Realising I had a load of porridge oats and margarine to use up quite soon, the obvious solution was to

*Edited as saw bits were left out and have since found different quantaties worked better-

Makes 25 cookies

COOOKIIIEESS

150g plain flour

150g porridge oats

150g Stork margarine/ butter

150g white sugar

2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp milk

2 tsp baking powder

50g white chocolate chips

Chocolate icing drizzle

2 tbsp Stork margarine/ butter

4 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

4 tbsp icing sugar (caster sugar will work too)

1 teasp milk

Couple drops of vanilla extract

*******************************************************

You will need two baking trays for this, or bake in two rounds.

Preheat your over to 180 deg/ 350 f/ Gas 5. Rub some butter over a greaseproof sheet and place on a baking tray. Make sure to grease it thoroughly.

Starting with the cookies, mix your dry ingredients in a bowl using a spatula.

In a microwavable bowl (a cereal bowl is perfect), add the honey, water and the butter. Heat on high for 30-50 secs, depending on your microwave. Stop every 15-20 secs to check it’s ok.

When melted, mix with the spatula/ a ceral spoon and add to the dry mix. Mix it up, until fully combined. It takes no time at all, and it leaves the sides of the bowl clean. Add the chocolate chips, and mix evenly.

Taking half ceral spoon sized lumps, roll into balls and place on the greasproof paper. Once you have roughly 12-15 per tray, evenly spaced out, flatten slightly using yout middle and index fingers.

Pop into the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Remove and leave cool for ten minutes on  wire rack before attempting to remove them. I found that loosening them at the sides helped take them off whole. I imagine making sure they’re loose before drizzling the chocolate icing is better than doing it all at once later.

For the icing drizzle, add the water and margarine to a bowl (reuse the cereal sized bowl from earlier). Melt the margarine the bowl  in the microwave on full power for about 40 seceonds, checking on in intermittently.

Now, I was too lazy to take out the electric whisk, so just chanced it with a spoon here. Add in the cocoa, icing sugar and vanilla. Mix until fully combined. Leave it for a minute or two and it should thicken up a little after a few minutes. I learned this the hard way and it was a bit runny at first.

Using a spoon, drizzle over the cookies. The closer the spoon is to the cookies, the better.

Leave to cool and the drizzle should harden enough to pack them up if you need to, no smeared icing here, thank you very much.

Alternatively, you could half dip the cookies in the chocolate.

So, despite winging it through this and feeling generally like this….
It turned out well in the end. Fake it ’til you make it, wha’!

First off, I don’t usually have anything to do with lamb as food. They’re too cute. I know, it’s ridiculous, all animals are beautiful and have a right to life. But y’know….deliciousness and all.

Anyhoo, it was Father’s Day last Sunday, and I was gifted a pack of lamb seasoning from Crete, so off I went.

Using Paul Flynn’s roasting method, for cuts about 1kg and the seasoning pack’s instructions, I was all set.

First up was to marinade the lamb in oil, lemon and the seasoning mix for 5 hours.

Roast the leg (mine was about 900g, roughly €10 in Lidl) at 185 C/ 365 F/ Gas 4 for 30 minutes. Drop the temperature to 175 C/ 345 F/ Gas 3 for a further 30 minutes.

Remove and let rest for 15 minutes. Tah dah! Perfectly pink and cooked throughout for those who prefer their meat done a little more on the end bits.

And for the lamb guilt…

Adapted from hurrrr

Serves 8

For the Cake

150g caster sugar
150g butter or margarine
3 eggs
150g self raising flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp hot water
1 tbsp instant coffee (add more if you like it strong)

For The Icing
225g icing sugar
100g butter or margarine
1 1/2 tbsp instant coffee
1 tbsp hot water

Preheat the oven at 160 C, 325 F, Gas Mark 3.

Line two equally sized sandwich tins with greaseproof paper. Grease the paper.

I greased silicon moulds because I have trust issues.

Add the sugar and the butter to a bowl and whisk until fluffy and a pale cream.

Whisk the eggs in a mug with a fork and then add them gradually to the mixture (about four or five pours) with 2 tbsp of flour each time.

Keep back a couple of tablespoons of flour.

Add the rest of the flour and the baking powder to the mixture and mix with the electric mixer.

It says from here on in the original method to gently fold in. Yeah…no.

Dissolve the coffee in the boiling water and add to the mixture, electric whisking away.

Divide into the sandwich tins and cook for 30 minutes.

Test with a toothpick. If it comes out clean from the centre of the cake, it’s done.

It’s the spongiest cake I’ve made so thought it needed more time, but thirty minutes was perfect.

Leave for about 15 minutes before removing from their tins/ moulds.

Remove from the tins/ moulds, and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

Clean your mixing bowl and whisk attachments.

When the cakes have cooled completely, cream the butter and the icing sugar until light and fluffy. Watch out for the asthma attack inducing plumes of dust from the icing sugar. It might seem like you’ll never get creamy icing out of this, but it does come together, hoorah!

Dissolve the coffee in boiling water, making sure you don’t add too much water or the icing will be runny. Add it to the butter and icing sugar and whisk to combine fully.

Once the cakes have completely cooled, place one cake onto the plate you’ll be serving from.

Spread the icing on the top of the cake layer you’ve put on the serving plate. You can spread the icing to the edge, unless you plan on squishing it right down. Even when cutting into it, it didn’t squeeze out like most fillings.

Leave around half of the icing for the top.

Pop your other cake on top, and spread the remaining icing all over the top layer.

Decorate with walnuts or chocolate shavings.

It’s worth noting this has been my most popular baking result in memory. It’s already been booked for upcoming get togethers. I fear for my safety if I don’t produce it. If I go missing you’ll know why….

This is my kind of baking. Minimum ingredients, fuss and clean up.

A friend had been at me to make these for a long time. Now I’ve found something this simple he can make it his bleedin self!

Makes 12 cookies

Ingredients-

70g plain flour

300g Nutella

1 large egg

50g chocolate chips

Add the flour, Nutella and egg to a medium sized mixing bowl. Using a regular spoon, mix it up until the flour has been mixed through thoroughly. It will all mix in, don’t worry. I used a teaspoon as well also to mash the flour in, delicate flower that I am. It only takes a couple of minutes.

Once all a lovely even chocolatey colour, add the chocolate chips. Mix up to distribute the chips as evenly as possible.

You can either grease a baking tray or some greaseproof paper (less washing up in my eyes using the paper) and put it on the tray.

Preheat your oven to 180 C/ 350F/ Gas 4

Using the spoon, take small amounts of the mix, roll in your hand and space out aiming to fit twelve cookies on a standard baking tray. Realising I don’t have a proper baking tray, I used the oven chip/ pizza tray yoke. You know the ones with the holes that doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to a regular tray? ANYWAY.

It’s better to make them on the small size, and more like fat balls (teehee) and gently flatten them just a bit using your index and middle fingers. Some chocolate chips might be left over so plonk them on top of the cookies.

Bake in the oven for ten minutes and voila, all done! Leave to cool on the tray/ paper on a wire rack.

I got these silicone oven mitts in Penneys for €2 each. Love them!

Wait about fifteen minutes before removing them from the tray as they might crumble.

That’s it. Enjoy!

Not to be confused with the Optigrab…

Judging precisely when a steak is done is a tricky culinary skill to master.  But now you can enjoy a perfectly cooked sirloin, fillet or rump steak every time thanks to Tefal’s intelligent new OptiGrill, RRP €169.99.

Using the Tefal OptiGrill is like having a professional grill chef at home. Meat is cooked to your personal preference each time, whether rare, medium or well-done – removing any worries about over or under-cooking. There’s no more need to keep opening the grill to check whether your food is done and no more cutting into the steak to see what colour it is!

 No matter if you are rustling up steaks for the whole family or just for you, the Tefal OptiGrill is the world’s first appliance to automatically measure the thickness of the meat and adjust cooking time to suit. Its patent pending technology even detects how many items are on the grill and adapts the temperature and grilling cycle accordingly.

 Uniquely, a clear colour-changing LED display reveals how your steaks or chops are cooking, allowing you to see exactly when they are done.  If the light is yellow, the steak is still rare, as it moves into orange the steak is medium, when the light turns red the meat is well done. Plus, the Tefal OptiGrill will beep at each stage of the cooking process to inform you that your meat is rare, medium or well done.

After trying to keep Stoffel the Honey Badger, who don’t care the most, safe from larger animal attacks, caretaker Brian discovered there’s no keeping this trunk scratching genius contained. One YouTube commenter asked-‘What about a padlock?’, but I’ve no doubt Stoffel has a lock picking claw all sharpened up for such an event.

Brian’s commentary makes it. ‘Woman, get up’ Haaaaaaah! Bet he didn’t say that to his missus when Stoffel came for them in the middle of the night.

Speaking of, he was pretty calm and jolly describing Stoffel’s terrifying B&E in the early hours. What did Stoffel use to break the window? What happened after he got into his room? How is Brian still alive? Maybe Stoffel dead-eyed him while slowly scratching his torso and ended with a quick claw point before retiring to his woman in the enclosure for a victory dance.

I wouldn’t put it past Stoffel to call up Brian to mess with him-

‘Brian, say it with me…..SHOW ME THE ENCLOSURE!’

‘Show me the enclosure.’

‘Oh, no, you can do better than that, Brian. Say it with me. SHOW ME THE ENCLOSURE! I got David Attenborough on the other line’

‘Show me the enclosure’

‘OK, but you’ve got to yell it. I GOTTA FEEL YOU, BRIAN.’

‘Show me the enclosure. SHOW ME THE ENCLOSURE. SHOW ME THE ENCLOSURE, STOFFEL’

‘Tell me you love the Honey Badgers, Brian’.

‘I LOVE THE HONEY BADGEEEERS!’

‘What are you going to do, Brian?’

‘SHOW YOU THE ENCLOSUUUUUREEE’.

‘Congratulations, you’re still my nemesis’.

*Click*

Between this and this Bonobo ape who would win the Gaisce award for camping that I never got, we’d better check our food chain privilege. We may be adorably overtaken fairly soon. Just FYI, I’d totally watch an Ina Garten and Kanzi Hampton beach picnic special.

A.K.A the easiest dessert, ever.

Feeds 6….or 3 and then me again after they go home…..

1 sheet ready-to-roll puff or shortcrust pastry

2-4 Pink Lady apples

White sugar-no idea how much, just to cover the pastry base and over the apples

Vanilla ice cream to serve

Preheat your oven to 220 c/ 425 f/ Gas 7

Grease a tart tin, or parchment paper, cut to fit the tin

I peel the apples sometimes, although most tarte fine aux pommes recipes don’t say to do so. I also prefer the shortcrust pastry for sweet dishes.

Cut the apples in quarters, remove the core and so on and thinly slice. If you’re in a hurry, cut the slices straight off the apple. You won’t get as neat a result but it does the job. Squeeze lemon juice over the sliced apples to stop them from browning. Once you’ve done this a few times, you’ll work quickly enough that you won’t need the lemon.

Lay your pastry over the tin, and cut any overhanging edges.

Generously sprinkle sugar to cover the base.

Lay the apple slices, overlapping each other just the smallest bit. in my opinion, the effect is much nicer in a round tin, and you will need only two apples for a round 8 in tin. You could double up on the apple layers, but that would cancel out the fine / delicate effect.

Sprinkle more sugar on top of the apples.

Bake in the centre of the oven for 25 minutes.

Serve with vanilla ice cream.

BON APPÉTIT!

Feeds 4-6

1 leek/ 1 white onion

1 yellow bell pepper

1 jalepeno

1 red pepper

2 x 400ml tin chopped tomatoes

3 bay leaves

4-6 eggs

Approx 400g refried beans

Three handfuls of fresh Coriander

About 7 in (steady, size queens) chorizo

2 tomatoes, sliced

2 teasp Pressed Garlic

2 teasp chilli paste

Finely chop your small peppers, bell pepper and leek/ onion. Chop your chorizo in half lengthways and then in halves.

Heat about 3-4 turns of olive oil in a frying pan (preferably with a lid to use later). I used a deep paella dish, but found since that it’s better to use a wide shallow dish for this.

Add your chopped chorizo, peppers and leek/ onion. Add in the garlic and chilli paste, and finally the bay leaves. Stir to mix. Cook for 10-15 minutes until it’s all softened.

Add the chopped tomatoes, refried beans and mix. Top with the sliced tomatoes.

Depending on how much coriander you like, add handfuls on top of the sliced tomatoes.

Using the back of a large spoon or ladle, make wells in the top to crack your eggs in. I made space for four eggs as I was only feeding that many. Take the pan off the heat while you do this if you want to take a bit more time cracking the eggs in, to ensure even cooking times for each gugg.

Crack an egg into each well, return to the heat if needs be, cover with a lid and leave to poach for however long it takes. Because I used a deep dish it took FOREVAH, so be prepared for it to take a while.

And that’s it. Very simple and tasty.

Serve with bread (traditionally corn tortillas). I cut up ciabatta and on the side, spicy chicken wings, served on gem lettuce with blue cheese dressing, because like booze, there’s always time for that at brunch.