God Bless the Humble Tomato

Okay, okay, I know I keep saying this, but I LOVE soup. It's like the best thing ever. So full of lovely nutrients, hardly any calories, and really filling. I could easily live off the stuff.

I took a couple of days off work this week, so I decided to make a vat of tomato soup to tide me over during the day. It's quick, cheap and really easy to make.

Tomato Soup

You will need (serves 4):


900g tomatoes
1 red pepper
1 large red onion
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 crushed clove of garlic
2 teaspoons dried oregano
A couple of fresh basil leaves (optional)
Salt and pepper to season
600ml vegetable stock

Preheat the oven to about 180 c / 160 c fan.

Chop up the tomatoes, pepper and onion and whack in a roasting tray. Drizzle in olive oil and add the salt, pepper and oregano. Then, give the tray a quick shake to ensure that all of the tomatoes are covered in oil.

Pop in the oven and roast for about 40 minutes until the veggies are all charred and squishy :)

Then spoon all of the stuff (including the juice) into a food processor and add the stock.

If you don't have a food processor, I seriously recommend investing in one. Basic ones go for really cheap, and will easily pay for themselves in the money that you'll save on expensive shop-bought packaged food.

Blitz together on a high setting.

BONUS POINT!!! Hold the stock, blitz for slightly less time and BOOM. Low fat, cheap and easy chunky pasta sauce. Sorry, just throwing that one out there.

However, for the soup, keep going until the mix is nice and smooth. Then transfer to a big pot and heat gently for a minute or two.

I know what you're thinking: "but it's summer! Who wants to eat soup in SUMMER?"

I have two words for you:

BBC weather.

I rest my case.

ENJOY!

Cake Day

So yesterday was my birthday.

Mr MFC got me this lovely icing set from Lakeland Plastics, and I was positively itching to try it out. So, as pathetic as it may sound, I made my own birthday cake.

Yes it may sound tragic, but to be honest, I couldn't think a better way of spending my birthday than pottering around in the kitchen and trying out my new gadgets.

For the cake, I just followed a basic madeira cake recipe. That is:

• 225g self raising flour
• 150g caster sugar
• 150g softened unsalted butter
• 3 medium eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

First of all, line your baking tin with parchment (I used an 18cm round cake tin) and preheat your oven to 180c / 160 c fan / gas mark 4.

While the oven is heating up, use an electric whisk to cream the sugar and butter together until light and fluffy. I have my trusty ol' Kenwood, but to be honest if you have strong arms (and if you've been doing the Shred, then by God you will) then you can probably cream it together yourself with a wooden spoon and a bit of gusto. 

After the sugar and butter is combined, start to gradually add the wet ingredients (i.e. the egg and vanilla) with a little bit of the flour. Keep going, little by little, until all of the ingredients are combined. 

Then, it's just a case of whacking it in the tin...

...baking for about 1 hour...

...and bashing it onto a cooling rack!

Then the fun could really start! Madeira cake is quite a light, inoffensive sponge, so I decided to give it  a bit of an edge with some chocolate buttercream icing. 

I was taking a risk with buttercream, because even though I have attempted it before, my track record has hardly been great. For me, it always comes out runny, runny, runny. 

However, I tried a new butter : sugar ratio, and with a little bit of birthday magic, the icing came out a treat! 

It was basically a case of:

• 100g icing sugar
• 50g unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon cocoa (to make it chocolatey, obviously leave this out if you want just bog standard buttercream)

The consistency was pretty much perfect, so I spread the icing on with a knife:

I left the base to set for a little while, then I made some bright red buttercream icing (using the same recipe as above, except with less cocoa and more red food colouring!) and used my new bag with star nozzle to pipe out some shapes. 

I think for a first attempt, it came out pretty well:

Image by Mr MFC, because he has a better camera than me!

Well, you know what they say. If you want a job done well, you do it yourself!

The cake was pretty good, I took it along to my birthday shindig at a nearby tapas place and people seemed to enjoy it.

Now, I'm really tempted to make a batch of cupcakes to try my new found skillz on a smaller canvas... This might be very bad for my healthy eating plans... very bad indeed!