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

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

2/  In a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat throw in the vegetable oil, diced onion, carrot and crushed garlic

3/  Cook stirring occasionally until the vegetables are softened and the onion has become translucent

4/  Place the mince into the saucepan and cook until browned and any excess liquid has evaporated (drain off the fat if you prefer)

5/  Stir in the tomato paste and flour, stirring continuously for 1 minute

6/  Add the crushed/diced tomatoes, parsley, Worcestershire sauce and stock and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until the liquid has almost completely reduced.   Salt and Pepper to taste

7/  Stir in the frozen peas

8/  Heat your oven to 200 C (400 F)

9/  Layer your meat mixture into an oven dish with a layer of mashed potatoes on top (I like a 50/50 ratio but whichever you prefer is fine)

10/  Fluff up the mashed potato by running a fork along it in straight lines and sprinkle the grated cheese evenly over the top (the shepherds pie pictured is dairy free, no cheese and dairy-free margarine used for mashing…the buttery, cheesy version is delicious though!)

11/  Bake for 15-20 minutes or until it’s golden and crispy on top.  Leave to sit for 5 minutes before serving

You can prepare your Shepherds Pie a few days ahead of time.  If you’re planning to eat your Shepherds Pie within 3 days then stop before the final step (chucking it in the oven) and instead cover and refrigerate.  To freeze for later,  before the final step cover securely and freeze immediately for 1-2 weeks.

If frozen then place your Pie in the fridge the night before and give it a good 18-24 hours in the fridge to defrost.  From the refrigerator place your pie into a preheated oven at 180 C/350 F for 20-30 minutes or until golden and bubbly and heated through.

I tend to double this recipe and it lasts a family of five 3 dinners with a large salad on the side.

You could also make into individual pies, just keep the ratio of meat to potato mash the same and reduce the oven time to 10-15 minutes (check regularly).

* Recipe used is from here

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

4/  Add to your flour mixture your small bowl of wet ingredients and very gently stir it through until you have a soft dough.  Add the remaining milk if your dough is too dry

5/  On a floured surface lay out your dough and gently knead until it comes together

6/  Press out your dough to approximately 2cm (3/4 of an inch) thick and cut out rounds (I used a glass cup with a sprinkle of flour to prevent sticking).  You want to handle the dough as little as possible so cut out as many rounds as you can fit on your first attempt and then gently knead and flatten the remaining dough back out and cut out the rest (should make 12 all together)

7/  Place your scones onto a lined tray flat side up.  Brush them with a little milk and sprinkle a little sugar if you like

8/  Bake for 12-15 minutes or they’ve risen and are lightly golden on top

* Recipe is from Masterchef Australia

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:

• 200g (4-5 small and fat) sausages (cooked, cooled, peeled and diced)  - My favourite Quiche ever was Pork Sausage (cold leftover’s from the night before) and Zucchini and extra diced onion
• 1 heaped cup of left over roast chicken/turkey pulled off the bone roughly
• 1 cup of roughly diced ham (really nice mixed in with the chicken too)
• 1 cup of bacon, crisp it up a little in a pan before adding to your mixture (can be used in smaller quantities if you prefer or mixed with one of the other meats)

• 1-2 large zucchini’s grated  - you won’t really taste them much but they give a lovely texture and are good for you
• Kale – 1 cup or more if you like.  You need to boil the kale first and it will shrink down a lot from fresh. To cook your kale bring a small pot of water to the boil and place you sliced and rinsed kale into the pot. Cover with a lid (or in my case a plate) and boil for 2 minutes.  Drain it and then squeeze all the water out before placing into your Quiche mixture.

• Frozen spinach – one of those small boxes from the frozen section at the supermarket, I guess it might equal 3/4 to 1 full cupful?  Let it defrost on the counter for a little while and squeeze the excess water out
• 1/2 cup of diced bell peppers (red looks pretty but any colour will do)
• 1/2 cup of grated carrot
• 1 medium (go larger if you like) tomato diced

Here’s how to throw your Quiche together:

This one is a crustless Quiche made with cream.  The Quiche below is crustless and has only a sprinkling of cheese and uses soy milk for a low-dairy option.

What’s your favourite Quiche filling?  I don’t think you can go wrong with a basic Quiche Lorraine but lately have been loving a meatier Quiche with some healthy greens to counteract all that cheese and cream.

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).

Icing will hide the bumps and I can happily report (mmm…) once cooled the mars bars and milky ways were a really nice squishy texture inside each cake, not burnt or overly sticky.

Chocolate Bar (Candy Bar) Cupcakes

(makes 12)

• 1/2 Cup of butter, softened

• 1 Cup of Flour

• 1/3 Cup of sugar (original recipe called for 2/3,  I halved it with all the sugar from the chocolate in there)

• 3 eggs

• 2 tsp of vanilla extract

• 1/2 a cup + 3 Tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder

• 1/2 tsp of salt

• 1 and 1/2 tsp of baking powder

• 1/3 of a cup of milk (I used semi-skimmed)

• 10 snack sized chocolate bars of your choice (I used Mars Bars and Milky Ways), each cut into 3 or 4 small pieces

1/ Preheat your oven to 175C/350F and line a 12 hole muffin tray with cupcake liners

2/  In a large bowl beat the sugar and butter until pale and fluffy

3/  Add to your bowl the eggs and vanilla and  beat until combined

4/  In a separate bowl combine the cocoa powder, flour, salt and baking powder

5/  Add your dry ingredients to the wet and gently fold until mostly combined

6/  Add the milk to your mixture and stir until your batter is thick and smooth

7/  Fill your cupcake wrappers to approximately 2/3rd full (I used an ice cream scoop and that was the perfect amount)

8/  Push a few pieces of your cut up chocolate bar into each cupcake

9/  Drop a heaped teaspoon of batter on top of your chunks

10/  Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until just baked through

11/  Place your cupcakes on a wire rack to cool (or if yours have exploded like mine, fix your cupcakes up as best you can before placing on the cooling rack)

I iced mine with plain butter cream (icing/confectioners sugar, butter, a dash of milk and a few drops of vanilla) and placed half a snack sized chocolate bar on top.

Note:  Pop your chocolate/candy bars in the freezer for 5-10 minutes to get a cleaner cut

Maltesers Cupcakes

(makes at least 12, I managed to squeeze 17 cupcakes out of the batter)

• 220g (2 sticks) of butter, softened

• 125g (1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp) of caster sugar

• 50g (1/4 cup) of light brown sugar

• 1 tsp of vanilla extract

• 4 eggs

• 200g (1 cup + 2/3) of Plain (All Purpose) Flour

• 2 tsp of baking powder

• a pinch of salt

• 80g (2.8oz) of Maltesers + extras to decorate

1/ Preheat your oven to 180C/350F and line your 12 hole muffin pan with cupcake wrappers

2/  In a large bowl beat the butter and sugars until pale and fluffy

3/  Beat the eggs into the butter mixture one at a time.  Add the vanilla extract

4/  Gently fold in your flour, salt and baking powder before adding the Maltesers and stirring them through

5/  Divide evenly between the cupcakes and bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.  Leave to cool in the tin

6/  Once completely cooled ice with butter cream and sprinkle some crushed Maltesers over the top if you like

These won’t be winning any nutritional awards but dang they taste good!  I love that you get a big bang for a small amount of effort (kiddos with their eyes bugging out of their head at the sight of cake AND a chocolate bar all in one magical sitting) so definitely a winner that I’ll be happy to make again when birthday’s roll around.

* First recipe is a slightly tweaked recipe from this lovely blog

* Second recipe is a Good Food recipe

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!

]]> http://chaoticallyme.com/2011/12/31/happy-new-year-changes-to-my-blog-in-2012/feed/ 4 chaoticallyme 049 http://chaoticallyme.com/2011/12/26/almost-good-enough-to-forget-youre-eating-turkey-yet-again-left-overs-turkey-soup/ http://chaoticallyme.com/2011/12/26/almost-good-enough-to-forget-youre-eating-turkey-yet-again-left-overs-turkey-soup/#comments Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:41:05 +0000 Jenny http://chaoticallyme.com/?p=3735 ]]> I surely can’t be the only one with eyes bigger than our entire household’s stomach at turkey buying  time.  It’s become a Christmas tradition buying a turkey that barely fits into our oven, gives my biceps a hell of a workout yanking it out of the oven every half hour to baste with the bucket-load of butter melted at the bottom of the pan and leaves us with enough left over turkey on Boxing Day to feed our entire apartment building.

For me turkey sandwiches start to get old really quickly so this spicy soup is one of my favourite go-to recipes in the week following Christmas.   I posted this recipe back in June when we finally roasted our emergency frozen bird and had turkey coming out of ears again.  I’m totally making this soup for lunch and/or dinner tomorrow so I thought I’d post it back up for any one stopping by.

Click the ingredients list for a printable pdf version of this recipe.

1/  Heat olive oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium heat

2/  Add the onion, frying for 5 minutes or until it starts to soften and becomes translucent

3/  Add the red pepper, ground coriander and chilli flakes (if you or your children don’t like spicy food reduce this to 1/4 tsp or alternately if you love a bit of zing you could increase it to 1 full teaspoon) and stir for 1 minute

4/   Pour in the hot stock (assuming you made it up out of a stock cube) and stir in the beans and turkey (you could also use left over roast chicken if you prefer)

5/  Give your soup a taste and add salt and pepper to taste (I like this soup with a heavy dose of cracked black pepper) before bringing to the boil

6/  Lower heat, cover and let simmer for 10 minutes (or until the vegetables have softened)

7/  Give it another taste and season if needed

8/  Stir in your fresh coriander or parsley and serve with crusty bread (or on its own if you’re all carb’ed out from Christmas snacking!).

Enjoy!

Based on this recipe from Good Food.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks with lots of end of year events at school, the crazy move and one of my good friends from Australia visiting (lots of nights out and about!) so I’m relieved everything is falling into place and the end is in sight.

One of my big to-do’s for Christmas Day was our Christmas Cake and here is how it all turned out.  This website has great instructions for decorating your Christmas Cake, head over there for all the details!

Marzipan layer is Delia’s recipe from here.  I didn’t have time to leave mine for days and had to make do with a few hours.  Mine turned out just fine so don’t worry if you’ve left it till the last minute like me and do the final two steps on the same day (night).

I had a few patchy bits (neat is not my forte) so I just squished some bits into the gaps

]]> http://chaoticallyme.com/2011/12/24/just-in-the-nick-of-time-my-christmas-cake-is-finished-christmas-eve-craziness/feed/ 3 chaoticallyme Rich Fruit Cake Decorating ed127 ed129 ed130 ed132 ed133 ed138 ed143 ed151 ed162 http://chaoticallyme.com/2011/12/17/settling-in-slowly-but-surely/ http://chaoticallyme.com/2011/12/17/settling-in-slowly-but-surely/#comments Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:23:02 +0000 Jenny http://chaoticallyme.com/?p=3690 ]]> We’ve moved home 3 times since May 2009 plus 3 mini-moves (i.e living out of luggage) before settling into our first U.K home.  With that in mind you might think that we’d have this moving business down to an art form.  You’d be completely wrong.  It’s become crazy clear to me that no matter how “experienced” you are at loading your crap into boxes, moving it and unpacking it at the other end, moving will always without fail suck balls.  Plain and simple, it sucks balls.  No if’s, but’s or maybe’s.  Moving?  I hate you.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest.  I’m totally NOT going to show you pics of our pretty, pretty flat because we still have unpacked boxes in almost every room.  I managed to finish unpacking the kitchen this week and it only took a very nasty burn on my hand to get my butt into gear (apparently if you reach over a pile of boxes and into your oven you are likely to sizzle your hand on the heating element, oh and if its hot enough you won’t even feel it thus leaving your hand in place for long enough to do a really good job of sizzling your skin).

The lounge room is semi-done as long as you ignore that pile of boxes in the corner and concentrate on the Christmas presents and the tree they’re sitting under.  On a side note, moving just before Christmas has one perk and one perk only.  The tree surrounded by wrapped presents provides a great eye-catcher to detract from the chaos.

We decided to get a real tree this year in the hope of making the house more Christmassy.  I normally start decorating the house at the end of November so we were already a few weeks late with the moving induced exhaustion.  A real tree gave us something to look forward to and I have to say it’s kinda worked.

Here are some photos of us decorating our Christmas Tree last weekend, our last tree was much smaller so we’re a little low on decorations but I still think she’s pretty in a naked kinda way.

I can’t be the only Aussie who grew up treating the Apricot Balls on the platter a bit like the fatty in the corner.  After a long night of boozing with all the pretty, pretty rum balls having been whisked away one by one,  any self-respecting sweet tooth will start to eyeball the apricot balls and settle for what’s left rather than go home hungry.

Don’t get me wrong, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without apricot balls on the table but rum+ chocolate will always prevail in the race for what to gorge myself on first.

Fortunately for me I finally found an Apricot Ball recipe that knocks these babies up a couple of notches (much like a very squeezy pair of Spanx on a wobbly bottom).

Two words:  Chocolate…and Marshmallows!

Apricot Balls

• 125g (4.4 oz) of Plain Sweet Biscuits (I used Nice Biscuits)
• 125g (4 1/2 oz) of Dried Apricots, diced finely
• 30g (2 and a 1/2 Tablespoons) of crushed peanuts (optional)
• 220g (2/3 of a Cup) of Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 1/4 Cup of Desiccated (Shredded) Coconut
• 40g (1.4 oz) of White Chocolate, chopped finely (I just used very small white chocolate chips)
• 60g (2 oz) of Marshmallows, chopped into small pieces (those little mini marshmallows for baking make life so much easier, I just broke them into thirds over the bowl with my fingers)
• 1/4 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1 cup of extra desiccated (Shredded) Coconut for rolling your balls in

1/ Using a food processor, blender or a ziplock baggie and a rolling-pin crush your biscuits into fine crumbs

2/ Add the dried apricot, peanuts, white chocolate, marshmallows and 1/4 cup of coconut

3/ Pour in the vanilla extract and sweetened condensed milk and stir your mixture until well combined

4/ Roll teaspoons of your mixture into balls and coat in the remaining coconut

5/ Place your completed balls onto a greaseproof paper lined tray and refrigerate for at least 2 hours

6/ Give them a little squish back into perfect balls before you serve them

I like to store mine in the freezer (they hold their shape better) but you can also keep them in the fridge for up to 5 days.

* Recipe used is from here.

For other Christmassy treats try my rum balls , rich fruit cake , peppermint creams and fruit mince (mincemeat) recipe’s!