Easy chicken and lemon all-in-one tray bake

When you want a nice easy recipe where you can chuck everything into one pan to save time (and save on the washing up), a tray bake is a great option.

This one is vaguely Mediterranean and very simple to make. All you need is:
 
Chicken thighs - I used skinless ones and allowed two per person 

Onion 

Garlic 

Tinned tomatoes (one 400g tin)
1 lemon, sliced
1-2 medium to large potatoes per person, cut into wedges
 
Dice the onion and finely chop the garlic. Fry for a few minutes over a medium heat and add the tinned tomatoes and season. Spoon into the bottom of a baking tin and mix in the potato wedges. 

Sit the chicken portions on top and top each one with a slice of lemon. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Sticky Ginger and Apple Flapjacks

When I was a child I remember my mum and sister making some flapjacks that were so sticky, we were picking bits of kitchen towel off them as we ate - they had been kept in a Tupperware dish lined with kitchen paper and were almost oozing with golden syrup.

I love sticky, soft flapjack, but not that soft - they need to hold together and be slightly chewy at the edges but soft and buttery in the middle. This recipe offers just that.

These were made in preparation of my sister and her partner coming to visit to meet their new niece, and even though I only made them the day before, about half the pan had been eaten before they even arrived!

The recipe is based on one from Good Housekeeping's The Baking Book; I halved the quantities but also added grated apple for extra flavour as I had a few apples that needed using up. The result was absolutely delicious and the texture was perfect.

Here's what I did:
You need:

175g butter or marg (I used Stork)
135g caster sugar
120g golden syrup
225g rolled oats
1 tsp ground ginger
2 apples, peeled and grated

Preheat oven to 175C. Grease and line a square cake tin.

Heat the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan over a gentle heat until melted. Stir in the rolled oats, ginger and apple until combined.

Spoon into the cake tin and press down gently to spread the mixture out and flatten it. Bake for 30 minutes until the edges have turned golden brown and slightly crispy; the middle will still be soft and sticky.

 

 I'm sharing this with Only Crumbs Remain
 and CookBlogShare.
 

 

Chocolate Chunk Cookie Dough Tray Bake

This recipe, from Xante Milton (aka Cookie Girl)'s Eat Me, is called Chocolate Chunk Tray Bake - but to me it was more like a cookie dough so I have added that in to the title of the blog post. I made this during the summer when we were going out for the day and wanted to take a picnic lunch; I wanted to quickly make something sweet that would travel well and thought of a tray bake or cookies, and when I came across this recipe, realised it covered both. What I didn't realise, as the recipe in the book is fairly sparsely written with no pictures or photos, is just how good this is! It was like eating thick squares of cookie that were still slightly gooey in the middle - absolutely delicious!

I also discovered they make a really good cookie ice cream sandwich, if you sandwich ice cream into the middle!

To make 16, you need:
320g plain flour
1 tsp bicarb of soda
1 tsp salt
110g unsalted butter, at room temperature
170g granulated sugar
125g soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
340g chocolate, chopped into 1cm squares
110g chopped hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 190C. Grease a large baking tin that is around 15 inches long by 10 inches wide, and around an inch or two deep.

 

Cream together the butter, both sugars and vanilla and add the eggs one at a time until well mixed.

 

Fold in the flour, bicarb of soda and salt, then stir in the chocolate and the nuts.

Spoon into the tin and spread out until the mixture is level and bake for 20 minutes.

Turn onto a wire rack to cool when it is still a bit squidgy in the middle - it will harden as it cools. When cool, cut into 16 pieces.

I'm sharing this with We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette and Tin and Thyme.

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.

 



Apple Cider Crumble Traybake

 

 

 

Today my work colleagues and I spent a day volunteering at a children's centre as a team building day - we worked on the centre's garden, making raised beds, weeding, planting a sensory garden and treating wooden fences. I decided I would take along some cake for elevenses, as I knew we would want a break and would be hungry from all our hard work - and I was right, my colleagues were really pleased when we stopped for tea and I produced some cake!

 

I wanted to make something that would travel well and would be easy to eat so some kind of tray bake. One of my team doesn't eat chocolate so I found this recipe for a cider crumble slice on the Caked Crusader. It also seemed perfect for autumn with the apples and raisins.

 

I adapted the recipe slightly; this is what I did:

 

You need:

For the base:

20g butter

2 tbsp. golden syrup

150ml cider

250g self-raising flour

1/2 tsp ground ginger

50g brown sugar

75g raisins or sultanas

75g walnuts

1 egg

 

For the topping:

2 apples

40g butter

2 1/2 tbsp. caster sugar

60g plain flour

 

Preheat oven to 160C. Line a square tin with baking paper.

 

Place the butter and golden syrup for the cake base into a saucepan and melt over a gentle heat. Stir in the cider and remove from the heat.

 

In a bowl mix the flour, ginger, sugar, raisins and walnuts. Fold in the golden syrup and cider mixture then add the egg and stir until well combined

 



To make the topping, peel and chop the apple. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the sugar, flour and apple.

Spread the cake mixture into the base of your lined baking tin and spoon the apple mixture over the top.

Bake for 30 minutes and leave to cool.

 

Slice into squares and serve

 

I'm sending this to Feel Good Food, hosted by Victoria at A Kick at the Pantry Door, as the theme this month is apples.

 

 

 Tea Time Treats has as its theme this month flapjacks and tray bakes so I am sending this to Karen at Lavender and Lovage, who is hosting the challenge this month. The challenge is hosted in alternate months by Kate of What Kate Baked.

 

 

I am also sending this to Baking with Spirit as the ingredient chosen by Janine at Cake of the Week is cider. I do enjoy an occasional cider but think this is the first time I have used it in baking; I think it gives the cake a lovely flavour and of course works perfectly with the apples.

 

 

 

Finally the theme for this month's Four Seasons Food is 'sliding into autumn'; I think the flavours in this tray bake are very autumnal. The challenge is hosted by Anneli at Delicieux and Louisa at Eat Your Veg.

 

 

Random Recipes - Triple Chocolate Crunch Bars

Every month Dom at Belleau Kitchen challenges bloggers to cook a recipe chosen at random from their collection of cookery books - and I have to admit, I haven't been brave enough to take part until now! I don't bake as much as some people and try to make things for particular occasions (eg visiting family, or a birthday) so don't want to leave what I cook entirely to chance, and also I'm pretty fussy so there's a chance that if I picked something at random I wouldn't actually like it!

I took part in Dom's challenge last month as it didn't involve baking - he asked us to take a photograph of our cookery book collections, which actually inspired me to reorganise mine after seeing how tidy other people's were! So then I decided I would take part in the proper challenge this month and cross my fingers and hope it was something I would like....

I counted my recipe books and used a random number generator and then counted along the shelf until I got to that number book. So far so good.... it turned out to be the Fairtrade Everyday Cookbook, edited by Sophie Grigson. My friend Alice gave me this book a couple of years ago and I haven't cooked much from it, so it was a good one to use - and it has a good selection of recipes.

I opened the book at random, hoping it would be something I liked..... and Dom probably isn't going to believe me when I say my first ever random recipe was chocolate cake! Hooray! More specifically, triple chocolate crunch bars. I didn't cheat, I promise!

There weren't many ingredients needed and this was a pretty simple recipe too. You need:

250g butter, softened
200g caster sugar
3 eggs
200g self raising flour
50g Fairtrade cocoa powder
50g Fairtrade dark chocolate, chopped
50g Fairtrade milk chocolate, chopped
50g Fairtrade white chocolate, chopped.

I used Green and Black's but there are plenty of other Fairtrade chocolate bars around you can use.

Preheat oven to 200C. Cream butter and sugar then add eggs.

Fold in the flour and cocoa powder

Chop the chocolate

Add to the mixture and fold in

Grease and line a tin. I was recently sent Dr. Oetker's cake release spray to try and review. I usually use a spray oil like Fry Light that I use for cooking to grease my baking tins, as I find it a lot easier than rubbing butter around the tin. I assumed this cake release spray would be pretty similar, but it was slightly different. Fry Light sprays a small amount in quite a targeted area so I have to spray each tin several times. The cake release spray was a more continuous spray that covered a much wider area and left a finer coating of oil, which I was pleased by. I had no problems removing the cake from the tin (I also used greaseproof paper) and I have to say I think I will be buying this again. It will be interesting to see how long one can lasts!
(Disclaimer: I was sent this product free of charge but was not required to write a positive review).

So where was I.... spread the mixture into the tin

Bake for 20-25 minutes

The recipe suggests cutting it into 8 slices but these would be massive! I decided instead to cut it into squares, much like chocolate brownies. I like how you can see the different coloured chocolate chunks inside the bake.

I found these a little dry as I think I was expecting them to taste like brownies, but the different taste and texture when you eat a chunk of chocolate inside was really nice (I left the chunks quite big so they wouldn't entirely meltaway). My boyfriend loved them and while I think we do both prefer brownies, this is a really nice change and I'm very glad I picked it as my random recipe!

Millionaire's Shortbread

I wanted to make an edible gift for a family friend of my boyfriend's and decided on millionaire's shortbread, as it's easier to give as a gift than a whole cake, and I wasn't sure how much the make recipient would like cupcakes. So I was thinking about some sort of biscuit or tray bake and remembered it had been a while since I had made millionaire's shortbread - and handily for this month's Alphabakes challenge, it also begins with the letter M!

I found a generic recipe on the internet, so essentially it went like this:

Mix 250g plain flour, 75g caster sugar and 175g softened butter in a bowl to make breadcrumbs.
Press down into a lined square cake tin and cook in the oven at about 190 degrees for 10 minutes or so until it turns golden brown.

For the caramel, I heated a small tin of light condensed milk, 55g butter and 55g brown sugar until just boiling, then removed from the heat and allowed to thicken. When the base was cooked and cooled, I poured over the caramel, and put that in the fridge to set.

I then melted 200g of dark chocolate and poured that over the top, and put it back in the fridge to set.

The shortbread was a bit crumbly and the chocolate was quite thick, so some pieces broke a little when I tried to cut it into squares, but my boyfriend was more than happy to eat the offcuts!

I rooted around in the cupboard until I found a pretty box to pacakage it up in. It looks quite homemade but I think that is one of the nice things about it!

I am entering my millionaire's shortbread into this month's Alphabakes - just a few hours ahead of the deadline! Speaking of which, I can't wait to see which random letter Baking Addict comes up with for April - based on the bakes I am already planning, I'm hoping it's C, S or P.... but it truly is random!