Rainbow jelly & marshmallow pie!

It’s a rainbow jelly pie! Oh doesn’t it look lovely??
Not sure where I got this idea again, maybe it was from the sweet rainbow cake and rainbowjelly pictures I've seen on google or I got the idea after seeing the rainbowcoloured packages for the jelly. Whichever way it was, I knew I HAD to make this cake at some point. I used marshmallow ‘pie’ inbetween so the colours wouldn’t blurr or mess up.
I used about a fourth of the ingredients for the marshmallow pie for every marshmallow layer and a fourth of every Hartley’s Jelly package I bought in all the cool colours I could find! I don’t believe I ever greased the glass oven bowl I put this in, but it wasn’t a problem. Do keep in mind that due to the setting of each layer before you can put another on, this might actually take a day or two, three! It doesn’t take much time however!



Ingredients:
Jelly layers:
Jelly in all colours of the rainbow!
Water (as stated on the package)

Marshmallow layers:
2 large white marshmallows (25-30 gram)
20 ml milk
40 ml whipping cream
1 gelatine leaf

1. Start with a jelly layer! (if you want) Put the jelly blocks in a large cup and add the boiling water. Wait till the jelly is dissolved and poor it in the bowl or tray you wish to have your cake in. Pop it in the fridge and wait until set.You might want to use just a small portion of the jelly, or the layers will be very thick.
2. Put the marshmallows in a small bowl and sprinkle the milk on top. Leave it in the microwave and stir it every 10-20 seconds until the marshmallow has dissolved and the mixture is non-lumpy.
3. Use another small bowl to mix the gelatine and whipping cream together. Put it in the microwave as well, and stir every 10-20 seconds until everything's dissolved.
4. Add one of the two bowls to the other and mix. Poor it onto the set layer of jelly and pop it in the fridge again to let the marshmallow layer set.
5. When this layer is set, repeat step 1 for a jellylayer, when that is set, repeat step 2 to 4 for a marshmallowlayer, and so on. The rainbow jelly&marshmallow pie is done when you can’t stand another layer! Serve with a warm sauce like custard, or eat it nice and cold!



On a sidenote, I made this in a complete different kitchen in England and kept popping everything in a microwave and randomly running downstairs to the kitchen again to make the next layer. It took me a total of 2 days as the jellylayers took quite long to set, but I’d made the next layer in about 10 minutes tops and got handier at it with the layers! Because of all the sugar and jelly and whatnot the pie really won’t go bad in the two days you might need to make it. It goes quite well with custard really. I’m starting to think this is an English flaw, they put custard on everything!
I managed to take some quick pics (not my best) before we omnomed it all!

Cheesy bread

While I’m busy blogging anyway, my wow is downloading and photobucket is down and I really can't be asked to do any of my homework, I might as well keep posting! So I’ll say something about bread. I can’t really live without bread and eat it every day. Of course I prefer (sweet) buns over loafs and I’d still much rather have dark grainy bread than anything close to plain white. After my exams I really felt like baking (and appearantly I’m the only one that wakes up thinking she wants to make buns) and I decided I’d make cheesy buns. The idea was making bread dough with cheese mixed in (perhaps some salami/proscuitto as well), then making pesto or some herby butter, cut off bunsized dough bits, roll them out, spread the pesto over and roll them up again, put them in my lovely tiny loaftin and coat them with a bit of milk and then loads of cheese. The idea was perfect! But when you’re slightly falling ill, everything is going completely wrong and you’re having a BAD DAY, then of course, this idea would just be ruined as well. I put my breadmachine on the perfect settings, absent minded as I was and by the time I went to check, I had baked myself a nice bread. That is, I was just in time to dump some grated cheese on, but either way my idea of buns with a pesto swirl was completely gone. So I’m not posting a recipe on this lovely idea, but just on simple bread with a hint of cheese coated with quite a lot of cheese.



Ingredients:
slightly less than 1 cup water (210 ml)
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cups white flour (350 gram)
3/4 cup (cheddar) cheese (75 gram) plus more for coating
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon dried yeast
milk, for brushing

1. Poor the water and oil into the bread machine pan and sift the flour over. Add the cheese on top and put the salt and sugar into a different corner of the pan each. Then make a well in the middle and add the yeast.
2. Put the machine on a normal white bread cycle and leave it! (Or put it on a dough cycle if you want to make minibuns with a pestoswirl.) When the doughcycle and rising is done and the machine starts to bake the bread, brush some milk over the top and add as much more cheese as you want on top. Leave it again until it’s done and then well.. done!

Ah, you just gotta love breadmachines for being so easy though. Even though they can ruin your bun-plans the little backstabbers! Hope you enjoy this recipe as well!




Don't you just love messy pics taken quickly at night with horrible lighting and what not?

Leek soup with coconut milk

When my mom comes up with “Let’s go shopping with the whole family!” I can only think of horror-scenario’s. Shopping with a bunch of women means every ile will take at least an hour to get through and every single thing on every single shelf will be looked at, picked up, considered and probably put back – or in the worst case BOUGHT. I have nothing against buying things, but when my family thinks it needs scrapbookstickers when none of us like to do the whole scrapbooking thing, it makes me want to kill things. But most of these everything-and-nothing shops have a book section, so this is where you’d find me. While my sisters came home with bags full of clothes, perfumes, make-up, paintings and other nicknack I got a book called “Soups”. It’s got soups in it alright! From the one I’m writing on now, to fruitsoups, unionsoup, mushroomsoup, spinachsoup, breadsoup with tomatoes till things like almondsoup, garlicsoup and cold yoghurtsoup. Trying some of these will be quite an adventure.
According to the way this leek-soup looks this might’ve been a sweet idea for Halloween. Too bad I hadn’t thought of that. The soup is quite tasty and I really like the coconut cream through it, but don’t use too much lemon. I had to throw half my soup away after I added too much lemon and no one liked it anymore. Originally the recipe used lime though, and that might’ve been why it went terribly wrong with the lemon’s my parents had brought home from doing the groceries. But before I destroyed it the soup was ‘lush’ as some English like to put it. So go easy on the lemon and you might like this soup just as much as I did! Note: if you don’t have a whole family to feed you might want to start off with half.



Ingredients:
Splash of olive oil
2 leeks
half a (green) bell pepper
2 potatoes
1 lemon (or 2 limes)
handfull coriander
600 ml vegetable broth
225 ml coconut milk
salt and pepper to taste

1. Start with slicing the leeks into thin slices. Chop the bell pepper in small pieces and the potatoes into little cubes. Grate the peel off the lemon and cut the coriander into smaller pieces. Heat a bit of olive oil in a pan and add the leeks, bell pepper, potatoes and grated lemon. Cook everything for a few minutes
2. In the meanwhile cook the broth in a pan. Add the leek/bell pepper/potatoes/lemon peel to the broth and bring it to boil. Lower the heat a bit when it boils and leave the soup to simmer until the potatoes are ready.
3. Take the soup off the fire and leave it to cool for a bit while you get out a food processor. Poor the soup in the food processor and ‘process’ it till you have a thick soup without any large lumps. Then poor everything back into the pan.
4. Time to put the soup on the fire again! This time add the coconut milk and the lemon juice (easy easy!!) until you like the taste. Mix everything in well and make sure the soup doesnt start boiling again.
5. Done! You can eat this soup either warm or cold and serve some lovely crackers with or use it as a starter for your Christmas dinner.



That reminds me I have to set up a menu for Christmas. I want to cook a lot and make some things nicely in theme (Im thinking of making green and red bread)! So that’s another thing I need to look into. Currently still trying to figure out how Im going to study abroad and what I need. Wonder if I’ll have a kitchen sufficient enough to do some baking...

Crackin' crackers

So what can I say about crackers? They are just bloody simple crackers. Obviously nothing is ever as it looks and there is actually an art to making crackers. Mine for instance aren’t thin enough. They’re nice but not thin enough and I swear they couldn’t get any thinner when I made these. Although a bit more doughy – just very slightly – at some points in stead of the cracky feeling of a cracker, they were nice. I think I made a slight mistake when I put anice in these crackers in stead of the prescribed cumin. Although I still might have been better of with dried parsley and a hint of garlic. You could put anything in really as long as it’s dried. I wouldn’t recommend putting sweet things like dried fruits in, especially since you also have the size to take into account. So, let’s get to the recipe then eh?
The recipe makes about 48 pieces for which you’ll need two baking trays. You might want to start off with half if you’re not sure you like it or if you don’t want so many. 48 crackers will be gone in no time though, mind!



Ingredients:
250 grams flower
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
60 grams margarine (cold)
1 teaspoon roasted anice seeds (or cumin or anything else to your liking)\
100 ml water

1. Start off with sifting the flower, baking powder and salt together. Rub ther margarine in with a spoon or so. You should get a lot of crumbles. Make sure there are no lumps of butter left. Add the anice seeds after.
2. Add the water bit by bit and mix it in with your spoon. The dough must remain firm but kneedable so don’t add too much, or add more when needed.
3. Kneed the dough till all the ingrediënts are mixed in and it is to your liking. Warp the dough in foil and leave it in the fridge for about half an hour
4. Take the dough out of the fridge and kneed it again. Take about a fourth of the dough and roll it out on the (floured) countertop making sure its REALLY thin. Then cut out rectangles with either a cutter or in my case a rolling pizza knife (whatever it’s called!) or some other funky shape you feel like cutting really.
5. Line two baking trays with baking parchament and organise all the crackers on there. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake the crackers in about 10 minutes goldenbrown. Done!



And then you have your own home-made crackers which you can eat with soup or cheese or however you like to eat your crackers. Wonderful, isn’t it? And it’s really not hard, but I might want to make a video of making these some time. Not only because it’s easy, but because some people might still need it and to see how making a video of me baking will turn out. I haven’t tried it yet, and almost everything is worth at least a try right?


If you ever come across cream cheese with sweet peppers - it's seriously worth a try!