Recipe Post

Apple Cake
Went to make Carrot Cake and had run out of Carrots, so used a couple of Apples instead. It's worked realy well!

150g light muscovado sugar (can use white)
150g dark muscovado sugar (can use soft dark brown)
300ml cooking oil
6 eggs
2 cooking apples, peeled, cored and grated
a couple of handfulls of raisins
300g self rasing flour
tsp baking powder
tsp cinamon
half tsp all spice

Heat Oven to Gas 4/180degC Line a 9" square cake tin

Mix the oil, sugar and eggs together, add the apple and rasins. Mix in the flour, spice and baking powder.

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for an hour to an hour and a half.

When you stab the cake in the middle, and comes out clean (no mixture, condensation/slight sheen is ok) take the cake out of the oven, take it out of the tin (but still in the baking paper) and place on a cooling rack to cool.

Cut into squares and freeze in individual greesproof wraps. Pull out one each morning to put in kids lunch box, will be defrosted by lunch time, and sneak some extra fruit into them

Wow! Made up with raspberries and whisky it will be FANTASTIC for Cranachan!!! Strawberries and Vodka for Romanoff............ Thanks for the inspiration!

I am making marmalade this weekend. Anyone else?

I will be making some this week. I wimp out and use Mamade - from a tin. Do you do it properly from the raw orange?

The season for seville oranges is almost over now, but you may find some.

It makes all the difference on taste to do it yourself.

2lbs of seville
2 large lemons
4 pints of water
2lbs of sugar

put the orange and lemon into the water and bring to the boil. then simmer for at least an hour. Take out the fruits and let them cool down. take the seeds out of the fuit and put them into the water.

Boil for another 10 minutes at least.Then after; take the seeds out of the water.
Scrape all the pith from the insides of the fuit skins with a spoon. Chop it all up and put into the water. You can cut the peels to any thickness and size you want. I use ab out half the peels. Add the sugar and bring to the boil.

Keep it at a good bubble for a while. Now watch the mixture. It will eventually form a froth. Stir this with a steel spoon and watch how the liquid turns to jelly on the spoon, when it cools. If you overcook it; the jelly will become very stiff and unspreadable. So you need to judge it and knock off the heat at about the right point. that's where you need experience. But generally easy enough to do.

Have done a quick edit for you KaznKev (I walked through the woods where I pick mine today and noticed some shoots so have a feeling it wont be long)

The wild garlic is also great for pesto. I got this off the interweb, however tend to just throw stuff into the food processor 'till it tastes right.

Ingredients

80 g wild garlic leaves
50 g parmesan (or similar hard) cheese
50 g pine nuts
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
100 ml olive oil + some more for topping up the jar

Method

1. Wash the wild garlic leaves and dry them carefully (a salad spinner is a great help!)
2. Grate the cheese (I use my MagiMix food processor for this)
3. Grind the pine nuts in a food processor and add cheese, salt and pepper
4. Add about 1/2 of the wild garlic leaves and blend
5. Repeat with the remaining leaves
6. Add the olive oil and blend
7. Put in sterilised jar and top up with oil so that the pesto is covered and close lid

Jackson Pollack Wall Cake

2 kg Self raising flour
6 eggs
500 gm Goats cheese
500 ml Virgin olive oil
500 gm Lard
250 gm caster sugar
Small box polyfiller
3 Bay leaves
Small tins of red,yellow, blue, green,white,black household paint.
2 bottles of vodka.
Bunch of violets, roses petals.
4 Blue Posts

1) Mix some of the lard into the flour.
2) Beat in the eggs to the mixture.
3) Heat some of the olive oil and melt the goats cheese.
4) when the cheese has melted stir in the polyfiller.
5) Add caster sugar and bay leaves.

Eat the flour/egg mixture and the goats cheese and remaining lard.
Then consume the tins of paint and egg shells.
Wash down with the remaining olive oil and vodka.
Eat the Blue Posts.

Stand on top of a step ladder near the ceiling.
Wait for multi coloured yawn to decorate wall.

Some good tips on here. Trouble is I'm not very good at cooking.

Plim

The best way to cook anything is go with the flow and how you feel about what you are cooking..
And if you mess up first time round,just try something else with less stuff to put in it,or even better just get the ideas from the tv shows and go from there,that is how i learned to ccok and i havent killed anyone up to now..

BELOW: Its a copy and paste, an easy one for anyone with not much cooking ability. Tastes yummy too. I do lots of variations on this Ive included the link too so you can see the method with pictures if you want to.

http://www.route79.com/food/omelette.htm


The Route 79 Omelette

This is one of my favourite "late night" dishes. When you know you haven't got much time to do a full-on cooking session - and you are feeling tired but ravenous. The kids will love this for their main meal too. This will take no longer than 15 minutes - and is made for two to share. Raid the fridge for the following:

You don't have to use precisely the above - but I can gaurantee you'll find the combination of all the above simply exquisite! The German-style sausage should be the already-cooked ones that you find in the chiller-cabinets or deli in the supermarket - can be of any sort you like: smoked, garlic, lamb, veggie etc. or even use pepperoni instead. Make sure you keep a couple in your fridge all the time - they last ages due to them being vacuum-packed - and they come in real handy on occasions like this!

I just love that horse-shoe shape that the Germans make their sausages! Just slice up the sausage into the thickness of 1 centimetre. Heat up a couple of tablespoons of oil in frying pan - medium flame - and then add the onions and sausage pieces. Stir it around so that all the sausage pieces are flat in the pan - the objective is to lightly brown both surfaces of each sausage piece - by which time the onion should also be lightly browned too.


Then add the mushroom pieces. Fry for a little more - these will cook quick and the pan should get a little liquidy due to the water coming out of the mushrooms. The objective here is to fry until all the water has evaporated - should only need a few minutes. Then add the chopped tomato. Make sure you've removed the centre of the tomato - the pulp and seeds. As these will make the pan too wet. I take the middle out and eat it whilst preparing - I love tomato! My dad has a habit of putting lumps of tomato pulp mixed with vinegar into his glass of Scotch Whiskey! Everyone has a different use for tomato pulp I'm sure!


Just fry the pan for a little more - this is the point that you add some salt and crushed black pepper. Be generous with the pepper please! And then add the beaten egg. Make sure the egg was beaten real good. It should be frothing before you pour it into the pan.


Now just let the egg cook from the bottom on medium flame. You will see the egg start to solidify and puff up a bit. Whilst you are doing this - put the grill on max heat. After a few minutes - put the frying pan under the grill - right up close to the grill element. This will make the omelette puff up in a way that just could never be acheived on the hob! (Be careful if your frying pan has a plastic handle - you don't want to melt it under the grill!)


Return the stove-top to finish it off - sprinkle some coriander leaf on top - and turn the heat right down to the lowest possible flam eon the smallest burner. This will keep the omelette warm whilst you make a couple of toast - butter them - and cut them into halves.

Place two halves of toast onto each of two large plates - and then cut the omelette in the pan into four quarters using the edge of the wooden spoon/spatula. It should cut really effortlessly. Slide each quarter of omelette onto the plates straight from the pan - two on each plate - on top of the toast - arranged in a buttterfly fashion.

Now all you have to do splash a bit of Tabasco sauce over it - and eat! Enjoy!

I will leave you with some arty pictures of this dish to make your mouth water: