Strawberry Muffins with Jubilee Strawberries
Did you know there are 30 home-grown varieties of strawberries?
Driscoll Jubilee strawberries are one of the best strawberries I have ever tried. They are so much sweeter and much more flavoursome than your average supermarket strawberry. Juicy, fresh and full of flavour, they have a succulent rich flesh, mouth-watering taste and distinctive fresh aroma of this perfect ruby-coloured, heart-shaped strawberry.
We love strawberries in this house and have a punnet available in the fridge at all times - they are perfect for snacking on and great for baking - or sprucing up a salad.
This is the first time we have made muffins, and what better fruit to use than Jubilee strawberries?
Ingredients
2 cups diced fresh jubilee strawberries
375g flour
1 of tablespoon baking powder
1/2 a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
10oz caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 tablespoons of ground cinnamon
310ml of milk
3 eggs
250ml unsalted butter
Method
Preheat the oven to 220 C
Melt the butter.
Sift the flour, then mix with the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Stir until all the ingredients are combined.
Make a well in the middle of the mix and add the milk, eggs, and melted butter. Stir well until fully combined. Make sure not to over mix as it is fine for the batter to be slightly lumpy.
Add the diced strawberries and caster sugar into the batter and stir gently - be kind to the mix.
I then scooped the mix into the muffin cups, about halfway full and baked in the oven for 25 minutes.
They were delicious.
How to Make Herb and Garlic Butter
Recently I wrote about the #GoGreen challenge where I grew my own indoor herbs.
Since growing my herbs, I've been looking forward to using them, I wanted to make something simple, but also something I will use and enjoy, thus I made some super easy-to-make herb and garlic butter.
Herb and garlic butter is a great condiment to have in the freezer as you can use it to add taste and flavour to many different dishes: garlic bread, or stuff it under chicken skin, or spread it on a steak - you can even mix it in with mashed potato - Yummy.
It is easy to make, and you can create different flavours, by using different herbs.
Ingredients
Herb and Garlic Butter:
3 cloves garlic, you can use more, depends on your taste.
250g of butter.
A hand full of herbs - I used my fresh basil and I also added parsley.
1 teaspoon of olive oil.
Pinch of salt and pepper.
Method
First I beat the butter with my mixer, until it was fluffy.
I then crushed the garlic and added some salt and pepper.
Using my mortar and pestle, I mashed up my herbs, I poured in a little olive oil, mixed together and added the garlic. Finally, I added the herb mix to the fluffed up butter, and mixed.
I wrapped it in cling film, and popped straight into the freezer, so it is now ready and available for when I need it.
How to Make Honeycomb
I love honeycomb, and one of my favourite chocolate bars is the Crunchie my hubby loves honeycomb, thus I wanted to find out how to make it, and to my surprise, it is simple and easy - although, it did take me a couple of tries before I cracked it, now I am whipping up honeycomb for the kids (and myself) with minimal effort.
I like to crumble it over vanilla ice cream, which is delicious and making it with the kids is fun, especially when you add in the bicarbonate soda, the confectionery instantly fizzes and froths up.
Ingredients
Honeycomb
160g caster sugar
2 tablespoons of golden syrup
2 teaspoons of
bicarbonate soda
Sheet of baking parchment
Method
The process of making a honeycomb happens rather quickly, so you must have all your tools and ingredients ready.
First I mix the caster sugar and the golden syrup in a saucepan until it clumps together, then I turn a low to medium heat on and let it dissolve - it's impo’t mix the caster sugar and golden syrup whilst it is on the heat, you can give the saucepan a swirl if needed.
Once melted I whack up the heat to high until it boils, then I remove the saucepan from the heat and add the bicarbonate soda. Whisk until mixed (don't mix it too much, as you will take the air out) then pour the mixture onto the
baking parchment - leave for approx. 30 minutes or until it is set, and then smash it up and eat.
Fillet Steak with Red Wine Sauce, Parsnip Mustard Mash and Asparagus
Fillet Steak with Red Wine Sauce, Parsnip Mustard Mash and Asparagus
We celebrated our 18th Valentine's Day together this year and it was the first time I've cooked for hubby on Valentine's, normally hubby cooks, but not this year.
If we don't go out for a meal, hubby will cook us a nice sirloin steak with peppercorn sauce, but this year I wanted to do something different, but something simple as I am still learning how to cook. So I decided to stick to steak, but fillet as we've never had that at home before, along with parsnip and mustard mash (I've done this once before which tastes amazing), and Asparagus fried with sesame seeds. I cheated with the stuffed mushroom, as that was Tesco brought, but the rest, I made from scratch.
Ingredients
Fillet Steak:
2 fillet steaks.
Vegetable:
Bunch of Asparagus
2 teaspoons
Sesame seeds
1 teaspoon
sesame oil
1 teaspoon of dark soy sauce
Mash:
750g of Parsnips.
1 tablespoon of honey mustard
2 tablespoons of
Wholegrain mustard
85g butter
Red Wine Sauce:
Half a cup of Merlot red wine
A quarter cup of balsamic
Method
Should take approx. 20 minutes.
First, get the parsnips chopped in half and sliced. Boil the kettle and pour into the saucepan, add some salt and bring to a boil. Add the sliced parsnips, and leave to boil for 10-15 minutes, until tender.
In the meantime, spread olive oil, salt and pepper over both sides of the steaks. Heat your frying pan on a medium-high heat, and place the steaks into the hot frying pan. Cook for 4-5 minutes on each side, or until preferred choice.
Toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat until lightly browned, 3 to 5 minutes; transfer to a dish and set aside to cool.
Remove the steaks from the frying pan and place them onto a warm plate. Then using the same frying pan, reduce the heat to medium-low and then add the red wine and balsamic and cook until the sauce is reduced down.
Whilst the red wine sauce is reducing, heat the sesame oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the asparagus to the skillet, season with salt and cook for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat; toss with the dark soy sauce and sesame seeds to serve.
Drain your parsnip, transfer into a bowl, along with the Dijon mustard, honey mustard, butter and a bit of seasoning, then mix and mash.
Plate the fillet steak, the parsnip mash and the asparagus and pour over the red wine sauce over your steak. Enjoy.
Smoked Chicken & Orange Salad
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| My dish - It tastes as good as it looks. |
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| Mixing the salad |
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| Whisking the dressing up. |
Turkey Mince Meatball Wrap with Mint Yogurt Sauce
For the Mission Deli Recipe Challenge I made turkey mince meatball wraps.
Mint yogurt sauce is my favourite at the moment, it is so easy to make and tastes light and refreshing. For this dish it tasted great as a base sauce within the wrap, and I had a bit on the side to dip my salad it, it really brought the dish together.
This is the first time I've made meatballs, and hubby and my boys loved it. It was so easy to do and I enjoyed making them.
For the meatballs:
4 x tablespoons of olive oil or sunflower oil
14 x Jacob crackers
1 x egg
400g Turkey mince
2 teaspoon dollops of Dijon mustard
Rosemary
Dried oregano
For the sauce:
Yogurt
Cucumber
Mint
Lemon
Method:
- For the sauce, I poured the Greek yogurt into a bowl, chopped up the mint leaves, sliced up the cucumber very thinly, and mixed altogether - finishing off with a squeeze of lemon and seasoning.
- For the meatballs, first I put the crackers into a freezer bag, and smashed them with a rolling pin. Jacob done this with me and had loads of fun.
- We added the mince in to a mixing bowl with the cracker-crumbs, the Dijon mustard and the egg. I added the finely chopped rosemary, and the dried oregano. I seasoned the mix and then with my hands, mixed it thoroughly together. Once I was happy with the mix, I shaped lots of little balls (I want them slightly smaller as they will be going into a wrap), and then I allowed them to rest for 10 minutes.
- I heated the oil in my frying pan over a medium heat and turned the oven on to preheat at 200C. I browned the meatballs in my frying pan and then transferred them to a baking trap and cooked in the oven for 12 minutes.
- I got my wraps out, and built our wraps. First I smothered my mint yogurt sauce over the wrap, then I laid some lettuce, cucumber, red onions, and tomatoes. And finally, I added my meatballs and rolled it up.
Angel Delight
was my favourite dessert when growing up, I loved it, and I am really not sure how or why it got lost in my life, but I haven't brought it since leaving home,
thanks to the Angel Delights moments challenge,
that has changed now. I got to re-discover it and introduce it to my children for the first time, which went down very well.
An iconic British brand and dessert I grew up with, as I am sure many of my readers grew up loving as much as I did? What was your favourite flavour? mine was butterscotch. It was the treat, the one dessert I wanted and loved - Instant, simple but yummy.
The new Bubblegum flavour Angel Delight, which launched in Tesco last September can be used to make either a traditional instant dessert or a milkshake, with instructions for both on the back of the packets! We got to try out this new flavour, and it tastes as sweet as bubblegum, just like it.
The Bubblegum flavour is made only using natural colourings and is suitable for vegetarians.
Other flavours available:
Banana, Butterscotch, Chocolate, Raspberry and Strawberry. There is a no added sugar range as well.
We were sent the new flavour, Bubblegum and we got to be a little creative with it:
All you need is milk, a whisk and a bowl - easy peasy, even I can make Angel Delight.
I added a treat in the bottom - Lewis loves meringue
Yum yum yum - a mouth watering bubbly delight
Lewis LOVES meringue, and he loves desserts, so I made his very own meringue coated in Angel Delight with a sprinkle
Violet Crystals
A dish of goodies.
Bubblegum Angel Delight went down a treat with the boys and Summer, they enjoyed the fun and unique taste - I can't wait to buy the other flavours and try these out on the kids.
BBQ Weekend
Over the Bank holiday weekend we decided to have a family BBQ - well it was meant to be nice weather, so we thought 'why not' - perfect excuse for the first BBQ of the year. We pulled the BBQ out, cleaned it, and popped off to Morrisons for our shop. Throughout the supermarket they had lots of POS and labels highlighting all the new cheaper prices, it made our shopping experience must more positive. Once we had everything we headed home and I started on the dishes:
Mediterranean vegetables -
I love this dish, not only great for BBQs but also goes well with most meals.
Courgette 55p
Yellow courgette - never added one of these before, but I spotted it in Morrisons and couldn't resist. £1.06
Peppers £1.59
Red Onion 49p
Mushrooms 89p
Baby Potatoes 76p
Slice all the vegetables up and place in a dish, pour some olive oil over and add a little seasoning/mixed herbs, then stick into the oven for about an hour.
Cost £5.34 - for 7 adults costing 76p each.
Potato Salad
I love making my potato salad, this dish is so simple and tastes much better than shop-bought.
1 pack of baby potatoes 76p
Half a bunch of spring onions - but I use the green part only 24.5p
Salt & Pepper
Half a jar of Morrisions Light mayonnaise - 45p
First, you steam the potatoes, then once soft drain them and chop them in half. Trim the green part of the spring onions and mix in with the potatoes, season with salt and pepper - then mix it all with some Light Mayonnaise.
Cost £1.46 - for 7 adults costing 21p each.
Red Coleslaw
This dish is my favourite (a few of my friends and family members love it when I make this), it is so simple to make and tastes yummy.
1 Red onion - Morrisons 49p
1 Red cabbage - they didn't have any in my Morrisons unfortunately, but I had some in the fridge already (from another supermarket). 49p
Pine nuts (half a pack) - £1.35
Salt & Pepper
Half a jar of Morrisions Light mayonnaise - 45p
Chop the Cabbage, chop the onion, mix, chuck in the pine nuts, season with salt and pepper - and then mix it all together with some Light Mayonnaise
Cost £2.78 - for 7 adults costing 40p each - howeve,r there was 1/3 leftover, which I enjoyed for a few lunches throughout the following week - Yummy.
From BBQ to the table:
Then the meat - my husband was really pleased with the quality of the meat (so was I) he mentioned how the burgers didn't shrink, and the sausages didn't split - the quality and taste was great.
For 7 adults, and 4 children:
Minty lamb ribs £2.01
Chinese steaks £2.99
3x Burgers £12
2xSausage £6.38
Beef shish kebabs £4
Total meat - £27.38
- for 7 adults + 4 children costing £2.49 each - there was plenty of meat for all of us, in fact we had some left over and Paul's mum took home a doggy bag.