Coffee Muffins

Iced Coffee

Lauren — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:12:45 +0000

As much as I don’t want to believe it, last weekend was probably the last weekend of the summer. The forecast for the next week is rain, and lets face it by the time your mid way through September it’s Autumn.

Bearing this in mind last Saturday I decided to finally make Iced Coffee. Way back in May I read about Cold Brewed Coffee over at ButterYum and I’ve been thinking about it for the last 4 months. Saturday was make or break point, I either make it now or wait till next year.

So here it is.

To cold brew your coffee you mix freshly ground coffee with water and wait for 12 hours or more in the fridge, the filter the coffee grounds out. By leaving the coffee to steep in cold water you get the same coffee flavour but it is less bitter and smoother than if you just chilled hot coffee.

Iced Coffee

~ inspired by Cold Brewed Coffee

3 tablespoons of freshly ground coffee, I used Fair Trade beans from Papua New Guinea.
1 1/2 cups of cold water
1/2 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of icing sugar, caster sugar would probably work too

In a large-ish jar pour some water then coffee grounds, then some more water repeating till you have used up all of both. Do not try and stir the coffee beans, you’ll just make a mess and they’ll stick to the spoon!

Then seal the jar (to prevent it from spilling in the fridge). Leave for 12 hours or longer if you can.

Next day pour the coffee through a filter, into a jug or bowl large enough for all the liquid. Leave it for around 15 minutes to finish dripping. Next stir in the sugar to taste, I found a tablespoon enough.

Pour in the milk, stir and serve with lots of ice.

And yes these are space invader ice cubes…

Loved this so much, that now of course I am regretting 1. not making more coffee concentrate so I could have it again today and 2. waiting so long to make it in the first place.

The next sunny day you get, you should make this too. What have you put off making all summer?

Lemon Yoghurt Cake

Lauren — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:53:24 +0000

The summer months are just long enough to forget how difficult it can be to get decent lighting for photos. I do most of my baking in the evening, by the time its finished it’s too dark to take good shots. I ended up taking these photos in the morning sunshine, but somehow it’s not the same.

This is the cake I made with the last of my Total Yoghurt, like all the other uses I have put it to, it excelled. It really is a great yoghurt, however I think I might wait a few months to buy some more – I’m all yoghurted out!

Lemon Yoghurt Cake

~ makes one loaf tin. Recipe based on Lemony Snickets Yogurt Loaf Cake.

For loaf cake

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup lemon or plain whole-milk yogurt, I used Total Strained Yoghurt.
1 cup sugar
3 extra large eggs
2 tsp grated lemon zest (skin of 2 lemons)
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

For glaze

1 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Preheat your oven to 180oC (350oF). Spray a non-stick loaf pan with cooking spray.

In one bowl mix the flour and baking powder. In a larger second bowl add the yoghurt, sugar, lemon zest, vanilla and eggs, mix with a whisk until throughly combined.

Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet, and mix until the flour is incorporated. Then add the oil, mixing gently. Lastly add the lemon juice to the batter and mix again.

Pour the batter into the pan, and then pop in the oven for 50 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Once out of the oven, leave in pan for 10 minutes, before leaving to cool on a cake rack.

In the meantime make up the glaze, I didn’t make mince quite as thick as this one. I used probably around the same amount of lemon juice but with only a 1/4 cup of icing sugar. Therefore it did run off the cake a fair bit, but contained a lot less sugar.

Yoghurt cakes really are my favourite type of cake, they keep well, and stay moist. The cake didn’t seem particularly lemony, but was lovely all the same.

Twice Baked Tuna Potato

Lauren — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:30:14 +0000

Or I could have called this Tuna once-microwaved-once-baked potato, but it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!

Last week I began the quite frankly scary task of trying to work out what appliances, kitchen utensils, furniture, bedding and any number of other things we need for our new home. Our first home! Since we are living in a furnished flat a lot of the things you think a food blogger would own, I don’t. For example I own frying pans, a saute pan, and a Le Creuset Casserole dish, but I don’t have any standard pots with lids.

I don’t have a slotted spoon, or a fish slice, or a microwave… but do I need one? I asked a quick question on twitter to see who had microwaves, who didn’t, and what they used them for.

It seems that very few people have microwaves and those who do barely use them. Some people use them to make porridge during the winter months, or defrost frozen foods, or to make the odd ready meal. The fact is that I rarely use the microwave I have at the moment. The one thing I would miss would be baked potatoes.

Or at least baked potatoes that can be ready in 15 minutes – 10 mins in the microwave, 5 under the grill to brown the skins. It’s a perfect quick healthy lunch. Especially good now that summer is starting to turn distinctly more autumnal.

My impending loss of being able to make quick baked potatoes spurred me on to make this. The recipe is from a memory of something my Mum used to make, in fact this dish is still one of the only ways I like tinned tuna.

Twice Baked Tuna Potato

~ serves two, for a large lunch. Great with a small side salad.

2 baked potatoes
1 small tin of tuna, in spring water
1 tablespoon of mayonnaise
lots of ground black pepper
1 large egg
broken up florets of broccoli, optional

First “bake” your potatoes, depending on preference, what equipment you have available and time you can either bake your potatoes in the oven, or cook them in the microwave for 10 minutes (turning them over mid way through). Remember if cooking in the microwave to prick the skins, so they don’t explode!

Once the potatoes are just cooked through, slice each in half. Scoop out the insides leaving at least a 1/4 inch around the skin, place the scooped out potato in a small bowl.

Preheat your oven to 200oC.

Place the potato skins on a baking tray.

Into the bowl of potato add the tuna, mayonnaise, black pepper and broken up broccoli, mix well until all the tuna is flaked up. Then add the egg, again mixing well.

Add a quarter of the mixture to each potato skin half, and then place in the oven for 10 minutes, or until the top starts to brown.

So for the moment I am leaving the microwave on the “wait-and-see” pile, once we move in I’ll see how quickly I change my mind!

Do you have a microwave? What do you use it for?

Social Media is Social

Lauren — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:57:28 +0000

Why do you use social media?

If your answer is anything other than to be “sociable” you may be doing it wrong. Trying to sell products or increase traffic to your blog are not the only reasons to be on Twitter or Facebook.

On CookEatShare there is a group called “Twitter Cooks”, the idea being to make it easier to follow your friends on Twitter. It’s a great idea, finding people to follow can be hard – it’s hard to be sociable with “celebrities”. The first post was a “Hi, my name is @X”. However the second post was along the lines of “I’m @Y. What tools do you use to you promote your blog on twitter?”.

I think this is looking at it the wrong way, and not because the guy was trying to promote his blog. Sure we all want to promote our blogs, we think our content is useful of course we want people to see it. It was because of the tools.

What tools do you need for Twitter? A web browser and a login. As far as I can see that’s all you need to promote anything on twitter.

The post went on to outline the “strategy” he was using already – scheduled daily tweets to both Twitter and Facebook.

Sending auto generated messages out day after day in order to get people to buy products or click links, could be seen as spam.

Social media is about being social, trying to fake it will mean that people don’t follow you in the first place, or they ignore most of your tweets.

You need to interact, and show that you are a person, respond to tweets in your feed, ask questions, get conversations going.

Talk about your successes and failures, I like the failures the most. You can learn so much more from a failure than from a perfect experience and it’s always good to laugh

Talk about stuff unrelated to your blog. The idea is to be a person that people like. Then people will want to follow you, they will trust you and will want to follow links that you tweet.

So my strategy, when I have time, is to be a person and use Twitter to talk about my life, sure I automate links to my brand spanking new posts, but that’s the only automation I do.

Why do you use Twitter or Facebook? Or if you don’t why not?

You can follow me on Twitter I’m @CoffeeMuffins.

How To: Cooking for the In-Laws

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Lauren — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:30:05 +0000

When I was a child I used to hate sweet and sour sauces with a passion, I never even told my parents (I am not sure why – if I had I’m sure they wouldn’t have made me eat it!) I don’t even really remember what it was, but I think it was the taste of pineapple.

However those days must be long behind me, as this sweet and sour recipe is made almost solely from pineapple!

This recipe comes from Chinese Food Made Easy, which I bought after the tv show. Strange thing is I thought I only bought it last year but amazon reliably informs me it was 2008! I have made a couple of recipes from this book – but so far this is the only one I have made multiple times. Take from that what you will

But I do love the idea of the book, showing a healthier way to get the Chinese Takeaway recipe favourites, and this healthy Sweet and Sour Chicken really does taste fantastic.

Healthy Sweet and Sour Chicken

~ serves 2.

2 chicken breasts
3 tablespoons of dry-roasted peanuts
1 teaspoon of dry crushed chillies
125g of tinned pineapple in natural juice
125ml of pineapple juice
3 tablespoons of lime juice
light soy sauce
rice wine vinegar

First for the chicken you need to make your crunchy coating. Add the peanuts and chilli flakes into a blend till it’s mostly ground (a few larger chunks aren’t bad).

Coat your chicken with the ground peanut mixture, ensure it’s well covered.

Heat a wok or frying pan over a high heat with a little oil (I use rapeseed/canola oil). Add the chicken and cook for 5 minutes each side, turning the heat down if the coating starts to burn.

In a blender blend the majority of your pineapple chunks with the juice (you may want to leave some chunks in). Add to a pan and heat under a medium heat, then add the lime juice. You can also add soy sauce and rice wine vinegar to taste at this point. (I add around one tablespoon of each, but you can add less or more if you wish).

Leave for the sauce to reduce.

Once the chicken is ready, serve immediately along side rice or salad leaves. I also usually do some basic stirfry vegetables, like broccoli.

I have also made this dish with pork (as it is in the book) rather than chicken, which is similarly tasty (and healthy).

Red Onion Chicken Curry

Lauren — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:43:59 +0000

If this is an authentic Indian curry, I don’t know what it is called. I made this using a similar ingredient list and method to this Rojan Josh.

I love that each time you cook a new recipe you don’t just learn one dish, you learn a range. Once you have the basic idea you can experiment with what you have, and this is exactly what I did with this recipe.

The measurements below aren’t exact, because that’s how I made it, so feel free to mess around a bit based on your preferences.

Red Onion Chicken Curry

~ serves 2. Based on this Rojan Josh.

6 green cardamom pods
1 tablespoon of coriander seeds
1/2 tablespoon of cumin seeds
8 – 10 black peppercorns
1 teaspoon of chilli seeds
2 small red onions, 1 diced, 1 sliced
2 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon of canola oil
2 chicken breasts, chunked
1/2 a red pepper
1/2 a yellow pepper
6 button mushrooms
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1/2 a vegetable stock cube
1 teaspoon of turmeric
2 tablespoons of full-fat TOTAL strained yoghurt
a handful of chopped coriander

Add the cardamom pods, coriander, cumin, peppercorns and chilli seeds to a pan over a heat, and fry until they are starting to become fragrant.

Add the cooked spices to a mini chopper along with the diced red onion and garlic. Pulse, until chopped finely, then add the oil and blend to a smoother paste.

Add the paste back into the pan, add the chicken and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add the onions, peppers, mushrooms. After frying for a couple of minutes, add the chopped tomatoes, turmeric and stock cube. If needed add a little more water, and leave to simmer for 15 minutes. (This is when I would normally put on our easy cook rice).

Two minutes before serving stir in the yoghurt, and heat through. Serve, topped with a little chopped coriander.

Most often when adding yoghurts to curries they split, i.e. you end up with little specs of yoghurt, however this Total yoghurt was actually really good, just 2 tablespoons full gave a really creamy taste to the curry. Wonderful.

Plum Yoghurt Cake

Lauren — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:13:55 +0000

This is the second yoghurt cake I’ve made in the last week. This is by far the prettier of the two.

One of the huge benefits of a yoghurt cake is that they seem to last really well, however this cake did not last long at all. I took it down to my parents this weekend, and despite the cooking it in Edinburgh it was still just slightly warm when we ate it in Dumfries a couple of hours later.

Plum Yoghurt Cake

~ based on Rose’s Recipes Plum Almond Yoghurt Cake.

1 1/2 cups of plain flour
2 tsp of baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup of granulated sugar
1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt, I used TOTAL strained yoghurt
3 large eggs
1/2 t vanilla extract
1/2 cup rapeseed oil
2 plums, sliced

Preheat the oven to 180oC. Grease and flour a 9 inch sandwich tin.

In a bowl mix the plain flour, baking powder and salt.

In a second bowl mix the sugar, yoghurt, eggs and vanilla. Add the flour into the wet mixture and stir until combined. Now add the oil and mix until smooth.

Pour the mixture into the tin and arrange the plums on top.

Place the tin in the oven and cook for 40-45 minutes. (Mine actually took longer closer to 50 minutes, so do make sure to use the skewer test to check your cake is done).

Leave to cool for 20 minutes on a wire rack.

The cake rose quite a lot in the middle, which made it look a bit domed. It tasted fantastic, it was moist, sweet with the slight tartness from the plum skin.

I will definitely be making yoghurt cakes again, and this plum cake tasted and looked fantastic!

Tandoori Chicken

Lauren — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:50:37 +0000

I got a lot of yoghurt this week from the kind people at Total. When it all arrived on Monday, I wasn’t sure what to do with it all. I now have a fair idea use some in salad dressings, some in curries of different types, some in cakes and lastly I plan to make some frozen yoghurt.

I’m really excited by all the different possibilities, the fact that the second shelf of my fridge is full of yoghurt means I am going to have to get creative, and yes I find that exciting.

Tonight I made one of my favourite yoghurt dishes, in fact I have mentioned it here before. But this time I am going to post it myself as I have made a few changes! You can see the original full recipe here.

As you will have guessed by now indian inspired food is sort of a passion of mine, this dish is easy, and although I have never cooked it on a barbecue I am sure it would be perfect. (Lucky you if you are getting the weather for it – as we certainly aren’t.)

In the winter I serve this grilled chicken with rice, and cooling cucumber strips in yoghurt, tonight I served it with a simple spinach and mixed pepper salad.

Tandoori Chicken Marinade

2 tablespoons of 0% TOTAL strained Greek yoghurt
1 teaspoon of turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon of ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon of ground coriander
1/8 teaspoon of chilli powder
a squeeze of lemon juice

Mix the ingredients together, till the form a smooth paste.

This makes enough for around 3 or 4 chicken breasts. In the past I have left the marinade for hours, but in this case it got 10 minutes, and it was still amazing.

I grilled it for around 7 minutes either side, but if you have thicker cuts you may want to butterfly it or cut it in half to ensure you cook all the way through.

Cherry Braided Bread

Lauren — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:46:32 +0000

This week I saw a punnet of British Cherries in the supermarket and it reminded me of this Cherry Bread I made a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately this was before I could get my hands on the British cherries at all.

I love cherries as you can probably tell from all the cherry recipes: cherry mince pies if you were really organised you could start thinking about making your mincemeat now, cherry bakewell cake, cherry and almond bread and a cherry teabread. Not even to mention the other draft posts I have for cherry recipes…

A couple of weeks back I bought a whole lot of cherries, while they were on special offer, most of them were just popped into my mouth and stone popped back out. (On a side note if anyone knows a way to eat cherries in a lady like manor – then do please let me know!). But some spent too long in the fridge, and went too soft. These I made into a compote, with sugar and limoncello (I had no kirsch).

But what to do with this compote? Plain ice cream and a tablespoon of compote would have been fabulous, but instead I slightly altered a recipe I’d been meaning to try for quite a while.

Smitten Kitchen’s Lemon Braided Bread. The great thing about the basic recipe is that it could be filled with almost any fruit or if you’re less fruit inclined there is always chocolate! In fact chocolate would be so amazing that I will try this recipe again, maybe with Nutella instead of compote.

This recipe impressed me by just looking so darn cute, with the long braid, I was also pleasantly surprised that after my previous forays into braided dough – this one was much simpler to get right!

Instead of a pony tail braid, in this bread you are very much faking it, you are basically just folding strips of bread dough all the way down. The most complicated part of this whole recipe is moving the braid from where you created onto a baking sheet.

My baking sheets are all too small to fit the rolled out dough on, so I couldn’t just make it in place. Deb came up with a wonderful suggestion of making it on parchment paper and then just transfer the paper to the baking tray – unfortunately I didn’t read that bit till it was way too late!

I really loved this bread, despite the problems I had getting it onto the baking tray, and the fact that I cooked for 10 minutes longer than I should have. The cherries weren’t too strong, but just enough to lift the bread, and the cream cheese filling only gave it a creamy texture, yum.

Recipe Links:

Cherry Compote

Lemon Braided Bread, instead of adding vanilla extract to the dough, I add almond extract instead. (As cherries and almonds go so well together).

Gin & Tonic with Elderflower Cordial

Lauren — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:50:57 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I was out at a bar in Edinburgh called the Villager on George IV bridge. I don’t really do reviews on this blog, but I did have a really great night, and table service for drinks in Edinburgh is almost unheard of (at least in the places I normally drink).

Being the sensible sort of girl that I am I didn’t go for any of the sharing scorpian bowls of overproof rum set on fire. They were all out of scorpian bowls when we ordered…

I went for the much classier sounding Bombay & Elderflower, a mixture of gin, soda and elderflower cordial. I have been thinking about it on and off ever since.

As the sun was setting tonight, on what has been a reasonably warm and extremely busy day, I felt the need to kick off my shoes and relax on the sofa with a cool G&T.

I used 1 shot of Gin (Bombay Saphire), 1 shot of Elderflower cordial and topped up with slimline tonic water.

The only thing that could of made it better? A slice of lime…

Gin and Tonic Cocktail