White chocolate parfait

We don't like Christmas pudding, so I try a new Christmas dessert recipe every year. Last year it was sticky toffee pudd. and this year I wanted to do something lighter. The recipe said that this amount would serve 8, but it served 3 people who had seconds! I made it in advance and froze it.

The recipe comes from this year's 'Woman's Weekly Christmas special'.

100g white chocolate broken up into pieces
250ml ready made vanilla custard
3 tbspns Baileys liqueur
142ml pot double cream
2 tbspns grated dark chocolate
a few raspberries

small loaf tin lined with cling film

Melt the chocolate and stir in the custard.
Leave to cool then stir in the Baileys.
Whip the cream then add it to the mixture.
Spoon it into the lined loaf tin and feeze overnight.
When it's solid, cover and wrap and label it.
Take it out and put it in the fridge 20 mins before you want to use it.
Put onto a plate, sprinkle the top with grated dark chocolate and decorate with a few raspberries.

Note: it melts quite quickly!

Christmas Day

Hope you had a great Christmas.

I shan't forget ours in a hurry, as I nearly burnt the house down!

I put some part-baked rolls in the oven to bake, ready to eat with our starter in the evening. Then we went out Christmas morning to visit our son and family and I forgot they were still in the oven! Luckily we came back earlier than we'd intended, as I wanted to make sure that the duck would be cooked  ready for our early evening meal. When we opened the lounge door, smoke was seeping under the door from the kitchen, and the kitchen was full of smoke! I quickly turned off the oven, and we had to open doors and windows to get rid of the smoke! My nicely-heated house turned into an ice block!
But it could have been an inferno!

Here are the rolls - blocks of solid charcoal!

Since then, I make sure everything is off before we go out!

Happy Christmas!

                                          Wishing you a very Happy Christmas.


Decided to start a new tradition and have muffins for breakfast on Christmas day. The idea is Nigella's, as is the recipe for Christmas morning muffins.

You'll find the recipe on Nigella's site here .

Blueberry muffins

I found a punnet of blueberries hidden in the depths of the fridge, and as it's snowing outside, thought I'd make some of our favourite blueberry muffins.
Everyone has their own favourite muffin recipe, but this one came from an American friend when we were in Chicago. I loved them so much that I came back to the UK with 2 muffin tins in my suitcase! This was before muffins had arrived here.
Anyway this is the recipe I always use. I've anglicised it !

It's supposed to make 12, but I only ever get 10 muffins from it.

225g plain flour
100g caster sugar
2 tspns baking powder
1 egg
250ml milk
120ml vegetable oil [ I use sunflower]
muffin paper cases and muffin or bun tin to stand them in

Preheat oven gas6/200C/400F

Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder together in a bowl.
In a measuring jug add the milk, oil and egg and beat together.
Mix the milk mixture into the dry one, but be careful NOT to overmix. It will still look a bit lumpy.
Spoon the mixture into the paper cases, filling them about 3/4 full.  [You don't have to use paper cases - just grease a muffin tin.]
Bake them for about 20 mins - the tops should be golden.

I like this recipe because you can make it into what ever kind of muffins you want.
For fruit muffins, add 200g of fruit - fresh or tinned [drain the liquid from the tin!] and 1 tspn cinnamon in with the flour mixture.
For chocolate muffins, use 40g cocoa and 175g plain flour, and add 100g chocolate chips to the flour mixture for an even better muffin.
For apple and cinnamon muffins, my favourite, use soft brown sugar instead of caster and add 1 tspn cinnamon and 150g chopped apple to the flour mixture.
I made banana ones for my grandsons the other day by adding 2 mashed bananas to the basic mixture.
I've also made peanut butter ones by stirring the liquid ingredients into 4 tbspns crunchy peanut butter then adding this to the dry ingredients.
The list is endless!

Date and walnut brownies

I'm hooked on dates - the edible kind!

I wanted to join in the 'We Should Cocoa' December challenge. This is the first time I've joined in, so I decided to make some brownies.

The idea is to make something with chocolate, and each month an extra ingredient is added and this month it's dates. This month's challenge has been set by Choclette of Chocolate Log blog. Here's the link .

The recipe is from an old copy of a 'Woman's Weekly' Christmas special magazine.




Makes 24 brownies
200g plain chocolate
250g butter, softened
4 med. eggs
300g caster sugar
125g plain flour
100g chopped walnuts
150g stoned and chopped dates

26x16.5 tin, lined with parchment paper

Preheat oven gas5/190C

Melt the chocolate and leave it to cool.
Then beat the chocolate and butter together; beat the eggs and sugar together till foamy and then add it to the chocolate mixture.
Fold in the flour, then add the walnuts and dates.
Spoon this into the pan and bake for about 30 mins till the cake is just set in the centre.
Leave it to cool in the tin then cut into 24 squares.

I made half of the amount, used a 20cm square tin and baked it for about 25 mins. It turned out fine.

A quick cake fix!

I made an apple pie yesterday and had some pastry left over. What should I do with it? Then I remembered a childhood favourite - Welsh cheese cakes. There's no cheese in them nowadays, but they're tasty and quick and easy to make.

you need:

a bun tin
leftover shortcrust pastry
1 egg and it's weight in sugar, butter and flour
1/2tspn baking powder
jam of choice - I used Mirabelle plum [home made]

So, roll out the pastry and then cut out to fill the holes in a bun tin.
Beat the butter and sugar together and then add the egg and fold in the flour and baking powder.
Put a tspn of jam on the bottom of the pastry shell and then a heaped tspn of the cake mixture on top.

I cooked them at gas6/200C for 15 mins, when they were golden.