Week Four - Lemon Drizzle Cake

This recipe came from a yoghurt pot. I tend to keep recipes that I find on packets or in magazines and one of my major motivations for making this resolution in the first place was that I now have an A4 ring binder stuffed to the brim with bits and bobs that looked tasty but have never been cooked in my house.

I love baking and try to do it as much as possible. Before The Child came along there was usually a banana cake either in the tin or in the freezer as I made the best of browning bananas, but now he'll make short work of them before there is any danger of them getting to that stage!

Having had a mild obsession last year with lemon and poppy seed muffins I thought this was just the next natural progression and decided to make this recipe this week.

Another angle for the resolution is that The Boy works shifts so isn't with us every week. In his absence it falls to me to make sure that something is still cooked to a recipe each week to keep us on the straight and narrow with this year's task. I thought about cooking a main meal but the thought of making something, probably enough for four, and having to eat it every night while he was away was just depressing. Thinking about it again I decided that it would also be nice to have a treat while he's not around, something to keep me going, and offer to visitors, so baking seemed to fit the bill! So most weeks you see baking as our recipe will be the ones I'm home alone!

This cake was great, really easy to make. But I must make a confession, something that hasn't happened to me in many a long baking year - it didn't cook all the way through! I think I took my eye off the time just as it went in the oven and so just estimated how long I thought it had been in. When checking it I touched the centre gently and thought I felt the cake spring back under my finger, but once I had got it out and it started to cool it became clear that I'd got something wrong as it sank and was basically raw in the middle! Oops!

Not to be put off I just cut that bit out, drizzled the icing on the rest of it, and away we went. It was yummy! But another word of warning, it didn't keep very long at all. I think a combination of the middle having not cooked properly and the icing making the cake very lovely and gooey mean this is one that you just have to guzzle down the day of baking - what a chore!

Lemon Drizzle Cake

Week Three - Butterbean and Sprout Falafels

This week we had a new twist to the resolution. Surrounded by veggies that we about to expire we realised that if we went out and got new ingredients for a meal, which no doubt there would be leftovers from, then we were in danger of ending up with a whole rack of veggies straight in the compost. Not good.

So we used the BBC Food Recipe Finder and put in the ingredients that we had to see what would come up. All you do is put in the ingredient(s) that you have and away you go. Handily for us there is even a tick box for 'Vegetarian' so that all the results only come back with veggie options.

I put in brussel sprouts (always left over after Xmas, even though we totally love them) and pressed search. What would we find?

And there it was, the answer to our dilemma - Butterbean and Sprout Falafels. Even the fact that they had butterbeans in was a bonus as we had some in the freezer from an earlier experiment with The Child - the beans were rejected and have been frozen ever since waiting for me to try them with him again.

It is great to feel that the resolution is growing with us, that we can enjoy great new food but also use ingredients that we already have in the house, this week felt like a lazy one as there was no shopping to be done before we started - bonus!

BBC Food Website - the recipe finder is on the homepage.
Butterbean and Brussel Sprout Falafels - we made the fried sprouts and dip as well, yummy!