Lead us (not) into temptation

Oh the irony... A decade ago, I remember being so desperate for chocolate that I left my baby (asleep) in his cot while I rushed out to the corner shop for a bar of Fruit and Nut, feeling almost sick with guilt. Now I am home alone for 10 days but can't be bothered to leave the house. So this time the solution is to make chocolate covered flapjacks. They're very quick and easy to get in the oven, but there is a tantalising 2-stage cooling process.

Practically a health food

Chocolate covered flapjacks

125g butter

125g brown sugar

75g golden syrup

250g oats
100g chocolate

Pre-heat oven to 180/gas 4. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup together, then stir in the oats and mix well. Transfer to a 20 x 20cm greased and lined* tin or dish and cook for 25-30 minutes until golden brown (if in doubt, err on the side of under-cooking). Allow to cool in the dish, then turn out and spread with melted chocolate. Cut into squares or bars when the chocolate has set.

*If you can't be bothered with this, just spread the chocolate over them while they're still in the tin, then chisel them out as needed. And if you can't be bothered to spread the melted chocolate, put it in a freezer bag, snip off the corner and drizzle it over the flapjacks.

Praise indeed

Extra children to feed today, so I made a big pizza. Our 8 year old guest told me it tasted like it had come from a shop - the highest form of praise!

Big pizza

I used my bread machine to make the base this morning and left the dough sitting in the mixer all day to prove. I made a sauce for the pizza by chopping 4 large tomatoes, putting them in a pan on a medium-high heat with a good slosh of olive oil, three crushed cloves of garlic, a squeeze of tomato puree and a teaspoon of honey. Cook for about 15 minutes until everything is mushy and sweet and garlicky. I whizzed it up in a blender for a minute and then spread it over the pizza base, topping with sliced mozzarella, ripped up pieces of ham and some bits of tinned pineapple chopped quite small.  Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and bake in a hot oven for about 15 minutes. This served one hungry 12 year old, two 8 year olds, a toddler and a bit left over for the waitress.

Amber nectar - golden syrup

Last week I promised to share my recipe for perfect flapjacks. Not too gooey, not too earthy... try them and let me know what you think.

Perfect flapjacks

4oz butter
4oz sugar
3oz golden syrup (I love the classic tin, but it's much easier to use the plastic squeezy bottle)
8oz rolled oats

Heat oven to 180/gas 4. Melt together the butter, sugar and golden syrup. Remove from heat, add the oats and mix. Turn into a greased 8" square tin, pat down gently and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Cut into squares soon after removing from oven but do not remove from the tin until cold. Better slightly under-cooked than over-cooked.

Instructions to my husband

I'm off for the weekend. Here's what I have planned for you to eat:

Tonight : Spaghetti Bolognese and flapjacks (serve the flapjacks for pudding, not on the side). The bolognese is in the slow cooker and the spaghetti is in a bowl in the fridge. To reheat it, boil a kettle of water and put the water and pasta in a pan until the water comes back to the boil (when it has bubbles on top). Get one of the children to grate some cheese.

This is spaghetti bolognese

These are flapjacks

Saturday : A selection of ready made Chinese dishes from a leading supermarket (not just any old ready-made rubbish).

Sunday : Steak and onion pie from the local farm shop with broccoli and corn on the cob. Hint: The corn is the kind that comes packaged in leaves rather than see-through plastic. Located in the drawers in the fridge.

There are no raw meat products in the kitchen and there are plenty of refined carbs in the larder. Any questions, ask the kids!

There is also one of these:

Spaghetti Bolognese

I made the spaghetti Bolognese by combining a 500g pack of lean mince, a chopped onion, half a chopped red pepper and a crushed clove of garlic in a pan and cooking until the mince was brown, bashing out any lumps along the way. I then added half a tin of chopped tomatoes that had been languishing in the fridge, about a quarter of a tin of kidney beans in chilli sauce (unorthodox, I know, but they needed using up too), a 500g jar of Dolmio original sauce, a third of the Dolmio jar of water and an Oxo cube. I let it come to the boil and tipped it into a slow cooker, where it will cook on high for about 3 hours, before being turned off and neglected for another 6 hours.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!