Veg Lej: Cornucopia cookbook adventures, Family Dinners, More cupcakes and a lot of fruit.

I decided to give one of the recipes a go from the Cornucopia cook book I have. I went with the ' Sweet potato, Broccoli and Lentil Sambar'. I had no idea and still no idea what a sambar even is but it looked nice in the picture. Some sort of a curry anyway, I think :/.

The recipes in the book are written in paragraph from. I find this pretty confusing and hard to follow so I wrote it out in a simple form. Step by step :).

I also decided to be extremely organised, so I did all my chopping before hand and sorted it into bowls.

There's onions, Carrots, Sweet potato, Red lentils, Tinned tomatoes, Broccoli, Cumin, Coriander, Ginger and other spices. I didn't have enough Sweet potato so I added some Butter nut squash. Some Peppers too.

So all this into this. Doesn't really look very appetizing.

I served it up with some short grain brown rice. I had first tried Short grain brown nice in Fresh. I had asked the chef what it was. I found some in Holland and Barret. It's yummm!

Verdict. It tasted pretty Bland. The recipe didn't have enough spices for the amount of water that is to the added. It would have really watered the spices down. So I added a bit more of everything until it had more flavour.

I would love to be great making curries. Always the same problem, not enough flavour.

Last night before I was going to Katie's house to commence on the weekly X factor sessions, I made Muffins. I also used a cornucopia recipe. Last winter most Saturdays, a load of us would go to Katies' to watch the X factor and I would always bake! So I made muffins with raspberries.

Over all I liked the recipe. Real simple and the muffins came out lovely and huge. I love huge muffins.

http://www.cornucopia.ie/

Last week my Mum was going to a Birthday dinner party for one of her friends. I always ask her to say she will bring dessert so I can make it!

We were thinking of what cake I could make when she thought I should make a big cupcake stand. Something different. So I did so. I made the usual Raspberry cupcakes. They turned out well! I also made a few chocolate ones.

So the cake. I decided to be summery and make a double layer victoria sponge cake with summer fruits. In the middle there is whipped cream, raspberries and raspberry jam. On top- Butter cream icing, Strawberries, Raspberries and Black berries.

My decoration was influenced by this photo.

But didn't go as smoothly as I hoped it would :/

The whipped cream in the middle of my one started to melt everywhere. The strawberries on top started to slide off. So It looked a bit of a mess and not as nice as I imagined it to be. But I learned that wet fruit and icing do not mix well!

This is just before the sliding began.

And I made Bean Burgers. I love these so much. So easy to make. They are vegan too unless you add honey to them like I do. They don't hold together very well so I might add a egg to them next time. A few posts below show you how to make these. Seriously try! Easy, quick and delish.

This is the mixture before I mould them into burgers.

And after! Gotta keep watching them because they burn real easy if you don't keep an eye on them.