Wild Garlic / Baerlauch

It is coming to that time of year that in Europe and Certain areas of the East Coast of the USA and Canada that when out walking in forest/mountain areas you will suddenly get a lovely whiff of Garlic. Now what you are smelling is Ramsons (Europe) or Ramps (USA/Canada).

Flowered Wild Garlic in Lough Key Boyle County Roscommon Eire

I do not have enough words to explain how much I LOVE this stuff. I first discovered this wonderful wild plant while at a snowboarding festival in the Alps in Austria. Enjoying a lovely meal with my than boyfriend (now husband) and one of my bestest friends Sabrina this was all over the menu. She had to explain to use what it was and we instantly fell in love with the stuff. We even bought some in a market and brought it home in our suitcases to cook with. I made a very tasty Pesto out of it that my mammy throughly enjoyed using to cook pretty much everything with. She put it in soups in curry you name it she had it in there calling it her secret ingredient. It only gave her away when I could smell it wafting around the house before dinner time.

Wild Garlic at the Meehambee Dolmen near Drum County Roscommon Eire

Ramsons is called a million different things depending on where you are from. Simply put it is Wild Garlic. Some will call it wild onion and that makes sense too as it has a slight chive smell while you are chopping it up. Also referred to as Bears Garlic in Austria and Germany that was the first name he learnt for it.

Wild Garlic on the hills by Boyne Castle, Portsoy Scotland

In Europe and the specific one I am talking about it's scientific name is Allium ursinum. It is a long wide leafy plant that flowers white petals at particular times of the season, it generally has a strong smell of garlic in its location and grows in large clusters. It is however a little bit like a weed and once it takes hold of an area it will spread rapidly. Every website around with tell you that it is at its best flavor and this time or that. I don't care it tastes good anytime and I will stick by that.
I have found that wild garlic can be found generally in wooded areas near a stream where it is quiet covered yet damp. If every you find yourself on a wild garlic hunt and you see a plant but you aren't 100% sure if it is the one. break the leaf and have a good sniff. You can always give it a taste too.

Ramp Farm, Richwood, West Virginia USA

There are a million things you can make with Wild Garlic in the Kitchen. I just tonight made "Bears Garlic Dumplings" that Sabrina's mammy made for us while we where visiting with them. They are ridiculously tasty! However, I have to admit that we are now staying the Pacific North West we cannot get wild garlic therefore I cheated and made these with a lot of regular garlic and some chives, it worked perfectly well. As I said before I have also made "Wild Garlic Pesto". this is a great idea as wild garlic is only in season for so long and you cannot get it in the supermarket in Ireland or Scotland there for the pesto will prolong the life of your wild garlic and you can continue to cook with it regardless.
We have also made wild garlic bread and butter. All of which is seriously tasty.

Recipes:

Bears Garlic Dumplings

Ingredients:

- 200g dry bread cubes
- 50g bears garlic (or if you have no way to get this use 25g regular garlic cloves plus 25 grams chives)
- 2 eggs
- 50g cheese of your choice
- 50g butter
- 250g milk
- dash of salt
- dash of pepper
- 1/2 tsp mustard

The Prep

Method

• Chop the bears garlic (or crush the garlic cloves and chop the chives) and mix with the bread cubes in a large bowl.
• Warm up the milk and melt the butter together either in the microwave or over the stove and combine with the breadcrumb mix. 
• Whip your eggs together with the cheese and mix that into the wet mixture combine until all together.
• Add your salt, pepper and mustard and give it a mix.
• Shape the Dumplings into 6 large balls and set aside.
• Bring a large pan of water seasoned with salt to a good simmer, add the dumplings carefully and allow to simmer for 20 minutes. Do not bring to the boil.
• Serve these up to 2/3 people. You can add a little extra butter over the top of the dumplings if you like. 

Ready for Dinner

Here is a link to a Wild Garlic Pesto that I made before:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Bears-Garlic-Pesto/

Always keep in mind. When you decide to go for some Bears Garlic...... You are gonna have some stinky breath afterwards! 

I hope you find a patch to pick yourself as that is part of the fun! 

Enjoy Tara x 

On the Hunt for Wild Garlic with Lisa and Greg in County Meath
We found it in LoughCrew Garden

Red Velvet Mini Cakes

I am well and truly back now! So my Friday was completely and utterly taken up with making some seriously tasty Red Velvet Cake. It's a funny thing, I have eaten ALOT of red velvet, I have however until today never attempted to make it.
I am delighted with the finished results taste. I did want it to be more Red however its still tastes good and its trial and error with your colors I guess.
I decided to turn these into small mini cakes as they are easier to give away meaning less food waste at the end of my baking. For the same reason I also decided to make some Red Velvet Jars! I was so silly excited when I put those together! Other then making some Salads in a jar during the summer these are my first sweet jar treats!
Obviously this was the choice I made. However if you want to make just one big cake that is perfectly fine too. you just need to separate your cake batter into 2/3 tins depending on how many layers you want your cake to be.

So to bring you the recipe, I trolled around on a millions sites for different recipes as I wanted my cake to be super moist and I have heard that can be hard to find so I pretty much made my own recipe from other cakes I have made before combined with many ideas from many different places and It definitely worked as the cakes are Decedent.

Cake Ingredients:

- 2 1/4 cups Self Raising Flour
- 1 tbsp cocoa powder
- 2 tbsp red food coloring (you can use more or less depending on your desired finished color)
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 cups caster (bakers) sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 cup canola oil (you can also use vegetable oil)
- 1 cup low fat butter milk
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp distilled vinegar

Cream cheese Icing Ingredients:

- 1 pound cream cheese
- 4 cups Icing (Confectionary) Sugar
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 2 sticks of butter (I use unsalted)

Method

• Preheat the Oven to 350℉ and then oil and flour your cake tin/s.
• Using a Large Mixing Bowl sift in the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, cocoa and set aside
• In a separate large bowl mix together the oil, buttermilk, eggs, food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla extract. You can now add this mix into the dry mix and beat until it is a smooth batter. 
• Pour the batter evening into your cake pan/s, and pop them into the pre heated oven. 
• It will take between 20 - 30 minutes to bake. Once the sides of the cake come away from the tin and a skewer comes out clean then the cake is baked. Do keep an eye on them as you don't want to over cook them or they will be too dry. 
• Once the cake is done take it out of the cake pans and leave to cool on a wire rack. Then move it to the fridge to firm up before you ice them.
• For the Icing beat the butter and the icing sugar together until smooth then add the cream cheese and the vanilla extract. Move this to the fridge and use when cold. 
• Obviously it depends if you are making mini cakes, a full size cake of throwing everything into a jar on how you are going to decorate everything but basically apply about a 1/4 - 1/2 inch of icing in between your layers of cake and and then cover the entire cake in the icing. You can make these nice and smooth do some fancy designs with a piping bag.

New Beginnings

How fast this year is coming in already. I am sitting here its February 19th already.

The weather has been up and down all month. Some days making you think it just looks like Spring and Summer are coming fast and other days looking like Winter is here to stay for some time yet.
So very obviously I have not blogged since just before Christmas and what a busy time December and January where with the holidays and then my sisters wedding back home in Ireland.
It is time now to get back on the horse and start some baking again as other then the husbands Birthday cake last month which was my Chocolate overload cake with plenty of decorating was the last bit of baking I have done.
I have been having a good think about what I want to do next I have come up with a few ideas. I really like the idea of doing some of original recipes in miniature. which works out wonderfully for tea party and having guests.
My small list is a mixture of some heavier deserts for those dark chilly days and then some lighter deserts for your bright sunny spring/summer beginnings.
Black Forest Minis - Red Velvet Minis - Key Lime Pie Minis - Fruit Scones - French Macaroons

Scottish Shortbread Christmas Edition

So Thankgiving came and went in the blink of an eye. I decided I was going to make some nice Thankgiving shortbreads in the holiday shapes as a gift for our dinner hosts. Alas that was not meant to be as every shop I went in to had not one thanksgiving shaped cookie cutter so in the end I decided I would preserve just in Chistmas theme instead! I think the last time I had made short bread was in school and I had grievously overlooked them. So I little hunting through the cook books and the lovely interweb! I found myself a good combination for my recipe.

Ingredients:

225g softened butter

110g caster sugar plus extra for dusting

225g all purpose flour

110g corn flour/corn starch 

Pinch of salt

You will also need a couple of sheets of baking parchment, a rolling pin and rather cookie cutters or a round tin depending what you want.

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy. I recommend using an electric whisk to save your arm muscles.

Sift in the flour and the corn flour with the salt and mix into the butter/sugar mixture.

Tip the mixture out onto a lightly flour surface and bring together while kneading to a soft dough. (It will more then likely be extremely flaky and likely to fall apart this is a good thing don't worry)

Using two pieces of baking parchment roll the dough out between them to about 1/2 an inch thickness.

Remove the top baking parchment and prick the dough all over with a fork. You can now cut the dough out into the shapes of your choice. 

Any dough you have left over you can re-roll out and cut too.

When moving the cut out shapes to the baking tray use a flat spatula and very gentle pick them up and move them over to prevent them from falling apart at this point.

Bake in a preheated oven at 170C for about 20 mins you want them to be a light golden brown.

Once then are cooked again using the spatula move them to a wire rack to cool and dust with caster sugar.

These really are super super tastey as they are but you can always vary the recipe up by dipping the finished cookies into chocolate. Adding chocolate chips to the recipe or dusting with a cinnamon sugar at the end. The choice is yours.

Enjoy Tara 

Home made Baileys

Well

After I decided a few weeks ago to clean my laptop up so I wiped back to factory settings after saving all of my important info into my hard drive. 

I figured I would remember all my passwords and such for the different sites I use. What I neglected to remember was that I hadn't written down the user name for this blog..... That has posed a problem for possibly two weeks now and eventually today I played the guessing game. After possibly an hour of trying to log into other people's accounts and a really old account I didn't even know I still had I found my username! My apologies to any other Tara Prendergasts out there I was not trying to hack your gmail accounts! 

Anyways now I have found my way here I should probably adjust this one to the married name so I find it easier in future. 

So today I am going to teach you about how to make your very own homemade Baileys. 

I never even knew that this was a possibility until myself and Rob stayed in a BnB near Oban in Scotland about a year and a half ago. It was a really lovely little place with big glass windows and beds that you seriously sank right into. I honestly think it may have been the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in. Anyways they had some really sweet little treats for us during our stay including complimentary homemade Baileys and the local whiskey. Hence how this post has now come to pass.

You may think this might be difficult but it is seriously one of the easiest recipes you can possibly try.

Ingredients:

1 cup Double cream(heavy/whipping) 

1&3/4 cups Whiskey

2 tbsp Chocolate syrup

1 tsp Instant coffee

1 can Condensed milk

1 tsp Vanilla extract 

Method:

Put all of the ingredients into a blender or your prefers mixing tool and whisk.

Whisk for 20 seconds for a nice light texture or whisk for up to 1 minute for a nice creamy texture. 

I prefer the ridiculously creamy if I'm honest.

This honestly is one of the tastiest Baileys you will ever try and it makes an excellent gift for friends when going to parties over the holidays. 

Enjoy Tara x 

Homemade Dungeness Crab Cakes

So it has been forever since I updated the blog!
Life has been hectic with getting married and everything. All the parents where here to help us celebrate our wedding, and I got to practice some of my blog posts on them which was really nice.
We had many nice meals including some fresh crab from Pike Place Market which is what inspired this blog post.
I am probably going to go away from Baking sweet things for a little while and work more on the cooking end of things due to my new get health kick before christmas.
I have this post and another one ready to come up to but I will leave them a few days apart to keep me busy.

You can use pretty much any type of crab you like for this we used Dungeness but Brown Crab or what ever is local is fine for you to use.



Ingredients:



2 Fully Cooked Dungeness Crab (de-shelled and use the meat only)
3-4 Medium sized Potatoes
1 Small Chilli
1/2 Bell Pepper (color of your choice)
5-6 Scallion Stalks (green onion)
Breadcrumbs
2 Eggs whisked
Oil for Frying





Method:

• Peel and boil the potatoes for making mashed potato
• Dice the chilli, bell pepper and scallions up nice a small
• Once the Potatoes are ready mash them up with a potato masher and mix in the crab meat and the diced vegtables.
• Shape the mixture into small flattish balls and then dip into the egg mix and them roll in the breadcrumbs until completely coated. 
• fry the crab cakes on a frying pan with a small amount of oil on both sides until golden browned.
• Serve up with sweet chilli sauce or seafood sauce and enjoy.

Enjoy Tara x

Molten Chocolate Volcano Cake

Again we have another ship inspired recipe! Another favourite past time of mine onboard was going to the signature restaurants for dinner. It was again lovely on occasion to go and have a sit down meal and actually be served, and for the food to be beyond delicious!
I could say one of the best deserts but I think it may just be THE BEST DESERT, the chocolate volcano cake. I hunted about online and eventually found a fair few variations of this recipe. Whether if it 100% the same of not I will never know but I tell you I think it takes incredible!
If you like a ridiculously rich chocolate cake with a gooey hot centre then this is the perfect desert for you. A word of warning though. this recipe makes 8 portions, and I would highly recommend separating it into 8 portions unlike me who halved the recipe (4 portions) and then forced all the mix between two portions. Me and the other  half only made it half was through 1 portion and we could not fit in another bite for love nor money.

So you will need 8 ramekin or another type of oven safe dishes for this recipe.

Ingredients:

Butter                            1 lb (there are 16oz in a pound)
Bittersweet Chocolate  11 oz
Sugar                             7 oz
Salt                                1/2 tsp
Flour                             4 oz
Cocoa Powder              2 oz
Baking Powder             2 tsp
Grand Marnier             1 oz
Orange Zest                 1 tbsp
Whole Eggs                 3
Egg Yokes                   3
Egg Whites                  3    

Preparation:

• Melt 12oz of butter and all the chocolate together and set aside to cool. 
• In a separate bowl mix 4 oz of butter and 7 oz of sugar until pale and fluffy. add on egg at a time and 1 egg yoke at a time while mixing.
• Once the chocolate mix is lukewarm add this to the mixture and then all the Grand Marnier and the Orange Zest

• Sift in the flour, cocoa, salt and the baking powder and continue to mix for about 3 minutes after it is fully incorporated.
• Using the Egg whites and the remaining sugar create a meringue mixture and then fold into the chocolate mixture.
• Fill each of the ramican dishes with about 7 oz of the mixture and bake in a Pre heated oven at 375F or 190C for about 15-20 minutes.
• You want to serve these hot in there dishes. There fore if you are having them after a meal don't put them in the oven unit you main course is already finished.

My Recommendation for serving them is with a side of Vanilla ice-cream as the flavour and the cold compliment the hot richness of the Volcano cake! I had way too much fun making this dish to be honest and I still have half of a dish in the fridge which I think won't be there by evening fall today!
Enjoy baking and most of all Enjoy Tasting!

 Tara x