Mandarin Jam

A few weeks ago I noticed that I had a few mandarins left and saw they were going a bit more soft then what I like them to be, so once again I went searching to find a recipe that would be good to use them in - Mandarin Jam.

Ingredients
5-6 Mandarin oranges
3 cups of water
4 ½ cups of sugar


Directions
Peel mandarins, keeping pieces of the peel as large as possible, then set aside.
Cut mandarins in half cross ways, pick out the seeds.
Blend fruit to make 2 cups of pulp, pour into a wide saucepan, add water.
Slice the peel very thinly to make about ½ a cup, add the peel and sugar to the pulp in the pan.
Stir over a medium heat until sugar is dissolved, turn heat to high and boil rapidly while stirring frequently until the jell point is reached. This should take about 40 minutes.
Remove marmalade from heat at once and then bottle.

Banana Bread

Sometimes I have a few bananas that have gone a bit brown and I know I wont eat them, so I have thought instead of throwing them away why don't I find a recipe to use them in and I did just that - Banana Bread.

Ingredients
2 - 3 ripe bananas
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g butter or margarine
100g caster sugar
275g self-raising flour
½ tsp ground cinnamon or mixed (apple pie) spice (optional)
1 egg
A little oil or extra butter for greasing

Directions
Grease a 2lb loaf tin, cut a piece of non-stick baking parchment to fit the base of the tin and place it in the bottom.
Preheat the oven to 180°c/350°f/gas mark 4.
Mash the bananas up with the back of a fork or place them into the food processor.
Add all the ingredients into the bowl and mix well.
Pour into the prepared loaf tin.
Bake in the oven for about 50 minutes until risen and golden and a skewer (or a sharp knife) inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Cool slightly, remove from the tin, take off the paper and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Chocolate Brownies

As it was my brother -in-laws birthday yesterday I decided to make him some chocolate brownies as I knew they are his favourites from what I bake (the last time I baked these he took the whole box).
And I thought I would make a post about them, showing how I make them and what I use.

Ingredients

65g (2 ½ oz) butter
2 eggs
255g (8 oz) sugar
75g (3 oz) plain flour
5g (1 tsp) baking powder
45g (3 tbsp) cocoa powder
100g (4 oz) bourbon biscuits

Directions

Melt the butter and leave to cool slightly
Beat the eggs and sugar until they are light and fluffy
Sift together the flour and baking powder
Stir the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, bourbons and melted butter into the egg mixture. Mix well
Spoon the brownie mixture into a greased 20cm (8 in) square baking tray
Bake for 30 minutes
Cut the brownies into squares while they are warm, but leave in their pan until they have cooled completely.

Chocolate Shortbread Cookies

Today I was in the mood to do some baking, but most of the recipes that I had I couldn't make because of the lack of ingredients, so I thought I would leave it.
I saw a new post by towards-sustainability and saw on the "you might also like" list a recipe for Chocolate shortbread cookies. I also knew that I had all these ingredients, so off I went to do some baking :)

 

Ingredients

250g butter, softened

½ cup icing sugar
1 cup flour
1 cup cornflour
¼ cup cocoa powder

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160'C/ 320'F.

2. Place the butter and icing sugar in a mixing bowl and beat them until the mixture is creamy.

3. Sift together the cocoa powder, flour and cornflour. Then stir it into the butter mixture to form a dough.

4. Turn the dough onto a floured bench top and knead it lightly until it is smooth.

5. Roll spoonfuls of the mixture into little balls and place them on a greased baking tray, then flatten them slightly with a fork.

6. Bake them for 20-25 minutes or until they are firm. Remove from oven and let the cookies cool down on the tray. Makes around 30 cookies, or 40 small ones.

For me, it was slightly difficult to get the mixture into a dough, so my partner did some research and found that you could wrap the mixture up in cling film and squish it together, so that is what we did and then we made them into little balls.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

A month after I got over that little cold I had, I am starting to feel worse again.
Once again sore throat which has made my tongue swell up, wisdom teeth have started to hurt which has made my gum swell up, I also have other problems which I wont share on here. I thought that was it, but nope woke up this morning to a very dry mouth and didn't realise it until I open my mouth up and ripped the side of it..so now that part of me is hurting.
The start of this year isn't being very nice to me at all, lol!

Apart from all that I have been trying to keep busy by trying to make other products. I tried to make some shampoo but that failed, for some reason it made my hair more greasy so its back to the drawing board on that one.
I did happen to make something else which I believe turned out to be a success, and that was - roll on deodorant!
I am very pleased at how it turned out, though I think I put in too much tea tree oil but never mind, I'll learn for the next time.

There are other things that I want to make but again, no space, no ingredients, no equipment. I am hoping to get some hot plates as I don't feel it is right to mix the food and craft equipment, and maybe I will manage to make some lip balm, but I don't know what will end up happening by the time I have managed to get some hot plates.

Me and mum are going to try and make some pizzas soon, as there is some food in the fridge that needs to be eaten so this is gonna be a great way of getting rid of it.
I love making things with my mum, even though at times she does tend to take over but I guess that's kind of natural lol, we just have some really nice times together when making things. I don't really get to spend much time with her as she is either helping my little sister with her course work, or help my oldest sister (who has just found out she is having twins! :D), or she is sorting my dad or brother out. So when we do spend time together it is really nice.

I finally managed to do a small video about HMS (Hypermobility syndrome), which I will put the video up at the end of this blog. This is something that me and my family suffer with and I remember doing a video like this on my old channel, but I felt I should make a new one as I feel I may not have added info that I should have.

This is pretty much what I have been up to, along with playing on world of warcraft :P
Hopefully I will update you more on the projects that I have been making :)

How to: Make a chocolate cake

Cooking time: 6 minutes
Preparation time: 15 minutes

Ingredients
100g All Bran cereal
250ml boiling water
2 eggs
6 heaped tsp of drinking chocolate
½ cup sweetener

Method
1.Pour the boiling water on to the All Bran in a large bowl and mix well.
2.Add the eggs, drinking chocolate and sweetener and beat the mixture until all the ingredients are thoroughly combined.
3.Put the mixture into a 6½ inch round plastic tub or other suitable microwaveable dish, smooth the top with a large spoon or flat knife, and microwave on high for 6 minutes.
4.Turn the cake out on to a plate, cut into 6 slices and enjoy!







This was originally found on the Slimming Worlds website