Whilst the mojito may be my favourite rum based drink, what I’ll be found drink most often in the pub is a Dark Rum and Diet Coke. What I’ll want to be drinking though, is my variation of the Cuba Libre – the Cuba Libre Oscuro.

A standard Cuba Libre blends the flavours of Cuba (a white rum) and “The Free World” (Coca Cola), with a bunch of lime juice. In contrast, and as the name would suggest, the Oscuro is a Cuba Libre made with Darker Rum.

Right now I’m enjoying a golden 5 year El Dorado (a drink blended from rums with a minimum age of five years aged in oak barrels) , but I also enjoy it made with a nice shot of Captain Morgan’s. It’s a simple flavoursome drink, and very simple to make. Om nom nom.

Ingredients

• Half a lime
• Three ice cubes
• 1 shot of your favourite dark rum
• Diet Coke

Instructions

1. Roll your lime under your hand on a board to squish its insides a bit, thus encouraging the juices to flow once you cut into it.

2. Cut the lime in half across its body, and then cut one of those halves in half again. Squeeze the two quarters hard, and drop them into the glass.

   If you have no fresh limes (it happens!) I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Tesco’s bottled lime juice. Replace the half a lime with two and a half teaspoons of bottled juice. I measure two teaspoons, not worrying about any extra that spills over.

3. Add the ice to the lime juice.

4. Pour the rum over the ice.

5. Finally, you guessed it, top up with diet coke.

   The pouring action of each stage should mix the drink for you, leaving you with a tasty limey, rummy, cokey drink. Tasty.

Cookies are awesome. They’re simple to make, tasty, you can freeze the dough and you can eat it raw if you want to. I love them all. If I had to choose to only make one type of cookie for the rest of my life though, I would choose these.

But why?

Well, I’ve got to admit that the main reason isn’t even in their name – it’s the cinnamon in them that I would gladly give up the chance to eat any other type of cookie for. It might not be the first flavour you’ll taste in them, but it’s there, and it gives the cookies a wonderful warmth that just wouldn’t find otherwise.

Don’t get me wrong, the oatmeal gives the cookies a wonderful chewy texture, and the raisins give a brilliant juiciness, but it’s the cinnamon that does the job for me every time.

So, chances are, if I say I’m going to be making you some cookies I’ll probably be making you The Oatmeal and Raisin cookies. Om nom nom.

Makes 25 small cookies, and takes about 20 minutes all told.

Ingredients

• 150g butter
• 85g soft brown sugar
• 50 granulated sugar
• 1 small egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 100g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 125g porridge oats
• 100g raisins

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 180ºc

2. Cream the butter and sugars together.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the egg and vanilla extract, before adding these to the creamed ingredients and mixing lightly.

4. In yet another bowl combine the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Then, you guessed it – mix this slowly into the creamy eggy mixture.

   I tend to do this a third at a time to make sure everything combines together.

5. Finally, mix your oatmeal and raisins and add them to the mix.

6. Make sure everything comes together, cover and place in the fridge.

   Ideally, leave your mixture in the fridge overnight, but if you can’t wait then make sure you leave it in there for at least half an hour. The reason we do this is to let everything firm up again, which in turn means that the cookies won’t spread to cover your entire baking tray when you cook them.

7. Once your cookie dough is fully chilled, use a tablespoon to remove small chunks, which you should form into balls. Place them on a baking tray – I tend to fit nine cookies on a tray.

   Try to handle your balls as little as possible – you want them chilled, remember?

8. Bake for 11 minutes. Allow to cool sightly before removing from baking tray and then leave to cool on a cooling rack.

   Alternatively, put a couple of cookies in a shallow bowl with some good quality vanilla ice-cream and nom.

It’s been quite warm here recently. Warm enough that I’ve not been sleeping too well, even with the bedroom windows wide open, and a fan on full blast all through the night. There’s no air conditioning here.

What I’ve had to keep my going though is the humble mojito. I love my mojitos. I’d love to blame Bruce Campbell in Burn Notice, but I’ve been enjoying them long before I started watching that show. There’s something about that combination of lime, mint and ice that makes a summer day wonderful.

But today I’m not making my normal strained mojito. Since True Blood is returning to our screens, I’ve been thinking about blood related drinks (you know, like you do). I’ve been making raspberry based mojitos for a while now, but I’ve only just realised what a gorgeous deep blood red you can get out of them. So, I decided to tweak my recipe a little bit and make something that really looked like blood.

The secret to this is in the double straining. Normally when I strain a mojito I’m left with bits of mint and lime flowing through the drink, contributing to the lovely green colour that I adore. For a drink that you’re wanting to look bloody though, this doesn’t quite work.

So, I double strain. As with most things I do, this is really easy. Instead of simply straining the drink, I hold a tea strainer between the cocktail shaker and the glass as I’m pouring. This has a finer mesh than the normal cocktail strainer, and so stops any bits of mint and any raspberry seeds entering the drink. What you’re left with is a very smooth, red drink.

Try it; I’m sure you’ll love it.

Ingredients

• Juice of half a lime
• 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar
• 12 mint leaves
• 15 raspberries
• 2 shots of light rum
• A load of ice

Instructions

1. First, squeeze the juice of half a lime into your cocktail shaker.

   Before cutting the lime, I will roll it hard against a table, pushing down on it as I go. This will smush the inside of the lime a bit, allowing the squeezing process to be a bit easier than otherwise.

2. Once you’ve squeezed the lime, cut the peel up and stick that in the shaker as well, along with the sugar, mint leaves and raspberries (in that order).

3. Using a muddler (or the end of a rolling pin), squish and rotate to puree the raspberries, rip the mint and combine everything together.

   You can use frozen raspberries if you like. In fact, I keep a stock of frozen blueberries and raspberries in my freezer all the year around for alcohol related emergencies. You never know when you might want a nice cocktail.

4. Add two shots of rum and a couple of icecubes. Shake vigorously.

   I find that singing a song at this point helps the process.

5. To a separate glass, add enough crushed ice to fill.

6. Now for the straining. Double strain the contents of your cocktail shaker into your glass of ice.

   So, why am I double straining here? Basically, your shaken mixture will contain lots of raspberry seeds and some shredded mint. Now, whilst the mint would look gorgeous in a normal mojito it doesn’t work too well for the True Blood variety. You want to get rid of all those bits and leave a nice smooth colourful drink.

   What I mean by double straining is strain normally using your built-in or hawthorn strainer and then immediately through a standard tea strainer. Your normal strainer will stop the lumps of ice and lime from entering your drink, and the tea strainer will keep hold of your raspberry pips and mint.

7. Finally, garnish with a few raspberries and a sprig of mint. Add a straw, and enjoy.

I love my Mexican food. Recently, I bought Thomasina Miers’ “Mexican Food Made Simple“, which turns out to be a fantastic collection of Mexican recipes from the former winner of Masterchef and founder of Wahaca.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been trying out a fair few of the recipes form the book, and making my own adjustments for taste and availability of ingredients. This Butternut Squash and Chorizo Salad has turned out to be a firm favourite, and not something I would have tried had it not been for this book.

Here’s my take on Thomasina’s recipe to serve two. Takes approximately 40 minutes.

Ingredients

• One small butternut squash (or half a medium one – even the smallest butternut squash can be too much for two).
• One finely chopped red chilli.
• Half a teaspoon of cumin seed – crushed.
• Half a teaspoon dried oregano.
• Olive oil.
• Half a red onion, roughly sliced.
• A punnet of baby tomatoes. I like a mix of red and yellow pomodorinos.
• A handful of fresh coriander leaves, chopped.
• Chorizo.
• A small bag of baby spinach.

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 190ºC.

2. Cut your butternut squash into 5cm or so pieces, making sure you remove the skin and seed.

   I hate this job. I’m not a fan of how butternut squash smells when raw, but I love the taste after it’s been roasted, so I put up with it. If I’m feeling incredibly lazy I’ll buy pre-cut stuff from the supermarket. This does not make me a bad person.

3. Put your butternut squash, chilli, cumin and oregano into a roasting tin, add enough olive oil to coat lightly and mix.

4. Cook for 15 minutes.

5. Add the onion to the tin, mix, and cook for a further 10 minutes.

6. Add the tomatoes, and cook for a final 10 minutes.

7. Whilst the tomatoes are roasting, grind the coriander leaves into a paste in a pestle along with the salt and pepper. Add a tablespoon or so of olive oil, and mix. This will be your salad dressing.

8. Slice your chorizo and sear it on a griddle. Once seared, place the slices on some kitchen towel to drain.

9. Now that your vegetables have cooked, remove them from the oven and place in a large bowl. Add the coriander oil and gently mix.

10. Finally, line a shallow bowl with spinach leaves, pile on your vegetables and top with chorizo. Tasty, and the chilli gives it a lovely kick.

Another post, another chance to point to Lay the Table and show off a different recipe than the one Becs used. This time it’s for big fat nommery Chocolate Orange Cupcakes.

The cake mix is a fairly standard mix, with a bit of good quality cocoa powder thrown in. On top of that you have a nice fruity orange sugar syrup, all topped off with some zesty orange frosting.

Takes a couple of hours all told, ideally with a day in the middle. 20 minutes cooking time for the cakes.

These ingredients make 12 normal sized cupcakes or 24 little ones.

Ingredients

Zesty Orange Frosting

• 150g icing sugar
• 100g cream cheese (full fat!)
• 50g unsalted butter
• The grated zest of two oranges.

Orange Sugar Syrup

• The juice of one orange (about 5 tbsp)
• 75g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp Cointreau

Chocolate Cupcake base

• 100g unsalted butter
• 100g caster sugar
• 2 medium eggs
• 85g self raising flour
• 15g cocoa powder

Instructions

Zesty Orange Frosting

1. Cream the butter and sugar.

2. Add the cream cheese, and mix this in too.

3. Grate the zest of two oranges and, you guessed it, add this into the mix as well!

   Don’t chuck the oranges though – you’ll need one of them for the syrup.

Orange Sugar Syrup

1. Juice one of the oranges you had left over from the frosting.

2. Bring the orange juice and sugar to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

3. Let the syrup cool, and then stir in the Cointreau (or other orange liqueur if you prefer).

   Yes, this means there will be a tiny bit of alcohol in your cakes. If you’d prefer there not to be, just add another tablespoon of orange juice instead at this point.

4. Leave to infuse overnight if at all possible to let all the lovely flavours intermingle. If you can’t wait, then start making the cupcakes now instead.

Chocolate Cupcake

1. Preheat the oven to 160ºC.

2. Cream the butter and sugar.

3. Lightly beat the eggs, and slowly add them to the mix – combine on a medium speed.

4. Once the sugar, butter and eggs are combined, mix in the flour and cocoa powder at a low speed.

   That’s your cake mix – nice and simple.

5. Put your mix into your cupcake cases, and from there into the oven for 18-20 minutes.

   I use a children’s plastic icing plunger to place my cake mix into cases. I find this is much easier than using spoons, and quicker than using a proper icing bag (which is use for the proper icing).

6. Once the cakes have cooked, leave them to cool for ten minutes if you’re making normal cupcakes, or five minutes if you’re making mini ones.

7. Prick the top of the cupcakes a few times with something pointy like a cocktail stick, and using a pastry brush coat the tops with the sugar syrup.

   Be careful not to splash syrup everywhere, but also remember that the syrup is fantastic and will keep the cakes lovely and moist and add flavour so don’t be stingy. Don’t be worried if you have a load of syrup left though – that’s normal.

8. Once completely cooled, you can ice the cakes using your preferred method.

9. Finally, eat the damn cakes!

Last weekend was Becca’s birthday, and since I’d been promising her I’d make her a birthday cake I ended up scouring the internet for a nommy sounding recipe. Somehow I managed to miss the fabulous sounding recipe that Becs recently posted on Lay the Table, and instead settled on one from the BBC Good Food website, even though if I’m honest it didn’t visually appeal to me too much. As Becca said about the Good Food cake: “It looks like a f*cking breezeblock!”.

I’m ridiculously happy that I looked past that initial photo. What I ended up with after I tweaked things a bit was frankly fantastic. It’s ridiculously rich though, and definitely not something I could see myself making every week – it’s most certainly a treat cake.

Takes one hour and fifty minutes – twenty minutes preparation of the cake, one hour cooking, half an hour icing.

Ingredients

For the cake:

• 250g self raising flour
• 250g soft brown sugar
• 50g cocoa
• 250g plain chocolate
• 250g butter
• 4 eggs
• 200ml water

For the sauce and icing:

• 150g plain chocolate
• 250g milk chocolate
• 300ml single cream
• 25g butter
• 700g icing sugar

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 160ºC.

2. Mix the flour, sugar and cocoa in a bowl.

3. Melt the chocolate, butter and water together in a pan.

4. Allow to cool slightly, and beat the wet into the dry mixture along with the eggs.

5. Dollop your mixture into a cake tin and bake for one hour.

6. Whilst the cake cools, it’s time to make the icing.

   Melt the chocolate, butter and single cream in a pan, and mix until it becomes smooth and comes together.

7. All the sauce to cool for about 20 minutes.

8. Beat in about 250g of icing sugar.

   At this point the sauce should be rich, thick and dark.

9. Slice the cake in half, and spread as much of the sauce as you want between the slices. Put the top of the cake back onto the bottom.

10. Beat in the remaining icing sugar.

    The sauce will now have become icing, will be a lot lighter in colour and will form peaks in your bowl.

11. Apply the icing to the cake. Make it as messy as you want – there’s something magical about a fully iced cake covered in dozens of little peaks and troughs.

12. Allow the cake to set.

    Over the next couple of hours the icing will harden, allowing it to crunch when you bite into it. The inside of the cake and the rest of the icing will remain wonderfully moist and rich.

13. Host a party, or take the cake into work. This is one cake you certainly don’t want to keep to yourself.

I’m a big fan of flapjacks – they’re sweet and oaty and fruity and yummy. Even better, they’re gluten-free, so my coeliac friends can eat them too.

Most of the time I make mine with cherries and sultanas, but it’s just as easy to substitute in other ingredients.

Takes 10 minutes to prepare, 20 minutes to cook.

Ingredients

• 150g unsalted butter
• 200g light brown sugar
• 4 tbsp golden syrup
• 350g porridge oats
• 150g sultanas
• 100g glacé cherries

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180ºc

2. Melt butter, sugar and golden syrup in a pan.

3. Whilst the meltening is happening, chop up your cherries. I tend to take them down to quarters.

4. Once everything’s melted remove from the heat, and mix in the oats, cherries and sultanas.

5. Press into a tin, and cook for 20 minutes in the oven.

6. Once it’s out of the oven, let the flapjack cool for a few minutes before scoring it deeply into portion sized pieces.

7. Once cold, turn out the flapjack and break into pieces.

It takes about 15 minutes to cook and tastes fantastic. Serves 2.

Ingredients

• 4 – 5 rashers of bacon (we use Sainsbury’s Be Good to Yourself Bacon Medallions for this)
• 1 courgette
• Garlic puree
• 150g “light” creme fraiche (we used TESCO’s Healthy Living Creme Fraiche today)
• 4-5 balls of Tagliatelle
• Olive oil

Instructions

1. Slice the courgette in half lengthways, and then slice each half finely. Add it to a large frying pan with a little bit of olive oil and a good squeeze of garlic puree. Mix, and fry on a medium heat for a few minutes until soft.

2. Whilst the courgette is softening, remove the fat from your bacon and slice’n'dice into small pieces. Once the courgette is soft add the bacon to the pan. I tend to turn the heat up a bit now to brown the courgette a bit.

   If you want, you can add even more garlic puree at this point. Don’t forget to give everything a good mix.

3. Now that your bacon and courgette is frying, put your tagliatelle into a saucepan and start cooking it. We tend to put four to five balls in. This will be cooked in about 7 minutes.

4. Once the bacon is cooked, it’s time to add your creme fraiche. Just dollop it into the frying pan and mix. It’ll start to turn a creamy yellow colour as it pulls in the lovely juices from your bacon and courgette.

5. Give it a couple of minutes, then drain your tagliatelle and add it too to the frying pan. Mix everything together and serve immediately. Grate some parmesan on top if you’re feeling that way inclined.

Nommy.

Takes five minutes to prepare, then take as long as you want to drink it.

Ingredients

• 2 shots of rum
• Half a lime
• 2 teaspoons of granulated sugar
• 10 mint leaves
• A whole bunch of crushed ice
• Soda water if you really want it

Instructions

1. Spoon two tablespoons of granulated sugar into your cocktail shaker. Squeeze half a lime onto this, making sure to get as much juice out as you can. Drop the leftover husk of the lime in too. Now throw 10 or so mint leaves in as well (take them off the stalks).

2. Here’s where the magic happens – muddling the sugar, lime and mint together. If you’ve already got a muddler then great, use that. Otherwise, do as I do and use a simple wooden rolling pin.

   Push down into your mixture with your muddler, rotating as you do. This crushes the mint into your sugary limey mixture, releasing its essential oils and wonderful flavours as you do so. Remember how mint leaves don’t really smell of anything until you rub them together in your fingers? That’s what is happening here.

   Give it a good bit of pressure, and you’ll only need to muddle for a few seconds. We’ll now leave this to sit for a minute or two whilst we prepare the ice.

3. Fill the glass you’ll be making the mojito in twice with ice (I use a chunky half-pint glass), and empty this out into a tea towel. Gather the tea towel up to make sure none of the ice can escape, and then give it a few thwacks with a mallet. We use a cheap wooden one – it works a lot better than using the rolling pin again.

   Once the ice is sufficiently pulverised, add it to your glass. You’ll find that what once filled the glass twice should now pretty happily fit in just the once.

   The reason we crush the ice like this is to increase the available surface area to cool the liquid in the drink. If we do a good job of crushing it, we’ll end up with things getting so cold that the outside of the glass frosts over. Lovely.

   As you can see, these mojitos use a lot of ice. For this reason we tend to keep bags of the stuff in the freezer, just for cocktails.

4. We’re back to the cocktail shaker now, and we’re finally getting to the alcohol.

   Add a couple of ice cubes to the shaker, pour in two shots of your favourite white rum, put the top back on and shake roughly. Once you’ve finished shaking and everything’s mixed together nicely, strain into your ice-filled glass.

   Your ice will turn green as you pour over it, and you’ll get some tiny pieces of mint seeping through your drink.

5. At this point, I’d be done. I don’t think that these mojitos need anything adding to them to water them down, but depending on how you like yours you might want to. So, if you want to, add some soda water now.

6. Finally, add a straw and some mint to garnish, and sip happily.

Takes 30 minutes – 10 minutes preparation, 20 minutes cooking.

Ingredients

• 170g unsalted butter
• 50g granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 210g plain flour
• a pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 180ºc.

2. Cream the butter and sugar, then beat in the vanilla extract.

3. Add flour and salt, and mix until everything’s come together.

4. Press hard into a tin and bake for 20 minutes, or until slightly golden.

   If I’m making this Shortbread to turn into Millionaire’s Shortbread I like to line the tin with foil to make turning it out later easier.

5. Once the Shortbread comes out of the oven, if you’re just going to keep it as Shortbread then you might like to score it with a knife to make it easier to break into nommy pieces once it’s cool.