Carrot cake

Tried carrot cake this week. And I can actually say it was delicious. The recipe is with oil rather then butter, which I don't mind as I hate creaming the butter. It came out very moist and apart from leaving out the walnuts which I would have loved, but is not loved by the rest of the family, it was delicious.

The recipe was out of a woman's magazine, which goes to show that you shouldn't exclude any recipe. They are all trial and error on which ones you like and would make again. Here is the picture. The icing is lemon icing which seems to go with most cakes and is sweet and refreshing.

Asian cooking

Hi everyone,
I haven't blogged about cooking for awhile and in the last couple of weeks I have being trying some asian cooking.

Now I love asian cuisine with all the flavours. I slowly but surely getting there and trying to make teriyaki chicken. I guess the flavours will never be like the restaurants but with this dish I'm almost there.

The marinade I use is a honey marinade. One tablespoon of oil,one tablespoon of soy sauce and one table spoon of honey. Now I mixed in some mixed italian dried herbs, a couple of shakes of the jar, and one to two cloves of crushed garlic, depending on your taste.

Mix the marinade until it is all combined and add the small pieces of cut chicken breast and put in the fridge for one to two hours. Marinade covers about one chicken breat.This will allow for all the flavours to get into the chicken.

Then put about half a tablespoon of oil in a pan and cook the chicken through. Take the cooked chicken out and add the sliced vegetables to the pan. The juices of the pan will coat the vegetables. Add the cooked chicken back to the pan alittle water to combine the dish to make a nice sauce.

Cook a few minutes so the chicken is cooked through and serve with some steamed rice.

Lovely meal. Here are the pictures. The cooked chicken and the raw vegetables. I didn't get the final shot but will make this dish again and will add the picture then. You can at least see the cooked chicken and how delicious it looks. Keep you posted.

Garlic Bread Never made it before. Yes, it is true!!

As promised, I have now some time to let you in on the Garlic bread Story. My family have been asking for some time now, but I can say it wasn't in my recipes of homemade meals I made.

So, I could have gone and bought some pre-made ones, I guess, and just put it in the oven. But I am big on home cooked meals, and thought, how hard could it be? So, I went and bought some long rolls, bought some spreadable butter and garlic. Some Italian herbs already had at home, so off I went and made the garlic butter.

I scooped out some butter, enough for what I thought would do for the 4 rolls. Added the Italian herbs, I sprinkled until I thought it looked enough. And then added the garlic. First I added 1 clove, then 2, then 3 small cloves crushed. When I thought the smell of garlic was strong enough, I mixed it all together and put it back in the fridge.

When I was ready, I cut the rolls into slices but not cutting all the way through and then spread the garlic butter on both sides of the cuts of the bread. Wrapped it with foil and into a hot oven for about 10 minutes.

Now, please bare in mind, I had never made garlic bread, I only saw the ones in restaurants and never looked up any recipe. So, It was amazing, and I don't think I have every said that about my food before. This is one thing I will make again and also serve it up at dinner parties. So, it isn't that hard and just like the ones in the resturants. Here are the pictures and I will absolutely make this again.

recipes- never dismiss a recipe

As you know I now have a mountain of blood plums on our tree of which are all ready to eat. So of course I am now looking for ways to use them in my everyday cooking. We are already eating them every chance we get, and I often say " Don't forget to eat the blood plums, they are fresh and delicious".And they are fresh and delicious but I also want to get through them.

So as I was doing the shopping yesterday, I thought I would pick up a woman's magazine to read in bed and made my choice and came home. Sure enough as I was going through the magazine, there right in front of me was a blood plum cake recipe. Perfect.

So the reason for this post is to say to never dismiss recipes from magazines or the daily paper.They give great recipes with foods that are in season or recipes which are relevant for certain times of the year. My pancake recipe,for example, came from a recipe out of the newspaper my husband brought home years ago and I still make to this day.

Recipes for me are a trial and error and a visual thing. If it looks good in the picture I will give it a go. Of course there have been some bad cooking experiences and the " I'll never make that again". But my motto has always been, you never know if you don't have a go.

So, don't dismiss recipes and have a go, sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised.

Will keep you posted.