Some winners and some pictures

As I’ve been in the kitchen quite a lot recently, I thought I’d pass along some recipes that have turned out as delicious success stories as well as some pics I’ve taken lately while out and about with my camera phone.

Ok, first some Vegan Peanut Butter Filled Chocolate Cookies.  These took a bit of time to put together, but nothing too difficult by any means and the results were yummy.  Thanks to MAC & CHEESE, I got the recipe here

Here’s my picture of the finished product:

Tower of cookies

My next recent success comes from the gang at Martha Stewart.  I bought the Everyday Food: Great Food Fast cookbook (you can buy/look at the cookbook here) atleast a year ago and have only recently started using recipes from it.  I made their Tortilla and Black Bean Pie, and since I’m not a fan of black beans, I substituted pinto beans instead.  I also used an ale as my beer choice.  You can find the recipe on page 236 of the cookbook or online here

My BF loved this dish and I thought it was both original and economical. We will certainly be making this again as we both loved the flavors of it too!

 

Dinner last night

 

For the side dish, we made Spanish Rice and an excellent recipe for it can be found at Simply Recipes, an excellent food blog/website that I’ve been using for quite some time now.  Elise’s Spanish Rice recipe is again not only economical in this day and age, but also very delicious!  I’ll never go back to using pre-made packages of it when it’s so much better and healthier for me to just make it myself.  You can find the recipe here. Add some sour cream and salsa on the side, and you’ve got yourself an excellent meal that’ll easily feed 4 adults for very little money.  

And now, some more foodie photos taken with my camera phone:

 

Wee Willie Winkies Sausages

Stagg Chili-a taste of the American West

Bread stall at the market–where I get my beloved spelt rolls!

Food portion of the market–notice the selection of cakes and jams

Chelsea Bun from the market, eaten on the way home

Tower of cookies

Dinner last night

And since I can’t seem to get rid of the tortilla pie or vegan cookies pictures in this section, you get to see them again!  I’m still new to blogging, so bear with me–think of it as doubling your photographic viewing pleasure. Ha ha.

Mmmm…Monday….

Like I said in my previous post, I’ve got a lot of blogging catching up to do!  Or would that be called blatching?  Ha.  I’ve made a couple of things in the past couple of days that I would like to share!  Ok first, is what is known in England as Millionaire Shortbread……Mmmm…like the title isn’t delicious enough?  It had me at shortbread!  What is it you may ask?  It’s a base of shortbread covered with a gooey layer of caramel followed by a layer of chocolate! Mmmm………It’s a square of goodness!  

First I must share the recipe, which you can find here:  Millionaire Shortbread  Please note:  instead of spending a ridiculous 3-4 hours boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk to make the caramel, why not just save yourself the agony and just buy it already made?  I made mine with Dulce de leche which is basically caramel in a can and followed the recipe from there.  I found it almost too easy!  So you know what that means–I’m putting it in the yummy file!  

One more thing I must say to all of my non-UK readers–if you need help converting any of the recipes I post on my site from Metric to Imperial measurements than feel free to turn to the internet for help.  There are lots of conversion resources and websites!  

Now I can present you the pics!  I do think the pictures don’t do it justice in my opinion, they somehow ended up like pictures from a 1970’s cookbook, but I guess you’ll just have to make it to find out what you think of them, my beautiful pics aside.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note the caramel gooeyness!  

 

 

 I like the shortbread base too!  If only this was fat-free…..ha.  

 And now I must also share a recipe that is on the opposite side of the      food spectrum–Mikki’s Magically Delicious Vegan Cookies.  Now these  cookies came to me via a family member who is vegan.  I’m not a vegan  and would usually not be so keen to try a baking recipe that is.  I’ve been  through my gluten free phase before and couldn’t help but speculate that  somehow vegan would be the same—dry and tasteless.  These cookies  could not be farther from the truth!  They are SO DELICIOUS and addictive it’s not even funny!  And the best part is, you can eat the cookie dough too!  They contain no butter or eggs, so eat away without fear of salmonella!  Mmmm….salmonella free cookies!  Yes please!  So without further due, I present you Mikki’s Magically Vegan Cookies, but please don’t thank me, thank Mikki!  Thanks Mikki!

1/3 Cup Peanut Butter

2 Tblsp. Canola Oil

1 Cup Sugar (I used 1/2 C white, 1/2 C brown)

1/3 Cup Soy/ Rice/ Whatever kind of milk you prefer (I used regular milk)

1 tsp. Vanilla

Mix that together and in a seperate bowl mix:

1 Cup All-Purpose Flour

1/2 tsp. Baking Powder

1/4 tsp. Salt

1 Heaping tsp. of Cinnamon (that’s the secret ingredient!)

Mix those two concoctions together and then fold in 1 cup of Rolled Oats and 1 HEAPING cup of Chocolate Chips (I found this worked well with even a 1/2-3/4 C of mini chocolate chips). Now, the dough gets thick and it’s hard to get the chocolate chips to fold in. I end up getting a ball of dough and stuffing as many chips into each cookie as I can. That’s where the LOVE comes in! 

Bake on an GREASED cookie sheet at 375F/180C for 12-14 minutes (if using a fan assisted oven like me, bake for 8-9 mins, turning half way through baking time).