Cake Pops

I want to be good at making Cake Pops but I just can't do it! I have made an effort for Halloween as the idea of making eyeballs on sticks is a great one.......

But, when I see other people making them, they look so much more delicious and simple. So, rather than write a post suggesting recipes and decorating ideas I will leave that to the experts and hand you over to those far more qualified. You can see them in all their delicious glory and be guided on how to make them. 

The Pink Whisk

Chocolate Apples

Quicker than toffee apples and less likely to break your teeth! Great for Halloween, either plain, with smarties or some cake sprinkles. If you leave them plain just add some sweets or plastic halloweeny thing to the tray.   

Noodle Soup

The children always like this and it's quick to make, perfect for a fast weekend lunch (or any other for that matter). I used the pre-prepared 'stir fry' veg but you can make up your own. A combination of Spring Onions, Pak Choi, Beansprouts, Sugar Snap Peas, Mushrooms, Carrots, Cabbage etc.

Halloween Unlucky Dip

This post is going to be short and sweet and has one simple idea for a Halloween game. Every year, we have a party but for various reason this year we are sadly not. However, I thought I would share what is always the game the children love most.........lots of buckets full of different gooey and sticky food filled with eyeballs, rats and spiders and deep at the bottom you will find small packets of sweets! This activity always gets a very large, over excited queue of small children. Of course they really want the sweets, but they also seem to spend the rest of the party talking about how disgusting it was (in a good way).
 
For each of the following, place some sweets (in packets) in the bottom of a bucket, mix the ingredients for each concoction and tip in the bucket. Stick in a few plastic insects and rats, form an unorderly queue and get stuck in.....

Blood and Guts
Cooked Spaghetti
Tomato Pasta Sauce (the cheapest you can find)
Vegetable Oil
Raw Eggs (delicately cracked on to the top of the guts)

Congealed Blood
Lots of Jelly 
You could also add some Raw Eggs or over cooked Rice to this to make it more interesting

Zombie Brains
Lots of over cooked Cauliflour
Cottage Cheese or more Raw Eggs
  
Happy Halloween x

Celeriac Soup

My first 'meat free' Monday meal is actually being posted on Monday! AND, if you are really lucky you may even see another one later..........

I tend to be a bit lazy when it comes to soup and I usually buy them. Like so many things I seem to do, I'm not actually sure why? They are usually easy to make and a great way of using up a particular vegetable you seem to have way too much of at the end of the week.

Celeriac is currently in season so I thought I would give it a go. This soup is creamy, but not too creamy (I'm sure I could find a more creative way to describe that) and adding the Lemon at te end gives it a much sharper and fresh flavour.

Ingredients
1 Celeriac, peeled and roughly chopped
1 Onion, chopped
100g Potatoes, peeled and diced
50g Unsalted Butter
2 Garlic Cloves, sliced
750ml Vegetable Stock (as usual, a stock cube is fine)
100ml Cream
Fresh Thyme, about 6 sprigs, leaves picked 
2 tbsp Lemon Juice
Salt and Pepper

Method
Heat the Butter in a large pan and add the celeriac, garlic, potatoes and onion, gently cooking for about 10 minutes until the vegetables are starting to soften. 

Add the stock, thyme and seasoning and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20-25 minutes until the celeriac is tender.

Puree in a blender or use a stick blender (if you don't have one of these you really should).

Stir in the lemon and cream before serving.   

Enjoy x
 

Beef Stew

It's not winter without a stew..........

The cooking time is a couple of hours, but the preparation is really quick. You could vary the veg you use and also use fresh meat or left over beef from your Sunday roast.  

This will serve 4-5 people

Red Pesto

This has to be one of the quickest pasta dishes, using homemade sun dried tomato pesto. If you want to make it in to a more creamy sauce, add a couple of tablespoons of creme fraiche to the pasta with the pesto. 

You could also add other ingredients to the pasta, liked chorizo (that's been fried for a few minutes) or cooked peas. Enjoy x 

Ingredients
400g Spaghetti
140g Sun Dried Tomatoes (this is the drained weight)
1 Garlic Clove
2 tbsp Pinenuts (toasted)
1/4 tsp Dried Chilli Flakes (you can add a little more if you prefer)
5 tbsp Virgin Olive Oil
Salt and Black Pepper
4 Basil Leaves
2 tsp Balsamic Vinegar
Optional: 2 tbsp Parmesan, finely grated (I often leave this out. The children like to sprinkle it over the pasta when I serve it and you can have too much of a good thing!)

Captain Underpants!

I am very fortunate that Eliza and Jude both love to read and can read well, but I did find that getting Jude excited about the possibility of reading a book and then having the attention span to actually read it didn't come so easily. We tried various books about dragons, knights, fighting (I know its all very stereotypical), joke books, comics etc but the books that came to the rescue were the wonderful 'Captain Underpants' by Dav Pilkey. As Jude's friend Ned put it, "they are easy to read as they make me laugh".

The Busy Mum's Cookbook

Yesterday my wonderful friend Mrs B bought me a cookbook. This one she has been telling me about and raving about for ages and if I'm honest, the main reason I haven't brought it, is that I wish I had written it myself!

Tomato Dahl

A few weeks ago I recommended the Cooks and Kids recipe book, as I had given it to Eliza to help her learn some new cooking techniques! At the weekend we tried this recipe and it was delicious. We had it with a Prawn and Mango Curry (recipe to follow), but you could have it as a main meal. I'm hoping to add some more veggie recipes to the blog and I think this one is a good start. The recipe in the book has a few extra spices, but I toned it down slightly.

 

White Chocolate and Cherry Cookies

These are an alternative to Nigella's White Choc and Cranberry Cookies from 'Nigella's Christmas' (Rufus prefers Cherries). Lovely eaten when still warm.

Ingredients125g Unsalted Butter, softened
100g Caster Sugar
75g Light Brown Sugar 
150g Plain Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 Egg
75g Dried Cherries
100g White Chocolate, chopped in to small chunks

 

Fish Pie

Unlike many fish pie recipes, this one doesn't require the effort of making a traditional roux, which means it is a bit quicker to make and the sauce is a bit lighter. There is no need to pre-cook the fish, again saving you time. If you want to increase the veg, you could also add in a small handful of peas with the fish.

It will feed 5 people.

2 Bean (no beef) Chilli

Yet again, I am posting my 'meat free Monday' meal on Tuesday (sorry!). I was too busy cooking it on Monday so writing about it just had to wait. This is a pretty spicy, bean chilli that you can vary according to taste. Add or reduce the cayenne pepper and chilli's depending on how hot you like it. You can also replace the kidney and cannellini beans for others that you might have in the cupboard (like borlotti or pinto). If you want to take an even faster option to adding the dried herbs and spices, I occasionally use tinned kidney beans that come in chilli sauce. They create a sweeter flavour but are really handy when you are in a rush.

Moroccan Chicken

There are lots and lots of recipes for
this dish but this one is really
simple (which of course, I like).
It is lovely served with Cous Cous or Rice.
You can also swap the chicken
for lamb (neck fillet) if you prefer. 

Butternut Squash Risotto

I don't often cook Risotto (no particular reason why), but I have been trying to add some more vegetarian recipes to the blog and this one seemed ideal.  

I have had a few knife accidents trying to prepare Butternut Squash, so I often buy the ready prepared packs!

Prawn and Mango Curry

Prawn and Mango Curry

The whole family had this one at the weekend. We planned to order in but I found myself in the kitchen on Saturday afternoon, feeling the need to cook. Eliza helped with her 'Cooks & Kids' book (Tomato Dahl) and I made this Prawn Curry.

Baked Apples or an Exploded Brain?

Yes I still have apples in the garden, so this is not the last apple based recipe you will see...... it's the tree that just keeps on giving, so I am taking action and trying recipes that use more apples. Many of the recipes I have are only allowing me to use a couple of apples at a time (and that's just not enough) so this one seemed perfect. Apple is the only ingredient (almost).

Serve them still warm but not straight from the oven (bubbling hot fruit and children are never a good mix), with a lovely big scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

Smarties Cookies

These are quick to make, you don't need to get the food mixer out and can (if you want to...) easily make them with children.

Ingredients
100g Butter, softened
100g Light Muscavado Sugar
1 tbsp Golden Syrup
150g Self Raising Flour
About 80g of Smarties (just short of 2 small packets). If you have a few left over you can push them in to each cookie before they go in the oven.

Friday night dinner

Pasta with Chorizo, Anchovies and Olives

I made this last Friday, to feed the children and three of their friends. It is great for adults too and the Chorizo gives it a rich smoky flavour. Add some Smoked Paprika if you want to spice it up. You could also add some red wine (about 1/4 glass) with the tomatoes.

I don't often make puddings, but everyone loves this Lemon Sponge and it takes 5 minutes to make.

This fed 6 children

Salmon en croute (Midweek)

This can be made mid week as it's easy to put together, but if you want to take more time and care over it and make individual portions, I'd keep it for the weekends.

I don't normally go for cutting up food in to faces or interesting shapes to make it more appealing to little ones, but the fish on the top of these ones was more necessity than design, as it helped the pastry come together on the top. Although, now I look at it, it's not a very good fish!

Serves 4

Marinated Chicken Drumsticks

This one is really easy to prepare and should really be left to marinate overnight. 
If you haven't planned that far in advance, you can marinate the chicken an hour or so before cooking and it's still incredibly tasty. Or, you could just do what I did last night. Totally forgot to do it the night before or even an hour before, so made up the marinade, smothered it over the chicken and put it straight in to the oven. It still tasted delicious!

Date and Apple Squares

I find these a bit crumbly so tend to keep them as an after school snack, rather than let them rattle about in their lunch box all day. However, I also found that I could not stop eating them, so you may want to put them in lunch boxes just to get them out of the house!

Nigella's Meatzza

After watching Nigella cook Meatzza on her show last week, I felt compelled to try it out.

As someone who grew up with mince on the menu at least twice a week (including very pale looking sliced marrow, accompanied by bolognese), I'm intrigued to find yet another variation of a family meal with mince as it's main ingredient.

  

For those of you that haven't heard of, or seen Nigella making her Meatzza, it looks like a pizza, but its base is made out of meatball mixture. Meatzza, Pizza....get it?

We were off to a good start, as the children found the whole meatzza, pizza connection very amusing. It was also pretty quick to make and easy for them to help with, but best of all.....they loved it.

Nigella's Meatzza will definitely be on the menu again.