Cheese and Tomato Chelsea Buns

My favourite flavour combination has to be cheese and tomato – so that’s what we used when I baked these savoury Chelsea buns with my sister!

The recipe was based on Paul Hollywood’s turkey, stuffing and cranberry Chelsea buns which were on The Great British Bake Off.  We followed his method for making the dough but used our own filling:
I cooked some tomatoes (I prefer our home grown tomatoes for their flavour but canned tomatoes would work too) and added some sage and onion stuffing mix until the mixture wasn’t too runny.  Using dried stuffing mix feels like such a cheat but I love the smell and taste of these ingredients!

When the tomato mix was cool we spread it over the rolled out dough then sprinkled grated cheese on top.  Then we followed the Bake Off’s method for rolling and baking the buns. Yum!

Parsnip, Carrot and Broccoli Quiche

I thought I would do something different today and share a recipe for a quiche we made last week.  It's a parsnip, carrot and broccoli quiche - we were using up some left over vegetables but you could try other vegetables or meat in the quiche too.

Make 8oz short pastry...
200g/ 8oz plain flour
pinch salt
50g / 2oz lard
50g/ 2oz margarine
about 30ml / 2 tbsp cold water

Mix the flour and salt then rub in the fat.  Using a knife to cut and stir, mix in the water to form a stiff paste.  Turn onto a floured board and roll out.  Line a 9 inch dish with the pastry.

For the filling...
Carrot, parsnip, broccoli
2 eggs
125ml/ 1/4pt milk
salt and pepper
cheese

Thinly slice the parsnip and carrot and cut up the broccoli into small pieces.  Boil the vegetables for a couple of minutes to partly cook them.

Place the vegetables in the pastry case.  Beat the eggs and milk, season and pour over the vegetables.  Cover with grated cheese.

Bake in a oven 190C/ 375F/ Gas mark 5 until set and golden brown - about 40 minutes.

Baking!

We love watching The Great British Bake Off in my house (on BBC2, Tuesdays at 8pm).  After weeks of cakes, biscuits, pastries and pies tonight is the final - I wonder who will win??

The programme has also inspired us to do more baking.  I made these Maids of Honour a few weeks ago...

I've also been practising dropped scones (like American pancakes I think) which I'd never tried making until recently...

And here's my latest bake - a Victoria sponge for my Grandma's birthday :)