Easy Roast Beef Dinner

I realise these pictures aren't the best, but what are you more interested in, good pictures or good food? 

Its the latter for me!

I was staying at home with my sisters while my parents were away, and one of my sisters that has been at uni for a few weeks was complaining about not having roast dinners anymore, so I decided to make one!

This has to be one of the easiest roast dinners I have ever cooked!

This was the meat I used, here is the link to it on the Tesco website, because they have changed the packaging for it. 

You literally cook it as it says on the packet; take the plastic off, pour the gravy over, cover with foil, cook for 45 minutes at 180 degrees, remove the foil, cook for another 10 minutes, then remove from the oven, wrap it in foil again and leave to stand for 10 minutes. Simple. 

You need to decide, preferably before hand, what you will accompany your meat with. 

We had; 

- Butternut squash, peeled, chopped, drizzled in oil and roasted - 20 minutes

- Carrots, peeled, chopped and boiled (you can buy it already prepared) - 15 minutes

- Broccoli and cauliflower (pre-prepared) boiled, 10 minutes

- Yorkshire puddings (Aunt Bessie's frozen) - 4 minutes in oven

- Peas and sweetcorn - 3 minutes in microwave, from frozen

- Gravy, Bisto 'favourite' gravy granules, made with boiling water that the vegetables were cooked in, with added beef juices!

Simple enough? 

Enjoy, 

Zoe x

Raspberry, White Chocolate and Vanilla Cupcakes

These cupcakes were really nice, and very easy to do!

The nicest touch to these was that they had everyone's names on, in white chocolate letters :)

I also added some red butterflies for a bit of contrast, and to match the red cases that the cupcakes were in. You can get the cutters here. 

Recipe:

Cupcake

- 125g butter

- 125g caster sugar

- 2 tbsp raspberry jam

- 2 eggs

- 150g self-raising flour (or 150g all-purpose flour plus 1 tsp baking powder)

- 12 fresh raspberries

Icing

- 75g butter

- 125g icing sugar

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Line a muffin tray with 12 cupcake cases.

2. Cream the butter for as long as you can, meaning mix it with a fork or a whisk, until it is pale and fluffy.

3. Add the sugar, mix. Then add the raspberry jam and mix

4. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

5. Sift in the flour in and mix again.

6. Half fill the cupcake cases, then put a raspberry into the middle of each case, then pour more cupcake mix over the raspberries until the cases are about 2/3 - 3/4 full.

7. Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes.

8. While the cakes are cooling, start to make the icing. Cream the butter until it is pale and fluffy. 

9. Carefully stir in the icing sugar and vanilla extract. 

10. When your cakes are cooled, decorate them with the icing, either piping it on, using a palate knife or a regular knife! I then added the names and the butterflies.

Zoe x