Lunch Box Treat!

Children and adults alike love rice crispy treats!

Here's an easy recipe:

5 Bar-one's, chopped

150g butter

100g rice crispies or coco pops

75g chocolate

Grease a 20cm square dish.

Melt the butter and bar-ones in a saucepan over medium heat.

Once melted add the rice crispies and fold until coated in the butter and bar-one mixture.

Pour into the greased dish.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave, watching it to ensure it doesnt seize, and drizzle over the top of the crispies.

Leave to set in the fridge before cutting into squares.

Lunch Box

Sweetcorn & Courgette Fritters

It's the time of the year when creating balanced, healthy lunch boxes seems a bit of a chore!

We'll be posting a few ideas this week to get you inspired!

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

1 cup milk

2 eggs

2 large corn cobs, kernels removed

Olive oil for shallow frying

1 cup tzatiki for dipping

Method

Sift flour into a bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Using a fork, whisk milk and eggs together in a jug until combined. Pour over flour. Stir until smooth. Add corn and zucchini. Stir until well combined.

Pour olive oil into a frying pan and over a medium heat, heat until hot. Using 1/4 cup of mixture per fritter, spoon mixture, 3 fritters at a time, into pan. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes each side or until golden and firm to touch in the centre. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Notes

• To freeze: Wrap each fritter in plastic wrap, then foil. Freeze for up to 2 months. Remove from freezer in the morning. Place frozen fritters in lunch box with a small container of tzatziki. Fritters will thaw by lunchtime.

Barbecoa

Jamie Oliver's new restaurant in London. A barbecue haven acknowledging the relationship between fire and wood. Looks pretty slick and smart.

See more here

Coca Cola's New Aluminium Concept....quite funky we think!

New Starbucks Logo

What do you think?

Move over cupcakes...here come PIES!

Food Trends predict that 2011 is the year of the pie.

So in keeping with the trend for 2011, try these delicious Aubergine-Feta Phyllo Pies

Ingredients

1 large aubergine, halved lengthwise

Extra virgin olive oil for brushing

Coarse salt and ground black pepper

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

1/4 cup roughly chopped pistachios

1/4 tsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp red-pepper flakes

2 tbsp fresh mint leaves, finely chopped

5 sheets frozen phyllo pastry, thawed

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius. Lightly brush cut sides of eggplant with oil and season with salt & pepper. Place eggplant, cut side down, on a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet. Bake until tender, 20 minutes, then remove from oven. Reduce heat to 190 degrees celcius. When cool enough to handle, scrape flesh from skin and roughly chop. Transfer eggplant to a medium bowl and add feta, 3 tablespoons pistachios, coriander, red-pepper flakes and mint. Season with salt and pepper and stir to combine.

2. Lighly oil 6 standard muffin cups. Lay 1 sheet phyllo on a work surface and, with a pastry brush, lighly brush with oil. Stack 4 more phyllo sheets on top, brushing each with oil. Cut into 6 squares. Gently press one square into each muffin cup and fill with 1/4 cup eggplant mixture. Gently fold over corners of phyllo to enclose filling. Brush tops with oil and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon pistachios. Bake until golden, 30 minutes.

Serve warm with lightly dressed greens or assorted vegetables and hummus.

Christmas

What do you have for breakfast on Christmas morning?

In preparation for the stuffing that is Christmas lunch we think these muffins are perfect.

Light, tasty, moist. And they can be prepared the night before!

Christmas Muffins

INGREDIENTS

50g plain flour

21/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

100g caster sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

good grating of fresh nutmeg (or 1/4teaspoon ground nutmeg)

2 clementines/satsumas approx.

125ml full-fat milk

75ml vegetable oil (or melted butter left to cool slightly)

1 egg

175g dried cranberries

FOR THE TOPPING: 3 teaspoons demerara sugar

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6. Line a 12-bun muffin tin with muffin papers.

Measure the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, caster sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg into a large bowl; grate the zest of the clementine/satsuma over, and combine. If you are doing this in advance, leave the zesting till Christmas morning.

Squeeze the juice of the clementines/satsumas into a measuring jug, and pour in the milk until it comes up to the 200ml mark.

Add the oil (or slightly cooled, melted butter) and egg, and lightly beat until just combined.

Pour this liquid mixture into the bowl of dried ingredients and stir until everything is more or less combined, remembering that a well-beaten mixture makes for heavy muffins: in other words a lumpy batter is a good thing here.

Fold in the cranberries, then spoon the batter into the muffin cases and sprinkle the demerara sugar on top. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, by which time the air should be thick with the promise of good things and the good things themselves golden brown and ready to be eaten, either plain or broken up and smeared, as you go, with unsalted butter and marmalade. Serves: 12

Thanks to Nigella for the inspiration!