Product Review - Kelloggs Hot Oat Krumbly

If there's one thing that gets me up and out of bed in the morning it's the though of breakfast. For years now I've eaten cereal for breakfast as I find it keeps me going all morning and there's such a huge selection available that I never grow tired of it. In fact, given the choice I think I could actually eat cereal for a couple of meals each day.
I tend to mix my cereals every morning allowing me to create my own mix and a nice balance of crunch and flavour - usually some All Bran, Special K , something fruity and some granola for added energy with the odd handful of chocolate thrown in for good measure.
Anyway, one of my favourites of late is this Hot Oat Krumbly option from Kelloggs. This is designed to be eaten with hot milk but personally I love the buttery crumbly taste with a little cold milk. The clusters are a good size and are light to eat with a lovely sweet buttery taste which were a lovely addition to my usual bowl. I've purchased a few boxes of this and have since noticed that my usual supermarkets don't seem to have them in stock. I hope this isn't one of Kelloggs unpromoted lines which pops up and disappears unannounced. If you come across these I'd grab them quick !

Holidays approaching

I've been off work for the past week now and other than submitting my Photography assignment haven't made much progress with the whole blogging/ updating my website intentions that I had. My head is in Vegas mode and we fly out on Wednesday morning. I hope to take some great shots and have the best of intentions to research website design, and do more blogging on my return. In the meantime, thought I'd post some favourite sweet treats which me and my sister used to enjoy at birthday parties. One is never enough and the addition of the syrup and toffees to the well known rice krispie treats makes these extra yummy!

Rice Krispie treats

• 200g toffees (individual sweets or a slab)
• 125g butter or margarine
• 200g marshmallows
• 200g Kellogg's Rice Krispies
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup or to taste

All measures are approx; feel free to throw in extra toffees and syrup according to taste!
Over a low heat, in a large pan (an old pan will do) melt together first the marshmallows, toffees and butter. Then add the syrup and stir slowly until mixture is completely melted (keep heat very low or mixture will burn).
When mixture is melted remove from heat, chuck in rice krispies and stir to coat them completely to make quite a firm mix.
Spread out on a large flat tray and mark out squares using a sharp knife once mixture has set slightly. Allow to set fully about 1 hour before removing from tray.

Cut up and enjoy!

Nutella brownie bites

My mum wanted to bake some cakes to take in for work colleagues who sadly are being made redundant. Nutella is a firm favourite in our household although its been ages since I've actually had some. I came across this quick and easy recipe on numerous recipes including here. The recipe made 6 medium size bites whereas the original recipes seemed to be based on mini versions.
The recipes was quick and easy but the only problem was we didn't want to taste any so we'd have a batch to give away, so we ended up sharing one which didn't disappoint.

Makes 6 regular or 12 mini brownies

Ingredients
175g Nutella
1 egg
5 tbsp all-purpose flour
chocolate chips or chopped chocolate ( can also substitute dried fruit or whatever you fancy!)

Directions
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Line 6 muffin holes with paper liners .
2. Whisk the Nutella and eggs together in a bowl. Once smooth and well-blended, add the flour, cinnamon and chocolate chips. Continue whisking until well blended.
3. Spoon the mixture into the muffin liners, filling them about ¾ full. Bake for 12 mins (7-8 mins for the mini ones) and cool on a wire rack . Top with dusted icing sugar or cocoa.

These also proved me with another chance to try out some food photos. I'm reading lots online about food photography and realising its not an easy task getting great shots with so much to consider - lighting, props etc. I might need to invest some more money, time in props and think I'll purchase a reflector to help with lighting issues, but in the meantime I think this image is a slight improvements.

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Birthday cake and updates

It was my dear Gran's 90th Birthday and wanting to do something special I decided to make her a cake. I based this on a traditional fruit cake, but left out the marzipan layer and just put some ready rolled icing on the top. I was quite impressed with my attempts at decorating and the fact the icing went on relatively flat. I cut out some flower shapes from the icing and stuck them to the cake with some marmalade (again we don't like the traditionally used apricot jam). Not bad for a first attempt I think, as the cake tasted great and I had a lot of nice comments from my gran and my work colleagues who were grateful for the fact my gran wanted me to share it round!

Makes 1 x 20cm cake

150g plain flour, sifted
50g self-raising flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1tsp nutmeg
100g ground almonds
3 medium eggs lightly beaten

Fruit mix
mixed bag - seedless raisins, sultanas, mixed cut peel 500g
200g ready to eat stones dates chopped
150g - 175g butter chopped
200g dark muscovado sugar
1 tbsp black treacle
1 tbsp golden syrup
100ml orange juice or alcohol - brandy. whisky etc

Topping
Marmalade warmed
Ready rolled fondant icing - 1 pack

1. Preheat oven to 150, fan 130.
2. For the fruit mix put all the ingredients into a pan and heat gently, stirring occassionally until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Increase te heat, bring to the boil , then set aside to cool for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, grease and line a 20cm round cake tin with non stick baking paper.
3. Put the flours, spices and ground almonds in a large bowl and stir in the cooled fruit mixture and eggs until combined. Tap the tin to remove any bubbles.
4. Bake in the preheated oven for 2 hours or until golden and firm to the touch. To check if it's cooked insert a skewer to the centre. ( I found my cake took about 2 hours 25 minutes keeping a carefully eye on it!)
5. Turn the cake onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely before removing from tin.
6. At this stage you can ice/ decorate when the cake is completely cool or I left it till the following day.
7. Heat some marmalade and spread lightly over cake. I actually slightly levelled the cake to give a smooth finish.
8. Unroll the ready rolled icing and roll to about 1/4 inch thick . Place over cake and smooth down with your hands. (This may take a few attempts).
9. Cut off excess icing, - these can then be used to make shapes / decoration for the top mixed with a little food colouring.
10. Decorate as desired and enjoy - keeps well in greaseproof paper or a tin for about a week.

In other updates, I hope to start blogging more and showing some of the images I've been taking whilst doing my photography course which I'm really enjoying. I think my food photography is still leaving a lot to be desired, but hopefully with practise ! (I'm very envious of professional looking food photos and blogs! - it's something I aspire to!)
I'm also trying to play about with photoshop and making my blog and website more attractive in the weeks to come.
I welcome any comments along the way and would love to become more involved in the blogging community :)

Banana flapjacks

Hello again and Happy Easter,

I'm really not sure if anyone is following my blog but if so I apologise for my lack of enthusiasm with the posting!
I hope to post more regularly and show some of the recipes and products I've tried. I'm also starting a photography course so I hope to experiment with some of my photos and hopefully learn some helpful food photo tips.
For now I thought I'd share some yummy banana flapjacks which were pretty delicious!

Banana Flapjacks

125g butter

2 tbsp golden syrup

85g light muscavado/brown sugar

350g porridge oats

2 medium ripe bananas, peeled and mashed

1.Preheat oven to 180c. Lightly butter a baking sheet, 9” x 13” (I used a 9-inch square pan).

2.Gently melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a large saucepan.

3.Once melted, stir in the porridge oats until completely combined.

4.Stir in the mashed banana and turn out the mixture into the greased sheet. Press down firmly.

5.Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until the flapjacks are starting to brown around the edges and the middle feels firm to the touch. They will firm up as they cool, so leave in the baking sheet before cutting and removing. Cut into 2-3” squares.

Chocolate fudge cake

I know I haven't posted for a while - so much going on -  holidays, life - but thought I'd share my first real attempt at a chocolate cake which I've been threatening to make for some time now. There are so many recipes some using chocolate in the cake others cocoa, but this recipe was pretty straightforward and the cake was pretty moist and the icing very tasty.

Chocolate fudge cake

Ingredients

175g 6 oz of soft (room temp.) unsalted butter

3 large eggs

175g 6 oz self-raising flour

175g 6oz Castor sugar

30g of cocoa powder

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

2 tablespoons of milk

For the Coating and filling

75g Unsalted butter

175g icing sugar

3 tablespoon cocoa powder

A drop of milk

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4 (350F).

Put all the butter into a good-sized mixing bowl and, using a wooden spoon or an electric mixer, beat until creamy. Add all the sugar, beating all the time until the mixture is very light and fluffy.

Break the eggs into another bowl or jug, add the vanilla essence, and beat together with a fork until this mixture is light and frothy. Pour this mixture a bit at a time into the bowl containing the butter and sugar mixture. Take time and care on each occasion that you add the mixture to mix carefully and beat thoroughly.

Sift the flour and cocoa powder together by gently tapping the sieve with the heel of your hand over the butter, sugar and egg mixture. At any point in making this recipe, the more air you can trap in the mixture the better; conversely, the more you knock out by mixing roughly, the poorer the texture of the cake will be.

Add the milk. Then using gentle folding movements with a large spoon, mix the flour and cocoa mixture together into the rest of the mixture, so that they are completely blended; i.e. no streaks, just a nice uniform colour, yet done very gently. Divide the mixture between the two tins 18-20cm in diameter and place in the preheated oven for 15 to 20 mins.

The cake is done when the sponge springs back when gently pressed in the centre; or is starting to brown on top and has shrunk away from the edges of the tin container.

Turn out onto a wire rack and let the cake cool completely before you ice.

To make the icing – cream the butter then add cocoa and icing sugar – add milk till you get a spreadable consistency. Sandwich the cakes together and spread the icing on top – decorate as desired.

Cut a slice and enjoy!

M&S Raisin and Cinnamon Toasta Breads

Calories : 200 per toasta

I remember years ago loving square croissant pastries which went in the toaster from M&S. They were great with jam but sadly were one of the many M&S lines which didn't hang around for long. I'm not a huge fan of pastry and I love all things with raisins and cinnamon so thought these sounded pretty tasty, especially as they were made from focaccia bread and were described as being "chewy in the middle".

My mum sampled these first and wasn't that impressed, however I think this was more owing to the fact that she burnt them as she had the toaster too high.

I wasn't holding out much hope but was pleasantly suprised and thoroughly enjoyed them lightly toasted. They had a nice sugary sticky coating and were packed with juicy raisins while having the texture of foccacia.

There's also a chocolate chip version of these which I might try but I doubt that these will be available in M&S for long.