We had some terrible storms a few weeks ago, and some branches and trees came down in our neighbourhood. Lots of baby birds stranded. On my daughters way home from school she found a baby magpie lark otherwise known as a peewee and brought it home. It was very very tiny, and it has been living with us for the past 2 weeks. It squawks constantly and is so funny when we feed it. Which is a mixture of small bits of meat and cat food and biscuits soaked in milk.

Just lately we have been taking it outside to learn to fly – the kids take it on flying lessons. So now while it can fly pretty high, it hasn’t quite realised that we cannot fly up to it to feed it. So it sits up in a high branch squawking for food. The first couple of days it did this it was up for about 4 hours squawking away – eventually – at the guilt ridden insistance of the kids, Rob got the ladder and an extender pole and managed to coax it down, we have had to rescue it from other territorial birds a few times too. But so far have managed to get it back in at night time and down from the trees every couple of hours to feed it. It still cannot feed itself.

I just spent about 4 hours in the kitchen baking for the school week. I am hating buying any sort of processed biscuit, cookie, cracker, bread or cake from the supermarket. If I do buy bread or a sweet treat its from the artisan baker at the farmers market, but it doesn’t usually last past the afternoon I bought it. So what to do for school?

I baked Tessa Kiros’ [FromApples for Jam: A Colorful Cookbook] Chocolate Bread, and her banana bread and her zucchini bread. All pictured above.

My daughter is also really into baking and as we have a new cookbook in the house [Williams-Sonoma Family Meals: Creating Traditions in the Kitchen]- we had to try a new recipe – Otilija made some cinnamon scrolls – they are proving overnight in the fridge and we plan to have them for breakfast!.

Everyone has their

My mother-in-law is Latvian and so we have had the (not as often as we would like) pleasure of making and eating these traditional Latvian Piparkukas. They are a crisp, thin Christmas spiced cookie, they take a bit of time to make and very delicious to eat. This Christmas I had a hankering for some and so asked for the recipe and Otilija and I got to baking. The first batch we made were slightly too thick and not crisp enough – delicious still – but didn’t have that ‘snap’ when taking a bite that is required. So the second batch we made sure to roll them thinner and I think we got them right the second time around. (My authentic taste tester is my husband who can remember his Grandmother’s Piparkukas.)

I also did a little research and found some variations to our recipe – some using orange peel, some add nutmeg, black pepper or mace to the spice mix, you can substitute honey or molasses for the syrup, and also substitute some lard in for the butter - here is one recipe – and here another and this recipe is in Latvian. But the main thing that is the same is freshness of the spices – cardamon spice is a very dominant flavour – also you must roll the dough out very thin. Some recipes recommend using a pasta machine to roll out the dough – and we might try this next time – seems like a very good idea.

My husband remembers these with half an almond pressed into them. They don’t need any added sweetness – the spices are a perfect accompaniment with coffee.

Here is our family recipe

Ingredients:
100g golden syrup : 100g brown sugar : 100g butter : 2 egg yolks : 350g plain flour
Spice mix – 1 teaspoon each of ground: cinnamon, cloves, cardamon, coriander, ginger
+ 1 teaspoon each of bicarbonate of soda, cream of tarter & lemon zest.
Glaze: 1 egg white lightly beaten with a teaspoon of sugar

Method:
Warm the butter and syrup and blend in the spices.

Add the sugar, egg yolks and flour and knead thoroughly (we used the dough hook on our kitchen aid for this step as it is a very stiff dough).

Roll it out while still warm (it stiffens up quite a bit more when cool) – roll very thin and cut out with cookie shapes. You can store the dough up to a week in the fridge, the flavours will intensify, just warm it up a little before rolling it out.

Place onto your trays – they will not spread so you can place them near each other. Brush with your glaze.

Bake in a hot oven (200c) for about 4 mins. They cook very quickly and each oven is different so be sure to watch them carefully.

Its school holidays and the kids have been wondering what to do – with me working at home, they have been doing their own thing. Reading books, playing video games, and getting the craft box out. Their current obsession is Harry Potter – they have seen the movies, listened to the audio books and now are reading them on their own. So naturally their craft projects also are all about Harry and Voldemort.

Otilija (10 yrs) designed and made the puppets and wrote the script and directed the play. Orlando (8 yrs) played along. Rob filmed them – it only took a few takes – some fiddling with the script and then they edited it a little on the mac before uploading it to youtube. They loved the whole process and are now very excited of course to be on the internet – and to make more productions – they can’t wait to share the video with all their classmates when they go back to school.

So without further ado – here is their little production … its very straightforwardly called ‘Voldy gets bashed’

This recipe is so easy that a child could make it – in fact a child did make it! I love that my daughter is now old enough and interested enough to bake on her own. I do still supervise, but mostly I check consistency and textures, keep a gentle eye on how things are going and help out with hot trays and generally just keep things from burning.

The recipe for these shortbread came from a new favourite cook book called Gran’s Kitchen (published by Hardie Grant). It is a collection of recipes from a 95 year old New Zealand Nana – Dulcie May Booker, collected and lovingly tested by her granddaughters. The author, Natalie Oldfield, runs the Dulcie May Kitchen.

We (my daughter and I) were especially enamoured of the chapter on morning tea – with lovely old favourites such as passionfruit sponge cake and anzac biscuits – but with plenty more old fashioned recipes that we are wanting to try out (making your own canned spaghetti really stood out for me) – this book brings back fond memories of cooking in the kitchen with my lovely nanna, but my daughter (10 years old) is also loving this book because of the excellent photos and the simplicity of the ingredients – and the ease with which the recipes are written.

So to test out this book we made ‘Flo’s Shortbread’ (we doubled the recipe and it worked a treat). I love when you cook something and it turns out exactly as it was supposed to – recipe follows:

‘Flo’s Shortbread’
1/2 lb (225g) butter at room temp
1 cup icing sugar (we used caster sugar [finely granulated sugar] as we had run out of icing sugar – and it worked perfectly well)
1 cup flour + 1-1/2 cups cornflour + pinch salt – sifted together

Beat the butter and sugar until it is soft and creamy – about 5 minutes with an electric beater.
See how the butter and sugar mixed together has gone a very pale yellow and looks a lot like whipped cream

Fold in the sifted flours and salt until just combined.

The dough is still very soft

(… and delicious – there were quite a few taste tests at this point)

Roll into a log (its best to do this in glad wrap as the mixture is very soft) and let rest in the fridge for 10 minutes to harden up. Then cut into rounds about 1.5cm / 1/2 inch thick. Place onto baking trays and bake at 330 F or 150 C for 30 minutes.
The relatively long slow cooking time allows these biscuits to become crispy without darkening.

I am not sure how well these freeze – as they usually don’t last long enough to bother. But they do keep well for a week in an airtight container and are a perfect accompaniment to your morning cup of tea – and go really well into lunch boxes too. (I think these would make excellent christmas gifts – boxed up prettily and tied with ribbon.)

Every weekend we head down to the farmers market and stock up on yummy home baked goodies, grass fed meat direct from the farmer and locally grown in season produce. We also love the locally freshly roasted coffee beans, homemade chai concoctions and when we are low on eggs we go to the farmers market to meet the demand. One of our favourite things to buy is fresh bagels, and we usually get them in bulk and freeze them for school lunches. The kids take a frozen bagel from the freezer and it is perfectly thawed and ready to eat for lunchtime. Nothing on it – they are wonderful just as is. However this last weekend we didn’t feel up to traipsing to the market, we were all just a little pooped from a long week and really needed a pyjama laze around the house kind of morning. But what about the bagels my kids exclaimed. So I thought about it and looked up a recipe and decided they couldn’t be that hard to make. And they weren’t! And they were delicious. We had a bagel feast weekend.

First of all you will need bakers flour and yeast, butter and eggs (its a rich and delicious dough). Recipe is below and is from the classic series of books (Time life The Good Cook ‘Breads’) that I learned to cook from as a child.

To make 40 bagels
800g strong plain flour :: 30g fresh yeast :: 1/2 litre milk :: 100g butter :: 60g caster sugar :: 1 tsp salt :: 2 eggs separated :: poppy seeds, sesame seeds and/or rock salt

Boil the milk then turn off the heat and add the sugar and butter. Let the butter melt in the hot milk and let the milk cool down to tepid. Add the yeast and mix in thoroughly and let sit somewhere warm to allow the yeast to activate.

Meanwhile measure out the flour and add the salt into a large bowl. Separate the eggs and leave the yolks aside to brush the bagels with before baking. Once the yeast mixture has begun to bubble, add the egg whites and mix.

Add the liquid mixture into the flour and mix (with your dough hook or with a wooden spoon). Once it has come together it will be a soft and sticky dough.

Knead with your dough hook for 5 minutes or by hand for 15 minutes. It will change from the initial sticky mixture to a glossy stretchy dough. Let rise somewhere warm covered with a tea towel for an hour.

Once risen, punch it down and gather the dough into a ball. Divide the dough in half and then divide each half into 20 even pieces. Roll each piece into a small ball. Then to shape into a bagel shape, poke your finger through the centre of the ball and make into a ring shape. Leave the rings to rise for 10 minutes. Turn your oven on to heat. (200 degrees C or 400 degrees F). Mix the egg yolks and thin with a little milk ready to brush onto the bagels before putting them in the oven.

Using a wide pan, boil some water. And poach the shaped bagel dough rings for about 15 seconds each – do a few at a time. They will puff up a bit more. Remove them with a slotted spoon and drain them before placing them on the baking sheet.

Brush the bagel dough rings with the egg wash and sprinkle with sesame seeds, rock salt or poppy seeds. Bake for 15 mins (200 degrees C or 400 degrees F). And eat warm. They also freeze really well and are perfect for school lunches.

Well are they really healthy – with all that sugar and flour and butter and chocolate? They sure are yummy though and the addition of oats and eggs and the fact they are actually homemade – without chemical additives makes them a health food in our house.

We have never really bought much in the way of biscuits and cakes from the supermarket – but lately we have really been paying attention to all the additives that are in everything – the kids especially are quite addicted to reading labels and then checking the additives with this great iphone additives app. So each week – or more often I like to make a big batch of some sort of cookie or slice that can be easily frozen and popped into school lunch boxes. I like a recipe that is easily adapted – change out the nuts and add oats, incorporate some ground linseeds and hazelnuts for added flavour and healthfulness – that sort of thing.

So when I received this new recipe book The Commonsense Kitchen: 500 Recipes Plus Lessons for a Hand-Crafted Life, to review from Chronicle books I thought I would test it out with some chocolate chip cookies – I always straight away double the recipe as its just as easy to make a double batch and freeze them. The book had done all the math for me – as it gives a double batch option too. Perfect!

Recipe: Ella’s chocolate chip cookies (double batch to make 5 dozen cookies)
2 cups butter : 1.5 cups granulated white sugar : 2 cups soft brown sugar : 4 eggs : 1 tablespoon vanilla : 3 cups walnuts (optional) : 4 cups chocolate chips : 4 cups sifted flour : 5 cups finely ground oats : 1.5 teaspoon salt : 4 teaspoons baking powder

To make:
- Cream butter and sugars until creamy with your electric whisk. Then add your eggs and vanilla until softer and creamier.
- Add the nuts, chocolate and oats – mix some more.
- Then add the flour and baking powder and salt and by this time you might need to use a dough hook or mix with a wooden spoon as the mixture gets stiff.

- Then roll the dough into golf-ball sized balls and place on tray – refrigerate for 10 mins before baking – this helps them hold their shape better in the oven.
- Bake on a med/high oven for 10 mins until golden brown.

These freeze well as cookie dough – roll them into balls before freezing – then just get out a dozen – place on a tray to defrost a couple of hours before you plan to bake them. They also freeze really well cooked and are perfect then pop into school lunches.

Homemade croissants are the ultimate slow food. Its takes 2 days to make the dough and another day before you can bake them – and the waiting is torture but oh so worth it. These croissants are not like those faux croissants you get from chain store bakeries – these croissants are flaky and buttery and very very rich. We make them only a few times a year and its a whole family weekend project.

I didn’t get a really good photo of them coming out of the oven as they were nearly all gone before I could think to get the camera out – and then it was just all hands and grabbing. Once we were satisfied after our first one – we could relax a bit and breath. We pile them up and have a luxury breakfast with our stove top expresso made from freshly ground coffee beans and we dip our croissants into our lattes french style.

The recipe I use is from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook – and it works every time. It might take a while, but it isn’t rocket science – it just requires patience and a bit of muscle – oh and lots and lots of butter.

Day 1: Make your yeast dough (if you don’t happen to have Martha’s book – here is a good recipe that shows you how to kneed and roll the dough)- knead it lightly and then let it stand overnight in the fridge (the dough is a slightly sweetened dough with a little honey). You will also need to make a butter package – which is about 5 sticks of butter (500g), flattened and mashed into about a 10inch square and you refrigerate this too.

Day 2: You spend a few hours incorporating your butter package into the dough by rolling it out and folding it into thirds – then turn it and roll fold again. You roll out fold into thirds three times before putting it back into the fridge to chill again for an hour each time. You must keep it cold so the butter doesn’t start to melt and seep through the pastry. You do this step 3 times – so 9 folds and turns in total and about 4 hours – then you let it rest again overnight.

Day 3: Roll the dough out into a long strip and cut into triangles using a pizza cutter or knife. Then shape the triangles into croissants by making a small slit in the wide end and then rolling toward the thin end – give them a slight curl and let them rise in a warm place for an hour. Then bake on med/high for about 20 mins.

The dough also freezes really well – you can cut the dough in half before shaping the croissants and freeze it in a square – or you can roll and shape all the crossants and freeze half of them before baking – then just get them out of the freezer the night before you want to eat and presto – they will be ready to bake in the morning.

My wife and I (when we were kidless) used to cook this all the time, but kind of forgot about it until recently. It is the easiest risotto in the world to make, because you just add everything to a dish and put it in the oven. No need to constantly stir it.

Ingredients

2 cups of brown rice
5 cups of chicken stock
Hot water
150g of butter
1/4 of a pumpkin diced (around 3/4kg)
1 onion (chopped)
4 large mushrooms (sliced)
Parmesan or Romano cheese to serve
Handful of parsley to serve (finely chopped)

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C.
Fry the butter, onion and mushrooms in a pan until the mushrooms and onion soften.
Put the fried mixture, rice, pumpkin and stock in an oven dish, mix well and cover.
Put it in the oven for up to 1 1/2 hours.
Check on it every 20 mins or so to make sure that it hasn’t dried out. If it does then add some more hot water. Just before the end (the last 20 mins or so) uncover it so that it doesn’t end up too wet.

To vary this we also like to bake the diced pumpkin in the oven to add a bit more flavour and sometimes add random tasty treats like pinenuts, bacon or chopped italian sausage.

Yum.

This is a funny book about some little kids and teaching them how to politely deal with the toilet. They get a bunch of tips like: “Don’t forget to flush” and “Wipe every time”. Liam (my four year old) thinks it is both hilarious and useful. The illustrations are of various little animals playing and going to the toilet… Funny stuff.