Salad Dressing

We've had glorious weather this past week with maximums in the mid to high 20s. Today I was making a batch of vinaigrette to take on holiday for a week camping at Esperance, when I was hit with guilt as I promised this recipe to a dear friend a long time away, who has recently moved to England. So I thought if I type it for her, I might as send it out to all of you, particularly those who are finishing up their summer.
This and balsamic and olive oil dressed at the table are the two dressings we have most often with a green or garden salad. I keep a jar of this in the fridge and simply shake before serving. It should keep indefinitely, though if you are keeping for a while it might be worth boiling you jar and lid for a few minutes before adding the ingredients.

1/4 c white vinegar
3/4 c olive oil
2 T lemon juice
1 garlic clove (crushed)
1 t seeded mustard
a generous grind of salt and pepper

The recipe also includes 1 shallot (which I've never added) and 2 T soft herb. I've never added the herbs preferring to add them fresh to the salad. You could actually put whole branches of herbs in the mix and the flavour would permeate.

I'm hoping to be a better 'blog friend' soon.
Hope you're well.

Stay Home All Day

We had a lovely 'stay home all day' day yesterday. We don't do this very often but it was a lovely day. We designed a great train track, painted, played in the garden and ticked off an activity that's been on the list for a while waiting for such a day.

Rainbow has been asking great questions recently like "How are houses built?" A few weeks ago Rainbow asked me "How do you make bread?" so today we did.

I actually own a bread maker but don't really use it much but today we made bread from scratch.

We did it all - mixing, kneading, proving, knocking down, kneading, shaping, proving...

It turned out really well and we ate it still warm with vegemite for Moonshine, raspberry jam for Rainbow and home made lemon butter on the crust for me. Rainbow's response was "It taste different to bread" as she ate it all.

Retro Baking

My mother is not a baker by that I mean it's not something that she terribly enjoys or would choose to do. Where as I am always trying out new recipes, she however has a number of signature dishes that she has mastered and can call on when the occasion arises. Lemon Coconut Slice (pictured centre) was one of them. Through out my childhood when ever she was require to 'take a plate' this would be her offering.
Today Russell was rostered on providing morning tea so I decided slices were the way to go.

Mars Bar Slice Lemon Coconut Slice and Raspberry Coconut Slice

There great for that kind of thing particularly for the busy Mum and are good for serving large numbers. The first two are even non-bake. The final one does require baking but ever so simple. Blend the pastry in the food processor and squish into the tray. Bake. Spread on jam straight from jar. Pour on eggs whisked with sugar. Bake The other great thing about slices is you don't have to be really careful about the measuring so perfect for kids in the kitchen. There is also lots of 'getting hands dirty' kind of jobs - snapping chocolate, squishing into the tray, spreading icing, stirring melted chocolate...
Have I convinced you? If so here are the recipes I used.

mars bar slice

lemon coconut slice

raspberry coconut slice

If you do make the last one, I know it says to let it cool in the pan (so it doesn't fall apart) but do steal a slice while the jams still hot and gooey. Cooks privilege!

So do you have a favourite recipe that you always fall back on?

Squeezy Edible Art

Rainbow and I are enjoying Masterchef. Rainbow loves watching a little before bed and comes up with her own ideas of what she would cook - such as a steak and cabbage pizza with beer poured on top.

Here's some arty cooking we've been up to using....

a squeezy bottle. We actually have two, Rainbow finds the red bottle easier to squeeze.

Firstly decorating cookies.

The icing is a simple glace icing (icing sugar and hot water) mixed to a thick paste. If it gets too thick the squeezy bottle can be stood in a jug of hot water to make it more viscous.

Here are the finished cookies ready to take to Playgroup. The angel's splotches are pockets. Every angel needs pockets. Also Rainbow put the butterfly aside for herself before handing out the cookies. I wonder why?

I didn't photograph my cookies but I was impressed with how much easier it is to pipe with a squeezy bottle than a piping bag, thought I founds spots a little challenging.

Secondly making pancakes

I often make shaped pancakes but now Rainbow is having a go.

I heat the pan and melt a tiny bit of butter in it. Then take it off the heat for Rainbow to draw her picture. This gives her plenty of time and also this 'slow' cooking gives it a firmer base and makes flipping easier.

A little person.
This pair is by me. Misha and her baby giraffe.
I have been wondering about making a really runny salt dough. Making a picture using the squeezy bottle and then baking but we haven't had time. Anyway art that you can eat is probably much more fun. Do you have a favourite edible art?

Fresh Plums

We brought some fresh plums and apples from a farm side stall a week ago. The plums were delicious but all ripen simultaneously so we cooked some up.
The first kilo I used to make plum jam. (I cut the sugar to 2 1/2 cups for 1kg of plums) We always have commercial jam in the fridge as Rainbow is a big fan but I don't usually have any desire to eat it. Put a jar of homemade jam in the fridge and it calls to me. I think its because it actually taste like real fruit. This one is just plums, sugar, lemon and water. How easy is that. If you haven't made jam have a go it's really easy. I'm wishing I'd brought more plums! We also made some upside down cakes. I made 12 muffins out of this cake recipe and didn't use all of the sugar and butter for the topping. They still came out of the pan quite well. There not all that pretty but they taste good and these one's keep well. They would be good with hot custard, I think. They remind me of ones my boss use to make for morning tea on Muffin Monday. She also use to make ones with fresh mango in the middle of summer. Delicious.

Nest + handle = basket

Yesterday I made a nest basket using the nest pattern I a few months back. I adapted to make the point (base of the basket) bigger and the rectangular portion (height of the basket) shorter. I made it with a felt outer and fabric inner with the intention of appliqueing and embroidering flowers on the front but time got away. It's a little too flimsy to use as an egg collecting basket but looks good displaying the rainbow dyed eggs.

In these photos it is holding cupcakes for a morning tea at my mother in law's house. It is also resting on a plate to hold it secure when I carried it.

These little cupcakes are topped with chocolate icing with a border "Flake" to resemble a nest. You could use grated chocolate if you don't have flakes in your part of the world. I had hoped to use those little bird's egg sugar coated chocolate eggs but couldn't find any. They are my little brother's favourite so I'll have to see where he gets his.

Some of the eggs have already hatched!

And here are the girls. Rainbow insisted that she needed an Easter egg dress - a little short notice for me but we agreed that polka dots look a lot like eggs. Hence both girls are in polka dots.

I just looked up to see both girls eating chocolate eggs when they should be eating their dinner. Russell and I are off to dinner (only the second time since Moonshine's arrival) for our 6th wedding anniversary. Please cross your fingers that Moonshine sleeps until we return.

Moonshine's party

We had a lovely picnic yesterday to celebrate Moonshine's birthday. I think everyone had a lovely day, except perhaps Moonshine herself - who like any sensible one year old would of been happier curled up with her Mama playing with toys. Moonshine did have a change of heart on seeing her birthday cake. She absolutely loves strawberries so spent the birthday song frantically gesturing and babbling at the chocolate dipped strawberries.

I kind of think 1st birthday parties are really a celebration for the family rather than the child so it was a little more restrained than Rainbow's party. We did though make some pretty cool party bags.

These strawberries were filled with heart shaped lollies, heart shaped chocolates, cherry coconut chocolates, bubbles and heart hair clips for the girls.

This really cool template can be found all over the place on the Internet but most people seem to credit it back to this site. This site is a bit of a gold mine full of great templates.

I ended up redrawing the template as I couldn't enlarge it to take full advantage of an A4 page. To give the strawberry more definition I went around the edges and the fold lines with red chalk and added white chalk seeds.

Each curved portion is then punched and a piece of green twine is weaved through. Both ends are then threaded through the leaf to form the stalk.

Happy Birthday Moonshine

This time one year ago I was about 15 minutes away from having little Moonshine. In a bathtub having a major "I can't do this" kind of moment.
Tonight both girls are in bed and my little Moonshine has just had her first birthday.

So what have I learnt in the past year about this little girl.
We call her our little lover. She is affectionate, full of smiles, cuddles and kisses.
She's determined - she concentrates so intently on what ever she does. She is very hard to distract from what she wants and not the slightest bit intimidated by other kids.

Happy Birthday my little one.

Her cupcakes are topped with butter cream and little homemade white chocolate hearts. (some has been tinted with red powdered food colouring)

Birthday Preparations

Had a busy day on Monday. On top of Moonshine's photo session I prepared a few other things for her party.

Made some glorious strawberry jam to spread with cream between two sponges for her cake. Still trying to work out the logistics of cake for 32 people.

Planted some basil for the Pesto Pasta Salad. Probably left it a little late but we'll see.

And here's us having morning tea (chocolate muffin and almond croissant from our local cafe and grapes, rockmelon, mango and plum) at the park after our photo shoot.

3 words

Happy New Year

What do you do with your left over cranberry sauce. Ours usually sits in the fridge for 6 months before being thrown out. I often wonder if I should just throw it out once we finish the leftover turkey. This year I stumbled across this recipe at Coconut and Lime. It looks pretty innocent doesn't it.
But inside this sweet chewy cake is a ribbon of cranberry sauce. The tart sauce contrast beautifully with the cake.
I must say it's not a cake I'd go and buy a jar of cranberry sauce for but it is really very good. It is particularly good straight from the oven.

We're currently eating our way through our Christmas Ham. Here are some of the meals we've had or will be having:

• ham and egg pie
• ham and potato frittata
• ham and zucchini cake
• vegetable fritters
• ham, mushroom and spinach carbonara
• stuffed mushrooms
• and the old classic - ham, eggs and chips (We've had this twice in the past week!)

I've also been busy revising our household budget that was written for 2007. I discovered that our cost of living has increased by 21% in the past 3 years. Now part of that is going from a family with one breastfed, cloth nappy and hand me down wearing baby to a fully fledged family of four but a lot is just how much more expensive things are. Our combined land and water rates, for example were $1200 in 2006 and nearly $2000 in 2009. Practically everything except water consumption has increased. It makes you really feel for people who are living on government benefits. How do they survive?

On a different note - as I was driving the other day a talk back host was inviting people to share their 3 words that sum up their 2009. People were saying things like "big personal growth" "best year ever" "glad it's over". The first thought that entered my heads were "Brand New Baby" which is probably fitting as it has been life altering for all of us. Russell's 3 words were "Too much Bot". He's a little tired of nappy changing and our streaker 3 year old. Rainbow's would have to be her favourite saying "I need attention" and Moonshine's (limited by her vocab of 4 words) would probably be "mama boo (breastfeed) bubba".

How would you sum up your 2009?

Christmas Baking

We normally have 3 Christmas dinners - all roast turkey! The first was the Tuesday before with Russell's Dad and his wife. The second was Christmas eve at our place. Here's desert - a fruit tart. The best thing about a summer Christmas has to be summer fruit - peaches, nectarines, cherries, grapes...

This tart was delicious - short crust filled with creme patisserie and fresh fruit.This was my second attempt at the pastry and the cause of my pre-Christmas tantrum! I'm not keen on making pastry and usually use frozen stuff. The first batch came together beautifully. On the second attempt I got it in the flan tin. Then blind baked and rebaked. Everything was going perfectly. Until I rushed getting it out of the dish. I was saying goodbye to Rainbow and giving shopping instructions to Russell and I rushed it. I knocked it as I lifted it out and knocked off two pieces of the crust. Even my naturally cold hand couldn't fight against the midday heat for the second attempt and it had to be refrigerated before it could be rolled out.

By 6am Christmas morning the presents brought by Santa were opened. Rainbow had raced around to check that Santa had eaten his snack and the reindeers theirs. Rainbow was bouncing on her trampoline and I was baking Nigella's Christmas Morning Muffins with Craisins. I had a head start sieving all the dry ingredients as I waited for Rainbow to fall asleep so I could do Christmassy things on Christmas Eve. These are now Russell's favourite muffins ever because they were crispy on the outside. I liked them warm with butter. Rainbow wasn't too keen and toothless Moonshine had difficulty with the craisins.

Now you may remember in late November I made the Christmas pudding to take to my parents. Well it's been a strange week. On Christmas eve both my father and Grandfather ended up having surgery so plans changed and we decided we'd have afternoon tea in the holiday for Christmas. So in readiness I decorated the Christmas cake to take.

Then Mum calls on Christmas morning and plans changed again. Both were released but turkey was still frozen. So we had a Christmas bbq and will have the turkey and pudding later this week. I had five egg whites left over from the creme patisserie so I whipped up a pavlova topped with cream and more lovely summer fruit. This is Jamie Oliver's recipe. It is amazing. It has the perfect crunchy outside and soft marshmallow inside. I'm not sure what makes his recipe so good. I think it's the 14 + minutes of beating. Don't be put off by the beating. It is a really easy fool-proof recipe. I wish Russell and Rainbow would eat it as I would make it all the time.

Stir Up Sunday

Christmas Pudding is done!

Since I've taken this on for the last few years I've been using Nigella's recipe.

We all had a stir and a wish.

Rainbow wished for "Fireworks for my Birthday" as did Sophie in "A Princess' Secret Wish".
Thankfully when Grandma asked the next day what she had wished for she couldn't remember.

Fish Cakes

Moonshine enjoys finger food and I enjoy not having to feed her so we're cooking lots of the finger food that we used when Rainbow was little. This one is super easy and makes enough for all three of us for lunch. It can be eaten warm or cold and tastes good too.

Mash together:

1 medium potato (cooked and mashed - I cook extra the night before)

1 T butter

100g tin of tuna (in springwater or a flavoured tuna - such as lemon and back pepper)

1T lemon juice

1 spring onion sliced

Roll in beaten egg and breadcrumbs.

Pan fry in a little oil or oven bake on baking paper.

I like it served with lemon, salad and bread.

Stomp Stomp

We went to 3 parties this weekend (a first, a second and a third). Each party ending with an enormous party bag. When I was little the party bag contained a handful of lollies. These days they contain drinks, chips, bags of biscuits, mini chocolate bars, games, toys, stickers and the lollies. Last year I use to take out all the toffee style lollies and lolly pops and drip feed the rest to her over several days but this year I've decided the best approach is to let Rainbow gorge and devour the whole bag. I think this is better for the teeth then periodically bathing them in sugar and also it reduces a little the idea of junk food as 'special'.

We often do this with meals too. If there is dessert we put it out with the main. Then Rainbow eats what she wants rather than holding out for dessert. Similarly if we're having something like a casserole (which Rainbow isn't so keen on) we serve hers with some things that she does like (maybe whole grain bread, yoghurt, fruit, cheese...). This means she can eat what she wants, her meal is basically healthy and there's no senses of cooking a special meal for a fussy eater.

This is the philosophy of a woman with a very sweet tooth!

Anyway - 3 parties this weekend. The first was a 2 hours drive (each way) on a fairly straight road so i decided to take one of my hand embroidery projects. I wish I'd packed the other one too as I had finished it in about 1/2 hour (even with passing it back to Rainbow for her admiration every 5 minutes.

To make the shirt I basically scanned and printed one of Rainbow's drawings so that it would fit on the t-shirt. I really love these early drawings. I also printed the writing. I then traced it on to interfacing and ironed it on. I used chain stitch for the elephant, backstitch for the writing at the top and to outline 'stomp' and satin stitch to fill it in. I've always hated how my satin stitch looks but I realised it's because I'm comparing it to machine stitching which looks so much flatter. I found this tutorial which helped.

One thing I discovered sewing in the car is how much easier it is sewing in daylight. You probably can't tell from the photos but some of the letters at the top are blue while others are black.

Rainbow loves her new top "It's so pretty." so I'm pleased.

Did she sleep in?

Baking a Silver Lining

The past two mornings have started at 4.40. Damn you West Aussies for voting no to daylight savings!

Every cloud has a silver lining. It's amazing to have the kids dressed and fed and Moonshine down for a nap before Russell leaves for work. I've also had time for some baking.

Yesterday I baked a Nigella Lawson chocolate cake. I found this one on the Internet. It's not a sinful as most of her cakes almost a bit like a chocolate sponge. It looks really impressive and serves well so would make a great entertaining cake. I just did a half batch (and 1/3 of the fudge icing). Nigella had another layer on top so hers must stand 8 or 9 cm tall. She suggests it serves 10. They must be massive slices.

I also made Moonshine some baby pancakes. She loves them. They're very healthy with no processed sugar and very little fat and don't contain egg white or milk. They're very sweet with the banana and fruit juice. Moonshine's also had sultanas as I used muesli rather than oats.
I found them a bit sticky to cook as a pancake so cooked them for about 15 mins in the oven on baking paper (like cookies) and turned them half way through.
That got me thinking anything pureed could be turned into baby biscuits. So this morning I was making porridge with apricots and banana. (1/3c oats, 1 chopped banana, 4 dried apricots, 1 1/2 c water. Cook for about 10min. Mash or puree) So I dolloped some on the baking paper and there we go. The resulting cookie was a little flat so I rolled it up 'baby cigar'. (Perhaps not the best title!) Perfect finger food.

Tomorrow I'm planning on baking chocolate chip cookies for a friend and her two (almost three - 2 weeks to go!) boys. A year or so back I went on a hunt to find the best chewy choc chip cookie and this is the best! The problem is if you count on a child's sleep they'll do the opposite so we'll see.

Nothing crafty to show this week - my beloved machine is away being serviced. I have two hand sewing projects that are oh so close to being finished but I'm too tired to do it. It took me so long to get Moonshine to sleep this afternoon that Rainbow fell asleep on the couch waiting for her story. I then tried having a sleep but Moonshine woke after an hour. (See what I mean -you can't plan around children - she normally sleeps 2 hours in the afternoon!)

Moonshine's latest trick is that she can get from lying on her back to a sitting position (via rolling over and hands and knees). She gave me a real fright last night when I went to her. I could hear her crying but couldn't see her in the cot. Eventually I found her sitting in the corner. She then proceeded to pull herself up to her knees using the side of the cot so we'll be lowering the mattress this weekend. I'm excited for her that she's learning all these new skills. It's going to be life changing for Rainbow and I.

Sultana and Cornflake Cookies

These cookies are really good. They have that crispy, chewy nature of choc-chip cookies which I guess is the lovely combination of sugar and butter. Not exactly the 'healthy' baked goods I had planned when I searched for cornflake and sultana cookies but absolutely delicious.
www.taste.com.au/.../sultana+cornflake+cookies
Go on try them

Three posts in one day. I must have too much time on my hand. Thought I'd share Rainbow Girl's afternoon tea.

The one on the left is a tiger. The first two sultanas are eyes. The next two are sharp teeth sticking out of it's dried apple mouth.

The second animal is obviously an elephant complete with prune feet.

I love her flexibility. Dried Apricot could be stripes or a trunk. I also love that I suggested she make faces and she made it her own by making animals.