them all, but I do need to try harder to fight the flab.

-          Cook at least one thing from every recipe book I’ve got and if I can’t do that, it’s probably a sign I should give that particular book to the charity shop

-          Organise my baking cupboards – when we moved I was in a hurry to unpack so everything got shoved into cupboards and now I can never find anything

-          Try harder to get some prizes for you lovely people who enter Alphabakes

-          Write at least one cookery book review a month (including books I’ve already got) – I started doing this and put it to one side

-          Spend more time visiting other blogs and commenting on them
- Donate a few of the recipe books I never use to the charity shop to make space for the four new ones (all big hardbacks) I got for Christmas. I find it quite hard to get rid of cookery books!
- Master the art of airbrushing on cakes, or at least give it a good go - I got a kit for Christmas from my boyfriend which I'm really looking forward to trying out
- Practice my macro photography - I also got a macro lens from my boyfriend for Christmas. The tutor on the food photography course I did in 2014 advised using a long lens and zooming in, but my boyfriend said he did a lot of research and everything he read said I should be using a macro lens for food photography! 

 

Restaurants I want to go to
 

 - Goodmans - meant to be a very good quality steak restaurant
- Bubba Gump's now it has opened in London
- Kensington Roof Gardens - not strictly a restaurant - it is a restaurant and bar and also a park of sorts that is on top of a building on Kensington High Street but has real flamingos! My boyfriend went once for a work event and ever since then I've been hinting that he should take me (though it has been a couple of years now so I guess he hasn't taken the hint!)
- A Mexican restaurant as I'm trying to persuade my boyfriend to go to Mexico (again I have been trying for a couple of years) but I'm not sure he's ever eaten Mexico food which is probably one reason for his reluctance
- Chilton Firehouse - a major celeb hangout. Someone I know said a few months ago that they could get me a table but so far they have yet to come through!
- Cereal Killer Café - a Shoreditch café that has just opened which only serves breakfast cereals, but has loads of variations including cereals you can only get in America. It's very hipster and has been the subject of many articles wondering why we need a restaurant that only serves cereal, but it's near my office and I think it would be fun to go there!

 

Things I want to cook
 

-          A showstopper cake for at least one of my parents’ 60^th birthdays this year (I say one because my sister may want to make the cake for the other)
- The wedding cake for a dear friend - she wants to do a cupcake tower and make the cupcakes herself and wants me to make a cake to go on top. At this point I have no idea what to make!
- A Marvel character-themed cake for my boyfriend's birthday
- Salmon in the dishwasher - I said this last year!
- Some more hidden veg recipes - I also said this last year!
- Something from Bake It Like You Mean It, which my boyfriend got me for Christmas - most of the recipes look very complicated!
- I'd also like to make one thing from every cookery book I have but I have over 100 books now so I don't think that is going to happen! I might start working my way through them in alphabetical order though...

I think that's enough for now - what are your new year's resolutions?

Lakeland R-Evolution Cuisine Kit - experimenting in the kitchen

 Heston Blumenthal has made the concept of 'molecular gastronomy' famous; he is known for doing strange things with liquid nitrogen and creating highly imaginative dishes that offer the unexpected. This R-Evolution kit from Lakeland allows you to experiment along similar lines in the comfort of your own kitchen.

I got this for my birthday last year but hadn't found the time to use it until new year's eve, when I decided to try out a few techniques. The kit comes with several small boxes of different ingredients - agar-agar, sodium alginate, calcium lactate, soya lecithin and xanthan gum. You get 10 sachets of each so there are plenty. You also get some pipettes, a syringe, silicon tubes, plus some measuring spoons and a mini slotted spoon. There are a few recipes and diagrams inside a printed booklet but all the recipes are provided on a DVD. I didn't find this particularly convenient as I had to watch the DVD and scribble down notes which I could then take into the kitchen. Of course, that's no problem if you have a TV and DVD player in your kitchen, or you can play a DVD on your laptop and take that into the kitchen, but I knew I would need all my workspace for the recipes. I understand though why it is on a DVD, because the method for making these recipes is very unusual - not that complicated, but it would be quite hard to describe and it's definitely much easier to watch! The DVD allows you to look at types of recipes or go through each one at a time. Each demonstration video takes about five minutes but there is no voiceover, only music, and every so often words appear on the screen. I think this is because this kit is available in different countries and it makes it easier from a language perspective (i.e. probably cheaper) just to have one film with nobody speaking!

So having gone through all the recipes on the DVD, I decided I was going to make goat's cheese ravioles, frozen parmesan foam, and honey caviar. I'll give an approximate description of what I did, but you really need to buy the kit and watch the DVD!

Goat's cheese ravioles

Sprinkle a sachet of sodium alginate into 475ml water and mix with a hand blender until dissolved. Set aside for 15 minutes.

Mix 50g goat's cheese with 20 ml milk. Add 1/2 tsp calcium lactate and stir with a fork.

Spoon the goat's cheese mixture into the sodium alginate bath using an ice cream scoop and balls will form and slowly sink to the bottom. Leave for three minutes then rinse in a bowl of clean water by adding the goat's cheese and gently stirring it around.

Remove with a slotted spoon and dry on kitchen paper.

I served these as our starter on new year's eve, on a bed of lettuce and drizzled with balsamic glaze. I wasn't that keen on these though I wondered if it was because the goat's cheese I used was quite firm and I should have used a softer cheese like Capricorn. There was a kind of jelly like membrane on the cheese balls, which I'm not sure was supposed to happen, and even though I rinsed the cheese it did seem to have a slightly funny taste. I would try doing this again though as perhaps something went wrong on my first attempt.

Frozen parmesan foam

I decided to make chicken stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon as our main course, and serve the parmesan foam with the chicken.

Mix 300ml water with 400ml (not grams) grated parmesan and add the sachet of soy lecithin.

Mix with a hand blender, then pour into a saucepan.

Stir and bring to the boil then set aside for ten minutes. The mixture will turn into a foam consistency.

Spoon the foam out into a small bowl and freeze for one hour. 

 As I was faffing around a lot with the kit I wanted to keep the main course simple so I used this
 pesto soft cheese to stuff two chicken breasts.

I wrapped them in bacon, and baked them in the oven.

 When the parmesan foam has been in the freezer for an hour it is ready to serve - simply scoop out. You need to serve immediately after it comes out of the freezer, otherwise the foam deflates. I also found that having it next to hot food meant it melted fairly fast and I was left with liquid! But it was pretty cool and tasted nice.

 I also made some creamy mashed potato topped with crispy bacon to go with the chicken.

Honey Caviar

I served this on top of a particularly nice dessert that I saw on Fuss Free Flavours for a three-layer chocolate mousse.

 To make the honey caviar, put a cup of oil in the freezer for half an hour. In a small pan, mix 80ml water with 125ml runny honey and a sachet of agar-agar. Stir and bring to the boil.

 Remove the oil from the freezer. Pour the mixture into a small bowl and use the syringe to siphon some of the liquid and drop it a droplet at a time into the cold oil - small pearls will form.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the honey caviar from the oil, and place in a bowl of clean water. Stir around gently to rinse.

Place the honey caviar on top of the dessert to serve.

To get the recipe for this gorgeous chocolate mousse visit Fuss Free Flavours. 
It's a simple but delicious recipe; all you do is mix three types of chocolate with cream and allow each one to set in turn. I started off using this dark chocolate with orange:

Melt the chocolate with cream in a small pan

Pour into a small serving glass and allow to set in the fridge.

For the next later, I used a good quality milk chocolate:

Repeat the process with the chocolate and the cream

Pour the second layer into the glass once the base has set, and allow that to cool and set.

I used white chocolate for the top layer and once again melted it with cream.

 Pour onto the top of the dessert and allow to set.

 I placed the honey caviar on top as the finishing touch.

This was a delicious dessert and the perfect way to round off our meal.

I'd be curious to know if anyone else has used the R-Evolution kit and what you think. It was quite fiddly and while it was fun and had great novelty value, I'm not sure how much the results really added to each dish and I wasn't always 100% keen on the taste. I will definitely use this kit again as there are plenty of things I haven't tried to make, but it will have to be on a day when I have plenty of free time!