Chocolate and peanut butter crispy cakes!
One jar of crunch peanut butter, two big bars of cooking chocolate, dark and high in cocoa solids! Melted together in the microwave (choc first and then add PB) then give it a good stir, sniff (very important!) and then add enough cornflakes or rice crispies to use up all the chocolate peanut yumminess before spreading it all out on a tin or baking tray lined with a bit of greaseproof. Leave in fridge while you go and do something else and cut into squares just before you need it - the bits that drop off as you tidy are for you to test and it is kinda the law that you do this and at the same time give yourself a pat on the back! Mrs Tudor and I thought that they would be jolly nice if they also had some sultanas or flaked almonds in...or some glace cherries.....*sigh* sadly the Monday ladies are a little choosy and some don't like sultanas or orange or apple or...you get the picture? I like to try and keep everyone happy!
This post has been inspired by a great tweeter fella who loves a good cake and always makes me smile when things are being a bit glum or tricky...he knows who he is! He liked the look of my crispy cakes which went down a storm with the crafty ladies last night...I missed another evening session of my Monday group due to being knackered and feeling a little under the weather - I have my second assessment for anti-tnf this Thursday and it's making me a little stressed. Over the last few years I have seen a pattern forming and I always get slightly 'better' around this time of year - to narrowly fail another assessment would be very hard to bear....but hey ho, there is always cake!
I've had to adapt almost every aspect of my relationship with food since becoming ill, at first I did try to isolate which villainous foodstuff was responsible in making me become so ill. Then after a while I thought 'sod it' and didn't really bother about anything, I just wanted to be able to move around and not be in pain - food became fuel and was no longer pleasurable.
I'm back round to enjoying my relationship with food again, it's different and there's always a few glitches along the way such as when I take Tramadol (takes away my appetite completely - not a good thing! I may look hefty but it isn't always food that's responsible...) but we are rubbing along nicely right now...I've developed a few different techniques which will have purists fainting all over the place but it gets me by and I have very few complaints!
These are my heavy old scales, they belong in a big farmhouse kitchen and not in a tiny modern (but perfectly formed) council house in deepest, darkest Suffolk.
I use the butter to weigh out the self-raising flour and sugar - equal amounts of each and then pop the butter into one of my lovely old vintage mixing bowls and place it in the oven whilst it's warming up. I know that I should be creaming the sugar and butter together until it's light and whippy but if I do that I will need a lie-down for the rest of the day. It's the same with preparing vegetables, chopping up a butternut squash can finish me off for a week! As soon as there is some softening occurring I remove the bowl carefully and sit down with it at the table and using a wooden spoon start to mix everything together...I could use the Kenwood mixer but what with the pills resting on it and having to change the beater...I prefer this way. Once I've added eggs - five if they are from Zsa zsa or Button and four if they are from Hylda or Betty - I plonk it into a big silicon and glass cake tin I got from Lidl for four quid and cover the surface with chopped up fruit. Pear and raspberry work well but so do pears on their own and if you are lucky enough to live near a Bullace tree then do some foraging and get them on that cake! After a sprinkle of sugar it goes into the oven and is ready when an inserted skewer comes out clean...ta da!
It's not all about cake though and the Fella and I have had this (above) every Sunday bar one ever since seeing this on Nigella's programme - he reckons he'll never get bored of it! Parmesan dusted eggs are cooked in tomatoes that have been mushed up in a pan with garlic and chilli - we use a squeezy tube of Harissa paste from the Turkish bit in Asda instead of chopping chillies, with my track record for clumsiness it's far to risky to allow me to handle REAL chillies...
So between my wonderful ma cooking brilliant roast dinners for me and eating with the Fella I have managed to find a way to love food again. I can no longer lift my pots and I can't cook every meal everyday, I don't have the energy and my hands hurt far too much but we get there...slowly! Tonight we will have sesame prawn toasts with our Thai curry, in the old days I could rustle them up in no time but these days I need three days notice and recovery time...they are so worth it though! The only ones we have had that are better are at the China Chef in the Station Yard at Needham Market.
There's your first food blog from me then Noel...I've held back some hot cake pics for another time! Nic x
PS. Apologies for poor quality photos, I'm borrowing the Fella's laptop and only have BlackBerry photos of food to hand right now!
