Oscar's Sunday Morning Baked Egg + Potato Hash

I'm always pestering O to make this dish and today seemed like the perfect time. We were both feeling slightly delicate this morning after having one too many whiskies last night and in my opinion, this baked egg and potato hash is the perfect cure! 

Ingredients ::

4 eggs (medium or large)

2 large baking potatoes (peeled and cubed)

chopped mushrooms

2 garlic cloves (chopped)

140g cheddar (grated)

2 or 3 diced bacon rashers

Spring onions (chopped)

Olive oil

1 tspn chopped sage
Salt + pepper to season.

Method ::

- Preheat your oven to 200C/180C fan/Gas 6.

- Boil the potatoes for about 5 minutes and then drain.

- Heat the oil in a large frying pan and cook the potatoes, mushrooms, garlic, bacon and spring onions for about 5-8 minutes until the mushrooms soften and the potatoes are slightly browned.

- Stir in half the sage and cook for another minute.

- Spoon the potato mixture into a baking dish. Whisk 2 of your eggs together and drizzle this evenly over the potato mixture. 

- Sprinkle the cheese and remaining sage. Make holes in the mixture and break in the remaining two eggs (I'm not a huge egg white fan, so you can feel free to just put the yolks in, like we do!).

- Bake in the over for about 12-15 minutes until the eggs are set and the cheese has melted. Add salt and pepper to season and voila! Enjoy!

This recipe is so easy to adapt and generally O just throws in whatever we happen to have in the fridge that day. So if you're vegetarian, you can leave out the bacon. I'm a huge fan of eggs, but I can be a little picky about how we cook them! I love mine scrambled (check out this link for some tasty scrambled egg recipes), whereas O is more of a poached egg man! Whatever your jam is, I hope this recipe rocks your boat! If you do happen to make it, please tag me in your photos so I can drool over them! :)

**This post was created in collaboration with British Lion Eggs who sent me some lovely kit to help with my egg recipes. As always, all opinions are truthful and entirely my own!**

Squash, Kale + Feta Salad

Now I know it's probably still a little on the chilly side for salad season, but there's one particular salad recipe that I like to make all year round. My squash, kale and feta salad is the perfect dish for a light lunch or we like to eat it along side some homemade pasta or pizza in the evening. The lovely people at Florette Salad were kind enough to send me some vouchers to try out some of their products including baby kale and after leafing through lots of kale recipes, I decided to use my own favourite recipe. This recipe is super super easy and the beauty of it is that you can add any ingredients you like, especially if you're a fan of eating seasonally. 

Ingredients ::

1 medium butternut squash (or any other squash of your liking)

1/2 pack of feta cheese

A few handfuls of mixed salad leaves

Kale/ baby kale

Cucumber

Cherry tomatoes

Red onion

Salt, pepper, olive oil + balsamic vinegar

- Chop the squash up into small cubes/slices and place in a baking tray. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle olive oil. Bake for about 30 minutes or until soft and crispy at about 190 degrees. 

- Whilst your squash is baking, chop up your cucumber, red onion, cherry tomatoes and feta cheese. 

- Place your mixed salad leaves and kale in a bowl/plate and add your chopped salad vegetables. Once your squash has cooled, add this along with a sprinkling of feta. 

- Mix some olive oil and balsamic vinegar together to make a dressing and drizzle this over your salad.

If you're anything like me, you'll artfully arrange it and then take an Instagram photo before demolishing it in 5 seconds flat! Enjoy! :) 

**This post was created in collaboration with Florette Salad who sent me some vouchers and some Florette swag in exchange for a review. As always, all opinions are truthful and entirely my own!**

RECIPE :: Banana + Choc Chip Muffins

I'm coming at you with a little mid-week pick me up! If like me, you buy about 40 bananas and then only eat 4 of them, you're left with a big banana bounty just crying out to be fashioned into something tasty! Normally I would just bake some banana bread, but I had no greaseproof paper to line my tin with, so off I went in search of a muffin recipe. 

Of course, Mary Berry never fails to provide me with the perfect recipe! Her recipe was for cupcakes though with chocolate icing (which I didn't have), so I decided that mine would be muffins instead. As usual, I adapted the recipe to suit whatever ingredients I had in the cupboard and here's what I did...(click here to see Mary's proper recipe!)

Ingredients:

100g (4oz) butter, softened (I used flora baking marg)

2 eggs

175g (6oz) caster sugar

225g (8oz) self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

3 tbsp milk

2 very ripe bananas, mashed

50g (2oz) chocolate chips

Method: 

Preheat oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas mark 4. 

Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases .

Again, being a lazy baker, I just slung everything into a blender and then added in the choc chips at the end. Then I spooned the mixture into the muffin cases and baked for about 25 minutes until well risen, golden brown and shrinking away from the cases (Mary's advice). 

As usual, I forgot to take photos whilst I was doing all the prep, so instead, here are some muffin porn photos to make you drool! Enjoy! :)

This recipe is super easy and takes about 45 minutes max all in, including baking time. What have you been baking lately?

RECIPE :: Butternut Squash & Lime Soup

I know that soup isn't exactly the summer staple, but this recipe is so tasty that you'll want to be eating it all year long! This recipe was modified from a Weight Watchers one, which you can find here. I've made a few different versions of this soup over the last few months, my favourite two being this one and another which has roasted garlic instead of the lime....yum!

Now, let me tell you the recipe for this lovely soup...

Ingredients:

1 portion of butternut squash {peeled, de-seeded and diced into 1 inch cubes}
2 medium onions {quartered}
2 cubes of vegetable stock {dissolved in two pints of hot water}
1 lime {the juice of}
Pinch of salt and black pepper to season

Method:- Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 7/220°C/425°F.
- Place the diced butternut squash and onion in a large roasting pan or baking dish. Bake, uncovered, for 45 minutes, until tender {if you are doing the roasted garlic version, I would add your chopped garlic in here too}.
- Remove from oven, tip into saucepan and add the stock.
- Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Let cool about 15 minutes {do not pour hot soup directly into food processor, or you risk it exploding}.
- Purée in batches in blender or food processor.
- Once blended, pour the soup into a sauce pan and add the juice of one lime and season with salt & pepper to taste.

Adding in the lime at the end really gives it a refreshing edge, perfect for this time of year. The roasted garlic or curry versions are great in the autumn and winter. For those of you who are calorie counting it's also super healthy (0PP for those Weight Watchers out there) and makes a perfect light lunch or pre-dinner appetiser. If you do make it, tag me in your photos (Instagram) or leave your links below so I can drool at them! 

 

recipe :: Nutella swirl banana muffins

Our baking escapades always begin with some sort of food that needs to be used up. On Saturday evening, we discovered four seriously overly ripe bananas in the kitchen. Now usually, I'd just make a banana bread, but we fancied doing something a little different for a change. After much googling, we found this muffin recipe on the Londoner's blog. We did modify it slightly, as we didn't have all the exact ingredients. This recipe should make 12 muffins, but because we used cupcake cases instead of a muffin tin, we got 20 out of the mixture. To make these tasty morsels, you will need:

Ingredients:

230 grams (1 3/4 cups) self raising flour
150 grams (3/4 cup) granulated white sugar {we used caster sugar)
1/2 tsp salt
2 large free range eggs, lightly beaten
113 grams (1/2 cup) melted unsalted butter {we used the Stork baking margarine}
3 large very ripe bananas, mashed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 tbsp Nutella, at room temp

Method:

-Pre-heat your oven to 180C or Gas Mark 4-5.
-Line your muffin trays with grease-proof paper or use cupcake cases like we did.
-In one bowl combine your flour, sugar & salt. In another combine your eggs, butter, mashed bananas & vanilla. Tip one into the other and gently fold together. Don't use a hand mixer or any other gadgets!
-You want your batter to be thoroughly mixed, but still lumpy and utterly hideous!
-Divide your mixture between your cases, each one should be just about half full. Take a teaspoon of slightly warm Nutella and pop a blob (technical term) onto the centre of each muffin.
-Use a cocktail stick or skewer (we used a meat thermometer!) to swirl the Nutella into the muffin without turning the whole thing chocolatey.

 

{This is how they should look just before they go in the oven. I don't know why this photo is so squinty!?}

-Repeat with each muffin and then pop them all onto the middle shelf of your oven. Bake for 20-25 mins (ours took about 10 mins longer, probably due to our dodgy oven).
-When they're done you should be able to stick a skewer into the centre and have it come out nice and clean.
-Leave to cool and enjoy when still warm, as the Nutella will still be extra gooey!

Some of the photos are slightly blurry due to my impatienceand excitement of the prospect of eating them all up! They are properly scrumptious!! :)