Simple Homemade Pizza

I never usually make my own pizza bases but after seeing Buddy from Cake Boss (on his Kitchen Boss show) make them, I decided to give them a go. I've done them before with a packet of base mix but decided it was lazy and unnecessary if the ingredients in the dough were so simple anyway. It's really easy to make and it does take a longish time but most of that time is spent on the dough proving so the actual effort is minimal.

Ingredients - Pizza Bases

3 1/4 cups plain flour

3/4 tsp dried yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp olive oil

1 1/3 cups warm water

Method

1. Put the ingredients into a mixing bowl (place the yeast and salt at opposite sides of the bowl) and mix with a dough hook until a dough is formed. 

2. Knead the dough until it is elastic and smooth (it can be done in the mixer but you can over-knead it so unless you watch it carefully do it by hand as you can't overdo it and it's good stress relief!). 

3. Place the dough into an oiled bowl and cover with cling film or a tea towel. Leave to prove for about an hour until doubled in size. 

While the dough is proving, make the tomato sauce. Using a tube of tomato puree is super simple but this tastes so much better and really doesn't require much more time!

Ingredients

1 tin of tomatoes

2 cloves garlic

2 pinches salt

1 tsp sugar

1/2 cup grated parmesan

lots of black pepper

Method

1. Put ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Simple eh?!

When the dough has doubled in size, take it out of the bowl and knead it again. Divide it up into three balls and place on a floured baking tray. Leave to prove again for another hour.

Once the dough has proved again, roll out into about 10" bases. Place on baking sheets and leave for about 10 minutes to rise again slightly.

Ladle over the tomato sauce and top with mozzarella and whatever other toppings you want. I made one with goats cheese, red onion, black olives and spinach and one with just mozzarella, fresh spinach and some herbs. 

Bake at 260 degrees Celsius for 7-10 minutes depending on how thick your base is.  

Tips

Use any toppings you want - prosciutto and mushroom is really tasty too!

You can put fresh spinach on before cooking and it wont burn onto the pizza.

Lots of mixed herbs make it really tasty!

Make all three up instead of dividing the recipe and freeze the pizza to have at a later date.

Use proper mozzarella cheese, not cheddar!!

Simple Strawberry Cheesecake

This recipe came about as a result of a bit of late night experimentation when I had a craving for cheesecake. I didn't want a really heavy one so used fat-free Greek yoghurt and light Philadelphia cream cheese. I've made it since without the biscuit base and for some reason I can justify eating a lot more of it to myself as the base is where the 'bad' things are. It's not really heavy like other cheesecakes and I'm sure it's MUCH lighter on the calories and fat too so I consider it semi-healthy (not that I need much persuasion for a good cheesecake!!). I added a load of strawberries to it but if you wanted to add something else instead or leave it as a plain vanilla one it'd work just as well. This recipe makes around enough for a standard sandwich tin sized cheesecake (about 12cm I think). I had to improvise and use a bigger rectangular one as my baking stuff is packed in the attic of the new house I've moved into and I was too lazy to go and dig it out. If you have too much mixture just put it into a ramekin and bake by itself.

I find the Greek yoghurt makes the cheesecake really creamy but stops it from being too heavy. It's such a simple and quick recipe and requires minimal effort. 

Ingredients

200g digestive biscuits, crushed

50g melted butter

200g fat free yoghurt

200g light cream cheese

2 eggs

4-6 tbsp icing sugar (to taste)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 punnet chopped strawberries (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 140 degrees Celsius.

2. Mix the butter and biscuits together and press into a tin (I had to improvise as I didn't have the usual sandwich sized tin so used a bigger rectangular one which made a bigger but thinner base). Bake for 5 minutes.

3. Mix the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Be careful not to overmix it. 

4. Add the cream cheese mixture to the top of the biscuit base and bake for 25 minutes at 120 degrees Celsius until firm on top but with a slight wobble.

5. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Tips

- It works really well with raspberries and white chocolate chunks!

- It tastes better cold. I was really impatient and tried to eat some before it was cool and despite still being good, it was much better after I'd waited for it to cool down. 

Chocolate Peanut Butter and Marshmallow Fluff Cupcakes (Chocolate Fluffernutters)

My little brother is currently going through a phase where he's eating a LOT of peanut butter. I wanted an excuse to use my blowtorch so decided to make these cupcakes as something a bit different. 

I started off with a chocolate cake, dolloped crunchy peanut butter into the batter before baking and topped it with some homemade marshmallow fluff.

For the chocolate batter, I used the vanilla recipe but substituted 20g of the flour for cocoa powder. It's really simple to do and gives a good result. 

In a bowl I mixed 40g margarine, 140g caster sugar, 100g self-raising flour, 20g cocoa powder and mixed until it resembled fine breadcrumbs. 

I then mixed an egg with 120ml of milk in a bowl and added half of the mixture to the 'breadcrumb' mixture. 

Once combined, add the rest of the eggs and milk and mix until smooth. 

Spoon the mixture into 12 cupcake cases and add a teaspoon of peanut butter to each cake case.

Bake for about 16-18 minutes at 160 degrees Celsius. 

Allow to cool completely. 

To make the marshmallow creme you need:

2/3rds cup water

1 1/2 cups sugar (plus 2tbsp caster sugar)

3 egg whites

Pinch salt

Method:

1. Put the water and the 1 1/2 cups sugar in a heavy based saucepan. Bring to the boil and boil to 240 degrees Farenheit while you get on with the egg whites.

2. Whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they form soft peaks then add in the 2 tbsp of caster sugar. 

3. When the sugar reaches 240 degrees, slowly add the sugar to the egg whites in a continuous stream while the mixer is still running. This is easiest in a freestanding mixer like a KitchenAid but works fine with a handheld one.

4. Continue to whisk the mixture on high speed for about 6-8 minutes until really thick and glossy and it resembles marshmallow fluff. It'll go really thick and 'gloopy'.

To put the cupcakes together, fill up a piping back with the marshmallow creme (or if you don't have one use a sandwich bag as I did as I don't have a piping bag at my parents' house) and pipe onto the cakes in a swirl. 

Next, toast your marshmallow lightly with a blowtorch. It's not imperative and it's perfectly fine un-toasted but I love the finish it gives and using the blowtorch.

I topped my cakes with half of a Reese's peanut butter cup and a chocolate covered peanut but you really could use whatever you wanted.

It's a simple recipe and a messy cake to eat. Prepare for a white face as the marshmallow goes everywhere!

This marshmallow creme is also good on top of s'mores cupcakes (or basically anything). I love it!!

Super Simple Chocolate Mousse

A dessert with only 4 ingredients (one being a pinch of salt!) is DEFINITELY a winner in my book. It takes about 30 minutes to make; 5 of which is actually making, the rest is time in the fridge so requires no effort. A 5 minute job with hardly any dishes sounds like the perfect dessert for me!! It's really good just to make in ramekins for the family or you could serve it in Martini glasses with a curl of orange zest if you wanted to give it a bit more refinement.

 

You'll need:

6 egg whites

2 tbsp. caster sugar

150g dark chocolate

1 pinch salt

 

Method:

1. Melt the chocolate in a bain marie or in the microwave. Allow to cool while you start with the egg whites.

 

2. Whisk the egg whites until they start to form soft peaks and slowly add the sugar. Whisk until they're firm but not stiff peaks.

 

3. Add 1/3rd of the whites into the chocolate to loosen it and fold through.

 

4. Add the chocolate to the remaining whites and fold the mixtures together.

 

 

5. Pour the mousse into your serving dishes and chill for 30 minutes (or longer, they won't 'over-chill' so can be done well in advance).

When they're set (or before if you're really impatient like me), tuck in!!

 

They're super simple to make and can be 'jazzed up' with some orange zest or fresh berries. It's a really good and simple recipe to work from.

 

As long as you don't knock the air out of the egg whites, you can't go wrong! Be gentle with it and you'll have a lovely light, fluffy and delicate mousse :)

 

With the leftover egg yolks, try making custard!

Custard.... the old-fashioned way.

I'd just made chocolate mousse so had lots of egg yolks left. Considering I hate waste, I decided to make a proper egg custard with the yolks rather than using custard powder. I'd also decided to make a salted caramel and apple tart so the custard went perfectly with that.

I used Mary Berry's recipe from the BBC Food website but took pictures as I went to give a step-by-step guide (and also to remind myself of what each step should look like next time I make it!).

The recipe is in the link there so I'll just post the pictures (because I'm lazy and sick of typing for today!).

Milk, cream and vanilla heating up.

Egg yolks, sugar and corn flour mixed.

A little hot milk into the eggs so the eggs don't split when you add them to the rest of the milk.

Egg mixture back into the rest of the milk.

Pan back on the heat and stirred until custard is thick.

All ready to be slathered over some cinnamon and apple tart ;)

(Or poured gently on the side if you want to take a photo of it without it being obvious that the tart was swimming in it before you started munching on it....)

 

The recipe is simple enough as it is but if you haven't made custard the 'proper' way before this might help :)

 

 



Salted Caramel, Cinnamon and Apple Tart

I went away to West Wales for the weekend with my mum and came back to the house to find cream, apples and a block of puff pastry that needed to be used up. Instantly I thought of caramel and cinnamon and came up with this super simple tart. It's soooooo yummy. It was just a kind of 'bung it all together and hope for the best' kind of experiment but I really like it.

 

First of all I made a salted caramel sauce. I've used this recipe numerous times and it's always come out perfectly. I'd definitely do this bit first or a while in advance. It keeps really well in sterilised jars but really isn't that time consuming to make when you need it. For a tart this size I used a whole batch.

 

The other ingredients you need are:

2 eating apples, cored and sliced thinly

1 block of ready-made puff pastry (unless you have ages to spare to make your own, shop bought is perfect)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tbsp. caster sugar.

 

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 220 degrees Celsius.

2. Roll out your puff pastry to about 1/2 a centimetre thick (or however big your tray is, mine was about 30cm x 20cm in a rectangle).

3. Stab the pastry with a fork, leaving about an inch around the edge as a border. This should stop the middle puffing up too much but give you a nice light edge to the pastry. Bake for about 10-12 minutes until golden and puffed up. When you take it out turn the oven down to 160 degrees.

4. When the pastry is golden, take it out of the oven and spread over your salted caramel, leaving about an inch around the edge.

If your pastry has puffed up in the middle too much, feel free to keep stabbing it (I did as I liked jabbing it with the fork) but don't worry too much as the caramel will flatten it down.

5. Once you've got your pastry all covered in caramel, lay your apple down in rows.

6. Mix your caster sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle over the apple.

7. Put the tart back into the oven (remember its at 160 degrees now) for about 10-15 minutes until the apple is slightly brown and the cinnamon sugar is melted and caramelised.

When it comes out it should look like this:

 

Sprinkle with some icing sugar and allow to cool slightly (the caramel will firm up if you leave it to stand for about 5 minutes) and serve it up. It's also really good cold!

 

Tips

*Serve with ice cream or custard (I made custard the old fashioned way to go with this as I had egg yolks left after making a mousse)

*Don't worry if your caramel looks runny when going on. If you make it in advance and allow it to cool it should be a spreadable consistency for topping the pastry and it'll firm up as it cools after baking.

*If you reeeeeally love cinnamon then when the pastry comes out of the oven after being in the first time, sprinkle on some cinnamon sugar then too before adding the caramel. I did and it was yummy!!

*For a more refined and less rustic tart, try serving the caramel in little jugs, baking apple wedges in cinnamon sugar by themselves (just on a baking tray and sprinkled with sugar until softened) and making your pastry really thin and cutting into small rectangles. Sandwich baked apple between the cooled pastry rectangles and build it up kind of mille-feulle styley. You can drizzle over the caramel just before serving to stop the pastry from going soggy. I've not tried this but it should definitely work. I'll give it a go sometime but if anyone tries it this way, fire a picture over!! :)

 

I served it with the homemade custard (it's quite pale so blends in with the plate) but vanilla ice cream or some yoghurt would work really well too. Obviously there's absolutely nothing wrong eating it by itself! Also, if you want a bigger chunk there's nothing wrong at all with that. I went for a modest serving as I'd just eaten a chocolate mousse I'd made beforehand and been dunking biscuits in caramel as I was getting on with the tart and had caramel cooling... Oops!!

 

It's super simple and has hardly any work or ingredients involved and looks like it's a real labour of love. Give it a go! :)

 

 



Salted Caramel Sauce

Okay, I know this recipe isn't technically baking, but I think the fact that it goes with baked goods (such as the tastiest sauce ever to drizzle over warm chocolate brownies with a big blob of vanilla ice cream) totally justifies it being in here!

It's a really simple recipe with only 4 ingredients and although it requires a bit of concentration to make it, you'll be really proud of yourself once you've done it!!

Ingredients

175g caster sugar

3 tablespoons water

125 ml double cream

1/2 - 1 tsp salt flakes (depending on how salty you want it)

Method

1. Gently heat the sugar and water in a heavy-based saucepan over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Once the sugar has dissolved, stop stirring!

2. Turn the heat up and boil the mixture - don't stir it or the sugar will crystallize!!

3. When the colour changes to a rich gold, remove the pan from the heat. If you're getting parts of the pan cooking the sugar faster than others then swirl the pan to get an even distribution of sugar and heat but don't be tempted to stir it!

 

4. Once you have your golden caramel, remove from the heat immediately (it'll carry on cooking and go from golden to burned in no time unless you're really careful - this is the hardest bit!), and add in the cream and salt. It'll bubble up but this is totally normal because your caramel is so hot. Stir the pan until the caramel is smooth and thick. When you've got your caramel texture, set the pan aside to cool.

I couldn't get a picture of mixing the cream and salt in as the steam blocked up the camera on my phone but persevere, don't be scared and just keep stirring!!

This stores really well in a sterilised jar and is a really versatile sauce. It's really handy to have a jar in the fridge to dunk biscuits into if you've had a day that's really sucked... it's a guaranteed pick-me-up! I think sugar fixes everything and this recipe is definitely one that can make most things better!

Tips

- Try serving with ice cream to create a super simple dessert.

- Don't be scared to try it - if you cook the sugar too much you've only lost sugar and a bit of water. If you think you may have burnt it don't just add the cream and hope for the best or you'll get a bitter tasting caramel that really doesn't taste too good. You're better off starting again, learning from the mistake and being even more careful to make sure you get your salted caramel perfect. 

- Try adding it to the top of a Nutella pizza (I'll post a recipe to that when I get round to making it) to give it a bit more 'oomph' (not that it needs it). Definitely not something for the faint-hearted! Probably enough calories in that to last you a week but once you try it you really won't care!!

This recipe makes about half of a jar full so if you wanted to double up the quantities to make a full jar to give it as a cute homemade gift that'd be perfectly fine :) It also stores well in the fridge, just let it come to room temperature before serving.

(As you can see by the time I'd got round to photograph it, half the jar had 'mysteriously' disappeared..)