Party food: Sticky sausages (and Christmas update)

I hope 2014 brings you all happiness and health in abundance!

 

 

Sticky Sausages

• 2lb cocktail sausages
• 4 floz Honey or Maple Syrup
• 1 floz Sesame oil
• 1 floz Soy Sauce
• 2 tbsp Sesame seeds

 Preheat the oven to 200c

In a bowl or jug mix the Sesame oil, Soy sauce and honey and whisk well.

 (Looks good enough to drink, no?)

Separate the sausages and place them in a baking tray (I use a disposable tray as the stickiness is a curse to get off my baking tray!) Pour the sticky sauce over the sausages. 

Take a spatula, turn and coat the sausages in the mixture. Pop in the oven for between 25-30 minutes. When they are done, let them cool down and the sauce gets really sticky.. YUM!

Finally, just before serving, sprinkle the Sesame seeds over the top!















And breathe....

Finally the craziness of Christmas is over for another year! This year was uber stressful/emotional as it was my first Christmas without my Mother, so that largely loomed over us for most of the month of December. We decided not to put up decorations this year as neither the Hubster or myself were in the mood to celebrate. We still bought small gifts for each other, though it was very weird not opening them under the Christmas tree like we did every year. This year it was just my Dad, Hubster, Sushi and myself for Christmas dins. I tried to wrangle the rest of the family and after the year that was in it, I thought they would make the effort..but alas. It was a real eye-opener this year, looking in from the outside. I realised that the true meaning of Christmas; rudeness, anger and craziness. The desperate shoppers looking for presents with no meaning or thought behind them, it was like a crazy free-for-all in the local shopping center. People were shopping like an Armageddon was coming! (The shops were only closed for Christmas Day) So we've decided that next year we are going to rent a dog friendly cabin and have a holiday away from it all. Sounds like bliss and I'm already marking off the days on my Simon's Cat calendar that Himself bought me as a Christmas present. :-D And finally 2013 is nearly over! I'll be glad to see the back of it too after 3 suicides and a cancer scare, I'm hoping 2014 is going to be more positive and peaceful for my family and friends. (Plus my soul mate is coming home from Australia in March!!) So while I'm gearing up to give 2013 the middle finger, here is a recipe for Sticky Sausages for our New Years Eve party. (It's just myself and the menagerie, Himself has to work)

Mini Quicky Quiches

MMMmmm..

As you know (or may not know) I love to bake, now I'm not saying I'm a master baker (*snigger*) but I love to dabble and the easier the recipe the better! This week I decided to make some mini "quicky quiches". Let me just say, I'm not a huge fan of quiches, I think it's the texture that makes me a little queezy but these little things have just enough egg not to make me want to barf. (Please forgive my shaky photos!)

What you will need:

• Pre-rolled shortcrust pastry (No messing with me, always a short cut!)
• 100g grated cheddar cheese
• 1 large egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 60ml milk
• 60ml of double cream (or heavy cream for the Yanks)
• Ballymaloe relish (or any other relish you have)
• salt and pepper
• Fairy cake baking tray
• Circular cookie cutter

And GO!

Preheat the oven to 180c.

Grease the baking tray lightly.
Mix together the milk, double cream, large egg and egg yoke in a bowl then add a shake of salt and pepper.

Roll out the pastry and using the cookie cutter, cut out the desired cases.

Place them on the baking tray, pushing the middle of the pastry down gently.

Add 1 teaspoon of relish to each of the cases and use the back of the teaspoon to spread the relish around the bottom of the case.

 Add a pinch of cheese on top of the relish in each case.

Carefully pour the liquid ingredients into each case making sure just to cover the relish (don't fill over the cases as the ingredients will rise slightly anyway)

Pop them on the middle shelf of the pre-heated oven. These should only take about 18-20 minutes to bake (depending on your oven), but keep a wee eye on them, when the tops turn brown they are ready to be taken out.

They are scrumptious eaten straight from the oven, but be careful as the relish is uber hot!

Layman's chocolate danish

These are my easy-peasy-lazy "Layman's" Chocolate danishes. Let me tell you this, these won't last 5 seconds on the table if you have gannets like I do in my home! :-D

• 1 Box of ready rolled puff pastry (If you're lazy like me, use the ready rolled but if not, you can make your own.)

• 1 Jar of Nutella

• 1 Pack of Chocolate chips

• Baking tray

• Parchment paper

Okay, here we go.
Set the oven to 200c, we need the oven pre-heated (as per instructions on the box, though my oven is a little too hot at 200c). Open out your rolled pastry. If you are using a non-stick baking tray I would still recommend using a layer of parchment paper as the bottom of these danishes can burn easily.
(Sorry, my lovely assistant deleted the first pastry photo!)

Next, take a big spoon of Nutella and smother it onto the pastry. (I use the back of a spoon to do this as it spreads a lot easier!)

Now, if you've bought ready rolled pastry it will already be wrapped in paper. Take the edge of the paper and roll the pastry in on itself. Keep rolling until you get to the other end and you've ended up with something that looks like a log.

Take a sharp knife and cut the log into slices of about 1/2 inch. Flip them over onto the baking tray but make sure to leave a good bit of room between them as they will expand (they look like little spirals) then, take some chocolate chips and sprinkle them over the top of the pastry.

Now time to pop them in the oven! They should only take about 15 minutes to bake, just keep an eye on them because everyone's oven is different.

There you are, these take only a few minutes to prepare and about 20 seconds to eat. Enjoy!

On top of me head!

I want to say an uber big SORRY to my two followers for not updating in a while. As I'm sure you read back in March that my Mother passed away, it was a terrible heart-breaking time for the family (and still is) and everyone that knew her. My Mother and I were, at the time, attending a night course to get our FETAC 5 cert as Care Assistants. After my Mother passed I found it quite difficult to continue with my study and unfortunately missed the submission date for my work. Since then I've started another module of the care assistant course and I am finally on a roll with my work, so that has been taking up a huge lump of my time. When I'm not studying or at the gym, I am usually working on a community allotment in the local countryside. I love it, it's so good to get the hands into the soil. The Irish weather has been unkind again this year, so our beds are still empty. While we've been waiting to the seeds to sprout, (cat+seed tray=disaster) we've been busy (between showers, hailstones and thunder storms!!) building a No Dig bed. It was our first time this year trying this out. I promise to do a small blog explaining what this is and how easy it is to do! I do have a lot of blogs to post up but I just haven't had the time to sort out the photos and words. Here is an idea of what will be coming soon;

• More crafts with tins
• Layman's danishes
• Recycling 
• An Cuige allotments
• My own allotment
• Knitted tea cosy
• Interiors
• and..fashion.. yes I know, I'm in my wellies and mucky clothes most of the time!