yummeelicious

I had a moment of inspiration on Sunday, helped along with the power of ‘googling’ rice pudding and bananas. What started out as a plan to make rice pudding for the boys ended up being far more complicated, time consuming and nowhere near ready for them to eat before bedtime. Needless to say they were still lovely the next day.

Although there is alot of chilling time, these are very simple to make and can be made with little ‘helpers’ as very little cooking and no baking is involved.

Filling

Add 200g of pearl rice, 1Litre of milk and teaspoon of vanilla extract into a large pot. Bring to the boil then allow to simmer for approximately 45 minutes or until the rice is cooked and most of the liquid has been absorbed by the rice.

When the rice is cooked, add 2 chopped bananas, 50g caster sugar and stir over medium heat until fully combined and allow to cook for 2 minutes.

Stir in one egg yolk and 60g unsalted butter until the egg is combined and the butter is fully melted and incorporated.

Transfer to a bowl and chill for at least 2 hours.

Assembly

Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcakes cases.

Place a packet of sponge finger biscuits in the food processor with 90g of softened unsalted butter. Pulse until you have a breadcrumb consistency and the biscuit  crumbs are coated in the butter.

Add two teaspoons of the biscuit crumb to each cake case, pressing firmly with the back of the teaspoon to ensure the crumb is compressed and fully covering the base of the cases.

Place in the fridge for 1 hour to chill.

Melt 200g of chocolate and pour over the biscuit bases until the biscuit base is fully covered and the chocolate is roughly the same depth.  Return to the fridge for one hour to chill.

Once the chocolate has chilled and hardened again, fill the cupcake cases to the top with the rice mixture, compressing with the back of a spoon.

Return to the fridge to chill for 1 hour.

These little treats have a  lovely banoffee taste to them. They are best taken out of the fridge 30-60 minutes before eating as the chocolate layer hardens and makes for fantastic jaw breakers.

A perfect little treat!

After making a lemon flavoured Daisy Cake for my mam’s birthday last weekend, I was left with some homemade lemon curd that I hadn’t used. Whilst eating it all with a spoon would have been perfectly fine with me, I thought I should do the lemon curd some justice and do something a little more creative. I thought the lemon curd would make a lovely filling for some little buns. So I whipped up a batch of my usual cupcake mix and then added a generous dollop of lemon curd on top.

Most bakers have their own fool-proof bun mix but mine is: 125g butter or margarine, 125g caster sugar, 2 eggs, 125g self-raising flour, 1 tsp vanilla extract and 2 tbsp milk. The quickest way is to put all the ingredients in a food processor and whizz up until combined but you can go the traditional route and cream the butter and sugar and then beat in the eggs and flour. Divide the mixture up equally into 12 cases and bake for 15-20 minutes in a 160 degree fan oven. These took a little longer than usual due to the lemon curd filling.

I had another reason to make cupcakes, and that was the gorgeous cupcake cases I got a pressie a few weeks ago and haven’t had a chance to use. I decided that lemon curd cupcakes would be fitting since the lemon curd recipe and the bun cases came from the same person (thanks Aoife).

With the decadent filling and the pretty cupcake cases, these cupcakes needed an equally decadent frosting. A bar of white chocolate has been calling me to eat it for the last week so I decided to use this for my frosting.

175g white chocolate, 250g icing sugar, 225g unsalted butter, 1 tsp vanilla extract and 1 tbsp milk. Whisk all the ingredients except the chocolate, until fully combined. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave on a low power setting for approximately 2 minutes, checking every 30 seconds to ensure it doesn’t burn and leave to cool slightly. Add the cooled melted chocolate to the butter and sugar mixture and whisk for 2-3 minutes until the mixture thickens sufficiently to pipe. Place the frosting in a piping bag with the nozzle of your choosing and pipe away. Top with a candied lemon slice for decoration.

These are not your everyday cupcakes, definitely a special yummee treat!

Man can not live on baked goods alone! Well maybe not, but this woman definitely could! This is the last week of the month for me, so money for fancy ingredients is scarce but that doesn’t mean I can’t bake something nice. The fridge looks like it belongs to Old Mother Hubbard and unless you are under 5 and enjoy tiny pots of fromage frais you’d be wasting your time looking. I did have eggs though and a couple of lemons, which in fairness looked like they should have been used yesterday, but as the old saying goes ‘waste not, want not’ so lemon flavouring it was.

On a recent trip north of the border to Asda, I found some adorable mini loaf cases which I have been dying to use. This influenced my google search of “mini lemon loaves” which provided me with this recipe. This is a gorgeous blog I have not come across before, but I have already added it to my Google Reader feed! The final decision was made when I read the recipe and it said  3 eggs! It was fate as all I had were 3 eggs!

I will admit that the help of my 2 year old prevented me following the recipe exactly but I did end up with some gorgeously sticky lemon drizzle loaves.

I remember when we bought our house first, we were thrilled to have a garden. After years living in tiny apartments, and especially the previous 2 years in a ground floor box of an apartment with no balcony or outside space, we were thrilled when we bought our house. It has no major front garden but has, what was to us at the time, a huge back garden with loads of potential. We had lofty dreams of vegetable patches, herb gardens, greenhouses, cherry blossom trees. We tried the lot, and then realised that neither of us are particularly green fingered. Gardening is hard work and the rewards require patience which I don’t think either of us have. In fairness most of the ideas were his but one that was mine was growing our own rhubarb. We grew it in a large pot and in fairness with got some nice rhubarb one season. By the time the next season came around, all the pot contained was weeds! So back to the supermarket to buy my rhubarb which is less hassle and while season is not expensive. Needless to say a number of years on in our house, the garden contains a rather oversized trampoline, a swing, multiple scooters, bikes, tractors, not to mention the 20 footballs and goal posts. The one thing that does remain from our original garden dreams is my cherry blossom tree.

I LOOOOOOVE RHUBARB!! Totally adore it, would eat it with anything for any meal or just for the sake of eating. One of the things I like about rhubarb is that is one of the few vegetables that you can only really get in season. So with the limited window in the year when rhubarb is a possibility I think the only thing to do is make as much rhubarb as possible. As  a child, I remember rhubarb stewed with custard and rhubarb tarts which are what I would call the usual things to do with rhubarb but this year I decided I would try out some other things to do with rhubarb and add it too as many things as possible.

Rhubarb and ginger cupcakes

I like making cupcakes, because they are quick and easy, there is always enough for everyone and they look pretty. Also, who doesn’t like cupcakes! However I wanted to incorporate my first purchase of rhubarb of the year and do something a little different. So I took out “The Flavour Thesaurus” and looked up rhubarb flavour combinations and happened upon ginger. I added a teaspoon of ground ginger to my usual cupcake recipe and then a cup of finely chopped rhubarb (1cup for a batch of 12). You need to chop finely enough that it will cook in the 12 minutes or so but big enough to know they are there! To decorate them, I used a meringue-type frosting made with a rhubarb syrup! They were Yummee but I did discover some people who don’t like rhubarb!! Strange individuals!

Moelleux au Chocolat with Rhubarb Compote

After watching the second episode of Series 1 of “Little Paris Kitchen” and seeing how simple a Moelleux au Chocolat with a salted caramel centre appeared, I decided I had to make one. Of course I realised too late in the evening that I had no cream to make the caramel. So to improvise, I decided to make a rhubarb compote to accompany my molten chocolate.

I made my compote with 2 cups of rhubarb, 4 tablespoons of brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of water simmered to 116oC for about 5 minutes. The result is a soft, sweet and tangy compote that I had to restrain myself to stop eating and wait for the accompanying cake. The cake was not the world’s greatest moelleux au chocolat but it still tasted good and the compote went fantastically with it. Of course, if you manage to have any of the rhubarb compote left over it can be used on any number of dishes. The Gastronomic Girls like theirs on yoghurt and in smoothies but I am sure the possibilities are endless.

I plan to continue my mission to find additional things to do with Rhubarb that are just as Yummee! Feel free to leave me some suggestions, maybe even savoury things

The things you can do with a simple heart shaped cookie cutter. A joint early morning effort with my mam and the boys.

A nice post dinner treat!

On the request of my 2 year old, I made cupcakes today so as he could decorate them with sugar spaceships and police cars that we bought in Asda last week.

The cupcakes themselves were a variation on a Nigella Lawson recipe with 10g of flour replaced with cocoa powder to make them chocolatey (his favourite).

I added a couple of drops of orange essence to the royal icing mix before he expertly placed the decorations on top.

Yummeelicious!!