Sue’s Cook Book

Makes 12

10 oz / 290g self-raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

4 1/4 oz or 120g soft brown sugar

2 1/4 oz or 66g white choc bits

4oz or 115g frozen blueberries

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 egg

200 ml milk

100ml cooking oil

Preheat oven to 200/180 fan assisted. Grease a 12 hole muffin pan or use 12 muffin cases and place in muffin tin.

Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl and add brown sugar smoothing out any lumps. Add choc bits and frozen blueberries.

Whisk together egg, milk, vanilla essence and oil and add to dry mixture and stir until just combined.

Spoon batter into muffin tray/cases. Bake for 10 mins and then reduce the oven to 180/160 fan assisted and bake for a further 10 minutes until muffins are firm and just golden.

Cool for 5 mins and then turn out and cool on wire rack.

Delicious and quick and easy to make!

Also very easy to change the ingredients - for example instead of blueberries use white and milk choc bits and chopped nuts and add a tablespoon of cocoa powder.

This is a fantastic budget meal that can last for days!  I normally make this and have it as a meal with rice or couscous on the night and then eat the rest as soup for lunches for the next couple of days - pretty good for one chicken I think and it’s low in fat and high in taste - what more could you ask for?

 1 whole chicken - you choose how big

1 tin chickpeas

1 onion finely chopped

2 garlic cloves crushed

1 large sweet potato peeled and cubed

1/2 red pepper diced

1/2 green pepper diced

1 or 2 fresh or dried chilli sliced - to taste

1 400g tin chopped tomatoes

1/2 bottle of passata (700g bottle)

1.5 litres veg stock

1 heaped tablespoon curry paste - I use Patak’s lemon and coriander masala paste

1 heaped tablespoon tomato puree

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon cornflour mixed with a little water

You will need a large stock pot for this.  Spray a little oil on in the pot and turn on the heat.  Add the onion, garlic peppers and sweet potato, put the lid on and let them sweat for 5 mins or so. 

In the meantime, get your chicken and peel off all the skin - the only bits that will be tricky is the wings - I normally just leave the skin on those. 

When the onion, garlic, sweet potato and peppers has softened a little, add the tomatoes, passata, curry paste, chilli, tomato puree and stock and give it a good stir.  Then add the whole chicken to the pan, turn up the heat and let it come to the boil and then simmer for 1.5 hours.

After 1.5 hours have a taste and then add salt and pepper.  It may need a little more curry paste or chilli - depending on your taste.

Remove the chicken from the pan and place on a plate.  Take all the meat off the bones and cut up into bite-size pieces. Put all meat back into the pot and stir.

 Add the cornflour mix into the pot and stir until it thickens.

Serve in bowls with rice or couscous as a warming winter meal or serve as a soup with crusty bread.  This dish will serve many people or if there’s only two of you will last a few days if stored in the fridge and will also freeze well.

 Variation:

Lentils work well instead of chickpeas - just add 6oz red lentils to the stock.

1 cup bran flakes or All Bran

1 cup sultanas

1 cup semi skimmed or skimmed milk

1/2 cup soft brown sugar

1 cup self-raising flour

 Pre-heat the oven to 180 or 160 for fan-assisted.  Line and lightly grease a 1lb loaf tin with greaseproof paper.

Mix together bran, sultanas, milk and sugar and leave for one hour.  Then sift in the flour and mix. 

Put into loaf tin and bake for 1 hour 10 minutes.

Let cake cool for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a cooling rack.  Have on it’s own or with butter if you’re being naughty!

 P.S I literally mean a cup/mug for this recipe for those people in the UK!

Hi world, welcome to my site on some of my favourite recipes and hope they are useful to someone out there.

Let me know if you have any particular ones that you enjoy or have any hints and tips.

Sue.