Christmas turkey and ham pie

We managed to get a bit of the turkey used up in this pie. You could use leftover veg if you were making it on Boxing Day, but its also a good way to use up what's in the fridge.

Soften an onion in butter for about 7 minutes then add sliced leeks and carrots. Cook for a few minutes. Add 200ml stock and 200ml cream (use less cream/more stock if you need a few less calories). Let the sauce thicken.

Add diced turkey and ham, then place mixture in dish. Top with puff pastry. Glaze the pastry with beaten egg then bake at 200C for 20 minutes or so until golden.

Enjoy!

Rum and whiskey truffles

Another warning - these are delicious. They are seriously easy to make and I am planning to give them as Christmas presents. Well, some of them anyway.

Bring 150mls of double cream to the boil. Pour the cream over 200g of broken up chocolate. I used milk chocolate (about 35% cocoa) for the rum truffles and slightly darker chocolate for the whiskey truffles. You could use really dark chocolate - whatever you like!

Stir the cream and chocolate until the chocolate has melted then add 5tsps of your favourite tipple. I added Morgan's rum to the first batch and Glenfiddich to the second.

Leave to set at room temperature. Then, shape into bite size pieces using a teaspoon or melon baller. I found the whiskey truffle mixture to be quite soft and couldn't shape it by hand.

Dip or roll the truffles in e.g cocoa powder, icing sugar, chopped nuts or similar, then place in the fridge to set. The truffles should keep for a week in the fridge but I don't think that will be an issue.

Enjoy!

Brendan's coffee and walnut cake

I'm going to start this post with a warning.

This cake is delicious and addictive!

The first attempt to make a coffee cake was a total disaster. So I turned to the master...the lovely Brendan from The Great British Bakeoff.

I followed the recipe with no ad libbing and it turned out brilliantly. The only changes I made were to use a different tin size and a simple coffee buttercream.  Visit Brendan's website.

Cream together 175g butter with 175g sugar. Beat in three eggs. Add 175g self raising flour plus 1tsp baking powder.

Dissolve 3tsps coffee granules in 1. tbsp boiling water and add. Finally, add 65g chopped walnuts.

Bake until done at 180c. It took about 35 minutes using my tin.

To make the buttercream, use a ratio of half butter to icing sugar. Eg for 100g butter use 200g icing sugar. Add 3tsps coffee granules dissolved in 1tbsp boiling water to the buttercream.

Cover the cake with buttercream and decorate with walnuts.

Apparently the cake will keep for several days in a tin. Mine didn't last that long!