Cheese Scones

Hi everybody, I just thought I would share the world's best scone recipe with you...yup you heard that right! These scones are seriously the best!

Cheese Scones

2 cups of flour
1/2 tsp salt
50g butter
3 tsp baking powder
1 cup of cheese
1 cup of milk

Heat the oven to 220c degrees.
Sift flour and salt in a bowl, then rub in butter until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Stir through the baking powder and then 1/2 cup of cheese (or all of it if you don't fancy cheese on top of the scones)
Make a well in the centre and add milk, mixing quickly with a knife to form a soft dough.
Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and pat or roll it into a rectangle. Cut into shapes and sprinkle with remaining cheese (if you were putting some on top)
Place on a baking tray and cook for 12 minutes or until golden.

The key to good scones is to mix them quickly, don't over mix. Make sure the oven is hot and get them straight into the oven.


So there we go, that's how you make them...
oh and when they're cooked, be sure to grab a piece when it's hot and smear it with butter... Delicious!!

Making tea

A little adventure to making awesome tea...

So for the last couple of days I've been craving chai tea (no I'm not pregnant :P) just the smell, of its warm cinnamony spices reminds me of cozy fires and warmth, the perfect stuff for a freezing winter.
 Unfortunately I'm a bit of a coffee drinker and I always seemed to reach for the coffee jar as it seems a much more practical drink (seeing as I'm in the habit of being a night owl, I've not caught that love of sleep that most adults have) I've also heard too many stories about drinking loads of caffeine, so I've kind of put my craving off.
Not that that works for long... so this morning I decided to forgo my usual ritual and make a cup of nice warm chai tea, so I put the tea bag in and left it, and left it. five minutes past, ten minutes past but the colour in the cup hadn't really changed. I was a bit disappointed as I really like a good strong brew, but decided to put the milk in anyway as it might taste alright after all. However it was not so, the colour became a horrid milky white and when I took a sip, I was disgusted. There was no flavour, no taste, and it wasn't even warm anymore. So much for nice hot chai.
However I was still determined to have some chai tea so I went on pinterest and looked up a few recipes, and then I came on this one. It didn't look impossible and we didn't have any cardamon but I was desperate... so in went the spices and water (I put a little more spice in, just in case).. and the whole recipe was easy, just boil and steep for ten minutes, so not much watching either. One batch gives you enough for four drinks and you can refrigerate the liquid which is really handy. But what topped that was the taste, it was nice and warm and spicy, and if you fluffed up the milk it tasted *amazing* -waaay better than the brought stuff!
So if you're feeling like a flippin' amazing tea, just pop over to Live Simply and treat yourself :)

Alternative Cooking

Lately the famous 'THM diet' has taken our community by storm...
It's a primarily weight loss diet, in which you separate your carbs from your fats, eat mainly carbs at one meal, then mainly fats at another. It's also sugar free and has limited gluten.

Attracted by the sugar free idea, Mum and I looked into it. Not that we need to lose weight, but both of us have several allergies, that this 'plan' could accommodate.  Anyway a couple of 'E' meals and 'S' meals later, I decided that it wasn't so much for me, I had a lot of air in my stomach, and would always be burping. Mum burps a lot when she is reacting to something, so I tried to find out what was wrong. Turns out that I might have been a bit extremist with my eating, after eating a few wheat crackers when I wasn't mean to, my tummy stopped complaining.
Now this isn't a THM critic report, I like many of the ideas in it, and I'm sure it works for many people, it just doesn't work for me.

Anyway one of the things I learnt from it was how to cook without flour, by grinding up coconut flakes and rolled oats. So I began experimenting, next thing I was making almond milk and substituting constantly. We also have a Vegan staying at our place at the moment which is also stretching my cooking skills, but I'm loving it, I would never have found out how delicious cauliflower sauce is, or how scrumptious vegan pancakes are. It's so liberating going into the kitchen and being able to make delicious vegan food without even realising it!

Vegan Pancakes              
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup flour (use coconut or nut flour for GF)
2 tsp Baking p.
1 tsp Guar-gum (probably optional, it basically thickens)
1 banana, or any amount of fruit
cinnamon (optional)
vanilla
3 tspns sugar (or nativa)
1 tspn salt
1 Tbls margarine (optional)
Rice milk (or any nut milk, or regular milk)

Mix dry ingredients together, then add the wet ones. This mixture is meant to be quite thick, but you may need more liquid. Cook in a pan like regular pancakes.


This recipe is pretty flexible as you can see, I mean, I added my leftover smoothie the other day and it tasted really good. Also I've found if you add an egg or two it makes the thinnest, fastest cooking pancakes ever. This also tastes really good with whipped coconut cream and cooked apple.  It's also really filling, you only need three before you're stuffed -and I don't get full easily.

P.S I'm going to try DF soon, which will be an adventure for this white-sauce loving girl, I'll try post some of my recipes.
-Tiffany

Spaetzle

Spaetzle is a German free form pasta that I made this morning. Really addictive, I keep going back to the pan for more ;)
So here's the recipe

1 cup of Milk (about)
2 eggs (or one)
1 1/2 tsp of salt
2 1/4 flour

Mix milk, egg, salt and any other flavouring ( herbs, spices etc.)
Stir in flour. Add more flour or milk 'til it becomes the consistency of
thick pancake batter (sloppy batter) Rest 10mins

Bring a pot of water to the boil. Turn it down a little til it gently boils.
Push the batter through a colander (with a spatula) and into the water.
When the pasta floats to the top scoop it out and into a buttered pan.
Cook them a little in the pan. Serve with meat, gravy, soup or whatever.


 Pintrest

Recipe

Ok this is something random I just made up

mix raw sugar, ginger and cinnamon together get a granny smith apple a dip it into the mix really quite nice, you can make it as spicey as you like. You could try it without the sugar.The sugar being raw is crunchy.This is probably good for you.
Enjoy!

I really like it, it's better than cinnamon sugar, but then again, I like ginger a lot!
-Tiffany