Grapefruit Drizzle Cake

An accident can be a fortunate one, and a disaster isn't always a disaster.

This cake is a fortunate accident that had a true disaster moment, one that had me swearing very loudly and angrily in the kitchen. But then every last crumb got eaten, with people coming back for thirds. So it really wasn't the end of the world. 

But the accident of its birth? I bought a grapefruit from Tesco's. I'm on a major fruit kick at the moment - the purchases that day were a huge punnet of kiwis, 3 passion fruit and aforementioned grapefruit. This is probably the only time in my life I have seen a grapefruit and had a huge urge to buy it, so I did. It was only when I got home that I looked at the grapefruit and realised I COULDN'T EAT IT. 

No, this isn't some sort of weird "I can't eat that poor innocent yellow fruit." This is an "I can't eat this because it might potentially kill me" moment. Basically, when you're on SSRI's they tell you not to eat grapefruit and not to drink grapefruit juice because grapefruits are filled with strange, evil enzymes that are out to get you. They make you break down the SSRI's too effectively and this can theoretically lead to a dangerous situation called serotonin syndrome. (I really don't sound like an educated biologist, do I...)

I guess having read the SSRI leaflet and been told NOT to eat grapefruit, my brain had stored this information in such a way that when I saw the grapefruit, a grapefruit message was triggered, but I didn't get the full memo. "Hi! This is your brain! GRAPEFRUIT! I think there was more to it than that, though. I'll get back to you later. But yeah, grapefruit." Is that the best you can do at trying to off me, brain? Better luck next time. 

But I hate to waste food. So I hatched a cunning plan. If I baked it in something instead... I'd only be getting a tiny bit... right?

Well, sort of wrong, seeing as I actually ate about a sixth of the cake in the end, but I guess that's still a lot better than eating a whole grapefruit by myself. 

This is a good summer cake for taking into the garden with friends and tea. Picnic cake. Lazy afternoon cake. 

Oh, and the disaster? I took it off the greaseproof, placed the greaseproof on the hob, realised the hob was on, panicked, tried to take it off and at that moment, the cake, which was still in my other hand, decided to split (fairly neatly and exactly) into two halves. I could have cried. I very nearly did. But instead I trimmed it up, ate the bits I trimmed off (which magically made me feel a lot better) and iced it as if nothing had happened. Sort of.

It's how it tastes that counts.

Grapefruit Drizzle Cake

This recipe was found at Tracey's Culinary Adventure, and originally came from "Ad Hoc at Home" by Thomas Keller. This is slightly adapted from the original to use self-raising flour, though you can of course use plain and baking powder instead. I also used medium eggs instead of the large specified in the original, changing the number accordingly, and adjusted the amounts of juice etc used so that the whole recipe can be made using one grapefruit, rather than the two that the original needed. Also, I had far too much icing, but I'm leaving the original amounts here as I couldn't really tell you how much you should need without making the cake again. That will be happening soon, don't worry.

For the Batter

2 cups self raising flour (or 2 cups plain and 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder)

1 teaspoon salt

1 2/3 cups granulated sugar

1 tablespoon grapefruit zest

2 large or 3 medium eggs (room temperature)

1 cup whole milk (original recipe says room temperature, mine wasn't)

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the syrup

approx 1/2 cup grapefruit juice

1/3 cup granulated sugar

For the Glaze

3/4 cup icing sugar

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon juice

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F.

2. Grease and line a 9 x 5 inch load pan with greaseproof paper, overhanging it to make the cake easy to remove from the tin.

3. In a large bowl, rub the granulated sugar and grapefruit zest together with your fingertips until well combined.

4. Add the eggs and beat with an electric mixer for 3-4 minutes, until the mixture thickens and a trail is left.

5. Measure out the milk, vanilla and oil, then add them while the mixer is running, if possible.

6. Sift in the flour (and baking powder, if using) and add the salt. Mix on low speed until just combined.

7. Pour into the pan and bake for 30-40 minutes, then rotate and bake for the remaining 20-30 minutes (you want to cook for an hour in total, I just turned it at 40 because that felt safer to me.) When ready, a toothpick should come out clean. 

8. Poke deep holes in the cake using a cocktail stick or similar; I probably made about 20. Leave to cool in the tin. 

To make the syrup

1. Add the grapefruit juice and water to the saucepan. Now, the most important thing is that you have enough grapefruit juice for the glaze. Use the rest for this, and if you have less than 1/2 a cup, like me, make up the rest with water. You're boiling most of the liquid off anyway.

2. Bring to a simmer, supposedly. I had mine on a rolling boil. Just keep going until it reduces to a thick syrup; this will take several minutes. You don't have to stir constantly, but stir occasionally to see how it's doing.

3. Brush the cake with the syrup.

For the Glaze

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl, add the grapefruit juice and mix until smooth. It needs to be thick enough to not run everywhere, but thin enough so you can flick and drizzle it artistically. You'll know if it's right. Mine was ever so slightly too thick - most of it was fine but I had one huge blob that annoyed me. It's sort of hiding, peeking out. Darn blob.

Anyway, yes. Make this cake. It's my new favourite drizzle cake and if you're willing to risk your health for a cake... it must be really good.

p.s. I'm not dead yet so I'd say that the amount of grapefruit in here is PROBABLY safe if you're on SSRI's. But I'm not a medical professional and I take NO responsibility for interactions with medication. Seriously, read about it, preferably talk to your doctor, and make your own decision if this is an issue that affects you. I'm on a low dose and the information seems patchy and conflicting. Maybe the cooking denatures the enzyme - I just don't know. If you're eating a SENSIBLE amount of this cake (i.e. not as much as we did) then... oh, I just don't know. Anyway, no legal responsibility yada yada CAKE.

I'm still here...

After doing so many posts a month I'm a little sad to have got over a week into May with none. After a few baking disasters (some non-setting lime squares, some metallic muffins, over-boiled potatoes, over-salted banana pancakes and a mug cake that was too bitter... I mean, it's a MUG CAKE, how the hell do you mess that up?) I took a week off from cooking, returning to ready meals and chocolate bars until I'd recovered. By Friday, I was ready to try again.

Pork chops wrapped in proscuitto with sugar snap peas and sauteed potatoes were well received, though we got some odd looks from a concerned passer-by who heard my visiting boyfriend flattening the meat with my saucepan as I don't have a rolling pin. On Sunday, brownies were made, and by Monday morning, all had been scoffed. Sunday night was piri-piri chicken with boiled potatoes, asparagus and the remaining sugar snaps. I cannot express how much better I feel for returning to a diet of fruit and home cooked food after a week of tinned soup and microwave meals, even after realising that many of the microwave meals available taste just as good and don't really cost any more (or sometimes less!) when it's just one of you.

But I haven't really got any specific recipes to share at the moment. The brownies I made were the ones in this post, and I can report that the first time wasn't just a fluke, these really are brownies that always come out right, even in a dodgy student oven. There's something so fun about the recipe, and watching the patterns as you gently fold the chocolate mixture into the whisked eggs and sugar.

I had a brief scare where I thought that the medication I've been prescribed had robbed me of my taste buds AND my appetite. It's one of the possible side effects and after a few things tasted funny I found myself panicking; food has become so important to me, such a passion, that I was desperate not to lose it. Those few short days made me appreciate the fact that I can now carry on with my culinary journey.

The thing that just continues to amaze me about food at the moment is how something like that can then turn into a tray of fudgey, chocolately delight. I love how a risotto changes from dry rice to creamy heaven, how porridge thickens, how cheese melts. I like how cake batter rises, how pancakes brown differently on each side, how toad in the hole puffs up and browns. Food really is fascinating and hopefully I'll have some more recipes for you soon!

Daring Bakers April 2012: Nazook and Armenian Nutmeg Cake

The Daring Bakers’ April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards: nazook and nutmeg cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling, and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake

NUTMEG CAKE

Well, this was my second challenge, and I was incredibly excited by both the options - I made both!

I wasn't originally sure if I'd have time, though, so started with the one that appealed most to me. Nutmeg cake. Ever since discovering that it was this little nut that MADE carrot cake, I've been looking for an excuse to use it again. Well, everything seemed to be going perfectly, but when I went to get it out of the oven at 30 minutes it seemed brown and, had it been any other cake, done, but wobbly. "No big deal..." I thought. "I'll give it an extra five minutes. 30 to 40 minutes, after all". 

So five minutes passed, and no, it was still perfectly, deceptively done on the outside, but completely liquid under the thin crust. So I gave it another five. And another. Then another. Then I put some foil over the top, lowered the temperature by twenty degrees centigrade, and gave it another fifteen minutes. At this point I gave up, took it out of the oven, and surveyed my sticky toffee nutmeg pudding.

I wish I actually knew how to replicate it, because it tastes amazing and, weirdly, a gooey, chewy texture works incredibly well with it!

However, I would have liked to be able to make the cake version too... my main suspect was our oven, which did exactly the same thing to me on the previous Friday when I was making a goat's cheese and onion tart for my family. After it had been in the oven for an hour, double the prescribed time, it was still completely liquid still save for a thin skin. Into the microwave it went, and then it was fine. My brother then made some brownies over the weekend and had trouble with them not cooking through too. So I bought an oven thermometer and, contrary to my belief it might be running far too hot, it was actually running about 10C-20C cool. 

So now I'm still a bit stumped, to be honest. I cooked it at 155C in our fan oven, following the usual tactic of knocking 20C off a non-fan temperature. I suppose it might have been trying to cook at 135C, but then surely it just wouldn't be done on the outside either...? I now keep a closer eye when baking, and tend to put the oven 10C above on the dial.

But I'll definitely be trying this recipe again!

p.s. Excuse the slightly blurry photos, I didn't take much care over them seeing as making a pile of goo look good is beyond my photographic skill. Honestly, the taste makes you forget about its beauty-impairment...

Armenian Nutmeg Cake Recipe
The recipe and directions below are taken directly from the Daring Bakers Challenge sheet provided by Jason at Daily Candor, our host for the month.

240 ml milk (whole was recommended but I used semi-skimmed)
1 teaspoon (5 ml) (5 gm) baking soda
280 gm/10 oz plain flour
2 teaspoons (10 ml) (10 gm) baking powder
400 gm/14 oz brown sugar, firmly packed (I used dark brown soft)
170 gm/6 oz butter, preferably unsalted, cubed
55 gm/2 oz walnut pieces, may need a little more
1 to 1-1/2 teaspoons (5 to 7 ½ ml) (5 to 8 gm) ground nutmeg, preferably freshly grated

1 egg

1. Preheat your oven to moderate 350°F/175°C/gas mark 4.

2. Mix the baking soda (not baking powder; that's for the next step) into the milk. Set it aside.

3. Sift together the flour and the baking powder into a large bowl. One sift is fine

4. Add the brown sugar. Go ahead and mix the flour and brown sugar together. Or not.

5. Toss in the cubed butter.

6. Mash the butter with a fork into the dry ingredients (you can also use your fingers if you want). You'll want to achieve a more-or-less uniform, tan-colored crumbly mixture.

7. Take HALF of this resulting crumbly mixture into your springform (9”/23cm) pan. Press a crust out of it using your fingers and knuckles. It will be easy.

8. Crack an egg into a mixer or bowl.

9. Toss the nutmeg in with the egg.

10. Start mixing slowly with a whisk attachment and then increase to medium speed, or mix with a hand 

whisk if you're doing it manually. Once it's mixed well and frothy (about 1 minute using a standing mixer, or 

about 2-3 minutes of vigorous beating with a whisk), pour in the milk and baking soda mixture. Continue to mix until uniform.

11. Pour in the rest of the crumbly mixture. Mix that well, with either a paddle attachment, or a spatula. Or continue to use the whisk; it won't make much of a difference, since the resulting batter is very liquidy.

12. Pour the batter over the base in the springform pan.

13. Gently sprinkle the walnut pieces over the batter.

14. Bake in a preheated moderate oven for about 30-40 minutes. You'll know it's done when the top is a 

golden brown, and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

15. Allow to cool in the pan, and then release. Enjoy!

NAZOOK

So, about a week later, I decided that seeing as the nutmeg cake hadn't been the hugest success, I might as well try the Nazook. I even managed to convert my Mum, who was eyeing it suspiciously since it "had an odd name and I don't know if I'll like it" *facepalm*

Well, she did, I did, my boyfriend did, my Grandparents did. Nazook is going to be VERY high on the regular baking list now!

I made two flavours, though I didn't try the original one because I'd halved the recipe and had 2 ideas for my own flavourings. The first was apple, cinnamon and currant, which did explode slightly when baked, though I'm not sure if it might be because this filling was much runnier than my other one due to the addition of the stewed apple.

However, they tasted lovely. These were my boyfriend's favourites.

The other flavour... well, okay, I'll admit I was naughty. Our host said that chocolate wasn't a traditional filling. But we like chocolate in our house… I know, I know, I'm sorry, but I had some good quality baking chocolate just sitting there and it sort of happened. In went a few squares of melted chocolate, a handful of finely chopped walnuts, and now I wished I'd doubled the recipe rather than halved it and made it all with this filling... though my waistline was complaining enough with all the easter eggs anyway! This filling was much thicker, I had to pop it in the microwave for a while to make it spreadable, but while it did expand out slightly it seemed to do so in a far more regular way, and they held together better.

So overall, nazook was a resounding success, easy to make, and it's so nice to have little things for once instead of big slices of cake. Yum and yum.

Nazook recipe

The methodology was the one provided by our host, Jason at Daily Candor, though I've made the odd note. The only part that is mine are my filling variations. I've also halved the ingredients because I found 20 nazook were a nicer number if you were making them for the family, not to take them anywhere special.

Pastry dough - makes 20 nazook (half original recipe)
210g plain flour, sifted

3.5 g (1/2 packet) active dry yeast (I ended up using instant so used slightly less)
112.5 g (120 ml) sour cream

112.5g softened butter (room temperature)

Basic Filling - make this and add other ingredients afterwards. Fills 20 nazook.
105g plain flour, sifted
170g sugar
85g softened butter (room temperature)

Wash
1-2 egg yolks for the wash (I used an egg white because we had one left in the fridge from something else)

Make the Pastry Dough

1. Place the sifted flour into a large bowl.

2. Add the dry yeast, and mix it in.

3. Add the sour cream, and the softened butter.

4. Use your hands, or a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, to work it into a dough.

5. If using a standing mixer, switch to a dough hook. If making manually, continue to knead for about 10 minutes, or until the dough no longer sticks to the bowl or your hands. If it remains very sticky, add some flour, a little at a time.

6. Cover the dough and refrigerate for 3-5 hours, or overnight if you like.

Make the Basic Filling

1.  Mix the flour, sugar, and the softened butter in a medium bowl.

2. Mix the filling until it looks like clumpy, damp sand. It should not take long. Set aside.

Make the Apple Filling

1. Make up the filling as directed, minus the vanilla.

2. Stew one apple per 1/2 of the filling recipe, cubed, with some water and cinnamon, in the microwave on defrost (approx 300W). I was using a pink lady, not a stewing apple, and it took upwards of 10 minutes.

3. Mix the apple into the filling mixture. I found it to be very gloopy; I'm not sure if it might be worth adding some more flour at this point.

4. Spread the mixture onto the rolled pastry, all the way to the short edges but leaving about an inch of gap before the long edges, and sprinkle with currants, raisins or sultanas.

Make the Chocolate and Walnut Filling

1. Make up the filling as directed, minus the vanilla.

2. Mix in approx 30g-40g of melted chocolate and a handful of finely chopped walnuts. You will have to mix it very thoroughly.

3. I then popped it back in the microwave for around 30 seconds on high to make it easier to spread. Spread the Spread the mixture onto the rolled pastry, all the way to the short edges but leaving about an inch of gap before the long edges,

Make the nazook

1. Preheat the oven to moderate 350°F/175°C/155°C Fan/gas mark 4.

2. Cut the refrigerated dough in half.

3. Form one of the halves into a ball. Dust your working surface with a little flour.

4. Roll out the dough into a large rectangle or oval. The dough should be thin, but not transparent.

5. Spread one of the filling mixtures across the rolled-out dough in an even layer. Try to spread the filling as close as possible to the edges on the short sides, but keep some of pastry dough uncovered (1 inch/2.5 cm) along the long edges.

6. From one of the long sides, start slowly rolling the dough across. Be careful to make sure the filling stays evenly distributed. Roll all the way across until you have a long, thin loaf.

7. Pat down the loaf with your palm and fingers so that it flattens out a bit (just a bit).

8. Apply your egg yolk wash with a pastry brush.

9. Use your crinkle cutter (or knife) to cut the loaf into 10 equally-sized pieces. Put onto an ungreased cookie sheet.

10. Place in a preheated moderate oven for about 30 minutes, until the tops are a rich, golden brown.

11. Allow to cool and enjoy!

Lemon, Lime and Ginger Nut Squares

Some days you need baking.

It's been a rough few days for me and I've been struggling. So sometimes, instead of staring uncomprehendingly at a screen, or sitting looking into yourself, you should go up to the kitchen and bread a packet of ginger nuts into small pieces using your hands because it's therapeutic and allows your mind to go blissfully blank.

Then you can get all the anger out by squashing them with a wooden spoon too.

As you may remember, I had a lot of limes left over from my strawberry, lime and coconut slices. A big part of student cooking is working out how to use up leftover ingredients. Often you'll need half a pack of something for one recipe, then in using that up you use quarter of a pack of something else... the cycle can seem to go on for a long time.

My Grandma gave us a photocopy of a key lime pie recipe a few years ago and it became a much loved favourite in our house. I had planned to make that one, but when Mum hadn't emailed it to me in time for my weekly shop (it's usually bi-weekly but I just can't face 2 shops this week) I decided to make my own recipe.

And because I'm on a squares kick at the moment I decided to make it in my 8 inch square tin rather than a round tin. It may be because it's a lot easier to judge portions when you're cutting things into squares, in my opinion.

But I didn't want to do the whole thing the American way. Nooooo. I wanted a ginger nut biscuit base. Only I thought 200g of ginger nuts would easily be enough. After all, they only used 250g to do the base AND sides of a 9 inch round tin (about equivalent to an 8 inch square) in another recipe.

So I found myself looking at a tin that was about half covered, with huge, gaping bald patches.

I've felt a bit defeated recently. For some reason staring at that sight roused me. Everything else is going wrong. I'm not going to let my baking go wrong too.

So in went a wodge of flour, some more sugar, some more melted butter. By eye, this was. I'm afraid I can't write it into the recipe so I'll just tell you that it would be a good idea to buy more ginger nuts.

But it worked, so I baked that bit (if it had just been ginger nuts and butter it would have gone in the fridge). And towards the end of making the filling I remembered it was in there so hastily got it out. It was fine.

Then onto the filling. In went the zest of 2 limes, the juice of 3, and the rest of the filling ingredients from a lemon squares recipe. Then I decided it wasn't quite flavoursome enough. In went a huge squirt from one of those Jif lemons... I bought it for pancake day, decided it tasted 'orrible, and then chucked it in the back of my cupboard. I'm glad it's come in handy for something.

A quick note. Scrape the bottom of the bowl after your first mix and mix again. Because I had to mix it in the tin again after finding that a lot of the flour had stuck to the bottom...

And now I won't bore you with a recipe because it was a flop. I went to cut it two hours later and it was a gooey, sticky mess, of which most has gone in the bin, save for a few bits around the edge that had cooked through. Just when you need your baking to go well the most...

Strawberry, Lime and Coconut Squares

Tesco and I have an uneasy truce.

It's the best supermarket in our town, but that's not saying much. It's either that or Marks and Spencer (too expensive) or Sainsbury's (less than half the floorspace). Sometimes it plays a blinder and gives me amazing offers. But, seriously, what shop in a student city runs out of:

a) blueberries
b) single limes
c) minced beef
d) packs of 6 sausages

Typically, I had made the trip specially and was not about to make another one. So I now have 6 more limes left to use, and blueberries became some reduced strawberries. I sort of prefer it, I think; I've never been a huge blueberry fan anyway.

So, Tesco, you may have won this time. Though having to queue for 15 minutes is not so cool. You can never tell if people are stocking up for a zombie apocalypse or if it is always just that busy in there.

Anyway, with my tales of substitutions and bulk buying of limes done (seriously, what am I going to do with 6 limes?) we can move onto the recipe and my favourite new recipe book. Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache by Harry Eastwood called to me for days. "Buy me" it yodelled from Amazon's pages, "and I shall make cake a healthy treat......."

Which is why, as I write this, I am stuffing my face with an absolutely ginormous slice of this cake and marvelling that it's under 300 calories. I mean, wow. It doesn't taste worthy. It tastes fruity and gorgeous and is incredibly moist. Harry Eastwood is on to a real winner; I can't wait to make more recipes. And the girly-girly cloying personification of all the cakes that so many of the reviewers have loathed? I like it. It's cute. It makes the book nice to read cover to cover again and again.

It also comes with calories tables, which makes me happy, especially when I see the numbers in them.

Anyway, make and enjoy this. The next post is going to be Key Lime Pie. The post after that may well be a Cosmopolitan Cocktail. I'll STILL have 3 more limes to go after that... On the plus side, no scurvy?

Strawberry, Lime and Coconut Squares
This recipe is mildly adapted from "Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache", in which Harry Eastwood replaces butter with vegetables and you end up with magic cakes. I'm not kidding. They taste lush and you can eat more while gaining less. Win? Yes. Just don't tell people you've put courgette in their cake until after they've eaten it. Or why not just not tell them? They'd never guess.


For the Base
80g caster sugar
20g unsalted butter
Pinch salt
150g dessicated coconut


For the sponge
150-200g Strawberries, Quartered and then chopped 3 more times (or basically chopped into small, blueberry sized pieces)
150g courgette, topped, tailed, peeled and finely grated (I used one fairly large courgette that weighed about 200g with the skin on, and still had some left to spare)
Juice and Zest of 2 limes
120g plain or rice flour (Harry Eastwood has tested all the recipes with both and actually says rice flour is better!)
2 medium eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder (I used 3 large ones because my baking powder is oooold now)
150g caster sugar

For the topping
Icing sugar, to sprinkle

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line a 22cm (8 inch) square tin. (Harry recommended oil, I would just go back to greasing with butter in the future, it sticks to the tin better...)

2. Melt the butter and sugar for the base in a saucepan until you have a paste. Place the dessicated coconut into a bowl and pour this mixture over the top, mixing well with a spoon, palette knife and/or your fingertips.


3. Press the base into the lined tin and press down with a spoon to pack it firmly. Place into the oven for 10-15 minutes, until fairly brown.

4. While this is in, whisk the eggs and sugar together until light.

5. Add the zest of the limes and the grated courgette (I grated the latter into a separate bowl for measuring purposes... and it's not that easy) and mix thoroughly again (I was using my hand mixer).

6. Add the flour, salt, baking powder and lime juice. Beat again until combined (yup, it says beat, not fold. I had no problem with the cake being dense despite just basically chucking everything in).


7. Pour the batter over the base (I hope you've been keeping an eye on the time, the intermediate steps took longer than the 12 or so minutes it took my base to cook) and then sprinkle the chopped strawberries over the top.

8. Cook for around 30 minutes.

9. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes.

10. Sift some icing sugar over the top and slice into 9 pieces in the tin before removing the slices.


CALORIES PER SLICE: 262

Italian Chicken Bake

It's always satisfying when you cook something and immediately start thinking of the next available opportunity to cook it again.

Discovering a new family favourite is a treat, and when it's as easy as this, it's even more of one. From a student's point of view, it reheats well, and the original recipe scales down to make two portions nicely too (which is what I will be putting here). It goes well with garlic bread, potatoes, neither, or both.

You can use cheap chicken breasts because there's so much else in there that you can't tell if they're organic or Tesco Value. Finally, you can use chorizo or pepperoni, whatever floats your boat. There are still a few tweaks that I'm going to try. When I made it for myself the first time I used a whole large onion - that was too much. I also think it could survive with half the amount of tomatoes, though I haven't tried that yet. Basically, instead of 2 400g tins for 4 people, I would use 1. For the 2 person version, I'd try the 200g tins I know Tesco sell. I think it would make it slightly less runny (though those juices are soooo tasty mopped up with garlic bread) and not really much less filling.

The recipe calls for 3 diced chicken breasts between 4 people, and even with 2 big eaters we found there was a lot. I made it for myself with 2 chicken breasts, which lead to some huge portions, though eating it never feels like a chore.

So thank you Fay Ripley!

Italian Chicken Bake for 2 (Or a student with a microwave)
This is halved from the original recipe in Fay Ripley's cookbook "What's for Dinner", which I won from the lovely Kelly-Jane at "Cooking the books with Kelly-Jane". I'd made a few very slight modifications - increasing the amount of garlic, decreasing the amount of tomato and swapping the pepperoni for chorizo.

2 skinless chicken breasts, diced
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 an onion
200g tin chopped tomatoes
60g mozarella (approx half a ball), reduced fat if you can get it (I couldn't tell the difference between the reduced fat and the full fat one)
1tsp dried oregano
40-60g chorizo


1. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas mark 6. In a frying pan, fry the onion in the oil until translucent.
2. Add the diced chicken and fry for 5 minutes.

3. Add the garlic and oregano and fry for 1-2 minutes before pouring in the tomatoes. 

4. Let it gently bubble for 5 more minutes.
5. Pop the lot into an ovenproof dish and top it first with the mozzarella, then with the pepperoni. I found it fitted quite nicely in a 7 inch sandwich cake tin. You basically don't want it all spread out thinly else you'll get big patches with no cheese.
6. Bake for 25 minutes.

7. Serve with new potatoes and garlic bread. 

APPROX 400-450 CALORIES PER SERVING (NOT INCLUDING GARLIC BREAD AND NEW POTATOES)

Wordle

This would appear to be just how much I like chocolate...

Yes, chocolate is the most referenced thing on the entire blog.

Wordle's are fun, and a good way of avoiding writing essays. Highly recommended. Thanks to Cher Rockwell at "The not so exciting adventures of a dabbler" for making me aware of their existence!