Weekend Carnivore

I hopped across the Atlantic again this week. My younger sister gave birth to her first child on the 14th. That was followed closely by me buying transatlantic ticket to meet my nephew and help out a bit. When I spoke to my sister on the phone shortly after she had given birth, she met my call with “you have to make me cookies”. Drugs, are a wonderful thing.

After a bit of probing, we established that it was oatmeal raisin cookies that both my sister and her husband were craving. Of all the cookies in the world they could ask for, they picked one that I had never actually made myself. I went on a hunt to try to find what I thought would be the perfect oatmeal raisin cookie recipe to celebrate the birth of my nephew.

After all that searching guess what oatmeal raisin cookie I finally ended up making? The oatmeal raisin cookie recipe on the back of the Quaker Oats box! You know what though? It was a pretty outstanding cookie recipe. I guess they really do know their oats!

The best thing out them is that since they include oatmeal, you can make a fairly convincing argument that they are acceptable as a breakfast food. At least that is what I am telling myself!

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups Oats, uncooked
1 cup raisins

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F/180C/Gas Mark 4
2. Beat together butter and sugars until creamy.
3. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.
4. Add combined flour, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well.
5. Stir in oats and raisins; mix well.
6. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet.
7. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.
8. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet; remove to wire rack.

Makes: 4 dozen cookies

Do jaffa cakes qualify as a biscuit or a cake? This quandary has been pondered with such frequency in British society that it may just rival that of the chicken and the egg. I say, stop wondering and make this amazing jaffa drizzle cake!

I have had this Jaffa Drizzle Loaf recipe in my ‘to try’ folder since I first saw it in BBC Good Food Magazine in 2006. That is a long time to hold out on a recipe. For New Year’s Eve I decided to borrow the infamous misquote from Marie Antoinette and let myself eat (the) cake. A decision made much easier by the prospect of sharing the jaffa drizzle cake recipe with a house full of party guests.

Jaffa drizzle cake recipe

It turns out that this jaffa drizzle cake was truly worth the wait. Unlike actual jaffa cakes it is very much a cake but it really does taste near exactly like like a jaffa cake. The main difference being that the cake part is ultra moist and carries just the right level of orange flavour.

Happily, the jaffa drizzle cake recipe is also one of the more simple cake recipes I have followed in recent times. All the mixing of the cake batter is done by hand with a wooden spoon. Saving me from having to get my electric mixer out. One less thing cluttering up my worktop is never a bad thing.

The only place that I, ever so slightly, strayed from the written recipe was to not so much drizzle the dark chocolate as to lather it on the top of the springy spongy orange cake. Admittedly, I did at first attempt a drizzle but it wasn’t looking as neat as I would wish for a party presentation. In the end, I resorted to just spreading the melted dark chocolate all over the top of the cake, allowing it to drizzle down the sides. I have to say, I will do it exactly the same again because once the chocolate hardened, the layer of chocolate added a lovely slight crunch to each slice of the cake.

This is certainly a keeper of a cake and I shall not be leaving it another four years before I once again make this jaffa drizzle cake recipe.

Hurrah! I can make shortbread! If I managed to follow a shortbread recipe and make some tasty shortbread cookies without any bid disasters then so can you! I have had my eye on this Cranberry Shortbread on Recipezaar for the past couple years but I never had the confidence in my baking skills to try it out. This year though, I decided to give it a shot.

I am glad I did because it turns out that this cranberry shortbread recipe really wasn’t that difficult at all. I have made a good number of recipes posted by the king of Recipezaar, Sydney Mike, so I should have known better than to be a bit frightened by the recipe.

Cranberry shortbread recipe

The only part of the cranberry shortbread recipe that I needed to get my head around, was getting the dough the right texture to roll out without it sticking too much. To get to my comfort zone, I had to add a little bit more butter but the shortbread recipe still turned out really well. After all, is a slightly more buttery taste in a shortbread going to get all that many complaints? I think not!

What I really enjoyed about this shortbread recipe was the way the sharpness of the dried cranberries worked so well with the rich shortbread. I am sure this would be a good recipe for all times of the year. However, this play in seasonal flavours makes it a particularly good addition to your Christmas cookie tray.

As I have said, I am not all that much of a baker. So, when Christmas baking season comes around, I am not afraid to reach for recipes that others have perfected. In fact, I think that is part of the fun of holiday baking. It is great to try out the recipes that other people love to bake. For the next few Weekend Carnivore updates, I am going to share the love and show some great Christmas baking recipes that I have learned from other people that share their recipes online.

Kahlua chocolate chunk cookie recipe

Who doesn’t love a good Christmas cookie? They don’t have to be just for the kiddies either! This Christmas cookie recipe for Kahlua chocolate chunk cookies, is one which I have been making for the past few years. I got the recipe from the lovely Kittencal over at Recipezaar. Part of what I love about her The Big Kahlua Vanilla Cookies recipe is that it is so versatile.

In the original cookie recipe, she uses white chocolate. Through the years, both through necessity and through experimentation I have tried it with all sorts of different types of chocolate but keeping the base of the cookie the same. In the end, I have settled on using a combination of milk chocolate and white chocolate. Instead of chips, I get really good chocolate bars and use a knife to make chocolate chunks.

They are a luxurious tasting Christmas cookie that has just a hint of extra richness from the Kahlua. Which means you can take something comforting and familiar and jazz it up to be something extra special for the Christmas period. A real treat just at the time of the year you want it most!

I love cooking and baking for parties because it means I get to try out new recipes and share out the calories. Otherwise, the baked goodies would just sit here willing me to allow them to jump straight on to my, already too big, belly.

Since the Christmas and New Year period is the season of parties, now is the point in the year where I do most of my baking. I save up recipes from magazines and websites all year round just for this time when I can bake and taste without feeling all that guilty about it. Though, I am fully aware that my diet will return with a vengeance in the New Year as a sort of culinary rehab.

In addition to baking and cooking the Christmas recipes of others, I also enjoy creating my own Christmas baking recipes. I am much more of a cook than a baker and I always feel a bit of shock when a baking recipe I have devised actually turns out okay. This weekend, I was met with just such a moment of shock when these mocha chocolate cupcakes turned out to be pretty darn good!

The recipe is based on the idea of a black coffee cake recipe which is in a copy of an American church cookbook from 1980 that my Nana gave to me when I turned 18. The original cake isn’t decorated at all. It is simply a cake with no topping. So, not only was I nervous about turning it into cupcakes but I also wasn’t certain a topping was going to work. Yet, it turned out to work very well indeed.

Since I was making them for a Christmas party, I used food colouring to turn the buttercream frosting festive red and green. However, you could very easily skip that stage and just use the white buttercream frosting. In fact, I think if you did that and just dusted the top lightly with cocoa powder you could call them espresso cupcakes.

For these though, I carried through the coffee theme to the top of the mocha chocolate cupcake recipe by topping each off with a chocolate covered coffee bean. That may sound a tad posh but I found a whole big bag of them on sale at lidls for £1.99. Your party guests never need to know!

Mocha chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting

Mocha chocolate cupcake recipe

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup strong coffee
1 cup milk (I use semi-skimmed)

For the buttercream frosting:

1 cup butter, softened
3 1/2 cups icing sugar (same thing as powdered sugar)
1 teaspoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

To decorate:

Chocolate covered coffee beans (optional)
Assortment of edible sprinkles (optional)

1. Preheat your oven to 35Of/180c/gas mark 4
2. Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Add the eggs, oil, coffee and milk to the dry mix and beat on a medium speed until well combined.
4. Line a cupcake pan with papers and pour the batter into each paper. Fill about half way up or it will spill out over the top of the paper while cooking. I got 15 cupcakes from this mix. So, you may have to bake in batches depending on how many holes there are in your tin.
5. Bake for between 15 and 20 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the middle of the chocolate cupcakes comes out ‘just moist’.
6. Take out of the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool. They need to be completely cool before you add the frosting.
7. When the mocha chocolate cupcakes are cooled, start making your buttercream frosting by putting the butter, sugar and salt in a large bowl and beat until blended.
8. Add the milk and vanilla and beat for another 3 to 5 minutes or until smooth and creamy.
9. If you want to make coloured frosting, divide your buttercream frosting recipe into as many bowls as you want colours. Then add a few drops at a time to each bowl and beat on low until combined. If you want a deeper colour add more drops until you get what you require.
10. Spread an equal amount of frosting on top of each mocha chocolate cupcake.
11. Decorate each mocha chocolate cupcake with a chocolate covered coffee bean and sprinkles, if using.

Makes: about 15 cupcakes depending on the size of your tin

December has arrived and for most of us the calendar change signals that a month of hardcore cooking and baking is on the horizon.

I have a huge stack of cooking magazines and recipes I have printed out from the internet sitting on my desk as I try to widdle them down to decide what exactly I will be cooking and baking for the Christmas period. You would think after all that foodie focused research I would be settled on a menu by now. The problem is that the more I see the more I want to make but I want to be careful of not biting off more than I can (literally) chew.

One thing I do know is that Christmas cooking period is going to be one of those times where I won’t be sticking strictly to a vegetarian diet. However, I do really want to try as much as possible to be cooking and serving mostly vegetarian Christmas recipes.

The good thing though is that it really isn’t very hard to do that. When you think about it, most of the Christmas cookies and cakes we will munch over the holiday period are vegetarian by their very nature. Then, the normal Christmas dinner trimmings are also largely vegetarian. At least that is the case if you skip doing your roast potatoes in goose fat. Frankly, even when I wasn’t so focused on vegetarian cooking that never appealed to me anyway.

As I make my way through a largely vegetarian Christmas, I will check in and share my vegetarian cooking adventures. Hopefully, it will give some of you also trying to eat mostly vegetarian over the Christmas cooking period of bit of inspiration.

For now though, it is on to finally forming a solid Christmas cooking schedule. So, time to settle down with that stack of Christmas cooking magazines and make my mind up. At least until I change it again.

Of course, I can’t do that research without having a good hot beverage by my side. This month for the vegetarian swap I participate in over at Recipezaar, I picked out this Mayan Hot Chocolate recipe posted by Recipezaar member the80srule.

spiced hot chocolate recipe

It turns out this hot chocolate recipe is the perfect partner to planning my vegetarian Christmas cooking. Firstly, the big sell for me, is that it is actually made with soy chocolate milk. I am lactose intolerant so whenever I make a creamy drink like hot chocolate I have to weigh up the consequences. I could make a normal hot chocolate recipe with water, I suppose, but any lover of hot chocolate knows that is simply never the same. Amazingly though, I had never thought of using soy chocolate milk as the base of a hot chocolate recipe but it really did work.

What really makes this hot chocolate recipe special though are the spices that go into the mixture. First in the pot, is a bit of cinnamon which gives a real Christmas feel to the hot chocolate recipe. Then comes the real surprise, a pinch of cayenne pepper. You would think that would make it hot and spicy but really it just adds a back ground warmth to the hot chocolate.

So, make yourself your own mug of this spiced hot chocolate and pull up your own pile of Christmas recipes and join the foodie December ritual of planning your holiday baking and Christmas cooking. Let the games begin!

This is going to be one of those recipes where it is clear that I am not an actual vegetarian. Sure, there is no meat in this recipe. Actually, if I posted a fudge recipe that did include meat, I would hope somebody would try to get me some help. No, what makes this recipe not totally vegetarian is the use of marshmallows. As you probably know, commercially sold marshmallows are  usually made with gelatine which is in turn made with the use of animals. So, marshmallows are for sure a no no for real vegetarians. There are vegetarian and vegan marshmallows available to buy but I would be lying if I said that I knew for sure that they would work in this sort of recipe. Perhaps, somebody could contact me and let me know and then in the future I can try doing this fudge recipe with vegan marshmallows.

Still, I have decided to post it anyway because I think that a lot of people such as myself, which are trying to eat less meat and perhaps progress into being real vegetarians will still be interested in such recipes. It is easier for those of us taking those baby steps away from meat to give up the big items first and then move into worrying about things like the gelatine in marshmallows. It will happen for me but just not straight away.

Apart from that, this is a super easy fudge recipe which I developed the other night. I am a dark chocolate type of a gal. I very rarely ever crave milk chocolate but now and then I just have to have a bit of the dark variety. I had learned this basic method of making fudge a few days prior but with the normal milk chocolate. So,I wanted to see if I could come up with something for the dark chocolate freaks such as myself. I thought that just a block of dark chocolate fudge would be far too rich. So, I roamed the aisles of the supermarket looking for a few ingredients that would jump out and scream ‘add me’. When I spotted the dried cranberries and raw cashews I thought they might be worth a shot.

Now, just to prove you don’t have to spend a ton of money to experiment with cooking, I am happy to say that everything for this easy fudge recipe was bought at Lidls. I bought their 70% dark chocolate which cost something like £1.85 for the whole bar. They also sell fair trade milk chocolate bars for the same price. Which is great to know and for a milk chocolate fudge recipe I would have for sure bought that instead. Then, for the marshmallows I went for their multi-coloured kiddie bag which was about a pound. Sure, they were funky colours but once it melted down it really wasn’t going to matter. Lidls now has a range of natural nuts and dried fruit too. So, I grabbed a really big bag of dried cranberries for just under £2 and a the cashews cost a bit over £1. The bag of cranberries had many more than needed for the recipe but they are great thrown into salads or just eaten as a snack. So, I had no problem spending the money on them and a small bag in Tescos or other supermarkets cost much more than that.

So, loaded up with my cheapo ingredients, I went into the kitchen and came out with this scrummy dark chocolate cranberry and cashew fudge recipe. We had guests over for the weekend and judging by how quickly we all ate the fudge, I would say it worked!

Dark chocolate cranberry and cashew fudge

Dark chocolate cranberry and cashew fudge recipe

Ingredients:

2/3 cup reduced-fat evaporated milk
1 2/3 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup dark chocolate, broken up in bits
1 1/2 cups marshmallows
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup raw cashews, freshly toasted and roughly chopped
1/2 cup dried cranberries

Directions:

1. Put the evaporated milk, sugar and salt into a pan and bring to the boil.
2. Allow to boil for 5 minutes, stirring all the time and then remove from the heat.
3. Stir in the broken up dark chocolate,and marshmallows and keep stirring until it is all melted.
4. Stir in the vanilla followed by the nuts and cranberries.
5. Pour the mixture into a lightly greased 8 inch square pan. Try to resist licking the spoon too much!
6. Smooth out the mixture so that it is as flat as possible on the top and put into the fridge to cool.
7. The longer it is in the fridge the more firm the fudge gets and the more the richness mellows out. Overnight would be fantastic but you can eat it just fine after a couple hours.
8. Cut up into squares and enjoy.

Serves: 10 to 12 depending on the size you cut the bard

I want to show off this vegetarian dessert recipe because I am so proud of myself for making it and not totally messing it up! I have always been a bit afraid of any recipes that involve whipping up egg whites to the point of the infamous stiff peaks. So, making a pavlova was totally out of the question. That is what I thought anyway until I was tempted into trying out the Australian Pavlova recipe posted by Sharon123 over on Recipezaar.

I was tempted by the pavlova recipe because it is a vegetarian recipe but also because of the use of egg whites, it is also a low fat dessert recipe. Who can turn that down? So, I gave I decided to have a try at making the recipe but I truly expected to fail. Much to my surprise my attempt at making this dessert recipe worked!

Pavlova Dessert Recipe

Not only did this vegetarian recipe for dessert look fantastic but it also tasted great. I filled the pavlova with low fat Greek yoghurt and then piled it high with chopped up kiwi and mango. As if that wasn’t tasty enough, I then sprinkled the top with macadamia nuts. It turned out to be an indulgent tasting dessert recipe. Best of all, even though it tasted so good, it was actually fairly healthy and of course it was a vegetarian recipe.