New Year treats!

After the busy weekend of Christmas had flown by, my husband had to go back to work, which was lame but it did mean it freed up my days to try out some new recipes and meal ideas. So I thought I'd share mine and my husband's two favourites.

Creamy Chicken and Spinach Ring

For the first time ever, I actually ‘winged it’ with a dish rather than sticking to a recipe word for word, and surprising it worked out. I pretty much just used ingredients that we had in the house, not to mention I didn’t have the car that day, but like I said it turned out pretty nice. Here is the list of ingredients that I used and how I made it:

2 cups of cooked chicken (shredded)

1 cup of ham (diced)

1 cup of grated cheddar cheese

1-2 cups of chopped fresh spinach

8 oz (220g) of cream cheese

Splash of milk

Sprinkle of onion powder, garlic powder, salt & black pepper

2 packs (16) of Crescent Rolls or 8 oz (220g) puff pastry

Firstly preheat the oven to 190C (375F). Place the chicken, ham, grated cheese, and cream cheese in a medium to large pan and put on low heat until all the ingredients have melted together nicely. I added a splash of milk, just to help everything melt nicely. Sprinkle in the spices, using as much or as little as you want and give the filling a really good mix together. Take this off the heat and allow to cool a little bit before carefully adding the freshly chopped spinach. I used about 2 cups of spinach as my husband and I really like it, but really you can add as much or as little as you want.

Crescent rolls, for those reading in the UK, are pre-cut dough triangles/crescents which made this dish a lot easier to make. Next time I make it, I will have to cut the shapes out myself but oh well, this will be fun I’m sure. I sprayed a circular baking tray with non-stick spray and laid out the crescents in the shape of a sunshine with about a 5-inch diameter in the middle, don’t forget to slightly overlap the corners so no filling escapes (see photo). Once you mixed in the spinach and laid out the dough, add the filling in a tall circle around the inner circle. I had quite a lot of filling as the ham I had needed using up so I did have a little left over when I was done, but the recipe should make the perfect amount.

Next you need to cover the filling with the dough, so simply pull each triangle up and over the chicken mix and tuck underneath. Do this all the way round and don’t worry if you have gaps as the filling won’t escape out the top. Bake this for 20-25 minutes and then allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving. We had ours with some chopped up veggies and a buffalo sauce...yum!

Lemon Blueberry Scones

Next dessert! Now for this one I did use a recipe that I found online as I had never made scones before, however I did make it my own halfway through. The ingredients I used are:

2 cups self-raising flour

¼ cup sugar

½ tsp salt

6 tbsp unsalted butter (cold)

½ cup milk

¼ cup lemon juice

2 tbsp lemon zest

1 cup fresh, washed blueberries

Preheat oven to 200C (400F). Mix together flour, sugar and the salt in a bowl, cut the butter into small chunks and then add to the bowl. I used a food processor for this as my husband doesn’t have a stand-mixer but this seemed to work fine. It took a little while for the butter to break down into the mix and a few times I had to mix it around manually with a spoon, but it got there in the end. Next stir in the milk, lemon juice and lemon zest. I found the dough was still quite dry but I just went with it as I wasn't sure what it was meant to be like...this is where I began winging it. The recipe I had found said to lay out the dough, carefully fold in the blueberries and then cut into triangles. The dough I had definitely wouldnt of allowed this so instead I added the blueberries to the mix, being careful not to squash them, before pressing them into small mounds. Place them onto a very lightly greased baking tray and bake them for 17-20 minutes, or until they are a light golden brown colour on top. After being pretty worried about how dry the dough looked, the scones tasted absolutely delicious and the texture was just perfect.

Thanks for reading and tune in next week for my new fashion and beauty favs!