Harveys At Home – The Harvey Circus

You all know I love my slow cooker… I hadn’t tried anything new in it lately and I’m sure it was feeling a little neglected…
Enter the unusually cold Brisbane weather we are experiencing at the moment (who knew it could actually feel like winter in QLD?!) and my foodie thoughts automatically turned to long cooked, heart warming dinners!

With two chicken breasts already thawed, and wanting to slow cook I went a Googling (as you do) and came across a recipe from Kidspot for Chicken and Pumpkin Casserole. Except, as usual, I put my own spin on things and this is what it turned into…

Chicken and Sweet Potato Casserole

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts cut into large pieces
2 tbl spoons plain flour
3 cups of sweet potato cut in 3cm pieces
3 carrots cut into large sections
1 garlic clove finely chopped (or minced out of a jar is good too)
Hebs of your choice (I used my favourite Gourmet Garden Mediterranean combo)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
500ml chicken stock

Method
(this is very much the same as the Kidspot recipe)
Toss the chicken with flour in a ziplock bag.
In a frypan, heat the olive oil and brown the chicken.
Add the crushed garlic and cook for a minute.
Add the herbs and apple cider vingear, using it to deglaze the pan.
Put all frypan contents in your slow cooker.
Add the carrots, pumpkin and stock.
Cook on High for 4 hours.
Serves with steamed greens.

Notes
I didn’t have any celery or onion, but you can add this to the casserole as well…
Serve it with rice to soak up all the juices.. Yummm!

Today, the Clowns and I made pizza scrolls for their lunch… Super, super easy and something a bit nicer than their standard sandwich!

Ingredients
Puff pastry sheets
Pizza sauce
Ham
Pineapple
Feta
Semi dried tomatoes
Capsicum
Mushrooms
Grated cheese

Method
Preheat moderate oven.
Score each if the pastry sheets 1.5cm along one edge without cutting it all the way through (this acts as a topping guideline).
Spread the pizza sauce over the pastry sheet, but not in the 1.5cm section.
Sprinkle whatever toppings you’d like (we just used a few of your normal pizza toppings) then throw on a bit of grated cheese.
Roll up your pastry sheet starting from the side opposite the 1.5cm section. You’ll see now that the topping moves as you roll it up and the topping-less section folds last and helps hold everything in place.
Cut 0.5cm off each end of the roll and then slice the pastry roll into 1 – 1.5cm sections.
Place on a lined baking tray, leaving a little room between the scrolls for the pastry to work it’s magic and puff up all golden brown in the oven. This should be about 20 minutes or near to, but you can smell when they are ready!

Success!!

Last night I cheated and made a Green’s chocolate cake…
I made it a little bit special by dolloping Nutella throughout the batter…

Then once it was cooked I decided that plain old normal butter icing wasn’t going to cut it.
So out came the Nutella again, and I made Nutella buttercream icing!
It was so good, even if I do say so myself.
Nutella always makes things better.
Always.

The only problem with me sharing this recipe is that I didn’t measure my ingredients. I almost always ‘wing it’ when making butter icing.. But I do have an old basic recipe that I used to use…

Buttercream Icing

Ingredients

• 185g Butter
• 2 1/4 Icing Sugar
• 2 tblsp Milk
• 1/2 – 1 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste

Method

• Cream the butter with a little of the icing sugar.
• Gradually add the rest of the icing sugar at a medium speed.
• Add the vanilla and the milk.
• If you want a runnier/creamier consistency, slowly add more milk.
• If you accidentally add too much milk and your icing is too runny, just add a bit more icing sugar until it’s at your preferred consistency.

So that is my usual {and favourite} cake and patty cake topping.

To make it into Nutella butterceam icing these are the small changes I made -

• Add 2 tblsp Nutella to the butter and cream them together with a little of the icing sugar.
  {You can add more Nutella if you like, but this was enough to give it colour and enough flavour without being too overpowering}
• With the icing sugar, add a pinch of salt.

The Nutella gives the icing an even smoother and creamier consistency than just plain buttercream icing…
It’s almost velvet-like…
Delicious…!!