KUMPULAN MASTER BLOG

Happy new Year! The blog has been going for 15 months now and I'm pleased with how far it has come. I can't devote my full-time attention to it and I haven't monetized it, so I am pretty happy with what I have managed to do in the last 12 months. If I am not monetizing it, why am I doing it you might be wondering? Well, it was originally born from wanting to get back into cooking and expanding my recipe repetoire and it still serves that purpose for me. There also does seem to be a market for easy-to-follow recipes and my page visitors are increasing, so, if people are interested in reading, then it's worth carrying on. That's not to say that I have ruled out monetizing it at some point... As 2016 is over, I thought I would do a round up of how things have gone for The Improving Cook Blog- social media followers, popular recipes etc.

Real Hot Chocolate- very simple to make with double cream, milk and real chocolate. A creamy and delicious winter treat, much nicer than packet mixes. When I think of cosy winters, sitting snuggled under a blanket on the sofa watching Christmas films, I also think of hot chocolate. There's just no other drink that adds to the cosiness like hot chocolate. Don't get me wrong, I live for tea, especially on a work day. I do believe it solves most problems and I power through the day on 3-4 cups. But, because I drink it most of the time, it just doesn't have that cosy factor. It's just not indulgent enough. Only hot chocolate fits the bill! You can get some pretty decent hot chocolate in some of the coffee shops these days and you can buy the packet mixes for home, but nothing beats real hot chocolate. It has a much deeper, creamier flavour (probably due to all the chocolate and the cream...) Making your own hot chocolate is very easy and totally worth the small amount of ef

I have been trying to expand my biscuit repertoire for some time, instead of always making Chocolate Chip Cookies ! I had some flaked almonds left over from making a bakewell tart but I wasn't sure what flavour to put them with in a biscuit. After a bit of pondering, I decided orange would be a good match, as long as it wasn't too sharp. I used orange curd to get a more mellow flavour and it was a lovely combination, just enough orange flavour without drowning out the almonds. Plus, orange is just a little bit Christmassy, so Orange and Almond Cookies are lovely for this time of year. These are the soft, chewy cookie type of biscuit but you do get a bit of crunch from the almond flakes. If you wanted even more crunch, you could use whole almonds chopped up instead.

We visited family in Canada earlier this year; beautiful place, lovely people. At the end of our holiday, I carefully transported some genuine Canadian maple syrup back in my suitcase, wrapped in ziplock bags and a layer of socks! it was the good stuff, A-grade, and tasted absolutely a world away from the nasty slop from the bottom of the barrel that they export to Europe. Wise people, keeping the good stuff for themselves! The bottle's half-empty now, and I know I won't be able to go back to the low-grade syrup that we used to buy. So, in celebration of of the delicious maple syrup we have left, I used some to make a sweet and spicy marinade for chicken, and served up this Spicy Maple Chicken with rice. It was quick and delicious and the sharp spice of the cayenne pepper was a good contrast to the sweetness of the maple syrup. If you made the marinade in the morning and put the chicken in before you went off to work, Spicy Maple Chicken would make a very quick and convenient d

Chocolate Sandwich Cake with Whipped Cream Filling- a Victoria Sponge style cake with a chocolate sponge and slightly sweetened whipped cream filling. At the weekend, I made a chocolate sandwich cake. It's one of those soft, fluffy cakes that's so light it melts in your mouth. Essentially, it's a chocolate version of a Victoria Sponge! This type of cake is the perfect cake to whip up quickly when you've got visitors coming round. There's no fuss, no fancy techniques, no icing to pipe, and it's sure to be a winner with anyone you give it to. I normally say that you can make cakes by hand just as well as you can with a fancy mixer or a hand mixer, but Victoria Sponge style cakes are where the gadgets come into their own. If you have one, you can incorporate a lot more air into the sponge and really get that light texture. I prefer to make Chocolate Sandwich Cake with a sweetened whipped cream filling, but if cream's not your thing, you could make a chocolate