Hi there,

It is my pleasure to share with you this Mothers Day offering from Robbie Cheadle who blogs at http://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com.

Mother-daughter relationships can be complex and multifaceted, evolving as both parties grow and change. From infancy to adulthood, mothers and daughters share a bond characterized by love, support, and understanding.

Robbie and her mother share a mother-daughter relationship that is incredibly rewarding and fulfilling. They have a unique bond and provide a source of love, support, and understanding to each other throughout life’s ups and downs.

“Give the one you love wings to fly, roots to come back, and a reason to stay.“

Dalia Lama

My Mom and this recipe

When I was a little girl, my mom often used to make ‘bangers and mash’ for dinner. It was a favorite meal of mine. The bangers were pork sausages and the mash was made from real potatoes and not the mash that you can buy in a packet. We had this meal with salad.

My mother preferred to make ‘bangers and mash’ than the equally well-known and popular English dish, ‘toad in the hole’. Mom’s experiences with Yorkshire pudding during her younger years were of a lumpy and overcooked mass of stodge that her mother often made to fill the tummies of her eight children. Mom said that her mother’s ‘toad in the hole’ was one of her most disliked childhood dinners. 

I thought the name, ‘Toad in the Hole, was fascinating and I knew how it was made, but my mother never made it. My parents moved into a cottage on my husband’s and my property in 2005 and mom did all the cooking until the end of 2021 when her health forced her to hand some of it over to me.

During the Covid lockdowns in 2020, my mother decided to spread her wings with cooking. She looked up a few recipes for Yorkshire pudding and ‘toad in the hole’ and cooked it. It came out well. Her batter was light and perfectly cooked, and she wrapped the skinned sausages in bacon which made them very delicious.

My father loved her effort, and so did my boys so it has become a bit of a family recipe now which I make now and then when we need a comfort food meal.

Toad in the Hole

Ingredients

16 pork sausages

500 grams bacon of your choice

3 cups all-purpose/cake flour

1 teaspoon salt

Pepper to taste

6 large eggs, lightly beaten

3 cups milk (I used low fat)

60 ml butter, melted

Olive oil for greasing

Method

Heat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius or 425 degrees Fahrenheit. 

In a large mixing bowl, sift the flour and add the salt and pepper. Make a well in the flour. Beat the eggs, add the milk and melted butter and whisk. Pour into the well in the flour and combine until the mixture is smooth. Set aside for 30 minutes.

Remove the skin from the pork sausages and wrap each sausage in bacon. In a large frying pan, heat a little olive oil and brown the bacon wrapped pork sausages. Do not cook fully.

Oil a large metal baking pan with high sides (bottom and sides) and heat in the oven for 10 minutes. Remove the baking pan from the oven and lay the partially cooked sausages in the pan. Pour over the batter and return to the oven. Cook for 45 minutes until golden brown on top.

About Toad in the hole

Batter dishes became popular in the 18^th century and a recipe for Toad in the hole appeared as early as 1762. It was originally a way of making meat stretch further in poor households and was made with a small piece of cheap beef cooked in a large batter pudding.

The curious name is not believed to have emanated from the use of toads in the dish, ever. It is said to be due to the appearance of the sausages peeking through the batter which is reminiscent of a toad in its burrow with its head poking up as it waits for a meal to fly or wander nearby.

Thank you so much for sharing this lovely story and recipe with such an amusing background.