Colourful Chicken Risotto

I have said previously said that my girls are fussy eaters. Technically Elizabeth is the fussy one and Rebecca copies. However, Rebecca is usually more willing to try new things, especially when Elizabeth is not around. So my new cooking challenge is to introduce new food to Rebecca at lunchtimes during the week when Elizabeth is at school.

Today I tried Colourful Chicken Risotto from The Baby-Led Weaning Cookbook by Gill Rapley & Tracey Murkett.

I have never tried risotto, it's not a dish that appeals to me, but as Rebecca is such a great fan of rice I thought I would give it a go. How hard could it be... (nicknamed the "Death Dish" on Australian Masterchef)?

The recipe is as follows:

1tbsp olive oil
25-50g butter
1 small onion chopped or sliced
200-300g chicken diced (I used one chicken breast)
750ml chicken stock
1 small red pepper sliced
1 small courgette sliced
1 handful of sweetcorn tinned or frozen
250g risotto rice
2tbsp Parmesan cheese grated
Pepper for seasoning

Method:
Heat the oil and butter in a large pan. When the butter is melted, add the onion and fry until soft. Add the chicken, fry until it is sealed.
Put the stock on in separate pan (a small one will do).
Add the peppers & courgettes to the chicken, fry for about 3-4 minutes until they are beginning to soften. Add the sweetcorn. Add the rice, mix it in until it is all coated with the butter/oil mixture.
Add the stock one ladleful at a time. Mix until the liquid is absorbed. Then add the next ladleful and mix until it is absorbed into the rice. Repeat this until the rice is plump but still has a bite and the overall consistency in the pan is creamy (this took me about 30 minutes).
Take the pan off the heat, stir in the Parmesan cheese and black pepper.

The overall result was ok. I'm fairly sure I cooked it correctly. It was creamy and silky, but not really to my taste or Rebecca's. I did enjoy the veg and chicken though but I think I'll stick to long grain and basmati rice.

I give this meal 4/10.

Birthday Cakes

Cakes, Cakes, Cakes

I've been challenging myself to be creative when it comes to birthday cakes.
I've made some progress as you can see.

Elizabeth's 2nd birthday January 2012

Vanilla Layer Cake from Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery

Elizabeth's 3rd Birthday Cake, January 2013

Chocolate Layer Cake from the Primrose Bakery

My birthday, May 2013

same as above

Rebecca's 2nd Birthday, November 2013

This is Lorraine Pascale's "I can't believe you made that cake" from Baking Made Easy. It's a great cake, really yummy and looks fab. Elizabeth insisted I make it for her next birthday too. I now constantly see variations of it on the internet.

What I learned from Elizabeth's cake Jan 13, was to leave the smarties until serving. If you put them on the cake too far in advance the shells lose their crispiness.

My birthday, May 2014

Red Velvet Cake from Lorraine Pascale's Baking Made Easy. I think I made the medium cake. I did NOT use enough red colouring, so it was really just a chocolate cake.

This was my first attempt at using Fondant Icing. I got the ready to roll stuff! I didn't make the flowers.

Jeff's Birthday, October 2014

And, of course there's the Candy Cake I made for Jeff's birthday last month. It's funny because since then it seems that "surprise cakes" are the in-thing! I got my idea from a conversation with Elizabeth about pinatas, and thought it would be cool to combine the cake with Jeff's love of sweets.

Rebecca's 3rd Birthday, November 2014

Finally, last week's Mystery Machine Cake that I made for Rebecca's birthday.

I think I've made some progress!

Scooby Doo Mystery Machine

Scooby Doo Mystery Machine Cake

This year the girls have both really been into Scooby Doo. So when thinking about Rebecca's birthday cake, I came up with the idea of making a Mystery Machine cake. It seemed like the easiest Scooby Doo design to make.

I had pictures of the van which I drew and used to cut out templates for the decorations on the side of the cake.

I used two loaf tins to bake the cake, using the same sponge recipe as I used for the Candy Cake.

While that was baking and cooling, I started cutting out the designs for the sides of the cake using my templates and ready rolled and coloured fondant icing.

I sandwiched the cakes together with buttercream and covered all the cake with buttercream. Again I used the recipe used to make the Candy Cake.

I then covered the cake with a blue fondant icing, and used water and a pastry brush to add on all of the decorations.

It wasn't as neat as I would have liked, but I was pleased with the final results. More importantly, Rebecca loved it!

A couple of points that I had issues with.

* I don't know how to smooth down the sides of fondant icing. When you put it over the cake, there are always flaps and they end up making the cake look messy. I will research this more next time.

* Next time I will make the designs to stick onto the cake after the cake had it's main layer of fondant icing on it and add them as soon as they are ready. Because I made them in advance they were hard and some of them broke when I picked them up.

Krakow with Children

My children are fussy eaters. That's why most of my updates are sweet treats. It's hard to spend time creating something delicious for them to eat when you know at the end of it you're probably going to have to make beans on toast because they haven't touched it!

Anyway, we visited Krakow in Poland at the end of October, and it was a challenge to find somewhere to eat that wasn't McDonalds. In my opinion, the best place we ate was at a little Milk Bar. These are the Polish versions of a cafeteria, but they were just like nice cafes open late. We ordered omelette, scrambled egg, paninis, chips, toast and rice. So there was a nice selection of food to eat and the girls were happy with it. The history of the Milk Bars is fascinating. They were originally set up after the war by the Communists to encourage workers to drink milk instead of moonshine, especially given the large surplus of dairy products in Poland at the time. When times were really hard, the cutlery was often chained to the tables so people wouldn't make off with them!

I think if the girls are still fussy the next time we visit Poland, we will have to try more of these Milk Bars!

Recommendations for some things to do with children in Krakow:

The Castle in Niepolomice. We stayed in the hotel in this castle for the first half of our trip. It was exciting for the girls that we stayed in a real castle. They enjoyed the visit around the museum, especially the stuffed scary animals. The restaurant here was lovely. We had high quality food for very little money, compared to what it would have cost in the UK. And they had kids meals, so the girls had chicken nuggets and chips for tea. Whereas we had things like chicken wrapped in parma ham with mustard puree and steak with potato puree and beetroot cooked in red wine. For pudding, the pistachio creme brulee with chocolate sauce. Unfortunately the girl's ice cream had too much cream, too much strange fruit (we struggled to identify all the fruit) and not enough ice cream for them. It looked amazing though, but it was not a children's dessert.

The Wawel Dragon. We walked up Wawel Hill and saw the stunning Castle and Cathedral. The views from the top of the hill were spectacular. After taking some photos, when we walked down the spiral staircase into the dragons cave. We came out of the cave to where this statue of the famous Dragon stands and breathes fire!

Krakow Old Town. One evening we walked past a little girl who said to her mum "Why do we just come here every day!" Elizabeth said to us "I don't know why she doesn't like it, we get food and toys every time we come here!" One of the highlights, and another Foodie link, in the Old Town for the girls was the sweetie shop, where they made sweeties in front of you! Cukier Artist

Under the town square is the Rynek Underground Museum which is child friendly. It very hi-tech with holograms and touch screens. It documents the history of the town.

The town came alive in the evenings with street performers, horse and cart rides and cafes with outside seating areas. It was very European. 

I would like to go back to Krakow when it's a bit warmer to appreciate being outside. And when the girls are a little bit older and don't need to be carried on our shoulders when their "legs are tired".

Quick and Easy Cupcakes

A quick and easy cupcake recipe. It's the sort of thing I always have the ingredients for if the girls want to do baking. This one was passed on to me, but I believe that it is Nigella's recipe:

Cake ingredients

• 125g unsalted butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 125g SR flour
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2-3 tbsp milk

Method

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees (fan).
• Blitz all the ingredients until smooth, except the milk, with electric mixer or in a food processor.
• Add milk slowly until the mixture is a soft droopy consistency.
• Spoon into cupcake cases until they are a third full.
• Cook till risen, golden, bouncy and if you put a skewer in it comes out clean. (about 15 minutes)

Butter cream icing

• 150g icing sugar
• 75g creamed butter
• A little vanilla extract
• A little milk if it's too firm

Method

• Blitz all ingredients together with your food mixer until it's smooth.
• Add colouring if you like.
• Spread over your cakes.
• Add toppings etc.

Fudge Slices - Traybake

When I was about 17 my after school job was looking after two early teenage girls. I would go to their house everyday after school until either their mum or step dad got home.

My little sister, Janis would also come to their house so that I could look after her too when my mum was working.

On Wednesdays we had half days at school, finishing before lunch. I got into the habit of buying Janis and I some lunch from a deli that was up the road from my school. We would have a roll each and a fudge slice. Their fudge slices were lovely. I don't think I had ever had them before and I don't really remember seeing them since until I was working in a school in Aberdeenshire.

At Mintlaw Academy, Aberdeenshire, the Business Studies classes would have to come up with an Enterprise Initiative every year. One year they came up with the idea of creating and publishing a recipe book. They invited all the members of staff to contribute a favourite recipe or two. I was very much into savoury cooking then, and  I added a Chinese recipe that I loved.

What was great about the book was that the recipes were tried and tested by home cooks. A lot of the recipes were family favourites, probably passed down from previous generations. Included amongst them was a recipe for fudge slices.

It had probably been 15 years since I had a fudge slice from the Deli in Currie, just up the road from the High School. But I thought these ones were a pretty good likeness. Regardless of whether or not they were the same, they were bloody delicious!

I've made this recipe A LOT, my mum now makes it and I've passed it on to Janis and my sister in law. I don't know anyone who doesn't like these. Elizabeth and Rebecca got one in her their lunches this week, and Jeff took some in to his work for his birthday.

I've made my own tweaks to get them just right.

Ingredients

• 4oz soft margarine
• 2tbsp sugar
• 2tbsp golden syrup
• 1 small tin of condensed milk
• 9oz biscuits blitzed in the food processor
• 1 pack of milk chocolate, melted to spread on top

Method

• Melt the marg, sugar, golden syrup and condensed milk in a pan over a low heat.
• Bring it to a gentle boil.
• Let it boil for at least 5 minutes, until the colour has darkened to a caramel colour.
• Take it off the heat and beat it with the electric beaters until it has thickened - when it's coming away from the sides of the pan. This will probably take about 5 minutes.
• Add in the biscuits and mix well. The mixture should all come together like a dough.
• Press and spread the mixture into a baking tray. I use a 30cm/20cm deep tray. I also line it in advance with clingfilm so that the edges are nice and smooth and it's easy to lift out of the tray to chop up when it's set.
• Spread the melted chocolate evenly over the top.
• Put it in the fridge to set.
• Cut it into squares or rectangles, whatever takes your fancy. Small might be best because they are very morish!

Candy Cake

I started thinking about having a Pinata type cake for Jeff's birthday after a conversation with Elizabeth about what Pinatas were. When I looked on the internet at other cakes like this, most seemed to cook the cakes in normal cake tins and hollow out the middle. I thought they often looked a bit messy once you cut into them.

On a recent shopping trip Jeff pointed out a cake tin where bakes the cake with a hollowed out shape of a heart in the middle to fill with mouse or ice cream or a different cake. He had seen it being used on Nerdy Nummies. I thought this would do the trick. So I ordered this one from amazon.

I also googled some images of cakes to get ideas for decorating the outside of the cake. I liked the idea of having sweeties on the outside but I didn't want it to be over the top, or too like the "I can't believe you made that cake".

And this is what I ended up with:

I had to redo my cake because there was not enough cake mixture to rise above the shape of the heart inside. And second time round I ran out of eggs, so I have a mixture of large and medium eggs. But the cake was really fluffy and moist that I might do the same next time!

Cake Ingredients:

• 375g soft unsalted butter
• 375g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs, 3 medium eggs, one egg yolk (6 large eggs will probably do)
• 375g SR flour
• 2 tsp of baking powder
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 tbsp milk

Method:

• Preheat oven to 160 degrees
• Grease the two baking trays
• Mix all the ingredients except the milk together in the food mixer. I mixed them for about 5 minutes until the mixture was fluffy and airy. Then I slowly added milk until the mixture was a soft drooping consistency.
• Add the mixture to the tins so that they cover the shape of the heart.
• Cook till it golden and the sponge springs back when touched. About 25-30 minutes.
• Leave them in the tins for a few minutes before popping them out of the tins and placing on a cooling wire.

When they cooled down I added sweets to the bottom layer of the cake. I used Haribo Starmix and some Tesco Jelly Beans. They had to be raised above the level of the cake because of the top half of the heart. I did not add enough. I felt that I could have tried to put a lot more in.

I would have liked there to have been more of a spilling out effect when the cake was cut. There probably would have been had there just been the jelly beans inside. Or if I had gone with smarties or skittles or something.

When served it didn't look very elegant because of the hole. But the taste made up for that.

Then I glazed the cake with some runny apricot jam, because I know that can be good for keeping the cake from crumbling when you add the icing.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing Ingredients (from Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery)

• 110g soft butter
• 60ml semi-skimmed milk
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 500g icing sugar

Method

• Mix butter, milk, vanilla extract and half the icing sugar together until the mixture is smooth. Then gradually add in the rest of the icing sugar.

I spread half the buttercream icing onto the cake. Then put it in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Then I spread the other half on.

I pressed skittles around the outside and put lolly pops on the top. Of course the lolly pops sang into the hollow of the heart, so more sweets inside would probably have given them more resistance then they could have stood up a little higher. But overall I was very pleased with the result. So was Jeff. And the girls actually went "wow" when they saw it.