Savoury Mince Pie

I thought today I'd try something new, and give some savoury baking a go. So I decided to have a bash at making a mince pie. I've never actually made a pie before, and also decided to follow my own recipe rather than one which had been tried and tested. Why make things easy?!

I have to say that I am pretty pleased with the result. It certainly doesn't look perfect, but it tasted delicious.

Ingredients:

Serves Six

For the pastry:
225g Plain Flour
50g Butter
50g Vegetable Fat
A little cold water

For the filling:
500g Lean Mince
One White Onion
Worcester Sauce\
One Beef Oxo Cube
Rainbow Pepper
Dried Basil
Gravy Granules
One Egg

To make the pastry, first sift the flour into a bowl before adding the butter and the vegetable fat. Rub this in with your fingertips until it reaches the consistency of fine breadcrumbs. Add a little cold water, a tablespoon at a time, to bind this into a soft dough. It should not be sticky. Wrap this in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour.

To make the filling for the pie, dice the onion and sprinkle the beef oxo cube over this. Brown together in a pan on a medium heat. Next, add your mince and brown this. Once this is done, reduce the heat to a simmer and the basil and rainbow pepper(to taste) and a dash of Worcester sauce. Mix up a tablespoon of gravy granules with a little boiling water to make a thick gravy. Then pour this into the pan with the mince, and stir. Take this off the heat while you roll out your pastry.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees (or 180 degrees for a fan oven) and grease or line a nine inch pie tin. Place your pastry between two sheets of clingfilm and roll it out until it is quite thin. Place this in your pie tin and press it into the bottom before going round the edges. Trim off the excess, and roll this out again to make the top of your pie.

Spoon the filling into the pie ensuring it remains a little below the rim of the tin. Level it off with the spoon. Cover this with the remaining pastry and press the top and bottom together to make sure it is sealed. Prick the top five or six times in the centre with a knife to allow the steam to escape during baking. Beat your egg, and then brush this over the top of the pie to give the pastry a nice golden finish.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the pastry is a nice golden brown.

Banana and Butterscotch Muffins

We all have them - those bananas that we forget to eat, and so they sit in the fruit bowl and slowly turn black. Rather than throwing them away, you could try this delicious little Nigella Lawson recipe.

I used butterscotch chips (from Sainsburys), and I only used 100g rather than the 150g in the recipe. I actually found this to be enough as the chips became nice and melty, giving the muffins a satisfying gooeyness. Personally, I think any more butterscotch may have made them a little too sweet, but it's all a matter of your preference.

I found that the mixture produced 12 lovely big muffins with enough left over for 3 smaller cupcakes. I baked them all for 15 minutes, and this was ample time for the muffins to become nice and golden. They smelt so delicious that I ended up eating one straight from the oven and it tasted like a lovely sponge dessert. They are also yummy cold, with a strong banana flavour and the butterscotch cutting through for that sugar hit.

Percy Pig Cupcakes

I am currently addicted to the little porcine devil known as Percy Pig. For those of you not familiar with this character, he is a chewy sweet available from Marks & Spencer. He comes in many different varieties, and I decided that the original Percy would look very cute on top of a cupcake.

Percy comes in grape and raspberry flavours, and after being unable to find any cupcake recipes in these flavours which I felt would compliment him, I settled on a vanilla cupcake. I've made a few of the Hummingbird Bakery recipes, and have always found them to produce a delicious sponge, moist and light. The recipe I used can be found here.

The only change I made to the recipe was using skimmed milk instead of whole milk, and it produced the perfect amount of mixture for 12 standard sized cupcakes. I baked them for 18 minutes at 150 degrees in my fan oven, and they came out perfectly. I have never made buttercream frosting with milk in the recipe before, and was a little concerned that it may be a bit runny, but it actually came out beautifully. It tasted lovely and creamy on top of the cupcake, and the actual cake itself wasn't overpoweringly sweet. Again, the quantity was just about perfect for the number of cakes, and there was very little waste. I didn't pile it on as I wanted to keep the tops of the cakes relatively flat, but if you like lots of buttercream, you may need to make a little more.

I found that a 100g pack of Percy Pig sweets contains exactly 12. I bought two of these packs (they were on offer) just in case I needed any more, and may use the second bag to whip up another batch as these are a scrumptious alternative to chocolate cakes, and I think they look incredibly cute.

Rocky Road Muffins

If anything can brighten up a dreary Monday, it's chocolate. And gooey marshmallows. And more chocolate. This is a really easy recipe, and one that would probably be quite fun to do with kids too.

Ingredients

225g/8oz Plain Flour
55g/2oz Cocoa Powder (I used Bournville)
1 tbsp Baking Powder
Pinch Of Salt
115g/4oz Caster Sugar
50g/1 3/4oz Plain Chocolate Chips
50g/ 1 3/4oz White Chocolate Chips
50g/ 1 3/4oz White Mini Marshmallows (or big ones chopped up)
2 Eggs
250ml/ 9 fl oz Milk (I used skimmed as that's what I had in the fridge)
85g/3oz Butter, melted and cooled

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees (or 180 if using a fan oven like me) /400 degrees f/ gas mark. Prepare a 12 cup muffin tin (either grease it, or line it with paper cases). 

Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into a large bowl and then stir in the sugar, chocolate chips and marshmallows.

Lightly beat the eggs in another bowl before beating in the milk and the butter.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour the beaten liquid ingredients into it. Gently stir until just combined. If you over mix it, it will become tough. I prefer to do the mixing by hand.

Spoon the mixture into the cases. An ice cream scoop also works brilliantly for this. Bake for 15-20 minutes until a cake tester (or cocktail stick!) can be pushed into the cake, and comes out clean. Leave in the tin for about 5 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool.

When cooled, DEVOUR!!!

Although this recipe should make 12 muffins, I actually got 12 muffins and 6 smaller cakes out of it. Sadly, this means I have some extra cakes to eat. I shall be enjoying mine with a mug of Whittards Rocky Road hot chocolate.

Cherry And Almond Loaf

My dad asked me to bake him something with cherries in it, and when I stumbled across a recipe for a Cherry and Almond Loaf Cake, it sounded perfect.

This is a Nigella Lawson recipe, and I followed it exactly. I am aware that some people have experienced issues with the batter being too wet, but I did not find this. I did, however, need to bake it for an hour and 8 minutes for the middle to cook through. I used tinfoil over the top for the last 8 minutes to ensure the outside of the cake did not burn.

For anyone interested, the recipe I used can be found here.

This is a moist cake, perfect to enjoy with a cuppa. It should keep for up to a week in an airtight container, but I don't think there is much chance of it surviving that long...