Caramel Sandwich Cookies

These have been heralded by my flatmates as "the best melting moment cookies ever!!!"

...I should have published these for Valentine's Day...

They vary slightly from traditional recipes because I've added a little milk to the dough so that it would be rollable so that I could make cookie cutter heart shapes.

But I still wanted that melting-moment feel - which is why I didn't use a standard sugar cookie dough...

The icing is runnier that I intended - because I wanted it to be frosting for my Choco-Caramel Cupcakes (I didn't post a recipe - but there's a picture of them...) but because this icing involves heat it's runnier and not fluffy like frosting... quite how I expected frosting I'm not sure... my brain was tired? But the icing is tasty! And it really made these cookies.

A note on frosting vs icing... if it's liquidy/doesn't hold its shape when piped, I call it icing - if it's pipeable and holds its shape, I call it frosting... and if it's totally liquid and runs everywhere with a mind of its own, I call it a "drizzle"... :)

Cookies on a Chess Board... Just 'Cause...

Read on for instructions on how to make your own crunchy, sweet cookies...

Jenny's Famous Chocolate Cake

When I was little... Like 12/13ish I "wrote" a cook book. By "wrote" I mean typed out all my favourite recipes, attached clip art images, printed them off and bound them into books which I proceeded to present to my family and friends as gifts. Copyright infringements were, no doubt, abound - but I never sold the cookbooks nor did I claim to have developed the recipes myself. They were just my tweenage favourites.

Served with chocolate sauce and yoghurt.

Featured in that book was my recipe for Jenny's Famous Chocolate Cake(s) - a delicious cake recipe made in a food processor (or by hand if, as a student, you don't own a food processor) that makes two dark, moist chocolate cakes. Which you can then layer or freeze one for later...

In the photographed image provided I've made the cake with 50% wholemeal flour and some rolled oats for extra fibre/texture but this is not necessary. The chocolate sauce I made is a recipe which comes from Edmonds Food For Flatters.

In my cookbook Katies Kool Kooking (don't ask...), when writing out the recipe I neglected to include sugar at all - instead suggesting that an auxiliary 2 cups of flour would be needed... and I left the cocoa out in it's entirety. The following version of this recipe has only one cup of sugar but it does include that all important half cup cocoa required to make the cake chocolatey...

Egg Flop Omelette

Super healthy, super tasty breakfast...

Omelettes and I get along in kinda the same way that stir-fry and I get along... I like to eat 'em... but I kinda suck a cooking them.

My current theory is that this is because I like to fry my "fillings" and then pour the egg over them and cook it all together unlike a normal person - who either doesn't cook the fillings at all or cooks them separately from the egg part and actually using them to fill the omelette...

My may is easier - and requires less mess. But only when "mess" refers to the number of plates and pans required. The finished result invariably looks a mess... kinda like someone else already tried it and didn't think much of it...

But that's beside the point! Kat Omelettes are tasty and healthy. And that's what matters here. They involve egg, which is good for protein. Spinach (whenever possible) which is good for iron. Tomatoes, which I cook a bit to help prevent prostate cancer ( ;] ). And cheese which is good on everything. Oh! And they're cheap. And easy. Student-able. Yeah.

See how I managed to get the daisies in the background in perfect
focus? Yeah! Mad photography skills...

I dunno... Let's just read the instruction now.

Le Chicken Stock

Vegetarians and Vegans: Avert your eyes now!

Chicken stock. One of the more useful things a person can make in their student kitchen... but one that is very rarely bothered with...

Why? To be perfectly honest - I don't know... it's not like it's difficult or expensive to make - all your need is the carcass left over from your Sunday Roast or, failing that, chicken bits are next to nothing from the supermarket... My guess is that, to most, it seems like too much hard work...?

I'm here to tell you that that is not the case!

Chicken stock... it's never going to win a prize for
"most presentable ingredient of the year"...

Granted, it's not very pretty or photogenic work - but it's pretty simple.

First. Eat your chicken and pick of any leftover bits to have for lunch the next day.

Then put your chicken bones into a large pot (like the one you'd normally cook pasta in...) with the lemons you roasted it with (or new lemons if you didn't roast the chicken with any... or no lemons if lemons aren't your thing), a little oregano, salt and pepper. - basically match the flavours you're putting into your pot now, to the ones you used when you roasted your chicken.

Then toss in a quartered onion and a couple of crushed garlic cloves. Celery tops and/or beet heads are good here too - next time you buy a celery, cut of the leaves and freeze 'em until you want to make stock - they add a lovely, savoury flavorur. Beet heads turn everything a gorgeous pink!

Now, fill the pot with tap - warm water and put it on the heat. Medium heat is probably Okay. - You can also half fill the pot with tap hot water, then top it up with just boiled water (this method is more power usage friendly I believe)...

Turn on your extractor fan, if you have one.. and allow the pot to bubble away until the quantity of liquid has halved.

At this point you can either strain it straight away into a bowl before allowing the liquid to cook and the fat to rise and solidify and then scrape the fat off later (this method is good if you want to reboil the chicken bones for a second [slightly lesser] chicken stock) OR you can allow the whole lot to cool and solidify in the pan and then strain the whole lot, fat and all (this is my preferred method). My chicken stock is never jelly-y (I think because I use so much water to only one chicken carcass) so that's never a problem when straining the cooled stock...

I find playing around in cold chicken stock trying to pick out little discs of congealed fat kind of repugnant, which is why I prefer the second method. The fat sticks to the bones and, if your sieve is fine enough, gets strained out.

Steam it up!

That's it. Pretty simple, really. Next time you roast yourself a chicken - try it out and let me know how you go! :)

A Decorated Cake

My Psychological Synaptic Transmission Cake

This is not a recipe. I used a boxed cake mix. This is a suggestion as to how a student might decorate a cake...

First - buy a packet cake mix... this is cheaper than if you have to start totally from scratch and don't plan to bake at all in the immediate future. Thus, you have more money for decorations.

This cake was a packet chocolate (note the term "packet"... I didn't even splash out for a boxed cake mix... although, in future, I probably would) with some added vanilla in an effort to make it feel more homemade-ish.

The white "frosting" in the background is, in fact, white chocolate which I melted and spread over - I wanted the decorations to be sufficiently durable that I could cover the whole cake in cling film and take it to my exam without worrying about ruining my design. If I were at home with my fancy thermometers I would have bought "real" white chocolate and tempered it - but these were just melting buttons.

The dendrites (purple), terminal bouton (purple), vesicles (pink)and transporter (blue, cropped out of photo - woops!) of my neuron as well as the words are from standard supermarket gel pens/tube-y things.... The neurotransmitter are 100's and 1000's (I've decided that it's a serotonin cake, 'cause all the insulin from the sugar in the cake will assist with tryptophan crossing the Blood Brain Barrier) And the soma (purple berry lolly), axon hillock (red berry lolly) and myelin sheath (white milk bottle lollies) are all gummy lollies... found in a cheap party mix bag of lollies... I got to eat the rest! :)

And that's how I decorate on the cheap! The cake was much admired and well received... All my friends and I did well in Psyc that year!

Macaroni Cheese Pasta Bake

Disclaimer: despite the presence of a small quantity of green atop this dish... it is by no stretch of any imagination a health food... this, right here, is pure, glutinous comfort food.

...because three green leaves totally makes this healthy...

 But sometimes, in the life of a student (and I'm sure in the life of a Real Person as well), the need to feel comforted out-importants the need to feel virtuous. In these times, more often than not, what is called for is cheese. Cheese and carbohydrates. And, if a little bacon can be thrown in? So much the better.

Other times what you really need is chocolate. But... I don't know that chocolate would work here...?

This is my favourite baked macaroni cheese recipe because it's super cheesy and - if you bake it in a large dish there's plenty of surface area for the delicious melty cheese on top. Yum!

The method is fairly simple - but it does require a fair few pots and pans...but hey! This is all in the name of warm fuzzies.

If you really want to add more than the merest hint of good-for-you-ness offered by the three green leaves - make it with wholemeal pasta...

Mmm! I feel better just looking at it!

Sweet, Skint Lentils and Rice

I put a lot of faith into Sam when I tried out this recipe... literally all it is is rice, lentils and onions... but, as he promises it is "surprisingly gorgeous".

I made this one day, two weeks after I last went to the supermarket... my cupboards were getting pretty bare! - But we had to eat! Lentils for protein, rice to bulk it out and onion to make it taste good... truly - that's all you need!

This is a very low effort meal, even if it takes a little while to cook - but you don't actually have to do a lot to it!

I've made this since, and will do so again - whether my cupboards are near empty, or I just got back from the supermarket... Skint Lentils and Rice are here to stay!