Slightly Late Easter Cakes

My parents are returning from their house in France tomorrow, where they have been for about a month so they've missed Easter and all the chocolate-y goodness that it brings.  With this in mind, I have today made them some Easter nest cakes, with a few left over for us!

Chocolate Easter nests
makes 12 cakes, so about 1 serving!  This is my standard cake recipe - I use it to make large cakes too, but don't add any chocolate chips for the bigger cakes.

Ingredients

6oz Self Raising Flour
6oz Caster Sugar
6oz Soft Stork (from a tub, not a block)
3 Eggs
1sp Baking Powder
5tsps Cocoa, mixed with a little water to make a paste.
1 packet Chocolate Chips (optional)

• Preheat oven to 180degC and line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper cases.
• In a large bowl, add the flour, sugar, stork, eggs and baking powder and, using a hand mixer, mix together for 2 minutes.
• Add in the cocoa paste and mix again until fully incorporated.
• Add the chocolate chips to the bowl and stir with a metal spoon, both to keep the air in the mix and to prevent the chocolate chips breaking up.
• Divide the mix equally between the 12 cases and bake in the centre of the oven for 20 minutes.
• Leave to cool on a wire rack until completely cold.

Icing

6oz Stork from a block, at room temperature

2 tbsp Cocoa Powder

9oz Icing Sugar

Dash milk to loosen icing enough to pipe

• In a large bowl, mix stork using an electric hand mixer until soft.
• Add sifted cocoa powder and mixed until incorporated, then slowly add the icing sugar, mixing well each time until all gone.
• Sometimes I find that the icing needs a little milk at aid pipability (is that a word?!) - if so add now and mix thoroughly. 
• I like to mix the icing until it looks a little whipped as it pipes nicely and goes a bit further like this.
• Pipe in rounds onto the top of cakes and, for Easter, add any mini eggs that you haven't eaten whilst cooking!

My finished cakes:

They may not be perfect, but they are delicious!  There are only four here as four have gone to my parents house ready for their return, and four are in the freezer, un-iced, for another day.  This recipe freezes beautifully.  Obviously you can use butter in place of the stork if you so wish, and I sometimes do, but I always keep some stork in the fridge as my Granny always had some in hers, and it's just what I'm used to using, I guess.

I haven't got any further really with the knitted cushions, despite having lost the youngest child to PGL for 3 days.  He's back tonight and I can't wait to hear everything that he has got up to.  It's been strangely quiet without him here, but I'm sure he'll be his usual lively, noisy and slightly self upon his return, shattering the peace in a way only he can!

Where did the days go?

Despite having spent all week with my internal body clock running at least one day ahead of real time, I haven't really accomplished a great deal.  I'm hoping to get some Easter baking done tomorrow, possibly a chocolate cake (my Grandmothers recipe which I shall post next time I make it).  I have some Cadbury's Mini Eggs, which were sent by Sainsbury's on the grocery delivery today in place of one of the childrens' Easter Eggs, so I shall be doing suitably seasonal decorating.

I am also hoping to get at least one more cushion finished over the Easter holidays, possibly two if I can squeeze it in (I find that 3 children fighting over the PC meaning little time for me on there during the day focuses the mind somewhat into finding other activities).  Here are the three that I have finished so far.  I've knitted them in James Brett's Chunky with Merino as I wanted a quick knit but it needed to be economical as I want to make at least eight and soft to the touch.  This yarn fits all three criteria nicely; the colours are just right too!

I originally decided that I wanted each cushion to be a single stitch pattern, but that each one should be different.  I've pretty much stayed with this idea, but I have decided to include a couple of cable designs.  I'm not following any patterns, just picking stitches I like and working out sizes required.  Unfortunately the first cable cushion I have knitted is a bit bigger than planned and is going to need a 22" pad and I only bought 16" and 18" ones so I'm going to have to buy 2 more and I shall also have to make sure that the second cable cushion is as big.  They have worked out pretty well so far and are so delightfully snuggly and soft that the children love them, so I must be doing something right!  I have started putting the patterns on Ravelry, but I've stopped short of completing them, but I should get round to it soon!

I think that I am rather deserving of a cup of tea and a quiet evening staring at mind-numbing nonsense on the box and with the Mr on the graveyard shift this week, the remote is all mine!

A new blog and a curry - in one day?!

So, I thought it about time that 'The Stripey Shed' had a blog.  There are lots of goings on at 'The Shed' and my twitter and facebook pages aren't really suitable for a lot of it, like recipes and patterns that I would like to share, so I needed a new outlet...and here it is!

Last night was 'End Of Month Panic' for dinner.  It's not really a panic this month as there was plenty to choose from, but some times it is.  Payday is on the 28th of each month, so as a general rule the 26th is 'EOMP' and the 27th is 'use up all the bits and pieces'.  I like the 27th as it often means simply chucking the dregs of bags of fish fingers/potato wedges/oven chips/crispy chicken in the oven for 20 minutes and then bunging it on plates - nice and easy.  Tonight, however, I wanted curry.  I made one curry from scratch using this recipe from the BBC (which was really really good, even if I couldn't puree the onions quite as much as the recipe said I should), but I have never found a decent recipe for Bombay Potatoes just the way I like them (i.e. quite distanced from the real thing, probably!) and every knows you can't have a good curry without Bombay Potatoes...not in this house anyway!  So this is cobbled together from various recipes over the years, and is quite delicious, even if I do say so myself!

Bombay Potatoes

serves about 6-8 as a side dish, possibly with leftovers for picking at all evening!

cost per serving approx 20 pence (as at today's date)

A brilliant side dish for any curry, with enough leftovers for lunch the following day.  You could also use leftover cooked boiled potatoes for this recipe, making it even more economical.  Very very easy to prepare and delicious to boot! Any leftovers freeze well if you aren't likely to eat this much in one go, although it rarely makes it to the freezer in this house.

Ingredients

• approx 1kg/2.2lb peeled potatoes.  I cut them into roughly walnut sized pieces or so.  Accuracy really not important, but they all need to be a similar size to cook evenly.  You could of course use new potatoes and leave the skin on for all the lovely vit. C and goodness in the skins.
• 2-3tbsp vegetable or sunflower oil.  
• 1 large onion, sliced.
• 1 tsp black mustard seeds
• large pinch cumin
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground garam masala
• 1 tsp hot chilli powder
• 3 tsp minced garlic and ginger paste or 1 tsp garlic puree and 2 tsp minced ginger
• small knob butter, about 1tsp
• 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 2 tsp mango chutney
• Some fresh coriander (optional - I often forget, as you can see in the picture!)

1. Parboil the potatoes until you can get a sharp knife in them with ease, but not quite all the way through.  This takes about 10-12 minutes for most potatoes, but will obviously depend on the size of them!  Drain them and leave them to one side.
2. Heat the oil in a good sized pan, preferably one with a lid.  A saute pan is the ideal size, but a large saucepan would suffice.  When the oil is hot add the onion and cook until it starts to go transparent, stirring occasionally.  
3. Add to the onion the black mustard seeds, cumin, turmeric, coriander, garam masala and chili powder.  Stir until the mustard seeds start to pop, then add the ginger and garlic, tinned tomatoes, butter and the mango chutney.  Do not be tempted to leave out the mango chutney - it makes all the difference!  Turn heat down to medium-low at this point and stir until combined and simmering gently, then add in your potatoes.  Stir carefully, trying not to break up the potatoes, until they are coated in the deliciousness that you have just made.  Cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are cooked through and any watery juice from the tomatoes has evaporated.
4. At this point, you could just scatter over the fresh coriander and serve, but if curry night in your house is anything like in ours you will be doing about 30 things at once and anything you can do in advance is a god send.  So, I make these potatoes a couple of hours before dinner, put the lid on the pan and turn the heat off rather than cook the potatoes completely, then about 15 minutes before the rest of dinner is ready, I put the pan back on medium-low and stir them through.  When the rest of dinner is ready, just sprinkle over the fresh coriander, if you remember, and serve.

Using MySupermarket and Spices of India, I cost this recipe at approx £1.47 in total, so around 20 pence a serving.  Bargainous for such deliciousness!

So there goes The Stripey Shed's first post on it's fresh, new blog, which I shall no doubt fill with inane ramblings and, hopefully, some useful bits and pieces I find along the way.