Coronation Chicken Salad

After watching the Olympics Opening Ceremony, I have been very patriotric. Also, the fact that I´m off back to my home country this week for a holiday and to catch up with friends and family is filling me with excitement! So what could be more ideal than to share a traditional English dish perfect for the summer, especially the hot weather (even if it´s not so hot in the UK at the mo!).

This is Coronation Chicken Salad based on the BBC Good Food recipe- I did the creamy version!Coronation Chicken was invented in 1953 by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. This is my version, just slightly different but not much!

Ingredients (for 2)
1 bag of mixed salad leaves
2 skinless chicken breasts
1tsp mild curry powder
2tbsp mild mango chutney
1/2 cucumber, cut into sticks
2tbsp flaked almonds
handful of sultanas
4tbsp natural yoghurt
3tbsp olive oil
juice of 1/2 lime or lemon (I used lime)

Method
1. Combine curry powder with  2 tbsp of yoghurt and cover chicken breasts.
2. Cook in 1 tbsp of olive oil,then slice chicken.
3.Stir remaining yoghurt, mango chutney and lime juice together.
4. Place salad leaves, cucumber and chicken slices in a bowl and add the yoghurt,lime and mango chutney dressing, add almonds and sultanas and toss!

You could make this healthier or more low fat if you use low fat natural yoghurt.

Apple & Pecan Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Glace Icing

I made this cake for my husband´s birthday even though it´s not a very birthdayish looking cake but he doesn´t really like buttercream or fondant and in this way, I can also practice my cake decorating skills with chocolate!

This cake is moist and not overly sweet so is great for those who haven´t got much of a sweet tooth. The recipe is taken from the book: Best Ever Chocolate Cakes & Slices by Konemann....however it´s not very 100 Mile!!Here´s the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup self-raising flour, sifted
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder,sifted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup oil (I used sunflower oil)
2 green apples, peeled and grated
1/3 cup of pecans,chopped

Method:
1.Preheat oven to 180ºC. Grease and line a 21x14x7cm loaf tin with baking parchment.
2. Mix flour, cocoa and sugar together, then add the combined eggs and oil and beat until ingredients are well mixed and there are no lumps and mixture has increased in volume.
3. Fold in pecans and grated apple.
4. Spoon into tin and bake for 45 mins or until toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

When cool, you can decorate the cake as desired. Instead of the decoration suggested in the recipe, I made a simple chocolate glace icing, using icing sugar, cocoa and water,which I made by guesstimation and iced the top of the cake with, then I decorated the cake with pecan nuts and Dr. Oetker´s Chocolate Hearts, which can be found in LeClerc.