Rustic Irish Potato Bread

I actually wasn't sure what to call this post because I can't work out if this is Irish Potato Bread, Cakes or Farls. I have heard these called all three and I really can't work out if they are the same thing. I definitely randomly vary between all three words.  Anyway, I got this recipe posted through my door on a leaflet for Abe and Cole who deliver boxes of vegetables to people. It is such a useful recipe because it is so quick and easy and requires so few ingredients.

 

These are really  nice for breakfast on there own or with a fry up. They are also great for lunch with soup. I have even had them for dinner with a stew. So basically they are great at all times!


You will need:

• 500g of potatoes, skinned and cubed ( about 3 medium sized potatoes) 
• 4 tbsp of butter
• 1-2 mugs of plain white flour
• a pinch of sea salt 

Method :

• Boil the potatoes in salted water for about 15 mins until they are soft enough to mash.
• Drain the potatoes and then mash them with a good chunk of butter and a pinch of salt. 
• Sift the flour, a little bit at a time, into the potatoes until it forms a soft dough, the amount of flour you need varies each time so just keep adding flour until the dough is soft and no longer sticky.
• Roll it out onto a floured surface until it is between 1/2 and 1 cm thick. Make sure you keep dusting it with flour so it doesn't stick to the side or the rolling pin. ( On a side note if you don't have a rolling pin, I don't, then you can just use an empty glass bottle and it works exactly the same) 
• Tidy up the edges if you want, and then cut it into squares. 
• Place a large frying pan over a high heat to warm the pan up. After a few mins turn the heat down and place the squares in the pan, you don't need any butter or oil to cook them in. Cook them on both sides until they are golden.

You should definitely serve them warm and  with plenty of butter. 

Quick & Healthy Fruity Flapjacks

I found this recipe when I was looking at healthy recipes. Instead of being full of butter these flapjacks are made with banana. They are really, really tasty even if it is a strange idea. Recently I've found loads of recipes that use banana instead of other ingredients, it is amazing how much they can be used for especially beucase I always have overipe bananas in my fruit bowl that I need to use up/ get out of eating. They're so quick to, they take about 20 minutes overall.

I'm not really a fan of bananas but I do love them used in other things. If you really don't like bananas this probably isn't the recipe for you but you can only taste the banana ever so slightly.

You can really change this basic recipe aswell so add any fruit/ nuts/ seeds that you want. I did make them with cranberry and white chocolate chips once which was delicious but probably not 'healthy'. Sometimes I use a tablespoon of honey instead of the sugar which also gives it a lovely flavour.

 

You will need: 

• 1 banana
• 50g of dried fruit - my favourite to use is apricot and sultanas
• 25g of sugar - muscavado sugar is nicest in this recipe
• 100g of porridge oats
• 3tbsp of oil - the recipe said rapeseed oil but I have tried sunflower and vegetable and they both work too. 

Method: 

• Preheat the oven to 160c
• Mash up a banana with a fork or spoon, then add the dried fruit.
• Stir in the sugar and oil, then add in the porridge oats and mix it all together thoroughly. 
• I love it with a teaspoon of vanilla and a teaspoon of cinnamon added but it is also nice without.
• Place the mixture in a 17cm square tin and cook for around 15 mins until it is golden. 
• Leave it to cool if you want it to harden, you can eat whilst its warm and its lovely and squidgy but less flapjacky. 

Bara Brith - Welsh Tea Loaf

This tea loaf tastes seriously amazing and is most probably the easiest, cheapest cake recipe you will ever find. It is made without eggs, butter or milk so that means no expensive dairy products.

Every time I make this Bara Brith it reminds me of holidays to Wales where you can find it everywhere.

The other great thing about this recipe is that it is done in cups, we don't have scales so it makes baking much easier. If you don't have cup measures - you should get some - you can just use a normal sized mug as they are only a tiny bit bigger but it doesn't matter because you'll just end up with a bit more mixture. You could even use pint glasses if you really wanted.

The best part of this recipe is making a cup of tea and then adding it to the cake. How many other recipes can you say ask you to do this. It feels strange but this is the part that means you don't need butter or milk.

You will need:

• 2 cups of self-raising flour
• 1 cup of caster
• 1 cup of sultanas, you can use raisins if you want but sultanas are the best!
• 1 cup of strong tea, use any tea you want, experiment!

Method:

• Make a cup of tea and leave to cool down for a bit whilst you mix the other ingredients.
• Mix the rest of the ingredients together then pour in the cup of tea - it doesn't matter if it isn't completely cool - and stir it in.
• Bake in a loaf tin - or a cake tin if you don't have one - for an hour at 180.

Serve in slices with lashings of butter. Like most things its loveliest warm from the oven.
 

Quick & Easy Cinnamon Buns

Warm cinnamon buns are the best to bake for a lovely warming treat. They are just so yummy and cinnamony! We all trooped out for a long walk down the river today and when we got back everyone needed a treat to warm up and get our energy back so I thought of this recipe.

Cinnamon buns always remind me of Sweden because we ate them there ALOT! They seemed to be much more popular there for some reason. I find that in England it is really hard to find a nice cinnamon bun. They occasionaly have them in the bakery bit in M&S but so far this is the only place I have found them. Apart from some extremely hard ones from a packet in Aldi. 

So baking them fresh is the only way to get really nice cinnamon buns in England. The only problem with this is that they take ages! I am not the best at kneading or waiting for dough to rise. So this recipe is amazing it is so quick and easy so that you can actually make them in time for breakfast. 

I also love recipes where you mix things with your hands. I just find that it makes baking even funner. 

They are a slightly different texture to normal cinnamon buns because they are made without yeast but it is still a delicious recipe. 

You will need:

For the Rolls:

• 350g of self-raising flour
• Pinch of salt
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 100g butter, melted
• 2 eggs
• 200ml milk

For the Filling:

• 1 tsp cinnamon 
• 55g brown sugar
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 tbsp of butter, melted

Method:

• Grease and line a 20 cm round tin and preheat the oven to 180.
• Mix the flour, salt, caster sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl with a spoon.
• Whisk the butter, eggs and milk together and then combine them with the dry ingredients to make a soft dough with your hands. 
• Sprinkle the side with flour and roll out into a thin rectangle, roughly 30 x 25 cm, don't feel that you need to measure it!
• Make the filling  by mixing all of the ingredients together, then spread the filling on top of the dough.

• Roll up the dough into a log shape and then use a knife to cut the roll into 8 pieces. 

• Place them into the tin and brush them with milk to glaze.
• Cook for 30-35 mins until they are golden brown.
• Enjoy them warm from the oven. 

They are also really nice with an icing topping and they look extra pretty too. It does make them a bit sweeter though so I don't always add it. If you want to just mix up some icing using the packet instructions and drizzle over . 

Easy Peasy Microwave Porridge & Some More Exciting Versions

This winter I have found a new love ... Porridge. It is so warming and comforting and such a lovely thing to wake up to on a freezing winter morning & it is so filling it keeps me going until lunchtime. My only problem is I think porridge tastes bland and boring this is why I did not eat it before. I have discovered that porridge can be delicious by adding your favourite flavours to it. Over this winter I have experimented with flavours so here are some of my favourites:

The other reason that I have started eating porridge is that I found out that you can make it in the microwave and it tastes just as good. Apart from not liking the bland taste of porridge the other reason I never made it was having to wash up the pan which porridge always manages to stick to stubbornly. Making it in the microwave means you just make it in the bowl your going to eat out of.

Method:

• 38g of porridge (or more or less depending on how hungry you are) 
• 280ml of milk
• Pour the oats and milk into the bowl and microwave for 2 mins, stir it and then microwave it for another 2 mins. Keep an eye on it in the last 2 mins and make sure that you stop it before it bubbles over the top. You need to make sure that you do let it bubble up a bit though or the oats stay hard. This will depend on how powerful your microwave is - mine sometimes takes a bit longer because it is not very strong.

Lemon Curd and Blueberry

I am a massive fan of Lemon Curd, I use it with a lot of recipes. If you like lemon you should definitely try lemon curd in porridge it is delicious even if it sounds strange. This is my favourite flavour of porridge it just goes really well. To make this just stir in a spoonful of lemon curd and if you've got them a handful of blueberry's go really well with the lemony flavour aswell.

Apple and Cinnamon

This is delicious but is is quite sweet and it takes a bit longer to make so I have it as a treat on a lazy sunday morning.

To make the apple and cinnamon chop up two apples, they can be any type of apple you like, put them in a saucepan with about 3cm of water in the bottom. Add about 3 tablespoons of brown sugar - you can use white if you like - and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon. This really depends on how sweet and cinnamony you want it, I usually put in loads of cinnamon. Leave this to bubble for 10-15 mins until it can be squashed together into a smoothish sauce. Don't be afraid to add more water to it absorbs all the water.

Once you have the apple and cinnamon sauce just stir it into the porridge and enjoy.

Maple Syrup and Cream

Stir in a spoonful of maple syrup and one of cream. or if you are feeling really decadent you can use cream instead of porridge. It makes the porridge so rich and ...creamy.

Fig and Honey

If you want a really quick version chop up the fig and put the pieces on top of the porridge and drizzle with honey.

If you have a bit more time it is even nicer with baked figs. Just cut the figs up and put them in a baking dish/ tray. Drizzle the figs with two tablespoons of honey and a pinch of cinnamon. This is also really nice with a tablespoon of brandy for a christmassy porridge. Then bake the figs in the oven for 20 mins at 180. Make sure you check them after 10 mins because the riper ones cook faster.

Golden Syrup

You can't go wrong! Just dollop in a generous spoonful, swirl it around and it tastes lovely. This is probably the easiest aswell.


.... & some less successful ones which you should never try under any circumstances!

• Peanut Butter and Jam - Jam is lovely in porridge and Jam and PB are so good together but apparently not in porridge! The Peanut Butter made it such a strange texture, really sticky and claggy.
• Chocolate Spread - sounds delicious tastes awful, I'm not sure why because chocolate is good with anything and everything. I've tried putting a square of chocolate on top of porridge and that is delicious  but for some reason mixed in it is not good. Don't do it!

I am absolutely loving discovering all of these new flavours so please tell me your favourites to try.