P365 - Day 347 - shortbread

A while ago Juniordwarf and I made shortbread using the 3:2:1 recipe.

Today we made some more. Stars this time.

In case you're ever wondering how many stars you can get out of 750 g flour, 500 g butter and 250 g caster sugar, the answer is 66.

That's how many we got after Juniordwarf* helped himself to some dough along the way.

*It's possible I did too.

P365 - Day 298 - yeah! cookies!

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you might remember that Juniordwarf and I cook biscuits every Tuesday so that he has a treat to take to school for the rest of the week.

Usually we make ANZACs, but we’ve also made shortbread and sometimes even choc-chip cookies. Last week he said he wanted to make choc-chip cookies, but we didn’t have any choc chips, so I told him we’d have to go to the shop before we baked.

Well the thought of that didn’t appeal to his sense of routine. 

We go up the street after lunch, which we have after we’ve baked. So he wasn’t keen on that idea at all, and decided he wanted to make ‘the oat ones’ instead.

When we finally did go up the street last Tuesday (after lunch, of course), we bought a bag of choc chips so that we’d be prepared for today.

The cookies really are very yummy.

I got the recipe from an American guy called Mike, who was an exchange student at the same time I was, and who had impressed everyone with these cookies. Naturally everyone had wanted the recipe.

This is it – with my own variations as necessary.

Ingredients

¾ cup raw sugar

¾ cup soft brown sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

230 grams soft butter

2 ¼ cup plain (wholemeal) flour

Yeah! 1 bag choc chips

What you do

• Mix sugars, salt, vanilla, eggs and butter in a large bowl until creamy.
• Add baking powder and flour gradually and mix well.
• Add choc chips and mix.
• Roll into small balls and place on baking tray.
• Bake in preheated oven (about 170 degrees C) for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

P365 - Day 289 - flourless chocolate and orange cake

I was going to make a cake on Thursday, but I couldn’t be bothered. I had so much more stuff to do!

Today was wet, raining and cold, so it was the perfect opportunity.

I made this cake last year (yes, I only make one cake a year), and it was divine, so I thought I might as well try it again.

The oranges - before and after

Melting dark chocolate and butter

You need 8 eggs!

Beating the eggs & caster sugar

A lot of almond meal

Beating in the almond meal, oranges and chocolate

Into the pan

The baking time is meant to be about one hour and 25 minutes. I lost track of time after about two and a half hours. I remember it took a similarly long time last time I did it. 

But it's worth the wait.

I realise that this post isn't going to be complete without a picture of the finished product, but as with most things I cook, it is not a particularly beautiful cake to look at. 

So there might be an update later in the night when the cake's cut. Or there might not. If you want to see what it's supposed to look like, go and look at the recipe - that one looks pretty much perfect.

P365 - Day 207 - . . . and biscuits

What else follows tea, if not biscuits?

On Tuesdays Juniordwarf and I cook biscuits for him to take to school for morning tea over the rest of the week. Ever since the start of the year, we’ve made ANZACs. Every single Tuesday.

He now knows the recipe word-perfect, gets everything out of the cupboard ready to make the biscuits, and has his own particular tasks – putting the ‘gold and sirrit’ into the bowl with the butter to be melted and licking the golden syrup  off the spoon, tipping the dry ingredients into the mixing bowl, measuring out the bicarb soda, and eating as much of the dough as he can while I actually make the biscuits.

I’ve tried to convince him to try something other than ANZACs, but he is a creature of habit and insists on ANZACs every week. Not even the idea of choc-chip cookies would budge him.

In a last ditch attempt, yesterday I asked if he wanted to use the letter-shaped cookie cutters that his aunt got him. He was very keen, so I thought we’d give shortbread a go today.

I made shortbread for the first time a couple of years ago as Xmas gifts. I had no idea how to make it, so turned to my trusty friend Google, only to be overwhelmed by different recipes.

The one I settled on was the simplest: 3-2-1.

That’s the ratio of flour to butter to sugar that you need. The actual amount depends on how much dough you want. We used 375 grams of plain wholemeal flour, 250 grams of butter and 125 grams of raw caster sugar.

(I can always remember the ratio, but I can never remember what the 2 and the 1 are for, so inevitably I have to re-Google it every time I want to make shortbread.)

Juniordwarf was very excited to be cutting out letters.

Correction, he was excited for me to be cutting out the letters. He supervised, and told me what letters to cut out. We started with his name, and then all of the letters in a random order that probably made sense to him. And finally the numbers 1 to 10 (or rather 1 to 1 and 0).

There was still a lot of dough left over and I didn’t fancy cutting out more letters, as they are quite fiddly, especially trying to get the middle bits out, so we used a dinosaur cutter for the rest of the dough. The final little bits (that he didn’t eat) became Zs.

It took a lot longer than it takes to make ANZACs, so I’m not sure I want to be doing this every week. I want to make choc-chip cookies! But I think I might just have created a monster, and it isn’t the dinosaur biscuits.

P365 - Day 165 school holiday fun

This is the second week of school holidays. Because Juniordwarf is only in school three days a week, there’s only three days we have to cover each week, so Slabs and I each have taken a day off work and my mother has kindly agreed to look after Juniordwarf for the other day.

This week I had today off so, combined with the public holiday on Monday (thanks monarchy!), I’ve had a five day weekend.

It was great, and reminded me of the past few years where I used to have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, by the end of which I felt like I was just getting into my ‘Mum’ role, only to have to go back to work the next day.

Today we did a lot of fun things. We did housework.

Actually, we spent some time cleaning up in Juniordwarf’s bedroom, and reorganising his bookshelf in the lounge room. We vacuumed and we continued to bring an airer full of washing in from outside at a time in an attempt to get it dry before next week’s washing day.

Juniordwarf discovered a bag full of flyers for the local community radio station that Slabs is involved with. He’s recently been watching a DVD we made of his first Xmas, which involve a rather lengthy sequence of me (in a Santa hat) handing out presents to everyone.

So today he got the flyers out, sat some of his toys down in a circle and proceeded to hand them out their ‘presents’ – ‘Teddy from Santa’, ‘Mum from Dad’, ‘Juniordwarf from Sleepydog’, ‘Mum from Juniordward’ and so on, until all of the flyers were handed out.

It took a long time, and an equally long time to pack them all up again.

I had a productive morning constructing the third tier of a scrapbooking paper rack that had been sitting in a box by the back door for longer than I care to remember. Also in the box was one of those fold up outdoor chairs that we got for Juniordwarf but never took outside to store with the rest of the chairs.

He sprang upon it as soon as I took it out of the box and decided it was time for him to set it up. So after lunch that’s what he did.

This was the temperature.

This is him.

I don’t think he feels the cold. I certainly do.

The last thing we did today, after a quick trip up the street to put the contents of Juniordwarf’s money box into his bank account and do the shopping, was to make sushi for dinner.

We had sushi because that’s what he said he wanted, and he was telling me all about how some of his school friends have sushi for lunch. About one of them, he was saying that she has sushi for lunch, then he said ‘actually no, she has a sandwich’. Bit of a difference there!

This is the first time Juniordwarf has had sushi and I was encouraged by the fact that a lot of the ‘healthy kids lunches’ type books suggest this as something kids will eat, and I’ve heard other people say their kids love it. So what a fine way to get him to eat vegetables.

I haven’t made sushi very often, and I’m not particularly skilled at it. I can never get it to look as dainty and perfect as the sushi gurus – probably because I make it every six months or so as opposed to every day –and I’m delightfully unimaginative when it comes to fillings. My standard is smoked salmon, carrot and cucumber. I’d love to try using raw fish, but I’m terrified of doing it wrong or keeping it at the wrong temperature and poisoning myself, so I usually stick to what I know.

Juniordwarf helped out making his roll. I let him taste a bit of wasabi, but he was less than impressed, as I suspected he would be, and so his was just salmon and carrot. He even ate a couple of carrot sticks on the side. Small victory!

He was so keen to eat his sushi. He kept asking when it would be ready and when he could eat it and I had to keep telling him to wait a bit longer because it needed to be chilled.

Finally he got to eat it. We showed him how to dip it into the soy sauce and eat it, but he ended up unwrapping it. After a couple of pieces he decided he didn’t like it after all, and pulled the rolls apart, picked out the salmon and left the rest.

At least he tried it, and he knows what it is now. I wonder if he’ll be as keen next time or if that’s it for his sushi experience for now.

P365 - Day 158 cooking spaghetti

Me: Juniordwarf, have you been eating the spaghetti out of the pot while I wasn’t looking?

Him: No.

Me: Juniordwarf, have you been eating the spaghetti out of the pot?

Him: Yes . . .

P365 - Day 144 the final cooking class

Today was the last of Juniordwarf’s four cooking classes.

We made meatballs, fruit skewers and a very creamy berry dessert. Juniordwarf was very proud of his fruit skewer, even though he ended up eating more marshmallows than fruit.

Left: "Oh no, Mum's taking more photos This IS a
smile, Mum." Right: "Amazing!"

After everyone had finished for the day, there was a little presentation where the children all got their own kids cookbooks, a bound copy of all the recipes we’d cooked (personalised with their photo on the front) and a certificate for completing the class. Juniordwarf was very excited to get a ‘tificate’ and insisted I stick it on the wall near the dining table so he can look at it while he’s having breakfast.

It was a really useful and fun activity for Juniordwarf and I to be involved with, and we learned a lot. I’m grateful that we were able to participate. Thank you to the Salvation Army for this fantastic opportunity.

P365 - Day 130 hot toddy

Today I wasn't feeling much better than I was yesterday.

A couple of people suggested a hot toddy (or three) as a remedy for my cold, or at least to make me feel better temporarily. Or possibly taste so bad that I momentarily forget how unhealthy I feel.

I'd never had one before, and all I knew that hot toddy was a warm drink (of course) made from whisky, honey and lemon. Similar to the honey and lemon drinks I'd been having. Obviously it would be good for me, but we didn't have any whisky.

So could I use rum instead? I wondered.

I did a little online searching and discovered that a hot toddy could be made from any dark spirit - rum, whisky, brandy, bourbon . . . I picked a recipe from the BBC website (that has to be authoritative doesn't it?) and after Juniordwarf went to bed, proceeded to make it.

The recipe is from here and in Step 1 it says:

Give this recipe to somebody else. If you have a partner, flatmate, parent, sibling or responsible offspring present - get them to go to the kitchen while you curl up under a blanket - you're poorly, remember?

Well Slabs wasn't here, so that wasn't an option. I had to do it myself. So here is how to make a hot toddy in photos.

Step 1: Get your recipe. The link for this one is above.

Step 2: Assemble your ingredients. You need 50 ml of your spirit of choice, 50 ml of boiling water, lemon juice, honey and cloves. I had also seen recipes with cinnamon, so I included that as well.

Please note: until tonight, I had never drunk any of the above rum. I bought it for cooking purposes and it has been in my cupboard for well over six years.

Also, since my 1/4 cup measuring cup is 60 ml that's the quantity I used, rather than measure out 3.5 tablespoons, or whatever 50 ml is.

Step 3: (This is where I varied the recipe. It mentions later down the track microwaving the alcohol so that it's hot. Call me weird, but I just can't bring myself to microwave alcohol. So I put it into a pot to heat on the stove)  Add 1/2 teaspoon of honey (I used a full teaspoon) to the alcohol and mix it in. I started to gently heat it at this point.

Step 4: Add boiling water.

Step 5: Stir until it is all mixed together and 'piping hot'.

The recipe suggests that a glass is not the best thing to use for a hot toddy because it doesn't retain the heat, and says a pottery mug is better, but not much - it actually suggests an insulated mug with a lid. I have a lovely pottery wine glass from Bendigo Pottery that I thought would be ideal, so I filled it with boiling water to warm it up while the drink was heating.

Also while it was heating, I juiced half a lemon.

Step 6: Once it is hot enough, pour it into the glass (obviously after tipping out the hot water).

Step 7: Add the lemon juice.  I wasn't sure how much lemon juice I'd need, because the recipe said 'to taste' and I'd been using half a lemon in my lemon and honey drinks. I ended up using about half of that. Add cloves (I used two) and cinnamon (I just used a couple of bits of a broken stick - they sank to the bottom).

Step 8: You are supposed to sip it very slowly to allow it to 'soothe your throat, clear your nose and relax your aching muscles'.

I don't think it did any of those things, and it tasted just ghastly. I wonder if it would be any better with whisky?

P365 - Day 128 mothers day

I had a lovely day today, despite being a bit knocked about by a lingering cold that I thought had almost gone, but that made a triumphant return to my life this morning.

Juniordwarf gave me a little stash of presents, which he helped me to open. (What that means is he said he’d help me open them, and then he proceeded to open them himself).

Slabs brought me coffee in bed, then a few minutes later Juniordwarf walked in, very carefully carrying the breakfast tray with my breakfast on it that he’d made (this cooking training is coming in handy!).

I was touched. It’s the first time I’ve had a Mothers Day breakfast in bed, and the look on his face when he walked in the room, with Slabs not too far behind helping him, was something I won’t forget. He was concentrating intensely and he looked so proud of himself.

It really made my day.

I was going to put the flowers he made me at school on my magnetic whiteboard to inspire me when I’m being crafty, but Juniordwarf told me they had to go on the fridge. He was very insistent about it, even though I said they were my present and I should be able to put them wherever I wanted to.

His response was ‘I’m sorry Mum, but they have to go on the fridge.’ He was very serious about it. I think his teacher might have suggested putting them on the fridge when the kids made them and Juniordwarf has interpreted this as being an instruction as to where they must go.

So rather than argue with him, I used it as an opportunity to take down a few pieces of old artwork and put the flowers in their place. And when my mother came to see us, he was very excited to show them to her in their new home.

He’s wonderful and I love being his mum. 

P365 - Day 123 cooking with families

For the last three years Juniordwarf and I have participated in activities run by the local Salvation Army under the Communities for Children banner.

Communities for Children is a program funded by the Federal Government and provides support and programs for families with children aged 0-12.

There was a whole range of activities that we participated in, including ‘Kiddygym’, cooking, excursions, parent information sessions and basic first aid training. This year we haven’t been involved, because Juniordwarf’s school days clash with the 0-5 kids’ program.

But during May, they’re running a cooking program on Tuesdays. Given Juniordwarf’s new-found interest in cooking, I thought he’d be interested in going, which he was, so I signed him up.

It’s a four-week program run by a chef, and we’ll be learning about healthy cooking that the kids can be involved in and food hygiene issues.

Today was the first day of the class, and we learned how to do easy (fast) roast chicken, gourmet pizzas and pear tarts.  The small size of the class was great. Two kids went into the kitchen each time and the others watched and then did the same thing on their tables. They got to peel stuff, stuff stuff and layer stuff. We all got aprons, and the kids got their own paper chef hats.

Looking a little apprehensive ....
but look at all those plates!

Then we got to eat it all, which the chef had conveniently prepared earlier, so we got to take what we’d made home and cook it later.

Juniordwarf had a great time. And he looked very cute in his too-big hat. He’s really looking forward to next week, as am I. 

Slightly too big hat

The serious business of
making pizza

Look what I made!

P365 Day 107 - hot chocolate

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago how Juniordwarf has started to do a lot of things now that he wasn’t doing before.

He’s been helping me cook his Sunday night cheesy noodles for quite a while now, and he’s getting really good at pouring the milk into the pot to make the cheese sauce a little bit at a time. We also cook ANZACs every Tuesday for him to have at recess at school. He pretty much knows the recipe off by heart now and knows what goes in where and when. His version of rolling the dough into balls is (1) eating as much as he can get away with and (2) mushing handfuls of it together and throwing it down onto the biscuit tray.

Fairly typical four-year-old cooking, I think.

A few weeks ago he wanted hot chocolate for afternoon tea. I’m not sure why. I can’t remember if it’s because I was going to have some, or because he’d had some at the coffee shop and wanted more, or if he’d seen the tin and wanted to know what it was.

Whatever the reason, he wanted it and it’s now become one of his favourite drinks. And of course, he has to help make it

The first couple of times we made it the only hot chocolate we had was a tiny of extremely delightful chilli hot chocolate that my sister-in-law first introduced me to and which I get as a very occasional treat for myself. (Don’t knock it until you try it, it has this divine chocolate taste, followed by a slight chilli aftertaste.)

I was worried that it might be too hot for Juniordwarf, but he seemed to like it (damn!). I didn’t buy any more, so we were without hot chocolate the next Tuesday. The local supermarket doesn’t stock anything like it, so I had to buy a plain one. Juniordwarf was very concerned that it wasn’t the hot one, but I told him I’d get some more (on a day to be determined), which hasn’t happened yet).

So every time he wants hot chocolate he observes that we still don’t have the other one, but he’s more than happy to have this one, and to help make it. For him, this involves getting the milk out of the fridge, taking the lid off the hot chocolate, dipping his finger in and eating the chocolate powder. Oh, and stirring the milk as it heats on the stove and tipping (most of) the chocolate in the spoon into the pot. (The rest goes all over the stove top . . . )

As I said, typical four-year-old cooking!

These are his cheesy grin photos. It was one of those days where he had to ham it up for every photo.

P365 - Day 73 hamburgers

Today Slabs and Juiniordwarf made hamburgers for lunch. Yum!

P365 - Day 53 - bake-a-rama

Now that Juniordwarf goes to school, I only have one day a week at home with him.

What this means is that all the home/mum ‘stuff’ I used to do on two days I now only get one day to do. Last year we had organised activities on both days, so with getting ready, going to whatever it was, doing errands on the way home and whatever else we did, those activities ended up taking at least half of each day. By the time we got home from those activities, neither of us really ever felt like doing much for the rest of the day.

It also meant that I felt a lot less inclined to do any meal planning or cooking in preparation for lunches and morning teas, so basically I never did any of that.

Well this year it turns out that there is no organised activity anywhere that I'm aware of on our 'home' day, which is great. You know why? Because we don’t ‘have’ to be anywhere at all. We have the whole day to do whatever we want. If we have to do errands, we can finish them in an hour or so, and be back home before we know it, rather than have to extend the time we’re away from home when we go out to do something structured.

So I’ve decided that Tuesday is going to be our ‘preparation for the week’ day. We’ll do the shopping, bake some treats for morning tea, make anything we need for meals during the week, do the washing . . . and we’ll hang around, build forts, read books, tell stories, listen to music, go out into the garden . . . whatever we want to do. And we'll have time to do, if not all of it, then most of it.

Today was the first day of this, and it was fantastic.

I may have overestimated what I thought I could get done and it's true, I ended up still in the kitchen at 9pm cleaning everything up, but today Juniordwarf and I baked some ANZACs and some banana bread, we made savory toast for lunch, I made chicken stock, dinner and did the time-consuming stuff for tomorrow night’s dinner. We did the shopping, we went to the library, we had coffee (he had a babycino), we did two loads of washing and we played with the dog.

Whew!

And you know what? Even doing all that stuff, I didn’t feel stressed, or tense or overwhelmed at all (except for the one time where everything had to come together at once at dinner time), and I had one of the best day’s I’ve had with Juniordwarf for ages. I didn’t waste time on the computer, and when I did go on it, I did what I had to do and got off, and I didn’t feel guilty.

It makes such a difference when we have no obligations whatsoever. Much as I’m glad we had the organised activities over the past four years, it’s nice right now for both of us to have a rest.

So in the spirit of the best cooking blogs, here are our recipes:

ANZACs

(Courtesy of the Central Cookery Book, by A.C. Irvine, 17^th Edition, Published 1992 – the Tasmanian classic.)

130g butter

1 tbsp golden syrup

1 cup flour (we use plain wholemeal)

pinch of salt

1 cup coconut

1 cup sugar (we use dark brown sugar)

1 cup rolled oats

2 teaspoons bicarb soda

2 tbsp boiling water

6 drops vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

2. Grease 3 oven slides. (We use baking paper and we only need 2.)

3. Gently melt butter and golden syrup (do not boil or burn).

4. Sift flour and salt (I skip this step. Wholemeal flour doesn’t sift well.)

5. Add sugar, cocout, rolled oats and vanilla to flour and salt.

6. Dissolve bicarb soda in water.

7. Mix all ingredients together well.

8. Put out in small balls on oven tray, allowing room for biscuits to flatten and spread out during cooking. (Or in Juniordwarf’s case, squoosh some dough together and throw onto the oven tray.)

9. Bake in oven 10-15 minutes (I recommend watching them very closely after 10 minutes.)

10. Allow to rest on tray for ½ minute before lifting off with a spatula to cool on cake cooler.

Banana bread

(Courtesy of Superorganisermum. Except her recipe has blueberries and I didn’t include them.)

150g butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 ripe bananas, peeled, mashed (see notes)

2 cups self-raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2  cup milk

butter, to serve

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. 

2. Grease base and sides of a 7cm deep, 11cm x 21cm (base) loaf pan. Line with baking paper, allowing a 2cm overhang at both long ends

3. Using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until pale. 

4. Add egg, in 2 batches, beating well after each addition.

5. Stir in banana. 

6. Sift flour and baking powder over banana mixture. 

7. Add milk. Stir with a wooden spoon until combined.

8. Spoon mixture into loaf pan. Smooth surface. 

9. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. (Ours needed over an hour.)

10. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Lift onto a wire rack to cool completely. Cut into 10 even slices.