Mini-mallows and Muffins.............

I don't know what your view is, but I do my best to minimise the intake of artificial flavours, colours and preservatives in the family's diet, especially in the cherubs' diets.

They don't have lollies as a rule, but we do allow them mini-marshmallows, a couple as a little treat, maybe to jazz up a bowl of porridge oats.

I had been using Pams mini marshmallows, and then of course the price war starts and we changed to Ma-Mallow for a while, then some were sent as gifts from family.....

I remember checking Pams for colours and flavours and saw that they used natural flavours and a natural colour E162 - Beetroot Red. It was remiss of me but I didn't check again even though the brands changed for a while. I did again recently as a bag arrived from a friend and the pink mallows were almost radioactive in colour - indeed the colour used was E120 - Cochineal, and another batch had an azo dye colouring used.

Now I am not super paranoid momma (I know natural doesn't necessarily mean good, often quite the opposite, and some of the 'bad' chemicals we are warned about have been labelled so from quite abnormal animal loadings in laboratories and give a worst case scenario) however, you are what you eat, so I don't want to shovel lots of these things down my cherubs' throats at such an early age of development.

Anyhoo, long story short I have been separating white mallows from pink for the last few packets and now we have returned to Pams. I am not advertising for them but it has made me get back into checking alternate brands for the same item again when shopping.

And.....further to my muffin vs cupcake project. It was time to bake the lemon cupcakes.
Well after moving the cows from one paddock to another, picking yet more cherry guava with the toddler cherub, feeding the pigs and chooks, baking biscuits, cooking lunch and reading stories - to be perfectly honest, cake making was so low down on my list I turned straight to the muffin recipes and used up a couple of oranges on Orange and Honey Muffins (Alison Holst again). Sooooooo easy and they're made 20 minutes later and I can sit down and have a cup of tea and ............ a delicious muffin....mmmmm................

.......I can see where this project is headed already.....

Notes from the kitchen

I was just putting away some recipes I have jotted down from some of my favourite blogs and it occurred to me....am I becoming a dying breed?

I don't own an iPhone, or any sort of smart phone or tablet (I'm not a luddite). I LOVE writing recipes down, scrawling notes into recipe books, pulling out old recipes written down in the handwriting of an aged aunt or long lost loved one, especially if they are dog-eared and stained with the splashes of some delicious endeavour.

My notes vary in form from additions in the front or back of a book, headers and footers to existing recipes, cut out snippets from magazines, and slightly more orderly recipe cards.

Sadly, my most recent affection for recipes cards from the stable of Nut and Bee has been cut short, as they are no more (although Annette, the owner/artist, still blogs of her exploits). I shall, however, continue to use up my stock and search for a replacement as I just don't think I am the 'baking with recipe on the tablet' type.....for one thing I would worry about getting flour or egg or something on the electronics (and as I have said, I think this just adds to the paper copy's authenticity).

Long live paper I say (don't get me started on books vs ebooks!)......

Pita Patter

Having tried the oil included recipe for Pita bread yesterday I was hungry (pardon the pun) to try an oil free version, something I was more familiar with from my childhood days. Along with the rich smokey smell of rotisserie chickens on the side of the road and the sticky sweetness of mishmish leather, I remember hummus and arabic bread - khubz (pita)الخبز العربي.

So I went trawling the internet for recipes for pita - it's a bit like baklava and the arguments for it being arabic or turkish.......pita, is it middle eastern or mediterranean.....? (Is that where the olive oil difference is most visible?). To be honest, I don't think it really matters, a number of countries have their take on the flatbreads and we are all the more culinarily richer for it :)

So here I find myself, adapting the middle eastern recipe from Saad Fayed and producing some tasty reminders of my childhood in the form of Pita/Arabic Bread.

Oh.....this is it..............fresh bread in a basket...............just fantastic. I might make myself a little hummus to go with it tonight but right now, straight out of the oven, unadulterated and as they are is blissful :)

My Pita Recipe
1 1/2 Cups Plain flour or a mixture of plain and wholemeal
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp honey
1 tsp dried active yeast (such as Edmonds)
3/4 Cup warm water

Sieve the flour and salt into a mixing bowl
In another bowl pour in the warm water, sprinkle over the yeast and stir in the honey - put to one side and leave for approx. 10-15minutes until nice and frothy.
Make a well in the flour and pour in the yeast mixture.
Stir in to mix and then combine with your hands.
Move to a lightly floured surface and knead for approx. 7 minutes or until the dough feels more smooth and silky, not sticky and begins to bounce back or resist you poking it's surface.
Form a ball with the dough.
Put into a bowl sprayed with oil, make sure all of the dough is lightly covered in oil too.
Cover and leave to one side for about 2 hours or until it has doubled in size.
Press out the ball on a lightly floured surface(knock back).
Divide into golf ball size spheres and lay to one side, cover again and leave to rest for about 20 minutes.
When rested, take each piece and on a lightly floured surfaceroll out with a pin to approx 1/4 inch depth pieces.
I don't worry too much about shape as these are snack size for small hands and the variability in shapes makes for a more interesting presentation.
If the dough is not stretchy when rolling out, leave them to rest further.

In a preheated oven (highest temperature it will go say 200-250 degrees Celsius) - using a baking stone if you have one or a good baking sheet - place pieces ,well spaced out (you may have to do in batches) and cook in the oven for about 4 minutes before flipping over and doing for another approx. 2 minutes.

This bread can be frozen and stored but in my opinion should be fresh each time you eat it (so make every day you want some).......

Wet and windy.....

....means we need something comforting, warming, just a little bit naughty.....Pancakes!

So it was a morning for my American Style Breakfast Pancakes. The kind hubby and I remember from some of our holidays in the USA, and the kind that his mum used to bake with blueberries (fresh or warmed and thickened up with arrowroot) and whipped cream. However, my hubby is still partial to breakfast pancakes with crispy bacon and maple syrup....yum......

My wee ones love these two. For a change from blueberries we had them with fresh kiwifruit and a dash of maple syrup this morning. Tiny wee one shared some of hers with the dogs - they are ever so grateful and her very best friends at meal times.

There is just something about maple syrup dripping over the edge of the pancakes and the butter melting and sliding down the side onto your plate that gets those taste buds working overtime...........

And then there is the layer upon layer of spongey, creamy softness of the pancake that slides down with the sweet, oaky syrup.....the kiwifruit was a nod at being healthy!

Wet and windy also meant cuddling up cosy and tonight we had homemade pita bread thanks to Bubbalino's blog reference to BrownEyedBaker, and the scrumptious Pumpkin and Quinoa recipe from the guys at Organic Naturally:

Pumpkin and Quinoa Soup

1 onion roughly chopped
Ceres Organic Olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1kg pumpkin – roughly chopped into cubes
1 cup white quinoa (rinsed well in cold water)
2 litres of liquid/stock (Use whatever stock you have available - fresh chicken stock or water and bouillon powder or cubes)
Salt and pepper

Cook the chopped onion in a dash of olive oil till translucent.
Add the washed quinoa, chopped pumpkin, cumin.
Stir and cover with the liquid.
Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes.
Check pumpkin and quinoa is cooked, season to taste.
Mash with potato masher and enjoy, for a less chunky texture puree with a stick mixer.

I used our homegrown Butternut Pumpkins and black instead of white quinoa, and a dash more cumin - the wee cherubs LOVED it. Tiny cherub had her pita broken up into the soup and we let it soak up a little to make it easier for her to eat solo. I made the pita smaller again for the wee ones' hands and we had a very warming dinner time.

 

 

 

1Cup Plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp caster sugar
pinch of salt
2 eggs - separated into yolks and whites
1/4 Cup melted, unsalted butter
1Cup milk

Put all dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Sift or stir with a balloon whisk. Stir in the egg yolks, add the melted butter, the milk and mix to a batter.
Beat the egg whites in a clean bowl to form stiff peaks. Now fold these into the batter gently.
Place spoonfuls of batter onto an oiled griddle or frying pan at a medium heat. Cook on first side, when bubbles appear on the surface turn it over and cook for a few minutes more. Place on kitchen towel whilst making the batch so that excess cooking oil can be absorbed away.

Enough for 4 without over doing it!

Bootiful bread and luvly lemons

We LOVE homemade bread in this house. Although a real treat for momma is a gorgeous artisan loaf made by someone else, we do love our filling the house with warmth loaves at home.
Currently we are besotted with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Fizz Carr's A loaf of Fresh White Bread from their A River Cottage Family Cookbook. It's an almost creamy loaf with olive oil and honey, just bloomin' delicious.

The other baking interest at the moment is the difference between or perhaps it's my preference for muffins over cupcakes. I think, mostly, it's the fact I see muffins as quicker, easier, can be thrown together in 15 minutes from whatever you have to hand, kind of fare. Whereas, cupcakes I see as their high maintenance cousin.....
So I am going to attempt to have my own bake-off, muffin vs cupcake, potentially each week (but the wee ones may have something else to say about that, we'll see....)

So today I made Lemon muffins (using Alison Holst's Marvellous Muffins book), later in the week it will be Lemon cupcakes and I shall compare and contrast. These were lovely, light, moist and just enough bite of lemon. The other bonus was I was able to come in and have them done and dusted in about 25 minutes total, after feeding pigs, chickens, collecting cherry guava and cleaning a toddler of paddock mud and cow pat..... that was a huge draw card!
We don't go for too much in the way of extras (cream etc) with baking on a weekly basis (we leave that for special occasions).

developing my craftiness......

I was led, via another blog by Bubbalino, to a fantastic post from Amanda, at Fabric Fixation, that shows how to make a chalk cloth mat for your cherubs to use. Much more transportable than the large easel we have hiding behind the bookcase. This one stores in the girls 'drawing basket' and is much quicker to tidy up.

It's also easy to make. I had some issues with the presser foot on my sewing machine sticking on the laminated cotton in the first draft, but after some advice from Amanda and her friends on Facebook I moved to the walking foot and it worked a charm.

Once that was tried I used the walking foot on the scrap piece of Cath Kidston oil cloth I had lying about, and it worked a treat there too...

I found this tutorial to make a lunch bag/stuff sac by Cindy at Skip to my Lou - super easy and a very useful design. Once I get more confident, I am sure I can adapt it to produce a multitude of versions.

The other thing I dabbled with over the last few days was felt pin books, the type I remember from my Home Economics lessons at school in the 1980's. Well I was inspired to have a go at these very simple little projects whilst leafing through Cath Kidston's MAKE! book.

Super easy, quick and fun. Great for keeping me occupied when the wee ones are in bed and it's all sport on the box.....

The thing that had not occurred to me was their other use - story books! My toddler cherub (almost 3 yrs old) loves running around with them and pretending to read a story from them, although she has taken it a step further and momma has been instructed to 'finish' the books with more pictures for the inside pages :)

My toddler was so keen on what she saw we got her using a needle and embroidery thread for the first time, she managed to sew a tight ball of matted thread and fabric but, hey, she was using a needle and thread....from small beginnings......

On your marks.....

Well the wee one's First Birthday cake is made. I went for a Lemon Mascarpone Layer cake as I figured all that calcium would surely cancel out the effect of the sugar!!
There's no artificial colours and gubbins in it, it's just (like many cakes) got a heap of sugar and a fair bit of fat in it, so as with everything - moderation. After all, it is her birthday...

(p.s. - this isn't a single portion! Actually you could probably get 12-16 slices out of this puppy, I had to send friends away with cake and this was the section I kept for us to have a taster more....)

I must say....it was absolutely delicious, this is a definite make again cake. Not difficult, a little time consuming but I split the steps up over a couple of days so it wasn't a chore. Melt in the mouth divine - almost..........almost better than the Hokitika double layered baked cheesecake (but that, as they say, is another story....)

(p.p.s. - It was a big hit with the birthday girl who was able to use her baby led weaning skills to full effect. She had the cheese icing all over her, the table , the chair, the floor and the dogs....everyone was happy.)

Lemon Mascarpone Layer Cake
You will need to make Lemon Curd, Lemon juice and sugar syrup, True Sponge Cake and the Filling/Icing.

The Lemon Curd I used is the one I make at home and you can see that recipe on this blog.

The True Sponge Cake is one that has lightness (sponge) due to the air you have managed to incorporate and not through any raising agent.
I use the following ingredients to fill two 7 1/2 inch round cakes tins that have been lined with parchment paper (ungreased tin, ungreased paper).

5 eggs
1 Cup caster sugar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Cup plain flour (sifted)
1/4 tsp salt

Separate the eggs. Whisk up the whites into soft peaks then add 1/4 cup of sugar and whisk to stiff peaks. You can now use the whisks without cleaning to take the yolks in a bowl, whisk up. Add the lemon juice and whisk, gradually add 3/4 cup of sugar whisking as you go until you have a nice, thick, smooth, pale yellow mixture that flows in ribbons from the whisks and slowly melts back into the mixture in the bowl.
Now pour the yolk mixture into the whites bowl and gently fold the two together to combine evenly.
It should be an almost foamy consistency.

Divide mixture between the two cake tins and bake at 180 degrees celsius for about 35-40 minutes. Use a skewer to test (should come out clean). When you press the top of the cake it should also spring back when you release your finger.

Once baked, cool on a wire rack. To be used in this recipe you will be slicing each cake in half horizontally so you have 4 layers.

The Lemon Syrup is super easy and, as with the sponges, I have made that in advance of the construction day. It is just too difficult to get a few hours of quiet in the kitchen at once. The wee ones demand attention at regular intervals (quite rightly they chime in!) and so I try to split projects into steps that can come together at a later date in an attempt to reduce anxiety and increase the likelihood of success!

I used :

1/2 Cup caster sugar
1/4 Cup Boiling water from the kettle
1/4 Cup fresh lemon juice

I simply pour the water over the sugar in a bowl, whisk thoroughly to help dissolve the sugar, then add the lemon juice. If you find the sugar isn't dissolving you can always do this in a microwave proof dish and give it a zap to help it along but I have never needed to, kettle seems to be fine and dandy.
Needs to be cool before pouring over the sponges later on.

The Lemon Mascarpone Filling/Icing is pretty straightforward.

I used :

480 ml full cream
1/2 Cup caster sugar
600 g mascarpone cheese (cold from the fridge)

I whisked up the cream with the sugar to form peaks in one bowl. In a separate bowl I whisked up the mascarpone with about 2 cups of the lemon curd - just on the slowest setting so not to beat it up too much but to get the lemon curd well in - you will need to taste and check for tartness, I wanted to have a hint of tartness in the filling/icing to cut through the cream and the cheese rich 'fat' flavour.
Then I added the cheese to the cream and gently folded with a wide spatula until evenly combined.

Then it is the building phase - lay one sponge layer on your choice of platter, board or cake dish. Brush with the lemon syrup without completely drenching, then spread over a layer of lemon curd before spreading a layer of the cheese filling. Lay the next sponge layer down and repeat, do this again with the next layer, with the final sponge layer finish with the cheese icing and carry on to cover the whole cake. Add piped decoration if you wish.

Ice-creams ready to go......

Well, task for the day done, the cupcakes are ready for tomorrow, hoping the well packed tin will do the trick of holding them upright.....

PS - the tin held the cones upright, beautifully, even with my twisty turny driving! And the cones went down a storm with the pre-schoolers at our little club, the mums were very nice about them too - which is always a bonus. Good times.

'Mr Whippy' for winter

When it's too cold for real ice-cream but the wee ones want a cone , we will be turning to our 'Mr Whippy' style cupcakes.

Mr Whippy is a long held treasure in NZ.

I made a simple sponge cake batter and buttercream from scratch but you can just buy a packet of your favourite cake mix and use that instead, you also buy the buttercream icing premade and make it really easy on yourself.

I am keeping things simple and all vanilla as these are intended for mostly under two's at an activity club. So hopefully it'll just be sugar rush and no other side effects!

A huge hit in this house :)

To make about 15 cones

15 flat bottomed wafer ice-cream cones
3 oz butter
4 oz caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
5 oz self-raising flour
2 tbsp milk (full fat)

Cream the butter and sugar together until it is fluffy and pale coloured, get as much air in as you can. Beat in one egg well, make sure it is incorporated well before adding the next egg. Beat well again.
Add the vanilla extract and mix well.
Add the flour and milk in batches, not all at once, beating all together so that you end up with a nice smooth batter.
Spoon the mixture into the cones so that the mixture falls all the way to the bottom of the cone and you fill it up to just over half way.
Bake the cones spaced out on a baking tray at 180 degrees celsius for around 15-20 minutes until they have risen well and you can test with a skewer to see it comes out cleanly.

Allow the cakes to cool on a rack before piping on a swirl of buttercream icing.

Buttercream icing - I used
3 1/2 oz softened unsalted butter
Approx 65 ml milk (you might need more if the icing is too dry and difficult to pipe)
1 tsp vanilla extract
12 oz icing sugar

Cream the butter. Do this for a few minutes so that it really fluffs up, air incorporation is the key here. Beat in the milk, the vanilla extract and half of the icing sugar (sifted in). It should be a fairly loose icing now. Continue by adding the rest of the sugar and beating well, you should have a spreadable/pipable consistency now. If it's too thick use a little more milk, if it's still too loose add more sugar, carefully (I often need differing amounts with different batches of icing). It's best just to have extra milk and extra icing sugar on hand to keep tinkering until you are happy.

You can add colours and flavours (omit vanilla and replace) if you like

Pooh Bear must have loved this too......

I am talking lemon curd. And no, I don't mean lemon jam or that mass produced pale yellow gloop often called curd.

I mean, honest-to-goodness, homemade, fresh eggs, fresh lemons kind of curd.

I use lemons from our trees (Yen Ben) and they are LARGE when ripe - we are talking an average length of 10cm and circumference at centre of 27cm. The skins are not perfect - we don't spray at all, nature takes it's course, skins are marked, nobbly and not very attractive at times, but oh so free of added 'nasties'.

What I absolutely love about this product is that no two batches will be spot on identical, there will be subtle differences in the lemons from the dates they were picked, the rainfall they had, sunlight etc etc that lead to differences in the acidity and taste of the juice. But that, for me, is the joy of growing your own food; being able to taste those subtle changes and to know that your food is real and not conforming to some production line statistic.

Another reality of this product is that it is highly perishable, in that I mean use within 4 weeks of making and keep in the fridge for the whole period. I do not sterilise (in the strict sense) the jar of lemon curd that is made for the eating or use now, and to be honest I only make lemon curd when I want to eat it as it doesn't last that long. The reason those identical jars on the supermarket shelf last so long....well look at the ingredient list.

The reason for this batch?

Well my wee cherub is one year old next week and she is getting a lovely birthday cake made by momma with our own lemons. So the curd was the first step ticked off the recipe list. All mommas out there know that you must tease out steps to a task into smaller managable chunks so that if it all goes pear shaped with the wee ones, you can fall back to the previous step at the next 'pick up' opportunity.

So, out came the old recipe, adapted from a Marguerite Patten book passed on to me from my (now deceased) mother-in-law. It was very hard to stop myself from constantly dipping into the jar with a spoon all afternoon!

In the region of half an hour to make

8 oz caster sugar
4 oz unsalted butter
2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
grated rind of 2 large lemons
juice from 2 large lemons

As our lemons are very large you may want to double up on your lemons if they are very small :)

When grating the rind from the lemons try to avoid the white pith just underneath the yellow layer as this will impart a bitter tast to your curd.

Place all the ingredient except the eggs into a heatproof bowl and place this over a pan of simmering water (if you have a bain marie - great)

Stir from time to time as the butter melts and sugar dissolves.

Whisk all the egg and yolks together well.

Once completely melted, take the bowl from the pan and place on a wooden board. Whilst constantly stirring with a fork or whisk, slowly but steadily drizzle the egg mixture into the melted butter and sugar mix, incorporate into a smooth liquid. The key here is not having the egg going into a really hot mixture as it will immediately cook them into scrambled eggs. If you can see that happening (cooked egg white might start to float about), stop and leave the mixture to cool a little more. If you notice them once all the egg is already in (and it is more than just a couple of bits you can lift out with a spoon) you can always sieve the whole mixture now before thickening.

Once all the egg has been added, place back on the hot water pan and continue to cook, stirring from time to time until is thickens up. It should get to a thickness that will coat the back of a clean wooden spoon.

Pour into your jars and seal down.

If you do this in small jars you can sterilise the jars before hand and so the lemon curd will store out of the fridge. I always do it in one big jar as I intend consuming from then on and before it expires in four weeks time !

Biscuit bliss

We don't buy factory made biscuits any more, not since the littlies were born. I started taking more interest in what was in the ingredients list and was surprised to see so much more listed than one would have expected; preservatives, flavour enhancers, stabilisers.......so, we make our own and if we don't, well then there aren't any biscuits in the house to eat that day!

The first and everyday go to biscuit is the shortbread.  The recipe I use is so very simple and so very, very, tastey. I came across the recipe in the September 2007 edition of North & South Magazine, it was titled Shonagh's Shortbread.

Easy, delicious and moreish. My toddler often makes them with me and cuts weird and wonderful shapes. Anyone can make these and will love them.

250g butter
3/4 Cup castor sugar
1/2 Cup cornflour, sifted
2 cups flour, sifted

Cream the butter and sugar well, add the cornflour and flour. Knead well. At this stage you can either roll out the shortbread fairly thick and cut into pieces, or make long sausage shapes of the shortbread about the diameter of a sausage roll and cut slices from them. The second is quicker. Bake for about 35 minutes at 150 degrees celsius.

Porridge permutations and baby led weaning .....

How many ways can you make porridge exciting to a wee one? Well I have tried quite a few, the classic chunks of fresh fruit in it, dried fruit additions, natural rainbow sprinkles, honey, yoghurt, cream, chocolate sprinkles, crushed nuts, mini marshmallows, making faces in the porridge with said additions, getting the wee ones to 'throw on' their own (dangerous), making the porridge slightly thicker so it can be cut and held (this works especially well for cleaner baby led weaning, although baby actually prefers the sloppier version....I wonder why.......)

On to the flapjack/oat crunchies and smoothie presentation next me thinks.............

I am a huge fan of baby led weaning (technically we are emerging from that phase). Admittedly it was and still is messy in our house but the dogs help with the clear up......I just continue to try to 'let go' at meal times and relinquish my desire for control. I say continue to try as I fall back into old habits from time to time and the girls (well now it's the wee, wee one) remind me by throwing a tantrum and their food at me or the walls. Both wee ones didn't like being 'spoon fed' much, I admit I did a little of it with both, more to satisfy my need to know they were getting something down their necks, especially as the nurses kept telling me to get weight on number two wee one, but also because my babies didn't read the baby led weaning books and were demanding real food from around 4 and a half months so I had to play safe and do some mashing/puree-ing (they wanted calories in and were not capable of manipulating chunks of food). It didn't take long for their strength to grow and their dissatisfaction with spoon feeding to show more overtly!
They were/are happiest when digging in themselves. They LOVE food, they love lots of different foods, they will try lots of new things and have a wide palate compared to many other littlies. I loved the fact I didn't have to haul around huge quantities of prepared foods and the babies simply sat on my knees in cafes and restaurants and we ate from the same plate, I still love it. Don't get me wrong, we still have days when it all goes 'pear shaped' and I am sure I have thrown more food to the piggies in the pen than has entered the wee one's stomach but they never starve and of course this was all done in conjunction with breast feeding, so they often just felt like more breast milk and less joined up food and I was/am perfectly happy with that.

Silly Billyz sleeved bibs are a must in our house and save excessive staining on clothes, I really don't know what I would have done without them.....oh yes I do, when it's been warm enough the bubs have eaten naked............soooooo easy to clean them up then!

This is wee, wee one - 11 months and in total control of feeding herself, using cutlery and hands, managing all sorts of shapes, eating what we all eat. She thoroughly enjoys a good steak, in large strips to chew and suck on (she only has three little lower teeth so mostly gum chewing). A very happy eater :)

Another lunch time option for both 1 and 3 year olds:

The wee ones love just having picnic style lunches that they can eat with their fingers (steamed veggies like pumpkin, carrot, baby beetroot, orange wedges, sliced banana and avocado cubes)

Bread for the ankle biters......

So I made some bread today. Actually I didn't have enough plain flour for the standard white loaf so I 'adapted'. This can be a very foolish thing for the novice baker, but hey, you only live once I say, and what can it do? Kill me?.....Well I guess ultimately, if I am really, really bad at my choices........hmm.....

Heck no, Go for it! my inner self shouted out, you can always feed it to the chickens (like my first foray into the world of Sourdough.......but that's for another time).

So back to this loaf. Well actually I tend to bake two small loaves - using 1L loaf pans, partly because that's all I've got (I could buy a bigger pan, I know) but at the moment, it's mostly because the cherubs can handle the bread much more easily if it's their size (I can feel Maria Montessori on my shoulder nodding in support).

So these loaves, well I simply mixed in some fairly coarse organic Polenta/Maize Meal and a sprinkle of Artisan Admixture for fun.......and what came out? I hear you ask........

A pretty nice bread with 'teeth'. It had a denser, I hesitate saying slightly gritty texture (as I can see you pulling a face now....stop it!) but it was lovely. Not quite like the chewy pumpernickel but just a little, enough to give the bread some body - it held together for the cherubs as they ate it, it tasted great with just salted butter on it and they came back for more during the day - score!!!!

So I shall be making this again and it will also go on the 'school menu' as it made lovely sandwiches too.

 



I used two 1L small loaf pans

1/2 tbsp dried yeast
1/2 tsp organic sugar
450 ml warm water
1/2 oz lard
1lb organic stoneground white flour
1/2 lb organic polenta (plus a little artisan admixture)
1 tbsp iodised bread salt

Dissolve the sugar in the warm water then stir in the yeast.
Leave in a warm place for 10-15 minutes until foamy.
Rub the lard into the flour and salt, then stir in the yeast mixture.
Work together to form a firm dough, it should leave the sides of the bowl cleanly.
Place on a lightly floured surface and knead until no longer sticky and texture becomes more elastic and smooth.
Place the dough in a oiled clean bowl, cover and leave to rise - double in size, and springy to the touch.
Knead the dough again until firm and divide into 2 , shape and place in the loaf tins (oiled/greased).
Cover and leave for about 1 and a half hours or so until the dough reaches the top of the tins.
Bake at 220 degrees celsius (pre-warmed oven), for about 25 minutes - loaf should sound hollow what the base is tapped.






Mini meals

As the eldest wee one is starting pre-school in a few weeks I have begun the countdown by practising 'mini' recipes on my two cherubs. What I mean by 'mini' is that they are scaled down versions of normal recipes both in quantity and in presentation. It's important that the cherubs get real food, but it is also important to make it easy to fit in a lunch box and be handled with equal ease such that I can reduce the potential for full scale war on the school carpet or walls!

The first, and most exciting (according to eldest cherub) task was to purchase the lunch box, or munchbox as it is becoming known. We opted for the naked lunch route and bought a medium sized box that could hold a sufficient amount yet not be too load bearing on the cherubs shoulders as she carried it into the school in her back pack. Eldest cherub LOVES her nude lunch box and it has become a regular at home during mealtimes as we build up to the big day.

So today's menu included mini salmon quiche. They turned out 'just tasty momma' and that was a big tick for them!

They were cherub hand size, moist and so didn't crumble all over the table and there was not a scrap left from either cherub. These are on the 'school menu' now.

Shortcut Pastry (for 12 mini quiches)
1 cup of organic stoneground plain flour (I actually added a little organic wholemeal to the plain)
1/8 tsp salt
65g butter chilled (if you can get organic - great!)

Sift the flour and the salt together into a bowl. Cut/rub in the chilled butter until you get it looking a little like breadcrumbs. Mix it up into a stiff dough by adding a little water. Roll out thinly but without working it too much if you can help it.

Using a round cookie cutter that is just bigger than your mould circles cut out the quiche bases and lay in your mould. I used a silicone medium muffin mould. Spray the inside of the mould with oil before laying in your pastry. Place a piece of parchment over the pastry and weight down with pie beads. Blind bake at 200 degrees celsius for approx 8 minutes.

Remove from the oven and take off the parchment and beads before spooning in your salmon filling.

Return to the oven for a further 12-15 minutes.


Salmon Filling
a knob of butter
3/4 cup of cooked organic mixed beans (e.g. chickpea, kidney etc)
1/2 cup of flaked steamed (cooked) salmon
1/2 organic onion chopped
1/2 cup of organic milk
1 egg
1/2 cup chopped parsley
grated cheese

Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the onion and fry until soft, add the flaked salmon, parsley and the beans and toss gently. Stir in the flour and cooked until you see it just foaming. Add the milk slowly and stir constantly to avoid lumps, allowing it to thicken. Take the pan from the heat. Add the lighty beaten egg. It is you choice whether you combine the cheese into this mixture or add it to the top for a cheesey layer (this is what I did). Season with salt and pepper.

Further experiments include:

• Salmon and potato sticks covered in crushed weet-bix and then oven baked
• Black Quinoa, carrot and brussel sprout mini quiche
• Mini chicken and vegetable pies