Mushroom, Leek and Gruyere Tart

Dish: Mushroom, Leek and Gruyere Tart

Difficulty: Easy, but more cheating on pastry

Utensils Used: Knife, sieve

Cock Ups: One

Recipe Book: The Messy Baker by Charmian Christie

Cooking: Felt in a bad mood the other day, so I invited Carole Heidi over for baking. Perfect opportunity to try out my new cookbook.

So, I cheated on the pastry and brought a pre-rolled pack (ultimately lazy) to spread out on my baking tray. I was supposed to score about an inch from the edge, but I've always folded the edges over, so I did that. Slightly less tidy, but it does the same job.

The recipe asked for a large skillet. I don't know what a skillet is, so I used a wok. It's the largest pan I have, and we had a lot of mushrooms to cook. So, I obviously very carefully measured out 3 tablespoons of butter, didn't just cut off a hunk and throw it in, and melted it, then added some garlic.

I got my mushrooms out of the fridge, only to discover they'd been frozen solid, which made chopping them a bit tricky...

The recipe asked very specifically for cremini or portobello mushrooms, so I used.... what I had in the  fridge.

The recipe then asked for two cups of leek. I don't do 'cups' measurement, so I just used two leeks, cutting them in lengthways then slicing them into little half-moon pieces. Aaand forgot to take a photo.

This was then fried together with the butter and garlic until the mushrooms were soft but not weeping.

I placed the mix onto the pastry and cook at 425F, which roughly translates to 220C and baked for 15 mins. The tart is then removed from the oven, 3oz of gruyere cheese grated over it, baked for a further five minutes until the pastry is golden brown and the cheese melted.

Washing Up Required: Quite a lot, but some of that is cake detritus from the pudding we also made.

Result: This smelled divine, and looked pretty good too. I'd like to make it again and brave trying the pastry from scratch.

Taste Test: Both Carole and I thoroughly enjoyed this. The Boyfriend... Not so much. When he had a slice for lunch the next day, I asked him if he enjoyed it, his response was... less than enthusiastic. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

Overall Result: I'd make this again if I could persuade the Boyfriend to give it a second chance!

Mushroom, Leek and Gruyere Tart

Dinosaur Cupcakes

Dish: Dinosaur Cupcakes

Difficulty: At once easy, and INSANELY hard.

Utensils Used: Spatula, electric whisk, spoon

Cock Ups: One, but it was a biggy.

Recipe Book: We used the old 4442 (see here for more info)

Cooking: Special Guest Chef on The Disaster Kitchen today (well, I say today, we actually made these last week, but oh well.) Carole Heidi is a big Master Chef fan and does a lot of her own baking blogging (and gets sponsored posts and everything! Even if I managed to update regularly, no cook book publisher would touch me with a ten foot bargepole, because it would be guaranteed that I'd find new and unusual ways to balls up their recipes) so I invited her over for drinks and cakes. Only, we had to MAKE the cakes. With alcohol flowing. Probably a bad plan before we even started.

So, I provided ingredients and Carole provided dinosaur shaped cake moulds and green food colouring.

Photographic evidence that I do actually do this baking! I'm mixing 4oz of butter and sugar together.

4oz of flour, 2 eggs and a generous dollop of green dye were then added.

Whisk together and add more food colouring until it's the right colour. We went for 'off scale green'.

I realised at this point that I had a bogus ingredient that I didn't really ought to be putting in a cake - the coriander I forgot to put in my dinner! Much laughter at my hopelessness ensued and the coriander was put safely away. I'm not so dedicated to dinosaur realism as to add a bit of colour with herbs.

Cake mix was then added to the silicone mould. This wasn't easy as it was difficult to judge how much mix had been put in, and to get it into all the crevices of the dinosaurs. I'm sure putting it in the warm oven made it go runny and level out, but we definitely overloaded our moulds a little in our efforts to get the mix into every nook and cranny.

Regular cupcakes (with appropriate green cases) were made with the left overs.

Cooked for about 20-25 minutes in the oven at 180 degrees.

Washing Up Required: Not too much. Those bowls are a pain in the neck to fit in the dishwasher though.

Result: Words cannot describe. Well. Perhaps DINOSAUR MASSACRE.

Yeah, the cakes didn't come out of the mould so well. This was partly because we overfilled them a bit, but also I learned later that there's a spray you can get for silicone moulds to stop mixes sticking which we probably should have used...

We did get a couple that looked vaguely dinosaurish, but mostly these cakes were dinosaurs post-massive extinction event. Which was a source of much hilarity.

Taste Test: Because we essentially made Dinosaur Dust, we of course had to eat all of the cakes. And they were yummy. Made more so by the fact that we ate them with a bit of my mum's Jelly Jam.

I saved our second best dinosaur for the Boyfriend. He declared it bland and boring, but that didn't stop him hunting for another one the following morning, and expressing his intense disappointment that there weren't any left.

Overall Verdict: The tried and tested 4442 cake mix remains an easy staple for making deserts. The mould was fun, but I think we need to perfect both our amounts of cake mix in each mould and the technique of using the silicone moulds...

Dinosaur Cupcakes