Challenge No. 24 – Scotch Eggs

Posted on June 11, 2015 by MyGastroAdventure

This is another dish suggested by my wonderfully supportive mum. I was back in Peterborough at the weekend and I thought a bit of mother daughter bonding in the kitchen would be fun; so I suggested we make the scotch eggs together. I started doing a bit of research and all the recipes I found involved deep frying the scotch eggs. I didn’t really want to do this and I had a vague recollection of previously making oven baked ones in my high school cooking class. Luckily my mum is very organised and has a folder with all my old recipes in so she had a look and found the scotch egg one.

Taking inspiration from a recipe on BBC GoodFood, I’ve updated my school recipe slightly and to make my version of the scotch eggs you will need the following ingredients:-

11 eggs
1,300g sausage meat
3 tsp worcestershire sauce
2 tsp english powder
Salt and Pepper to season
5 rashers smoked streaky bacon*
Approximately 50g plain flour
Approximately 150g golden breadcrumbs

*My soon-to-be-sister-in-law doesn’t like bacon so I made half the scotch eggs without the bacon so Nikki could try some 🙂

The above ingredients will make 10 scotch eggs, 5 of which will include the bacon.

Now, I have a quick confession to make before we get started. Before I attempted this challenge, I had never boiled an egg before! Yep, at the age of 26, I had never cooked a soft or hard boiled egg. I’ve previously made scotch eggs but my mum got the ingredients ready, including providing me with hard boiled eggs. At the weekend, I confessed this embarrassing fact to my mum who was deeply ashamed but laughed at my expense.

So, on with my first attempt at cooking a hard boiled egg. I put 10 of the eggs into a pan and filled it with cold water, making sure the eggs were sufficiently covered. I then popped the pan on a medium heat and put the lid on to bring the water to a boil. Once the water was bubbling away, I set the timer for 5 minutes. When the timer went off, I decided to give them another minute and then plunged them into cold water.

Practical tip: to check whether the eggs are done, take one out of the water and if the water evaporates quickly it will be done. if the water takes a while to disappear, give the eggs a little longer. (This tip was provided my mum 🙂 )

While the eggs were cooking, I had prepared the sausage meat. I put the meat into a bowl and added the worcestershire sauce, mustard powder and seasoned it with salt and pepper. I then mixed it up. I tried to use a spoon but this just didn’t work so I got a bit messy and used my hand – this was actually really fun!

With the sausage meat ready and the eggs cooled, I set about peeling the eggs by gently tapping them on the worktop to break the shell and then pealing it off. I dipped each pealed egg into a bowl of water to make sure all the bits of shell were washed off.

Next up, I cooked the bacon rashers. The recipe on BBC GoodFood said to bring a pan of water to the boil and then to drop in the rashers, turn off the heat and then remove the rashers using tongs by which time they will have cooked. I did exactly as the recipe said and I have to be honest both me and mum were amazed that this worked! Such a quick and neat way to cook the bacon!

I then set up the ‘stations’ for the next stage of the recipe. I put my eggs on one plate, bacon on another, some plain flour into a shallow bowl and I measured out 10 spoonfuls of the sausage meat mixture onto a chopping board.

I started with the non-bacon scotch eggs and rolled the eggs into the flour, shaking off any excess. I then took one ball of the sausage meat mixture and squashed it flat onto the palm of my hand before adding the floured egg. I worked the meat round the egg until it was fully encased and put it to one side as I carried on.

To make the bacon scotch eggs, I wrapped the bacon around the egg before rolling it in the flour and then adding the sausage meat mixture casing.

Practical tip: make sure the sausage meat mixture is sealed all the way round the egg to ensure it doesn’t break open in the oven. I didn’t quite manage this with all of them and I had a few breakers but it just makes them look more homemade 😉

Next up it was time to add the breadcrumb coating. If your kitchen is big enough, you could do this in with the last stage by just adding two more bowls to the ‘stations’ – one with a beaten egg in and one with breadcrumbs. I was making these in my mums kitchen which had the benefit of size, however, as I needed to take photo’s and this gets a bit messy, I thought it best to do this bit as a separate step.

Practical tip: to avoid waste, don’t put all the breadcrumbs into the bowl before you start. Just add a small layer and top up as necessary.

With all the hard boiled eggs wrapped in the sausage meat mixture, I took one at a time and rolled it in the beaten egg and then into the breadcrumbs before popping it onto a tray to cook in the oven.

I cooked the scotch eggs in 2 batches so I could know the difference between the ones with bacon and the ones without. The first batch I just put on a lined baking tray, however, they went soggy on the bottom. So the second batch, I put on a rack on the tray and these cooked a lot better.

I cooked the scotch eggs for a total of 33 minutes at 190 degrees celsius. After 30 minutes, I turned the scotch eggs over to allow the bottoms to brown for the last 3 minutes.

Once the scotch eggs were cooled, I chopped them up and my family and I enjoyed them as a starter before a yummy BBQ in a bit of rare English sunshine. Everyone said they were very nice…even my brother who doesn’t like hard boiled eggs tried the meat and breadcrumb element and said it was a good texture and flavour. However, I think my nan liked them the most. At 86 her appetite is definitely not what it used to be but she kept going back for more of these scotch eggs!

Personally, I thought the bacon was a nice extra and made them a little bit special. However the ones without bacon were also lovely; so much so that I’m not sure which one I prefer – I just wanted to eat them all.

Coming up next week, Challenge No. 25 – sweet potato brownies.

Challenge No. 23 – Chocolate Truffles

Posted on June 4, 2015 by MyGastroAdventure

This recipe was suggested by my friend Katie. On Saturday another friend of ours had a garden party for her hen do and I decided to attempt this challenge at the weekend so I could take the truffles to be enjoyed by all the girls. I was staying with Katie and she got very excited when I said I was making them to take with us. Considering I was taking the truffles to a hen do, I thought I would make them a little bit special by adding some alcohol 🙂 So this is my attempt at Prosecco truffles and Disaronno truffles.

I did a little bit of internet searching and found a lovely looking Prosecco truffle recipe by Miss Messy (aka Holly). I think these truffles are adorable with the addition of the little gold hearts. I even bought some edible glitter so I could do the same but I sadly ran out of time – I’ll have to try this next time.

I adapted Miss Messy’s recipe to make my Disaronno truffles. The method is exactly the same but it’s just the ingredients which differ slightly.

For Prosecco truffles I used the following:-
- 280g good-quality dark chocolate
- 280ml double cream
- 50g unsalted butter
- 20ml Prosecco
- cocoa powder
For the Disaronno truffles I used the following:-
- 280g good-quality dark chocolate
- 280ml double cream
- 50g unsalted butter
- 2 tbsp Disaronno
- cocoa powder

Note: I accidently left out the cocoa powder in this photo so it its own below 🙂

I started by making the Prosecco truffles and broke the chocolate into small pieces to put into a large bowl.

I put the butter into my saucepan, poured over the cream and put it on a medium heat. I kept a close eye on this and kept stirring until the butter had melted and the cream was nice and hot. It was just about starting to bubble when I decided it was hot enough.

Practical tip: to help the butter melt quickly so that your cream doesn’t burn, let it sit at room temperature before starting and chop it into small pieces.

Once the cream was ready, I poured it over the chocolate and let it sit for a minute before I gave it a good stir. At first, the mix was a bit milky looking but after a bit of patience and continued stirring, it turned a beautifully rich chocolate colour.

I mixed in the Prosecco and poured the ganache into a clean dish to cool. I covered the dish with cling film and put it in the fridge.

I then got started on the Disaronno truffles and I repeated all of the above steps. In hindsight, I could have simply made all the ganache together and separated it into two bowls before adding the alcohol…but I didn’t do this and I’m not sure why! I’m going to put it down to having a bit of a blonde moment.

With both my ganache mixtures chilling in the fridge, I realised it was already 11pm! The recipe says to leave the ganache for at least 4 hours and considering the time, I decided to just leave it overnight.

The next morning, I took the dishes out of the fridge to check them and the mixture was really hard! I panicked a little and decided to let them sit at room temperature for about half hour before I started shaping the truffles. It turns out I didn’t need to do this and it actually just made rolling the truffles a bit more difficult as the ganache was melting. So I popped the dishes back in the fridge to firm up again.

With the ganache re-chilled, I got a shallow bowl and poured in some cocoa powder.

I took one of the dishes out of the fridge and started forming my truffle balls. I coated my hands in the cocoa powder and used a measuring spoon to scoop out a small portion of ganache. I rolled the ganache in my hands to achieve a rough ball shape (as much as tried, they weren’t very neat!) and then rolled the ball in the cocoa powder before popping it to one side and getting on with the rest.

Things got a little messy here so I couldn’t get any photos of the rolling process but here is the aftermath…

Once all the truffles were rolled and coated, I put them in the fridge to keep chilled until I left for the garden party.

So these truffles were really nice, however, none of us could taste the alcohol and I couldn’t even tell the difference between the Prosecco ones and the Disaronno ones! Next time, I’ll just make sure to add some more alcohol 🙂

Whilst all the girls enjoyed these little chocolate treats, some of them weren’t a massive fan of the cocoa coating. Another recipe I found used a mixture of icing sugar and cocoa powder and I think this would perhaps be a bit lighter. I’m going to give this a try next time and I’ll let you know how I get on.

Coming up next week, Challenge No. 24 – scotch eggs.

Challenge No. 21 – Carrot Cake

Posted on May 21, 2015 by MyGastroAdventure

This recipe was suggested by another of my close University friends. I lived with Kate in my first year and throughout the year, we shared the job of resident baker. It was therefore so nice that Kate challenged me to make a cake 🙂 But this isn’t just any old cake, its one I’ve never made and have always been a bit apprehensive about making it. Why was I apprehensive – it’s a cake which has carrots and cream cheese in it! There is just something about that which never quite sat right with me. As I’ve said before, this is the whole point of Challenge 52, to take me out my comfort zone!

When I started searching for recipes, I was still trying my best to avoid the cream cheese but every which way I turned, there it was. Finally, I found a recipe that didn’t use a cream cheese topping but by then I had come to realise that the cream cheese is an almost iconic part of the carrot cake and I felt guilty about leaving it out! So instead I kept looking and found this recipe by the Hairy Bikers for a carrot and sultana cake with creamy orange frosting.

For the recipe you will need the following:-

For the cake
- 200g/7oz self-raising flour
- 75g/3oz sultanas
- 75g/3oz pecans, broken into rough pieces
- ½ large orange, zest only
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ whole nutmeg, finely grated
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- pinch fine sea salt
- 3 free-range eggs
- 175ml/6fl oz sunflower oil, plus extra for greasing
- 175g/6oz soft light brown sugar
- 200g/7oz carrots, grated
For the cream cheese icing
- 100g/3½oz icing sugar
- 100g/3½oz unsalted butter, softened
- 1 tsp fresh orange juice
- 200g/7oz full-fat cream cheese
- ½ orange, zest only
- 25g/1oz pecan nuts, roughly broken

If you look at the ingredients photo carefully, you may note an extra ingredient which has snuck in there. I accidentally included the vanilla essence which I had purchased to stock up my store cupboard but it isn’t needed for this recipe!

I started off by sorting through my pecans to remove all the nice whole ones to put to one side for the topping. I then weighed the remaining bits to make sure I had 75g, adding a few of the whole ones back in to bring it up to the right weight. I then chopped them up nice and small.

I put the nuts in a bowl with the flour, sultanas, ground cinnamon, grated nutmeg, baking power, bicarbonate of soda and the salt. I then grated in the orange zest from one half of my orange.

I broke the eggs into a jug and whisked with a fork until they were smooth. I then added the oil and brown sugar, giving it a good whisk until well combined. I created a well in my dry ingredients and poured in some of the egg/sugar/oil mix.

I stirred it all together with a wooden spoon, gradually adding more of the oil mix until it was all combined. I added the grated carrot and gave it a final mix.

The recipe puts the cake mix into a 20cm square cake tin but I wanted to do something a little different. I’ve found these adorable cases in the supermarket and thought it would be nice to make individual carrot cakes rather than one big one. So i split the mixture between 14 cases, 13 of them weighing 79g with the mix in, and the 14th having a little less.

I put the filled cases on a tray and into the oven on 180 celsius. Given that I used individual cases rather than a big tin, I knew I needed to adjust the cooking time. I originally set the timer for 20 minutes and then checked them. I felt the tops of the cakes and decided they needed a little longer so I returned them to the oven for around 2-3 minutes. I then tested the cakes and decided they were done.

Practical tip: I’ve given this tip a few times but it is one of the key points to perfecting your cake making skills – knowing when the cake is done. To test whether the cakes are cooked, gently press the top of one of the cakes with your finger; if it is done it will be springy to touch and bounce back into place. You can also take a tooth pick (or cake tester if you have one) and slide it into the centre of one of the cakes; if the cake is done the tester will come out clean. If you think it’s not quite done return the cakes to the oven but keep an eye on them – 1 minute may be all they need but that 1 minute can make all the difference!

I put the cakes on a cooling rack and left them to cool completely whilst I got started on the icing.

I put the softened butter in my bowl, beat it with a fork until smooth and added the orange juice.

Practical tip: this is another one I’ve given before but in case you missed Challenge No. 5 I’ve included it again. To soften the butter, cut it into cubes and put it in a sandwich bag in a bowl of lukewarm water for between 5 to 10 minutes until soft. This can be a lot quicker than leaving the butter at room temperature, especially in the winter when your kitchen may not be so warm!

I then gradually sifted in the icing sugar a bit at a time, giving it a good stir between each addition. Once it was all added, I used a wooden spoon to beat until light and creamy.

I stirred through the cream cheese and remaining orange zest before popping it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

When the icing was firm, I used a teaspoon to smooth a bit on each cake. Finally, it was time to add the decoration. The recipe uses the whole pecans (which I set aside at the beginning) but I wanted to do something a little bit cuter. So I made mini icing carrots with some coloured fondant icing and added one to each cake.

These cakes took a little trip with me to Sheffield to celebrate my friends birthday and new home. Kate was part of the celebrations so she got to try her suggestion, along with all my University girls. Everyone said it was delicious! 🙂

I even managed to persuade Dave to try this one (he had an issue with the whole carrot in a cake thing!) and he said “actually, its quite nice”. I feel this is a great review, all things considering.

Personally, I really enjoyed this challenge, both eating and making the cakes. They weren’t too heavy and were just perfect with a cup of tea.

Coming up next week, Challenge No. 22 – homemade burgers.

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