Maple Spiced Sweet Potato Muffins

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas.....

I've been absent of late from blogging. I had  to take a time out towards the end of our busiest B&B season ever. Things got very hectic and on top of doing Bed & Breakfast 24/7, I also have the two little monsters to look after. So in the end, something had to give and alas I'm afraid it was my blog! Now that we have closed for the season and I had some time to recuperate, I delighted to be back experimenting, photographing, tasting, and blogging all my favourite recipes!

And this is a wonderful recipe to return with!! These muffins, though not intentional, and bursting with Christmas tastes and smells! And with December starting tomorrow, this recipe is a highly appropriate come-back!

Last night I put down too many baked sweet potatoes for the dinner. Here I was thinking one of the kids would finally fall in love with baked sweet potatoes, instead of eating mashed regular potatoes. To no surprise, there was no such luck, leaving me with two spare baked sweet potatoes.

I let them cool fully and put them in the refrigerator over night. I remembered last winter experimenting with butternut squash muffins, and they tasted great. Howerver I totally forgot to write down how I made them, so I thought, with these spare baked sweet potatoes, I should really try to recreate that recipe again, and this time record the ingredients.

The spices used in the recipe and wonderfully Moorish and the use of oil and maple syrup give the muffins a great moistness. My kids adore muffins, and these muffins are a great way of hiding sweet potatoes in their diet. They are going to be the perfect lunchbox snack.

Ingredients

Makes 12 muffins

• 225g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon 
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp all spice
• 140g light brown sugar
• 75g raisins
• 175ml milk
• 30ml maple syrup
• 60ml olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 150g of cooled baked sweet potato
• 2 tbsp of mixed seeds

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Line a muffin tray with muffin cases.
3. Sieve the flour, baking powder, and spices into a large bowl.
4. Add the brown sugar  and raisins and stir to combine.
5. In a jug, add the egg, mashed sweet potato, maple syrup, and milk and whisk thoroughly to combine.
6. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients from the jug.
7. Stir until all is combined and a batter is formed.
8. Divide the batter evenly into the 12 muffin case. Scatter each muffin with some mixed seeds.
9. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes.
10. Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack. 
11. While the muffins are still hot, brush the tops of the muffins with some maple syrup. This with help make the tops sticky and crunchy and the maple syrup will also soak into the hot muffins.

Chocolate Caramel Bites - Speedy Sweet Canapes

This post isn't even a recipe, I couldn't call it that, as these bites are just a simple assembly job. In saying that they taste amazing, too good not to share! I love to have something nice and sweet greeting all my guests arriving to the Bed and Breakfast. Sometimes I have time for cupcakes or brownies,  but there are some busy days when I don't have enough time for anything other that pimping up melted chocolate!

For these little bites from heaven, I use all butter shortcrust pastry case from Marks and Spencers. I have made these from scratch before using shortcrust pastry, but these shop bought ones are great, especially if you are on a time budget

A staple in everyone's pantry should be Nestle's Carnations Caramel Sauce, it's awesome! So good in so many treats.

The final ingredients were some dark chocolate and some candy sprinkles. Here's the assembly recipe!

Ingredients

• 1 can of Carnation Caramel
• 1 100g bar of good dark chocolate 
• Sprinkles
• Ready made mini  all butter shortcrust pastry cases

Method

1. Melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30 second bursts
2. Place 1/2 tsp of carnation caramel in each pastry case
3. Pour 1/2 tsp of melted chocolate over the caramel and place your sprinkle of choice on the melted chocolate.
4. Put in the fridge for 20 minutes and they are ready to eat.

Perfect for a tea party, last minute guests, or a canape for a drinks party. I myself put them on a table in the hallway of my Bed and Breakfast, so chocolate is the first thing that my guests see when they walk through the door.

Chocolate & Pear Crumble Pies - Not Just Another Mince Pie

I love a mince pie as much as the next person. But wouldn't it be nice to have a mince pie with a twist for a change. I was trying to think of alternative mince pie recipes without compromising too much on the concept, and I got to thinking of good flavour combinations.

I knew I wanted chocolate chips to make the final cut, so what goes well with chocolate? Pears!!! Chocolate and Pear go together like Simon and Garfunkel!And what also goes well with chocolate from the mincemeat family? Well dried cranberries are a good call, and there is a heavy chocolate-type flavour from dates also. Very moorish. So there you have it: chocolate chips, dried cranberries, pears, and dates make up the 'dry' mince meat ingredients. Now for the quick fix 'wet' ingredients, Some marmalade and some cream liqueur will do nicely . Oh don't forget the mixed spice.....It is Christmas after all!

I like to make my mince pies look really rustic and homemade! So instead of putting a lid on the pies, I have made a super fast crumble to top the pies with. If a crumble doesn't tickle your fancy, grab a star cookie cutter with the same diameter as the circle ring you use to cut out the pastry discs and you have really pretty star studded pies instead. Either way, they are anything but another boring mince pie.

Ingredients

• 80g of chocolate chips
• 2 pears, diced
• 35g of dried cranberries
• 3 tbsp of orange marmalade
• 1 tbsp of bailey liqueur 
• 125g chopped dates
• 1 tsp of mixed spice
• 1 ready rolled sheet of all butter shortcrust pastry

Crumble

• 25g of cold butter
• 25g of brown sugar
• 25g of ground almonds
• 25g of flaked almonds

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
2. First make the 'mincemeat' filling. Add the following to a large bowl and stir well to combine : chocolate chips, diced pears, dried cranberries, chopped dates, mixed spice, baileys, and the marmalade.
3. Then make the crumble by rubbing the butter into the sugar and then add the ground and flaked almonds.
4. Roll out the sheet of pastry and cut out circles with a round cookie cutter. (Measure the circle cutter to make sure its a small bit bigger that the muffin tin holes.
5. Oil the muffin holes, and place one disc of pastry in each muffin hole.
6. Spoon in the mincemeat mixture and top with the crumble mixture. You can tray freeze them at this stage and just cook them from frozen for an extra five minutes.
7. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.
8. Remove from the oven and place muffin tin on a wire rack. The liquid will be bubbling so be careful, they are very hot. Run a knife or spatula around the rim of the mince to release from the tin while the liquid is still hot. If it cools too much it will stick to the walls and be more difficult to remove without them breaking.
9. After 2-3 minutes, remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack. 
10. When ready to serve, sprinkle with icing sugar and serve with cream, custard, or icecream. 

Traditional Whiskey Glazed Ham

It's beginning to look alot like Christmas!!!! This year I couldn't be more excited about Christmas. I think it's because we have a little girl now so the magic of Christmas has returned to our lives and it makes this time of year extra special.

In addition to Santa visiting us this year, I am cooking Christmas dinner for the first time ever!!!!!!!!! Yes, I usually don't lift a finger on Christmas day other than to help with the dishes after.  This year we are having our first ever Christmas Day in our home in Sika Lodge and my husbands parents are going to join us all the way from Roscommon. So with them putting the effort in driving all the way down I want everything to be absolutely perfect. Hence, I am trialing all my Christmas day recipes before the big day to make sure I get everything right and to help me make any tweaks that need tweaking.

I have been devouring Christmas recipe books the last week or so, trying to come up with the ultimate dinner. I am hoping to get ahead and reduce the stress by using some handy make ahead tips. More of that to follow in later posts.

Here we are talking ham! The Christmas ham is my absolute favorite, preferring it to the turkey. The cooking of my Christmas ham begins two days prior to Christmas day. It doesn't take a mountain of actual physical work; but trust me, this extra attention to detail will be worth it when you come to taste it Christmas day and it will be awesome in sandwiches and salads and pasta dishes for days to come.

Ingredients

• 4 kg of Gammon, bone intact
• 2 carrots
• 2 sticks of celery
• 3 bay leaves
• 6 peppercorns
• 2 onions, halved
• 1 bunch of parsley
• 1 bunch of thyme
• 4-5 cloves
• 1 clementine
• 2 cans of cider (I use Bulmers - known as Magners outside of Ireland)

The Glaze

• 200ml of Irish Whiskey
• 200ml of maple syrup
• 2 tbsp of thick cut marmalade
• 1 tbsp of allspice
• 2 tbsp of redcurrant jelly
• Cloves to stud the ham

Method

1. Get a large  lidded casserole on the hob, add all the vegetables, herbs and cider. Put the ham into the dish making sure its big enough to cover when cooked.
2. Add water to the dish to ensure the liquid comes up to almost cover the ham.
3. Bring to the boil and bring back to a simmer. Cook the ham for 20 minutes per 500g and then an extra 25 minutes.
4. When the time is up, simply cover and leave it in the liquid overnight.
5. The following day when you are ready to glaze the ham, preheat the oven to 180 degrees. (Allow 2 hours for this part of the cooking process)
6. Take the ham out of the liquid and discard the liquid. Place the ham in a roasting tray. I use disposable foil trays for this as the burnt-in glaze is impossible clean off an oven dish after. Actually I will be using foil trays for most of my Christmas dinner, eliminating the worse part of the clean up.
7. With a sharp knife, cut the majority of the fat off the ham, leaving a small white layer. Score the fat, being careful not to cut right through to the meat. Make diagonal cuts the opposite way of the intial scoring to create a criss cross diamond effect. Place 1 clove into each diamond corner.
8. To make the glaze, simply add all the glaze ingredients to a saucepan and cook until reduced a little. This should take ten minutes.
9. Pour one third of the glaze over the ham and place in the oven. Then 15 minutes later, pour over one third more. And finally 15 minutes later, pour the final glaze over the ham. The ham should start to have taken on a lovely bronze colour. Continue to cook for a further 15 minutes and do a final glazing when removing from oven.When its a lovely golden colour and sticky the meat is cooked.
10. Place on a serving platter and allow to rest for at least 30 minutes.

Homemade Irish Liqueur Cream

I got this recipe from the BBC Website and I must say its absolutely awesome! I love Baileys, but this homemade version of Irish Cream Liqueur wins hands down and all my family and neighbours who received a bottle from me this Christmas agreed.  I brought the bottle to neigbours when visiting instead, and I also added to my homemade gift hampers for my mother and mother in law.

But this is not just a drink for Christmas, its way too tasty to reserve it for just once a year. It's a fabulous treat at the end of a meal at a dinner party, or even drop a sneaky bit into a coffee. Bliss!!!

 Here's the recipe, which I tweaked a little to my own taste, unable to source coffee syrup I used a cold strong espresso shot from my coffee machine and I added more chocolate sauce.

Ingredients

• 250ml/9fl oz single cream

• 1x 397g/14oz tin condensed milk

• 350ml/12fl oz Irish whiskey

• 1 tsp Camp coffee essence/or an espresso shot cooled if you cannot source the Camp.

• 5 tsp chocolate sauce

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 tsp almond extract

Method

1. Sterilise the bottles for the liqueur: wash in very hot water or on the hot cycle of a dishwasher. Preheat the oven to 160C/325F/Gas 3. 
2. Place the bottles on a baking tray and dry in the oven for 10-15 minutes.
3.  Leave to cool.
4. Pour all the ingredients into a blender and blend on high for 30 seconds. 
5. Add extra Camp or chocolate to taste.
6. Pour into sterilised bottles and store in the fridge. (The liqueur will keep for up to two months.) Shake well before using.

Pretty Meringue Decorations

Being a huge foodie, I hang edible treats on my Christmas tree every year and this year I decided to make some meringue circles. I must admit however that they only lasted the day and every single one of them was eaten before lights out. Nevertheless they are great fun to make with little ones and they look so pretty. You can make them whatever colour you like by adding your preferred food colouring to the finished meringue mixture, I chose pink as I'm super girly.

Ingredients

• 4 eggs, room temperature
• 220g caster sugar
• Red food colouring
• Pretty ribbon for hanging

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 140 degrees
2. Separate the eggs and put the egg whites in a food mixer with the whisk attachment
   
3. Whisk the eggs for 5 minutes, on medium speed.
4. Add the sugar little by little, increase the speed of the whisk and continue to whisk for 8-10 minutes, until you have stiff peaks.
5. Whisking slowly, add the colouring until you have reached the desired  colour.
6. Put the meringue into a piping bag.
7. Pipe out thick circles onto baking trays lined with baking paper.
8. Place the trays in the oven and bake for 25 minutes
9. Cool on a wire rack.
10. Using a ribbon hang the meringues on your Christmas tree. Keep them away from the fairy lights if you can as the heat can melt the meringues.

Easy Peasy Mince Pies

I don't have a lot of time these days for baking and blogging, but these mince pies are all about the short cuts and are a doddle to make, so easy I just had to share the recipe. I'm a self proclaimed lover of store bought pastry, it makes everything so quick and easy.

 These pies are made using store bought pastry, but good quality pastry. The mince pie filling is also straight from a jar, but I'm using a luxury brand. Basically I'm all about the shortcuts once the very best store bought items are used. There then is nothing stopping you pimping up store bought ingredients. For example here I jazz up the mince filling with some clementine zest and chopped apple.

So on first glance of the pies you think 'oh I don't have the time to make those'; but read on and see how easy it is to make your own.

Makes 9 mince pies

Ingredients

• 1 ready rolled premium quality shortcrust pastry
• 1 jar of luxury mincemeat
• 1/2 an apple, diced
• Zest of 1 clementine 
• 1 tbsp of milk
• Butter, for greasing muffin tray
• Icing sugar, for dusting

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, and grease a muffin tin with butter
2. Empty the mincemeat into a bowl and add the zest and the chopped apple and stir to combine.
3. Roll out the pastry and using a round pastry cutter, cut out as many circles as you can. 
4. With the scraps, re-roll and cut out some star shapes for the top of the pies.
5. Place the pastry circles in the muffin holes and add the mincemeat filling. Do not be tempted to overfill them as they will burst and overflow when baked.
6. Top each pie with the cut out pastry stars. Brush the stars with a little milk.
7. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until they are bubbling and golden brown.
8. Cool in the tin on a wire rack for 5 minutes before removing from the rack and allowing to cool completely.
9. Dust liberally with icing sugar and hey presto.

If you are visiting over the festive season, these are the prefect gift to bring your friends and family. Everyone loves homemade gift, especially ones that look like you were slaving in the kitchen for hours making. They need never know how easy and quick they were.

In a make ahead tip, you can freeze the pies in the muffin tray unbaked (covered with cling). Then just defrost overnight in the fridge before baking them.

Quick n'Lazy Cranberry, Raisin & Walnut Relish

For anyone who's put off from the thought of making relishes & chutneys thinking they are way too complicated, then this cranberry relish recipe is the perfect solution for you. The recipe couldn't be simpler and its an absolute piece of cake to make. This relish can be a great accompaniment to the turkey dinner Christmas Day or even nicer with those famous turkey sandwiches Christmas Night. 

I recently teamed the relish with spiced quail and cous cous and it was a marriage made in heaven. 

The relish can be made, and jarred and kept for up to a week in the fridge in a sterilized jar. I've made a batch and put them into Kilner jars and wrapped the jars as gifts for my mom and mom-in-law. I just love to make homemade gifts, it really adds a special touch I think.

To sterilize the jars, I just put them in the dishwasher on a high heat.

Ingredients

• 200ml of orange juice (not from concentrate)
• 200g of soft brown sugar
• 500g of fresh cranberries
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 150g of raisins
• 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon 
• 100g of chopped walnuts
• Salt & pepper

Method

1. Pour the orange juice and the sugar into a saucepan
2. Stir to dissolve the sugar
3. Put on a low heat and add the cranberries.
4. Cook for 10 minutes or so, until the majority of cranberries have popped. Don't worry if it looks too watery at this stage, the mixture thickens very quickly.
5. Add the raisins, salt, pepper, cinnamon and ginger.
6. Stir to combine and cook for a further minute.
7. The add the walnuts, cook for a final minute before removing from the heat.
8. Pour into your sterilized jars and seal.
9. Use within a week of making.

Goats Cheese, Pecan, Cranberry &Thyme Festive Pizza

This pizza ticks all the boxes for me sweet versus tangy!! Awesome. Homemade pizza is a family all-rounder, as kids love to help making them and the toppings can be customised to suit even the fussiest of eaters. Take my house for example, my husband is afraid of veggies and for him, pizza is all about getting the most amount of meat possible on a pizza.

 I on the other hand prefer nuts and salad and rarely have meat on my pizza. Hence for my pizza, I've created a festive vegetarian friendly pizza. It has the sweetness and sharpness from the cranberries, the crunch from the pecan nuts, the salty tang from the goats cheese and I make it even sweeter then by drizzling the pizza with balsamic vinegar and honey just before serving.

Don't waste any pizza dough though when finished. As I only made two pizzas I put the remaining dough in a resealable box and popped it in the freezer. Now I know that more homemade pizzas can be at my finger tips and won't require the same dough making effort the second time round. Just defrost at room temperature until completely defrosted, Then work the dough and make your pizzas.

Basic Pizza Dough Recipe

Makes 4-5 pizzas

Ingredients

• 500g of strong white flour (for bread making)
• 1 7g sachet fast acting yeast
• 330ml of warm water
• 2 tbsp of olive oil
• 1 tbsp of salt

Method

1. Sieve the salt and flour into a bowl.
2. Add the yeast and oil to the water and leave to stand for a few minutes
3. Make a well in the flour and add the liquid.
4. Work the dough into the liquid and kneed until you have a smooth springy dough.
5. Dust a clean large bowl with flour, and place the dough in the bowl.
6. Wet a tea towel and cover the bowl completely with the tea towel. Set the dough in a warm part of the kitchen for an hour to double in size.
7. After an hour, dust some flour on your work surface and turn out the dough.
8. Kneed for 10-15 minutes to knock out the air.
9. When you are happy with your dough, using a knife divide the dough into equal pieces for pizzas.
10. Using a roll pin, roll out the pizza try to maintain a neat circle if possible. (Though don't get too hung up on the perfect circle, these are homemade after all and the more rustic the better.)
11. Place the rolled pizza dough on a floured baking tray.
12. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees.
13. At this point the pizzas are ready to be adorned with their toppings.

Goats Cheese, Pecan & Cranberry Festive Pizza

Ingredients

• 1 rolled pizza dough on a floured baking tray (recipe above)
• 2 tbsp of passata
• 1/4 ball of buffallo mozzeralla, shredded
• 3-4 sprigs of thyme leaves
• 50g of goats cheese,sliced
• 50g of pecan nuts
• 50g of fresh cranberries
• 1 tbsp of olive oil
• Honey for drizzling
• Balsamic Vinegar for drizzling 
• Peppery rocket for garnishing

Method

1. Spread the passata over the dough and then scatter the pizza with the mozzeralla, goats cheese, pecans and cranberries.
2. Scatter the thyme leaves over the pizza and drizzle with the oil.
3. Bake in the oven for 7-10 minutes, until the cheese is bubbling and the base has browned.
4. Before serving, scatter the rocket over the pizza and drizzle with some honey and balsamic vinegar.