Homemade Adzuki Bean Burgers

Recently I've started eating less meat and so I've been experimenting with some vegetarian recipes!

A lot of the vegetarian meat-substitutes that I've seen in the supermarket tend to have a mushroom base, and as I consider mushrooms to be my food hell they seemed less than appealing!

I like bean burgers so I thought it would be a good place to start!

I found this recipe made 3 large burgers

Ingredients

100g adzuki beans

100g quinoa

1 carrot

1 egg

Salt and Pepper

1 tablespoon tomato ketchup

2 teaspoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon chilli flakes

This makes a sweet and spicy burger, if you prefer a savoury option, swap out the ketchup and brown sugar for 2 teaspoons of paprika and a clove of chopped, fried garlic.

Preparation

I buy my adzuki beans dried so they need soaking overnight before they can be cooked

For 1 part adzuki beans, add 5 parts water

Cooking

Cook the adzuki beans in 500ml of water. Boil for 10 minutes and then simmer for 40 minutes.

Drain the beans and mash them lightly with a fork.

In another pan, cook the quinoa in 400ml of water, simmering for 20 minutes.

Drain the quinoa and add to the mashed adzuki beans.

Set the oven to 180°C (fan assisted, 200°C for non-fan ovens) and line an oven tray with greaseproof paper.

Grate in the carrot, add the ketchup, brown sugar and egg.

Salt and pepper to taste.

The mixture is quite sloppy, but don't be put off by that! When the mixture is baked, the egg firms up the burgers.

I put large handfuls of the mixture onto the lined baking tray and flattened them into burger shapes (use a spoon if you like, I just like getting hands on with my cooking!). This made 3 large burgers.

I cooked them for 15-20 minutes until the burgers began to crisp around the edges

They were delicious! I had mine with some lettuce, cheddar cheese and (yet more) ketchup!

The burgers are moist in the middle and crisp on the outside!

The other burgers I kept in the fridge and when I wanted to have another I warmed them up in the oven for about 15 minutes.

These will definitely be added to my regular rotation of meals!

Hannah x

Homemade skinny oven chips

I love chips. If I could have them with all my meals I probably would. But sense (and my waist line!) tells me that's probably not the best thing to do.

We went through a phase of buying lots of frozen oven chips, they're easy to just shove into the oven and forget about, but they're pretty average taste-wise.

Then we decided that they couldn't be that hard to make, they would just take a little bit more effort, but they would be a whole lot tastier!

And damn, were we right! Now every time we have chips, it's these bad boys that we're chowing down on!

So here we go: homemade skinny oven chips!

First and Foremost: Which potatoes?

In my opinion, the best kind of potato to go for to get the best chips are the fluffy ones, something along the lines of Maris Piper or King Edwards. This means that when you bake them they will be crunchy on the outside and nice and fluffy on the inside.

Method:

I generally go for one medium sized potato (about the size of a fist) per person for this recipe.

You can peel your potatoes or leave the skins on depending on your preference. I've kept the skins on for this batch. C

Set the oven to about 180°C (fan assisted, 200°C for non-fan ovens)

Cut the potatoes lengthways into slices of about 1/2cm, then cut these slices into 1/2cm wide chips

Put the chips into some boiling water for about 5-10 minutes, just to blanch the potato so there is less cooking required in the oven

Drain the chips, and add some olive oil (enough to coat the chips), some salt and some pepper and mix well

Put the chips onto an oven tray or a crisper tray and cook for approximately 20 minutes ( or until chips are golden brown, turning occasionally

These guys turned out a little crispier around the edges due to my ovens tendency to create random hot spots in the oven, but they tasted fantastic!

Experiment with flavours!

We've tried a couple of different ones (garlic and rosemary, paprika and onion granules) so add your favourite flavours at the olive oil stage and experiment away!

Hope you enjoy!

Hannah x

Return to the blog

So things have been a bit hectic in my life recently, leaving me no time whatsoever for blog writing!
However, now that things have calmed down considerably, I thought it was high time that I got back on the proverbial horse.

Hopefully I'll be blogging more regularly now, so I hope you enjoy what you see!

Hannah x

E45 Moisturiser

So, while the majority of my posts are going to be concerning things that I have made, there will also be posts about things that I have tried!

I signed up to BzzAgent a while ago and was given a product trial of E45 to test for a month.

Now, E45 is one of those products that was always in the back of the bathroom cabinet at home, something that was about but I never really tried. After all, when I was still living at home I was not really at the point in my life where moisturising was essential and so in the back of the cupboard it stayed.

So now that I'm a little older and starting to think I'm at the point where I should probably start to look after my body a little better than in my first 20-odd years, moisturising has eventually been added to the daily routine!

And I do love E45. It's light, does the job, and although I did get my batch for free, it's not expensive.
I get dry skin from washing my hands constantly at work, and this does the trick to make it feel normal again!
And with summer (hopefully) around the corner, I'm going to be making my skin look good all over before exposing other people to it!

I also tried the Nourish & Restore version, which wasn't really for me, I like moisturising effect it had, but the scent was a little too much for me.


Although the bottles are a little clinical looking, whats inside is just as good as any expensive moisturiser.
It's easy to be tempted by pretty bottles and confusing 'scientific' jargon, but E45 really is just as good, and often a fraction of the price.

I can safely say that E45 has now taken a permanent (amd more prominent place) in my bathroom cabinet!

Homemade Sushi - Maki rolls

So this weekend I made lots and lots of sushi maki rolls

They're really fun and suprisingly easy to make, and the best part is you can put whatever you fancy in them!

You do need a few basic starter things to make sushi that you're unlikely to have already, but I found that there were only a few things that I didn't already have in the kitchen

So here is a picture of everything I used for my rolls!

On top of the ingredients listed below you will need a bamboo rolling mat to roll your sushi, you can get them from all good Asian supermarkets and some larger regular supermarkets.

Basic Main Ingredients:

• Sushi rice
• Sugar
• Salt
• White rice vinegar (white wine vinegar can work as a substitute)
• Yaki nori (dried seaweed) sheets

Making the sushi rice

I find 250g of rice makes a decent quantity of rice.

You want to wash the rice really thoroughly before you boil it, I put it into a sieve and run it under the tap for a few minutes before transferring to a pan

Add approx 300ml of water and bring to the boil

Stir the rice to make sure it isn't stuck to the bottom of the pan

Once the rice is boiling, reduce to the heat so the water is just simmering, put a lid on the pan and leave for approx 10 minutes

After 10 minutes, turn off the heat and leave to cool for about half an hour

DO NOT TRY AND USE THE RICE HOT, IT WILL RUIN YOUR SEAWEED SHEETS!

After half an hour, stir in 3 tablespoons of white rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons of sugar and a teaspoon of salt to flavour

Ta da!

Now that the rice is ready you can choose your fillings!

For my ones I used smoked salmon, tuna and king prawns as the main ingredients.

I also added red pepper, cucumber, cream cheese and chives.

I chopped the pepper and cucumber into long thin slices and seasoned my tuna with lime, ginger and soy sauce

So the one I took photos of to demonstrate the technique had smoked salmon, cream cheese, cucumber and chive in it, yum!

Here's a pictorial guide to rolling your sushi!

First place your seaweed sheet onto your rolling mat and layer some of the rice on top

Then in the centre of the rice add your fillings

Try and stack them tall, as it will help when you come to roll them out

Grab the edge nearest to you and fold it tightly over the fillings, pressing down evenly along its length

Roll the mat back

The roll the edge furthest from you towards the roll

This time roll the entire mat around the sushi roll and firmly squeeze the roll to bind the ingredients together
Some might fall out the ends, but there is not really much you do about this!

Unroll your mat and you are left with a long roll

Take a very sharp knife and cut slices from the roll. I find it works best if you are very gentle and cut in a sawing motion, otherwise they get squashed and the filling falls out either side!

Beautiful!

From the 250g of rice I managed to make this amount of sushi:

So have fun choosing your fillings and enjoy your homemade sushi!


Hannah x

Strawberry and Buttercream Topped Vanilla Cupcakes

So for this first cake post, although these babies look fantastic, they are very simple to make.

I've chosen this recipe first as it is the basic sponge cake mix and buttercream recipe that I use as the base for the majority of my cakes.

As far as sponge goes I follow a really simple, easy to remember recipe that my Mum taught me when I was a little girl! It's basically a ratio of eggs, self-raising flour, caster sugar and butter that you can scale up or down depending on how much cake mix that you want to make.

For every egg you add to the mix add 2oz (55g) of self raising flour, caster sugar and butter

Easy, right?

So the ratios I tend to use are:

• 12 cupcakes: 2 eggs + 4oz each SR flour/caster sugar/butter
• Single layer cake (i.e. too thin to slice and add a filling): 3 eggs + 6oz each SR flour/caster sugar/butter
• Large cake (i.e. suitable for slicing and adding a filling): 4 eggs + each 8oz SR flour/caster sugar/butter

To this basic mix you can add whatever you fancy in terms of flavourings and spices to create a wide range of cakes, all from the same base.
For instance in the case of these cakes I've swapped caster sugar for dark brown sugar to give the mix a richer taste and added vanilla flavouring.



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Strawberry and Buttercream Topped Vanilla Cupcakes

Preheat your oven to 180C for fan assisted ovens, 200C for non-fan ovens

Ingredients

For the cakes :

• 2 large eggs
• 4oz self raising flour
• 4oz dark brown sugar
• 4oz unsalted butter (room temp)
• Chef's strength vanilla paste (can usually get this at most large supermarkets in the baking aisle)

• A cupcake oven tray and some cupcake cases

For the pink buttercream topping:

• approx 6oz icing sugar
• approx 3oz butter (room temp)
• These measurements are only approx as I never measure out anything for buttercream!
• Milk
• Some lovely big strawberries!
• Red food colouring

• Icing piping bag and icing nozzles

1. Cream the sugar and butter together in a large bowl. I usually do this using a fork or a spatula. Add your eggs one at a time and mix them in. Don't worry if the mix looks a bit horrible, it's all part of the process!

2. Next sift in the self raising flour. If you have one, then use an electric whisk to mix the egg/sugar/butter mix with the flour, it'll make your cakes nice and light. If you don't have an electric whisk then use a spatula or wooden spoon to mix the ingredients together until the mix is smooth.

3. Put a large spoonful of cake mix into cupcake cases and bake at 180C for approximately 15 minutes or until golden brown on top. Leave to cool.

WARNING! Don't try and add the buttercream while the cakes are warm, the buttercream WILL melt and you'll have a soupy mess on your hands! Only add the buttercream once the cakes are cold!


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Pink buttercream

Add a large chunk of butter (I guessed that I used about 3oz for 12 cakes) and sift in the icing sugar (again, I guessed that I used about 6oz).

The icing needs to be stiff enough to keep it's shape but not so dry that it crumbles. You can just add a little milk if it's too dry, or a little more icing sugar if it's not stiff enough to ice with. 

This is why I never usually measure this part, as you can easily fix it if the mix is not quite right.

Add the pink food colouring a few drops at a time.

When it comes to using food colouring in icing, always err on the side of caution, after all you can always add more colour, but you can't really take it away! Add it a few drops at a time until you achieve the color you are after.

2. For this topping I used a 6 star icing nozzle, but use whichever you like/have available. If you don't have nozzles then fear not! If you cut a small corner off a sandwich bag you can use it to pipe onto your cakes.

Add the icing to the bag and starting from the centre of the cake, pipe in a tight spiral til you reach the edge of the cake.

3. Wash and chop strawberries in half as below:

4. Place them on top of your cakes, et voila! Beautiful strawberry and buttercream topped vanilla cupcakes!

Hope you enjoy, let me know in the comments if you have any questions!


Hannah x

Getting started

Welcome reader! I've decided to start this blog as an outlet for my creative side and something of a showcase for anything I've been making recently!

I've always loved making things, be it new and interesting meals, cakes and desserts, or, more crafty things like jewellery, the occasional piece of clothing and homemade homeware.

While it is nice to share pictures with Facebook and Twitter friends, I thought I should start sharing the more intimate details of their creation for people who are interested in such things!

So I hope you enjoy and share with your friends and followers :)

Hannah x