Easy Peasy Paprika Pepper Quesadilla...

......wiiiiithhomemadechilliandlimeguacamole.
Holy Guacamole! Try saying all that after a few tequilas. I DARE YA.

Its only 10am on a Saturday morning and about, roughly, i'd say, 100 degrees outside (weather girl career plan B sorted). If you eat a fry up right now, i will think you a) must be so hungover you can't tell its sunny and scorchio or b) you're one of those people who eats fry ups on holidays in spain and therefore get out of my kitchen right now.
SO.
Ditch the bacon grease and ketchup on hot summer mornings and head straight for a mexican brunch.
Fresh, spicy, light, bright ingredients (except the cheese but who doesn't love cheese on all the foods OK?) make for the best type of breakfast. These are so quick and easy and 10000% tequila hangover proof. Rachel loves tequila more than me. Im sure she could manage 20 of these after that night we had in exeter...
The homemade guacamole is also so, soooo easy and takes just a few minutes. Don't worry if you don't have a blender an electric mixer, just going at it with a spoon pretending its someone you hate will work just as ok and offer some free therapy at the same time.

Just promise promise me you WILL use lots of lime, chilli and paprika and bright red crunchy peppers and we're sorted.
These also make for a healthy pizza alternative if you can't quite bring yourself to eat this much cheese in the AM and want it with beer (who am i kidding. really).

For the Guacamole:

2 ripe avacados

1 lime squeezed

Chilli powder to taste- fresh chillis even better if you can face it in the am!

Paprika powder to taste

Put all the ingredients in a food processor or blender and blitz. Season with the spices to taste!

For the Quesadilla:

2 tortilla wraps per person

Grated cheese

Fresh peppers, chopped

Paprika to taste

Head your griddle or pan on a high heat, grease pan, lay down one tortilla and load on the cheese and peppers and sprinkle with pepper and paprika to taste, place the second tortilla on the top and press down- i used a bacon press because god knows why but there's on in this house- flip over when the cheese starts to melt inside and the side of the tortilla starts to brown. The edges should go nice and crispy! This works well with cajun chicken also!

Plus you can add sweetcorn, chorizo etc etc into your quesadilla. To be honest i haven't eaten pizza in weeks, it was friday, i love making fresh guacamole and i wanted to play with my new camera. Do what ever the bloody hell you like with these ha!

p.s first brunch recipe post on this blog yay! 

Holly x

Big Blueberry Muffins For Breakfast

When most folk buy a new camera what do they do? Oh you know, maybe take a walk and photograph some landscapes, take pictures of their friends, family, maybe even their pets. What did i do? Headed straight for a quick and easy but damn yummy blueberry muffin recipe from my magnolia bakery book to create some little bundles of blueberry joy that would make for the perfect test subjects for my new camera. I was picturing big fluffy white muffins with bright blue spots all over them to make for fantastic foodie bloggy photos.
What i got was even better! Big proud, fluffy, but dense (good dense, buttermilk was involved, however full fat milk works fine) with bursts of burst purple blueberries, specks of white chocolate chips and lovely glazed tops.
Why did i add white chocolate? Er cause. Chocolate.
Oh they also read the manual. I have a certificate somewhere that says i'm pure BA boss at photography, so i left the manual in the box and headed straight for the kitchen. So really i still have no clue how to use my new camera.

Next time i make them i will 100% use chocolate chunks from an actual bar rather than chips, there wasn't enough chocolate! Are you a crazy woman i hear you all cry. Well when i took them into work Hayley who sits on the desk opposite noticed pretty much straight away. And if a fellow lady notices there isn't enough chocolate about, well, we have a problem!
However when you did get a bite of the dense soft sponge, big soft blueberry and a decadent swirl of the white chocolate all at once then it was the perfect combination i had pictured when fruit, chocolate and breakfast foods join together in holy muffin matrimony.
They made for welcomed thursday breakfast treats in the office and in the saxton household. Apart from my sister who is weirdly allergic to white chocolate. The milky bar kid is tres sad.

The really quick and easy one bowl recipe from the magnolia bakery book is in the link after the pics. Bring that cliche freshly baked muffin smell into your casa pronto!

Tips:
-I made my own DIY cases with squares of baking paper cut 20cm wide, place them over the muffin tin and use a small cup to press them down into the tins. The muffins cooked fine in them and have a real home baked look about them without the lines you normall get from shop bought cases.
(I used normal cases too for the ones to take to work with leftover batter)
-This makes them look great on a plate (poet wheeey) in little nests of scrunchy baking paper. 
-Try and find small blueberries, as in smaller than already quite small blueberries?! (i have officially gone mad) mine were a little too big (?!) and left quite big pockets in the sponge. However win some/lose some cause they also meant for that great purple dye on the sponge and when they burst they left an almost sweet jam like texture. 

-Use big big big chunks of good quality white chocolate for real rich decadence.

-Remember to spinkle with caster sugar before you bake them- this creates the lovely golden brown tops!

If you dont eat these warm with butter i won't ever talk to you again. Cheers.

Holly x

CLICK BELOW FOR RECIPE

Good Grief Charlie Brown(ies)

Yeah thats right, i went there. (sorry schulz)

There are 3 reasons why i adore this recipe for peppermint pattie brownies:

1. brownies are probs in my top 5 baked goods of all time
2. i really really love anything peppermint
3. i really really REALLY love peppermint patties, ever since i fell in love with them on a ski-ing trip to killington a few years back. i can scoff a bag of them in a scary amount of time it wouldn't even be worth filming for man vs food they're gone that quick
4. all we have here are peppermint poppets which suck ass in comparison and you only get like, 5 in a box
4. i really really love anything snoopy related and peppermint patty is a boss
5. they come from the absolutely stunning food blog How Sweet It Is which i am currently obsessed with and my new blogging hero/inspiration is the very funny and lovely Jessica who runs it
6. i made them and they came out WELL good, giving me mega baking confidence booster points and the boyfriend agreed to help make them too which was a great way to spend a sunday afternoon
7. my friend Lucy once made me a 17th birthday cake with snoopy on and rachel (fellow blogee of this blog!) dropped the cake on the floor outside lucy's house. I don't think i've ever quite recovered but these seriously make up for missing Peanuts related baked goods in my life.

Okay, so thats er, 7 reasons why i adore this recipe.
This basically turned out to be the best brownie batch i have ever baked combined with the most fun and delicious topping you could want. Americans might say silly food things like scallions or chickpea mash or eggplant but by eck do they give good candy, this recipe is SOOO american and it works so, so well.
It wasn't dry, it didn't sink when i took it out the oven. The fondant turned out the most perfect consistancy. Maybe i under estimated my darling boyfriends cooking skills! (this didn't involve meat, pasta or caesar dressing so i thought we were in for a challenge)
I don't have too much waffling to do for once, this easy and delicious invention has sugar stunned me into silence for the first time ever.
It was incredibly easy to make- mixing time about 10 mins and baking time about 30. Fondant done in 10. Refrigerate for another 30 whilst you make the ganache. Eat entire block of them in about 5 seconds. I didn't even need my beloved kitchen aid for the batter its that easy!
I really cant remember the last time i ate something so good that i wanted to skip around my kitchen going weeeeee/OH MY GAD/guhhh im in food heaven at the same time. I think pancakes or pulled pork are the only things that make me go weak at the knees these days but these brownies may have just taken top spot.

I can't take ANY credit for these. Its all thanks to the amazing recipe from Jessica's blog.
Please go have a look, even if its just to drool over her fabulous food porn photos!
Follow the link for the recipe and don't get too confused with the cups you can look up conversions into grams. You can buy all the ingredients in good old tesco theres nothing complex about this recipe at all.
For some reason my peppermint fondant didn't come out as bright white as hers did which is a shame as the bright white icing looks great against the dark fudgey brownie, but it sticks all together perfectly in a big sticky minty chocolaty chunk of heaven.
I honestly don't think there's anything better than refreshing peppermint cutting through chocolate and theres something about fondant thats just so blissfully moreish you just can't help yourself. These will literally just make you go UGH (in a very, very good way). Make sure you use good quality dark chocolate for the ganache otherwise it will taste rubbish.

Enjoy!

Holly x

CLICK HERE FOR BROWNIE HEAVEN

Jamie O's Orangey Carrot Cake

...thats also carroty, spicy and er, quite flat. But that didn't make a cool alliteration.
I came to a bit of a carrot cake conundrum this week when looking for a recipe to use for a fathers day treat (as requested by papa sax) theres obviously tons of variations of every kind of cake, everyone has thier own preferred versions or family recipe's but i must have seriously missed the memo that there is about 500 different ways to make carrot cake! I thought i'd just look one up and have everything i needed already yet every recipe calls for something different and i didn't come across one the same.. after browsing all the books in the house i whittled it down to the following few:

Lorraine Pascales 3 tier carrot cake (asks for 9 eggs!)
Lili Vanilli's carrot cake (made with an entire bottle of fruit smoothie and spelt flour)
Magnolia bakery carrot cake (asked for many complex americany things i didn't have time to source)
Jamie Olivers 'a rather pleasing carrot cake' from his 'cook with jamie' book

In the end i went for Jamies recipe- mostly for the simplicity of the recipe- this was my first attempt at solo carrot cake baking and so i wanted to keep the ingredients to a minimum!
Luckily for me i don't have to type it out as old good jamie is so trendy its on his site, all 'pukka' and ready to go (and luckily for you guys that means less rambling from me)-

CLICK HERE FOR RECIPE

HOWEVER my tips for this 'simple' recipe to actually make it more simple (like it should be) and to stop you using every grater/zester/spoon/mixing bowl/whisk/chopping board in the house in a bit of a flap (as i ended up doing when halfway through mixing ingredients i forgot i needed to zest and squeeze my orange, chop the walnuts finely and ground nutmeg and cloves etc etc)
SO- before you start this-

-weigh your carrots out once grated- not when they are whole
-seperate your 5 eggs! it doesn't state this anywhere in the recipe?! 
-finely chop walnuts, zest and juice the orange, grate the nutmeg and crush the cloves first thing and set to one side so you can add them in quickly (i had to stop everything halfway through which left my mixture sitting for quite a while!)
-use a small to medium size orange, not an L, the one i used was pretty much a wannabee mango and i think made my cake too moist and dense and therefore resulting in a flat cake
-don't split between 2 21cm cake tins or you will be left with 2 very skinny (in my case slightly sunken and flat- sadface) cakes rather than a lovely thick cake like a traditional carrot cake should be! 

However it's whats on the inside that counts with cakes such as this, and im incredibly frustrated that the sponge turned out so dense after been in oven for 60 minutes! Considering this recipe has baking powder, self raising flower and egg whites in i do not understand why both my cakes sank when i took them out the oven and then uncovered a very damp sponge when cutting into it.
Anyway im set on making it again and tweaking it to get the perfect sponge. The recipe was a joy to make and the orange and spices came through amazingly making it a very moreish and fresh cake.

Im happy with the end result now its been iced, it has a nice homemade look to it and perfect for elevensies on fathers day, maybe it will taste so nice my dad will momentarily forget about me turning the heating up in june/leaving lights switched on all around the house/not cleaning my car/owing him money....

Holly x

My Two Favourite Things - Wine and Chocolate

This week is my last week at my current job, and so last week I was inundated with requests for some cakes to bring in this week. Whilst browsing the Internet for a bakewell tart recipe to make for these guys, I somehow came across this fabulous blog, Love and Olive Oil.

These guys are incredible, and after browsing through their recipes (there are A LOT) this one really caught my eye. Chocolate and wine, a girl's dream.

The recipe uses olive oil instead of butter in the cake mixture, which gives it a gorgeous richness and helps preserve the cake for much longer. I think I will be using this trick on a few more of my recipes.

I also made a few changes to the original recipe - my edition is below, the original can be found here.

It will take a while to assemble, and you will end up become facetious about how smooth the edges are. If pressed for time, make the cake the night before and assemble the next day.

Rachel x

Flour Free Gooey Goodness

Spying a metro over someones shoulder one december evening on my way home from work i saw Nigella was doing a signing of her new book at Selfridges the next evening. I thought: 

Ah an excellent christmas present for my mum, she'll love this!

The next evening i had about 5 minutes between finishing work in covent garden and getting there to get a good spot in the queue so legging it down a packed oxford street at the peak of christmas time i thought: 

She better actually be there. I better get a good spot in the queue. Man i wish i worked at Selfridges, this would be so much easier (guess where i ironically work now. Dreaming for another book signing of interest that i can be at the front of the queue for. ho ho ho)

Standing in an extremely packed lower ground floor in the middle of a very long queue, clutching my newly purchased Nigellissima book, the front pages bare and ready for a sharpie pen blessing i thought: 

This better be worth it, if all the recipe's are for salad i will be most annoyed.....

Et voila it was all worth it as the chocolate olive oil cake that i successfully baked last weekend was divine and there was a very happy momma Sax on christmas day when she opened her present and saw the message in the front pages. 

I am an awesome christmas present buyer and world renowned attempted cake baker daughter extraordinaire. Aren't my family lucky to have me living with them still.

Baking with olive oil may seem daunting or slightly weird- you may think the cake will be greasy or have a strange taste or that nutty smell that comes with (good quality) olive oil but this wasn't the case at all. It meant the cake retained just the right amount of soft gooeyness you need whilst its in a hot oven without been raw or undercooked in the middle.

You can substitute the ground almonds with flour. However even with no allergy sufferers in the house i still went with the almonds- and the complete lack of butter, milk and flour in this cake makes it seem just a teeny bit healthier doesn't it? (I asked my parents if almonds had dairy in them before writing this. I've said before Rachel is the brains behind this operation.) meaning its also the perfect tea time treat if you have guests who suffer from those allergies. 

Finally standing in front of the beautiful and talented Nigella herself i thought:
Er, nothing. I thought nothing. My mind went completely blank in a way i thought i was far too cool for it to go when around people from the tele. When she said hello and i er'd and ummm'd like a complete and utter loon until she finished signing the book in silence and handed it back to me where i then proceeded to walk away impersonating the blue one from finding nemo. A kind looking Selfridges employee then looked at me and asked if i needed any assistance. Great.

Holly x

Recipe link below to reduce blog post waffling length-

Rhubarb Spiced Cake

Oh What To Do With Rhubarb....

As you may or may not know, my family keeps a gorgeous vegetable patch, providing us with super fresh ingredients to cook with and share with our friends. Around this time of year, we usually have a glut of rhubarb- and unable to face a month of rhubarb crumble (very nice, but wears thin after a while) I went on the hunt for something different. 

I came across this recipe on the Internet, as my cook books were not providing something of interest for once, and I am glad I did. This cake is super moist, reminiscent of the sticky ginger cake I used to love as a kid, and everyone who tried it loved it. Easy peasy recipe by the amazing Mary Cadogan (although I will make some notes at the end) so crack on and enjoy! Very good for those who might never buy rhubarb in their weekly shop.

Rhubarb Spiced Cake