DEERPARK, CORNWALL

Back in October me and 4 friends headed for the forest for a week long retreat in the good ol’ fresh Cornish air. We stayed in one of the Forest Holidays resorts, it was a bit of a last minute plan and a quite a journey, but it was great fun!

When we arrived, we headed straight for the nearest alcohol-selling shop! After stocking up and grabbing a bottle of bubbly to celebrate our arrival we all jumped straight in the hot-tub, on our cabin’s balcony!!

It was divine, being out in the fresh air but completely submerged in the perfect, hot water! Bliss!

The cabins are super cosy and surprisingly warm – we were really lucky with the weather when we went, it was pretty mild, no rain and pretty sunny most days.

Between us we cooked dinner every night, including one exceptional roast! One night we even ordered curry/pizza to our cabin, they prepare the food in the reception and then deliver it to your cabin!!

As a group we chose not to pay for the TV package and with the very limited Wifi too we were almost completely screen-free for a whole week! It was really nice, we brought a couple of board games and accompanied with drinks and food it was a perfect evening activity.

RECIPE | MINCE PIES WITH SPICED ORANGE CRUMBLE

The recipe for these mince pies caught my eye when I was flicking through the Waitrose magazine one lunchtime, as a family we eat a lot of mince pies over the christmas period so it was one I knew would go down well! Mum and I batch bake about 200 mince pies every year, we tend to give them out as gifts and take them to events here and there throughout December, and we’d been thinking about trying something new this year so it was the perfect excuse to try these out.

They went down a treat!

Everyone really enjoyed them, warm and cold they tasted amazing. The crumble on the top added a really nice crunch to them too, I think the topping would work just as well on other fruits too alternative to the mincemeat. We followed the recipe for the pastry as well as the crumble although for ease we said we’d probably just make our usual, basic pastry recipe if we made them in bulk.

Ingredients: 225g plain flour 50g ground almonds 50g caster sugar 125g unsalted butter 1 vanilla pod (we used vanilla essence) 1 egg yolk 800g mincemeat

For the crumble: 75g plain flour 6tbsp demerara sugar 60g unsalted butter 1 orange, zest 1tsp mixed spice

Method:

• Make the pastry; Mix flour, almonds, caster sugar, butter and vanilla essence to form crumbs.
• Add the egg yolk and 1tbsp cold water, pulse together into a dough.
• Knead until smooth. (The recipe them says to chill the pastry for 30 mins, we didn’t!)
• Make the crumble topping; Mix the flour, demerara sugar, butter, orange zest and mixed spice to a chunky crumble mixture.
• Preheat the over to 200°c.
• Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured work top to about £1 thick & cut out 24 rings using a 8-9cm cutter. Press the rounds into the holes and lightly pinch the edges for a fluted effect.
• Divide the mincemeat between the cases (about 1 heaped tbsp in each) and scatter the crumble over the top.
• Bake for 15 minutes or until golden and crunchy.
• Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes before turning out and transferring to a wire rack.
• Once cool, dust with icing sugar.

The mince pies can be frozen for up to 3 months and re-heated when desired.

We don’t have a 8-9cm round cutter so used a jagged edge cookie cutter which meant we didn’t have to flute the edges. We did find that the pastry didn’t roll as easily as others but that may be because we didn’t chill it as instructed!

I’d definitely recommend this recipe to anyone to try, I’ll be making them again during the christmas period for sure.

RECIPE | COCONUT CAKE

This was another BBC GoodFood recipe from one of my favourite cook books. It was a simply recipe, quick and easy to make. The sponge was amazing and tasted incredible, best sponge we’ve ever made, however we were really gutted at the lack of coconut flavour. We didn’t have any coconut cream so we used single cream instead, in hindsight using coconut cream may have helped bring the flavour out a bit more.

Ingredients: 175g butter, softened 175g golden caster sugar 3 eggs beaten 175g self raising flour 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 50g desiccated coconut 2tsp coconut cream or single cream

For the buttercream filling & topping: 280g icing sugar 100g butter, softened 175g self raising flour 3tsp coconut cream or single cream 5tsp raspberry jam

Method:

• Heat the oven to 180c/fan 160c/gas 4. Butter and line the base of two 20cm round sandwich tins.
• Mix the butter, sugar, flour, eggs and baking powder until smooth.
• Gently stir in the coconut and cream.
• Divide the mixture between the two sandwich tins and smooth the tops.
• Bake for 25 minutes until evenly golden and firm.
• Loosen the edges and leave to cool in tins for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
• Make the buttercream: beat together the icing sugar, butter and cream until smooth.
• Spread one sponge with the jam.
• Top with just under half the buttercream and sandwich with the other sponge.
• Decorate the top of the cake with the remaining buttercream.

We also chose to decorate the top of the cake with more desiccated coconut, sprinkled around the edges of the cake. I would definitely use this recipe again to make the sponge for sure! Next time i’ll try with coconut cream too in a bid to get more coconutty flavour into the cake!