Puffed Up Love Pie.

This pie is perfect for a home cooked valentines dinner.

It is a steak and leek pie stuffed with onions, it takes about 1 hour and 45 minutes start to finish if you are not making your own pastry.

Here is the recipe serves 3 (large portions)

Ingredients:
450g stewing steak cut into strips
1 large onion
handful of thyme chopped finely
handful of parsley chopped finely
as many leeks as you fancy
1 tablespoon flour
2 beef stock cubes (dissolved in 260ml boiling water)
salt and pepper
1 packet puff pastry
1 egg

Step 1.
Lightly dust the steak in flour that has been seasoned with a little salt and pepper. Then heat olive oil in a large saucepan. Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees.

Step 2.
Stir the steak strips frequently until it has browned both sides, then add the chopped onion, parsley, thyme, leeks and beef stock and bring to the boil.

Step 3.
Then turn it down to simmer for 45 minutes, and then transfer it to your casserole dish.

Step 4.
Roll out your puff pastry and cover your dish with the pastry. Slice a pattern with a sharp knife across the pastry and trim the edges. With the trimmed edges roll it out again and with a heart shaped cutter cut out 2 hearts and place them on top of the pastry.

Step 5.
Brush your pastry with the beaten egg and place in the oven at 180 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown.

Good To Know Recipes

Since I've been back at Uni I just haven't been baking, it's not that I haven't wanted to but student houses are not the nicest places to cook! Mainly because it is always dirty and the oven doesn't seem to work properly ever! But I did end up cooking quite a bit over Christmas. I've just been trying to get my choux pastry to be really good, haven't perfected it quite yet but I think it is definitely getting better. I really want to tackle pastry, but I'm a bit stuck on a good puff pastry recipe. I'm going to try one from the Great British Bake Off book because those recipes are normally amazing, we will just have to see how it goes!

I didn't go for tidiness for the cream puffs!

Even though I made them about 4 months ago my valentines cookie lollies and red velvet cupcakes have made it into Good To Know Recipes in their February Issue (on sale now, pg11). I was so excited when I found out but not only did I have 2 articles I ended up getting an inset on the cover, thanks to my dad's photography! I would love to be able to get into some more magazines, might try an attempt with Good Food even if it is a long shot!

Seeing the articles in the magazine has made me want to get back cooking again, so the house are having a clean up and trying to introduce baking days. This will probably be an absolute disaster considering one of the boys has never made a cake! Can't wait to get them all into it, even if the only reason they're doing it is for a large slice of cake at the end.

I'll be posting photos of our house baking along with their recipes. So keep checking back, I will be posting more frequently from now on, I promise!