Still Running With a Case of the Lazy January’s : Peanut Butter Cornflake Cookies

1/ Place the sugar and agave nectar in a small saucepan and bring to the boil stirring

2/ Remove from heat and immediately stir in the peanut butter and the Tablespoon of butter

3/  Place the cornflakes into a large bowl before pouring in the mixture

4/ Give it a REALLY good stir through

5/ Onto a lined tray place balls of mixture (about 1/2 a desert spoon full) and flatten into cookies.  This mix makes 20 small cookies or 10 big ones

6/ They now just need to be left to harden (you can eat them now but they aren’t really crunchy until they’ve completely cooled).  Eat them as is if you like but I love them with a sprinkling of cinnamon and/or a sprinkling of sea salt.  The sweet and salty is delicious!
A drizzle of chocolate followed by the sea salt is heavenly too!

I popped some crunchy peanuts on top of mine this time around.  Maybe avoid the extra nuts if feeding to under 5′s if you’re concerned about choking.

* Recipe originally from here

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An Oldie But A Goodie : Shepherd’s Pie

You might have picked up on a theme of late.  January for me is a bit of a cop out on the meals front.  After crazy Christmas cooking and Master 8′s birthday I’m generally pretty burnt out by January and not feeling the least bit creative.  Any one else get a case of the Lazy Cook’s in January?

Anywho!  Shepherds Pie is an easy “make-in-bulk” dinner option and this means I can get 3 night’s worth of meals done in one cooking session and that makes me one happy, happy lady!

1/ Boil, drain and mash your potatoes (with milk and butter if you like) and set aside.  If you have two large saucepans you can wait until your meat mixture is simmering before boiling your potatoes if you prefer (more…)

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Scrummy Afternoon Tea For Very Little Effort : Date and Lemon Scones

I’ll be honest, I’m trying my darndest not to eat anything naughty for the next few months (I can’t vouch for my self-control once Easter Eggs make their way into our cupboards).  So in the interest of trying to get a grip on my bad eating my sweet recipe this week has very little sugar in it (unless you count the jam on top but I for one would rather not).

Date and Lemon Scones

3 Cups of Self-Raising Flour
2 Tbsp of Caster Sugar
1 egg
Zest of 1 lemon
1 Cup of chopped, dried Dates
150ml – 175ml (5 – 6 ounces) of Milk (I used Skim but whatever you have will do)
150ml (5oz + 2tsp) of cream

1/  Preheat your oven to 200C/400F

2/  In a small bowl or jug whisk together the cream, 150ml (5oz) of milk and the egg

3/  In a large bowl combine the remaining ingredients.  For best results (lovely fluffy and fall apart in your mouth scones) you don’t want to over work your dough so be gentle combining your  ingredients and working your dough (more…)

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Rocking the Classics Despite the Cries of “Oh No Not Again Mum”: Basic Quiche

Quiche is one of my favourite thrown together meals.  It’s so adaptable and with a few basic ingredients you can add whatever you like to make a proper (and in most cases nutritious) meal.  Leftover Quiche cold for lunch the next day is pretty awesome too.

Master 5 and I have a love-hate relationship with cow’s milk protein (lactose intolerance and pretty nasty eczema) so I often make us a separate Quiche with soy milk instead of cream/milk.  When watching my weight or low-carbing it I just make the Quiche without a crust and pour the mixture straight into an oiled pan/dish.  Mini-Quiche’s are a favourite for school lunches when the kids aren’t having a hot meal at school the next day.

Basic Quiche Recipe

  • Shortcrust Pastry (optional)
  • 6 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup Self Raising Flour
  • 60mL (1/4 cup) of vegetable oil
  • 120mL (1/2 cup) of single cream (you can use milk for a lighter option or your chosen non-dairy alternative)
  • 1/2 cup of grated/shredded cheese (optional but does make this so much tastier)
  • 1/2 large onion chopped finely (also optional but highly recommended)
  • Salt and Pepper (to taste)
  • Tomato for slicing on top (optional – our household is divided.  3 of us like cooked tomato, 2 only like it fresh and hate it baked on top of quiche)

Suggestions for fillings: (more…)

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If Chocolate Cake Just Isn’t Naughty Enough For You : Chocolate Bar (Candy Bar) Cupcakes

For Master 8′s birthday on Wednesday he only had one request for his cake.  Chocolate.  Lots and lots of chocolate!

A lover of all things chocolatey myself, I was more than happy to fulfill my little man’s wish.

After a bit of a brain storm and a lot of googling, Master 8 bounced out of bed on Wednesday morning to discover three varieties of chocolate cupcakes iced and ready for school (in case you were wondering, the diet is going terribly…I’m sure it has nothing to do with licking chocolate and cake batter from my fingers).

Below are the two cupcake recipes I used.  The first 2 batches of cupcakes were made using the same  recipe and I added snack-sized Mars Bars into the first and Milky Way‘s into the 2nd.  These were by far the messier and fiddlier cupcakes but were also the yummiest and most impressive looking in the end.  The third batch I used a Maltesers Cup Cake recipe and it was straight forward, easy and they came out of the oven looking perfect.  The Maltesers cakes were not quite as yummy as the others but were hassle-free and I had enough batter to make a few extra’s in case of emergency (i.e a mystery person accidentally eating one or two…or three).

The Mars Bars and Milky Ways in my first two attempts kind of exploded and oozed out of the cup cakes.  Fortunately they still tasted amazing and next time I will try putting the bars in the freezer for 10 minutes so they are nice and cold (mine were at room temperature) .  If you make yours and have the same problem as me, never fear they are fixable and you won’t even notice once you’ve smothered them in a not-so-healthy dose of icing/frosting.

When I pulled mine out of the oven they looked like this…

Straight out of the oven the exploded bars were fortunately still sticky and warm and I just used a teaspoon to scoop it off the pan and back into the holes (obviously only do this if your pans are clean and the non-stick coating isn’t on its last legs and won’t end up inside your cakes). (more…)

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Happy New Year! Changes to My Blog in 2012

When I began posting recipes regularly in 2011,  I was pleasantly surprised when they began getting so many regular hits and lovely comments.  I’ve been blogging for years with little or no traffic and have been very happy to just use this blog as a personal record/diary as our kids have grown and our lives have changed over the past 5 and a half years.  When I began this blog we had 3 very young children and I was a baby myself.  I’ve documented birthdays, financial struggles, health problems, a downward spiral into depression and that slow steady climb up out of it.  Our children have grown and changed and we dragged ourselves out of financial and emotional stagnation and moved across the world to the U.K all the while as I plodded along sharing our lives on this blog.

People dropping in and actually wanting to read about my cooking adventures and trying the recipes themselves has been so rewarding!   I’ve decided my next step should be to split my blog into two, a personal blog and food/cooking blog.  This blog will be my cooking blog and Chaotically Rambling will now be my personal blog.  If you’re following this blog for the food, recipes and all things domestic then you’re in the right place.  If you do enjoy hearing about the kids, my self-reflection, weight loss struggles and seeing photos of us out and about in London and abroad then please pop over to my personal blog and subscribe to the posts over there too.

Hopefully this blog will become a bit more focused and in 2012 I’m hoping to increase from one weekly recipe to two and have some sort of schedule going on.  I’ll post more on that later.  This blog is starting to look a little tired too so I’ll hopefully get working on a revamp soon too.

Thank you so much for all your support my lovely, lovely readers…it means the world to me that you take the time to read my blog and a bit of extra love to my wonderful regular commenters who give me the oomph to keep plodding on!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (the extra 2kg’s I’m carrying around is a testament to how much we enjoyed our’s) and Happy New Year’s for tonight!

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