Chocolate Apricot Cake

Who doesn't like chocolate?? I love it ! My Step Father used to call me Chocolatey-Claire for a long time and I lived up to my name!
Whilst feeding Molly her breakfast this morning I was multi tasking and reading a cook book at the same time - well she was taking aaaaagggeeess eating her toast and I needed to something to read and just happened to have Nigella Lawsons - Domestic Goddess on the table. Flicking through the pages I stumbled upon the chocolate chapter and found a lovely recipe for a Chocolate Marmalade Cake which sounded slightly intriguing as did Nigellas' description especially saying that it isn't a pretty cake! It also sounded like an easy cake to make - melt some things and then fold the rest of the ingredients in ! no creaming of the butter and sugar which is something that I hate doing. Wish I had a Kitchen Aid! . I amended the recipe slightly , the original recipe is for marmalade which I didn't have but I did have some home made apricot jam lurking about in the back of the fridge which has been there for ages and the jar is so huge that it has been taking up all the room so I was delighted to find a good use for it.

Not very pretty!!! But tastes A-M-A-Z-I-N-G

 



It was so easy -peasey , will definitely make this one again and use different jams - It lovely and chocolatey with an aftertaste of apricot, it can be eaten hot (as we did with crème fraiche) or cold with a cup of coffee. We had it for dinner that evening and I put the rest of it in the freezer for emergencies of course otherwise I would have had it all there and the

125g unsalted butter
100g dark chocolate broken into pieces
300g Apricot Jam
150g caster sugar
pinch of salt
2 large eggs, beaten
150g self-raising flour
Preheat the oven to 180′. Melt butter in a saucepan over a low heat, when it is nearly melted add in chocolate and remove from heat, stir until smooth. Into the saucepan add marmalade/jam, sugar, salt and eggs and stir with a spoon until combined, beat in flour bit by bit. Pour into a greased and lined baking tin no bigger than 23cm. Bake for 50 minutes, checking with a skewer at 40 minutes. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, turn out on to a cooling rack. If the cake isn’t left to cool, it will crack ( that's what happened to mine - I'm so impatient) .Store in an air tight container, eat within 5 days. The recipe serves 6.

 

 

Foodie Penpals November

All fun and games this month with foodie penpals! The original people that I was giving to and receiving from both pulled out so I was rematched to send to Claire at The Black Cat Kitchen  (have a peek at the items I sent her)  , I received a really  lovely parcel from Julie of Joolsy67 
After a long weekend away it was exciting to get this parcel hidden in the cupboard by the front door (the only perk of living in a flat is the cupboard by the front door! Don't get me started on all the stairs!)

As soon as I opened it I spotted the Lemoncurd chocolate and had to try it - I had to take a photo quick of it before I ate it all!

In Julies note she said she loved these and I can see why OMG divine.

 Molly had her eye on the Apple crisps and loves them - Haven't used G&B cooking chocolate mmm Stephen asked me to make brownies so that is my weekend sorted! The Dragon bar is a blackcurrant museli fruit bar which is delicious - chewy and fruity.

 

 

 This is a little bag of goodness - Star Anise which Julie said would be delicious in Mulled wine - oh Yes please! Have some friends over at the weekend so will make some. And also some nutmeg which is THE Christmas spice.

I am so pleased to find this bottle of Rapeseed Oil I haven't had any before so happy to be able to try some - that is why I love Foodie penpals you get things that you wouldn't normally try.

Here is Molly checking the contents for me!
A fab and festive parcel thank you Julie. If you would like to take part in Foodie Penpals click here and If you would like to see what everyone else received this month click here.
Looking forward to my next parcel next year......

Meal Planning Monday

Here It is DECEMBER! very excited as I love Christmas and I have an even better excuse being all festive and giddy now that I have lovely little Molly - she isn't into it all yet but that won't stop me! I have already filled the advent calendar that my mum made ( for Molly really but she can't appreciate it yet!) with lots of chocolates and I have said to Stephen that we can take it in turns to take out the chocolates!

 


I have put 2 small chocolates in for 24th so no arguments! you can just see a penguin poking out

 

So back to this weeks meals. They are all a bit up in the air this week as I am not really feeling organised!

Monday - Fish cakes with mash and sweetcorn

Tuesday - Vegetable chilli

Wednesday - something with scallops ??!

Thursday - Nutloaf

Friday - Salmon salmon surprise ( It will be a surprise to me too! No Idea!)

I have some friends coming over at the weekend so need to think of something delicious then as well - just as well I have new Olive and Good Food magazines for inspiration!

If you would like to take part or want to see other peoples meal plans for this week take a look at Mrs M's page.

Cranberry and Marzipan tealoaf

This is the easiest cake recipe that I have in my repertoire and every time I make a variation of it I am always asked for the recipe. It was passed to me by my old college room mate Sally, years and years ago - I went to stay with her for a weekend and we had this cake and I expressed how delicious it was and she gave me the recipe and I have been passing It on ever since.

These are the basic ingredients but you can adjust the fruit etc..

Tea Loaf
1 cup of brown sugar
1 cup of raisins
1 cup of sultanas
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
1 egg
1 cup of cold tea
2 cups of self raising flour

 In a bowl add the sugar dried fruit, mixed spice and give it a little stir

 

Then add the cold tea -I used some Lady Grey and steeped it for a while to get all the flavour

 

 I then added some marzipan and an egg - mix this and then fold in the flour

It then went into a lined baking tin ( I love these cake tin liners!)

Bake for about 50 mins and this is the end result...

Delcious with a cup of tea mmmmmmmmmmm

You can play around with this one no end which is fab - you can use any dried fruit, add marzipan or nuts, add more spices or change them for nutmeg or ginger for example. Change the flour to wholemeal and even change what type of tea that you use.
I guarantee that you will be vey pleased with the result and someone will ask you for the recipe!

I am entering this into a blogging challenge called Tea time treats that is hosted by Karen at Lavender and Loveage and Kate from What Kate Baked. Novembers challenge that I can just slip into is all about dried fruit and this little beauty fits perfectly.

Meal Planning Monday



It seems that I can only meal plan every 2 weeks! I didn't manage to plan any of my meals last week and it was a bit of a pain - we had to have a takeaway one night which is something I hardly do as I was completely disorgainised! So here I am on Sunday tapping away on my computer with strictly come dancing on in the background - Feeling organised!I have also managed to do a shop today getting most of the ingrediens I need for the week which is also something that I never manage to do! I live on a second floor flat which doesn't have a lift so walking up the stairs with a heavy Molly and bags of shopping is a nightmare.
So here is my meal plan this week... I hope... Molly and I are off to the Good Food Show on Wednesday which I am very excited about as I won the tickets! I am intending to eat my way around the show!

Monday -Roasted vegetable pasta
Tuesday - WhatevervegetablesIfindinthefridge Lasagne
Wednesday - Off to the Good Food Show!!!!
Thursday - Fishcakes
Friday - Smoked Haddock rarebit

If you would like to see what everyone else is making this week and join in then head on over to Mrs M

Pumpkin Carrot Cake

Well it isn't really a carrot cake - even though there are some carrot decorations - I had to use them up!!

 I replaced the carrot for the pumpkin. In my October parcel I received a tin of Pumpkin Puree and after thinking long and hard ( I spent hours looking at Pinterest and googling for pumpkin inspired recipes!!) I decided on making it into a cake.
I made my favourite carrot cake recipe from the Humming Bird cook book and instead of the carrots I added just over half of the tin of pumpkin puree. It was so much easier to open a tin and pour out the contents rather than grate the carrots which is always a pain and I end up with it all over the kitchen!

For the frosting I added cream cheese to icing sugar, I have tried with low fat cream cheese before thinking that I could at least make the topping less calorific but it doesn't work -you have to use the full fat stuff!

I took the cake to a firework party that we went to - it was lovely and moist, the spices go really well with the pumpkin. You couldn't really taste the pumpkin but you knew that there was something In the cake if that makes any sense!

With the remaining pumpkin filling I made some 'cheats' Pumpkin Pancakes that you can see here,

Applique

This isn't a food post as you can see ! But I also like to do other crafty things and thought that I would share these with you. I am one of those people who looks at things and thinks 'oh I can do that!'  and never gets round to making anything or I buy all the bits that you need to do a project and leave them in a cupboard for ages and then take them round to my mums and asks her to do them!! One of my 'projects' that I didn't quite do included Reindeer Candy Canes..



My mum has all the items needed for these ! She hasn't made them yet either !
I have a Board full of ideas that I hope to someday make

         



For a few months now I have been wanting to embellish some of Mollys' clothes with applique and I have a Pinterest board that I keep updating with designs that I would like to make - so this week I took the plunge and had a go - As I said I have been thinking about this for a while and have bought some plain tops from charity shops over the weeks and popped into material shops to get some sraps ( would love to have a go at quilting.. another project that I think about all the time...)
I am really pleased with the result - not sure how they will do after they have been washed but for the time being they look fab!

They are very simple designs as modelled by Molly

 She wasn't sure about being photographed here but it is the best one showing the heart.

You can't see the heart here but I love her smile!!

This is one I did for a friend who has just had a baby boy.

The Whale material is one of Stephens old shirts!

They were so easy to make and I feel very envigorated and want to do more! Will try using a sewing machine next time and add more material bits and maybe some buttons , maybe some pom poms....maybe some eyes...could go on forever...