Curried Sausages

I have never been a fan of curried sausages that have gravy in them but I love these ones. This is a recipe I learnt from my mum years ago, shared with her permission of course.

You will need:

• 8 sausages (I have found Coles brand sausages to be the best for this recipe)
• 2 cups of frozen peas and corn
• 1tbsp mild curry powder (gotta keep it child-friendly here)
• cornflour to thicken

Boil the sausages until the skin starts to separate from the sausages. Turn the heat off and, one by one, remove a sausage from the water, pull the skin off and cut it to bite sized pieces. The reason I say to do it one by one rather than to drain it all first is because once the sausages start to cool/dy, the skins stick down and it makes this step is a real pain.

Once all the sausages have been skinned and cut, throw the skins out, tip out the remaining water and rinse out the pot.

Add the sausages to the pot along with the veggies, fill with water until just covering the food. Bring it to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add the curry powder and give it a good stir. Make a paste with about a tablespoon of cornflour and a few drops of cold water, add it to the pot while stirring. Simmer for a further 10 minutes.

After the 10 minutes you can add more cornflour or water to the pot of needed for your desired consistency, just remember that it will thicken a little more over time as it simmers. Simmer for another 10 minutes or until veggies are cooked through and you have reached your desired consistency.

Serve with mashed potatoes.

Sorry, I didn't pause to get a pic of it served like I usually do.. It tastes too good to be pausing for anything ;-)

- To freeze, under-cook the vegetables and leave out the cornflour. When you are ready to defrost and eat, you may need to add more water and then thicken it.

Mini Chocolate & Banana Muffins

The other day while at the supermarket I found a big bag of over ripe bananas for less than a quarter of the usual price so I thought I would take the chance to do a bit of baking this week. Little did I know just how many Bananas there were in the bag. I baked these muffins today to try to use some up, and the kids love them!. They have in them banana, milk chocolate melts and white chocolate melts, which in my opinion, is much better than chocolate chips.

To make these, you will need:

• 2 cups of SR flour
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 2 bananas
• 2 eggs
• 125g butter
• 1/3 cup white chocolate melts
• 1/3 cup milk chocolate melts

Grease a muffin tin and pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. 

Mash the bananas and, using an electric mixer, combine all ingredients except the chocolate.

Roughly chop the chocolate melts and add them to the bowl, gently stir them in using a wooden spoon or spatular. Spoon the mixture into a muffin tray. Bake the muffins for about 10 minutes per batch. This recipe made 34 mini muffins.

Yum!

Minestrone

This is such a healthy recipe! And so so yummy! I'm not a fan of tomatoes at all but I loooove this recipe..

• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of crushed garlic
• 1 small brown onion, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 stalk of celery, diced
• 1 zucchini, diced
• 100g of green beans, topped and tailed and cut to about 2-3cm
• 60g of cabbage
• 70g of bacon, diced
• 1 400g can of diced tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
• 2 cups of chicken stock

Over high heat, heat the oil in a frying pan (I actually like to use my wok because it gets so mud hotter). To the pan, add the garlic, bacon, onion, carrot and celery. Fry for about 3-5 minutes until the onion is soft and fragrant. 

Add tomatoes, tomato paste and stock. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add the zucchini, beans and cabbage and simmer for a further 10 minutes.

Serve with crusty bread.

Banana Bread

Who doesn't like banana bread?! Yum! Here is my recipe:

• 3 1/2 cups of SR flour
• 1/2 cup of plain flour
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
• 1 1/3 cup of brown sugar
• 1 cup of milk
• 4 eggs, lightly whisked
• 100g butter, melted and cooled
• 4 bananas, mashed

Pre-Heat the oven to 190 degrees celcius, grease a loaf tin with cooking spray. Combine all ingredients well, pour into the loaf tin and bake for 50 minutes. Let sit for 5 minutes before removing it from the tin. Cool on a cooling rack.

Serve with a cup of tea (or if your as desperate for some delish banana bread as Mr Bay is, eat it before you even put it in the oven) :-)

Carbonara

This is such a simple recipe but it's oh so good. If it were up to Logan I think we would have it for dinner 99% of the time.

I don't like to say how many servings a recipe makes because everyone eats different amounts, but this recipe feeds our family of five with the kids going back for seconds and Logan bloating his bowl.

You will need:

• 1 small/normal sized packet of penne pasta
• 4 rashes of bacon
• 1 small tub of thickened cream
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 a cup of finely grated parmesan cheese
• 60g butter

Cook the pasta to packet directions.

Fry the bacon until it is cooked, add the cream and turn the heat down.

Whisk the eggs and mix them with the cheese.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it, mix through the button and cover for a few minutes. Stir through the raw eggs and cheese, and the bacon and cream. Cover and let sit for five minutes. Serve

See? Easy peasy!

Chicken Risotto

I love chicken risotto, it is such a good hearty meal with some really lovely flavours. 

This recipe will make enough for a family of 5 to eat twice.. With young kids anyway. 

You will need:

• 1 tbs olive oil 
• 1 whole cooked chicken, shredded (I like to dice my chicken)
• 2 cups of arborio rice
• 2 carrots, diced
• 2 stalks of celery, diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 tbs crushed garlic
• 1L of hot chicken stock
• Boiling water
• About 60g of butter
• 2/3 cup of grated Parmesan

In a large frying pan (or pot) heat the olive oil over high heat, fry the onion and garlic for 3 minutes or until the onion is soft and transparent, add the carrot and celery and fry for a further 2 minutes.

Add the rice to the pan and give it a good mix. Add the stock a cut at a time to the rice, stir often and wait in between each cup for the rice to absorb it. Once you have gone through the stock, just replace it with boiling water, gradually adding it until the rice stops absorbing it. 

Once the rice is cooked and absorbing no more water, take it off the heat and stir through the butter and cheese, let it sit covered for a few minutes while the butter and cheese works it's magic. Give it one last stir then serve it up. 

This recipe is still so good for the next couple of days. 

Yummy Spaghetti Bolognese

Spaghetti bolognese is a favorite in almost everyone's homes I think, and there are so so many ways to make it, I myself have a few different ways I make it, depending how I'm feeling at the time. This recipe is the one I chose to use today. I love this one as the sauce has a lovely creamy texture without using butter.

This recipe makes enough to feed a family of 5 twice. You will need:

• 900g beef or pork mince
• 4 rashes of bacon, diced
• 2 tsp crushed garlic
• 1 tbsp oil
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1 large zucchini, diced
• 1 brown onion, diced
• 1 420g can condensed tomato soup
• 1/2 cup of beef stock
• 2 tbsp (1 sachet) of tomato paste

Heat oil in a frying pan over medium to high heat. Fry the onion and garlic for 3 minutes. Add the mince and bacon and fry for 5 minutes or until browned. Add the veggies, soup, stock and tomato paste. Give it a good mix and cover it. Leave it to simmer for about 20 minutes.

Serve with spaghetti, Parmesan and garlic bread.

The sauce freezers perfectly in an airtight container. If you want to freeze spaghetti with the sauce then you just need to under-cook the spaghetti a bit.

Egg-Free Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding

None of us here are allergic to egg however so many times I've craved a chocolate self-saucing pudding only to get to the fridge to find that I'm out of eggs yet again. So Yay! It isn't as good as my normal recipe but definitely scoff-able! In fact, I may have eaten the left-overs the second the kids were in bed the following night!

For the 'cake' you will need:

1 cup of SR flour

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup milk

40g butter, melted

For the 'sauce' you will need:

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 1/2 cups boiling water

Like all my recipes, this one is super easy!

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Combine all the cake ingredients. Make sure the batter is smooth. Pour into a baking dish.

Combine the brown sugar and cocoa powder for the sauce and sprinkle over the cake. Pour the water over the top and pop it in the oven. Bake for about 35-40 minutes.

Serve with ice-cream.

Enjoy! I will post my usual recipe next time I make it.

2 Ingredient Chocolate Fudge

This recipe is my easiest yet. As you probably got from there being 2 ingredients! 

I've gotta say, this certainly isn't as good as my mums recipe however it took me years to finally get her recipe out of her, if i shared it online.. well.. I'm not sure I would live to write another post ;-)

Anyway, here it is;

Like I said, not as good as mums, but still yummy!

The two ingredients are:

• one tin of sweetened condensed milk; and 
• one bag of (Coles Brand) milk chocolate chip melts

Chuck them both in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave for a few minutes until melted. Make sure you take it out a few times and give it a good mix, I would hate to see how it would turn out if you cooked it! 

Here is where I cheated (as if cooking with only two ingredients isn't cheating enough!), I used my mini muffin tin to make mini individual chocolates. Because why cut up a big slab when I don't have to? Granted, they were a little bit of a pain to take out because they don't go as hard as I expected. But knowing my luck something would have gone wrong if I made it as a big slice anyway.

Pop them in the fridge and let them set. I think it only took about an hour.

All in all, this is a cheap, quick and easy fudge, and pretty yummy too! These would make a nice little treat for a birthday party.