Christmas pudding muffins

Bizarrely I don’t cook over xmas, I eat lots but it is always at other people’s houses, in restaurants or a quick snack of cheese and biscuits. So when my few quiet days before new year came around I took the opportunity to do some baking.

I’d ended up with some left over Christmas pudding, and, much as I love it, didn’t fancy the full on richness of it on its own. Just before Christmas I had half seen Rachel Allen (I think) making Christmas pudding muffins so I thought I would do the same by tweaking my usual muffin recipe.

As an aside I claim not to like muffins – but as there are two muffin recipes on here I think that might be a lie. Instead I think I don’t like shop bought blueberry (yuck) muffins – what a snob I am!

300g Christmas pudding, chopped/crumbled into small pieces
100g caster sugar
300g flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
200ml milk
100g butter, melted and then cooled

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Sift the flour into a bowl and mix in the sugar and baking powder then stir in the Christmas pudding. Beat the eggs, milk and butter together. Roughly combine all the ingredients.

Spoon the mixture into 12 muffin cases and bake for 30 minutes.

Eat with a big mug of tea or with warm with brandy butter.

Mushrooms with rice and dill

Been very bad at updating this – life has just been a bit crazy and I’ve not had time to cook let alone write about it!

This was one of those use-up-all-the-left-over-bits-in-the-fridge meals which either turn out to be amazing or awful. This, thankfully, was the former.

I do have an admission to make, the rice was a couple of the Uncle Ben’s heat-up-in-the-microwave jobs. Very lazy but on the plus meant this only took 10 minutes from start to plate. I realise that cooking rice wouldn’t have taken much longer but it would have doubled the washing up!

1 tbsp oil
1 large potato
250g Chestnut mushrooms
2 spring onions
1 clove garlic
Splash dry vermouth (or white wine if you refer)
150ml crème fraiche
Salt and black pepper
½ a pack of dill
Enough rice for two

Start by heating up the oil in a frying pan, and putting on your rice (if you are cooking it rather than just reheating it!)

Chop the potatoes into approx 1 cm chunks and put them in the frying pan. Stir them occasionally, while you prepare the other ingredients.

Slice the mushrooms and spring onions fairly thickly and finely chop the garlic. Once the potatoes are golden and just cooked through (check with a skewer), turn the heat down a bit and add the mushrooms, onions and garlic.

While everything is cooking, stir frequently and finely chop the dill (discard the thick stalks). When the mushrooms are soft, add the vermouth and let it bubble away to about half.

Stir in the crème fraiche, season to taste and warm everything through. Add most of the dill and give it a final stir before serving with the rice. Garnish with the remaining dill and enjoy.

Serves two.