Author: Scottish Mum
Breadmaker Recipe: Basic White Loaf
Using a breadmaker is like coming home to warm slippers. Yes, really. It’s so handy to have if we run out of shop bread and means I don’t have to run out for extra supplies late at night for the next days packed lunches.
I have a Panasonic which is fairly aged now but it still churns out the bread beautifully. It also means I can put some in the freezer too.
Breadmaker Bread: Basic Large Size White Loaf
Ingredients
Method
- Breadmaker recipes tend to differ on how they explain using ingredients for bread. I tend to add in the water first as I really have not got the hang of putting in the dry ingredients first.
- Add the water and olive oil.
- Put the flour on top of the water until it completely coats the surface. If you’re not confident, make a little well in the middle of the flour for the yeast.
- I put the salt and sugar on top of the flour into one side and then add the yeast in last, making sure that it is not in contact with the water or sugar at all.
- Select a four hour or basic bread setting. You can also use this recipe for a thicker French crust effect by using a longer setting to get a thicker crust. I find this is the best recipe for making sandwich bread for school packed lunches.
- Leaving your bread to cool fully means it will cut more easily, but if you’re like my boys and like some warm bread to use immediately it comes out of the breadmaker, then it tends to be more of a tear and share effort here. I can get up to 11 slices from this, but when I first started to cut a loaf, I was lucky if I got five or six. It does take practice.
The Allotment / Plot Is Under Way for 2014
We have an allotment, but we call it the plot. It’s great for the kids and it means they get to know the origins of our fruit and vegetables in life. It’s good for middler as he gets to potter in dirt and keeps the garden for being a garden. It also means the hub can take a child or three now and then to give me a bit of peace.
I wrote about the plot first here, where the old shed that stood on it was falling down and in a terrible state. You can also see the completely overgrown plot area where the people are all trampling over. It seemed to be mostly carpet sewn into grass and earth.
Last year, I wrote about it as it moved along here. This year I am hoping to get many more and better pictures as our goodies grow.
The man built a new shed rather than buy one as he wanted a sturdy wee box to live in while he is there.
Here’s how we’re shaping up so far this year. Peas are in, as are strawberries, rhubarb, some potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, onions and leeks.
I can’t persuade him to put in blackberries or raspberries and since I don’t plan tending the plot myself this year, I think I’ll have to do without.
Potatoes, neeps and carrots still have to be finished, and we have lots of different herbs this year.
I think there are even some melons on the go, as well as cucumbers and marrows, but we’ll just have to see if he manages to grow those.
I just hope we don’t get too much nicked this year. That really winds me up when people just come to take the harvest when they don’t bother to do any work for themselves. It’s also seems to be one of the biggest reasons that people give up their allotments.
They trash things they can’t take in the process of stealing the crops, so we tend to harvest early and have smaller fruit and veg than they would be if they were fully grown.
Making Chocolate Eggs For Easter
A wee while ago, the people from Stay In Devon sent us a wee kit for making your own easter eggs to try. Middler, who has special needs decided he’d be the one making them with a little help from his brother.
As much as I tried to persuade him to use the fried eggs as eyes, he wanted to do it his way, so ours have a fried egg inside, and he ate the other two. He put the lips and nose on to please him and he’s delighted with the result. We left ours overnight before de-moulding which was perhaps the wrong thing to do as the chocolate speckled, but he’s happy with them 🙂
How did we do it? Here’s how. We used a chocolate easter egg kit. You can buy moulds to make them from any good mould seller.
He found it quite difficult to wait in-between layers so if I did this again, I’d let him do one and head off to school, then I’d do a couple more before he got home. I had to heat up an oven tray and put some greaseproof on top of it to melt the edges so that they could be stuck together, but it all worked out fine.
Silent Sunday – 20 April 2014
Basic Meringue Recipe – Great For Meringue Nests
Being able to make meringue nests is one of the jobs I wish I had learned years ago.
Now that I know how to do it, making all sorts of meringues is now quite easy. For this recipe you can use a piping bag, or if you don’t have one, just pop your meringue mix onto your making paper and use the back of a spoon to form peaks.
This will take around 30 – 45 minutes to dry in the over if the nests are small, but one large pavlova size meringue will take up to an hour and a half to dry out in the oven, and then it has to be left to cool.
The vinegar is in all my meringue recipes and will be forever more. It helps to stabilise it, and the chances of it collapsing are greatly reduced, although meringues are by their nature, crumbly and light.
Basic Meringe Recipe – Useful For Meringue Nests
Ingredients
Method
- Put the oven on to approximately 130 C or Gas 1 - 2. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
- Separate the egg yolk from the egg whites and put them into a mixer bowl. Whisk them for a few minutes until they form stiff peaks.
- Add the sugar slowly, about 50g at a time and whisk again for a few minutes each time, until the sugar is all added.
- Add the vinegar, cornflour and vanilla essence and continue to mix for up to 8 minutes, until the mix is smooth and glossy.
- Line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Put your meringue mix into a piping bag with the nozzle of your choice. Starting from the middle, work out by going round in circles to create the meringue nest shape on your baking paper.
- Pop your meringues into the oven for approximately 30 - 45 minutes. Let the meringues cool down in the oven if it's possible.
Shortcrust Pastry Recipe
For almost every other pastry, I buy it in the shops as ready make blocks and sheets, but for the shortcrust pastry version, I usually make it as it is just so simple and quick to make.
It can also be frozen once it’s made for another day, so for example, if you were going to make 4 x 4″ flan case base size portions, I would use half this quantity.
What I often do is make the full batch and freeze half of the dough for another day. This batch size will make up to 8 x 4″ flan case size bases.
Ingredients
Method
- Put flour and butter into a bowl and either rub the butter into the flour, or mix it in the food processor until it is a breadcrumb consistency. Make sure that all the lumps of butter are rubbed in.
- Add a couple of pinches of salt and caster sugar, and mix with the breadcrumb consistency ingredients.
- Add a little water at a time and either mix by hand, or in the mixer / processor until the dough forms a ball. Stop when the dough has bound together. I add a tablespoon at a time until the ball begins to form.
- Wrap the dough up with cling film and refrigerate for approximately half an hour before using it.
Roasting Bag: Chicken Breasts in Chicken Tonight Country French White Wine Sauce …With Cream & Chives
This is a speedy way to have a home cooked meal in a sauce.
Roasting bags are one of my favourite things to cook with, as the food really just never goes wrong.
I have made this recipe with 1 jar, which just gives the meat and vegetables a very nice coating with this level of ingredients.
This worked perfectly for us, but I suspect I might add 2 jars at my next attempt at using a jar of sauce for a roasting bag.
Roasting Bag: Chicken Breasts in Chicken Tonight Country French White Wine Sauce …With Cream & Chives
Ingredients
Method
- Set oven to 180C . To make this dish easier, I used a dish to mix the chicken breasts, potatoes and carrots in while I coat them all with the jar of chicken tonight.
- Pop all the ingredients into the roasting bag and seal it well.
- Lay your chicken out so that each piece is separate and on the floor of your roasting tray. If they are piled on top of each other, they will not cook properly. This is why you need a large roasting bag. If you only have smaller ones, split your ingredients into smaller batches.
- Cook in the oven for an hour, or until the chicken breasts are fully cooked. This could be more or less, depending on how large your chicken breasts are.
- Just take out of the bag and serve. Easy Peasy.
We’re all going to die !!!!!
Long term readers of my blog will know that I have adopted children, one of whom has full-blown foetal alcohol syndrome and is in a dedicated special school, where he is now settled after a few years of sad instability at the hands of the education department staff.
He is now 12 years old and heading towards the teen years very fast.
He has also just begun to learn how to join simple words from some simple letters. Read cat sat on the mat, but not so advanced yet. Just the cat is a huge deal.
For 12 and a half years, he has rarely watched TV, and on the rare occasions he has, it hasn’t been sustained, but more of a one-off.
Imagine my surprise when he came through to see me last night. He’d been in the family room while I was in the lounge, reading in peace.
“Mum, the news is bad.”
“What’s on the news?”
“Well, the army has killed two of their own people. Cigarettes are now banned forever so dad has to stop smoking or he’ll be in jail, and Saharan sand is smothering everybody and we’re all going to die.”
Then, off he pops, happy as Larry, to listen to more gore from the news while I go and put on the kettle.
Win a bibT Wipe Clean T-Shirt – Closing Date 4th May 2014
bibT recently sent me a wipe clean t-shirt to review. I have a very young nephew and thought it would make a lovely present for him, and I was right.
The bibT has a very soft t-shirt base which I found hard to imagine until I had one in my hands. The cotton is 100% organic supersoft and I can tell you that it feels really nice to the touch.
There are adjustable neck poppers and the bib part reaches from the neck to bottom of the t-shirt. I initially wondered if the bit under the neck piece would be scratchy, but it’s the soft t-shirt material, so it looks fine to me.
I haven’t washed the one I have, but I’m told it is washable at 40 degrees. It certainly looks much better than having a bib permanently wrapped around a childs neck. If these had been around when my kids were young, I suspect I’d have been persuaded to get a few for going out and about.
There are several different designs and come in long and short sleeves. Sizes are available to fit any child up the age of around 4.
As a gift, I’d be impressed as mine arrived in lovely tissue, wrapped with ribbon.
I’ve got one to giveaway to my readers too. You can have your own choice of which design from the bibT website. As well as being functional day to day, I think these make for fabulous presents.
The Rules
- Open to UK Mainland Entrants only.
- 1 Winner will win a bibT from http://www.bibt.co.uk
- The prize will be sent to you from bibT directly..
- The Scottish Mum Blog is not responsible for your prize and cannot be held liable in any way for non delivery or non receipt at your end.
- Winners will be notified within 3 days of giveaway end. If the winner does not respond within 7 days, a new winner will be drawn.
- The winners will be chosen by Rafflecopter random generator.
- Scottish Mum Blog and bibT reserves the right to amend, add or withdraw this giveaway at any time.
- Each entry method entitles you to one entry into the draw.
- You may tweet daily. Each tweet counts as a rafflecopter entry, only if you enter it into the rafflecopter widget daily.
Win Maw Broon’s Cooking With Bairns – Closes 30th April 2014 at Midnight
I have two of these and I’ve just found out that the sister in law who I would have given it to for Christmas bought it after seeing my version.
Rather than just give it away to someone I don’t know, I thought someone who reads my blog might get the good of it.
Enjoy.
The giveaway runs from the first of April until the 30th April at midnight.
Good luck.
The Rules
– Open to UK Mainland Entrants only.
– 1 Winner will win a cookbook titled Maw Broon’s Cooking With Bairns.
– The prize will be sent to you from Scottish Mum Blog.
– The Scottish Mum Blog is not responsible for your prize and cannot be held liable in any way for non delivery or non receipt at your end.
– Winners will be notified within 3 days of giveaway end. If the winner does not respond within 7 days, a new winner will be drawn.
– The winners will be chosen by Rafflecopter random generator.
– Scottish Mum Blog reserves the right to amend, add or withdraw this giveaway at any time.
– Each entry method entitles you to one entry into the draw.
– You may tweet daily. Each tweet counts as a rafflecopter entry, only if you enter it into the rafflecopter widget daily.
Mothers Day With McCains Special Roast Potatoes
Mothers Day food yesterday was courtesy of McCains to try their new roasties.
The NEW Special Roast Potatoes are made from the very best King Edward potatoes cut into generous chunks and basted in sumptuous beef dripping. They are really really good. I put on both bags and by the end of mealtime, there were none left at all. That’s always a good sign.
McCains sent along lots of lovely ingredients to go along with the roast potatoes, and we had carrots, sage and onion stuffing, chicken, green beans, broccoli and cabbage.
The broccoli and cabbage is in the fridge for another day, as there was too much for one meal, even if there were 6 of us eating.
There was a Knorr Flavour Pot in Mixed Herbs which we’ve also not tried before, and as I like my vegetables roasted, I use roasting bags to keep them moist and not get burned. I used two separate bags, one for the green beans and one for the carrots. In them, I halved the flavour pot and added a few tablespoons of water before shaking the mix around to coat the vegetables.
The chicken went into the oven first (also in roasting bags) and just over half an hour from the end, I popped the roast potatoes in a tray covered in tin foil to start cooking. The vegetables were last to go in, with 20 minutes cooking time at the end.
Can I put cooked garlic mushrooms in the fridge for a couple of days
Neeps is just short for turnips.
Made this last night and it as perfect , i never made bread before and its the first time i…