The Christmas Crazy Begins

It seems that the Christmas Crazy has begun.  We have our first Christmas get-together tomorrow and so I had to get busy making a treat to share with our friends.  I wanted to make something that looked good, tasted great but was super quick and easy to make.  I have seen about a billion different variations of mini-plum puddings, do you like what I came up with?

Now normally I hate plum puddings but these are delicious.

Mini Plum Puddings (that actually taste great!)

The other good thing about making these is that all of the ingredients are delicious - Chocolate Royales, Jaffas and Mint Leaves.  Even the splodge of icing tastes OK.

I wonder what Christmassy treat I will make next?
Love Princess George

Sundays in my City #16 - Crazy Cake

I know I promised to get out and about this weekend and take real photos but I have already posted many of the photos.  Luckily after the Soccer Goal of the Year (OK, her only soccer goal), we promised Milla that her and a friend could do something fun and they decided to make a cake.  I could have taken photos of the baking but that would have shown the devastation of 3 kids baking, instead I took heaps of photos of the eating.

Ready for frosting

He doesn't want to wait!

The boy has a taste...

The girl is waiting for her slice... 

Apparently this shows they like the cake.

And perhaps this one suggests a little too much food colouring!

If you want to make this delicious cake too, this is the recipe base we used, adding food colouring instead of cocoa and choc chips.  It is super easy to make (3 kids under 10 did all of the work!), delicious and looks pretty spectacular too!

If you want to join in the fun of Sundays in my City too, click on over to Unknown Mami.

Happy to have Homework?

Now it isn't often that I am happy to have homework, or that I even want to do homework but today it was different.  I had to choose my own topic and it was the best topic ever - AJ's Awesome Triple Layer Cake.

As you can see, my cake is pretty awesome so I thought I would share it with you.

Preparation

• wash your hands
• check and make sure you have all the ingredients
• check and make sure you have all the equipment
• make sure you have permission

Equipment

• mixing bowl
• wooden spoon
• table spoon
• cup
• small sized pan
• medium sized pan
• large sized pan

Ingredients

6 dessert spoons of butter (melted)

2 cups of sugar

2 cups of self raising flour

4 table spoons of cocoa

4 eggs

1 cup of milk

3 drops of vanilla essence/extract

1 cup of choc chips

1/4 cup of cocoa

Recipe

1. Preheat the oven to 180c.
2. Put the sugar and flour into the bowl.
3. Break eggs on top and mix.
4. Pour the melted butter, milk and vanilla into the cake.
5. Beat all ingredients together for 3 minutes.
6. Pour 1/3 of mixture into the medium sized lined cake pan.
7. Put cocoa into the rest of the mixture and mix well.
8. Pour 1/2 of the chocolate mixture into the biggest pan.
9. Add chocolate chips to the rest of the chocolate mixture and stir.
10. Pour the rest into the smallest pan.
11. Place in the oven and pan for 45 minutes or until cooked.
12. Remove from the oven and cool in pan for 5 minutes.
13. Ice with chocolate icing.

Construction

• Get the biggest layer and cover the top and sides with icing.
• Place the medium size cake on top and then put icing on it.
• Then place the smallest cake on top and put the icing on.

Safety

• Get help to get the cake in and out of the oven.
• Get help to cut the cake.

Clean Up

• Wash the dishes.
• Put everything away.

Eat and enjoy - this cake is totally AWESOME!

Baking with Colour

Last night one of my best friends came here for a sleep over.  Her dad came to pick her up in the morning but we convinced him to let her stay because we had really important things to do.  Luckily he said yes and to celebrate, we made cookies.  The best thing about making cookies is eating them.  The second best thing about making them is that as they are cooking, we get more time to play - the perfect delaying tactic!

We used one of my favourite cookie recipes - 100s of biscuits.  The recipe literally makes hundreds of biscuits if you don't eat all of the dough!  I think we ate more than we cooked.  Because the mixture makes so many, we all got to choose our own variations.  AJ and mum made choc-chip cookies.  We would have taken photos of them if they weren't devoured in 3.2 seconds.

We decided that we wanted plain biscuits but wanted to add some variety.  When I say variety, what I really mean is COLOUR.  How awesome do they look?

They are pretty delicious too!
Love Princess George

Mother's Day Treat

Well normally for Mother's Day, AJ and I would want to make breakfast in bed for mum but since mum is pretty fussy about what she has for breakfast and doesn't really like us cooking bacon and eggs on our own, we usually end up going out somewhere nice for brunch.  We really wanted to do that today but we couldn't because mum and dad weren't here, they had a wedding to go to yesterday that was really far away so they had a sleepover instead of driving all the way home.

We were lucky, we had a chance to spend the weekend hanging out with Grandma until mum and dad got home this afternoon.  Then it was time to get busy in the kitchen and make a special treat for mum, and for all of us too.

I made a chocolate torte from a box, I didn't have enough chocolate to make it from scratch.  To be honest, it was delicious and it tasted like it was made from scratch anyway.

Happy Mother's Day mum, I love you
Love Princess George xo

Industrial Cooking

Why oh why does AJ need to wear ear muffs when he is cooking?  

Oh well, I really shouldn’t complain, I should just enjoy the cookies!

Love Princess George

All Things American

Taxi!

Our quest to do All Things American continued.  Our bus was a little late arriving in at Penn Station because we had to drive through the New York Marathon.  (If only we had arrived earlier, we could have run the marathon too!)

We had too much luggage to take on the subway so we had to catch a cab to our hotel.
Once we had checked in, we headed out to explore the neighbourhood that would be our home for the next few days.

The next typically American thing we did was buy homemade brownies from a sidewalk bake-sale in the Bowery.  The kids had just made the brownies and wandered out to sell them.

Beautiful Brownies

I wonder if we will stumble upon a lemonade stand like we did last time we were in America?

Either way, what a great start to our stay in New York.  I think we are really going to love this city!
Love AJ and Milla

Kids Cook Monday

Have I told you that the kids cook dinner at our house EVERY Monday?  We make all sorts of delicious meals... pumpkin risotto, chicken strips on kumera mash, creamy pasta, chicken curry our favourite - maggots!

Today shared our secret maggot recipe with Gabby, so we should share it with you too.  

The superRelish Secret Maggot Recipe

1. First you smash up heaps of rice bubbles and cornflakes into even smaller pieces.  
2. Then you dip the pieces of chicken into some mayonaise so that the bubbles and flakes will stick to the chicken.  
3. Then all you need to do is to put them into the oven to cook.  
   

As the maggots are cooking, you need to peel some kumera.  We get mum to chop up the kumera into pieces to roast along with some potato and pumpkin.  Chop the tails off some snow peas and some beans and put them into the microwave to cook a bit.  While we wait, we chop up some tomatoes and cucumber to mix with some other salad.

Our maggots are delicious.  Fred and Tash loved them, even if they did think we were crazy for cooking our own dinner!  I don't think we are crazy, I would cook every night if I had time.

Love Princess George

Rainbow Cake

It was Ella and Taylah's birthday the other day, so today we had a celebration. Did you know that when you are 4 years old, you have to make your own cake for your birthday? The best part about making your own birthday cake is that you get to decide what type of cake.

We made a rainbow cake - it had red, yellow, blue and green swirls in it, with chocolate icing and rainbow chocolate chips on top. It was delicious.

Love Princess George

How to make delicious biscuits.

We made biscuits at school today and they were delicious. Do you want to know how to make them.

First mix together about 80 grams of softened butter with 1/2 a cup of caster sugar. When that is mixed together you add a tablespoon of condensed milk and 3/4 of a cup of self raising flour.

When everything is mixed together, roll out the mixture on the table, just like playdough, and cut out some interesting shapes. We decorated our biscuits with coconut and sultanas, but if you aren't allergic to food, you could add chocolate or nuts.

Then you need to cook the biscuits for about 15 minutes in an oven set at 180c. When they are cooked and have cooled down, you need to eat the biscuits really quickly.

Love AJ Pickle

PS - don't forget to wash your hands and clean up all of the mess!