Easiest Hors d'œuvre - Savory Potato and Cheese Bread Baskets

These are the easiest Hors d'oeuvres ever. They are simple and elegant - put together in a snap (less than 15 minutes) and can be made in advanced and baked just before serving! People will be wondering what they are and asking you the recipe - trust me on that. To top this they are made with brown bread and mashed potatoes - comfort food and health all thrown together in one dish. You can make this with white bread but the brown bread gives it a nice color. Also, you can reduce the butter and make it all in olive oil if you want it to be very very healthy! (The brown bread katori's are inspired from Nita Mehta's cookbook but filling and ideas are all original) You can definitely experiment with the filling.

Do tell me how they turned out but I know they are soo easy that my friend's kids were able to put them together in a jiffy!

Here is the recipe:

6 pieces of brown bread - cut in the shape of a round or katori
2 potatoes boiled and mashed
oregano and butter for seasoning
2-3 tbsp grated cheese - cheddar preferably
Hot sauce of your liking
Sprigs of coriander to decorate

Method:
Roll the round shape bread with a rolling pin or belan till very thin. Brush with a little olive oil and put inside a muffin tray and bake for 10 minutes at 190C. Meanwhile take the mashed potatoes and put it in a pan with the butter and oregano and saute till slightly browned. You can add chilli flakes, jalapenos, peppers or any other seasoning to this to make it suit your taste buds. When the bread baskets are ready - spoon the potato mixture into this. Top with grated cheese and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove from tray. Top with hot sauce and sprigs of coriander (to get a great contrast of colors and to draw a little bit more of oohs and aahs when you serve it. The coriander in my house was over so I just did my photo shoot without it). Serve hot while the cheese looks like it's still melting and these will melt in your mouth.

Simply Chocolate Chip Muffins!

The newest recipe book that I have added to my collection is Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess - and that has inspired me and shown me how cakes, muffins, cupcakes can be easy to whip up and not a nightmare! The way her book conveys the message to you, it is as if she is right there telling you, "Go on! You can do it! No biggie!" So this afternoon when I was craving something chocolate I thought about baking myself a batch of muffins to have with my cold coffee... 

Well, so here is my first go at muffins. I am using ingredeints I had on hand and making them was as easy as 1-2-3... so I am going to have to try variations before I can conclude that I have mastered muffin making but my first attempt definitely seemed like a success. Within 30 minutes I had a batch of freshly baked muffins on the wire rack cooling and a delicious aroma wafting from my kitchen... and I still managed to catch a nap with my sleeping baby! So all in all it turned out to be a productive day :)!

This post is dedicated to all the mothers who have young toddlers and still seem to find their life a little topsy - turvy. Trust me it will come back all together bit by bit... here's a start for a little treat for your little munchkin with that cheeky grin who has you wrapped around your finger. You can try using whole wheat flour to give it a healthier twist - it makes a perfect evening snack to take to the park with your toddler! No more guilt about giving them only packaged snacks.... you can make mini muffins which are perfect for babies under 1.5 and regular sized ones for the older ones. Better still make an activity out of it coz they are going to be really happy helping put this together! Also, I find cooking therapeutic so making dinner and dessert is very relaxing... and putting together a homemade dinner and dessert after taking care of the baby the whole day makes you feel like giving yourself a pat on your back and sinking your teeth into the soft muffin is your reward for that.

So here goes the recipe:

I read a few recipes before I put mine together - mine makes 6 regular sized muffins.

1 cup all purpose flour
1 large egg
1/4 cup butter at room temperature
1/2 cup milk chocolate
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/3 cup demerera sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
a pinch of baking soda

A useful tip Nigella Lawson gives in her book is to mix all the dry ingredients and leave on the counter the night before. Mix all the wet ingredients in the fridge the night before. Then in the morning - just melt the butter - mix the dry and wet ingredeients and you have a yummy breakfast in under 30 minutes :)!

So the batter is as easy as mixing the wet ingredients together and the dry ingredients. Then add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix slowly till all mixed together with a wooden spoon. Do not over mix as this will cause the muffins to be hard.

Scoop the mixture equally into 6 cupcake / muffin cups and bake for 20 minutes at 190 degrees. And your mouth watering dessert / breakfast / snack is ready to be dvoured hot or cold!

Magic Bars, Seven Layers Bars (thought I got only 5 from my pantry at the last minute), Easy Peasy Yummy Treats - call them what you make like!

These were the yummiest and easiest bars I have ever made and healthiest if I may state. I have been staring at the pics and salivating at pictures of bar on various websites but never got down to doing anything about it. My sweet tooth got the better of me last night but I had promised myself to eat healthy till I work off all the sinful food I had eaten and added to my waist during my seven day holiday!

Now all the bar recipes seemed to be pretty great about substitutions and coming up with your own variations - so here goes what I did at 3am.

Firstly, these are the easiest bars to make. The condensed milk binds them together - so they hardly need any butter - no added sugar and no mixing, whisking - nothing. This in my dictionary was = PERFECT!

I used oats as the base of my bars. 1.5 cup quick cooking oats mixed with 1/2 cup melted butter - pressed into a square dish over some butter paper. When I had that down, I spread some ready made almond and raisin muesli over it - about 1/2 cup. Then on top of that went 1 cup chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped walnuts. On top of that I poured a 400gram can of condensed milk and baked for 35 minutes at 180C. Mine were overly brown on the top - I am guessing because of miniature oven I have. Next time I will bake for 25 or 30 minutes only.

But these bars were finger licking delicious - my husband like them - they were packed with fibre and nuts - and I didn't feel that bad about being derailed off my "eat healthy routine"!!!

I looked at a lot of websites and I thank all of them for the pictures and inspiration but this recipe isn't a direct copy of any 1 of them....

Turkey - Istanbul & Hillside Beach Club - Fethiye (Especially for all my readers with children)

Yes, I have been away and it has been one of the most relaxing vacations I have taken in a while. Hillside Beach Club is set far far away in the fairytale town of Fethiye. It is Wi-Fi connected and very modern and yet you will not ending up touching your TV remote or laptops or sit on the computers they have set-up that offer free internet because there is soo much to do. And since it's full board - all the yummy food is on the house form 730am onwards. It is a relaxing food fest interrupted with activities of  your choice (read: diving, sailing, aquarobics, pilates, shows, swimming) or anything else you please from the host of activities going on around the club! They have a children's club that keeps kids of all ages on their toes with interesting stuff to do - archery, darts, swimming, play areas and the kids want to keep going back for more. Yet, you will find time to sit on the pebbled beach and throw pebbles into the sea, observe the fish from the pier and sun bathe to your hearts content if you are not to busy swimming in their beautiful private bay. I guess I can ramble on and on about this but if you need any more details from me please feel free to e-mail me.

Decadent Chocolate Brownies...

Chocolate cravings always come unannounced! But this one has been lingering at the back of my head for the last few days but I just haven't had the time to put something together. Usually in these situations I just use a brownie or cake mix and add my own twists to it... but I have decided to only use the ready-made mixes in a real real emergency and I had no excuse to not bake from scratch today.

So I started sifting through the numerous recipes I had and looked online for something easy not requiring sour-cream or buttermilk and I wanted to make something from Barefoot Contessa's recipes. I used to watch her show when I was studying in the US and found he way she put together her things very interesting...

Now the easiest recipe with all the ingredients available in my kitchen turned out to be a Brownie Pudding recipe (which I noticed much later) and I was in the mood of brownies... so since I had brought out all the ingredients and measured them, I said what the heck, I will bake them like brownies and see what happens! What is cooking without a bit of experimentation and imagination all rolled into one?

So this is the recipe:

1/4 pound unsalted butter (1/2 cup)
1 cup sugar
11 oz Hershey's Chocolate Syrup (1.5 cups - didn't have syrup - so used a little under 1.5 cups mixture of melted chocolate chips, Fruit n Nut Bournville & Cadbury Dairy Milk)
1tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all purpose flour
4 large eggs at room temperature

Now this recipe, called for baking the ingredients together in a water bath - but I just did the usual thing with the batter. I creamed the butter and sugar. Added the eggs and vanilla and whisked some more. Add the flour and poured it into a square pan. I added about 1/2 cup of chocolate chips on top and put it into the oven at 175 degree celsius and baked for 20 minutes - it wasn't done. I baked for about 9 minutes more and the top seemed a little over done - so I would suggest bake for 25 minutes and immediately put to cool on a wire rack. The result was a nice and gooey brownie. Pretty heavy with all that chocolate in it and I topped it with a really nice fudge sauce. Hope it looks as gooey and chocolaty as it turned out to be!