The Splat Cooking Blog

Saturday lunch today was different, trying to cut costs I decided to buy a pack of puff pastry, caramelise some onions in butter and olive oil and make a caramelised onion tart with salad and leftover roast veg for lunch, made onion tart surprise for the children aka puff pastry pizza with passata, ham and mozzarella.  Served this up to yelps of joy from husband and small children and everyone raved about how wonderful it was and begged me to cook  it again.  Makes a nice change, I’m so used to ‘yuk,I’m not eating that, what’s in it, don’t like the look of that, can I just have some bread, etc, etc, ‘ it was wonderful and now on the list.

Very Excited – just been commissioned to write 20 recipes for the new BBC Lifestyle recipe site.

I’ve spent the past 2 days making a cupcake bouquet for a TV production company in the hope that they’ll commission me to make them for the show, Emma delivered it yesterday and here’s the finished result.  Hope they like it

For the past few years, probably about 4 years, we’ve been toying with the idea of setting up Splat Cooking as party plan.  When I first launched I used to go round to friends houses armed with a stack of homemade biscuits and copious amounts of icing and sprinkles to get them to decorate biscuits with the concept that they’d buy stuff too and I’d promote the workshops and parties.  It worked to a certain degree but I found that it was costing me more in icing and sprinkles than I was making, especially when a lot of guests took the mickey with  how many biscuits they iced.  Really down to bad planning on my behalf, should  have rationed them!

With the franchises launched we’ve taken another look at this as it’s the perfect model to promote the parties and workshops for new franchisees and also gives them the opportunity to sell stuff and get a foot in the door of possible schools and toddler groups.

So I did one last night and this morning.  I made cupcakes and iced them and then had the ladies making sugarpaste roses which they put on top of a cake and could either eat there and then or take home with them – hah, rationing in progress, one cake each!  It worked a treat, last night there were only 3 ladies that I know, the majority had been told by word of mouth so immediately I have 8 new customers, two of them are on the PTA of their schools and are going back to discuss having cooking clubs, at least 4 of the ladies want cupcake coffee mornings, one lady is involved with three toddler groups and took away our cards to give out at these and talk to the playgroup leaders about me or one of the team coming in to do some cooking with the children and I’ve had at least 3 workshop bookings.  All in all, a huge success.

If anyone would like a cupcake coffee morning and you’re in Bucknghamshire then call me in the office to arrange on 0870 766 8290, if you fancy running these yourself, have a school you think would like a cooking club or even feel that you’d like to work for us running cooking parties or classes then call us too, any potential franchisees reading this – IT WORKS.

I love dumplings, baked in the stew so they go crispy on top rather than boiled like my Mum prefers them, however, they always feel like they’re sitting at the bottom of my stomach for the rest of the day and the guilt of how much fat is in them takes the edge off the enjoyment. So I made a classic ‘chuck it’ beef stew today and used my herby farl recipe instead of classic suet dumplings – they were lovely.

Herby Farls

350g plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

half a teaspoon salt

284ml buttermilk

2-3 tablespoons skimmed or semi skimmed milk

chopped fresh herbs – chives, thyme, rosemary – about 1 tablespoon

2 tablespoons grated cheddar cheese (optional, leave it out if you don’t like cheese with beef)

Cook the stew as  usual, to make the farls mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, adding a little extra milk if you need to until it comes together as a soft dough.  Knead for a minute or two until smooth then break off balls, roll roughly and lay on the top of the stew, leave gaps in between as they will expand as they cook.  Pop the casserole back into the oven on 180oc/Gas 4 for 15-20 minutes until the farls are golden brown. Eat