This recipe is based on a recipe from Maggy Woodley at Red Ted Art. It’s really, really easy, really quick, and relatively mess-free: you’ll only need a bowl, a wooden spoon, a teaspoon, a cup, and some muffin tins. The original recipe calls for a pot, which I’ve taken to mean a traditional Aussie/US cup: 8floz. You can use any pot, though: even a mug will do.
You’ll need:
- 1 pot sugar
- 3 pots self-raising flour
- 1 pot yoghurt (I use goats’ yoghurt)
- 3/4 pot oil
- 1 egg
- 1 pot blueberries
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
How To:
Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F / Gas Mark 4
Put all the ingredients apart from the blueberries into a bowl. Mix them together thoroughly, then fold in the blueberries.
Spoon into muffin tins. Bake in the oven until golden: about fifteen minutes.
Leave to cool in the tins for about fifteen minutes, and then cool on a wire rack.
Enjoy. Keep in a locked tin if necessary.
The weather outside currently looks like this.
Over the last couple of days, it’s given me cravings for warming winter food, including this lovely simple spicy bean mixture. It’s wonderfully cheap to make, filling, and healthy. You can use it wherever you’d use baked beans, or on it’s own. It’s great on pitta bread.
So, here we go…
You’ll need:
- an onion
- a green pepper
- a tin of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- a tin of taco mixed beans (baked beans can be substituted if you can’t get them)
- 2 teaspoons of paprika
- 2 teaspoons of cumin
- 1 teaspoon of chilli powder (or more to taste)
- 6 tablespoons tomato ketchup
First, peel and roughly chop the onion.
Then, peel and chop the green pepper.
Heat some oil, and add the onion and the spices.
When the onion has softened, add the green pepper and give it a stir.
When the green pepper is getting soft, add the beans and the tomato ketchup.
Put a lid on the pan, and simmer for ten minutes.
Eat and enjoy! I eat mine with copious amounts of sour cream to cool them down. They’re good with grated cheese on top, too.
David tried these as his first taste of chilli and now has an addiction to the stuff, just like Daddy. This is the second batch I’ve made in three days.
Just a quick recipe for tonight. I made a loaf of this at lunchtime to go with soup, and it was gorgeous. David loved it: I think he ate more than I did!
Damper is an Australian bread, traditionally cooked over an open fire. The quantities I use make a small loaf, just right for the three of us. I reduced salt because David was eating it, and we very rarely add salt to anything now. It’s edible cold, but it’s best almost straight from the oven, in buttery chunks.
Ingredients
2 cups self-raising flour
pinch salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp room-temperature butter
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup water
chopped chives/ dried mixed herbs to taste (I used about a tablespoon)
Method
Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl.
Add the butter and rub between fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Mix in chives and herbs.
Make a well in the flour mixture, and add the milk and the water. Mix together until a dough is formed.
Turn the dough out onto a floury surface, and knead until silky.
Form into a round loaf and cut a deep cross in the top.
Bake for 20 minutes at 200C, then reduce oven temperature to 180C and bake for another 10-15 minutes until done.
How do you tell it’s done? Pick it up (with oven gloves on!) and tap the bottom. If it’s cooked it’ll make a hollow sound.
Serve warm with butter.
