Quick-chocolate-fix Cornflake cakes

My earliest memory of Cornflakes is eating them with cream and sugar as a young child. I must have needed building up. Sadly, I cannot make the same claim now but I do commend these chocolate Cornflake cakes to you as the very best of their genre. The recipe comes from my sister-in-law.

Panda's tea party

Chocolate Cornflake cakes

Melt together 4oz butter, 4 tablespoons of golden syrup and 4 tablespoons drinking chocolate. Allow it to come to the boil but then take it straight off the heat. Mix in 4 and a half ounces Cornflakes and put the mixture in cake cases, before cooling in the fridge. 

Turkey meatballs in tomato sauce

The last time I ate turkey was December 25th 2011. But today I unearthed a packet of turkey mince from the back of the freezer (which I am clearing to make space for the Christmas bounty I will be squirrelling away over the next few weeks). Keep an eye on here for cranberry sauce, roast potatoes, stuffings, bread sauce etc to freeze in advance of the big day.

Turkey - not just for Christmas

Nigella's Turkey Meatballs in Tomato Sauce (tweaked slightly)

For the sauce you will need:
1 onion
1 stick of celery
2 tablespoons garlic oil (I used ordinary olive)
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 x 400g chopped tomatoes
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt

For the balls:
500g turkey mince
1 egg, beaten
4 tablespoons breadcrumbs
3 tablespoons grated parmesan
2 tablespoons finely chopped celery and onion (borrowed from the sauce... read on)
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
half a teaspoon dried thyme

Put the onion and celery into a food processor and blitz it to a mush. Reserve 2 tablespoons of it for the balls. Fry the onion, celery and thyme in the oil over a moderate heat for about 10 minutes, stirring every now and then. Add the tomatoes, then fill each tin with water and add that too. Season with the sugar, salt and some pepper. Let it come to the boil, then simmer while you make the balls.

For the balls, mix everything - don't forget the celery and onion - together, add a generous pinch of salt and roll them into balls. Nigella suggests a heaped teaspoon of mixture per ball, which will make about 50. Drop them into the simmering sauce and cook for about 30 minutes or until done, depending on how big you have made them (mine were bigger and yielded about 30). We had them with Ainsley Harriott's couscous.

Pear and ginger cake with ginger glaze

Ginger - guaranteed to cure colds and keep you young. It also protects you from radiation if eaten daily. Apparently. (I wonder if they know that in Fukushima). Yet again, I seemed to have a glut of nearly-rotten pears which I just couldn't bear to throw away, so this recipe which used 2 (or 3, by the time I'd cut out the brown bits) was ideal.

Pear and ginger loaf cake

Pear and Ginger loaf cake

200g butter (unsalted preferable but not essential)
100g soft brown sugar
100g caster sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Half a teaspoon ground ginger
200g self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 pears, peeled and chopped
2 balls of stem ginger in syrup, finely chopped

Glaze: 3 tablespoons syrup from the ginger and 3 tablespoons light brown sugar

Heat oven to 160/gas 3. Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs and vanilla gradually. Fold in the flour and baking powder and then the pears and ginger. Place the mixture in a lined 2lb loaf tin and bake for 60-70 minutes. Make the glaze by mixing together the syrup and the sugar, adding a half a teaspoon of water. Tip it over the cake and allow it to cool in the tin.

I had run out of self-raising flour so added an extra 3 teaspoons of baking powder to the recipe; and I used only half the amount of sugar - unintentionally - but you wouldn't know.

Talking of gluts, I have a few apples to use up...

... all suggestions gratefully received

Thai green curry paste

Ingredients for Thai green curry paste

Thai green curry paste

Another gem from the Wagamama cookbook. I made this today for curry-in-a-hurry tomorrow. Simply put all the above ingredients (in the quantities listed below) into a food processor and blitz until smooth. Purists would say you have to pound it in a pestle and mortar to release the oils properly, but I'll leave that decision to you. Once made, it can be kept in a jar in the fridge or frozen (in ice cube trays).

6 green chillies, roughly chopped
1 lemongrass stalk, outer leaves removed, sliced finely
3 kaffir lime leaves, sliced
1cm piece ginger root, peeled and grated
bunch of coriander stems
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, roasted in a hot, dry frying pan
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon chopped shallot
1 teaspoon shrimp paste
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

To make a chicken curry: Heat a couple of tablespoons of paste in a large frying pan with a teaspoon of palm (or brown) sugar. Pour in some coconut milk and when it comes to the boil add some finely chopped chicken and mini aubergine, followed by some halved baby corn. Cook until the chicken and aubergine are done. Finish with a generous squeeze of lime. Garnish with coriander and/or basil leaves.

Thai green curry paste

Don't overlook the wrinklies

Not a plea to be nice to Grandma, but a call to arms for droopy carrots and withered apples.

Droopy carrot soup

Carrot soup

I used 6 medium carrots, 2 small onions, a generous knob of butter, a chicken stock cube and about 1 and a quarter pints of water. I cooked the onions in the butter on a medium heat until sweet and translucent, then added the carrots, stirred them round a bit and let them sweat over a low heat with the lid on for about 15 minutes. Then I poured in the water, added the stock cube and brought it to the boil, before putting the lid back on and simmering for a good half an hour and blending well.

Roasted apple wedges

The last 6 of my recent harvest have been sitting in a bowl, ignored, for about 2 weeks. They were a mixture of sizes and type, but I peeled, cored and cut them into wedges and put them in a roasting tin. I added 75g sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon, a few grinds of nutmeg, a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of orange juice and a knob of butter and gave everything a good stir before putting it into a medium-hot oven (about 180/gas 6). My kitchen soon filled with the most amazing smell, which prompted me to open the oven and give everything another good stir. After about half an hour I had a mixture of slightly squishy and just-cooked wedges which taste like American apple pie. I am looking forward to eating them with some cold cream.

Looks like chips, tastes like toffee apple

Perfect scones

Hold the front page, I've just found the perfect scone recipe! Not much of a surprise that it comes from Mary Berry, Britain's baking supremo. These are the lightest I have ever made, and were delicious warm with double cream, lemon curd and the remains of some home-made strawberry jam.

Perfect scone

Perfect scones

Makes 8-10:

450g self raising flour
2 rounded teaspoons baking powder
75g butter
50g caster sugar
2 large eggs
225ml milk

Pre-heat oven to 220/gas7. Put the flour and butter into a food processor and whizz until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and whizz for a couple more seconds. Break the eggs into a measuring jug, beat them and add milk to make up to 300ml. Reserve about 2 tablespoons, but add the rest gradually to the dry mixture with the motor running slowly. Soon you will have a soft dough which should be rolled out to about 2cm thick and cut with a 5cm diameter fluted round cutter. Brush the tops with the egg-milk mixture and bake for 10-15 minutes until well risen and golden. Cool on a wire rack, covered with a clean tea-towel to keep them moist (her word, not mine). Eat asap.

Freeloading Friday

Elevenses at Amanda's

If you like eating great food for free, invite yourself round to your friends' houses at mealtimes. Look what a lovely spread A has laid on for elevenses (above): chilli chocolate cake, crunchy lemon muffins and mince pies with homemade mincemeat, complete with roaring log fire and cuddly spaniel.

I left there on a sugar high and in a state of great excitement to collect my pretty new business cards. Unfortunately they had been rather badly botched, saving me 50%, but meaning that they are really only fit for scraping ice off the car windows or sticking up in phone boxes in the wrong end of town.

Things started looking up when I arrived at M's to find her slaving over some recipes from the latest Ottolenghi cookbook, which has been kindly published by Mr O for all those people too poor to live near one of his eateries. Such philanthropy, such generosity. We ate meatballs with barberries (heard of them?), roasted red onions and butternut squash with tahini, and a courgette, tomato and yogurty-herby salad. A total taste sensation.

Ottolenghi's meatballs with barberries