Mexican chicken pies

This was something of a one-pot wonder for when I couldn’t decide if I wanted a casserole, something spicy or something all vegetabled up! So I created this based on a Mexican recipe for burritos with chicken and rice.

This made quite a lot – enough for dinner for probably six or more, mainly due to the amount of rice I inadvertently cooked. 

Ingredients 

2 chicken breasts diced

3 garlic cloves, crushed/finely chopped

1 onion, diced

2 carrot, diced

½ zucchini diced

1 capsicum, diced

10 or so mushrooms, diced

2 chillies, chopped or equivalent in dried chili

½ teaspoon ground/minced ginger

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon ground cloves

3 teaspoons dried oregano

1 heaped tablespoon tomato paste

2 tins diced tomato

2 cups rice, cooked

4 sheets pre-packaged pastry

Method

Heat frypan, add in garlic and onion.

After a couple of minutes, add in chicken.

When the chicken is sealed, add in the spices, vegetables and stir occasionally for a couple of minutes.

Add in the tomato paste and tinned tomatoes, and about 1 cup of water

Preheat oven to about 190C.

Allow to simmer for about 15 minutes until the flavours are developed.

Turn off the heat, add in the rice.

 Prepare the tins  (I made a couple of small party-pie tin sized ones, and one big pie)

Cook for about 20 minutes, until pastry is cooked and brown.

The easiest chocolate cake

I'm not lying. This cake is easy. And it's pretty good. 

You can either make it as one bg cake, or as a batch of about 20 cupcakes. 

Ingredients: 

125g butter, softened

2 eggs

1 tspn vanilla extract/vanialla essence

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups self raising four

1/2 cup cocoa powder

2/3 cup milk

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. 

Grease and line one 22cm cake tin with baking paper, or about 20 patty tins.

Beat the first four ingredients in a bowl until well combined. Then add the last three. Mix to combine.

If cooking one cake, bake for about one hour. For cupcakes, about 20 minutes, but keep an eye on them. 

Basic icing: 

1 cup icing sugar

1 tbspn butter

2 tbspn milk

2 tbspn cocoa powder

Beat well in a bowl. 

Ganache icing

1/2 cup or 125ml cream

200g dark eating chocolate

Bring cream to the boil in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in the chocolate until smooth. Stand for at least 10 minutes before smoothing over cake/s. If it's still too runny, pop it in the fridge for a little while but be careful as it gets very thick and hard quite quickly. 

Butter cream frosting (yes, frosting. I'm not American obviously, but this is definitely frosting)
185g butter, softened
2.5 cups icing sugar
2 teaspoons water or milk
any food colouring - add this at the end, not at the start

Beat it all together in a large bowl until it has lightened in colour slightly and is thick, but still spreadable. About two or three minutes. Add more icing sugar or liquid to adjust if necessary. 
Add 2-3 drops food colouring, mix and add more as desired.