Recipe competition: Very crunchy granola

This was one of G*'s entries for the competition. Being rather fond of Lizi's granola from The Good Carb Food Company, I was shocked when my local health food shop hiked the price up by 14p in a week, so I refused to buy it any more. I've now resolved to making my own. This recipe, I'm told, comes from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café: Breakfast Served All Day. So far, I've made it without the soy protein powder, since I only seem to be able to find the vanilla-flavoured stuff used by body builders. Apart from the oats and barley and oat bran (I haven't yet figured out what oat bran is, so I haven't used that yet), it has pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and almonds (although I've used ground cashews as I have a big bag of them in the cupboard). It's certainly very crunchy and even better than Lizi's. And you can try making it with different types of honey or maple syrup. Manuka honey seems to work quite well.

Serve with home-made yogurt for a perfect start to the day.

Recipe competition: Daube

This one is from BJ. A French stew of beef, mushrooms and sundried tomatoes cooked in wine with an orange rind. I can think of no more deserving recipe to inaugurate my brand new 22cm cerise Le Creuset cocotte..... it's a really easy recipe, though it does take time to cook, so it's better suited for those slow, lazy winter Sundays (i.e. EVERY Sunday until June.......). It's a substantial, rich stew with earthy flavours and a twist of tangy citrus, and goes well with rice, pasta or potatoes. And having just had some leftovers, I can confirm that it doesn't suffer from being left in the fridge a couple of days. It does, however, help if your wine bottle doesn't have a powdery cork that decomposes upon opening and causes red wine to spray all over your face, white top and kitchen appliances........

Recipe competition: wasabi seared tuna

This is another one from SN. Must be from her fusion collection. Tuna steak marinated in wasabi and soy sauce, seared (it helps if you have one of those griddle pans, so you get the grill marks, like proper chefs do....), and served atop butternut squash mash. Great winter dish, and you don't have to worry too much about your heart giving out.

Recipe competition - Black Midnight Cake

This entry was submitted by SSR. It's a rich chocolate cake, kind of fiddle to make, as it requires two cake tins and some surgery if the two halves rise too much in the oven. The icing recipe supplied by SSR was also a bit dodgy and requires a rather lengthy period of stirring, for which I clearly didn't have enough patience. I have to thank G* for fixing it...

All that aside, the cake is fantastic and the unorthodox icing quickly improves on cooling. It tastes much better after a day in the fridge.

Stirrin' icin'

Black Midnight Cake

Recipe competition: Chocolate pud

For those of you sending recipes for my recipe competition, you can follow progress here. I'll be reproducing all the recipes and posting them so you can see the final product. I should stress that what I write on here is not an indication of the recipe's chances of winning, since the final judgment will be made by an independent panel of jurors. Also, I'm not posting the actual recipes here, since I'll be compiling these in a recipe book for y'all.

So, let's begin! To start things off, here's a recipe from SN. A yummy chocolate pudding that takes minutes to make. Crisp on the outside, deliciously gooey on the inside, but not excessively heavy. A great ending to any dinner party. With thanks to GK for help with the faithful reproduction of the original recipe.