Review- Son of a Bun Cupcakes

The lovely Meg from Son of a Bun recently got in touch and asked me if I'd like to review a box of 6 of their delicious cupcakes.
Of course I said yes.

Son of a Bun is a super Dorset based online cupcake business. The team deliver their wares to anywhere with a BH postcode (that's a pretty huge area) and make cupcakes to order. Deliveries are guaranteed to be fresh, with a homemade touch.

The trickiest part of my Son of a Bun experience was choosing a cupcake flavour, the team have over 30 different flavours and types of cupcakes to choose from, and the list seems to be growing weekly!
The selection ranges from the classic Pure Chocolate and Red Velvet cupcakes to the more original White Chocolate and Cardamom and Lemon Curd and Coconut variations. The team have even thought up a whole range of cupcake types based on puddings and desserts, including their Eaton Mess, Cherry Bakewell, Ice Cream and Hot Chocolate Fudge Sundae flavours. The full selection of Son of a Bun cupcake flavours can be found here.

The decision proved to be too difficult for me, and I left the decision making to the team. A box of 6 fabulous Rocky Road cupcakes turned up at my door not long after. I instantly became the favourite in the household and nobody could wait to 'help' me get through my new delivery.

The cakes were beautiful to look at, and were topped with (from what I could tell) white chocolate chunks, milk chocolate chunks, mini marshmallows, digestive biscuits, peanuts, melted white chocolate and melted milk chocolate, what a mouthful. The toppings were layered on a buttery chocolate icing.

I don't know what other people's criteria for good cupcakes are, but for me a cupcake has to serve two functions:
1. Look good
2. Taste good

The first one seems to often be achieved by compromising the second, and far too many times have I admired a cupcake only to be met with enough icing to fill a shoe and a bland, dry sponge base. Although difficult to fit the full height of the Son of a Bun cupcakes into my mouth (and trust me, I did try), I wasn't overwhelmed by rich buttercream, instead my tastebuds met a multitude of flavours and textures, all very pleasant. I especially liked the use of peanuts to top the cake, a pretty damn tasty addition.

Once the toppings were tackled I hit the sponge, only to be met with another delight, a melted marshmallow in the centre of each cupcake. Why would you not want a marshmallow in the middle of a cupcake?! Yet another piece of ingenuity from the Son of a Bun team. Good going guys.

So to round this up, the cakes were delicious, home-baked morsels of goodness that were devoured by my household in mere minutes. The team are real people who are happy to chat to their customers about any requirements or ideas (isn't it nice not to have to call a premium number and pay a small fortune just to get a point across!?), the delivery is prompt and the cakes are good. What more can you ask for? I'm a great fan of supporting small businesses and buying local produce, and Son of a Bun tick both of these boxes for me.

Prices
A box of 6 cupcakes is £12
A box of 12 cupcakes is £24
A box of 24 cupcakes is £48

The team can cater for larger orders and events and all of their contact info can be found here.
Son of a Bun also have a Facebook which they update with all manner of interesting snippets and developments, they also host a fair few competitions, so keep your eyes peeled.

The verdict? A lovely company, great cakes and brilliant service. I'm not really the sort of person who orders cupcakes (I always make my own), but I'd definitely recommend these guys, and will probably be using them at one of my events sometime soon.

Firecracker Shrimp

It's been a while, I apologise. I've missed you all, honestly I have! University and all manner of other boring things have been getting in the way of me, my food and you guys... but fear not, I'm almost back! One week more of delightful education and I'll be done forever, isn't that exciting?
Yes.
Yes it is.

So today is my aunt's birthday, 'Happy Birthday Jan!' I hear you all chant in chorus. We started the day with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs (delicious) and the seafood theme continued with lunch. I'd like to share this recipe with you for Firecracker Shrimp with Sweet Chili Sauce from The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook, which is honestly the best Asian recipe book I've ever come across. Steamy Kitchen finally helped me master the art of egg fried rice (but I'll save that story for another day), and the recipes are written by Jaden Hair, author of the amazing Steamy Kitchen blog. A couple of days ago I popped to Waitrose, which is always dangerous, and came home clutching a bag of fresh, raw king prawns. They're on sale at half price at the moment, and I managed to get 300g for £2.60, which was a bargain, 300g made 20 prawny parcels. I tried to find a beautiful link to the offer for you guys, but Waitrose online isn't being very useful, so you may have to venture in store to make use of this offer.

This recipe requires very few ingredients, it does, however, take a bit of time (I probably spent the good part of an hour making these babies), be warned, they're also a bit of a faff, but a good group activity.

Ingredients
To make 20 pastrified prawns

20 raw king prawns (shell on or off, it doesn't really matter, they'll end up naked either way)
10 large spring roll wrappers, cut in half diagonally (so they make triangles)
1  tablespoon corn flour
1/4 cup of water
1/4 of a bottle of Thai sweet chilli sauce

Done.

Method

De-shell the little buggers.

Once naked, de-vein the prawns. This is a tricky bit, use a cocktail stick and unpick the vein/digestive tract from the prawns (it's kind of like undoing running stitch).

Pat the prawns dry and cut a nick or two along the length of each of the prawns, to straighten them out. Roll the prawns in the sweet chilli sauce (try and avoid getting the sauce on the prawn tails, otherwise they'll spit all over the place when you fry them). Leave them to soak up the tasty goodness for 10 minutes (or so).

Pat the excess sauce off of the prawns, and prepare to wrap!

Mix the corn flour with the water to form a paste. 

Lay the pastry with the middle point at the top, and follow the below diagram instructions to wrap the prawns. Be sure to keep the wrapping tight, and try not to catch any air in between the layers. 

When you get near the end of rolling, rub a little of the corn starch paste onto the wrapper to stick the layer down. 

Repeat until all your prawns are wrapped up! 

Heat up a saucepan of oil (I use Crisp 'N Dry which tends to not gather a ton of grease and leaves my fried nibbles both crisp, and dry!) until it 'pops' when you flick a drop of water in it. Fry the prawns in the oil until they turn a golden brown colour. Eat immediately with sweet chilli sauce or any other tasty dipping sauce!

Simnel Cakelets

What with today being Easter and all, I figured I'd better post an appropriate recipe. I tried to make hot cross buns last week, but was less than impressed with the results. Although they tasted fairly delicious, the recipe was time consuming (so much rising) to make... and to be honest, they taste just as good from the shop as they do from the oven. 

So, I scoured my recipe books for Easter-y recipes, and although the majority of the recipes were just for ordinary cakes or bakes with the word 'Easter' shoved in front and were topped with a couple of token mini eggs, this seemed like a genuine real life Easter recipe to try out. The recipe is from Cakes: River Cottage Handbook No. 8. The cakes turned out quite nicely, although I'd definitely put more marzipan in next time and eat less chocolate eggs while baking... they are quite rich, and the chocolate/cake combo defeated me. 

Ingredients

250g mixed dried fruit (I chucked in half a handful of mixed peel too)

Finely grated zest and juice of 1 large orange

250g self raising flour

1tsp ground mixed spice

1/2tsp grated nutmeg

175g caster sugar

175g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and softened

3 eggs

75ml milk

300g marzipan (I used 200g and it wasn't enough...but it was all I had in the cupboard)

250g Glace icing (you can use less, I think I over did it on the icing front, it barely needs any, just for aesthetic purposes)

Easter-y food colouring (I used yellow!)

Something to decorate with... I opted for fluffy chicks and edible glitter.

Method

Preheat the oven to GM4.

Mix the dried fruit and orange zest and juice in a bowl (you're supposed to leave the bowl in a warm place for an hour to plump up the fruit...but I'm far too impatient for that sort of thing).

Sift the flour and spices into a large mixing bowl and mix with the caster sugar. 

Add the butter, eggs and milk to the dry mixture and beat for 1 1/2 minutes, until light and fluffy (probably a little longer if you don't have an electric whisk). 

Fold in the fruit and orange juice mix and half fill muffin cases with the dough mixture. 

Roll and cut thin disks of marzipan and place on top of the mixture in the muffin cases.

 Spoon the remaining mixture over the top of the marzipan.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes, until golden and springy. 

Leave to cool for 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool. 

When cold top with glace icing and any decoration. The cakes keep for about a week (in a airtight container). 

What are your favourite Easter foods, bakes and recipes?

Hello Fresh Box- Product Review

I'm sure a lot of you have seen Hello Fresh boxes advertised? If not then where have you been? They're  all over the internet...popping up in my sidebars and on YouTube and basically not letting me avoid them. So I gave in. I was offered a £20 discount on my first delivery (you can get it by logging in to Hello Fresh and entering this code at the checkout: 6E3D3V) and we bought the 3 meals for 4 people, which is usually £59, but was £39 with the discount.

These meals worked out at £3.25 each per person and I can 100% say they were totally worth it.
There are two options for delivery, Tuesday or Thursday, and we opted for early week. Two big brown boxes were delivered to our door and we excitedly opened them and rifled through the contents.

You don't really have a choice of meals, apart from vegetarian or meat, but that kinda suited us. It's nice to let someone else choose for you sometimes! Our options for the week were:

Teriyaki Chicken with Coco-Nutty Rice and Bok Choi

Lebanese Lamb Wraps with Minted Tzatziki and Toasted Almonds

Potent Pan Fried Salmon with Linguine and Homemade Pesto

Hello Fresh also sent us a bottle of Innocent Raspberry and Apple juice as a little gift!

All of the ingredients were perfectly measured (tiny little pots of spices and mini bags of nuts) which, in my opinion, is a great idea. We try not to waste food in our house and having just the right amount left us with no guilt! It also saved on having to fork out a couple of quid for a spice or oil or other ingredient that we'd only use one spoon of in the dish. I think half of my money goes on those ingredients...

The recipe cards were easy to follow, and they were quite fun to read too, the biggest problem I had was forgetting to double up the ingredients on the recipe cards for the 4 people (they send you everything in quantities for 2 people...so we had double of everything). Everything cooked in less than half an hour, and there wasn't too much washing up, although there was a lot of basil chopping in the salmon dish!

The ingredients were all extremely good quality, especially the meat and fish and the portions were more than generous (we even shared the salmon dish between 5, and nobody went without). Blimey, I think Hello Fresh is an excellent idea. I was a little reserved about the price at first...as it's quite a lot to spend on a few meals...but I don't think we're really the target market. For professionals with not much free time but enough cash to splash out a little, these would be perfect.

So, although I've now cancelled my subscription (boo) as we all have a lot of time spare, enjoy cooking and don't really have much spare cash around; I will definitely think about getting a Hello Fresh box again at some point in the future.

Have any of you tried Hello Fresh (or similar)? What do you think?

Lemon Curd Tartlets

Gosh, I adore lemons. I hope you do too! They're my default flavour for cakes, I love to squish them over salmon and chicken, and they're pretty good in gin and tonics too! A while ago I made (but didn't blog) the most amazing Tarte Au Citron, the recipe for which can be found in this interesting article 'How To Cook Perfect Tarte Au Citron' on the Guardian website. When I found a recipe for Lemon Curt Tartlets in Falling Cloudberries I couldn't wait to give it a try. 

Now I've never (touch wood) had any trouble with pastry (excluding the time I tried to make quiche with young children, that didn't end too well). I know there are all sorts of weird tips out there to stop pastry from being naughty, the most known of which seems to be having cold, cold hands. I have boiling hands. Honestly, I'm the warmest person I know...and yet the pastry always seems to behave itself long enough for me to trap it in a dish/tin/tray/pot. I'd like to think this is down to good recipes, and maybe a touch of technique, and I'd like to assure you that this recipe isn't too difficult, so don't worry.

Ingredients

Pastry
70g butter, slightly softened
30g caster sugar
70g plain flour
25g ground almonds (my new favourite ingredient)

Lemon Curd
75g butter
3 eggs, lightly beaten
230g caster sugar
Juice and finely grated rind of 2 lemons (Stick them in the microwave for a few seconds, until warm, before juicing them, you get a lot more juice!)

Method

Cream together the 70g butter and the 30g caster sugar with a wooden spoon.

Add the flour, ground almonds and a pinch of salt. Mix well. Use your hands when it becomes stiff, and mix until the pastry comes together (I added a drop of milk as the mix was a little dry). 

Flatten the dough slightly, wrap it in cling film and stick it in the fridge for half an hour. 

In the meantime...

To make the curd, melt the butter in a metal bowl (I used a glass bowl) over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Whisk in the eggs. Add the sugar and whisk until combined. Keep whisking and gradually add the lemon juice and zest. Cook over the simmering water for 20 minutes, stirring often, until thickened. Cool to room temperature.

Preheat the oven to GM4. 

At this point I want to offer you two options.

You can a) follow this recipe and make tiny, tiny tartlets. Be warned, they are a super faff. Beautiful, but ridiculously small, and they're tricky to work with, the almond makes them more crumbly than normal pastry. To make these tiny tartlets use a small cupcake baking tray. 

Or b) bulk up. These babies were much easier to handle in larger tins. I recently bought some tartlet tins (from TK Maxx for about £4) and these made much more substantial treats.

Roll out the pastry thinly (on a lightly floured surface) to the desired size and cut into circles to line the trays/tins. Grease the tray/tins with butter and fill with the pastry. Cut sheets of baking paper to the size of the trays and lay on top of the pastry. Fill the tray/tins with baking beans or weights (these guys are cheap, promise, and well worth having) and blind bake for 8-10 minutes, or until golden and cooked. Remove the paper and beans and cook for another couple of minutes to dry the bases. Remove from the oven and leave to cool before removing from the tray/tins. When cooled fill with the lemon curd. Then let these guys chill in the fridge for a bit until the curd is firm.  

Devour. 

I had enough lemon curd left over from this recipe to fill half a jam jar. It tasted great on toast in the morning. Yum. 

Chicken and Mushroom Casserole With Cider

I really enjoy casserole. I really enjoy chicken. However, I rarely enjoy the two together! There's something about tomatoes and chicken together that totally freaks me out. In my head, red meat and tomatoes are getting it on, they're made to be together, but chicken, it's all about the garlic and wine and cream. This casserole manages to do something beautiful to the chicken (and granted, it doesn't contain tomato, but it's a chicken casserole nonetheless), and I wanted to share the magic with you.

Yes, you have to make this a bit in advance- the chicken takes over an hour to cook; but once it's in the pan then you have an hour (and an excuse) to faff about near the kitchen, make yourself a cup of tea and read a chapter (or two) of a good book. Not too bad really.

Yet another brilliant recipe from Every Day.

Ingredients

1 chicken, jointed into 8 pieces. I (cheaply) opted for just buying drumsticks, although next time I make it I'll go for either a whole chicken or some cuts with more meat on them, as we didn't quite have as much chicken as we would have liked.
2-3 tbsp plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.
3-4 tbsp rapeseed/olive oil
250-400ml dry/medium cider
A knob of butter
400g mushrooms, cut into large chunks/slices
1 bay leaf
1 large sprig of thyme
5 tbsp double cream
2 tsp English mustard
Salt and pepper

Method

Cover the chicken with flour, and shake off any excess.

Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a large frying pan on a medium-high heat. Brown the chicken in the pan and transfer to a large casserole dish.

Pour 250ml of cider into the frying pan and scrape all of the bits of stuck on floury-chicken mixture into the liquid. Pour the mixture over the chicken. Pour the remaining cider over the chicken, until the liquor comes about halfway up the chicken.

Heat the butter in a pan and add the mushrooms. Sweat gently until their juices run. Add all of this to the chicken. Tuck the bay leaf and the thyme among the chicken, simmer.

Cook uncovered or covered (Hugh says uncovered/partially covered, I go with covered) gently on GM4 (Hugh recommends 1, but I don't see anything ever cooking on that low a heat...and we haven't got all day) for about 1 1/2 hours, until the chicken is cooked through and tender. Turn halfway through cooking.

Remove the bay leaf and thyme, pour the juices into a saucepan, leaving the chicken and mushrooms in the casserole (this can be a little tricky, casserole dishes are heavy!).  Whisk the cream and mustard into the juices and bring to a simmer. Taste and adjust seasoning and pour back over the chicken. Bring to simmer (or in my case, with my ceramic casserole dish, stick it back in the oven for a few minutes) and serve.

I served this with some boiled new potatoes and chives and it was delicious!

World Book Day

Today is World Book Day, and the thought of it brings back fond memories of receiving exciting £1 book tokens in school, and then rushing around Borders in a hurried frenzy, trying to find the best book to spend my voucher on. Alas, Borders is no more, and one of the (many) downsides of being a grown up is the lack of £1 book tokens. However, although voucher-less, today I helped a friend pack for moving house, and in return, came home with a stack of beautiful cookery books she no longer wanted!

Excited to get started on some new recipe finding. Do you have any of these books? Send your recipe suggestions my way! 

Dear readers, what are your favourite cookbooks?