Cheeeeesy Twists

There are two things that will always taste fantastic together, and they are cheese and pastry! I love making cheese biscuits using my Granny's recipe, but this time I decided to try something a bit different and use puff pastry instead of short crust. 

I love cheese straws, but I have never made them before as I usually buy them so I thought I would give it a go. It turns out that they couldn't be much easier to make! They tasted delicious and were gobbled up in a day so make sure to make a large batch if you have lots of mouths to feed!

Recipe: (makes 30 small straws)

- 1 x packet of ready made puff pastry (unrolled and unthawed if frozen)

- 3 x good handfulls of grated Cheddar cheese and Parmesan 

- 2 tsp Poppy seeds

How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 200c and grease 2 baking sheets.

- Unroll the pastry and scatter with a good hanfull of the grated cheddar and parmesan cheese. Then fold the pastry in half and roll out until it becomes the thickness of a £1 coin. 

- Using a large sharp knife, cut the pastry in to long, thin strips and then cut those in half to make about 30 small strips. 

- Twist each pastry stip 3 times and then lay on the baking sheet. Once all are twisted, put some more grated cheese on top of each one and then sprinkle over the poppy seeds.

- Bake in the oven for about 6-7 minutes until golden brown on the top and bottom. Keep an eye on them though as they will burn quickly. 

- Enjoy warm if you can, if not keep them in an air tight container and eat at the earliest opportunity! You won't be able to resist!

Photo how to:

Grated cheddar and parmesan

The folded pastry with the cheese inside, ready for rolling out

Cutting the pastry in to strips for twisting

The twisted cheese straws on the baking tray

These are the finished cheese straws hot out of the oven!

Mmmmmm

xXx

Peanut Chicken Skewers

I recently had some friends over for dinner and I made some delicious Peanut Chicken skewers from Jamie Oliver. The recipe can be found here. The skewers are very flavoursome and have a lovely Thai/ Asian taste.

These are best marinated in advance so that you can get a real depth of flavour, so marinate in the morning so they are ready for dinner! 

Recipe: (makes 6 large skewers)

- 3 Chicken breasts

- 3 tbsp crunchy peanut butter (Whole earth is good!)

- Good handful of coriander or parsley

- 1 small chili (depending on how spicy you like it)

- Thumb size piece of Ginger

- 1 Garlic clove

- Glug of Soy sauce

- 2 Limes, zest and juice

To make:

- Put the peanut butter, chilli, coriander, ginger, soy sauce, garlic and lime in to a food processor and whizz until combined. Add a little water if the mixture seems too thick.

- Chop the chicken breasts in to reasonably large chunks in a bowl and then add the peanut mixture. Rub in the marinade with your hands to make sure all the chicken is covered. Leave to marinate in the fridge for several hours, or overnight.

- Take the marinated chicken out of the fridge and pierce them on to skewers

- Preheat the grill to high, and then grill them for about 25 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and peanut sauce has gone golden and slightly crispy.

- Serve with salad and roasted potatoes. Enjoy!

The chicken marinating.

Here are the chicken skewers part way through grilling.

Here are some close ups of the chicken once it has been taken off the skewers!

Enjoy!

X

Almond, Rosemary and Fig savoury biscuits!

I haven't done any baking for a while, so I decided it was time! I found this recipe for rosemary and fig biscuits (but really they are more like crackers), but instead of using normal flour, they use Almond flour/ground Almonds. This means that they are high in protein which is good :)

The Recipe: (makes about 25 biscuits)

-1 1/2 Cups of Almond flour

-1/2 teaspoon of rock salt

-1 tsp Rosemary, finely chopped

-4 dried figs, finely chopped

-1 egg

-1 tbsp Olive oil

To make:

-In a mixing bowl, stir together the almond flour, salt, rosemary and dried figs. Then add the egg and olive oil.

-Stir the mix until combined. 

-Roll out the mix inbetween 2 pieces of baking paper, so that you can get it nice and thin (about 1/8 inch thick), then cut in to sqaures with a knife or pizza cutter.

-Then bake on about 150c, for 8-10mins (but keep an eye on them as they brown quickly) until lightly browned on top and bottom.

-Enjoy!

Chopping the Figs and Rosemary, and below the dry ingredients on the left and then adding of the wet on the right!

This is what the mix looks like once combined, then below is the mixture having been rolled out!

Above is the mixture once it has been cut in to shapes (you can make up ones from little bits of mix). Then below are the biscuits ready to go in the oven!

And these are the finished biscuits cooling on a wire rack! Yum!