Home made beefburgers

I am relieved that I can honestly say I have never bought a value burger from any supermarket. In fact, I rarely buy any sort of burgers and do my best not to buy any processed food.

So, in light of the current horse meat in burgers scandal, a few thoughts.

1) support your local butcher
2) buy locally reared meat (or at the very least know where it comes from)
3) make you own burgers

Add a finely chopped onion to som minced beef. Season with herbs, e.g. Basil, sage, thyme (whatever you like). Add a beaten egg and mix together with your hands.

Shape into beefburgers and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Cook by either grilling or frying.

Serve with a ciabatta roll, cheese, slice of beef tomato and a dollop of mustard mayo (mix mustard and mayo together).

Eat!

(Apologies for the photo quality - the first burger got eaten very quickly and this one didn't last long either).

Mary Berry's carrot cake

I warned you there would be a lot of Mary Berry coming up!

This cake is delicious and moist, and much easier to make than I thought. And I am counting it as one of my 5 a day.

Measure into a large bowl: 225g self-raising flour, 2tsps baking powder, 150g light muscavado sugar, 50g chopped walnuts, 100g grated carrots (mind your fingers!), 2 mashed ripe bananas, 2 large eggs and 150ml sunflower oil.

Beat until smooth and turn into 8 inch deep round cake tin, base lined with baking parchment. Bake at 180C (160C fan) for 50 - 60 minutes.

For the topping, beat 175g full fat soft cheese, 50g softened butter and 100g sifted icing sugar.

Decorate with walnuts.

Enjoy!

Mary Berry's Victoria sandwich

Quite a lot of my posts from now on are likely to start with "Mary Berry's..." - I am currently working my way through her Baking Bible, which was a wee Christmas pressie from my father-in-law.

I have been following Mary's all-in-one method. Up until now I creamed the butter and sugar before folding in the flour. However everything has turned out perfectly!

For the Victoria sandwich, mix together 8oz butter, 8oz sugar, 8oz self raising flour, 2tps baking powder and four eggs.

Divide mixture into two greased and lined eight inch sandwich tins and bake at 180C (160C fan oven) for about 25 minutes.

Traditionally, a Victoria sandwich is sandwiched with strawberry or raspberry jam; however his one was sandwiched with buttercream. (2oz butter and 8oz icing sugar), then dusted with icing sugar.

It didn't last long.

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!

Duck tales #2

A (not) very sad farewell was said to four fawn runner drakes today.

Of the six duck eggs hatched in the incubator, only two were ducks. Could have been worse...

It was impossible to tell the boys and girls apart until they began to moult. The drakes then developed the give-away curly feather on their tails.  They were much bigger than the ducks and developed beautiful plumage.

The other way to tell them apart is by their quacking, or lack of. Drakes make a characteristic rasping noise and ducks quack. Loudly!

Anyway, the boys are off to their new life on a pond with lots of other ducks. And I am looking forward to making duck egg sponge cake in the spring.