Chicken Tikka

As delicious as oven-baked chicken tikka will go.

Good old chicken tikka. One of my favourite Indian dishes – amongst many...

There are two ways you can cook these – in the oven (the way this recipe says), or on a BBQ. I highly recommend you use a BBQ as it will make the tikka taste 100x better. I don't have access to a BBQ and therefore had to settle for the oven. But don't get me wrong – they still taste beautiful.

With the tandoori masala powder, I buy this from Sainsbury's in the world foods section – the brand is called Natco.

I also suggest you make the mint sauce for this tikka recipe, it really enhances the flavours and just tastes delicious!!

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INGREDIENTS

6 chicken thighs

1 cup full-fat greek yoghurt

3 tbsp tandoori masala powder

1 tsp turmeric

3 tsp garam masala

1/2 - 1 tsp chilli powder (I would use 1/2 tsp for minimal spice. You can put more if you like a lot of spice!)

2 tsp salt

6 wooden skewers (you may or may not use all of these)

Vegetable oil

INGREDIENTS FOR MINT SAUCE

1/2 cup greek yoghurt

1 tbsp mint sauce

METHOD

1. In a medium-sized bowl, mix together yoghurt, spices and salt until well combined. The mixture should be a red-ish pink colour.

2. Dice the chicken thighs so the pieces are big enough to slide about 4 onto a skewer. Place these into a large bowl.

3. Pour the marinade over the chicken and mix together until all the chicken is coated. Wrap the bowl in cling wrap and leave to set for about 45 minutes to an hour.

4. When 45 mins to an hour have commenced, preheat the oven to 190-200ºC fan. Prepare a baking tray with baking paper and brush lightly with oil.

5. Feed the chicken thighs onto the skewers, leaving a little gap at the top (you don't want to put chicken all the way to the tip of the skewer.

6. Place the skewers onto the tray next to each other. Put into the oven and cook for 25 minutes, turning them around at 13 minutes.

7. Serve hot with naan bread or basmati rice, and mint sauce!

Buttery Movie Popcorn

I promise you this popcorn beats cinema popcorn.

The perfect amount of saltiness, and just enough buttery goodness. This is the best popcorn I've ever made.

Popcorn is such a great snack and can be considered a healthy one too (if not doused in butter). Alternatively, you can sprinkle freshly popped corn with a little bit of Himalayan Pink salt, or have it without any flavouring at all. But what's the fun in that???

It's super easy to make, but just three things to note:

1. Make sure your pan isn't too hot, or else you risk burning your popcorn. The key to perfectly popped kernels is to first heat your oil in a pan on high heat, and lower the heat when over half the kernels have popped.

2. Use a pan that has a lid – you want the popcorn to end up in a bowl, not the kitchen floor!

3. When heating up the oil in the pan, put one kernel of popcorn into the pan and cover it with a lid. Once this single kernel pops, you can pour the rest of the kernels in. That's how you can tell the oil is hot enough!

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INGREDIENTS

1/3 cup popcorn kernels

1 tbsp vegetable oil (or olive oil)

2 tbsp butter

Salt

METHOD

1. In a medium-sized pan, heat up the oil on high heat. Place one kernel into the pan and wait for that kernel to pop. Once it does, the rest of your kernels are ready to go into the pan. Close the lid and wait for intensified popping.

2. Once just over half the kernels have popped, lower the hob to medium heat. Once the popping starts to slow down (about 1 pop every 4 seconds), your popcorn is pretty much ready. Turn off the heat and transfer the popcorn to a large serving bowl.

3. Melt the butter in the pan, with the heat still turned off (your pan will be hot enough to melt the butter to a liquid). Once the butter has melted, pour it evenly all over your popcorn. Toss the bowl so that the butter is evenly distributed.

4. Sprinkle some salt on top and toss once again, and enjoy!

Mary Berry's Hot Cross Buns

Ain't got none unless you got buns, hun.

It wasn't even close to Easter, but I was craving a delicious hot cross bun and wanted to create some at home.

I used the legendary Mary Berry's recipe for these luxurious buns and not gonna lie – I completely screwed up the first batch. The dough did not rise and was overly dense. I was so disappointed and let down at how appalling the dough felt and looked. There were tears and a few meltdowns. So I tried again the same day.

Where did I go wrong?

Firstly, I don't think I warmed up the milk to the correct temperature – it was too cold. Secondly, the BBC Food recipe states that you 'may not need all of the milk'. This is false. You do need all of the milk. So given this instruction, I didn't use all of the milk and therefore my dough wasn't moist enough and become a hard lump of sadness!!

I spent a total of seven (7) hours attempting these buns. But would you just look at them? This was the second batch!!!

My tips for making these buns

I used the recipe on the BBC Good Food website, but there are a couple of things that this recipe doesn't mention.

1. I did some more research on hot cross buns after the first screw up and came across a Youtube Tutorial by Mary Berry herself. It turns out that Mary rose her dough twice before shaping and baking them. The recipe on BBC Good Food's website didn't say to do a double rise – I can assure you that a double rise is necessary.

2. You don't need proofing bags to let your buns rise. I used cling film and this worked perfectly fine.

3. The recipe calls for using golden syrup as a glaze. Instead, I baked my buns until they were slightly baked on top (approx. 3 minutes) and no longer soft and dough-y. I then took them out of the oven very quickly and glazed them with egg. They tasted just as delicious!

If you want to make these delicious buns, I strongly suggest you acquire some patience. Rising the dough takes about 3.5 hours altogether!!!

Nevertheless, they were absolutely worth the patience, tears, and meltdown.

Thank you Mary Berry x