Shake Up Your Wake Up!

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I am a firm believer that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I can't cope and feel nauseous if I haven't eaten within about half an hour of waking up, and enjoy the traditional cereal and toast with a glass of milk (or coffee if it's been a bad night) most days. On weekends, we may indulge with a cooked breakfast or a maybe some naughty chocolatey cereal, but on the whole we do eat a sensible breakfast.

Or so I thought.

That was until I received a hamper from the people behind the Farmhouse Breakfast Week campaign who are encouraging us to shake up our wake up!

In the basket are a whole range of goodies including porridge oats, sesame seeds, mixed fruit, mixed seeds, jams and Marmite. There's also a rogue orange which is a little alien to me if I'm honest. Bananas yes, but oranges?

It made me realise that possibly the cereal I have isn't the best and most-filling cereal, especially to last me 'til lunchtime. And possibly I shouldn't be trying to persuade Mr. TBaM to buy white bread because it's not actually very good for you. We were also sent a loaf of granary bread which will make Mr. TBaM feel like he's won points, and a box of home-made,  really yummy breakfast energy bars. Now I get what the seeds are for.

I must just add that the breakfast energy bars are delicious and if you'd like to know how to make them, then pop over and check out the Shake Up Your Wake-Up breakfast idea recipes. And this weekend when I would normally provide Mr. TBaM with a cooked breakfast, I shall do him a breakfast hash with bacon and eggs instead, the saturated fat content will be a lot lower than normal!

Check out the Shake Up Your Wake-Up campaign over on Facebook. If you take part in their breakfast challenge this week, then you could be in with a chance of winning £1000 in holiday vouchers! What are you waiting for?

I was sent a breakfast hamper to try out the challenge this week. It's healthy and I need wishing good luck! My opinions are honest and unbiased.

Anchors Away! (Competition)

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I like cakes, they make me happy. I also like baking as this too makes me happy.

When Anchor asked me if I'd like to share my favourite elevenses snack as a part of their campaign to bring back the mid-morning goodness, I jumped at the chance to indulge!

Go on admit it, your mouth is watering isn't it?

Strictly speaking, this should be for an afternoon tea. Also strictly speaking, it should be a scone. However, it is neither a scone, nor am I that bothered about whether I eat it at 3 o'clock. I tend to find that leading up to 11 o'clock my blood-sugar levels are dropping and I need a pick me up to get through to (an often non-existent) lunchtime. I have a snack at half past ten on a working day, so why not at home with The Boy?

The reason this is not a scone is because I have bad memories of trying to make them. My grandmother only once tried to teach me how to cook and failed miserably on her part. She read the recipe incorrectly and told me to put a tablespoon of salt in and consequently, and to no-one's surprise, the scones were disgusting! Shop-bought scones always taste chemically and leave me with an after-taste.

Therefore I give you an easy elevenses recipe (adapted from my own blog-post), to be eaten with clotted cream and strawberry jam or not.

  • 60g caster sugar
  • 300g self raising flour, sifted
  • 85g Anchor butter, cubed
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 3 tbsp milk
  • 150g Low Fat Natural Bio Live Yogurt
  1. Sift the flour, butter, baking powder and the sugar into a bowl, and using a food processor or mixer whizz together until fine crumbs form.
  2. Add the milk and yogurt and mix until a soft dough forms .
  3. (I decided to add a handful of raisins at this point).
  4. Bake the not-scones for 25 minutes until a knife comes out clean.

Let me just remind you of the simple beauty of my Elevenses:

I have one of these special edition Anchor aprons to give away to one of the readers who comments below telling me their favourite elevenses snack.

Sorry, did I say one? I meant ten! Yes that's right: ten! Anchor are feeling generous and therefore providing ten of you lucky souls with one of these gorgeous aprons, and you just have to do the three really simple things listed on the rafflecopter form (Facebook 'like' & comment are mandatory, tweeting is a bonus entry).

What are you waiting for? Get entering!

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Winter Warmers

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I like love Winter when it's cold and frosty, the sun is shining and the sky is blue, the grass crunches with frost underfoot and the birds are tweeting in the skeletal trees. And, despite the past week where it's been grim and grey, today it was just like that! We went to Roath Park in Cardiff for The Boy to practise some more on his balance bike, we fed the swans and the ducks, we froze our little noses and ears off, and then we went to soft-play.

Then we came home, had a little rest and I made a dinner ready for Nana and Grandad to join us. I decided on some serious warming food for a seriously Wintery day! Vegetable stew and dumplings, followed by this little beauty:

Plum, Pear & Apple Cobbler

Ingredients:
Serves 4-6

  • 500g plums, stoned & quartered
  • 300g Bramley apples, peeled, cored & sliced
  • 160g caster sugar
  • 2 tbsp water
  • 300g self raising flour, sifted
  • 85g unsalted butter, cubed
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 3 tbsp milk
  • 150g Rachel’s Low Fat Natural Bio Live Yogurt

Method:

  1. In a saucepan take the plums, apple slices, 100g of the caster sugar and add the water, cook until the plums and apples soften. Tip: leave the fruit to cool before adding the cobbler pieces this will stop some of the fruit bubbling out over the dish.
  2. To make the cobbler, add the sifted flour, butter, baking powder and the remainder of the sugar (60g) and using a food processor or mixer whiz together for a few seconds on pulse speed until fine crumbs form.
  3. Add the milk and yogurt and whiz again until a soft dough forms . You can either spoon the mixture in scattered clumps over the fruit or add a little more flour and roll out the dough using a cutter. Leave some gaps for the cobble effect.
  4. Bake the cobbler for 30-35 minutes until the topping is golden and the fruit is visibly bubbling beneath.

It was seriously gorgeous. As discussed with @Jessies_online, I am not a fan of fruit crumble but this was gorgeous! The pear made the fruit much more mild, and the yoghurt in the dough topping made it rise beautifully which meant it was light and fluffy. I thoroughly recommend trying some of the gorgeous Rachel's Organics  yoghurts, but in a cake or dough mixture.

I was supplied with some samples of Rachel's Organics products to try this recipe.

Snowflake Cookies

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I've made a fair few cakes with The Boy now, and we've turned our hand to pizza, but we haven't tried cookies yet, and we haven't tried gingerbread. When I saw a recipe for polish spiced Christmas cookies (basically gingerbread) on The Crazy Kitchen, I decided to give it a whirl: everyone is always making it, it can't be hard surely?

Wrong! Well, that is if you're not using an electric mixer which it turns out, everyone else did. I only have a handheld mixer, which I am wary of using with The Boy, and so we mix everything we make with a good old-fashioned wooden spoon! Gingerbread ingredients are quite tough to mix together.

Anyway, here we go!

Ingredients
110g unsalted butter
110g soft, dark brown sugar
6 heaped tablespoons runny honey
1 egg
450g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon powder
2 tablespoons mixed spice
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
100g icing sugar

  • Melt the butter, sugar and honey in a small pan until the butter has just melted
  • Sift all the dry ingredients into a large bowl, stir together
  • Add the egg and mix well
  • Add the melted butter/sugar to the dry ingredients and mix until a dough forms
  • If the mixture is too dry add water 1 tablespoon at a time until it comes together
  • Roll out on a floured surface to an inch thick
  • Use cutters to cut out the shapes and place on greased baking trays
  • Bake in 200 degree (C) oven for 7-8 minutes
  • Cool on a wire rack

Then we decorated our snowflake and jigsaw piece cookies with drizzly white chocolate and sweeties!

We used these fab cookie cutters from Cox & Cox, excellent quality and durable.

I was sent the cookie cutters to review. I pinched Helen's recipe. Both are great and my opinion is honest and unbiased.

Christmas Cupcakes

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We haven't done any cooking together in a few weeks, and as I had some pretty cupcake cases and stencils that I wanted to try, we dutifully washed our hands, donned our aprons and got down to business this morning!

Adapting a basic fairy cake mix, I added nutmeg, cocoa powder and raisins to make it taste a little more Christmassy, along with a splosh of oil to keep it moist and a little espresso coffee powder to give tang against the sweetness.

The Boy loves mixing everything together and is getting very good at creaming the butter and sugar, then adding the eggs, a little flour, whisking and then adding the oil. It got a little stiff with the flour so I had to give him a hand. Bung in the raisins, cocoa etc and Bob's your mother's brother!

Then while they are cooking for 12 minutes at 200°C, of course what better excuse for a little bit of water play than doing the washing up?

I iced the cakes with white chocolate buttercream and then we used some nifty Christmas stencils from Asda and chocolate poweder to decorate them. Scrummilicious!

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I'm linking this up to the following fabulous linkies:

I Love Cake

The Crazy Kitchen

CreatingChristmas