On the grill

Saw a recipe in a women's magazine for grilled tortilla wraps that I had to try out and I loved them. As always I 'tweaked' it a little to adapt to what I had in my fridge. Ingredients for 4 wraps:

tortilla bread
1 avocado
half a red onion
mozzarella cheese
grated cheese
mache lettuce or rocket/ruccola
cherry tomatoes
fresh basil leaves
lemon or lime juice
salt and black pepppar

Chop all the ingredients and lay them on the tortilla. Sprinkle with lemon/lime juice and season with salt and pepper.



You may want to put a little less filling in them than I did!



Roll them and secure with a couple of toothpicks and lay them on the barbecue for a few minutes each side until browned. Keep an eye on them though, as they don't take long.

The mozzarella melts and becomes lovely and gooey.....

Alice's Birthday Bash Spread

My little Alice turned 15 last week and what better way to celebrate than with cake. There was lots of it too as we couldn't quite make the choice of what to make, so we made them all. Triple layer chocolate and raspberry cake with chocolate fudge frosting, blackberry and strawberry pavlova and Alice's speciality - cupcakes.

The chocolate fudge frosting was especially nice and I am writing down the recipe below in order to be able to find it here in the future:

50g butter
200g dark chocolate
3 tbsps double cream
half a standard tub of philadelphia

Melt the chocolate and butter together by stirring slowly over a double boiler of simmering water. When completely melted stir in the cream and then the philadelpia and stir in thoroughly. It's good to soften up and stir the cream cheese first before adding it to the choc mix. Allow to cool slightly - but not set - before spreading out on the cake.

These cakes aren't edible although they look yummy - they're made of felt and I ordered them from an Etsy seller. Hoping to do a tea-party themed jewelry display with them in the future.

Appley-cinnamony comfort food

I have been home for the last few days looking after A who has come down with a bout of the flu. So, in an effort to keep cabin fever at bay, I decided to get out a stash of recipes I've been wanting to try out. When I was a kid myself, I remember ice cream being the only thing I really felt like when I was under the weather.

This was pretty simple to do. It's basically apple slices fried in butter (yes!) for a few minutes each side. I then sprinkled about 2 tbsps of brown sugar over them in the pan, added the chopped zest and juice of half a lemon and a sprinkle of cinnamon. The apples caramelize in a minute or two, ready to be served warm with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream.