I’ve got to be honest and say I’m not keen on traditional X-mas desserts like Figgy Pudding, and since I became chef de jour at casa de Jeffs the responsibility has fallen to me to do the pud for Christmas day, and the past few years it has gone well (although we shan’t mention the disaster with a Jamie yule log recipe…I’m still bitter). Last year I made these Eggnog creams and they were yummy and not massively heavy either which you don’t want when your so full to bursting with turkey and ’tatoes that you couldn’t even wedge a sprout in.
Can you tell I’m starting to run out of adjectives for my recipe posts? The recipe can be used to make mulled wine or cider, although please forgive me for having not tried it with cider since even mentioning the word cider brings back haunting memories of my first ever escapade into alcohol at 13 which resulted in much barfing and eventually being picked up by my dad after my friends exhausted their combined powers of patience and nursing care as as I lay gagging in a bush.
I’m usually the sort of person who is repelled by fruit in salads, or nuts in curries or any of that other faff. Its like drinking a pint of water when you need a wee, it goes against the grain. But saying all that my dad made this marvelous little salad from the September issue of Delicious magazine (which if you don’t read you should since it’s awesome) and after I tinkered about with it and made it to my liking, I thought I’d shove it (belatedly) up on here for you to have a butchers at.
Another new feature I’ve dragged out for the depths of my imagination (which, judging by my groundbreaking titles is more like a puddle than a never ending abyss of creativeness).
As you probably gathered from the highly innovative concept, each edition will feature one ingredient used two different ways. The two recipes featured here came about after I was sent the Dietary Specials new recipe Shortcrust Pastry.
I must preface this now by saying this is NOT a sponsored post, I just really love this product.
This is the first edition of one of my new features Speedy Sides (racked my brains to think of that title didn’t I?). The name speaks for itself, each edition will be a super quick and easy dish which will work great as a perfect side,with, or as an addition to a main meal (Depending on whether you eat for England or enjoy mini meals).
Ingredients
700g New potatoes 100g Radishes 100g Half fat creme fresh (or you can use full fat if your already bikini ready!
We all know by now that I am a total lemon slut. I love anything with/near/like lemon and as a result I perhaps post more lemon recipes than any other. I had promised that I wouldn’t do anymore lemon containing recipes for a while, but after I converted this one from the The Hummingbird Bakery book I knew it was far too yummy not to post it on here (despite it being a doppelganger of one I posted last year)
The best thing about these bad boys is that they taste just as awesome with or without the rum. Plus fruit (even if it is mixed with a sugar laced syrup) surely counts as one of your five a day. I’ve seen quite a few recipes which use sugar cane syrup, but it’s not always easy to get hold of. This recipe uses a super duper easy home made sugar syrup which you can knock up and keep in the fridge until the earth ends because it never goes off.
After you’ve finished yakking after reading my vom worthy ‘Daddy Cool’ post I thought you might like to indulge in a yummy-o, calorific Apple Upside Down Cake (the point being you turn the cake upside down,not eat it whilst upside down…but you knew that already). I wouldn’t have ever attempted an upside down anything due to my innate ability to pretty much drop anything I pick up, but my Dad found it while flicking though my new Rachel Allen cook book (a barginlicious £5 from W H Smith) and I had promised him a dessert of his choice for Fathers Day and this was what he chose, and blow me if it didn’t actually come out pretty much perfectly!
I always use sparkling water for batters because you get a much lighter,less greasy batter. Feel free to use beer for the batter if you want, although with this recipe a beer batter will probably overpower the taste of the prawns.
Ingredients
200g King prawns (uncooked) 100g Plain gluten-free flour (Doves Farm,Glutafin) 250ml Sparkling water 25g Cornflour (or you could use potato flour) 1 Egg 2 Pinches of salt 200g Plain yogurt (I used Greek) 2-3 Tbsp’s of mango chutney (Sharwood’s is g/f.
Scones are one of those things that are hard enough to get right when they’re not gluten-free, and they’re even harder to re-produce when you take gluten out of the mix (literally). This recipe is one that I’ve adapted from a Phil Vickery recipe. Phil uses his own flour mixes, but I find the Doves Farm flour mixes are brilliant and work great for this recipe.
Ingredients
300g Self raising gluten-free flour (we need to give these bad boys a fair chance at rising!
As I said before this was adapted from a Delicious recipe. It’s actually gluten-free, but I nearly took the roof of my mouth off with the spices so I have tweaked it a wee bit in order to make it not so spicey, but I’ll also list the ingriedents if you like a bit of spice in your life and aren’t a total wuss like me.
Ingredients
4 Cod steaks (or any other white fish) Sunflower oil A couple of limes to squeeze over your fish or for making your plate look fancy!
Ingredients
100g Cream cheese (Philadelphia) 200g Plus x2 25g caster sugar 175g Cranberries (I used frozen cranberries defrosted ) 1 Tsp vanilla extract 2 Eggs 2 1/2fl Sunflower oil (don’t be tempted to use olive oil,it will make the muffins taste vile!) 200g Plain flour (Doves Farm,Glutafin) 2 Tsps Gluten-Free Baking Powder Makes 12
Extras
12 Muffins cases 12 Hole muffin tray Small pan Method
Pop the oven up to Gas mark 5 and get on with beating 25g of sugar into a bowl with the cream cheese, mix well until its all combined and whack it in the fridge until you need it later.
So here we go a lovely gluten free macaroon recipe you can get your teeth into. Make sure you make these on a day when you have no appointments/things to do/people to see/sleep to be had. The times I’ve had to ring up and cancel appointments because my macaron’s aren’t ready.. The original recipe is gluten-free anyway, but I couldn’t resist twiddling with the recipe and changing the lemon curd around so I could use my own recipe for it.
Millionaires shortbread seems like one of those things that should be super duper hard to make, but this recipe is actually surprisingly easy. The recipe is in part inspired by a Phil Vickery recipe, but the rest I’ve tweaked and changed to make it easier and even more yummy (if I do say so myself).
Ingredients
120g Butter 60g Golden caster sugar 160g Plain flour mix (Doves Farm, Glutafin) 397g Tin Carnation Caramel (Nestle) 200g Milk chocolate 100g White chocolate A few drops of vanilla extract Extras
A lot of peoples prevailing idea of gluten-free food is that it tastes profoundly different from non gluten-free food. This is another one of those recipes where I dare any non gluten freer to taste the difference. The original recipe is from the February issue of Delicious magazine and I’ve tweaked it here and there to make it gluten-free. It’s not vastly different from a normal pancake recipe but I think the little differences that are there make for a far nicer pancake.
I call these cookies, but technically they should be called shortbread since they have no eggs in and loads of flour. They’re called Happiness Cookie’s because they make me very popular in my house (which in turn makes me happy), everyone seems to like them and they’re my Baking Trump Card which I usually play when a person who has previously been cynical about gluten-free food comes over for coffee and I palm them off at non G/F.
