OK I’m not being serious, this is not only just for Shut Ins although sometimes during the cold of Winter, I definitely feel as though I qualify. I am not sure why there is such a stigma to hibernation, the bears do it and you hardly hear cries of “anti social bears” and mutterings that there’s something wrong with them. If you feel like the world is just too cold or cruel a place and that stepping out the door would be as appealing as sawing your own arm off, these recipes are for you. And I don’t want to hear from people who say that they’ve never felt like that and that they love socialising and interacting. Don’t get me wrong I do too. But there are just some days that you just want to barricade yourself indoors. An example of why everyone at some stage has felt this way is the great Australian tradition of a sickie. Sometimes you just cannot be bothered and slobbing around the house is the best you can do.

I like to celebrate my shut-in days by making the most of them. I watch the DVDs I’ve never gotten around to, read or at least start the books I’ve got gathering dust by the side of my bed and read trashy magazines *ahem* … I mean keep up with Current Affairs.

This Tessa Kiros recipe for chicken soup is from her book Apples for Jam, a cookbook/storybook with some gorgeous pictures and home recipes with a comforting edge to them. It interested me as it looked great in the photos. Yes, I am that superficial. I also liked the idea of a thick chicken soup - there’s nothing wrong with a thin broth but I like more sustaining soups, particularly if they are the main and only course at dinner.

As for the Potato Bread, I admit I fiddled with Nigella’s recipe. I actually got the idea from a friend Maria from Foodie Wanderings in which she told me about a bakery that made bread rolls with a whole boiled potato and mayonnaise inside. So I thought what bread recipe would better apply to this than Nigella’s potato bread. Call it potato on potato. And if you’re walking around in your Juicy trackpants, thermals and wooly socks, what better way to celebrate not having to wear your jeans than with an unashamed carb fest.

The soup was lovely on it’s own but like all great partnerships, it becomes so much more moreish when partnered with the spongy yet crunchy crusted bread. And if you think that it’s all too much of a production making the bread along with the soup, the smell of it baking in the oven should convince you otherwise. I’m pretty sure you could fit this in amongst your busy at home schedule. I managed to between appointments with Oprah and Entertainment Tonight.

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I came to London armed. Armed with Nigella recipes of things to cook with ingredients that I couldn’t get in Australia. I had recipes such a perfect roasted potatoes made with Goose fat and Roasted Goose. What I didn’t count on was Goose being out of season until December. So distressed at having a dinner party the next night I flung myself on Waitrose’s meat counter (not literally) and picked up two Free range Guinea Fowls, raised for Waitrose in France’s Loire Valley.

Looking at them, they looked like a chicken, with black legs. I used one of Waitrose’s recipes based on the fact that it was simple and it required not too many ingredients. Lower in fat than chicken, they’re tender with slightly drier meat with a gamey taste.

I am always very apprehensive trying to cook new types of food. Especially for dinner parties for people that I haven’t cooked for before. There was a time when we were preparing this when I asked my husband to quarter the Guinea Fowls and when he asked “How?” to which I frantically replied “I don’t know! Just quarter them!”. He did a pretty good job in the end and the recipe is quite ideal for a dinner party as most of the work is in the browning of the pieces and the peeling, coring and slicing the apples. The rest is a cinch and I suggest that you make more of the sauce than specified. It’s downright delicious with any sort of meat. And please know that I’m not suggesting that you try and track down a Free range Guinea Fowl, a good chicken will do.

As for the perfect roast potatoes, I’ve tried these using a butter and oil mix which works but but now that I’ve tried using Goose fat I have to confess that yes indeed, using Goose Fat does produce superior results. And interestingly, I have read that Goose Fat is, despite what one would assume, the most balanced of all animal fats because it has far less saturated fats than butter and lard and has far more ‘heart healthy’ monounsaturated (55g compared to 19.8g in butter) and polyunsaturated fats (10.8g compared to 2.6g in butter), which are essential for good health. In comparison to other animal fats, it is possibly one of the reasons that cardio-vascular disease is not as prevalent in the goose rearing and consuming regions of the South West of France as in some other regions of Europe. So Goose Fat it up!

I didn’t use anything close to the amount of goose fat that Nigella used though, in fact I used less than a can and even then I thought it was too much. I don’t know how I’d go about finding Goose Fat in Australia. It’s readily available here, and in fact, apparently around Christmas, it’s impossible to get a tin due to Nigella and Delia’s raves. Is it crazy to pack tins of it in my luggage?

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When I first made chocolate mousse, when I was about 10 years old, my sister, a devoted chocolate lover steadfastly refused to eat it as it contained raw egg. She has a “thing” about eggs (the worst thing for her is finding stray pieces of egg shell in her food). Come to think of it my mother also loathed eggs while pregnant with her so you’d suppose this has been passed on to her. This recipe is ideal for her and anyone who dislikes the idea of eating raw egg. It’s also ideal for those short on time, who don’t have hours to wait for a mousse to set.

It is ludicrously easy and sets straight away. The only thing that you might find is that it takes a while to melt the marshmallows (and don’t forget the water like I almost did, it will burn if the marshmallows are sitting at the bottom of the pot) and I wanted to set aside some time for the chocolate mixture to cool so that my thick whipped cream didn’t collapse. I set the pot of melted chocolate in a cold water bath and within 5-10 minutes while I was whipping the cream it had started to set and cooled well enough to fold in the cream. I used milk chocolate as I had used up all my dark chocolate on other things and didn’t have the time to buy some. The most fun part about this apart from eating it is dolloping it in the glass, it has the perfect dolloping texture and holds its dolloped shape. And whatever you do, don’t refrigerate it like I did, it becomes a bit too hard and loses it light mousiness. Keep it at room temperature and it will be lovely, soft and light.

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We don’t have Halloween to any organised extent in Australia. If you knock on someone’s door and demand candy, you’ll probably get a puzzled expression in return or in the case of someone on a sugar high who has actually consumed all of the household candy, you’ll get a door slammed in your face. But Friday the 13th is well known. I’m a medium on the superstitious scale but have found that actually nothing bad happens on this day. Every Friday the 13th for me is a day where nothing at all awful happens. And I know this because every year, I wait for something terrible to happen and it never does. So I know to expect a good day rather than a bad.

I got the idea for these from Claire Crespo’s “Hello Cupcake” book which I often turn to for decorating ideas. Sadly I didn’t have any random doll’s arms lying around so I had to make a special trip to buy them. When I got home I pulled the arm off but it was too long for the cupcake so, serial killer like, I hacked off more of the arm. And I’m sure the neighbours thought we were completely bonkers taking the photographs outside at night.

These cupcakes are like a Chocolate Crumb cake and I found the recipe for the cupcakes themselves on the Nigella website from a reader, Bevis. It’s a no bake, easy recipe for when you just cannot cope with the idea of switching an oven on and getting out the heavy equipment. It is rather rich though so I’d suggest making them in the miniature 3cms diameter smaller cases as the recipe only makes 4 regular sized cupcakes.

Chocolate Crumb Cupcakes

Makes 4 regular sized cupcakes

• 8oz/240g digestive biscuits (like McVities)
• 4oz/120g unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup
• Medium sized bar of very dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids at least)
• Chocolate powder to dust on top (I used Max Brenner Hot Chocolate powder)

1. Put the biscuits into a plastic bag or similar and whack repeatedly with a rolling pin. You want some very fine crumbs and some bite sized pieces. Some will also break up a bit more with the stirring so don’t bash them up too much.

2. Melt the butter and syrup together in a pan and break up the chocolate and put that straight into the butter/syrup. You don’t need to worry about heating it over water or anything as long as you don’t have the heat up too high because the butter and the syrup will prevent it burning.

3. Once it’s all melted together into a smooth, silky sauce add the crushed digestives and stir them in until it’s all well mixed. The little crumbs should soak up the chocolate sauce while the larger bits get coated with it. You may not need all the biscuits but you want it so that there is hardly any obvious chocolate sauce, but the biscuits are still glistening and coated with the sauce.

4. Finally pour the biscuit mixture into a cupcake pans. The aim isn’t to crush the biscuits but to pack it all together so that the chocolate sauce bonds the whole lot together. Then put it into the fridge to cool. Once it’s mostly cool, but not completely, insert cut off arm (yes doesn’t that sound gruesome). It needs to be just warm enough for the arm to go in but not so warm the arm falls over). Return it to the fridge until it’s completely cold. Once it is cold it will keep perfectly and refuse to fall to bits even with the most vigorous throwing around as it is carted to wherever you want it.

Recipe adapted from Nigella.com reader recipe by Bevis

I’m certainly not one of those Coca Cola connoisseurs who can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. In fact I rarely drink the stuff and I also loathe Diet Coke. Didn’t Paris Hilton once say “Diet Coke is for fat people”? Although I’d caution anyone following her lead on things. My dislike of Coke goes completely out of the window when it comes to baking with Coca Cola. I will happily eat a Ham baked in Coke and a Coca Cola cupcake or cake. I can’t account for my lapse in logic but it’s one that allows me to eat a gigantic 4 tier slice of Red Velvet cake but say no to a can of Coke. I suspect it’s also that flawed logic that lets me buy a pair of shoes thinking 1 wear per year is actually pretty good and I have achieved a good cost to value ratio.

Sequin shoes-worn once since purchase=an excellent cost to wear ratio

And before I go any further, let me link you to a site that has almost 1001 uses for Coca Cola: http://members.tripod.com/~Barefoot_Lass/cola.html where Coca Cola is like a version of Windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where Windex is the cure all for any ailment from cleaning burnt pans to relieving jellyfish stings. I don’t know if I’d turn to either but in a pinch…

Coca-Cola cupcakes

(makes 12-14 cupcakes)

• 200g plain flour
• 250g golden caster sugar (I used regular caster)
• 1/2 teaspoon bi carbonate of soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg
• 125 ml buttermilk (or 30g yogurt mixed with 100ml semi skimmed milk)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 125g unsalted butter
• 175 ml Coca Cola
• 2 tablespoons cocoa

Cola icing:

• 225g icing sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons Coca Cola
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Optional decorating

• Fondant or marzipan
• Red colouring gel
• Wine gummy Cola lollies

1. Preheat the oven to180c/gas mark 4 and line cupcake tray with paper liners.

2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Beat the egg, buttermilk and vanilla in a measuring jug. In a heavy-based saucepan, melt the butter, cocoa and Coca Cola, heating it gently. Pour into the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, then add the liquid ingredients from the measuring jug, beating until it is well blended.

3. Pour into a measuring jug and then pour into cupcake pans, about 3/4 full (they will rise a little but not a great deal) Leave to stand for 15 minutes in the pan before unmoulding.

4. You can use the Coca Cola icing that Nigella details below: Prepare the icing: Sift the icing sugar and set aside. In a heavy-based saucepan, combine the butter, cola and cocoa and stir over low heat until the butter has melted. Remove from the heat. Add the vanilla and spoon in the sifted icing sugar, beating as you do so, until you’ve got a spreadable but still runny icing. While the cake is still warm, pour the icing over it. Leave to cool before transferring to a serving plate.

From How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson

OR

5. You can use the Fondant/marzipan icing idea I used. Do white fondant parts first: make tiny white balls to represent bubbles. Do the open bubbles last, after the red fondant. Roll white fondant out and cut into strips. Set aside but be prepared to use it within the next 30 minutes before it goes hard. Colour fondant with red colouring and cut out circle. Place on cupcake, then add white ribbon swirl, then add solid balls. To do the open bubbles, roll a tiny ball, then dip the pointy end of japanese chopsticks with a thin end into icing sugar (not takeaway ones that have a thick end) and poke a hole into the centre of the ball and slide straight from chopstick onto cupcake. These are delicate so I found it easiest to slide them straight on in the end. Add coca cola sweet standing up.