Avocado Pate and Salt & Pepper Scottish Oatcakes

Wherever I can I like to eat clean as much as possible. Yeah, yeah, I know my blog is full of cakes and sweet treats, but, y'know, a little of what you fancy and all that.  Sometimes life gets in the way a little though, and it's easy to reach for the beans on toast for lunch and pasta for dinner, but when I do take a little time to think and create, I'm usually pleased with the results I come up with, in not much more time than it would take to pop a jacket spud in the microwave.

This avocado pate is delicious, and so easy to make. It does contain cream cheese, which I'm sure is frowned upon by many in the clean eating world, but as long as you're not cutting out dairy then I think a small amount is fine - it's not as though you would eat the whole pot in one sitting or anything daft like that *ahem*.

I absolutely love Scottish oatcakes and really should make these more, as they're so simple, need very few ingredients, and you can flavour them how you want. Unlike many regular crackers, they are also gluten free, and go perfectly with the avocado pate.

Avocado Pate 

1 ripe avocado

juice of 1/2 a lime

100g full fat cream cheese

pinch of chilli flakes (optional)

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• Add all the ingredients to a blender (or you can mash for a more textured pate) & blend until smooth
• Spoon into a ramekin, cover with clingfilm and place in the fridge until needed

Salt & Pepper Scottish Oatcakes

150g oats

freshly ground black pepper

sea salt

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• Add the oats to a food processor and blitz until finer
• Add the salt & black pepper (to taste)
• Add the olive oil and pulse until the oats come together
• Roll out onto a sheet on clingfilm until the thickness of a £1 coin
• Cut discs and place onto a baking sheet
• Re-roll and cut the remaining mixture until used up
• Bake in a preheated 180C oven for approx 20 minutes, until crispy and slightly browned
• Allow to cool on a wire rack & store in an airtight container

Alternative Christmas Pudding

This year there will be 11 of us for Christmas dinner and, as well as the usual Christmas pudding, I'm probably going to be serving up a couple of other desserts, just in case anyone has any room left. One of the guests is a tad fussy though, but I'm reliable informed that he will eat a chocolate steamed pudding. With this in mind, along with OXO and Mermaid sending me a couple of their new products I've created a chocolate steamed pudding that I hope my fussy guest will approve of. Of course I won't be revealing the secret ingredient to him until after he (hopefully) eats his last mouthful.

Steamed Avocado & Chocolate Pudding

50g Dark (70%) Chocolate
50ml Double cream
2 medium Avocados (approx 110g of flesh)
tsp lemon juice
110g Soft dark brown sugar
2 Eggs
110g Self Raising flour
20g Cocoa powder
1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

Chocolate sauce
50g Dark Chocolate 
100ml Double Cream
2 tbsp Golden Syrup

• Heat the cream and chocolate gently in a microwaveable bowl until chocolate has melted, stir until smooth
• Place the chocolate/cream into the fridge until almost set
• In the meantime use an OXO Good Grips Avocado slicer* to scoop out the avocado flesh from the skin and remove the stone.
• Mash the Avocado with the lemon juice until smooth
• Beat in the sugar and eggs
• Stir in the flour, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda & mix well
• Grease a Mermaid 2 pint pudding basin**
• Pour half of the mixture into the basin and make a shallow well in the centre
• Scoop out the (almost) set chocolate/cream mixture and place into the well
• Cover with the remaining mixture
• Cover the basin with 2 layers of foil & place in a steamer over boiling water
• Steam for approx 1 1/4 hours
• Heat the cream, chocolate & golden syrup gently until the chocolate has melted
• Turn the pudding out onto a plate and pour the sauce over

Serve with ice cream

* The OXO good grips avocado slicer is a handy little tool that is invaluable if you eat lots of avocados - it slices through the skin, makes removing the stone easy and then removes the flesh at the same time as slicing it, no matter how ripe your avocado is. This would be great to use when preparing avocados for salads.

** The Mermaid pudding basin is an excellent quality basin, made of hard anodised Aluminium and has a wide rim making it easy to tie string around to make lifting out of a steamer easier. The pudding that I made released easily from the basin, intact.

I was sent the avocado slicer and pudding basin to use in creating a recipe