I love me some pizza.... let's face it, if you don't there's something wrong with you! At least that's what I say about my husband eating his cheeseless pizza because he hates cheese, or at least he thinks he does.

I was excited to get an email from Roma offering me some of their lovely pizza/pasta flour to try out along with a few recipes. I'm glad I said yes, not only cos it meant I got to enjoy more pizza but also because they provided me with my new favourite dough recipe! This is a fantastic dough to work with, really easy to make and deliciously tasty. It's become my new standard recipe (sorry Jamie!)

Roma Pizza Dough

Makes 2 8/9" round pizzas

Ingredients
250g Roma Strong Pizza/Pasta Flour
1/2 tsp salt
150ml lukewarm water
3.5 g fast action yeast
1 tsp EVOO
1/2 tsp caster sugar

Recipe
1. Mix the water, yeast, EVOO and sugar together and set to the side until the mixture starts to froth.
2. Mix the roma pizza flour with the salt in a bowl with tall sides.
3. Make a hollow in the flour and pour in the yeast mixture. Mix the flour into the liquid. When fully combined, knead for 5 minutes. Cover the bowl with cling film (aka seran wrap) and place the bowl in a warm spot for an hour or until the dough has doubled in size.
4. Divide the dough in 2 and make 2 pizza bases on a floured surface. Add your favourite toppings and bake in the oven at 170˚C for 8-10 minutes.



Thank you to the good and lovely people at Roma for the free flour and the fantastic recipes!

I was sure I had blogged this before but it seems I dreamt that, so now to rectify the situation because this recipe definitely needs shared and devoured!



Here be my lovely and simple and ever so tasty recipe for mars bar krispie treats

Mars Bar Krispie Treats

Makes 16 2" squares

Ingredients
75g unsalted butter
5 x 58g Mars bars
3 cups of rice krispies/generic puffed rice
150g milk chocolate
30g unsalted butter

Recipe
1. Melt together the Mars bars and 75g butter in a double boiler.
2. Mix in the "generic puffed rice" until well combined. Spread this into an 8" x 8" baking tin and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Melt together the chocolate and 30g butter. Spread over the krispie mix and leave it back in the fridge for 30 minutes.
4. Remove from the fridge and cut into squares

I love it in restaurants when they give you a basket of different breads along with some butter and oil for nibbling before your meal so I decided to make some bread when my family came for dinner one night.

This was a great simple recipe I found on channel 4 from delicious magazine.

I split the dough into 3 and made a loaf with sundried tomatoes in the middle, a loaf with black olives in the middle and a plain one. The baking time was half what the recipe below states because of this split.



Basic White Rustic Loaf
Source: channel 4 from delicious magazine.
Makes about a 750g loaf/12 slices

Ingredients
500g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tsp fine salt
7g sachet fast-action dried yeast
300 ml warm water
1 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for greasing

Recipe
1. Mix together the flour, salt and yeast in a bowl. Create a well in the centre and slowly mix in the water and the oil until the dough comes together – if the dough is very dry, add a little more water.
2. Knead the dough for 5 minutes, until smooth, on a lightly floured surface.
3. Shape like a rugby ball and put onto an oiled, large baking sheet. Leave to rise in a warm place for 40 minutes or until doubled in size.
4. Preheat oven to 220°C. Make slashes with a sharp knife in the top of the dough and dust with flour. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until risen, golden and cooked. Cool on a wire rack and slice to serve.

I'm absolutely loving the Nigella Express book I got in the January sales. I'm pretty sure I've made loads more out of it than any other cook book I have.

I found some chicken drumsticks in the freezer and immediately thought of this recipe and I'm glad I did, because it was beautifully juicy and tender and full of flavour. Thank you again Nigella!!!

Buttermilk Chicken
Source: Nigella Express, Nigella Lawson, p274

Ingredients
12 chicken drumsticks
500ml buttermik
60ml vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, skinned and bruised
1 tbsp crushed peppercorns
1 tbsp sea salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Recipe
1. Mix together the buttermilk, 60ml oil, garlic, pepper, salt, cumin and maple syrup.
2. Place the chicken in a ziplock bag and pour in the mixture. Squish everything around to marinade
3. Leave to marinate in the fridge for at least 30 minutes but if possible overnight
4. Preheat oven to 220˚C. Place chicken pieces in a roasting tine lined with foil, shaking off the excess marinade
5. Drizzle the 2 tbsp oil over the chicken and roast for 30 minutes.

This is the third part of February's monthly triplet of recipes from magazines and next week I'll get into March's triplet.

I was caught by the photo of this recipe in the magazine, it was a blueberry cottage cheese cake but I had a bag of frozen raspberries I was dying to use so I subbed out the blueberries, but I think I may just try this sometime with blueberry because it was a great cake and fun to make. I also halved the recipe and baked in a sandwich tin instead of the 9.5" tin. I think this would be perfect with some afternoon tea sitting out in the beautiful sunshine we've been having here over the past week.



Heres the recipe using my halved measurements

Raspberry cottage cheese cake
Source: Easy Food magazine February 2009, p65

Ingredients
butter, for greasing
2 eggs, separated
70 g brown sugar
125g cottage cheese, beaten until smooth
75g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
100g semolina
1/2 tsp lemon rind
2-3 handfuls of frozen raspberries
2 tbsp caster sugar
(削除) 25g flaked almonds (削除ここまで) (I thought I had some when I started making this but it turns out I didn't)

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C and grease your cake tin.
2. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl, add the sugar and whisk until the mixture is light and creamy.
3. Mix in the cottage cheese.
4. Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl then stir into the cheese mixture. Fold the semolina and lemon rind in.
5. Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff, then fold into the cake mixture.
6. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and sprinkle the raspberries over the top along with the caster sugar (削除) and almond flakes (削除ここまで).
7. Bake in the oven for 1 hour (because mine was smaller it took 40 minutes)


I twittered about how I've been blogging too much cake lately and worried that you all think I ONLY eat cake so I'm going to blog a few non cakey things this week to try and convince you!

In January I made a little "vow" to make at least 3 recipes a month from the food magazines I have bought that month. Well February's mags weren't too great for me so I ended up making some recipes I have bookmarked in cookbooks instead and this is one of them - Whole Orange Cake.



Really simple to make and very tasty - especially seeing as it was topped off with chocolate ganache.

Whole Orange Cake
Source: Simply Essentials: Fruit by Donna Hay

Ingredients
2 oranges
175g butter
1.5 cups caster sugar
3 eggs
3/4 cup ground almonds
1.5 cups plain flour
2 tsps baking powder

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 160˚C
2. Wash oranges and place in saucepan of water on a medium heat. Bring the water to the boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Leave for 30 minutes or until soft.
3. Take the oranges out of the water and leave to cool a little. Chop coarsely.
4. Process the oranges in a food processor until finely chopped.
5. Add the butter, sugar, eggs, ground almond, flour and baking powder and process until smooth and mixed through.
6. Pour into a greased 9" cake tin and bake for 1 hour or until cooked through.

Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients
3/4 cups single cream
100g dark chocolate, finely chopped
70g milk chocolate, finely chopped

Recipe
1. Bring the cream to a boil in a saucepan over a medium heat.
2. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate.
3. Leae to melt slightly and then stir until the mixture is glossy and smooth.

I really need to learn to read recipes better before trying to make them. I'm good at reading what ingredients I need but beyond that I'm quite hopeless. I had planned to make a cake on Sunday for youth group but when I was about to start discovered it needed a bit more prep than I had time for so I'll know for next time to start sooner. So I had to rustle up something else and came up with this idea rather quickly as I looked round to see what else I had to hand.



Lemon and Blackcurrant Cake

Ingredients
250g butter, softened
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tbsp lemon rind
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup milk
2 cups self raising flour
1/4 cup blackcurrant jam

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 160˚C and grease a 9" cake tin.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl
3. Gradually beat in the eggs one at a time.
4. Stir in the lemon rind, lemon juice, milk and flour.
5. Spoon half the mixture into the cake tin then spread the jam over the top.
6. Cover with the rest of the cake mix and bake for 55 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

Sorry everyone this was set to post itself on Sunday but apparently never did so here it is now!

Hey everyone!!! I'm back! Well I've been back from Summer Madness since Tuesday afternoon, but Rob and I have been busy little bees clearing out some stuff in the house, getting new furniture built and so on, and are now expecting a painter to be here tomorrow to give the place a face lift so cooking has been staples for the past week but have made my bookmarked recipe to share with you. Last week I made a recipe by Deeba, the Passionate Baker and this week is another recipe by Deeba: Versatile Pound Cake. Deeba's looks beautiful, mine looks nice too but not as inviting, and also Deeba used chocolate ganache, I used what I thought was chocolate ganache until I realised half way through baking that it was actually chocolate frosting, but it still tasted lovely.

The trouble with running an event for getting through your list of bookmarked recipes is that it seems to add more recipes to my must make list and this was one of them.

For bookmarked recipes 7 Deeba had sent in Zebra Cake. I loved how this looked and how simple it looked to make compared to how complicated it looked!!!! I loved the simplicity of this but also the novelty so I just had to make it. Unfortunately mine doesn't look as lovely as Deeba's and I haven't been able to taste any yet because I'll be taking it to Summer Madness. But I'm sure this will be a winner.



Check out Deeba's Zebra Cake for great photographic instructions and the recipe.