Easter break is a good excuse to indulge yourself on some of your favourite (or new) treats. In our family dining over Easter is always pretty much a freestyle. This time I chose not to cook a sit-down meal but have a buffet type lunch instead. I made Smoked Salmon Terrine, Pickled Herring and Egg salad, continued with Courgette and Chick Pea Filo Pie and a variation of my Speedy Salad, with other small bits and pieces. I promise to post the recipes of those later on, but for now I’m going to share our baked goods with you.
My Boyfriend’s Mum came to us today with these delicious savoury muffins and she was glad to share this recipe with me.
Here is goes:
LEEK, CHEESE & BACON MUFFINS
Ingredients:
1 leek, trimmed
100 g melted butter
4 rashes bacon, chopped
300 g self-raising flour
1 level teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
1/4 teaspoon chilli or cayenne pepper
2 eggs
175 ml milk
150 g extra mature Cheddar, grated
salt
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180C, lightly grease 12 holes of a muffin tray.
2. Trim & cut the leek finely. Cook it in 1 tablespoon of the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, for about 5 min, or until softened. Set aside.
3. Add the bacon to the pan and cook until the fat starts to crisp. Add to the leeks.
4. Sift the flour, baking powder, mustard powder, pepper and salt into a large mixing bowl.
5. Lightly beat the eggs, milk and the rest of the melted butter together. Stir into the leeks and bacon. Add the grated cheese, then the flour mixture, all in one go.Stir until evenly mixed together but don’t over mix, otherwise muffins will be tough.
6. Divide the mixture between the muffin tins and bake for about 25-30 minutes, until golden.
And here is the recipe for a fabulously easy cake which is very moist, has a velvety texture, full of flavour and you can easily adopt it for any occasion.
ANY OCCASION CHOCOLATE CAKE
One of the main ingredient of this cake is soured cream, it makes cake moist and gives a nice flavour to the icing
Ingredients
For the cake:
200 g plain flour
200 g caster sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
200 g butter
40g cocoa
150 ml soured cream
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla or orange extract
Plus: 2x20cm sandwich tins, buttered and lined
Fo the icing:
160 g good quality chocolate
75 g butter
125 ml soured cream
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1/2 teaspoon vanilla or orange extract
50 g icing sugar (optional)
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a large bowl. Then, using electric mixer, add the butter. In a separate bowl whisk together cocoa, soured cream, eggs, vanilla or orange extract and slowly add this cocoa mixture to the flour and butter mix, beating until throughly mixed.
3. Pour the batter into the prepared tins and bake for 30 minutes, until it bakes through. Leave for 10 minutes in their tins, then turn out to cool.
4. To make the icing, melt the chocolate and butter in a microwave (no more then 30 seconds in one go, stir and if it’s not melted, put again for another 30 seconds), or in a bowl over hot water. Let cool a little, then stir in the soured cream, vanilla extract and syrup. If you use dark chocolate and prefer cake to be quite sweet then at this point you can add the icing sugar (personally I use dark chocolate and don’t put any sugar in the icing at all and I found that cake is sweet enough for as is, specially I definitely won’t put additional sugar if I plan to serve cake with ice cream).
5. Spread the icing onto both layers and use the rest of the icing to cover the top and sides.
Have a great Easter! x
the usual ingredients 