Rhubarb and Ginger Pie

My Rhubarb and Ginger Pie brings together the age old combination of sweet and sour as the soft rhubarb and ginger filling is encased in a sticky syrup and sweet pastry crust. And what’s more…it’s in season!

I hadn’t really discovered rhubarb until a year or two ago. We have always grown it in our garden but it was something the parents sneakily ate when we had gone to bed. Because of this I never really had much interest in it as a fruit. The other fruit we grew like apples and gooseberries were eaten almost daily in our house during the summer months but the rhubarb was kept hidden away!

The more I got into cookery shows the more I became intrigued by this bright pink fruit! (How you get it to retain this bright colour while cooking still escapes me: answers on a postcard please.) If it was good enough for celebrity chefs it was good enough for me surely?

I really fell in love with rhubarb in a delicious rhubarb crumble. The topping had a claggy yet crunchy texture and the filling was so soft and sweet yet sharp at the same time. The combination of textures and flavours was to die for and I knew I had to try and recreate my own.

Crumbles feature a lot in my cooking. You can find an Oaty Apple Crumble and Gooseberry Crumble already on the blog, and in a week or two’s time I will be posting a Spiced Pineapple Crumble (seriously amazing, watch this space!!!) So with that in mind, plus the fear I could never recreate the amazing rhubarb crumble that made me fall in love with the fruit in the first place, I decided instead to try a pie.

Baked Spanish Eggs

As quick as it came, the Shake Up Your Wake Up campaign is almost over and breakfast week will soon be a distant memory…

Ok so there’s probably no need to be quite so dramatic. Especially considering that you’re all going to eat breakfast every day from now on! Right?

The campaign this year has been fab in my opinion, with hundreds and hundreds of people sharing their breakfast pictures every day using the hashtag #breakfastwatch.

I was pretty proud of myself as I managed to send in a picture 5 out of the 7 days! Looking back on the week I had some pretty cool breakfasts!

Monday: Black cherry jam on wholemeal toast

Tuesday: Porridge with berry compote

Wednesday: Breakfast detox smoothie

Thursday: Bacon jam on toast

Friday: Spanish Baked Eggs!

It probably won’t come as a surprise that I won’t be able to keep up that level of variety much longer! With two jars of jam now open in the fridge I’ll probably be living off of jam and toast for the next month or so.

Hopefully you’ve all been just as inspired as me to try to add a bit of variety into your morning routine, so with that in mind I’m going to share with you my Spanish Baked Eggs recipe!

This recipe is guaranteed to put a smile on your face as the little egg yolks look like sun shines in your brekkie bowl (/ramekin!)

They’re also packed full of flavour which is guaranteed to wake you and your taste buds up.

Courgette and Feta Bake

Since Easter I have lost nearly a whole stone and have now reached a rather healthy plateau bang smack in the middle of my recommended BMI range, WOOHOO! Unfortunately for me, both high blood pressure and high cholesterol run down the female line in my family. Despite only being at the top of the healthy BMI range for her height, my Mum was recently told she needs to keep her weight down to reduce her chances of suffering a stroke like her Mum did. Understandably, now that I’ve reached this weight I want to stay here so that I don't suffer the same fate as other women in my family. As a result, I have come up with even more delicious but low-calorie recipes.

Mum and Dad are also on diets and this has become one of their firm favourites! It’s incredibly simple with just 5 ingredients (including the 1 cal spray!)

If you haven’t come across one cal sprays yet, where have you been? You can get all sorts, from olive oil and sunflower oil to even balsamic and ceaser salad dressings. By turning the oil (or dressing) into spray form you can much more easily control the amount of oil you use. If you don’t want to keep buying the sprays another alternative is to get an oil pump spray – unfortunately mine is currently in a box labelled “Emma’s House”...I don’t have any plans for moving for over a year yet but that’s another story! Anyway, I digress...

I wasn’t entirely sure what to call this recipe it to begin with – essentially it is finely sliced courgette, crumbled low-fat feta (I actually use "Be Good To Yourself Salad Cheese from Sainsburys), egg, Italian herbs and the one cal spray all baked in an oven. Spanish omelettes and frittatas traditionally contain potatoes, but the only veg inside this eggy-bake is courgette. But it’s not cooked in a pan either so it can’t be an omelette? If anyone has any insight into what this should really be called, do leave a comment!

For now I will simply call it a courgette and feta bake! I think the name of a dish should explain what it is and hopefully that does the trick.

Strawberry Ice Cream

In the summer time when the weather is high

You can chase right up and touch the sky

When the weather’s right

You got *ice-cream you got *ice-cream on your mind

Have a drink, have a drive

Go out and see what you can find...

(Hopefully more ice-cream!)

You would have to live in a cave to have not noticed the beautiful weather we have been having across the UK the last 3 or 4 days. The picnic blankets have come out, there have been walks in the park, gardening, cool cocktails in the evening sunshine and plenty of BBQ’s and the whole time I’ve been walking around with my own personal summer theme song playing in my head, except unlike the Mungo Jerry original, I have not had women on my mind, but instead, ice-cream!

I love all types of ice-cream, scoops in a bowl with fresh fruit, in a tall sundae glass covered in sauce, nuts, sprinkles and whipped cream, Ben and Jerry’s out of a tub, or soft my whippy in a cone with a flake...ALL types of ice-cream! I’m also quite partial to a sorbet or frozen yogurt too...but I’m sure there will be more of that as the summer continues.

As most of you know my exams are already over due to a horrible timetable that meant I had all of my exams in the first three days of my university’s exam period. As a result, I thought I’d return home for a week so as not to distract my friends still slogging it away over their textbooks and revision notes!

I’ve been fortunate enough to not only be able to sun myself in the garden all weekend, but I’ve also had access to my parents fridge/freezer and a couple of gadgets I couldn’t take to uni with me, like my ice-cream maker!