Vodka Jelly

Yes, I know it’s not baking but I made it last week and I’m not feeling well so this will have to do this week. The most exciting thing about this recipe is the fact that I got ID’d in Sainsbury’s while buying the ingredients. They have a ‘Think 25’ policy so I’ll happily take that. 

I made this for my work Christmas party and it went down very well. I do find that people’s only experience of making it was from younger days when it not setting wasn’t seen as an issue. As I was sober during my younger years I paid attention to making sure the jelly set and experimented with the best flavour to complement the vodka. I was always put in charge of the alcohol at house parties as I could be trusted not to drink it while I prepared punch and other such things. 

So below is my recipe and method which is guaranteed to give you a fairly solid jelly that can be served in cubes of shots. Easy. 

Ingredients

1 bottle 70cl vodka (this equates to 20 shots)

6 packs of strawberry jelly 

1.    Get a large roasting tray or plastic food storage box that can hold 2 litres of liquid. Put the kettle on.

2.    Cut up two of the packs of jelly into a measuring jug and fill up to the 500ml mark with hot water. Melt the jelly and pour the liquid into your mould.

3.    Then with the other four packs do them two at a time, as above, but use 400ml of hot water per two packs. Pour jelly into mould.

4.    Then pour all the vodka in, stir, and set in the fridge.

5.    Once set prise out of the mould – you can get a bit aggressive with it as its fairly stable jelly. I tend to release the jelly from the edges and then tip upside down. Cut into 20, or more, pieces. These will store in a plastic storage box in the fridge.

Bread Pudding

I go through phases of thinking I don’t have a certain spice and buying it when I do my shopping four weeks in a row. This means I then have a glut of a particular spice and think of ways to use it. Smoked paprika is currently in abundance and once I managed to use cumin seeds (mainly toasted and then ground down) in every meal for two weeks. I don’t seem to do this for dried herbs as I’m always scrabbling about and using thyme instead of oregano or something else.  

As it’s coming up to Christmas I decided to check what spices I had to aid me in Christmas style baking. Along with the usual – cinnamon, ginger – I discovered that I had two unopened refill packets of mixed spice and a small glass jar of it. I have no idea when I bought these but mixed spice just smells instantly of Christmas to me so I looked into how I could use it. A recipe that calls for tablespoons of spice and not ½ teaspoons. I wasn’t doing well until I remembered I was seeing a friend soon and that she likes bread pudding. I’ve never made it before but looking at recipes I soon discovered a lot of mixed spice was needed. I did a mini trial run last weekend and then went for it last night. 

This tastes good to me but I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten it before! However the test batch went down well at work (although what doesn’t?!) and I’m sure this is what other pictures of it looks like. It’s a good way to use up excess bread you may have and can make use of any dried fruit you have lying around. It’s basically making a bit of a custard style gloop using squished up bread. And if that doesn’t tempt you …. 

Ingredients

500g bread (I used white but I’ve been assured wholemeal will do)

500g dried fruit (sultanas and raisins went in mine but I guess anything dried would do – maybe not apple and pineapple but cranberries, apricots)

75g mixed peel (I know people can be funny about this but you need it)

2 tbsp mixed spice

Good grating of nutmeg (and I mean a good one)

600ml milk

3 large eggs, beaten

150g brown sugar (light or dark or a mixture)

Zest of a lemon (optional)

120g melted butter 

1.    Bread the bread up into pieces and put into a bowl. Add the fruit, peel and spices. Then pour in the milk and get your hand in there. Squish up the bread so it absorbs the milk and makes a batter that takes in the fruit. This doesn’t look attractive but is good fun.

2.    Add the eggs, sugar and zest, stir and leave for 15 minutes.

3.    Preheat the oven the GM4/180°C and line a large tray. Mine was about 35cm x 20cm. You could use something smaller, the final result will just be deeper.

4.    Add the melted butter to the mixture and stir well. Pour into the tin (you can sprinkle with sugar to form a crust if you like) and bake for 1 ½ hours. Check it’s done but it’s meant to be stodgy so don’t worry too much about it.

5.    You can either serve warm with custard or cream, or wait until its cold and cut into chunks.

N.B. Now having 500g of stale/left over bread is quite a lot. This recipe will happily be adapted for the weight of bread you have. I did a trial run with 160g of bread and just did about a third of everything. It worked. Bake for about 40 minutes and check.

Tara's Vegetarian Sausage Rolls

I promised my office that I would make the sausage rolls if they filled in our industry training diaries. I’m in charge of making sure this happens and as it's fairly annoying to keep reminding people I find that bribery helps. Anyway I have never previously catered for vegetarians when doing sausage rolls and needed to on this occasion.  

So what to do? Well I went online and found a recipe that looked like the craziest recipe ever for something that would taste good. I found it on The Veggie Mama blog and apparently it’s someone called Tara’s recipe. Now I don't know Tara but I feel it only right to credit her. These look very much like sausage rolls (which might put some people off if the whole point of not eating meat is to avoid what it looks like) with the oats adding texture to them. They are better hot than cold but what isn’t in the baking world? 

Ingredients

1 egg

1/3 cup cottage cheese

1/4 cup crushed walnuts

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 large shallot (or a small onion)

1/2 cup breadcrumbs

1/2 cup oats

1 tsp dry veggie stock (I crushed 1/3 dried veggie Knorr stock cube and that was about right I think)

A good grating of Parmesan cheese

Ready rolled sheet of puff pastry

Beaten egg  

1.    Preheat the oven to 200°C/GM 6.

2.    Put the egg, cottage cheese, soy sauce and shallot in a blender and whizz together.

3.    Put the breadcrumbs, oats and parmesan into a bowl and mix. Add the wet mix and stir together well.

4.    Unroll the puff pastry and cut in half lengthways. Put half the mixture as a sausage down each half. Put some beaten egg down one side and fold the pastry over the mixture, sealing by pushing down with fingers or pressing down with a fork.

5.    Cut into the desired size, brush the top with egg and bake for 20 minutes or so. You can top them with seeds or crushed onion crispies (I find it useful to have something that shows easily what is vegetarian and what isn’t).