Category: Quick

For the times when you need food and you need it fast.
Vegan Peanut Butter Blondies

Vegan Peanut Butter Blondies

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In the last 3 days I’ve moved back to college, have had 36 hours of drama rehearsals and now I have a tonne of coursework to do before term starts, so this is gonna be a fairly short post. Essentially, I made some of these last April and then I found myself craving another batch. However, unable to use eggs and milk at the moment I had to make a vegan version of my fave PB blondies instead. Dare I say it, I actually prefer these to the originals because they’re so much easier to make and they taste so damn good!

Recipe

Makes 16 squares

Time: 15 minutes, plus baking

Ingredients

  • 150g Light brown sugar
  • 200g Peanut butter
  • 45ml Sunflower oil (or other oil like vegetable or coconut)
  • 130g Plain flour
  • ½ tsp Baking powder
  • 100ml Soy milk
  • 100g Vegan white chocolate chips

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Then grease and line a 25x25cm cake tin with a little oil and baking paper.
  2. Put the sugar, peanut butter and oil into a large bowl and beat together with a wooden spoon until smooth.
  3. Add the flour, baking powder, milk and chocolate chips to the batter and mix again to make a smooth batter (it may be fairly thick).
  4. Pour the mixture into the tin and smooth out to make an even layer.
  5. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden brown and baked all the way through. Leave to cool a little before serving!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Easy Chocolate Pudding with Chocolate Custard

Easy Chocolate Pudding with Chocolate Custard

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From an easy main to an easy dessert, I love making complicated things but there are those times when you just need something you can throw together without thinking about it. Being a student I’m truly experiencing the struggles of little money, little space and little time, so that’s when something like this becomes a godsend. This can be made in the oven or a microwave and so it’s the perfect last-minute, ‘I need chocolate cake now’ kind of dessert.

Of course no good fudgy sponge cake is complete without a good dollop of custard. For this one I’ve used custard powder. Whilst I think fresh custard made with eggs is always a lot nicer, you can’t deny the ease and speed at which you can make custard with a powder mix, so in the interest of preserving your sanity this custard recipe is as quick and as easy as you could want it to be! By extension though, if you don’t want to bother making custard at all, or if you don’t have a hob at your disposal you can use packet custard and then either add cocoa powder to it or just leave it as a vanilla custard.

Recipe

Serves  8

Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

For the sponge

  • 180g Butter
  • 80g Light brown sugar
  • 50g Cocoa powder
  • 3 Large eggs
  • 2 tbsp Whole milk
  • 175g Self raising flour

For the custard

  • 400ml Milk
  • 5 tbsp Custard powder
  • 5 tbsp Light brown sugar
  • 25g Cocoa powder

To serve

  • Fresh berries (e.g blueberries, strawberries or raspberries)
  • Ice cream or Sorbet (I recommend raspberry sorbet with this!)

Method

  1. Take a 1L pudding bowl and butter the inside (this can be any kind of bowl but just make sure it’s not metal as it’ll be going into the microwave).
  2. Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and beat until smooth. Add the cocoa powder to the mix and then stir until combined.
  3. Add the eggs and milk to the batter and whisk them in, followed by the flour to get a pourable mixture.
  4. Pour the mixture into the greased pudding bowl and cover loosely with clingfilm. Then microwave for 4 ½ minutes on high heat until cooked through. Check the pudding with a skewer to make sure the centre’s not raw, and then leave the pudding to rest for a few minutes.
  5. Meanwhile make the custard. Put the milk into a pan and bring to the boil.
  6. Put the custard powder, sugar and cocoa powder into a bowl and whisk together. Pour a little of the milk onto the mixture and whisk in to make a smooth paste. Then slowly pour the rest of the warm milk into the mixture, whisking constantly, until combined.
  7. Pour the custard mix back into the pan and then cook whilst whisking over a medium heat until the mixture thickens.
  8. Turn the pudding out onto a plate and then pour some of the custard over the top. Serve slices of the pudding with the rest of the custard, fresh berries and sorbet/ice-cream!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Easy Spaghetti Carbonara

Easy Spaghetti Carbonara

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Things I have learnt from uni so far:

  1. Do not boil pasta in a kettle (thanks for that one Ivo).
  2. Banana and pasta is not a bad combination, but equally I would not recommended it.
  3. You can have too many chilli flakes in tuna pasta.
  4. There’s nothing you can do to pasta that will make it taste bad. Apart from puree it.

Ok so, I’m not cooking for myself this year at uni, but I am getting to cook for myself at the weekend! I thought would be this really cool thing to look forward to but apart from my experimental pumpkin pie (fyi a golden syrup bottle does not work as a rolling pin!) I’ve returned to just making a LOT of pasta. As this seems to be a uni staple I thought I’d represent one of m’ faves on here.

There seems to be something at Oxford called the 5th week blues, which is basically the wave of sadness and despair that hits everyone just after the half way mark in the term. Having just blindly walked into too much to do, with the words ‘do not over commit’ ringing strongly in my ears as I continue to over commit myself, I turn to a big bowl of this to solve all my problems. 5(ish) ingredients, 2 pans, easy to portion. What’s not to love?

Recipe

Serves 2

Time: 10-20 minutes (depending on how quickly your spaghetti cooks)

Ingredients

  • 4 Rashers of Bacon (or 2 slices of ham)
  • 8 Chestnut mushrooms (or one large closed cup mushroom)
  • 50g Dried spaghetti
  • 300ml Double cream
  • 50g Cheddar cheese, grated
  • A few leaves of fresh basil (optional)

Method

  1. Take a large sauce pan and put over a medium-high heat. Chop the bacon into strips with scissors into the pan and fry until cooked through and crispy.
  2. Meanwhile chop the mushrooms into rough slices (or dice it if you’re using a large mushroom). Add the mushroom to the pan with the bacon. Fry for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally until the bacon is crispy and the mushrooms have shrunk.
  3. Whilst waiting for the bacon to crisp up, put a pan of water on a high heat to pre-boil for the pasta. Once boiled add the spaghetti and a pinch of salt. Stir once and then leave the pasta to boil to the packet’s instructions (about 10 minutes).
  4. To finish off the sauce pour the cream over the bacon and mushrooms. Then add the grated cheese and stir until the cheese has melted. Leave on a low heat to warm the cream through and simmer gently, but do not boil.
  5. Drain the spaghetti once it’s ready and then add it to the sauce. Mix everything together and then serve with fresh basil!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Chicken Ramen

Chicken Ramen

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Ladies and gentlemen, I have flu. Like really bad flu. Like the rip your nostrils out, shove a fog horn down your throat kinda flu. So whilst I was going to do something more halloween-y for today’s post, I’ve resorted to what I’d actually want to be eating right now – this soothing bowl of chicken ramen soup. Think of this as pot noodle+. It’s pretty quick to make, and I can safely say that no matter how hung over, ill or dead you are, you will be able to make this. So if you’re like me right now and you feel like the walking dead, rustle yourself up (or find a nice person to do that bit for you) and glug down a decent bowl of this and I promise you you’ll feel a little bit better.

Recipe

Serves 2

Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 Chicken Breasts
  • 1L Chicken stock
  • 2 ‘Layers’ of Noodles
  • 4 Spring onions
  • 2 Handfuls of Baby spinach

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Put the chicken breasts on a sheet of tin foil and then wrap it up around the chicken so the join of the foil is on top. Then put this in a small roasting tin and roast in the oven for 15-20 minutes until cooked all the way through (so it’s not pink inside).
  2. Put the chicken stock into a pan and heat up. (You can make this by putting 1L of water into a pan with a chicken stock cube and bringing it up to the boil.)
  3. Add the noodles and boil until they’re soft but not too floppy.
  4. Meanwhile take the spring onions and chop the tops and tails off them. Then finely slice them into little discs. Add half the spring onions to the stock, keeping the other half for later.
  5. Once the chicken is ready slice it into 1cm slices.
  6. Ladle the stock into 2 bowls. Then portion the noodles between the bowls.
  7. Top with the slices chicken breast, the rest of the spring onions, and a handful of baby spinach on each bowl. Serve!

(Note: If you don’t have an oven you can chop the chicken into chunks and then poach it in the stock until it’s cooked all the way through!)

Thanks for reading!

Emma x
Amaretti Stuffed Peaches with Lemon Cream

Amaretti Stuffed Peaches with Lemon Cream

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As it’s world mental health awareness day today I wanted to make a recipe that’s perfect for all states of mind. For me cooking is that relaxing, creative outlet for all my anxiety, anger and so on and I think lots of people similarly find that it’s a great de-stress activity. There’s also something very communal about making something you can share with others, and most of all making something that is tasty to eat. However there are times when the thought of going into the kitchen is not appealing and whilst I know it’d help me feel better, everything I can think of to cook feels too complicated. Bring on the stuffed fruit!

I’ve never been much of a fan of stuffing fruit for desserts; I generally prefer to stuff desserts with fruit. But if you want a quick, delicious dessert that is super easy to throw together and very hard to get wrong then I seriously recommend these! By crushing up some amaretti biscuits you can make a really flavoursome stuffing for these peaches in seconds, and it also works really well in plums, nectarines and apples so you can work with whatever fruit is in season. I realise that amaretti biscuits may be a little pricey and niche for the average student/household, so if you don’t have any amaretti biscuits around you could use a selection of nuts instead.

Recipe

Serves 3

Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

For the peaches

  • 3 Peaches
  • 30g Ground almonds
  • 20g Chopped almonds or hazelnuts
  • 20g Crushed amaretti biscuits
  • Zest of ½ a Lemon
  • 1 tbsp Caster sugar
  • 1 Small egg
  • A few drops of rosewater
  • A few drops of Vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp Amaretto (optional)
  • 250ml Apple juice

For the cream

  • 250ml Double cream
  • Zest of ½ an Lemon
  • 2 tbsp Icing sugar
  • 1 tsp Orange blossom water

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Slice the peaches in half and then take out the stones. Put the peach halves into a deep gratin dish or roasting tin in a single layer.
  2. In a bowl mix together the ground almonds, chopped almonds, crushed amaretti biscuits, lemon zest, sugar, egg, rosewater and vanilla until combined.
  3. Spoon this mixture into the space in the peaches where the stones were, making a little mound.
  4. Mix the apple juice and the amaretto in a bowl and then pour this around the peaches.
  5. Then bake the peaches in the oven for 30-40 minutes until soft and slightly caramelised (the time will vary depending on the peaches ripeness).
  6. Now make the cream. Gently whip the cream with a hand whisk until soft peaks form. Then add the lemon zest, sugar and orange blossom water and fold in gently to combine.
  7. Serve the warm peaches with the cream and little of the poaching juices!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x