Lasagne From Scratch / FOOD

There's something so satisfying about making a meal completely from scratch. I'm talking making the bolognaise sauce and the white sauce etc (not rearing and killing my own beef, I'm not that keen).

I LOVE lasagne, like really love, so if I'm going to spend time cooking instead of sleeping it's going to be lasagne I make.

This is lasagne as I like it, which means it is packed with vegetables rather than just being meat and tomato sauce. I really struggle to get my five a day so smuggling vege into a lasagne is perfect for me.

Basics

Pre-heat the oven to 160C

Prep time: 1 hour

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

Meat Sauce

250g mince

1 onion chopped

sprinkling of garlic granules (or one clove of garlic)

1/2 carrot chopped

1/2 red pepper chopped

4 small mushrooms chopped

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 squeeze of tomato puree

1 glass of red wine

Sprinkling of Rosemary, Sage, Thyme or other herbs

Black pepper

White Sauce

85g of butter

85g of plain flour

1 1/4 ml of milk

Grated cheese for the top

Lasagne sheets

Cooking Instructions

I always make the meat sauce first because then it can simmer away while I give all my attention to the white sauce.

1. Heat up oil in a frying pan and then bung in the mince, onion and garlic. Let that cook away until the mince is browned.

2. Add in the tomatoes, carrot, pepper, mushroom, wine and all the herbs and black pepper and let the whole thing simmer away for 30 minutes

3. White sauce time. In a pan melt the butter and then add in the flour. STIR THE WHOLE TIME, this stuff burns quick!

4. Whisk in the milk slowly and once you've added it all bring the mix to the boil

5. Once it comes to the boil turn it right down and stir it for a couple of minutes until it thickens then take it off the heat

6. Time to put it all together. Start with the meat sauce layer in the bottom of your dish, then a layer of lasagne sheets, then white sauce. Continue this pattern until dish is full, finish with a white sauce layer

7. Add on the grated cheese and shove it in the oven for around 45 minutes until the cheese is nice and golden and the pasta is cooked through.

8. ENJOY

Kate // SK

Healthy Snacks // Eating on the Go

So as Bekah said in her post last week myself and three of my friends recently got back from Romania and decided that we never wanted to see bread ever again and made a pact to go on a diet together. So far, it's actually going pretty well.

My main problem with staying healthy is that a lot of the time I don't know where I will be during meal times or what time I'll be able to eat at. So I just end up nipping to a shop and buying some unhealthy snacks or a take away to tide me over. Not great.

So on a recent trip to Tesco I tried to pick up some foods I could use as substitutes for my normal unhealthy snacks. I tried to find things which were healthy, didn't require much preparation, didn't need to be kept in the fridge and  weren't crazy expensive.  And today I thought I would show you guys what I bought.

Please bare in mind that I am in no way shape or form knowledgeable about nutrition or other such things. These are my opinions so if they are wrong or you disagree then that's fine, feel free to kindly point them out to me!

White Choc & Raspberry Muffins

The other day I was in a serious baking mood. I had also went strawberry and raspberry picking so needed a nice way of using my freshly picked fruit rather than let them mould over time.

So, I thought I'd make some white chocolate and raspberry muffins.

Pancake Tuesday // FOOD

It's pancake day!

Which means it's time to start making those sweet little circles of fluff.

And if you're anything like us fail miserably. Or just try out a bunch of different recipes until we're happy with pancakes that look, and taste, semi decent.

So, if you're in the mood to make pancakes, we've decided to share the recipe that worked best for us!

A Cheats Way To Pastry's // FOOD

Do you ever just have those mornings where you think "Oh, I could go a cinnamon roll or maybe a chocolate croissant" but you don't have pre-bought pastry's in the house? And making them from scratch - you know, making the dough - is just way too much effort plus by the time they're actually ready it's lunchtime.

Well, there is a way to make them within, roughly, 20 minutes!

BLOGMAS DAY 23 // Decorating the Christmas Cake

For the past few years my sister and I have taken on the task of decorating the Christmas cake. My mum makes a traditional Christmas cake (you know the ones you make in October and feed brandy to for the next couple of months?!) and she puts the royal incing on the top. It's the tradition in our family that the icing is spiky around the sides and flat on top..It's the flat bit that me and my sister decorate.

So I thought I would enlist her help to do this blogpost!

We thought we would start off by showing you a the cakes we've decorated in previous years. I searched high and low for old photos. Some of them look good, others less so.

This Year

 This is the blank canvas we start off with every year.

 The first thing we did this year was sieve some icing sugar and edible glitter over the top to give them impression of snow fall. Basically we really wanted to use the edible glitter.

 Next we made an igloo. We tried several different methods including trying to build it brick by brick (impossible) and after a lot of frustration we settled on forming the igloo using a circular glass.

 Next we used a knife to make our igloo look like it was made of separate bricks and also to dig an ice hold into the icing for our penguins to fish in.

We were having so much fun that we forgot to take pictures of the different stages of penguin creating. However they were super simple. We adapted this idea from Pinterest and made it our own. We snapped a cocktail stick in half to make fishing poles and added a few piles of mini snowballs around to add a bit of character.

This cake was a lot of fun to make and we think it looks pretty good. Obviously we aren't professionals so it's never going to look perfect but I think making it ourselves makes it more special anyway.

Show us your Christmas cake decorating or tweet us ideas for next year @SimplyKarah10

SK x

BLOGMAS DAY 14 // Christmas Gingerbread Cookies

I'm about to sound like Zeek from High School Musical but ... I love to bake!

"I gotta confession my own secret obsession and it's making me lose control!"

No, I'm not about to blast out all the lyrics to High School Musical - I'll try and stop myself.

Anyway! I always think Christmas is the best time to bring out some good old fashioned cake/biscuit recipes and fill your kitchen with the most amazing scents. Spices!

So, without further ado. Here is a recipe for some gingerbread biscuits I made this week.

Ingredients:

❄︎ 350g Plain Flour
❄︎ 2tsp ground ginger

❄︎ 1tsp ground cinnamon
❄︎ 1tsp bicarbonate of soda
❄︎ 100g butter
❄︎ 175g soft brown sugar
❄︎ 1 egg
❄︎ 4tbsp golden syrup

Method:

1. PREHEAT THE OVEN! 190℃/Gas Mark 5

(I always forget to do this)

2. Sift flour into a large bowl, add ginger and bicarbonate of soda and rub in the butter.

(Use your fingers till you get a sort of breadcrumb look)

3. Then, add sugar and stir in the syrup

4. Add the egg. This should create a firm dough

(If the dough is sticky just add a little bit more flour)

5. Sprinkle flour onto your worktop - that's important!

6. Roll out the dough on top of the flour (roughly 5mm thick) and start cutting out your shapes!

(I chose to use stars and circles but you can use whatever cut out you like)

7. Put a sheet of baking paper on a tray and evenly space out your biscuits

8. Bake in the oven 10-15minutes until they're golden brown

9. Leave to cool and then start decorating!

The recipe I followed said it makes roughly 20 biscuits, however I certainly have over 20. I'm not even kidding! I think I have about 50 biscuits!

Have you made any Christmas treats so far this year?

Let us know if you have and let us know if you try out this recipe!

We'd love to see your photos too!

Twitter & Instagram: @simplykarah10

Now, excuse me while I go find somewhere to put 50 gingerbread biscuits!

SKx