Quick? Tick. Spicy? Tick. Easy? Tick. Satisfies my need to put everything on a stick? Tick. Quick, easy, spicy prawns on a stick for festive parties across the land. Doesn’t everything taste better on a stick? I think so.
If you prefer to watch a little video of how to make these click below:
Makes 12
Ingredients:
– 12 tiger prawns, cooked and peeled
– Juice of ½ lime
– Pinch of paprika
– Pinch of Cajun seasoning
– ¼ cucumber, deseeded and chopped
– 12 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
These are so quick and easy it’s very hard not to eat them as you work, but that wouldn’t do at all. Simply pop the king prawns into a bowl, then take half a lime and squeeze it straight over the prawns and when you’ve got all the juice out give them a little stir. Now add to that marinade by popping in a pinch of paprika and a pinch of Cajun seasoning and stir well.
Let all those flavours mingle and in the mean time, cut up a cucumber to thread onto the sticks, scooping the seeds from the centre of the cucumber, then chop the cherry tomatoes in half. To assemble, take a cocktail stick, thread a piece of de-seeded cucumber on, next thread a prawn into the middle. Lastly, a quarter of cherry tomato.
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This is the stuff of dreams. Sometimes, just sometimes, the 6 year old only child in me creeps back to the surface and whispers in my ear, not to cut the shortbread but to leave it in one block and eat it all myself, whilst pretending to be a giant. Make this for people you care deeply about. Or just yourself if it’s a selfish kind of a day.
Ingredients:
– 250g soft salted butter
– 100g caster sugar
– 260g plain flour
– 90g cornflour
– 1 x 397g tin of caramel
– 200g white chocolate
– Malteasers, chocolate coins… do your worst
Very easy to make. Very easy to eat. Preheat your oven to 170C and line a 20cm x 20cm tin with sides at least 3cm high, with butter and greaseproof paper. (You can use a bigger tin but reduce the cooking time a little as the shortbread will be thinner and therefore will take a shorter time to cook.)
Take your soft butter and beat (in your stand mixer/with an electric mixer/by hand with a wooden spoon) until soft and creamy looking. Then add the sugar and beat again until all combined, light and fluffy. Add the flour and cornflour and beat until the mixtures comes together into clumps. Press into your prepared tin and bake for 20 – 25 minutes until lightly golden brown on the top. Don’t worry about opening the oven to check, shortbread doesn’t mind this at all.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack, in the tin. Once cool open your tin of caramel and pour over the top, using a spoon and knife to ease over the whole of the slab of shortbread. Leave to settle in the fridge. Melt your white chocolate very carefully in the microwave in 30 second bursts so as not to risk burning it. You can use the bain marie method instead if you prefer.
The best way to do this is not to pour in one place – pour it in sections so that you don’t disturb the set caramel. Use a teaspoon to push the chocolate gently over the caramel and then, whilst the chocolate is still molten, pop chocolate coins and Malteasers over the top, being careful to only pop them into ‘squared’ sections so that you can easily cut the slab of shortbread when completely cool and not have to saw a Malteaser or coin in half. Do clean the knife after each cut as it makes for cleaner looking slices.
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The ultimate thrifty canape. An austerity-canape if you will. Bread cleverly toasted into cups to hold whatever your heart desires. Brie and cranberry is an old favourite of course but really the contents of your fridge and cupboard are the only limitation.
Makes about 12 but really depends how many people you need to feed and how full your fridge is with leftovers. Here’s a video if you prefer to watch rather than read:
Get your oven onto a really high temperature; 220 C. Roll your bread out thinly using a rolling pin and using a small cutter to fit a mini muffin tin, cut as many circles as you can from it. Take each little circle and brush with melted butter then press into a mini muffin tin, butter side down. Bake for 5 – 10 minutes. You’ll know they’re done when they’re crisp and golden and they look like little toast cups.
Once they’ve cooled, line up your little toast cups and then whatever you’ve got in the fridge you can pop into these. I often have odds and ends of cheese leftover at Christmas time and I always have half a jar of cranberry sauce in the fridge, so this is a great way to use it up. I finished with some parsley here mainly to add a bit of colour.
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I don’t think I’m a natural canapé maker. They always seem like a good idea, and then, a bit like making your own Christmas cards, after 5 or so, boredom sets in and I’m wishing I’d let the shops do the hard work for me.
Not so with these little beauties. They’re easy peasy, can be made in advance (hurrah for no last minute stress) and even tick the manly box. Because even in miniature form, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is a fully respectable canapé for even the most manly man. The full recipe, courtesy of Sainsbury’s is here. But if you prefer to watch it rather than read it you can see me and the lovely Nicola making them together.
Makes about 12
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
40g plain flour
1 medium egg, beaten
50ml semi-skimmed milk
1 tablespoon horseradish
2 slices beef, torn into pieces
Watercress to garnish
Preheat the oven to 220ºC, fan 200ºC, gas 7. Pour ½ teaspoon oil into each hole of a 12-hole non-stick mini muffin tin and place in the oven to heat through
Meanwhile, sift the flour and a pinch of salt into a medium bowl and make a well in the centre. Beat in the eggs until smooth, then gradually add the milk, beating until the mixture has no lumps.
Remove the mini muffin tin from the oven and carefully add ½ tablespoon of the batter into the compartments. Cook in the oven for 15 minutes, until the puddings have risen and are golden in colour. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
Fill each mini Yorkshire pudding with a couple of pieces beef and a little horseradish. Season with black pepper and garnish each with a small sprig of watercress.
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“Too many cocktails are pink, sickly sweet or overly creamy in my opinion, as much as I love kitsch, I want Don Draper style with an element of homegrown, not Priscilla Queen of the Desert! Many of the spirits are made on the family farm – sloe gin, raspberry vodka & Christmas pud vodka, from home grown ingredients. I became fascinated with cocktails here after working my way through the wine list too many times! Once pregnant I became a cocktail pusher, designing the very bloke friendly ‘Cider with Rosie’ made with locally pressed 7% scrambler cider (made in our friend Robs back garden) Makers Mark bourbon, ginger ale & rosemary.”
Ingredients:
– 100g cranberries
– 150g sultanas
– 50g mixed peel
– 100g golden caster sugar
– 2 cinnamon sticks
– 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
– 15g ground mixed spice
– 4 cloves
– Zest of 1 orange
– Zest of 1 lemon
– 1 litre bottle of vodka/gin
Put everything into a bowl/container/jug, making sure that whatever you use holds all the alcohol. Cover and leave for about a week in the fridge. Then strain through muslin and bottle ready for making into a Stir Up Fizz cocktail (one shot of this gin/vodka, topped up with champagne and served with a ginger biscuit) as soon as the festive mood takes you. Don’t throw the dried fruit away! You can serve it over ice-cream for a very grown up and super charged dessert.
A few other Christmas cocktail ideas from the lovely Caitlin… (a shot is 25mls by the way)
Blood orange margarita: Shake 1.5 shot tequila, 0.5 shot Gran Marnier, squeeze fresh lime, 1 shot syrup and 2 shots blood orange juice over ice. Strain into a tumbler glass with a salt rim and finish with a lime or orange wedge.
Snowball-Highball: Stir 2 shots Advocaat and a large squeeze of fresh lime over ice in a highball glass, top up with lemonade and pop a glace cherry on the top!
Sloe Gin Fizz: Muddle 2 raspberries or blackberries in the bottom of a whiskey style glass, fill half way with crushed ice, then add 2 shots sloe gin, 1 shot lemon juice and 1 shot syrup, and top up with soda.
Cider with Rosie: Pour 1 shot Makers Mark into a whiskey glass, add a squeeze of lemon juice, half fill with ice then top up with half Scrambler boxed cider and half
Schweppes dry ginger. Serve with a sprig of fresh rosemary.
Fabulous fizz (alcohol free for the cocktail pushers amongst us): Mix a third each of Shloer, ginger ale & pineapple juice. Serve over ice and feel very smug that your head doesn’t hurt the next day.
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A Christmassy cake that doesn’t make your teeth itch from fondant icing, or break them with fondant’s posh Royal sister. An honest fruit loaf, flecked with toasted almonds, a hint of gingerbread and topped with the lightest fluffiest brandy butter inspired icing you ever sunk your teeth into. It doesn’t keep for long, but then it won’t have to.
Ingredients:
– 200g soft butter
– 200g soft dark brown sugar
– 400g self raising flour
– 100g sultanas
– 100g toasted flaked almonds
– 4 large eggs
– 4 tbsp milk
– 2 tbsp gingerbread syrup (if you don’t have it, substitute with more milk and 1 tsp ground ginger and cinnamon)
– 100g soft butter
– 245g icing sugar
– Zest of 1 orange
– 15mls brandy
This recipe makes a monster of a fruit loaf, big enough to fill a tin that measures 25 x 11 x 7cm. If you prefer your cakes on the dainty size then please feel free to halve the quantities. Look how big it is!
Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and grease and line your loaf tin. Cream 200g butter with the soft brown sugar until creamy looking. Takes about 4 minutes using an electric mixer or about 10 minutes by hand with a wooden spoon. Then add the flour and mix again until you have a dry breadcrumby consistency. Next add the fruit and nuts (which you can substitute for whatever you like but please do toast whatever nuts you add as it makes all the difference to the end result.)
To your very dry looking crumble type mixture add all 4 eggs, the milk and the gingerbread syrup if you have it. Mix well until all combined then smooth into the loaf tin and bake in the centre of the oven for about an hour and 15 minutes until a skewer comes out of the centre of the loaf clean. Do check it from 50 minutes onwards though as all ovens are very different. If it looks like it’s browning too quickly on the top but is still raw inside then feel free to fashion a foil hat for the top of the cake to protect it.
Leave to cool on a wire rack. Make the brandy butter icing by creaming 100g soft butter with the zest of an orange and the icing sugar. Once really fluffy (7 mins top speed in a stand mixer or at least 12 minutes with a wooden spoon) add the brandy and mix again.
Spread onto your cooled cake and add any decorations you fancy. Keeps for 5 days in an airtight tin or freezes very well without the icing too.
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Essentially a very lazy recipe… just follow the recipe for this to make the pavlovas. Then add 200g whipped double cream, some sliced bananas and if you feel inclined you could make you own toffee sauce. Or you could just buy one. This is a Friday night pudding for when you need maximum gratification and minimum effort. Make the meringues on a Wednesday and you may just fall in love with yourself come Friday dinner time.
I heart toffee sauce. Look at this stuff. If you want to make it then this recipe is very good. Good old Mary.
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I’m going to have to hold my hands up in the air and declare a truth. I’m not one of those girls who’s mad on meringue. It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s kind of hard not to like. It’s more that I can always find other things on a menu I prefer. However I have married into, and now given birth to, a family of meringue fiends. So it is very much in my interest to create new meringue based recipes each year. Though let’s be honest, a good old Eton mess always goes down well when the fridge is a little bare.
Makes about 10 but all depends on the size of the nests.
Top tip: make these just before you go to bed so the meringue can cool to room temperature VERY slowly and thus avoid cracking in a volcano like fashion.
Ingredients:
– 120g egg whites (about 4 but depends on size of your eggs)
– 200g castor sugar
– 5g cornflour
– 5mls white wine vinegar
– 1 x tin chestnut puree
– 50g raisins
– 30mls brandy
– 200g double cream
Whisk your egg whites until beginning to hold their peaks. Then whisk in 1 teaspoon of the castor sugar at a time. I know this is laborious but if you rush it and throw the lot in you’re less likely to make sure it all dissolves into the egg and you might end up with weeping meringue. Might.
Once the sugar’s all in, the mixture should look really white and glossy, then add in the cornflour and white wine vinegar. Whisk again. The combination of these ingredients makes for a mallowy chewy middle to your meringue so whilst they’re desirable they’re not a reason to run to the local shops if you don’t have them.
Pop some foil or baking parchment on a baking tray, fixing it down with a little sticky meringue. Then spoon about 2 heaped tablespoons of the meringue onto the foil/parchment to make each nest. You can leave in a big snowy heap or use your fingers and the back of a teaspoon to slightly hollow out the middle for holding double cream later. Up to you. (You can squash the meringues after baking instead to make a pocket for the cream if you prefer, but they will crack as you do this.)
Then bake at the bottom and on the middle shelf of a preheated oven at 140C. (For these are the coolest areas of most ovens and we’re trying to dry these meringues out, not bake them so that they brown.) As soon as they go into the oven turn it down to about 100C, or 90C for a fan. Then after 45 minutes turn the oven off entirely but don’t open it.
About 35 minutes into baking I tend to open the oven door and have a little prod to make sure the oven has worked it’s magic and the outsides of the meringue are hard. If not they need a little longer than the aforementioned 45 minutes. Then I DO NOT OPEN the oven for the last ten minutes of baking. I turn the oven off and then leave the little snowy meringues to slowly come to room temperature for a few hours. Easier to just make these last thing at night and leave them until the morning in your oven.
Once completely cold I fill with whipped cream, pipe a little chestnut puree on top and then crown with raisins I have soaked in brandy by heating them gently on the stove and letting them come to room temperature. But you can top with anything you like. The unadorned meringues last for 3 days or so in a tin at room temperature so you can easily get ahead with this easy pud. Don’t forget to add any broken meringue to vanilla ice cream along with some lemon curd and crunched up digestives. Lemon meringue ice-cream is too much of a joy to be missed.
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These mince pies are inspired by my friend Helen’s mother-in-law, who tops her mince pies with Viennese biscuit dough. They are divine! I thought I’d remove the need for a piping bag and add some heavenly Christmas flavours of orange, nutmeg and cinnamon to make these truly special. Don’t forget you can add your favourite tipple to the mincemeat. Brandy is traditional but Amaretto, ginger wine and even Baileys are all delicious. Makes 24.
Ingredients:
Pastry
– 250g plain flour
– 50g icing sugar
– 125g room temperature butter
– zest of one orange
– 1 large egg
Filling
– 411g jar of mincemeat
– 15mls of your favourite tipple (optional)
Pop the flour and icing sugar into your stand mixer and give it a quick mix with the flatbeater. Add the butter and orange zest and mix until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. (Can obviously rub in with hands too.)
Add the egg, mix in short spurts until the pastry dough comes together into a lump. (Use a blunt knife for this stage if making pastry by hand.) Cover in clingfilm and refrigerate for 30 minutes. In the meantime mix the alcohol and the mincemeat in a bowl and make the biscuit dough. Here’s a pic of my little helper. Gratuitous shot of blond toddler alert:
To make the dough mix the very soft butter with the icing sugar in your mixer with the flat beater. Mix until really light and fluffy – about 4 minutes. Then add all of the other biscuit dough ingredients and mix again until combined and fluffy.
Wrap the dough in clingfilm and pop in the fridge. (You can make the biscuit dough with a wooden spoon and sheer willpower if you prefer.)
Roll the pastry onto a floured work surface to about 3mm thick and cut rounds out using a pastry cutter. Pop into your non-stick bun tray then place a teaspoon of the mincemeat into each pastry case.
Roll the biscuit dough to about 1cm thick on a floured surface and cut triangles using a sharp knife. (You can use a mini star cutter or other festive shaped cutter if you have one handy…) If the knife sticks dip in flour between cuts.
Then place on top of the mincemeat and pop the whole tray in the fridge for 10 minutes.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180C/Gas 4 for about 15 – 20 minutes until just starting to brown at the edges.
Eat within 3 days or freeze and use within a month. Defrost at room temperature.
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I’m a mum of 3 boys, a cookbook writer and also a finalist on the 2011 Great British Bake Off.
I’ve decided to record the recipes I use, partly to save them somewhere and partly in case someone else might like to use them...
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Holly Bell 