Recipe: Italian Baked Eggs

This is definitely a dish I wish I'd known about when I was at university, just thinking about the amount of times I made do with just pasta and sauce when I could have been making something this magnificent.

Eggs are probably one of my all-time foods, they're not just for breakfast, they're for ALL times, I have even been known to make an oven 'brinner' just because eggs.




So this is super-simple but I figured I would share it anyway, because it's the perfect dish to prepare if you're into making something quick or if you're on a bit of a budget.
I think calling them Italian is just to fancy them up a bit, I got the original recipe from Damn Delicious but it's pretty easy to make it up as you go along, as long as you know how long you need to bake an egg to make it to your liking.

You Will Need

• 4 x Oven-Proof Ramekins

Ingredients: (Feeds 2 People)

• 4 Medium/Large Eggs
• 300g Pasta Sauce of Your Choice - Use as much as you like, this is dish that's all about leftovers
• Hard Italian Cheese - Parmesan or Parmigiano Reggiano - Grated
• Pinch of Fresh/Dried Parsley
• 1 tsp Salt and Pepper
  
  

Method

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180°C
2. Put around 2-3 tablespoons of your pasta sauce into the ramekins
3. Crack your egg on top of the pasta sauce and sprinkle with cheese, parsley and salt & pepper
4. Optional: I happened to pick up a jar of Chop Chop's Italian Herbs so I plopped around half a teaspoon in each ramekin
5. Pop in the oven for around 10 minutes or until egg is cooked - less time is needed for a runny yolk obviously.
6. Serve with buttery toast and enjoy!

Rainy Day Rhubarb Crumble.

All this rainy weather does not make for a very active, go-getting Ruth, I'm afraid. So after a pretty powerful start to this month blogging-wise that I'm quite pleased with, things have slowed down a fair amount in these parts.

I do try and take advantage of these lighter evenings but find myself getting tied up with Great British Menu and then it's cold and dark. It's safe to say, I can't wait until Summer(!)

That said, a couple of weekends ago, the miserable weather provided a great excuse to do a smidge of comfort-baking. A household favourite, rhubarb crumble cake, funnily enough, using my own recipe. I'm trying to snap as much as I can but I'm not really feeling it, I quite like these though, and a selection from the Easter weekend which I'm yet to share - stay tuned!




I love finding a recipe that just means adding to something simple, all you really need for this is a basic sponge base.




Baking has actually become a bit of a work-out since my stick-whisk decided that it couldn't handle cake-mix.



Rescuing daffs-season is over now but it was pretty cool to have some homegrowns decorating our home for a bit.



We had enough rhubarb left over to make a couple of tiny crumbles, well, it would be rude not to!


Not too shabby! ♥


I dunno, there's something about this miserable weather that makes me grateful for a lie-in on a Saturday morning and curling up on the sofa of an afternoon and catching up on new TV shows - our current favourite is Fargo, have you seen it?

Good Cat Parenting and Other Things.

Who would have thought that it's only September, I had to have the light on when baking at 4:30 in the afternoon yesterday, and we've had the heating on. We're definitely ready for a bit of hibernation, as demonstrated by our 11:30am wake-ups on Saturday and Sunday. I feel a little guilty I suppose, but boy oh boy was it good to relax(!)

I'm so glad we decided not to do anything over the weekend, not just because we're saving money and we kind of needed it after packing the last two weekends with returning from a holiday, a family party and a trip up to London, but also because I've felt like a pretty negligent cat-mum.

The cat litter doesn't live there, I was too excited to play with Doll and hadn't put it away yet...

I think I've been forgiven slightly now and I've really seen a change in my sweet Doll in the last few days. I guess that because I see her as independent and she can be a little aloof, it's made me feel like she doesn't care that much, but her sitting with us during the day and curling up with us at night tell a different story. After a couple of treats and some fancier than usual cat food, I feel a little better about leaving her and as she'll have me again next weekend, I'm sure she'll be sick of my over-affection by then and be glad I'm not always up in her face.


We had lunch at The Taco Shop on Saturday. By far the best burrito I've ever had and look at the size of Moon's chicken taco. So tasty and such a great atmosphere for such a reasonable price, it's firmly made itself one of my favourite places to eat in Newbury.


Doll killed her old scratching post months ago, so we treated her to a brand new one. We were almost worried she'd be more interested in the box but she got to using it straight away.



Cute mini-gourds and pumpkin display at Saddleback Farm Shop, a new find from yesterday, it turned out to be the place with the corn maze that Moon had been bugging me about all summer(!)





I gave Rosie from Cider With Rosie's banana cake recipe a go, because drizzly weather is perfect for making something to go with a cup of tea - you should definitely try it, best banana cake I've ever made!



Although it would have been nice to take advantage of the extra time a weekend provides and do a slow-cooked roast, this pizza had been in my mind's eye for days. I do a pretty mean homemade pizza, all following a recipe I found on good ol' Pinterest, amazing what you can do with a little flour, yeast and warm water...
This weekend was about sleeping in, napping anyway, shopping at the market, picking out nice gifts for friends, driving in the rain, new recipes, catching up on TV shows and lighting my candles for the first time in weeks.

Seems to be a pattern with me, I'm either doing to much and forget to slow down or I slow down too much and am mega-lazy - I did get all my chores done though, so I'm totally ready take this week on with both hands, bring it(!)

Oaty Muffin Obsession!

After having a bit of a sort-out last weekend, I ended up finding one of the notebooks that I'd filled with recipes. It got me a little inspired and this recipe is actually a twist on a recipe card for 'Mini Oaty Banana Muffins' from Sainsburys - I tried those first and they were so good that I thought I'd use up the last few frozen raspberries I had left over from my go at the weekly bake off we do at work.


I kind of like that these could kind of work as something for breakfast because they have oats in, plus there's fruit so they feel healthy. They're probably totally not, but they sure are tasty, and thanks to taking in Innocent's tip from their 'Hungry?' cookbook to whisk each egg one by one, they're really light, I'd definitely say that's my number one baking tip ♥.

I wanted to share this little adapted recipe because it's been a little while and I feel like I've been doing a lot of baking lately.

Ingredients:

• 250g Plain Flour
• 2 tsp Baking Powder
• 75g Scottish Porridge Oats / & a small handful for topping
• 3 Eggs
• 175g Caster Sugar
• 250ml Sunflower Oil
• Pinch of Salt
• 1-2 Cups of Defrosted Frozen Raspberries
• Icing Sugar for Dusting

Directions:
1. Pre-heat your oven to 180°C/Gas 4 and line your muffin tin.
2. Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl and stir in the porridge oats.
3. In a separate bowl beat together the eggs, caster sugar, sunflower oil and salt.
4. Once your egg/sugar mixture is blended well together fold in the flour, add in the raspberries and mix.
5. Spoon your mixture into you muffin cases, sprinkle the remaining oats over the top and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden.
6. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

Mr Moon is 24.

I never seem to take lots of photos when it's Moon's birthday, with last year maybe being an exception. To be fair Saturday was a bit of strange one filled with far too much indecisiveness on my lovely boyfriend's part, mainly because he didn't actually want to do anything in the first place. Still, we had a visitor, and then more visitors so plans were to be expected.

We ended up heading to Andover for a look around (which was not good), and then went for a quick drink in Hungerford before heading back to wait for a few more friends to come over to eat Chinese and we should have just stayed in but instead decided that it would be fun to head out, and it wasn't. Maybe I'm getting old but I'm pretty sure that the pub we went to needs to recognise that it's not a nightclub and it's entirely too loud, I don't care if it was Saturday night.

I hope Mr Moon had a nice day though, I think he did really, and he sure was pleased with the gifts I got him and the other gifts he got too. I'm actually still waiting on a t-shirt I ordered him from Society6 but it still hasn't come, has anyone else used them? It's been over a month now and an order I placed for a cushion cover has arrived but my t-shirts still haven't, weird.


The last of my Valentine's flowers still going strong!

His mum got him a steam cleaner to help out with his ironing predicament, I think it's a super idea, but also a sign that he's no longer mummy's little soldier, but an adult, an adult who needs smart clothes. I'm kind of looking forward to him getting it out of the box so I can use it. I did my first proper stint of ironing (I usually just do one item as and when and that's never often in my eyes) and I must say it's dire, why is it that so many people claim that it's therapeutic, simply not true at all.

I was a pretty swell gift giver if you ask me. I got him a fancy malt whisky, some brandy glasses and an Easter egg to name a few things, as well as new pyjama bottoms in a hope that he'll be more inclined to let me wash them.

Doll always enjoys when we're unwrapping gifts but today was an extra-great day because she got to lick some of the leftover cake mixture.



I feel like I did a pretty grand job on this, and today it tasted like a shop-cake. The icing is a lot more purple in person.


More than enough Chinese food for 6 people.
'You don't want it delivered, do you?' – Worst service, best Chinese takeaway in Newbury.

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