Homemade Pizza

This should have been uploaded a few days ago, but I've had internet problems. Although I'm not too bothered about that now, because I've got lots of baking/cooking things for Christmas which I'm uber excited to use, and so might go slightly blogging mental once I'm back after the Christmas holiday!


I love making my own pizza, it's quick and easy, and uses ingredients that we almost always have in the house. Once the base is made, you can add whatever you like really, but this one's pretty simple because it was made the day before I went home for Christmas and we didn't have much left in the house. I forgot to take a picture once it was done, I was very hungry and it smelt amazing, so I only have a picture of just before it went in the oven.

Ingredients (the dough makes enough to serve 2)

Dough
1 cup self raising flour
1 cup plain flour
6 tbspn cooking oil
2/3 cup milk

Topping - this is variable, throw on whatever you fancy, but for this one, I used -
2 tbspn tomato paste
1 tbspn garlic puree
1 tbspn sticky BBQ sauce
1 red onion finely chopped
1 handful mushrooms roughly chopped
lots of cheese (I didn't weigh it)
sprinkle of basil and thyme

I know recipes that use cups are annoying, because everyone's cups are different, but I've put a picture of mine compared to a normal Strongbow can so you know sort of what size it is. Although my stepmum apparently paid attention to my hatred of cup sizes and bought me some proper measuring cups for Christmas (yay)!

Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

1. Sieve all the flour into a bowl and create a hole in the middle. Pour the oil into the whole and mix together thoroughly, either with your hands or a small spoon. 

2. Add the milk slowly, continually mixing with your hands. The dough should go a little gooey, but not so sticky that you can't get it off your hands.

3. Sprinkle some flour on a surface, your hands, and a rolling pin, and roll the dough until it's around 1cm thick, turning it over a few times to prevent sticking. 

4. Grease a baking tray with oil, and place the dough on it. At this point, if you like, you can be inventive and create a thick crust by folding the edges over, which can then be stuffed (this is really tasty if you create little pouches with feta in them).

5. Spread the tomato paste, garlic puree and BBQ sauce evenly over the base, leaving approx a centimetre clear around the edge. 
6. Spread your toppings over the sauce, with the cheese going on last.
7. Sprinkle on the basil and thyme, and place in the over for 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye on it in the last few minutes, because if you leave it thin crust, it can burn quickly.

Vegetable Paella

Vege paella's kinda helpful if you have some veg which needs using. Obviously, traditional paella usually has some kind of seafood in it, but seafood's gross, so I can't offer any help with that. This is really quick and easy to throw together, and is pretty tasty without the spices if you can't afford them. 
The original recipe is from a BBC Good Food recipe book my stepmum gave me when I came to uni. It's one of the 101 range, and I would massively recommend getting a couple, they're great!

Ingredients (serves 4)

8oz rice
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1garlic clove
2 peppers (I used one orange and one red)
4oz mushrooms (I used 4 large mushrooms, couldn't be bothered to weigh them)
1.5 pints vege stock (I make half a pint properly and then just use water to top it up)
4oz frozen peas
1 tspn paprika
1 tspn saffron, although I don't have any so have never used it in this recipe
2 tomatoes, seeded and chopped

Method (takes around 30 mins)
1. Cook the onion in a pan until soft, then add the garlic, peppers and mushrooms. 
2. Once the veg has cooked through, add the rice and stir for 1 minute, before adding all of the stock. Leave to cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rice is almost cooked (add more water if you need to).
3. Throw in the peas and cook for a further 5 minutes.
3. After serving, scatter the tomato and parsley over the paella. A nice touch for this dish is to add cheese, feta is best, but a strong cheddar works just as well too. 

Smoked Haddock

I love fish, and don't really buy enough of it unless it's that breaded stuff you chuck in the oven, but today I treated myself to some fresh from the fishmonger because I finished my Christmas shopping. There are lots of ways of cooking smoked haddock, but I decided to pan fry it, largely due to a lack of tin foil in my house.

Ingredients 
Well, this is both obvious and vague.
Obviously - smoked haddock. I asked the fishmonger for a medium-ish piece, which he laughed at, but I got. I got dyed smoked haddock, but mainly just because I think it looks nicer, so you can get undyed. The fishmonger should be cheaper than a supermarket, the piece I got could easily have served two, and cost £2.20.
Vague - a drizzle of oil (I used vegetable, but olive is better), some parsley, oregano, black pepper and lemon juice. Also, whatever you'd like to serve your fish with, I had new potatoes and sweetcorn.

Method
1. I put my potatoes on to boil in some salted water, but that part depends on what you're having with your fish.
2. Drizzle olive oil over the fish, along with approx. a teaspoon each of oregano and parsley (dried - fresh is probably better, but I imagine it's also more expensive) and a pinch of black pepper. Then wrap in tin foil, or something similar, I used the greaseproofy stuff my fish came in, and leave for a while to allow the flavours to soak in.

3. About 8 minutes (bit specific, I know) before your side's going to be ready, heat some oil in a pan. Once it's really hot, place the fish on it skin side down, and leave for 4 minutes. Then flip, and cook for around 2 minutes, although this depends on the thickness of your fillet. The fish should appear opaque when cooked.

4. When you plate your fish, a good touch is to drizzle some lemon juice over it while it's still really hot from the pan. I mixed my new potatoes and sweetcorn with a little butter and parsley before serving.

Homemade Quorn Burgers

Vege burgers are always so expensive, and I'd gotten tired of doing the same things with Quorn mince, so I figured if I can make decent meat burgers from scratch, it couldn't be too different with Quorn mince. For non-veges, these burgers are also great when made with lamb mince, although a little more should be used as the meat shrinks more when cooked.

Recipe (makes 2 or 3 burgers)
100g defrosted Quorn mince
1/2 medium white onion
1 crushed garlic clove
2 large closed cup mushrooms
white breadcrumbs from one slice of bread
a handful of finely grated cheese
1 medium egg
1 tspn thyme
1 tspn black pepper
pinch of salt
plain flour
chips to serve
burger buns

Method (takes around 40 mins)
1. Finely chop the onion and fry over a low heat until soft. Add the mushrooms (very finely chopped) and garlic and continue to fry until cooked. Leave to cool.
2. At this point we put our chips on, with a little oil, basil and cumin, for 25 minutes.
3. While the chips are cooking, combine the mince with the breadcrumbs, thyme, egg, cheese, onion, mushroom and garlic, then add the salt and pepper. If the mixture does not fully combine, or is a little watery, add either a little flour, or some extra breadcrumbs. 
4. Heavily flour your hands for this part, I didn't, and ended up covered in burger mix. Squash together a handful of the mix as much as possible, and place in a very hot pan to ensure the burger doesn't split. Do this two or three times, depending on how big you'd like your burgers. (Make sure you do this about 10 minutes before you chips are going to be finished)
5. Seal each burger for around a minute on one side (sprinkling a little flour on each side of the burgers helps here), and then turn regularly for around 7 minutes to cook the burgers. They should be brown all over, and piping hot through the middle.

6. We didn't have burger buns, and I couldn't afford to buy some just for a one off, so we just cut brown bread into squares and used that instead. We also recently bought some black pepper and garlic mayonnaise from Lidl, which was amazing on these burgers with a little extra cheese on top, although Daz said that his mayo and english mustard combination was also lovely on his burgers.

Victoria Sponge Cake

I can't have a food blog called 'Who Ate All The Cake' and not have regular baking posts really, so here's a cake. 
This one wasn't planned, I just came home after work and fancied baking, and luckily, Maria fancied eating a cake. Unfortunately, there's not many pictures for this one. 

Ingredients 
Sponge cakes are SO easy to make, especially if everything's weighed in ounces. Depending on the size of cake you want (this recipe makes two smallish cakes), you just double the number of eggs for the weight of the flour, butter and sugar.

For the cakes
8oz butter
8oz sugar
8oz self raising flour
2 tspn baking powder
4 eggs
Also, if you have any, throw in 2 teaspoons of vanilla essence, although that's not essential.

For the filling
I have a small problem here, because we didn't really weigh anything out. Basically, for the buttercream, we just shoved some butter and icing sugar in a bowl, mixed it together, and added extra of one or the other if it was needed. For a special twist with this one, we threw some popping candy in too. You also need some jam, preferably strawberry. Again, the amount you use is up to you, we got a little over eager and used almost half a jar.

Method
1. PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 180degrees. Too many times I have forgotten to do this, and it makes the cake sink, which is rubbish.
2. Cream together half the butter and sugar before sieving in half the flour, baking powder and adding half the eggs and optional vanilla essence.. Mix thoroughly until light and creamy. 
3. Grease a cake tin (which can be any size really, ours was 20cm I think, you just may need to adjust the cooking time slightly) and pour the cake mix in. It should be a pretty liquidy mix, so you shouldn't need to level it too much, although it might need a little push to get all the way to the edges.
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes until it appears golden brown and has risen.  To check it's cooked through, poke a knife in the middle right to the bottom, and if it comes out clean, it's done.
5.  Leave the cake to cool.
6. Repeat 1-5 with the other half of the ingredients.
7. Cream together your butter and icing sugar until it's the right flavour for you, and add whatever you like to this. Chocolate butter cream is always tasty, and just needs a little cocoa powder throwing into the mix. 
8. Once both cakes have cooled thoroughly, turn one upside down and coat the top with jam. Then add a layer of buttercream - we added ours when the cakes were still warm because we were very hungry, so it did melt slightly. Finally, put the second cake on top, and you're done.