Cooking With Jaye: S'mores Brownies

 I'm not a massive chocolate fan, I don't like chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, hot chocolate or chocolate milkshakes. I can never even finish a small bar of chocolate, but these were amazing. Brownies are one of the few chocolatey goodies that I do like, although I'm pretty fussy, I like 'em cakey but the boy likes them gooey. I made these a week or so ago and they are perfect because the ones on the outside end up cakey, and the ones in the middle gooey. These were incredibly straightforward to make, you know me, I don't like to faff in the kitchen, and they didn't take long either. I love the marshmallow top, it makes these super special, but of course, you could leave it off.

You will need:

100g Butter 

200g Chocolate (you can use any chocolate you like, I used two bars of standard Milka because that's what I had in, but you can use dark or milk, I prefer them with milk!)

4 Medium sized eggs

250g Caster Sugar

100g Plain Flour

1tsp Baking Powder

30g Cocoa Powder

One bag of Marshmallows

One Digestive Biscuit 

The method is pretty simple, start by melting butter and chocolate, I did this by putting both in a glass bowl, sitting it in a saucepan full of water on a medium heat, stirring it as it melted, it only took a few minutes. Then in a mixing bowl beat eggs and sugar together, then fold in the chocolate butter mix. Then mix in flour, baking powder & cocoa powder. Mix it all up til its smooth then bung it in the oven on 200c for 20 minutes (works best in a 20cm tray). Once that's out, let it cool and switch the grill on. Sprinkle marshmallows over the top of the brownie, and grill until they've gone squishy and start to brown at the edges. Finally, crumble up a rich tea biscuit and sprinkle it on the top! Serve with a mug of your favourite tea.

Are you a brownie fan? Got any good recipes for me to try?

Cooking With Jaye #4: Easy Peasy Risotto

I have been on a cooking roll recently, trying out countless new recipes, making things myself so I know exactly what is in what I'm eating! I instagrammed this picture and loads of you asked for the recipe, so here goes!

You will need:

- around 250g of arborio rice

- one chopped onion

- a handful of asparagus tips

- bacon/bacon lardons

- frozen peas

- 750ml of vegetable stock

-125ml white wine (plus a glass for whilst you cook!)

- 30g of parmesan

- butter

- a clove or two of garlic (to taste)

To start, add the chopped onions and garlic to hot butter (about a tbsp) and fry slowly til soft.  Then add the rice and keep it moving constantly on a high height for 2-3 minutes. Pour in the wine and allow the rice to absorb it on a medium heat. Once the liquid has been absorbed, add the first 250ml of stock. Mix gently and then leave the rice to absorb. Then add another 250ml of stock.

In another pan, heat another spoon of butter and fry your chopped up bacon or bacon lardons. You can use as much or as little bacon as you like, or leave it out completely if you're veggie. Once the bacon is cooked through add your chopped up asparagus tips (I like to chop them to roughly inch long pieces) and toss. After 2-3 minutes take the pan off the heat and add two or three handfuls of frozen peas, and let the residual heat of the pan cook them. 

Add the last 250ml of stock to the rice and once that has absorbed taste the rice. It should be cooked perfectly by now but it may need a little more stock! Once the rice is cooked how you like it, mix in the bacon, asparagus & peas, and grate the parmesan into the pan. Mix it up all good and proper, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve with a little extra parmesan on top. All of this shouldn't take more than 25 minutes!

So there we go! If you try this recipe please instagram or tweet me a picture! What are your favourite quick and easy meals?

Cooking With Jaye #2 - Super Easy Cookie Cakes

I'm a low fuss sort of baker, I love the finished product, but if I'm gonna spend time cooking, I want it to be super easy, fairly speedy (so I don't loose interest) and use as few utensils as possible so I have less to clear up.

I had half an hour to kill this week and decided to whip something up using what we had in the cupboards. I much prefer to make things like cookies and flapjacks, it's so much cheaper and you can tailor them to your fancies. Plus these literally took me about ten minutes to make, and then I baked them while I got on with my work. I made these by adapting an American recipe so it works off cups, but if you don't have cup measures, just use a small coffee mug as 1 cup!

What You Need:
One cup of soft butter
One cup of sugar (you can use brown or white, they are more cakey with white and gooeyer with brown!)
Two medium sized eggs
One tbsp of Vanilla Essence
3 cups of self raising flour (or use plain and add baking powder)
Chocolate (you can use whatever chocolate you want! I used Dairy Milk Caramel as it was what I had in my cupboards, but you can use anything, or a mix! I used two bars but you need roughly 250g)

It's all super easy, pre heat your oven to 180c/350f and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Then, in a big mixing bowl beat the butter til smooth and then mix in the sugar. Add vanilla essence and eggs and beat together. Then slowly add the flour, mixing as you go. I found that after two cups, it was easier to use my hands to kneed it in as the mixture got a little thicker. The consistency shouldn't be too thick though!

Then it's chocolate chopping time! I cut each square into four, because I didn't want massive chunks, but you can cut it as big or small as you like, or have varying sizes in there (probably easier if you aren't using caramel chocolate!). Also, if you're planning on using caramel chocolate like I did, it's worth sticking the chocolate in the fridge for five minutes before you cut it, to stop all the caramel sticking to your knife! Then just mix it into the dough, it's as simple as that!

 From there, it's simply a case of spooning the mixture onto the baking tray, and sticking them in the oven. I kept mine pretty small but they still ended up as monsters! If I did them again I'd probably do them a little smaller, since they ended up huge!

Baking them is a bit of a guessing game, I'd say around 8-9 minutes, but go buy the colour, I took them out when they started to go golden round the edges. They'll be squidgy still when you take them out, but they'll harden up as they cool. I stuck them on a wire rack to cool straight from the oven, and then put them on a wooden chopping board when they were cool and put them on the coffee table when the boyfriend got home! So domesticated!

 Yum! Enjoy!

Do you have any quick and easy recipes?