Tagliatelle all'amatriciana Vs. Puttanesca Mash Up... Winning!

So, I was sitting at home all on my lonesome tonight, on what is Hump Day for most, but Saturday for me. I was picking my brain for an idea of what to cook for dinner. I did a quick ring around to the girls to invite them over for a feed, but all declined for various reasons. Pft! Their loss! Time to find some new friends methinks!

Any who, back to the story. I decided I was going to make pasta with some sort of red, spicy sauce. I drove to the supermarket and the idea hit me. Tagliatelle all'amatriciana Vs. Puttanesca Mash Up! Awesome!

I diced 1/2 a brown onion, 2 slices of short cut bacon cut in 1/2 length ways, and then cut into thin strips and around 100g of a stick of pepperoni sliced into 5mm lardons. I threw all of these into a fry pan with heated olive oil along with 2 tea spoons of crushed garlic on a Med-High heat.

After a few minutes when the onions had turned transparent, and the bacon had slightly browned, I chucked in 2 table spoons of tomato paste and cooked that for a few minutes until it had dried out quite a lot.

While that was all going on, I diced a medium sized fresh tomato and a medium sized field mushroom and slid those babies into the pan with all of the other crap then added a splash of water. I chopped up around 12 kalamata olives 3 large pieces of roasted red peppers from the Deli and popped them into the mix too. I gave it a bit of a stir, poured in a tad more water and around 1/3 of a cup of hot chili sauce.

I put the sauce on a smaller burner and let it simmer with a handful or 2 of baby spinach whilst the tagliatelle cooked.

I drained the pasta, added it to the pan of sauce and mixed it all together. Then it was time to feast! Yummo! I possibly put a little too much chili into the sauce, but I like it hot! You can reduce the amount of chili to your taste.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

I made these little babies on one of my days off last week. I used Jiffy Devil's Cake mix for the cupcakes and created Peanut Butter Frosting to cap them off. Here is the recipe for the frosting...

You'll need 2/3 cup of peanut butter, 1/4 cup of butter that you whip with an electric beater until light in color and fluffy.

You then gradually add 1 cup of sifted icing sugar. If the mix starts getting too stiff add a splash of cream or milk and keep beating til all of the sugar is mixed in. I used a piping bag to ice my cupcakes this time, but I don't think the nozzle opening was large enough. I think next time, I'll just use a spatula to frost them.

Voila! You have a dozen chocolate peanut butter cupcakes that taste just like Reeses Peanut Butter Cups!

Bon appetit!

Cabbage and Beetroot Soup (Borscht)

This is my variation of my Ukrainian Grandmother's Borscht. The recipe my Dad uses was her's. It's way too involved for my liking. Who has the time to make stock from scratch when perfectly good sock, or stock concentrates are commercially available? Not me, that's for sure! Plus, my Grandma's old recipe calls for chunks of browned diced beef in the recipe, I'm not a fan of chunks of meat in my soup, so I just omit it.

With my recipe, I dice 2 medium sized onions and add about 2 table spoons of garlic to a large pot with heated olive oil and sweat them down until the onions are transparent. Whilst that is all going on, I peel and grate 3 medium sized beetroot. I throw this into the pot and fill to the top of the beetroot with water.

Whilst the beetroot and onion mix begins to simmer, I take a quarter of a cabbage and finely shred it. This then gets bunged into the pot too. I tip a large can of baked beans and can of diced tomatoes into the pot, along with a few bay leaves and a sprinkle of cracked pepper and salt.

I then top the water level up and add one 'pod' of jellied beef stock concentrate and stir the mix. I pop a lid on and let the soup simmer away for around an hour or so, checking the liquid level and stirring occasionally.

When the soup is ready I chuck a handful of washed baby spinach leaves in just to wilt them. You can serve the soup chunky as it is with a dollop of fresh cream. If you're making for kids, like I often do for my Niece, I give it a quick blitz in the blender and serve her up her pink soup. She loves it and I'm sure you will too!

White Chocolate Mud Cake for my Nephew's First Birthday

I got to let the creativity loose in the kitchen earlier this week when I was given the task of creating a cake for my nephew's first Birthday family dinner. I was was only given one instruction from his Mum. That was to make something delicious. I had planned on getting the Vintage Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book out and create something spectacular. But then a major case of the CBFs kicked in. Who wants to eat a boring old butter cake and jam roll smothered in brightly colored butter cream in the form of a choo choo train anyway?

I remembered a few years ago I had a tea party for my Birthday and had found a recipe for a white chocolate mud cake that I had made as cup cakes. I remember the cakes turned out to be extremely tasty and super moist. I dug out the recipe and melted 300 grams of white chocolate, added some flour and a couple of eggs amongst other things and baked at 160C for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

I let the cake cool before preparing the white chocolate ganache. I melted a further 200 grams of white chocolate and stirred in a few table spoons of sour cream. I stirred it until it thickened slightly. I left the cake on the cooling rack and placed the rack over a baking tray and poured the ganache mix over it.

I placed the iced cake on a timber board and sprinkled with holographic, edible glitter. I got the colored writing icing out and wrote HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY Remy on the cake. How hard is it to write with icing?! Next time I think I'll down a couple of Valium to help me cope with the task! I put the cake in the fridge to firm up the ganache.

I took the cake around to the Birthday Boy's house and presented it to his Mum. She was thrilled. I scored 10/10 from all that were lucky enough to taste it.

This is one recipe that I'll be hanging on to for a very long time to come!

UPDATE: I made the same cake a few days later for The Gentle Giant's birthday. Only this time, 'somebody' noticed the oven was on in the middle of the day at a low temperature and turned it off! My second cake sunk and did not and could not rise to the occasion. I decorated it with the white chocolate ganache, this time adding a touch of blue gel food dye, as well as edible glitter and a monogram. It tasted just as great as the other one, it just looked slightly flat....

Welcome To My Kitchen...

When I'm not putting energy into being the loud mouthed, opinionated little miss, you can usually find me in the kitchen. I love to cook. It relaxes and calms me. I love nothing more than to spend an afternoon in the kitchen preparing fan-fucking-tastic meals for my family and friends.

I prefer cooking savory things over sweet, purely as cooking pastry requires you to use exact measurements and that's just not how I roll. I prefer to add a dash of this and a glug of that until it tastes right.

The following are different things that I've made more than once. My friends and I have loved them so I've decided to share them with the world.

So kick back and let me tantalize your taste buds.