The finished Christmas Goalie Cake!

It's time to finish the Christmas cake. This is going to be the best Christmas for cakes that has ever happened! Pass me the rolling pin Mr Bond...

Here I am getting ready to deal with the marzipan! Mwah ha haaaa! 

After I had rolled out the marzipan, using my special mathematical rolling pin that guarantees a 2mm thickness (apparently), I needed some glue to stick it to the cake. So I boiled up some apricot jam and spread it over the cake. This will make sure the marzipan sticks.

I put the marzipan on and cut round the edges of the cake to make it look neat.

Now for the icing! 

I decided this year to take up my counsin Bekah's suggestion and let's just say, have a Christmas cake with a twist. A goalkeeping twist! Look's like Santa's finally ready for some exercise! Good save Keeper!

Here is the final result. Hope you like it! (Because if you don't - I've got my rolling pin!!!)

Christmas Cake

Welcome back to The Cooking Goalie. Sorry it's been a while - I've been a bit busy. Anyway this year my Mum said me and my brother could make the Christmas cake so we did it in half-term. Here we are, at the ready with all the gear.

Jamie was in charge of measuring the ingredients as usual. That's his job. I am mixing together the dry ingredients - flour, mixed spice and some salt.

Here I ahem attempted to mix together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer. Oh dear. We are still finding bits of it on the walls.

Here the Cooking Goalie's Brother is chopping up the glace cherries and trying not to eat them all. They are his favourite.

I am mixing the eggs and treacle into the flour. And  then all the currants, sultanas and raisins go in. And mixed peel. And lemon zest and brandy. You have to do this with a metal spoon and try not to knock out all the air otherwise the cake will be flat as a pancake. (As you might have noticed I am now wearing a very professional chef's hat from a posh shop in London.)

The Cooking Goalie's brother is having a go at mixing all the ingredients together. My mum thinks I may have been on the brandy.

This is the cake just before it goes into the oven...

...and this is it about 4 hours later. We stuck a skewer in it to make sure it was cooked. I will decorate it before Christmas - watch this space. Suggestions for decorations on my blog comments please, otherwise it will be the usual Nativity set.

Pesto, bourbons, fishing

June 2010

This time I decided to make linguine al pesto. To make the pesto I mushed up some garlic and some pine nuts then added some basil leaves, parmesan and olive oil. It makes a nice green paste. This is a picture of my pesto.

We then put some pasta in some salted water and left to boil. When it was cooked we mixed it into the pesto. This is what the recipe thought it should look like :

But I made it better by adding - SALAMI !!!!

Then I decided to make some bourbon biscuits. I had to rub flour and cocoa powder into the butter first.

I added an egg and some sugar. And some golden syrup. Then I had to roll out the mixture and cut it into long biscuit shapes. I pricked them with a fork because that's how bourbons look.

This is the cooked version.

I then mixed up some icing sugar, cocoa paste and butter and put it in the whisker. I left it in the fridge overnight to firm up and then spread it in between the biscuits.

This is a picture of my luxurious bourbons!

This is me on my first fishing trip. I am catching a fish.

And here it is! Not bad eh?

Postcard biscuits

Our granny went on holiday in the Lake District  last week and sent us a postcard with a recipe on it  for Parkins.

Here is the Cooking Goalie's brother weighing out the ingredients and the Cooking Goalie making sure he is getting it right.

The Cooking Goalie's brother is now asleep while I get on with rubbing the butter into the flour and oatmeal.

(The Cooking Goalie's brother, Jamie, says "I'm boooooooored!)

The mixture was brown sugar, oatmeal, mixed spice and ginger, golden syrup and butter.

Then the mixture was rolled out. By me.

And it was cut into shapes. By him.

We put them in the oven and went outside to play and my mum left them in the oven too long. They were very tasty but rock solid!

Kicking, Cooking, Cricket

                      SAVE! Just to prove that I am, really, a goalie.

 

This time I was making fish wraped in prosciutto with roast vegetable but as you can see I had my usual trouble with the onions!

 I chopped up carrots, spring onions, red onions and put a tin of tomatoes and some extra passata over them. The green stuff is flat leaf parsley. I added some pepper to give it a bit more HARRRRR!

I wrapped the fish (which was called pollack) in some prosciutto ham. It all went in the oven . (The veg went in the oven earlier)

I have now magically transformed into a cricket player because Friday evening is cricket night.

Here I am holding my tea. All we have to do now is serve it out.

 Here's me enjoying my food. (Well except the broccoli...)

Stuff

Sorting eggs we collected from the chickens on holiday

I got Man of the Match at football this week.

 

Chicken stuffed with mascarpone and mushrooms

      Sorry about being away for ages. I've been on holiday and doing other things. But now the cooking goalie is back and nothing going to get in his way. Not even cabbage!!!
                    
                         This time I decided to make chicken stuffed with mascarpone. I started by chopping some mushrooms and garlic and added some chopped up flat parsley.

I then melted some butter and put it in a saucepan. Then I added the mushrooms, the garlic and the parsley. Once the mushrooms were nice and soft I left them in bowl to cool down.

Then I attacked the chicken breasts with a big knife. Ha! ha! ha! I sliced them so they could open like a book and then rolled them out using a rolling pin until they were quite thin.

I dolloped some masarpone cheese into the mushroom mixture then I put the mixture into the chicken and closed it like a book. Then, to stop the cheese falling out, I wrapped the chicken in prosciotto ham. As I had some leftover mixture, I put it on top of the chicken! After that they went into the oven for 25 minutes.

This is me looking rather daft holding my tray of food! :)

 

I served them with new potatoes and carrots even though my Mum thinks we should have had broccoli! Never!!!!!!!!!

Chocolate Chip Muffins and an Eggsperiment

Today I made some chocolate chip cookies with my cousin Megan. We used the recipe from Cooking for Boys - it doesn't matter that she's a girl. Here we are measuring the ingredients.

We mixed up flour, caster sugar, baking powder, sunflower oil, milk and DUN DUN DUN an egg. I used to be allergic to egg but now I might not be, YAY!!!! So today I cracked the first egg I have ever broken since I was about one year old and it exploded! Perhaps I need a bit more practice!

 

We then chopped up the chocolate (we used chocolate buttons) into halves

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               and then added them to the mixture.

This is the mixture before it is cooked. We put the mixture into 12 muffin moulds and cooked them for 20 minutes.

They are delicious! And so far I haven't been sick after eating them, even with egg in!