Food Plan week ending 22/06/13

This week we didn't have a huge variety of meals as most of them went quite a long way. 

Sunday - We went over to Gary's parents and had a lovely pasta bake. 

Monday - I made a bacon, sweetcorn and pea risotto. This is an old recipe that I got off the BBC website but can no longer find. It's very straightforward and we have adapted it slightly over the years. I fried some diced onion until soft, added cubed bacon and fried until cooked. Added risotto rice and chicken stock. This is all cooked together until the rice is lovely and fluffy. Add frozen peas and sweetcorn for a few minutes and then serve. 

Tuesday - Risotto from Monday

Wednesday - I tried a new recipe from the BBC Good Food Magazine and the recipe can be found here. I got part way through making this and realised it was quite similar to the chicken recipe I made a few weeks ago, however, it was very tasty and a nice variation.  I did make some adjustments to this recipe as well to try and pad it out a little. I added some onion to the potatoes at the start and then later on I added some pepper. With the addition of these ingredients we got 5 portions out of the meal. I used chicken breast rather than thighs. I intended on using 3, however, our naughty cat helped herself to one while it was defrosting on the side so we could only use 2. Needless to say she was in big trouble after that. Anyway the meal was really tasty, I served it with some more veg. The flavours of the rosemary and garlic really added to the taste. 

Thursday - We had the final portions of risotto from Monday. 

Friday - Gary decided he wanted pizza so we had a take away from dominos, yummy!! 

Saturday - Left over pizza. 

Choc-Cherry Muffins

I wanted to make some cakes for Gary to take back to work, his first day after having m&m, so I looked through my vast pile of waiting recipes and chose this one. Choc-Cherry Muffins, I took the recipe from the BBC Good Food magazine but it can also be found here. 

The recipe is very simple and it's basically just a normal cupcake recipe to start with. Cream the butter and the sugar, add in the eggs and finally the flour. The chocolate comes in the form of chopped up plain chocolate, this is stirred into the cake mixture. Once this is light and fluffy then it is placed in muffin cases, I made 16 from this recipe. 

Fluffy batter ready to go in cases.

The recipe states you should use tinned cherries, however, these aren't sold in our Tesco so I used frozen cherries that I'd defrosted throughout the day. The cherries are added to the muffin cases, once the mixture is in there, and pressed into the batter. I added around 3-4 cherries per muffin, this meant that there were plenty of cherries left over and I certainly didn't require the quantity stated in the recipe. 

The cakes were then placed in the oven and cooked for 25 minutes, for once the timing on the recipe was actually correct and the cakes were beautifully cooked after this time. I got them out and left them to cool on the rack. 

Cakes ready to eat..yum!! 

Verdict: I gave these muffins 9/10 and Gary gave them 8/10. They were really tasty with the chunks of chocolate and cherries. With each bite you got a different flavour and the combination was really good. Gary took them into work and his colleagues also agreed that these were very good. It's a shame I don't have more to eat :(. 

"Best Ever Chocolate Raspberry Brownies"

I couldn't wait until the weekend to get back into baking, the ingredients were tempting me in the cupboard, so I decided that Gary can always buy more chocolate and I should do a trial run!! So the recipe I decided to do was Chocolate Raspberry Brownies from the May 2012 BBC Good Food Magazine which can also be found online here. 

I'm not usually overly successful with brownies, I either over cook them and end up with solid masses or I under cook and they are just raw. I was determined that this time it would all work out and followed the recipe very carefully. 

First step was to melt the chocolate, butter (as usual I used cheapy soft spread) and sugar together in a saucepan. This step was rather interesting for me as I didn't realise how much mixture there was going to be and so it was bulging out of the pan, however, once it had melted it was much better. This mixture produced a lovely rich mixture, yummy!! 

Melted chocolate, butter and sugar ready to add the eggs to. 

I then transferred this mixture to my mixer and added 1 egg at a time. The first egg may have missed the bowl slightly so my recipe had slightly less than the required 4 eggs. 

I then added in the flour and cocoa and finally added in half the raspberries. I used frozen raspberries for this recipe as they are much cheaper and they worked perfectly well. 

I lined a tin with greaseproof paper,

Lined tin

 poured in the mixture and then sprinkled the remaining raspberries on the top of the mix and placed in the oven for 45mins (longer than the recipe stated but it still felt too runny so I thought this was necessary). 

Brownie mixture in the oven

The mixture feels so soft when you get it out the oven I was worried it wasn't done enough but I decided to trust it left it to cool. 

Mixture is cooked and cooling

As the mixture cooled it solidified up and I was pleased that when I cut into it there was a lovely gooey mixture inside, just cooked perfectly. 

My yummy piece of brownie (well my second piece maybe!!)

The verdict: I really enjoyed these brownies, I thought they were lovely and rich but that the raspberries brought an extra dimension to a mixture that would otherwise have been far too rich. This is a recipe that I would certainly like to make again as they are delicious. I now have the rest of the tin to eat :) and then I will make a batch for Gary to take to work for Monday. I give them 9/10. Gary gives the brownies 8/10, they were yummy but they could have been more yummy. Ever the insightful response from my husband!!!