Birthday cake!

Behold the amazing birthday cake!

Steak sandwich and caramelised onions

Mmm this was tonight's dinner and it was gorgeous. Steak, caramelised onions and mayonnaise on toasted ciabatta served with salad and coleslaw.

My caramelised onions:


Nom:

Truffles!

I decided to make truffles as a surprise for Brian for valentines. I asked Claire for her recipe as she makes gorgeous truffles but I won't reveal her secrets. The truffles came out pretty well but I still think Claire has more skill to this one!

Anyway here's the truffle 'mix' being melted together:



The final result, yum!:

Macaroni cheese

Macaroni cheese is proper stodge food. I always make too much of it and never manage to eat it all. It's really cheap and easy to make which is also a bonus.

Italian Beef stew

This was tonight's dinner. I like casseroles so I thought I would try a stew instead. Really simple and quick to make which was a bonus. I served it with garlic potatoes and carrots.

Creamy tomato pasta

I loved this, gorgeous sauce. A lovely mix between cream and tomato. Brian said he wanted meat in it but I liked it just the way it was, with parmesan on top.

Cake

Hmmm not so convinced with this one, the white chocolate mudcake was gorgeous. This came out disastrous but nothing that a load of ganache icing couldn't fix...

Soda Bread

The second result of my baking day yesterday was my Soda bread. Oddly enough I don't think I'd even heard of it until somebody on a forum posted photos of some they had made and then I remembered there being a recipe for it in my Rachel Allen book. Anyway, it's gorgeous if I do say so myself.


Before going in the oven:


Fresh out of the oven:

Cross section (if you look close enough you can see the steam):

And this is what we enjoyed for our dinner last night:

Madeira cake

I was in a baking mood yesterday (Saturday) probably through boredom, so I decided to make 3 things, (only two of which got made in the end) but I'll make my sausage rolls next Saturday, I think. So I picked out a Madeira cake as I love them and used to eat them quite a lot. Very easy recipe and only took me about 10 minutes to make the batter:


Which went into my lovely little loaf tin:

Et voila after 1 hour of cooking we have this beauty:



Yummy:

Chocolate chip shortbread

One word: amazing.

This is gorgeous stuff, only bad thing is the recipe only makes 12 smallish sized pieces. Tastes sensational though. Dusted with cinnamon sugar.

Cookery books

Claire suggested I take a photo of all of the cookery books I own, so I have obliged! I hasten to add that before Christmas I only had around 6 at most...

Spaghetti with chorizo

Really easy recipe from one of my Good Food books. Fry off some chorizo with red pepper in a little oil until the oil is stained from the paprika in the chorizo. Having cooked some spaghetti prior to this, take a cup full from the pan and add it to the chorizo and pan and allow to bubble away for around 5 minutes. Drain your spaghetti and mix with the chorizo and pepper and throw in some fresh basil. Et voila:

Chicken skewers with home-made sweet chili dip and rice.

Ok so I made these last night and I realllly liked them. Pretty simple food but it tasted good and Brian agreed too. The dip was gorgeous and I think I'll try to figure a way of making bottles of the stuff perhaps. So the chicken was marinaded for around 10 minutes but I'd probably leave it longer to let it develop more flavour in the future. It was mixed in; lime juice, garlic, coriander and sugar I believe. The dip was a mixture of rice vinegar and sugar melted down to a syrup, red chili, shallot and cucumber.

Pizza!

Yesterday I made pizza. Second time I've ever made pizza from scratch. I made the dough myself and I had enough to freeze half so will probably make another pizza next week!
I just put chorizo and lots of mozzarella on top of the tomato base. Very tasty.

Before it went in the oven:
After it came out of the oven:
Delicious!