Chocolate and Hazelnut Filo Rolls

From the same programme, Sam's  lovely friend Natalie whipped these up this afternoon in a frantic ( well, pretty laid back actually) day spent chatting and baking.

Makes 12

3 Filo pastry sheets
25g / 10z melted butter

250g/ 9oz chocolate hazelnut spread

Preheat oven to 200c /400f / gas 6
Cut each sheet into 4 equal size rectangles and brush with melted butter.
Spread a tablespoon of the chocolate over the long side of each piece of pastry keeping a 2cm border for rolling up.Fold the two short sides over the filling to seal the chocolate spread and roll up along the long side to form a neat cigar shape ( see video link above ).
Repeat with the rest of the pastry to form 12 rolls.
Place on a lined baking tray and brush with remaining butter.

 Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes until pale but golden.
Remove and place on a wire rack to cool.
Dust with icing sugar to serve.
Lovely.

Debs

Christmas Pudding Vodka

I had to try this after seeing it on Hairy Bikers last night. It sounds right up my street...yum yum

1 bottle cheap vodka
300g / 11 oz mixed dried fruit and peel
75g / 3 oz caster sugar
zest of one lemon and one orange
2 cinnamon sticks
Half a nutmeg grated
2 tspn mixed all spice
6 cloves

Pour all ingredients into a sterilised kilner jar, seal and put in fridge - jiggle daily for 3 days.
After 3 days, strain mixture through a fine muslin and pour into a clean bottle.

Looks a bit murky at the moment but I think it'll taste gorgeous.

Debs

Perfect bread music

Perfect kneading music...just try it

Baby give it up

Debs

Nduja and Potato hash

Another great SFTW recipe that I made a couple of weeks ago. Living in a small town, I was never going to get my hands on the nduja so simply substituted with chorizo.

Serves 4

300g / 10oz  waxy new potatoes boiled and cooled
2 tbsn vegetable oil
1 onion sliced
75g / 30z nduja / chorizo
1 red chilli chopped
200g / 7oz Serrano ham chopped
1 tbsn capers
100g / 4oz butter
8 large free range eggs
parsley to serve

Heat oil in a large frying pan ( I used a paella pan ) and fry onion on a medium heat until soft and golden brown.
Add chilli and chorizo and cook for three minutes.
Add Serrano ham and cook for a further three minutes.
Add potatoes, capers and butter and cook until potatoes are golden.
Make little holes in mix and break an egg into each space.
When eggs  are cooked, serve with crusty bread and a green salad.

I didn't photograph this but there is a lovely photo as part of the link above!

This is dead easy and the recipe does call for using two pans but luckily I had one pan large enough.

Debs

Christmas biscuits

I made these many moons ago when my children were small and decided to revisit the ghost of Christmas past. These are great to make for the tree but actually quite time consuming.

Makes about 30

350g Plain Flour
1 tspn Bicarbonate of soda
2 tspn Ground Ginger
Half a tspn salt
100g butter
175g caster sugar
4 tbsn Golden syrup

Family pack of fruit boiled sweets crushed.
Icing in a tube

Preheat oven to 180c/ 350f/ Gas 4
Mix flour, bicarb, ginger and salt in a bowl.
Rub in butter and then stir in sugar.
Whisk together egg and golden syrup and mix into flour mix.
Bring together to a softish dough and turn out onto a floured surface.
Knead gently just until into a recognisable ball shape ready to roll.
You will need quite a lot of flour as this is quite a sticky dough.
Roll out to about half a cm thick and cut with cookie cutters.
Place onto a parchment lined tray.
Make hole in the top of biscuit ready for ribbon to hang the biscuit.
Cut out middle of biscuits with any small cutter, I had a little bell shaped cutter ( and I used a metal beer top - perfect - )
Fill hole with crushed sweets, take a little care not to get too much sweet over the actual biscuit as it spoils the effect.
Pop into oven for about 10-12 minutes.
Take out of oven - you may need to make the hole a little bigger here as it tends to close up during the cooking process -  and leave to cool a little.
Carefully peel biscuit from paper and cool completely on a wire tray.
Once nice and cold, ice squiggly things onto biscuits and leave to dry.

Ok so here are the problems that I  had.
The sweets were harder than granite so Mr Debs had to put them into a poly bag and break with a hammer  not very child friendly.
I initially didn't use lining paper, big mistake as the whole batch stuck like glue ( yes it's a learning curve folks )
After icing, I left them out to dry and they took so long that - being deliquescent  - they became all floppy.
Useless but looked great.

Debs