We have had the most awesome family week in the lead up to the new year. We had a loose plan of the activity we would be doing each day and were blessed with perfect weather for every one of them. Last Wednesday, we took a drive up to Silvan’s U-Pick Berry Farm in the morning. It was cool and quiet when we caught the bus from the carpark to the orchard. Armed with a bucket each and a plastic container for the more delicate berries, we set off to the boysenberry patch. Avoiding the thorns, we picked carefully and ate recklessly – boysenberry-stained lips and tongues and fingers. Eventually, we moved onto the blueberries then the raspberries and finally the cherries. By the time we returned, 2 hours later, the carpark was full to the brim and there were queues of locals and tourists waiting patiently for the buses.

Back home now, I marinate 5 cups of boysenberries with 1/2 cup sugar, a squeeze of lemon, a pinch of nutmeg and 3 tbs pre-soaked sago for 1 hour. This mixture is scooped into a pie tin lined with shortcrust pastry then topped with a pastry lattice before being brushed with beaten egg. Bake at 200C for 30 minutes, then another 30 minutes with foil over the top to stop the pastry lattice from burning. Cool before eating so that the filling does not ooze out. We served it with ice cream as it was quite tart (more sugar next time).

Bananas are finally getting to be affordable again – an important and essential pantry item for those with little people in the house. It’s easy to grab at the last moment before you head out of the house and it prevents those ‘I’m so hungry and can’t wait another moment‘ tantrums (which happens quite a lot with my boys – the ‘I’m so hungry moment‘, I mean, not the tantrums). So, we get a bunch of bananas each week and prices range from 99c to $1.98/kg at the moment – pretty affordable in comparison to $20/kg or whatever it got up to. However, summer conditions also means that our bananas are ripening pretty quickly, sometimes faster than we can eat them. But, just in the nick of time, I’ve found the perfect solution for slightly over-ripe bananas that suits the heat and humidity we have been experiencing. No, not banana bread – that needs an oven and a whole lot of other ingredients. I’m talking about a frozen banana ice cream. A really quick and easy treat that I whip up with the help of my almost 4yo, then I send them both outside to enjoy every lick.

Here’s what you need to do: slice a banana and place onto a plate (trust me on this step as it’s a lot trickier to peel a frozen banana). Freeze for about an hour or two until solid then place the slices into a blender. Pulse until it comes together as a creamy mixture. You can experiment with adding other fruits (as we did with mulberries here), honey, a squeeze of lemon, peanut butter or spices like nutmeg and cinnamon. Ultra-delish and awesome treat for those who are dairy-intolerant.

What made it so good? Was it the buttermilk, the caramelised bananas, the addition of dark chocolate pieces? Whatever, it worked and it worked so well that I made two batches in one day. It worked so well that my son who was ‘helping’ me to hold onto his cousin’s container of muffins sneaked pieces of it while we were driving over until there were just crumbs left. All I gotta say is you HAVE to try this recipe. I know that everyone has their own best banana bread, or muffin, or cake, but really truly -this is it.

Buttermilk Banana Bread

2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 or 3 mashed bananas
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 tbs rice bran oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 and 3/4 cup SR flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
cinnamon & nutneg
80g butter
1/4 treacle or agave syrup
1/4 cup semi-dried bananas
1/4 cup dark chocolate pieces

1. Beat the sugar & butter until thick and pale, then add eggs and continue beating for a few minutes.
2. Add the mashed bananas, buttermilk, oil, treacle/agave syrup, vanilla extract, semi-dried banana and dark chocolate pieces
3. Stir in dry ingredients until just mixed
4. Bake at 175C until done (skewer comes out clean)

2 whole lemons
250g almond meal (you can substitute 50g of this with desiccated coconut)
250g caster sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp baking powder

1. Wash lemons well then cover with cold water in saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 2 hours then drain and allow to cool before processing into a pulp (remove pips first)
2. Cream butter and sugar until thick and pale
3. Fold in almond meal, lemon pulp, baking powder until just mixed
4. Bake at 170C for 1 hour until skewer comes out clean
(For a short cut, you can process the lemons, then add all your other ingredients into the food processer. I found that this worked pretty well too)
5. Decorate with butter cream if you wish

We have baked this recipe many times now, with my son getting to decide what dried fruits to add each time. It’s from a newspaper clipping about Emily Rose, who like me is forever reading labels and putting things back on the shelf because they have too many (bad) ingredients. She’s created recipes that use rice bran oil instead of butter, honey instead of sugar and wholemeal instead of white flour but they don’t taste like ‘health’ foods.

This is our go-to recipe for biscuits right now and probably will be for a long while yet! Also handy for those times when you don’t have any eggs and still want to make biscuits.

In the middle of putting this post together, I decided to try Emily’s chocolate chip biscuit recipe (this one does include an egg) and I can report that it’s a winner too. I will include my adaption of both recipes below for those who have been asking for them.

Orange, Cardamom and Fig Biscuits

1 cup wholemeal self-raising flour
1/3 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/3 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup rice bran oil
1/3 cup honey
1/2 tsp grated orange rind
2 tbs freshly squeezed orange juice
1/3 cup dried figs (you can substitute any dried fruit eg raisins, cranberries)

1. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, coconut, oats and ground cardamom) together
2. Mix the wet ingredients (oil, honey, orange rind, orange juice) together
3. Stir the wet and dry ingredients together and add the figs , then let the mixture sit for 10 minutes.
4. Roll into small 20 or 50c sized balls and place on lined tray
5. Bake at 170C for 15 minutes until golden brown

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 egg
1/2 cup rice bran oil
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup warm water
1/4 cup desiccated coconut
2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour
2/3 cup chopped dark chocolate (70%)
1/3 cup chopped roasted almonds

1. Beat the egg and mix in the oil
2. Dissolve the honey in water and mix with egg/oil
3. Stir dry ingredients (coconut, flour, chocolate, almonds) in
4. Stand mixture for 10 minutes so that it’s less sticky, then roll into balls and place on lined tray
5. Bake 180C for 15 minutes until golden brown

Some days seem to go so slowly when you have a little baby to care for, but now I can hardly even remember what it was like to hold my newborn. He’s crawling after his big brother as fast as he can and almost ready to take his first steps. His first word, spoken this week, was ‘Bella’ – my beautiful Russian Blue cat who has just been adopted by my brother & his girlfriend.

We celebrated with family this weekend and I wanted to make a special cake for him. There was something about a robot cake that seemed appropriate, so I baked two square cakes using the Buttermilk Birthday Cake recipe from Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess and Planet Cake’s Vanilla Cupcake recipe. The buttermilk cake is a cinch to work with when you need to cut shapes out. A couple of rectangular blocks pieced together and I had the beginnings of a robot sitting down. He was propped up against the vanilla cake and I used this for the birthday message. The worst part about decorating children’s cakes is having so many leftover lollies (mine usually end up in the bin otherwise they might end up in my mouth). I wrote the message by piping melted chocolate onto baking paper and allowing it to set before placing the letters individually on the cake. This way any mistakes can easily be corrected.

I’ve been a fan of cake pops since seeing them on Bakerella’s (who has just received a kidney transplant from her mum) site. Watching her tutorial, I thought you needed candy melts to make them so I didn’t bother as I thought these weren’t available in Australia (although I have found them since). For Zac’s birthday, however, I really wanted to try making them. Out of sheer laziness, I searched for a one-pot chocolate cake to bake but ended up with this one. I used G&B’s 70% dark chocolate and wanted to devour the entire cake before it even had a chance to cool down. After crumbling the cake, I mixed in some peanut butter frosting adapted from Smitten Kitchen (which I’ve converted to metric measurements below). After shaping the mixture into even, golf ball sizes, a chopstick dipped in melted chocolate was inserted into each. These were left to harden in the fridge before being dipped entirely in dark chocolate, then drizzled with white chocolate. They looked beautiful in makeshift vases of jars and tasted like a decadent brownie. Not too messy to eat either!

Peanut Butter Frosting (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

1. Beat cream cheese and butter together until light and fluffy
2. Gradually add icing sugar and beat until light and fluffy
3. Beat in peanut butter until thoroughly blended

I was wondering aloud what type of cake to bake for my 3 year old’s birthday party when he suggested a strawberry cake. Not The Wiggles or a dinosaur or a car. No, he really wanted a strawberry cake.

I used the basic vanilla cake recipe from my recently acquired Planet Cake book to bake a round cake and a bundt cake. I scraped the beans from a whole vanilla pod instead of using extract and I think it it elevates the flavour to a whole new level.

After baking, both cakes were halved and sandwiched with warmed marmalade (with all the chunky bits removed) then I stacked the bundt cake on top of the round one to create a dome. The hole in the middle was filled with blueberries and black cherries before lightly whipped cream was applied and smoothed. Decorating the cake was super easy – thinly sliced strawberries spiralling from the base to a top crowned with a single strawberry and bright yellow stars piped around the base and the top. I really love the way the design has come off – stylish and elegant. Maybe too elegant for a 3 year old party?

My son’s favourite bedtime book currently is Annabel Karmel’s ‘Mummy and Me Cookbook‘ so I made the blueberry and lemon cheesecakes (minus the blueberries). Taking inspiration from these, I piped the lion’s mane then added the face with fudge icing.

My boy also loves cheese sandwiches, so I pulled out my round cookie cutters to cut out the mane from bread and the face from sliced cheese. A smear of vegemite to colour the mane then the face drawn in with fudge icing again Easy!

If you are serving popcorn cones at a kids party, be prepared to vacuum up stray kernels from the couch and carpet. Oh, and to pick them up from behind the bed and cupboards for the next week or so.

The lions would have been lonely by themselves so I made some clowns to keep them company. These featured in A’s birthday party a few years back but this time I made marble cupcakes instead of using using Nigella’s Burnt Butter cupcake recipe. I had piped the mouths the night before only to find that the gel icing ran onto the butter icing overnight. So mum cleverly and painstakingly cut little think strip from the edge of canteloupe slices to create new little smiley mouths for them. What a great job!

Happy 3rd Birthday to my little darling…

My son has been requesting that we make this for weeks now. So, out came his apron and chef’s hat, potato masher and rolling pin. Measure, pour, nibble, measure, pour, mix, nibble, mix, stuff a handful of raisins and dried apricots when you think mum’s not looking, oven, drizzle G&B 70% dark chocolate….voila!

Plate from Anthropolgie and recipe from Annabel Karmel.

Seeing as we had not done a potluck since our Neil Perry special, I decided it was time for us to have a Masterchef cook-off, the idea being to cook a recipe from the Masterchef website and bring it along for all to try. As I didn’t bother asking what anyone was making, I was a little concerned that we would end up with four desserts and one entree and we’d have to order in pizza – not that there would have been anything wrong with eating four desserts for lunch. Fairytale ending…

We started with Adam’s Prawn Scotch Eggs with a Coconut, Chilli Sambal. So good.

This was followed by George’s Open Beef Kofta and George & Gary’s Chicken Winglets, Hummus and Raw Vegetable Salad (I took the photo before the winglets were placed!)

To end the meal, we had George’s Braised Tomatoes with Smoked Chocolate Mousse – my effort – and a Fruit & Cheese Platter.