Rabbit Dropping Pancakes

Actually nothing particularly horrific about this one. Just when my brother and I were little, we would joyously declare that raisins were rabbit poo as we wolfed them down. To be honest, we still do that.


YOU WILL NEED
(makes 4-6 pancakes)
100g flour
20g caster sugar
50g butter
2 eggs
120ml milk
cinnamon
lemon juice
vanilla essence
raisins


THE METHOD



# Sieve flour, sugar, and cinnamon together in a big bowl.

# Melt butter and add half to flour.

# Crack in eggs and whisk to a paste.

# Add milk and whisk until smooth.

# Throw in half a teaspoon of vanilla essence and two tablespoons of lemon juice.



# Heat up a pan and grease lightly with some of the left over butter. The best way to do this is by dipping kitchen roll in butter, then wiping the pan with it.

# Really make sure the pan is hot. Do a little test pancake. If it takes more than about a minute to cook, get hotter. If it burns, turn the heat down a little.

# Spoon some batter onto the pan.

# While one side cooks, sprinkle raisins on top.



# Flip the pancake. Normally I encourage showing off, but I recommend using a spatula or something for this instead of tossing it, mostly because it works best if the top of the pancake isn't cooked yet. Tossing would make pancake batter fly everywhere. Just flip it gently.

# Cook the other side of the pancake. Once this is done, feel free to toss as much as you like.

# That's literally all there is to it. Lazy this week. Anyway, enjoy your rabbit dropping pancakes. I like mine with raspberry jam that I can pretend is rabbit blood. Mwuhahahaha.

Blue Hawaiian Flapjacks

The Blue Hawaiian is a cocktail made by mixing equal parts rum, blue curacao, cream of coconut and a double helping of pineapple juice. All well and good (if a little sickly for my dry taste) but it's not my own invention and I think you'll agree what is really needed here is a way to eat cocktails.


YOU WILL NEED
(makes 16 pieces)
200g butter, and a bit over for greasing
200g demerara sugar, also an extra tablespoon full for the topping
2 tablespoons of golden syrup
275g porridge oats
100g dessicated coconut
75g dried pineapple
1 orange
Captain Morgan rum
150ml double cream
blue food colouring


THE METHOD

# Get the oven warming up to Gas 3, 160c, 325f.

# Get a big saucepan and bung in the butter, sugar, and syrup. Leave it on a low heat to melt.



# Pineapple! I guess you could use fresh, but that will probably make your mixture a bit slippery and lead to its ultimate demise. Also, I found this dried stuff and it freaked my shit out, so I bought it immediately. Confront your fears.



# Anyway, chop up pineapple and grate up the zest of your orange. Yummy!!



# The butter, sugar and syrup should be melted now. Give it a good stir. Taste if you want, it'll be hard to resist, but probably don't lick the metal spoon that's been in the pan the whole time. That will be hot. Ow.

# Stir oats and coconut into the melty goodness. Then add pineapple and orange zest and give it all a good mix. Eat some. NOT ALL OF IT.

# Grease up a baking tray with butter and spread the mixture out flat. Pop in the oven for 30 minutes.



# While you're waiting for the flapjack to bake, grab a large bowl and drop a tablespoon of demerara sugar in. Then three tablespoons of dark rum. Give this a good stir and leave it for a bit so the sugar dissolves. Taste if you like, but you might die.

# Pour in the double cream and beat with an electric whisk until it's all stiffened up. At this point you may add the blue, depending on exactly how blue you want it. I went for a couple of teaspoons. BLUUUUUUUE! Put this topping in the fridge until you need it.



# When the flapjack is done, take it out of the oven and allow to cool for ten minutes, then cut into sixteen pieces and set out on a wire rack to cool completely.

# Decorate flapjack with boozy blue topping. And ta-da! Blue Hawaiian Flapjack! Damn tasty.

Swamp Toast

I'm currently nursing an absolute bitch of a head cold, so this week is very quick, short, easy comfort food.

YOU WILL NEED
clove garlic
half an onion
some mushrooms
seasonings
cream
some bread


THE METHOD

# Finely chop garlic and onion. Spend lots of time on this as the decongestant properties of airborne onion juice is very appealing. This is literally the only time crying while chopping onions is acceptable.

# Set onion and garlic off frying. Low low heat, the aim is to gently soften, not brown or crispify.

# Slice up mushrooms, as many as you can conceivably eat. This is a lot for me. Sorry, all you weirdos who don't like mushrooms, this is not your week.

# Add mushrooms to frying pan and stir. Probably add a bit more oil if it's looking dry.



# Time for seasoning! Plenty of salt and black pepper with your choice of extras. I like a tiny touch of both cumin (I adore cumin, I am obsessed with cumin) and cayenne pepper. Stir and keep on the low heat until everything is nice and soft.



# Add a little gloop of cream to the pan and turn the heat up a little. It will look thick, then more liquidy, then back to thick. While you wait for this to happen, whack some bread in the toaster.

# Toast done, swamp done, serve. If it suits you, add some HP sauce too. Delicious and soothing. Guzzle with a mug of strong tea.

The Big Fat Egg Of Solid Fuck

There's this little show called The Thick Of It that is pretty much the greatest thing in the world. For the finalé of the latest series, my friends and I had a themed party, because we're exactly that brilliant. Have a look here, about 4:40 in.



YOU WILL NEED
3 Kinder eggs
2 bars of Cadbury's Caramel
1 bag of Kiddies' Supermix Haribo


THE METHOD

# Heat a sharp knife over a lighter or gas hob or something. Probably also have a damp cloth or soggy kitchen roll handy to clean the knife every now and then. Get it hot, but for fuck's sake be careful.

# Unwrap Kinder eggs carefully. Use hot knife to slice them open. CAREFULLY. They will break if you're not careful. Remove toys.

# Put eggshell halves on a plate in the fridge. They are pathetically thin so any time you're not handling them they need to be chilled otherwise they will melt and cover your kitchen in goo.

# Finely chop Caramel bars and fifteen Haribo sweets. The best sweets to use are the ones that are jelly on top and foam on the bottom. Get a good mix of colours.

# Put chopped things in a microwavable bowl and make sure they're nicely mixed. Pop in microwave for about 30 seconds. It really doesn't take long. Much much less time than you expect. Seriously, if you do it for longer the sugar will get too hot and the chocolate will burn and it will be hell.

# Give melted things a bit of a stir, this will make a truly disgusting goop. Leave goop to cool for about five minutes. I hope you weren't too attached to that bowl. Because now the goop is.

# So something to do with gelatine means the goop should now be a mouldable putty. You will know if it is not ready because the hot sugar will melt your skin. Warm to cool what we want. Split it into three equal balls of putty.

# Fetch eggshells from fridge. CAREFULLY pop a putty ball into one half shell, then CAREFULLY place the other half shell on top. Do this quickly, three times, before the shells melt. The putty will hold the shells together, don't worry about rejoining the seam.

# BACK IN FRIDGE FUCKING QUICKLY.

# Give it about twenty minutes, then grab some aluminium foil to wrap your eggs up.

# CONGRATULATIONS you have just laid your first big fat eggs of solid fuck. I'm so proud.



This recipe is dedicated to the excellent Armando Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Ian Martin, Tony Roche, Roger Drew, Sean Gray, Will Smith, and Peter Capaldi. Thanks, chaps.

Open Heart Savouries

These were devised as a tasty bit of weird for my friend Liz's birthday.

YOU WILL NEED
(makes 25 canapés)
15 cherry tomatoes
1 pack puff pastry
200g cream cheese
1 red pepper
1 egg

small pastry cutter (Doesn't have to be heart-shaped, but if it isn't you can't do the Open Heart Savouries pun, which would be a shame)


THE METHOD

# Pop on the oven and get it to a nice warm Gas 2, 149c, 300f.

# Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. This isn't essential, but advisable unless you want to try cleaning caramel sugar off your tray. Ick.

# Slice tomatoes in half and place cut side up on the tray. Season. This bit is really up to you. I prefer a good amount of caster sugar, a touch of salt, and a good twist of black pepper. Feel free to go crazy with basil, thyme, chilli, anything really.

# Tray of tomatoes in the oven. They will take a varying amount of time, depending on your oven. They'll be fine for an hour. After that, start checking every ten minutes until they look caramelly and dried and luscious. Eat one or two. They're amazing. Make these whenever you want. They store well in a jar of olive oil to be nibbled on as sweeties. Nom.



# I used pre-rolled puff pastry because I'm a terrible cheat. If you're an honest person, roll out your pastry to about half a centimetre thick. Line another baking tray with paper.

# Cut out twenty eight little pastry hearts and arrange on the tray.

# Beat up an egg and brush the hearts with the wash.

# Cut out more hearts, but these ones need a circle cut out of the middle of them. Place each heart-ring on top of the egg-washed hearts. Then give another egg wash. Put them in the fridge for half an hour.



# While you're waiting, finely chop a red pepper and give it a quick whizz in the blender with the cream cheese. Just mix, you don't really want to purée.

# Turn the oven up to Gas 7, 218c, 425f. Put tray of pastries in the oven. They will take about 20 minutes to bake. Again, keep an eye out.

# When the pastry hearts are ready, remove from oven and let them cool a while. They will have little circles on the top. Cut these out and voila! Little heart pastry cases!



# Fill the cases with a little cream cheese mix. Don't throw away any leftover cream cheese. It makes lovely sandwich spread, or dip or something.

# Pop a cherry tomato on each pastry and you're done! Eat some. Marvel. I did. I'm not sure I expected this to work.



# Serve at a birthday party with excellent friends. Give them pointed looks until they tell you how amazing you are in the kitchen.