Apricot Cupcakes

Apricot Cupcakes

Ingredients

For the cake

• 100g of self raising flour
• 125g of butter (softened)
• 125g of caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 100g of ready to eat apricots chopped small
• 2-3 table spoons of milk

For the topping

• 150g of butter (softened)
• 280g of icing sugar
• 1 table spoon of apricot jam
• 1 drop of orange food colouring (or until you get the colour you want)

We made 17 cakes

Method

Cake

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C
2. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the butter
3. Use the tips of your fingers to rub the mixture together until crumbly (this didn't happen with ours for some reason so I just bunged it into a food processor with a plastic blade)
4. Add the sugar and mix it in
5. Add in the eggs and mix
6. Add the apricots and milk and mix

   

   The finished cake mix

7. Spoon the mixture into the cake cases (about 2/3 to 3/4 full)

   

   Fill the cases with the mix

8. Bake the cupcakes for 10-15 mins until golden brown
9. Leave the cakes to cool on a wire rack (ours were a bit soft, I think this was because we used tinned apricots in syrup and didn't drain them enough.

   

   Leave the cupcakes to cool on a wire rack

Topping

1. Place the butter in a large bowl (I put it in the food processor) and add about half of the icing sugar)
2. Beat until smooth
3. Add the remaining icing sugar, 1 table spoon of apricot jam and the food colouring and mix again until smooth

   

   The icing mix

4. Place into a piping bag and pipe the topping onto the now cool cupcakes, for some reason our mix was very runny and so didn't keep its shape after piping

Sweet Potato Chips (not crispy!)

Sweet Potato Chips (shown with mediterranean burger)

I've tried these several times (after trying them at giraffe) and they have never really turned out right, but I thought I'd write up what we tried and hopefully update when I succeed.

Using normal potatoes instead of sweet potatoes seems to work better, however I think the only way this is going to work properly is to deep fry them.

1. Pre heat your oven, I put ours on the hottest which is 250°C in a fan oven.
2. Cut the sweet potato (or normal potato) into chip shaped pieces, you can either scrub the skins or peel them depending on your preference, leaving the skins on does seem to get them a bit crispier
3. Put them in a bowl with some oil (we used olive oil), salt, pepper and some herbs (we used oregano and garlic)
4. Mix the ingredients thoroughly with your hands
5. Spread the chips out on a baking tray on some baking paper (the paper helps to stop them from sitting in any excess oil.
6. Bake them until lightly browned and then turn and bake again until browned on the other side, for ours it took about 15-20 mins each side.
7. Serve your probably soft chips!

Mediterranean Beef Burgers (Hairy Dieters style!)

Mediterranean Beef Burgers

Dafni normally makes burgers a little different to this, and at some point we will post how she makes them.

Today, however, we decided to follow the recipe in the Hairy Dieters book (as in a book of low calorie recipes from the Hairy Bikers)

The TV series and consequently the accompanying book makes use of little tricks to make food taste good but contain fewer calories such as using stronger tasting cheese so you don't need so much, or in the case of the burgers adding more ingredients to the burger to reduce the amount of calories per serving.

The actual recipe in the book is to make burgers in ciabatta rolls with salad and mozzarella. We, however have opted just to make the burgers and add our own accompanying sides.

We have also made double the quantity than the book says and are freezing some.

Anyway, enough waffling, onto the recipe!

Ingredients

• 2 courgettes
• 2 medium onions (we used 1 large one)
• 800g of extra lean beef steak mince
• 4 garlic cloves (crushed)
• 1 teaspoon of oregano (we used dried)
• 1 teaspoon of basil (we had some fresh)
• 1 tablespoon of tomato puree

Made 14 burgers

Method

1. Trim the end(s) off of the courgettes and grate them, if using a hand grater its worth leaving the end that joins the courgette to the plan on as it provides a good handle as you get to the end of the courgette. Add the grated courgette to a bowl.
2. Peel the onion(s) and grate them too. Add the grated onion to the bowl.

   

   Grated courgette and onion in a bowl

3. Add the minced beef, garlic, oregano, basil, tomato puree and a little salt and pepper to the bowl.
4. With clean hands mix the ingredients, it works well if you squish it through your fingers in the bowl.

   

   All the ingredients mixed

5. Once thoroughly mixed take hand fulls of the mix and shape them into the size (and thickness) of the palm of your hand (imagine, if it's not too gruesome, the size and shape of your hand if you cut it off your arm and cut your fingers and thumbs off, this is a good portion size for meat for a meal)

   

   The palm sized/shaped burger

6. If freezing wrap them in baking paper and put in an airtight container and freeze.
7. If cooking immediately brush some oil over a frying pan and place over a low heat
8. Fry the burgers for about 10 minutes or until browned and cooked through, turning half way through cooking.

   

   Fry the burgers until brown and cooked through

9. For the dish showed in the picture with sweet potato and normal chips view the chip post and serve with salad.

Spinach Pie (Spanakopita)

Spinach Pie

Ingredients

• Dafni's Pastry (see pastry recipe)
• 1kg of Frozen spinach
• A combination of leeks, spring onions and onions. For this version we used 3 leeks and a bunch (8) of spring onions.
• 400g of Feta
• Fresh Dill/Parsley (however we used 5 teaspoons of dried mixed herbs, but fresh is better)
• White pepper to season

Method

Filling

1. Put the frozen spinach in a pot and cover with water and heat until the blocks are broken up and the water is boiling

   

   Add frozen spinach to a pan

   

   Cover spinach with water
2. Trim the top and bottom and cut the leeks into 1-2cm rings

   

   Chop the leeks into 1-2cm rings

3. Trim the top and bottom and cut the spring onions into 1-2cm rings

   

   Chop the spring onions into 1-2cm rings

4. (If using onion coarsely dice)
5. By the time you have cut the leeks and onions the spinach will be ready

   

   Spinach is ready

6. Put a sieve over a bowl to drain the spinach, use a spoon to force the water out

   

   Sieve and bowl to dry spinach

7. The spinach should be quite dry

   

   Keep the water and spinach for later

8. Keep the water to cook the leeks and onions in, add the water, leeks and onions back to the pan and bring to the boil again

   

   Leeks and spring onions boiling in the water from the spinach

9. Chop the feta into small cubes, the easiest way is to cut each block in half so you have 4 pieces, then cut from the end of those to make long strips, then cut along the strips to make cubes

   

   Cut each feta block in half and align

   

   Cut the feta into strips and stack on their long end

   

   Cut the feta again to form small cubes
10. Once the leeks and onions are soft strain them the same as with the spinach, discard the water now
11. Add the feta, spinach, herbs, pepper, leeks and onion to a bowl

    

    Spinach, feta, leeks & spring onions

12. If you are going to cook the pie another time stop at this point and put this filling mix and the pastry into the fridge

Pie assembly

1. Start with the larger ball of pastry, place it on a floured surface

   

   Ball of pastry on a floured surface

2. With a floured rolling pin roll the pastry until its large enough to comfortably cover the bottom and sides of your dish (this will probably be larger than you think)

   

   Rolled out pastry to cover the bottom and sides of the dish

3. Place the bottom of the pie into the dish and push into the corners

   

   Push the pastry into the dish

4. Add the filling to the dish

   

   Filling in the pastry bottom

5. Roll out the smaller piece until its large enough to cover the top
6. Fold the top edges over to seal the two pieces together

   

   Fold the edges over the top

7. Prick the top with a fork and press the pastry together with the sides of the fork

   

   Prick the top and squeeze the edges with a fork

8. Brush the top with milk

   

   Brush the top with milk

9. Place in the oven at 180° for 30-45 minutes or until the top is nicely browned (for some reason ours took quite a bit longer today). This should serve 6.

Dafni's Pastry

I'm not sure if this pastry has a real name, but for me it's Dafni's pastry.

We use this for a few different things that we make, so I thought it would be worth separating out how to make it to save going over it each time!

Ingredients

(These are rough guidelines, you will need to adjust as you go)

• 500g of plain flour
• 1/2 cup (125ml) of water
• 1/2 cup (125ml) of olive oil

Method

1. Measure out 500g of plain flour into a bowl

   

   Measure 500g of flour

2. Make a dent in the middle so that it will hold the water and oil

   

   Make a dent in the middle of the flour

3. Measure out the water and oil and add to the flour

   

   Add the oil and water to the flour

4. Mix and knead the mixture by hand. It should have a firm and slightly greasy consistency. Breaking it into smaller balls makes it easier to mix. If the mixture is dry and flakey add more water, if its too sticky add more flour

   

   Mix the flour water and oil, splitting it into balls helps

5. For most of our recipes we split the dough into two balls, one 3/4 and one 1/4. Cover the bowl with cling film and chill for 4-6 hours to make rolling easier.

   

   For most recipes we split the dough into 2 balls, cover with cling film and chill for 4-6 hours