Dog biscuits

This Christmas I made some edible gifts for various friends and family and had a few four-legged friends I didn't want to leave out: Tilly, Princess and Patch. I'd picked up some cute cookie cutters at Wal-Mart when I was in America in September and this seemed the perfect way to use them.

I looked online to find a good recipe for dog biscuits and liked this one. There's actually nothing in it that humans couldn't eat and I like the fact that it seems relatively healthy - no preservatives but also no sugar (though there is peanut butter). It was also very quick and easy to make.

You need:
3/4 cup skimmed milk
1 egg
1 cup peanut butter
2 and a half cups wholemeal flour
1 tbsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180C. In a bowl, beat the egg and the milk then add the peanut butter.

Add the flour and baking powder and work into a dough

This is the set of cookie cutters I got in Wal-Mart for only a couple of dollars. There's a paw, a bone and a dog shape; they are made of metal so quite sturdy and from the Wilton brand, so I think they're really good.

Roll out the dough and cut out the shapes.

I got about 20 thick cookies out of this mixture I think

Bake for about 15 minutes.

As these were a Christmas gift I packaged them in one of the tins I bought from Ikea, that I mentioned in a previous post. I also included a note listing the ingredients as I don't think people would want to give anything to their pets without knowing what was in it. My sister said her dogs really liked them!

Our letter for Alphabakes this month is D, and while this is a bit unusual there is nothing in the rules to state that bakes have to be for human consumption! So I am entering these dog biscuits in the challenge, which I am hosting this month.

Slimming World-style Salmon Laksa

As a healthy dinner recently I made salmon laksa, which I adapted from a recipe in the Slimming World book Extra Easy All In One.

I just made this for myself, but to serve 2, you need:
For the laksa paste:
pinch of dried chilli flakes
1 garlic clove, crushed
1cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated or finely chopped
2 shallots, peeled and chopped
1/2 tbsp each of mild curry powder, Thai fish sauce and light soy sauce
1 lemon grass stalk, chopped
grated zest of 1 lime

For the salmon:
2 tbsp laksa paste, as above
100ml reduced fat coconut milk
juice of 1 lime
1 tsp Splenda
1 tbsp Thai fish sauce
400ml fish stock
2 salmon fillets
rice or noodles to serve

Make the laksa paste by placing all the ingredients in a food processor with 50ml water and blend until you have a paste.

Heat a frying pan and add 2 tbsp or so of the paste, and stir fry for 2 mins. You can keep any left over in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

Add the coconut milk, lime juice, fish sauce and stock and gently bring to a simmer.

Add the salmon and poach until it is cooked, which will only take a few minutes.

Serve with rice or noodles and green veg like broccoli or pak choi.

Meal Planning 2013- week 2

I lost a pound last week, which I'm pleased about - start as you mean to go on and all that! Here's my plan for this week:

Monday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Macaroni cheese
Dinner Beef and broccoli stir fry

Tuesday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Being provided as I'm in a meeting
Dinner Homemade chicken burger (this may change as I'm expecting to have to work late)


Wednesday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Macaroni cheese
Dinner With my boyfriend - chicken lasagne, with garlic bread for him, followed by white chocolate and rose mousse from SW mag


Thursday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch saigon chicken noodle soup on p172 of extra easy entertaining or leftover chicken lasagne
Dinner Salmon florentine from SW mag


Friday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch  saigon chicken noodle soup on p172 of extra easy entertaining
Dinner Will probably go to my boyfriend's for dinner


Saturday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch tinned curried mackarel or similar on toast
Dinner Going to a friend's house - TBA

Sunday
Breakfast Cereal
Lunch Probably still at my friend's house - TBA
Dinner With my boyfriend - Scandinavian style meatballs from SW calendar (recipe for February)

Smoked mackarel fishcakes

I had some leftover mackarel pate from Boxing Day and some leftover mashed potato from dinner so I decided to make fishcakes.

I would normally just use the fish but in this case I had homemade mackarel pate - which was just smoked mackarel and soft cheese - and decided that would work just as well in a fishcake.

I simply mixed it with the mashed potato and added some herbs and seasoning.

I then shaped the mixture into patties and dipped them in breadcrumbs. Sometimes you might need to coat the fishcakes in flour then beaten egg to get the breadcrumbs to stick, but because I was using pate rather than fish the mixture was already wet enough for the breadcrumbs to stick.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes until crisp.

 I took these into work for lunch along with some homemade low fat tartare sauce, which I made by mixing Quark, fat free fromage frais, lemon juice, seasoning and capers.

I am sending this to the No Waste Food challenge, hosted by Elizabeth's Kitchen and Turquoise Lemons, as their challenge this month is finding ways to use up leftover mashed potato.

I am also sending this to Credit Crunch Munch, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours. She has rebranded the Frugal Food Friday challenge and is running it with Camilla from Fab Food 4 All. The idea remains the same - to share recipes which are thrifty and help you save money, and using up leftovers certainly does that.

Dog basket cake

About a year and a half ago, before I started this blog, I took a four-week cake decorating course at Kingston Adult Education college in Surbiton (on the outskirts of London). For a while now I'd been thinking about doing a more in-depth course to learn a little more than how to pipe buttercream onto cupcakes, but all the classes I'd found in central London cost at least £99 for a one-day course, and I've seen some that cost almost twice that.

Then I started browsing adult education websites and realised this was potentially a much better option - and certainly cheaper. Unfortunately adult education colleges don't tend to be in central London so the best course I could find was in Surbiton - and it took me almost two hours to get there after work (I only just got there in time for the 7pm start) and about an hour and a half to get home. Since then I've taken a course at a college just a few minutes from my house but at the time this was all I could find. The course was two hours a week for four weeks, covering different techniques every time, and only cost £40 for all four weeks. My friend David and I decided to sign up and do it together, and I was really glad we did!

The course was taught by a very experienced cake decorator called Annie. I swiftly discovered that David and I were the only ones coming from central London after work - everyone else seemed to be local to Surbiton and had managed to go home first and have dinner (dinner for us was a sandwich eaten with one hand in class while modelling icing!) and could load their cars with all the equipment we needed to bring, whereas we had to carry it all on the tube!

Luckily the class was worth the effort that we went to. We didn't have to bring a cake for our first week, but were asked to bring white roll-out icing, a box of Dr Oetker coloured icing, a rolling pin and various other bits and bobs that I forget now. We were told we were going to spend the next two weeks making a dog basket cake, and Annie began by showing us a picture of one she had made previously. I couldn't believe I was going to be able to make something like that! Now of course it looks really straightforward but at the time I had never made anything like that before.

We spent the whole of the first class making dalmation dogs to go on top of the cake, as you can see below!

So how did we do this? First, take a ball of white icing and mould to make the shape of the head - so wider at one end a little like a carrot, and then flatten the bottom slightly so it sits flat. This was the first time I'd modelled with icing so I wasn't happy with my first few shapes, but the beauty of roll-out icing is that you can re-do it over and over!

Next we took some of the Dr. Oetker black icing (you get five colours in the pack, including black). Roll some very small balls and squash them so they become discs, and press them onto the dog's head. Similarly, use the black icing to make some ears.

We coloured some white icing with a little pink paste to make the nose, and used a modelling tool to indent the eyes and mouth.

The feet were fairly easy too - for the front paws, just mould some white icing. For the back paws, mould icing in the shape you can see above, and roll then press out some tiny balls of pink icing to make the soft pads on the paws.

As this took the whole lesson, we would then leave the dogs until next week, so we wrapped them in clingfilm and tried to transport them home as carefully as we could.

So it's probably no surprise that the next week began with a quick repair job to the dogs where a couple of people had found an ear or a nose had fallen off!

This week we had been told to bring a cake and a cake board, along with all the stuff from last week - white and coloured roll-out icing , rolling pin etc.

To start with, I rolled a cylinder of icing and stuck it along one edge of my cake to make one side more raised than the other. Most people actually achieved this effect by cutting a section out of one side of their cake but as my cake wasn't as deep as some peoples', we decided this was the best way. Basically what you want is for one side to be a little higher as you can see from the picture a little further below.

Then we coloured some roll-out icing with brown paste and rolled out a section large enough to fit all the way around the cake and a couple of inches higher than the side. We stamped all over this with a basketweave embosser, which I thought was really cool. It's a piece of plastic with basket or brick-like markings and a little handle, so when you press it into icing you are left with the indentations.

Then use some buttercream or apricot jam to stick the 'basket' around the side of the cake, like so:

The next part was relatively easy. We chose another colour and rolled out a square of icing to make a blanket. I rolled out some tiny balls and pressed them on to make a polkadot effect. Then position your dogs' heads and paws in the basket and put the blanket over the top, so it looks as if they are asleep under the blanket in their basket.

Ta-da!

And from the front....

The proportions are a little off - if you think about the size of the dogs' heads, there is no way there's room for three bodies under that blanket! Other than that I was really pleased with this - my first character cake. Incidentally the cake underneath was a plain sponge - we were told not to split and fill it, which I think did make it taste a little bland, and I reckon I could have got away with doing this and still been able to model the basket around it, so if I did it again I would either do that or make a chocolate cake as I think that would have tasted nicer.

My sister's birthday was a few days after this cake class and I was going down to Southampton to see her, so I took this cake. I had told her she was getting a birthday cake but she said she hadn't expected anything like this - and it was perfect for her as she has dogs. She didn't even want to cut into it initially to spoil the effect, which was a really nice thing to hear!

The letter for this month's Alphabakes is D and since I hadn't gotten around to blogging this dog cake yet, it seemed like the perfect opportunity! Please do send in your D bakes as we have a prize on offer this month!

A romantic new year's eve dinner for two

My boyfriend and I decided to stay in on new year's eve and I wanted to cook us a romantic dinner. The menu I chose was: herbed bacon and egg souffle; steak in a stilton sauce with boulangere potato stack; tiramisu. I thought I'd combine all the recipes into one blog post: enjoy!

Herbed cheese and bacon souffles

This recipe is adapted from the Slimming World recipe book Extra Easy Entertaining

Serves 2

You need:
Fry Light spray oil or similar
two rashers lean bacon, chopped
1 spring onion, chopped
pinch of chilli flakes
2 eggs, separated
chopped fresh parsley
dried dill
40g grated parmesan
pinch of mustard powder
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180C or 160 C fan. Place a roasting pan one third full of hot water in the oven.

Fry the bacon and spring onion and add a pinch of dried chilli flakes.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff

In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with the bacon and spring onion mixture and the herbs, along with three quarters of the parmesan. Add the mustard powder and season.

Fold the mixture into the egg whites, using a metal spoon.

Spray the insides of two ramekin dishes with oil and spoon the mixture into the ramekins. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top.

Bake for around 20 minutes until risen. These can be made the day before and heated up on the day.

We had these as a starter on new year's eve; I think they would work really well for breakfast or brunch as well.

I am sending these to Herbs on Saturday, hosted by Bangers and Mash and started by Karen of Lavender and Lovage.

I am also sending this to Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes for her Classic French cooking challenge, as the recipe she has chosen this month is the souffle.

Steak in Stilton Sauce

This was our main course on new year's eve. I didn't follow a recipe, and just fried some rump steak; helpfully, when I went to buy some that day they were reduced from £4 each to £1.79 in Tesco. I added some double cream to the meat juices in the pan (also in the reduced price section - I love going shopping after Christmas!) and then added some Stilton - left over from Christmas. The stilton melted and made a lovely creamy sauce.

As this meal used reduced-price steak and cream, and leftover cheese, I am sending it to Frugal Food Fridays, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

Boulangere potato stacks

We had this as a side dish to accompany the steak (I also cooked some broccoli); I took the recipe from my new book Slimming World Extra Easy Entertaining. It was absolutely delicious and I will definitely make this again!

Serves 2
You need:
500g potatoes
1 litre vegetable stock
Fry Light or similar spray oil
tbsp chopped fresh parsley
4 tbsp Quark
2 garlic cloves, crushed or half a tablespoon garlic puree
salt and pepper
25g reduced fat grated cheddar

Peel the potatoes and slice with a mandolin or the wide edge on a grater

Bring the stock to the boil in a saucepan, add the potatoes and bring back to the boil

Drain the potatoes and reserve the stock. Put the potatoes into a bowl.

Mix in the quark, herbs and garlic with 6 tbsp of the reserved stock and season. Toss gently with the potatoes.

Spray a muffin tin with oil and press spoonfulls of the potato mixture down into each muffin cup.

Sprinkle the grated cheese over the top- I used more than the recipe suggested but my boyfriend definitely wasn't complaining! Bake for 25-30 mins. I didn't take a picture of these on the plate but if you remove them carefully you have neat little stacks of potato slices. And they taste fantastic!

Tiramisu

I got Nigella's new book Nigellissima for Christmas and adapted this recipe from the book as our new year's eve dessert.

Serves 2
You need:
50ml coffee (eg made up from instant)
1 tbsp coffee or chocolate liqueur
2 sponge fingers
1 egg white
200g mascarpone cheese
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp marsala
1 tsp cocoa powder

Make up the coffee, add the liqueur - I used a chocolate liqueur I bought in Italy last year -  and leave to cool.

Break each sponge finger into four pieces and place in a martini glass.

Pour the coffee mixture over the sponge fingers.

Beat the egg white with an electric whisk. In a separate bowl, beat the mascarpone and honey, then add the marsala if using and beat again.

Fold in the egg whites then spoon into the martini glasses.

Sprinkle with cocoa powder or grated chocolate

And serve!

I am sending this to the blog challenge Forever Nigella, hosted this month by Recipe Junkie. Forever Nigella is organised by Sarah at Maison Cupcake. The theme in January is "food to cherish your loved ones", and what better way to spoil my boyfriend than to make him this lovely dessert for our romantic dinner together? (Incidentally, we followed our romantic dinner by spending a romantic evening... playing Xbox. It was actually a lot of fun!)

Alphabakes January 2013

Happy New Year!

It was great to see all the Alphabakes entries for December - the letter S lent itself quite well to the festive season. We had stollen, snowmen and stockings, shortbread...plus sticky toffee pudding and Sachertorte, and those were just the things I baked myself! If you haven't already checked out the roundup, visit my co-host Ros's site.

We've got another prize on offer this month: "On A Stick", a recipe book featuring all the foods you could imagine serving on a stick... and several you can't! It would be great for parties or catering for crowds or even an at-home floor picnic with the kids. The recipes and photos look really good and Ros and I would like to thank PGUK Publishers for providing this as a prize.

This prize is only available to UK and Ireland participants so if it's not obvious where you are from on your blog, please let me know in your email. A winner will be chosen at random after all entries have been collated.

So all you need to know now is which letter we are baking with in January! I hope you all have lots of ideas for bakes and ingredients beginning with the letter....

D



As a reminder, we will accept entries where the main - or one of the main - ingredients begins with the letter, or the name of the bake itself starts with the letter. A reminder of the rules in full but first a quick plea to remember to email your entry to alphabakes@gmail.com and not just Tweet it if you want to make sure you are in the running for the prize!

1. Post your recipe on your blog and link it to The More than Occasional Baker and Caroline Makes, stating the relevant month's host. If you do not have a blog, email us a picture and a brief description of your entry which we will include in the round-up at the end of the month.

2. You can use your own recipe or someone else's recipe. The recipe can be sweet, savoury or a mixture! Anything goes as long as the random letter is predominantly featured in the recipe as one of the main ingredients or flavours or in the name of the bake itself (i .e . not as a garnish , or using 'flour' for the letter F!) You can also republish old posts/recipes but you must include the information for this challenge as stated in these rules.

3. Add the logo to your post and add 'alphabakes' as a label to your post.

4. Email your entries to alphabakes@gmail.com by midnight (GMT) 25th of January. Please include:

• Your name (that you want included in the round up or we will use the name of your blog)
• Your blog post URL
• Recipe title
• Photo of recipe (to be included in the round up)

5. You can submit as many entries as you like.

6. You do not have to participate every month to join in.

7. You may submit your entry to other challenges as long as it complies with their rules.

8. If you use twitter, please use the tag #alphabakes and mention @bakingaddict and @Caroline_Makes. We will retweet all those that we see.

9. Have fun! :)