Missing in Action

Hi everyone

I've had a few e-mails lately about my blog, making sure I am ok. I am great - thanks everyone :0) I am just really busy. Work is busy, Harry keeps me busy and just lately blogging is just another thing to do! So, while I may come back to it some day soon, at the moment I am having a wee break to refresh!

Tammy :0)

Quick and Easy Home Made Gifts

Harry had a very busy Sunday a couple of weeks ago as we had been invited to a second birthday party in the morning and a first birthday in the afternoon. In my pre Harry days I would have spent ages decorating little biscuits for my friends children, but with time being a bit more precious, these easy but still cute shortbread cookies were the quick version of decorated cookies.

A set of number shaped cutters are a great thing to have on hand to make quick and easy birthday gifts. These cookies were obviously for the two year old’s present. I simply made the shortbread in the number 2 shapes, whipped up a batch of royal icing (I whisk an egg white until frothy and then whisk in the desired amount of icing sugar – this kind of icing is less runny than glace icing and also sets to a nice thick consistency) and sprinkled over “boy” coloured sprinkles. The one year old party was for a girl and I made Number 1 shaped cookies and sprinkled them with pink sprinkles. In the past I have also made these for adult presents (a bag of 5s and 0s for a 50 year old, 3s and 0s for a thirty year old etc. Even just decorating the cookies with coloured icing gives some impact.

FFwD - Hachis Parmentier

This week’s FFwD recipe is Hachis Parmentier. If there was no photo of the recipe in the book, I would have gathered from the name of the recipe that it is some kind of hash, and that is one way of describing this recipe. Dorie describes it as a French version of Shepherds Pie. The full recipe, which my sister made, takes a long time as it involves making your own beef broth and cooking basically a casserole before topping it with a cheesy potato mash. I made the quick version which is made with mince, and I am glad I did as my sister said she felt like she did a lot for what is essentially a fancy shepherds pie. I am sure Hayley’s hachis had a much greater depth of flavour than mine. I actually added more tomato paste to my meat mixture to give it a bit more depth. I am not a lover of shepherds pie or mashed potato, but I did think that the grated cheese through the potato and scattered over the top was a nice touch. See what the other FFwDers thought here.

Cupcakes, At Last!

Last week book club was at my house, so for the first time in a long time, I made cupcakes. For my birthday at the start of the year, one of my good friends gave me the hummingbird bakery cook book. It is a lovely book full of delicious cakes, cupcakes, muffins etc but I had only ever made cookies from it. I had a look through it and found this recipe for peaches and cream cupcakes. They sounded delicious and also easy as they used a drained tin of peaches rather than fresh peaches.

The other thing I liked about the recipe is that it only had one egg and only 40g of butter. So many cupcake recipes have huge quantities of butter and numerous eggs, so not only was the recipe easy, it was also economical and fairly low in fat. Instead of making a buttercream icing, I topped the cakes with swirls of whipped cream. I love using whipped cream to top cupcakes, as I love cream far more than icing and it negates the need to serve some cream alongside the cakes. I made the cakes in pretty blue cupcake cases and topped them with little silver balls and blue flowers which I made a while ago. I think they looked really elegant and my book club friends enjoyed them too.




Peaches and Cream Cupcakes (from the Hummingbird Bakery cook book)

120g flour
140g sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
40g softened butter
120ml milk
1 egg
400g tin peaches, drained

• Combine flour, sugar and baking powder, then mixing in the softened butter using a cake mixer
• Combine the egg and milk and then gradually add to the dry ingredients. Mix to combine
• Place two slices of peach in each of 12 cupcake cases. Divide the cake mixture between the cases and bake at 170c for 20-25 minutes

TWD - Caramel Pumpkin Pie

Short but sweet post today. TWD recipe is Caramel Pumpkin Pie and was chosen by Janelle of Mortensen Family Memoirs. Pumpkin Pie is not big in NZ and I think this is only the second time I have made it. I thought this pie was ok. I didn’t really love the highly caramelised flavour of the pie. I prefer my caramel to be on the sweeter, creamier side rather than the highly sugared almost burnt caramel flavour. I halved the recipe and made two mini pies, and cooked the rest of the pie filling in a small ramekin for my gluten free mum who was up staying over the weekend. Mum hadn’t tried pumpkin pie before and loved it. See if the other TWDers enjoyed it here.

FFwD - Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup

This week’s FFwD recipe is Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup. Goodness, this was a hard recipe to photograph nicely! The soup almost has Thai flavours without the curry paste. It’s a coconut milk based recipe with fish sauce to season, chicken gently poached in the soup and noodles. There were also a myriad of things you cold flavour the soup with - I was a bit boring and just used lime juice.

The soup was nice – probably nicer the next day once all the flavours had had a good chance to meld together. I think if I made it again I would make the curry paste version just to give it a bit more depth of flavour. Check out the other FFwDers’ versions here.

Improvising for Harry

When I am cooking dinner for my husband and I like to think of ways I can make a version of what we are having for Harry. Last week I made us a basmati rice, eggplant and lamb mince dish which had Moroccan flavours. It was obviously too spicy for Harry and also I don’t salt his food, and I found this dish needed a reasonable amount of salt to bring out the flavour. So after browning the mince with a little garlic, I put some in a different pot for Harry and added some rice and frozen peas. I cooked this mixture until the rice was cooked through.

Now by itself, this was pretty bland as you can imagine. I thought of adding tomatoes, but Harry has quite sensitive cheeks and I don’t want to give him anything too acidic until he is a little older. So, instead, I grated some cheese and stirred this through the mince mixture. I also added a cube of mashed pumpkin from the freezer. This mince and rice dish actually turned into a very tasty little dish. Harry loved it – it was a bit like risotto. And no, I didn’t let him eat it with his hands as the photo suggests –once again, trying to capture a little of Harry, he was too quick for me and had his hand in the bowl before I knew where I was. But I always have a wet cloth at the ready for times like those. My mum always says when we were kids she walked round with a hairbrush in one hand and a face cloth in the other – I think I will be the same!