Butter Chicken

This curry recipe will not disappoint! It’s tasty and just as good as your take out curry.

You don’t need to use a lot of spices and you’re not going to spend hours slaving away in the kitchen which makes this a good midweek dinner option.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

For the chicken:

• 500g chicken boneless chicken breast
• 1 tbsp garlic paste
• 1 tbsp ginger paste 
• 1 tbsp Kashmiri chilli powder 
• Salt 

For the sauce:

• 450g tomatoes, cut into quarters
• 1 white onion, chopped 
• 1 tbsp garlic paste 
• 50g cashew nuts 
• 1 tsp kasoori methi
• 1/2 tsp garam masala 
• 4 tbsp caster sugar 
• 1 tbsp Kashmiri chilli powder 
• 5 tbsp butter
• 4 tbsp double cream 
• 2 tbsp malt vinegar 
• Salt to taste 

Cut your chicken and add to a bowl. Add the garlic & ginger pastes, chilli powder and sait. Mix well and leave to marinade for a minimum of 30 minutes. Overnight is best.

In a pan, heat some olive oil and fry the chicken until cooked through. Add to a bowl and set aside.

In the same pan, add the onion, a little oil and a tablespoon of butter. Once the onions are cooked, add the tomatoes and cashew nuts. Add some water, the garlic paste, salt, malt vinegar, sugar, garam masala and chilli powder. Mix well and leave to simmer on a low heat for 20 minutes. 

Now all your ingredients are soft, add the mixture into a large mixing bowl and using a hand held blender, blitz the sauce until there are no lumps and it’s smooth. Strain the mixture through a sieve back into the pan, add some more water if too thick. Add the rest of the butter, cream, chicken and kasoori methi. Mix well and leave it to simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve with rice and garnish with a drizzle of cream and a sprinkling of kasoori methi. 

Red Velvet Oreo Cupcakes

What could be better than red velvet cupcakes? Red velvet with Oreo icing cupcakes!!

Oh my god!! These are soooo heavenly and so moreish!

Makes 22

Ingredients:

For the red velvet cupcakes:

• 235g self raising flour
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 250g caster sugar
• 3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda 
• 270g softened unsalted butter 
• 4 large free range eggs
• 3 tbsp buttermilk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract 
• Red food colouring paste/ gel
• 1 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar 

For the Oreo icing:

• 300g softened unsalted butter 
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 tbsp whole milk
• 675g icing sugar
• 120g Oreo cookies 

Preheat the oven to 170C. Shift all of the dry ingredients together and 1/4 tsp of salt (apart from the bicarbonate of soda) into a large bowl. Add the butter and eggs then beat for around one minute with an electric mixer. Add the buttermilk, vanilla extract and food colouring then mix well. Add enough food colouring to get a nice red colour. Scrape down the sides and beat for a further few seconds, until we’ll incorporated. 

In a small bowl, mix the bicarbonate of soda with the vinegar. As soon as you do this, it’ll start to fizz . Add it straight away to the mixture and whisk very briefly to incorporate. Fill the paper cases two thirds full with the mixture and bake for 20 minutes. Leave to cool then transfer to a cooling rack.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter in a mixer for 5 minutes, until pale and smooth. Mix in the vanilla extract into the milk and set aside. Shift the icing sugar into a large bowl, then add to the butter in two stages, beating well between each. Gradually add the milk mixture and beat for another 3-5 minutes, or until almost white. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and give it another quick blast.

Add the Oreos into a food processor and blitz into fine crumbs. Add to the butter icing and mix until we’ll incorporated. 

Once the cupcakes are cool, decorate them with your Oreo icing. Either by hand or using an icing bag .