Sheena's cooking and baking

Ingredients:

1 large chicken breast

~12 strips of bacon

1 large white onion, chopped

4-5 gloves of garlic, quartered/3 teaspoons of garlic powder

300 g grated cheese (I’d recommend grating yourself, as pre-grated cheese is often coated with starch)

salt, pepper

optional: chili, cayenne, jalapeño (depending on what you used for filling!)

Preheat oven to  180 °C/356 °F.

Cut off the flaps from the chicken breast if your breast came with them. Then butterfly the breasts. Lay them out and tenderize them thoroughly! If you have the small flaps and want to use them, tenderize them, too. You can make 3 rolls, 2 out of the two halves of the breast and one from the two flaps, or just 2 of the two halves of the breast if you don’t have the flaps. Store-bought might not include them.

Place the butterflied breasts on the counter while open. Season them with salt and pepper, and garlic powder if using. If you have the flaps, place them first on each other, pierce them together with 3-4 toothpicks, then open similarly to the butterflied breasts. Put the cheese and whatever filling you want on the middle of the breasts, leaving some place, roughly an half an inch on both sides so you can close the breasts. Don’t overfill it, or you won’t be able to close them! 2a. If you use liver or mushrooms, you should prepare it before putting it in the meat. It won’t cook properly if you put them in raw. Also chop them finely, so the cheese will hold it together better, and you have an easier time closing the breast.

Fold the two halves of the breasts over the filling and each other, as tightly as you can. Take two toothpicks and pierce the meat together. Now take a slice of bacon, and wrap it around one end, using the toothpick to hold the bacon to the meat. Then take the next bacon and wrap it around the meat, too, fixing the ends with toothpicks. Continue until you wrapped them completely. Do this for the other(s).

Once you are done with wrapping them in bacon, take a thread or string, and tie a tight loop around one end. Then wrap it thoroughly around the meat to hold the bacon and its shape. Finish with another loop at the other end and remove the toothpicks. They should look like this:

6. Once they are done, place them in an oiled pan and scatter the chopped up onion in the pan. If using garlic cloves, place the quarters on top of the three rolls. Add one cup of water to the pan, then cover with tinfoil and bake for about 40 minutes. Remove the tinfoil for the last 10 minutes to give the bacon a nice color.

Once it’s done and you removed the thread, this is how it looks like:

This was my first time baking blueberry cupcakes, so I’m glad they turned out well. This is how they looked fresh out of the oven. Due to the blueberries’ volume, this yielded 18 cupcakes.

All in all, they looked pretty nice! 

They were done in 30 minutes as usual, and there wasn’t any unwanted blueberry juice inside, either.

For the swiss meringue color, I didn’t use food coloring but added the drained juice of the blueberries, so even the cream had a nice blueberry flavor!

For the leaves - and for the flowers in the previous cupcakes - I used Sugarflair gel food coloring. I really recommend investing in good gel food coloring if you want strong colors. Especially in red, you’ll end up with pink if you buy liquid food coloring, or too loose/too sugary buttercream.

Except for yellow - for that, the coloring I used is your cheap, average liquid food coloring. Yellow colors well enough, you don’t need much of it.

The liquid food colorings can also be good for mixing color if you don’t plan on adding to much to the buttercream. You don’t want your buttercream to be too loose.

This is the shade of green I used here, very lightly to get the lighter end: 

You can find the base recipe here.

Ingredients:

500 g chicken liver, cut into roughly same sized pieces

400 g button mushroom, sliced

2 big white onions, sliced

bacon, roughly 400 g (at least 15 slices)

2-3 teaspoons garlic powder/4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped finely

salt, pepper

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 °C/356 °F.

Cut everything as listed above. Salt and pepper the livers to taste. Add garlic powder now if using that.

Lightly oil a pan, then take a piece of liver, wrap tightly it in bacon, and put it in the pan. Do it for all pieces of liver.

Once done, take the sliced mushroom, salt it to taste, and throw it in the pan beside the bacon-wrapped livers. Then do the same with the white onion, and the chopped garlic cloves if using that.

Chocolate muffin:

Ingredients:

240 g flour (or 220 g if you want it more chocolate-y)

25 g cocoa powder (or 45 g if you want it more chocolate-y)

1 package (12 g) baking powder

1 flat teaspoon of baking soda

120 g butter

150 g granulated sugar

1 egg

240 ml milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

salt

Preheat oven to 160 °C/320 °F if using convection oven, or to 180 °C/356 °F if regular.

Beat the egg and the sugar together until it’s light and fluffy. With an electric mixer, this should take 2-3 minutes on high. Once it’s fluffy, add the butter.

Mix the flour, cocoa, the baking powder, baking soda and the salt in a separate bowl. Slowly (2-3 tablespoons at a time) start adding it to the wet mix while continuously stirring it on low. Once it’s mixed completely, add the milk slowly.

Ingredients:

300 g elbow macaroni, cooked

250 g cheddar, chopped (some can be reserved as grated for top)

250 g red leicester, chopped (some can be reserved as grated for top)

100 g feta cheese, chopped

200 g cream cheese of choice  (I use Lidl’s full fat plain Goldessa from Milbona)

250 ml heavy cream

fresh, chopped jalapeño to taste/ jalapeño powder to taste

salt, pepper

bacon, chopped and lightly fried 

optional: any other spice you like your mac n cheese with

Preheat oven to 180 °C/ 356 °F. Cook macaroni.

Chop up the bacon and lightl fry it in a pan. You don’t want it perfectly cooked, or it will burn in the oven.

Pour the heavy cream and cream cheese into a pot and starting heating it. Stir constantly over medium-high heat until it starts bubbling and thickening. Add feta cheese, salt, pepper and jalapeño while stirring constantly. Once the feta is more or less dissolved, turn to low heat, and add the chopped cheeses while constantly stirring. If it’s still bubbling, turn the heat off completely. Stir until the cheese mostly melt.

How to make:

1 kg minced pork

5 medium eggs/6 small eggs, hard-boiled

1-2 tablespoons of Hungarian red paprika (NOT smoked red paprika powder - that is made from bell pepper and will have a different taste)

1 raw egg

2-3 slices of bread, soaked in water and squeezed before usage

half white onion, finely chopped/onion paste/onion powder

8 gloves of garlic, finely chopped/4 teaspoons of garlic powder

salt, pepper

optional: 2 teaspoons Erős Pista (traditional Hungarian hot pepper paste)/ 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Preheat oven to 180 °C/ 356 °F.

Mix the raw minced meat with the onion and garlic. Squeeze the soaked bread slices out of water as much as you can, then tear into tiny pieces and mix it with the meat, along with the one raw egg, red paprika powder, salt and pepper. (You need to make sure you completely mix the raw egg, so you can beat it separately beforehand to make sure.) Taste the mix to know whether you’ve used enough spices. If you’re icky about eating raw pork, taste the bread.

Once the mix is ready, take a baking sheet and line it with paper. Form an elongated oval of about 1 cm/roughly half inch thick meat, long enough to fit the five/six eggs. Place the hard-boiled, shell-less eggs tightly one after another on the meat. Then start covering it with the rest of the meat. Make sure you’re not leaving any eggs uncovered. Form a nice dome of the meat.

A how-to for those who want something quick and effortless:

Sacher torte:

Ingredients:

125 g butter

2-3 teaspoons of cocoa powder

3-4 tablespoons of sugar

3 eggs

12 g baking powder

4-5 tablespoons flour

10 g vanilla sugar (or 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract)

1 teaspoons of rum exract

Melt the butter in the microwave. Add the egg, sugar and vanilla sugar, then beat thoroughly.

Mix flour with baking powder. Slowly start adding it to the mixture. Once it’s also mixed, add the rum extract.

Preheat oven to 160 °C/ 320 °F, no convection. Butter and flour a 26 cm/10 inch round cake form, and pour the batter inside it. Bake for 6-10 minutes. Check with toothpick. (This batter will look wet even when it’s fully baked because it’s shiny. But the toothpick test will work as ever.)

Once the base is done, prepare vanilla pudding as you would, and pour it over the base.

Let it rest and cool. Once the cake form is not warm to the touch, whip whipping cream with stabilizer, and spread it gently on top. Pour shavings (or whatever decor you want) on the top, then put it in the fridge for at least 1 hour to cool.

Base recipe (for 1 batch):

Ingredients:

1 egg

150 g butter, room temperature

150 g granulated sugar

1,5 dl milk

280 g all purpose flour

12 g baking powder (1 packet)

a pinch of salt

(for white chocolate cupcakes) 50 g white chocolate, grated

Preheat oven to 160 °C/320 °F if using convection oven, or to 180 °C/356 °F if regular.

Beat the egg and the sugar together until it’s light and fluffy. With an electric mixer, this should take 2-3 minutes on high. Once it’s fluffy, add the butter and mix well, then add the milk slowly. (It’s okay if it looks a bit soupy, or if the milk doesn’t mix well perfectly!)

Mix the flour, the baking soda and the salt in a separate bowl. Slowly (2-3 tablespoons at a time) start adding it to the wet mix while continuously stirring it on low. 3a. If making white chocolate cupcakes, add the grated white chocolate into the batter and mix well with the electric mixer. (You can also add white chocolate chips if you’d like, but I didn’t use them. The batter should have a strong white chocolate flavor from the grated chocolate.)

Pour the mix into forms. It should make 12 large or 14 medium cupcakes. Put 2-3 tablespoons of batter into the forms. For these cupcakes, I baked 14 pieces per batch. Bake for approximately 30 minutes. Check with a toothpick for doneness. This is a really reliable recipe - if the top is golden and the toothpick is clean, it’s done. The bottom will feel soft until it cools, that should be normal and no reason for worry!

Frosting:

This is the general American Buttercream recipe but here’s a quick rundown on how I make it.

Ingredients:

500 g butter, room temperature

500 g confectioner’s sugar (might not need all), sifted

2-3 tablespoon heavy cream

a pinch of salt

vanilla extract

Beat the butter on high until light and fluffy. Make sure you beat it thoroughly and you don’t have chunks stuck to the bottom. It should take about 3-5 minutes. Once beaten, add the salt and give it one more whip.

Add 2 tablespoons of heavy cream. (If too hard, more can be added after the sugar was mixed in to achieve the desired consistency.)

Start adding the sifted sugar, half a cup at a time, and mix on high until it’s completely incorporated. Do this until the buttercream holds its shape if you take a pinch of it but it’s creamy and not too hard. (If you add too much sugar, it will be very hard to pipe with.) Once you have the desired consistency, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

If you want to color it, separate the buttercream into as many batches as you’d like colors. I used three colors for the flowers, so I divided it into roughly three batches, and put a smaller batch aside for the green. That was about 3 heaped tablespoons worth, since I didn’t plan on too much leaves or greenery.

Piping tips I used:

Purple flower and grass:

Pink and yellow:

Leaves: