Baking with Beeta // No bake edition // Rocky Road

This recipe is one of my favourite types - it involves minimal possibility of burning anything. Oh and it tastes pretty incredible and is the perfect thing to take to a friend's when you pop over for food, especially when last time you took them over-baked fairy cakes. (That's obviously a story about somebody else...uh hurrr hurr hurr) 

So today, followers, I give to you Rocky Roads ft. zero fruit and loads of sweets. Sure, they aren't the most handsome of desserts out there, but trust me on this one - they taste ridiculously good. And go pretty well with vanilla ice-cream too. Or a cup of tea. Or both if you fancy a mixed temperature experience.

To make a box of these, you will need:

- 300g dark chocolate (Bourneville is yummiest), broken up into squares
- 100g butter, roughly chopped
- 3 tbsp golden syrup
- 140g rich tea biscuits, roughly crushed
- any many marshmallows as you fancy
- a couple of chocolate bars e.g. Twix, Mars, Turkish Delight, Malteasers variations

Method:

1. Line a cake-tin/tray with greaseproof paper or foil to avoid too much mess.
2. Melt butter, golden syrup and chocolate together in a pan, on a low heat. Stir lots of avoid the chocolate going crazy.
3. Once smooth, leave the mixture to cool for 10 minutes.
4. Stir the biscuits and sweets into the pan until well mixed.
5. Pour into the tin and spread the mixture to roughly level it.
6. Chill until hard, then cut into pieces.

Original recipe found here.

I'm pretty sure you could put whatever you wanted to in yours. Let me know if you come up with any exciting variations.

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This post ties in quite nicely with this fortnight's #2014BloggerChallenge which was the topic of Food, so consider this Challenge Number Six.

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Brunch with Beeta

I spend many an hour of my life scrolling through Pinterest, taking inspiration from the photography, style, interior design and words of wisdom on there. There's something therapeutic about it, I find. Perhaps it's the leisurely scrolling itself, the time I've taken out for myself, or the way it feeds my insatiable thirst for knowledge and beautiful things. I try to act on the motivation it gives me and recently that has manifested in the category of food.

Now, all too often any attempt to replicate something in those beautiful pictures is little short of a disaster. They look much messier than the picture and taste less appetising than the picture's colours ever gave away. So it was a real surprise when my attempt at making these egg and bacon cups was actually a success!

Look at them smiling in their little muffin tray homes. I haven't been able to stop telling people about them since!

To make six of these beauties, you will need the following:

- 6 slices of bacon

- sliced bread

- cheddar cheese

- 6 eggs

- salt & pepper

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

2. Drizzle a tiny amount of oil into the holes of a muffin tray, or spray some cooking spray.

3. Fry the bacon until it is partially cooked and not too crispy.

4. Cut circles out of the sliced bread, using a biscuit cutter or a cup, ensuring that they are the right size for the muffin tray holes.

5. Press the bread circles into the muffin tray holes.

6. Curl pieces of bacon around the edge of the bread circles, so that they are touching the tray as well as the bread. You might find it helpful to cut the bacon lengthways before this stage if the pieces aren't quite long enough to curl the whole way around the perimeter of the circle. If you do this, just curl the other half around from where the first piece ends, so that the whole perimeter is covered.

7. Grate a little bit of cheese on top of the bread circles.

8. Crack an egg over each cheese-topped bread circle. You may find that all of the egg-white is too much, so exercise your own judgement here.

9. Pop them into the oven for around 15 minutes or so.

10. When they're done, very carefully cut them free from the muffin tray, gently using a knife and with the help of a spatula.

11. Serve with salt and pepper, a side of mushrooms (unless you have sense and don't like them) and a cup of tea.

12. Impress and tell everyone you know!

Even the kitten thought he was getting one. Sorry kitty!

You can find the original recipe here.

Have you ever tried making anything from Pinterest? Please show me if you have and you were triumphant! 

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Baking with Beeta: COOKING EDITION

At the end of a very lovely #lbloggers chat the other weekend, I had to dash off and help my mum prepare dinner - paella. Yum yum flipping yum. I had a request for the recipe so here I am duly sharing the love/yum with you :) When I was in Madrid, I tried paella for the first time and found the experience slightly intimidating as the prawns still had heads on, I'd never eaten mussels before and I couldn't figure out what anything else in the dish was! This version is a lot simpler but hopefully one day I will attempt proper paella too :) We based this attempt on The Guardian's recipe in their little "Cook" supplement on a Saturday. 

To make this (for 4 people)

You will need:

- 4 cups of paella rice

- 750ml chicken or vegetable stock (or fish for a particularly fishy dish)

- a red pepper or two (I used 1 and a half), chopped

- 200g prawns, cooked

- 200g chorizo (we had garlic and paprika flavour), chopped

- white fish, chopped (if you fancy it)

- 1 clove of garlic, chopped

- 1 onion, chopped

- a few sprigs of parsley

- the juice of one little lemon

1. Using a relatively shallow pan (a wok may also work) and a dash of oil, cook the onion, peppers and garlic.

2. Add the chopped chorizo chunks to the pan and leave until the red juice oozes out. 

3. Add the rice and mix everything through. We were slightly ill-prepared and didn't actually use paella rice...being Iranian we have a never ending stash of Basmati so we used this this time. If you want to do the same, I suggest cooking the rice separately for a bit before finishing it off with everything else.

4. Add the stock (and the fish pieces if desired), leave to simmer and cover it up for 15 minutes.

5. Add the prawns and after a few minutes, stir through the lemon juice. You should aim for the majority of the stock to have been soaked up before you're done.

6. Throw on the parsley and voilá! 

What's your favourite bit of paella? I can't resist the chorizo!

PS. I didn't actually burn any of this :)

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