Super Simple & Quick Crunchies

 This recipe is great if you don´t have much in the cupboard or have unexpected guests and need to whip something up very quickly as it is so simple and quick to make. It is also ideal to make with older kids because it´s so easy to do. I don´t know the origin of Crunchies so I´m not sure if they are British or from elsewhere...however this particular recipe comes from Delia Smith´s book The Complete Cookery Course and what´s more it only has 3 main ingredients so is pretty economical too! You could always adapt the recipe too and add dried fruits, nuts or coconut...anything you want really.

Ingredients (makes about 12)
110 g porridge oats (or 50g whole or jumbo oats(very difficult to find!) and 60g porridge oats)
75g brown sugar (preferably demerara)
110g butter or margarine

Method
1. Preheat oven to 190ºC(375ºF), Gas Mark 5.
2. Grease a shallow square tin of roughly 28 x 18cm (I´m not sure my tin measures this but it did the job anyway!)I´d also reccommend that you use some baking paper as despite greasing the tin with baking spray, it did stick a little.
3.Place oats and sugar in a bowl and combine.
4.Melt the butter over a low heat so it doesn´t brown, then add to oats and sugar and combine well.
5. Tip mixture into baking tin and press it out evenly using your hands, the back of a spoon or a knife.
6. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until a pale golden colour and remove from the oven.
7. Cut into 12 equally sized bars while still warm and then leave to cool and crisp.

Mincemeat & Apple Crumble

Firstly, I apologise for my absence in blogging but there has been a whirlwind of activity going on what with moving house, Christmas and then the usual reasons so I just can´t seem to find time to fit in blogging!!Secondly, I have to apologise for posting a very similar recipe to my last post!!

I thought you might like it though as it´s a delicious way to use up any leftover mincemeat after Christmas (we had a humungous jar!!).It´s based on a Delia Smith recipe which I tweaked to fit with the leftovers I had and because I wanted to make a smaller portion.Also this recipe is so quick and simple you could make it with your children. I tried to get my daughter to join in especially with making the crumble but she didn´t want to...I think she didn´t want to get her hands dirty!!She did help me put the crumble topping on though and flatten it out with her hands,which she seemed to enjoy doing!!I think she thought it was like playing in the sand!!

Ingredients:
Mincemeat leftovers(I used about 215g as that was all I had left)
1/2 cooking apple (Bramley or Reineta)(peeled and chopped)
1/2 Ambrosia apple(peeled and chopped) (I think there was around 150g apple in total)
37g butter(at room temperature)
37g caster sugar
117g plain flour

Method:
1. Mix apples with the mincemeat and place in greased shallow pie plate or dish.
2. Place flour in a large bowl and rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips as if you were making pastry.
3. When all the butter has been rubbed in and the mixture looks like breadcrumbs,add the sugar and combine.
4. Sprinkle the mixture on top of mincemeat and apples and cook in a preheated oven at 180ºC for 30-40minutes or until a golden colour.Serve hot with cream or custard!Delicious!

Halloween Eyeball cupcakes

 Once again rather behind on my posts!!I love Halloween and this year was even more special as it was the first year that I could celebrate it with Chloe! I can´t wait till she´s a bit older to hold a Halloween party for her and her friends!This year though we celebrated Halloween in a pretty mudane kind of way. For starters, I had to work till 9pm so there was no trick-or-treating but I think she´s still a bit young for that anyway. There was a Halloween part at her nursery school,which she dressed up for...we managed to find a cute little witch´s costume.

The day after Halloween (All Saint´s ) is a bank holiday in Spain so I decided to whip up Annabel Karmel´s Halloween Eyeball Cupcakes although instead of the vanilla, I used lemon rind to give them a nice lemony flavour. As I didn´t have much icing sugar, I made some glace icing,half of which I coloured green using yellow and blue liquid food colouring. I then used assorted sweets for the eyeballs and to make the faces. Unfortunately,they don´t look quite as good as the photos pictured on the recipe webpage but nevertheless these are easy to bake and great fun to make and decorate with your kids. I tried to involve Chloe by trying to let her help me mix the green icing but all she wanted to do was to try and eat it and then wandered off to find her daddy!!Maybe I have to wait till she´s a little older to try and do some baking/cooking with her. I´m looking forward to when we can bake/cook together!

Easy Chocolate Refrigerator Cake otherwise known as Tiffin

I felt like cooking this the other day as it was one of my favourite treats when I was a child that my Gran made me...In fact, this is actually her recipe. It´s also a treat which is great to make with children due to its easy preparation and it is also very safe as it doesn´t entail too much work with hot ovens or sharp utensils such as knives. Choc-a -block with hazelnuts, raisins,biscuits and chocolate, it´s perfect to drive away those sugar cravings.

Ingredients

6oz (about 170g) crushed digestive biscuits

2oz (about 56g)hazelnuts, chopped

2oz (about 56g) seedless raisins

2oz (about 56g) plain chocolate

2tbsp golden syrup

3oz (about 85g) butter

Method

1. Melt chocolate, syrup and butter in pan over a low heat as shown in the photo:

2. Take off heat, add biscuits, nuts and raisins and stir till combined.

3.Press into a square 7 inch tin, cut into squares, place in fridge and leave to harden.

I think you could maybe try using different types of nuts, dried fruit eg cranberries and different biscuits as variations of this recipe.

Cooking with kids:Traditional Flapjacks

Every Sunday my niece comes to play,speak and learn English so I thought it´d be nice to try a spot of baking with her, bearing in mind this was my first time trying to bake with kids!! A disaster waiting to happen almost!! As I am getting married this year and don´t want to put on any weight, I´m trying not to do too much baking or eat too many biscuits and cakes so I went for a recipe from my Weight Watchers recipe book. I decided to make traditional flapjacks as I thought it would be a fairly easy recipe to do with kids. Maybe not the most kid-friendly recipe as you have to stir the mixture over the heat most of the time and there wasn´t a lot that a child, especially if they are quite young, could actually do. She got to add the sugar and oats etc but it was got a bit messy as some of the sugar and oats ended up on the floor, on the hob, everywhere!! Or maybe it was just my own inexperience of baking with kids!! Anyway, we had fun doing it and next time, I´m hoping I´ll learn and pick a more kid-friendly recipe. Unfortunately, my niece doesn´t like sweet things and wouldn´t even try any of the flapjacks. I´m hoping I can eventually bring her round to the sweeter things in life.

Here´s a link to the recipe I used from Weight Watcher´s seeing as I didn´t tweak or change anything....the only slight difference was that I used a mixture of butter and margarine....so much for trying to bake something low-fat!! If you can´t find golden syrup, you could replace it with honey. You could also dip the flapjacks in chocolate or add nuts, raisins or other dried fruit.

Weightwatchers flapjack recipe (maybe not the best photo and next time I´d take them out about 5 mins earlier!)