Meatballs!

Who doesn't love balls of meat? A versatile dish with a versatile recipe! Meatballs are fun to make, especially if you've got kids or friends and some free time! You can make a few or you can make a whole bunch of them like I did and freeze some for a later date! You can also make meatloaf with this recipe too if that's your thing! Let's get started shall we?

What You Need:

1 lb (500g) ground beef
1 medium onion, finely diced
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 eggs
4 slices of bread, crumbled
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground pepper
2 beef stock cubes, crushed into powder!

Ya Ready?

If you're baking these, Preheat oven to 350 F/180 F

1. Put all those lovely ingredients in a bowl and combine them thoroughly with a spoon. I say with a spoon because if you overwork the meat with your hands too much, then the meat tends to get tough.

(Pst, if you want to make meatloaf either gently put the mix into a greased loaf tin OR just shape the mixture into a loaf on a greased baking sheet and bake for 45 minutes!)

2. With gloved hands, form 1 1/2 inch thick balls with the meat mixture and then you can so any of the following:

A. Fry em up in a shallow pan with a little olive oil until cooked through.

B. Bake them in the oven for 15 -20 minutes until cooked through.

C. If you've got a saucepan filled with a lovely simmering pasta sauce, you can carefully put them in the sauce and let them cook in there. Don't disturb them by mixing the sauce or you'll just break the meatballs apart end you'll end up with meat sauce.

I went with B. because as I had a bit of time, I wanted to cut down the fat content and I wanted to freeze some afterward.

Serve them up as a meatball sub, or if you're like me, have them with good old spaghetti!

Done done done! Meatballs with a spicy tomato sauce over whole wheat spaghetti for me.

Now eat the food!

Carrot Cake

As it was my mothers birthday this past weekend, I decided to make her one of her favourite desserts: Carrot Cake. A lot of people are really skeptical of Carrot Cake simply because there's carrot in it. That's just crazy, carrots have a natural sweetness to them and even if you happen to have a batch of not so sweet carrots, they still go super well in this recipe. Paired with another cream cheese icing, this moist cake will be a sure hit. Even my dad enjoyed it (he ate half of the cake himself!) and he's super picky about cakes, trust me. Let's get started!

What You Need:

2 cups of plain flour
2 cups of sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 cups of finely shredded carrot
1 cup cooking oil
4 eggs

Cream Cheese Icing

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup of butter, room temperature
2 teaspoons of vanilla
4-5 cups of icing sugar

Ya Ready?

Preheat oven to 350 F/180 C

1. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon.

2. Add the carrot, eggs and oil and beat with an electric mixer (or a super amazing mixing arm) until everything is beautifully combined!

3. Now choose the baking tins you'd like to use. I chose three 9 1/2 inch round baking tins because I wanted the cake to be super fancy. I don't know...more layers to me means it's more impressive, maybe that's just me! What you want to do is grease your tins and then flour them. This ensures that the cake doesn't stick to the tin after baking! Make sure every little bit of those tins are greased and floured! Respect your cake!

4. Pour the batter equally into the tins. I tapped them on the counter top to help get rid of the bubbles! Bake for 30 - 35 minutes or until a toothpick that is inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean!

5. As you cool your cakes, get to work on the icing. The key to really nice and fluffy icing is to whip the hell out of it. I used an electric hand mixer for this. Cream the butter, cream cheese and vanilla together until mixed thoroughly. Gradually add the icing sugar....slowly though, you don't want it going everywhere. Keep on adding the sugar until the icing gets nice and stiff, yet fluffy. Set aside!

6. Flip one of the cakes onto a plate, ice the top with about 1/2 inch of icing. Place another cake on top of that one and ice, and then place the last cake on top. Ice the top and sides! I find messy and "dippy" icing looks nicer. It gives the cake a lovely effortless-I-just-whipped-this-cake-together-in-no-time-at-all feel.

7. Once you're done icing, you are totally done. I put a few shreds of carrot on top just to let everyone know it was indeed a carrot cake. Serve it up and enjoy!

Just to make myself feel better about eating this cake, I like claiming it's part of my five-a-day. Carrots are healthy, yo! Happy Birthday, Mom!

Now eat the food!

Macaroni and Cheese

Ah Macaroni and Cheese - one of my childhood favourites and always a hit with my friends and family! Super easy because most of the work is done in the microwave so make sure you have a good sized microwaveable dish to get started!

What you need:

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
half of one large onion, finely chopped
3 tbsp flour
3 1/4 cups of milk
1/2 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
2 1/2 cups of grated cheddar cheese
3 cups cooked pasta (preferably small like macaroni, but as you can see, I used rotini)

Ya Ready?

Preheat oven to 350 F/ 180 C

1. In a microwavable bowl add your olive oil, butter, garlic powder and chopped onions.

2. Add your milk and flour to the bowl too and give it a good mix to get rid of a good few of the lumps of flour. Don't worry if you don't get all of them, you can whisk them away in the next step.

3. Put your bowl in the microwave for 3 minutes, then take it out and whisk out those lumps. PLEASE NOTE THE BOWL WILL BE HOT SO USE OVEN MITTS TO GET IT OUT OF THE MICROWAVE! Safety first! Add 2 cups of the cheese and stir that in too. The mixture should be nice and thick like so...

4. Put the bowl back into the microwave for another 1 minute or so so that the cheese sauce is all nice and melted!

5. Now combine the cheese sauce with the pasta and mix together gently.

6. Into a nice deep dish, pour the cheesey covered pasta out and spread evenly. At this stage I added about 1/4 cup more of milk and 1/4 cup of cheese and mixed it in thoroughly.

7. Cover the top with the rest of the cheese and put in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes or until it looks like this:

Oh yeah. Dish it up and marvel at the cheesiness.

Mm, childhood.

Serves about 6 people if it's a side or 3-4 people if it's eaten as a meal.

Now eat the food!

Pizza Pizza

So do you ever grow suspicious of what exactly is in those store-bought frozen pizzas? Man then can be easy and tasty, but why not try and make your own. Trust me, you'll enjoy this homemade Pizza. Twas truly a hit with my family! Go crazy with the toppings. Mmmm. I tend to make the dough before I go to bed because then you don't have to worry so much about the rising process. And the dough always tastes better if it sits in the fridge for a few hours or overnight!

What you need:

Dough:
2 1/4 tsp of active dry yeast or one of those packets
1 cup of WARM water (quite important i did 2/3 cold and 1/3 hot)
2 cups of plain flour
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cornmeal (optional)

Pizza Sauce:
1 cup of canned crushed tomatoes or chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp oregano
2-3 leaves of fresh basil, torn into pieces
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
pepper
2 tsp paprika
1 garlic clove, minced and sauteed or 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp plain flour (optional)

Toppings:
Well...that's up to you. You just can't forget the cheese, okay?

Ya Ready?

1. First we must prepare the dough! What you need to do is put the yeast in a bowl and add that cup of warm water to it. Make sure it's mixed up well and you need to let it sit for 10-15 minutes or until the yeast water develops a frothy layer on top. That totally means the yeast is all alive, crazy and ready.

2. In another biggish bowl, combine the the flour and yeast water together and mix until you get a doughy ball in the middle. If the dough still has a lot of flour around it, add a tiny amount of water until it all becomes incorporated in the dough. If the dough is too wet, add some more flour - trust me bread is quite forgiving where measurements are concerned. As long as the consistency is right, you're pretty much good to go.

3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it for about 3-5 minutes with floured hands. The pizza dough should become nice and elastic so then let it rest while you clean out your mixing bowl and drizzle your olive oil in there.

4. Transfer the dough to that oiled bowl and rotate it around so all sides of the dough are coated in the oil. This is to help prevent the dough from sticking to the sides of the bowl while it rises.

5. Cover the dough with a bit of cling film or a lightly dampened towel and put the bowl in a warm place to rise until it doubles in size. (about 20-30 minutes)

6. After the dough has risen, punch it down to its original size again, cover and put in the fridge for a few hours or leave it in there overnight so it can rise again.

7. The next day, or a few hours later, make sure your oven is preheated to 350 F/ 180 C. Get your dough out and onto a lightly floured (or cornmealed!) surface and with floured hands, you want to go ahead and gently stretch that dough out into your desired shape. I chose a circle this time, but y'know...you can make it square or rectangular or triangular, whatever suits ya! Transfer that onto your pizza pan or oven tray.

8. The sauce is dead easy. Put everything in a saucepan on a medium low heat. Mix it all up and let simmer until the some of the liquid evaporates and the sauce gets thicker. Alternatively you can add that teaspoon of flour and thicken it that way. Depends what kind of mood you're in.

9. Let the sauce cool, or you could have used store-bought sauce, makes no difference to me. Spoon it onto your pizza dough stopping about 1 inch from the edge and then you have my permission to put whatever toppings you want on top.



(Psst, you can freeze your pizza at this point if you want to save it for another day!)

10. Bake your pizza for 20-25 minutes or until all your cheese is melted and bubbly and the crust is golden.

I put sun dried tomatoes, broccoli and onion on my pizza. Ohhhh it was devine!

Now eat the food!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Who doesn't like Red Velvet Cupcakes? ...I'm not going to even go into who doesn't like them, because that is just blasphemy, trust me. I've had failures with red velvet and successes. This one is most successful one to date! There's a random ingredient too...coffee?! Yep, even if you don't like coffee, add it anyway. It makes the cake that much more moist and you don't even taste the coffee, mhm.

What you need:

1 1/4 cup of plain flour
3/4 cup of sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp cocoa powder
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 tsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup of coffee
red food colouring

Cream Cheese Icing:
125 g cream cheese, room temperature
125 g butter, room temperature
2 1/2 cups of icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Ya Ready?

Preheat oven to 350 F/ 180 C

1. Put the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and cocoa powder into a bowl and mix it all up!

2. In a separate bowl mix the buttermilk, oil, egg, and vinegar all together and then add the dry ingredients to it.

3. Add a few drops of red food colouring to the batter....my food colouring was terrible, but normal, not cheap-as food colouring will do the job! Go on and make it properly red, unlike I did.

4. At this point, chuck in that coffee. Mhm it does make sense in the end! Mix it beautifully.

5. Pour into a lined 12-count cupcake tin (of if you're me, put it into 4 mini cupcake trays) and bake for 20 minutes or until fully cooked (poke it with toothpick, make sure it comes out clean!)

6. While those bad boys are baking, make that icing! Simply combine the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract until it's nice and creamy! Easy!

7. When the cupcakes are fully baked, let them sit until they are cool enough to ice and go wild!

Serve em up. I put red sprinkles on miiiine!

Now eat the food!