Tag: kimberlycun recipe

Delicious and seriously easy apple crumble.

What do you do when you have only a couple of hours to spare before bedtime? You make apple crumble for supper!

Fruit crumble is possibly one of the easiest desserts to make from scratch. It looks impressive and tastes as though there’s a huge labour of love involved but the truth is, I only needed less than 15 minutes to prepare and 60 minutes to watch TV while it baked in the oven.

If you don’t cook or bake very much, I most definitely think that this is the dish to make to impress your friends & family! And what’s more, you don’t even need a whole lot of ingredients, which is a winner in my book. This recipe serves 2, so if you want to make more just multiply the amounts accordingly.

For the filling:

  • 2 green apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
  • 50grams of granulated sugar

For the crumble:

  • 85 grams of flour
  • 35 grams of butter
  • 25 grams of caster sugar (I used demerara sugar though)

# – First, lay the apples on an ovenproof dish or ramekins (for individual serving).

# – Then pour granulated sugar over the apples and ensure they are well coated. Set aside.

# – Sift the flour into a mixing bowl.

# – Add the butter into the flour.

# – Rub flour and butter with your fingers until they resemble fine breadcrumbs.

# – Now throw in the caster sugar (demerara sugar in my case) and mix. This is now the crumble.

# – Next, sprinkle the crumble evenly over the apples.

# – Make sure the apples are fully and evenly covered by crumble, like this.

# – Stick it in pre-heated oven at 190 degrees celcius for 15 minutes then reduce to 180 degrees celcius for a further 40 minutes or till top is lightly brown, so check your oven, ya!

# – Serve with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream for a perfect but simple & delicious dessert.

The combination of the tart & juicy apples with sweet, crunchy crumble is pure heaven! I’m going to make this regularly because the ingredients are readily available & reasonably cheap, the recipe is so easy an 8 year old can make it no problem and most importantly, I LOVE IT!

This is truly the easiest focaccia recipe.

I’ve never in my life made bread. What took me so long? Fear. Why now? Why not? Okay, I confess. I adapted a recipe that claims it’s the easiest. I’m a sucker for titles like that…so here are the ingredients….

  • 1 teaspoon white sugar
  • 10gm of active dry yeast
  • 80ml of warm water
  • 450gm of flour
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/4 teaspoon of ordinary salt
  • 4 tablespoons of Rosemary powder (you can of course use fresh rosemary!)
  • 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt

# – In a bowl, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water.

# – Let stand for 10 minutes until creamy. Brace yourself for the stench, lol.

# – Prepare flour and salt in a larger mixing bowl.

# – Combine the yeast mixture with flour; stir well to combine.

# – Add in the Rosemary powder too, for a beautiful fragrance. Stir in additional water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until all of the flour is absorbed.

# – Till it forms a dough that looks something like this. Gently knead it for another minute.

# – Now lightly oil a different bowl or pot and leave the dough inside.

# – Cover the bowl with a damp but clean towel. Leave it for 30 minutes.

# – After 30 minutes, the dough would have doubled in size.

# – Grease a baking tray with olive oil.

# – On a floured surface, deflate the dough and gently knead it for one minute. Then, pat or roll the dough into a sheet and place it onto the greased baking tray.

# – Sprinkle coarse sea salt all over the surface of the dough.

# – A few dashes of black pepper too.

# – And lastly, a sprinkling of rosemary powder all over…

# – With a fork, poke the dough all over.

# – Then, stick it in a pre-heated oven of 245 degrees Celcius for 10-20minutes depending on the desired crispiness. The longer, the crispier. I baked mine for 15 minutes.

# – Easiest focaccia, DONE!

# – Great with olive oil + balsamic vinegar, creamy soup, gravy and my favourite…chopped crabstick mixed with mayo and tabasco sauce. Yums!

This bread freezes really well too. Just wrap it in foil and stick it in freezer. When you want to eat it, take the whole thing out (bread and foil), place it on a shallow baking tray filled with some water (make sure foil has no holes as you don’t want water to seep into the bread), open the foil so top of bread is exposed, and bake at preheated oven at 150 degrees celcius for 10 minutes.

Nothing beats the smell of homemade breads!

Spicy Beer Cottage Pie My Way

The BF has been dropping hints about cottage pies & shepherd’s pies since forever. So one day, because I’m just so unbelievably awesome, I decided to materialise his wish.

It’s definitely not the type of cottage pies he grew up eating. For one the ones he’s accustomed to pies that have no chillies. And, it’s nowhere near the standard of his grandmother’s (which according to him is the best cottage pie in the whole wide world) BUT mine was juicy and delicious ;)

So if you’re interested in making an impressive looking, impressive tasting but impressively simple dish, here goes:

For the filling:

  • 1 chili, sliced
  • 1 large onion, roughly chopped
  • 1 carrot, grated
  • 2 handfuls of frozen peas
  • 1 small bottle of beer
  • 300+ gm of minced beef
  • 3 tablespoons of ketchup

For the crust:

  • Peeled & chopped 8 small potatoes, or 2 large ones
  • Some milk (or whipping cream, which I naughtily used :P)
  • Salt & pepper

# – First of all, heat up some oil in a pot and brown the minced beef.

# – Throw in the onions. Stir.

# – Throw in the chillies. Stir.

# – Throw in the grated carrots. Stir.

# – Pour in beer till it covers the top of mixture slightly. Stir.

# – Throw in 3 tablespoon of ketchup. Stir.

# – Throw in 1 tablespoon of salt. Stir.

# – Throw in frozen peas. Stir.

Leave mixture to simmer till everything is pretty soft and the liquid reduced by half. If it’s too dry, add more beer :D During this time, boil some chopped potatoes for making mash. I steamed mine though cause I’m just preppy like that.

# – Mash the potatoes, add some milk, salt & pepper. Throw in some cheese if you’re not on a diet, why not? If you’ve got your own favourite version of mash potato, use it.

# – Pour the beef mixture into a casserole dish.

# – Spread mash potato all over the surface of the beef mixture, making sure there’s no hole in the crust anywhere.

# – Looks good enough to eat but it’s not done yet!

# – Stick it in pre-heated oven for 30 minutes at 190 degrees celcius.

# – After 30 minutes, bring the cottage pie out to rest.

# – Or dig in immediately, like what we did :)

This cottage pie is very juicy and flavourful. There’s no need to make any stock as the liquid is all from the beer. There’s a good kick from the chillies though if you can’t take the heat so well you can always omit the chillies.

# – YUMMMS!

My favourite thing about this dish? It’s a complete meal all in one bowl which means, less washing up! Hehehehe.