Meal Planning Monday 2016 Week 1

Happy new year! Well, almost - 2016 starts on Friday but this is officially the first meal plan of the year. I'm determined to shed the Christmas weight I'm sure I have put on (I haven't actually checked!) and then I do need to lose some more weight as I'm getting married in June!

Monday – bank holiday – going to see my sister in Southampton then staying the night at my parents'

Tuesday- day off
Lunch: any more Christmas leftovers
Dinner: I'll have chilli, garlic and lime salmon with prawns from this recipe and he can have chicken.

Wednesday – day off
Lunch: tuna nicoise tortillas based broadly on this recipe
Dinner: Sausage ragu with butternut squash ‘spaghetti’ for me from Inspiralized, with tagliatelle for him

Thursday- day off. New year’s eve
Lunch: smoked salmon pasta
Dinner: steak and chips (with prawns as surf and turf for me)

Friday – day off (bank holiday)
Lunch: naan bread pizzas
Dinner: roasted sausage and potato tray bake

Saturday

Lunch: on the train to Cheltenham

Dinner: with my school friends in Cheltenham

Sunday

Lunch: with my school friends in Cheltenham

Dinner: burger and chips as I'm not sure what time I will be back

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Decorated Salted Caramel Arctic Roll

Arctic Rolls were very exciting when I was a child - a rare combination of ice cream and cake that we had as an occasional treat. I haven't eaten it for years - possibly since I was a child - and I've never tried to make one before. But after seeing some beautiful and elaborate arctic rolls on the Great British Bake Off this year I decided I wanted to have a go at baking a cake with the decoration on the outside.

I was also sent some vouchers for Haagen Dazs ice cream recently and made this amazing dessert; I had one voucher left to use and an arctic roll seemed the perfect idea.

Making the Swiss roll part was very easy; I then looked up online how to do the decoration on the outside which I changed slightly and then used a much better alternative than the traditional jam between the sponge and the ice cream - dulce de leche caramel! So I guess I can call this

Decorated Salted Caramel Arctic Roll - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

For the cake:
3 eggs
100g caster sugar
100g self-raising flour

For the decoration on the outside:
1 egg white
20g cocoa powder
20g plain flour
30g caster sugar
30g softened butter or marg

For the filling:
half a tin of Carnation caramel or dulce de leche
500ml tub Haagen Dazs salted caramel ice cream

First prepare the decoration to go on the outside of the cake. Mix all the ingredients together to make a thick paste and spoon into a piping bag (you don't need a nozzle). Line a Swiss roll tin or baking tray with baking paper. Snip the end of the piping bag off so you can pipe a thin line and pipe swirls or whatever patterns you like all over the baking paper.

Put in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile cream the eggs and sugar together for the cake and fold in the flour. When you are ready to take the decorated baking parchment out of the freezer, pour over the cake mixture and bake in the oven for about 15 mins.

Allow to cool; meanwhile take the ice cream out of the freezer. I took mine out a bit early and it melted more than I expected which made it a bit messy when I came to assemble the arctic roll so you are better off leaving the ice cream solid frozen.

One reason I used Haagen Dazs is that the ice cream comes in a carboard tub - you need the ice cream to be a tube shape and there are various recipes online showing how you melt the ice cream, fill a metal tube with the ice cream and refreeze it, but that all looked very complicated. With a cardboard ice cream tub that is a cylinder shape, you can just cut it off and the ice cream is ready to use!



Normally you would spread jam inside the arctic roll but I used Carnation Caramel from a tin which went perfectly with the salted caramel flavour ice cream.  I wrapped the cake spread with the caramel around the ice cream - you can see the pretty decoration on the outside - and sliced it up to serve. A lovely festive dessert!

This recipe uses eggs so I'm sharing it with Simply Eggcellent hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.

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Slow Cooker Ham and Potato Soup

Just before Christmas I made slow cooker ham in Cherry Coke which was delicious. I deliberately cooked too much ham so I would have some left for another recipe the next day; if you have leftover ham from Christmas this is a great way to use it up (and any leftover potato and veg you have as well).

 

The quantities are easily adjusted depending on how much leftovers you have to use and how many people you are serving so my recipe is more of a rough guide.

I used:
2 cups leftover cooked ham, chopped
1 pork stock cube (you could also use chicken or vegetable)
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped (I used a raw carrot but you could use leftover cooked veg)
1 cup leftover mashed potato, cooked (you could also use leftover boiled or roast potatoes, or raw potatoes cut into small cubes)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream (you could also use leftover single or double cream)

Place all the ingredients in your slow cooker apart from the milk and cream, and add enough water to cover the veg.

Cook on high for 3 hours or medium for 5-6 hours.

When ready, take about half the soup out of the slow cooker and blend until smooth in a food processor.

 Return to the soup and mix in so it still has some chunks of meat and veg. Add the milk and cream and serve. You can add more water if you want the soup to be thinner but I liked it as it was.

I'm sharing this with the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Lucy aka Baking Queen 74 as the theme is Christmas.

I'm also sending this to the No Waste Food Challenge hosted by Jen's Food as this recipe uses all sorts of leftovers.

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Proper Welsh Rarebit

At this time of year sometimes you want a meal that isn't Christmas leftovers and doesn't involve a lot of cooking, and cheese on toast hits just the spot. Proper Welsh rarebit has a bit more to it than just melting some cheddar on toast, and my fiancé really enjoyed it when I made it for lunch recently so I thought I would share the recipe here.

To serve two, you need:
225g grated cheese
1 tbsp. butter
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp English mustard powder
2 tsp plain flour
4 tbsp. milk

bread - either sliced bread toasted on one side, or some crusty bread rolls or a baguette split in half.

Melt the butter in a small pan, add the flour and mix to make a roux. Add the cheese, Worcestershire sauce and mustard powder and stir until the cheese has melted.

Stir in the milk and you should have something resembling a thick paste.

Preheat the grill. Place the bread under the grill so the bottom starts to toast.

Remove from the grill and spread the cheese mixture on the other side.

Return to the grill and heat until the cheese is bubbling.

It's a good idea to place a baking tray lined with foil under the bread as I found mine got quite messy from melted cheese!

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Slow Cooker Ham in Cherry Coke

I've made a ham in Coca-Cola in the slow cooker before and thought it would be a good dinner in the week before Christmas - quite festive and also easy as you just put it in the slow cooker and forget about it.

 

I only had Coca-Cola though but I figured that would work - but this time rather than adding cloves, onion, carrots and bay leaves to the cola 'stock' I decided to just do it straight, in nothing but the cola, but then make a glaze from brown sugar and honey at the end.

So essentially that's all I did - I used two small gammon joints as I wanted this to do a second meal as well - I made ham soup the following day which was really good (recipe to follow!) and covered them in Cherry Coke. I put the slow cooker on high for 3-4 hours and when the joints were cooked, I removed them from the stock and put them in a roasting pan.

I mixed brown sugar with honey which I spread over the ham and then baked it in a hot oven for 20 minutes. I served it with a mixture of mashed and boiled potatoes and vegetables - the ham was very good and had a slightly sweet flavour from the stock and the glaze, and fell apart at the touch of a fork, in texture a lot like pulled pork.

I know for a lot of families it's traditional to have a ham at Christmas either alongside the turkey or to serve cold on Boxing Day so I highly recommend this recipe!

I'm sending this to the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Lucy aka Baking Queen 74, as the theme is Christmas.

 

 

I'm also sending this to Cook Once Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice, as I made soup from this the following day.



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Edible Christmas Tree Decorations

I had some gingerbread mix left over when I made this gingerbread house so I decided to cut out a few extra Christmas trees and snowmen. I had the idea of hanging them on the Christmas tree with ribbon and I think they look really cute!

You could make any sugar cookie recipe but these gingerbread ones did taste really good; here's the recipe I made for the gingerbread house so it would make you quite a lot of cookies:

 

180g butter
125g brown sugar
300g golden syrup
500g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda


Melt the butter in a pan and add the sugar and syrup. Remove from the heat, add the dry ingredients and mix to a thick dough. Roll out on a floured surface and cut out the shapes on top of pieces of baking paper.
Make a small hole with the tip of a dinner knife or the end of a teaspoon handle to thread the ribbon through. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes depending on size.

Allow to cool and push a skewer through the holes to open them out again if necessary if they have closed up a bit.
















Decorate however you like, with icing and dragees or sprinkles. Leave to dry then thread some ribbon through and hang on the tree!

I'm sending these to Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat the Baking Explorer.

 

I'm also sending this to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Jane at the Hedgecombers, as their theme is sugar and spice.

 

 

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Meal Planning Monday Week 52

I can’t believe it’s Christmas already! We are away for quite a lot of this week running around seeing different family members which will be pretty tiring but it is important to us both to see as many people as possible, and luckily our families don't live too far apart. It does mean that my meal plan this week is not much of a plan!
 

 

Monday: chicken lattice pie and chips

 

Tuesday: Sausage ragu with butternut squash ‘spaghetti’ for me from Inspiralized, sausage and mash for him

 

Wednesday:

Working from home in the morning so lunch at home with my fiancé - leftover soup

Dinner: at my parents

 

Thursday: Christmas Eve: at my parents’

 

Friday: Christmas Day: with my fiancés family

 

Saturday: Boxing Day: with my fiance’s family

 

Sunday lunch: Boxing day leftovers

Dinner: more Boxing day leftovers? Actually one of my favourite meals!

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