Sweets & treats | Vegie Smugglers

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Let them eat slice

July 4, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, Food experiences, Sweets & treats

The winter break can be a bit uninspiring, can't it!

School holiday time again – don’t they come around quickly! This is the dreary one isn’t it? Cold, miserable! Everyone snotty. Still, we’re soldiering on and enjoying the lack of deadlines.

So far we’re filling in the days at the park, a spot of origami and of course, cooking treats.

Oh the possibilities!!!!

Last holidays I was obsessed with my psychedelic marble cake but these holidays I’m focused on SLICE! They were SUCH a staple of my childhood, but I’ve only started making them recently. They’re lumped into the category of “recipes I’ve started cooking since I became a parent”, along with cheese sauce and schnitzels. Could also have something to do with the dodgy state of my oven and its inability to cook a cake evenly.

Most of us who take our Australian-ness seriously will have one of the Woman’s Weekly slice cookbooks. Below is the recipe I whipped up this morning, a favourite from my own childhood, now passed onto my own little lovelies.

Chocolate, butter... it must be school holidays!

Chocolate Fruit Slice (From the Woman’s Weekly “Cakes & Slices” Cookbook)

125g butter
1 cup SR flour
2 tbsp cocoa
½ cup castor sugar
1 cup coconut
½ cup mixed fruit (today I used sultanas & craisins)
¼ cup chopped pecan nuts
CHOCOLATE ICING
1 ½ cups icing sugar
¼ cup cocoa
2 tsps melted butter
2 tbsp milk

Preheat the oven to 175C. Grease & line a 19cmx29cm lamington pan.

Melt butter. Add in the sifted flour & cocoa, sugar, coconut, fruit & pecans. Press into the tin and bake for 20 mins.

Sift the icing sugar and cocoa into a bowl, stir in the melted butter and milk and mix to a stiff paste.

Spread over the cooked base (while it’s still warm). Leave it all to cool in the tin. Cut into squares.

****

While you wait for these to cool and set, check out some of my previous school holiday ideas.

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A quick clafoutis

April 20, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, Food experiences, Sweets & treats · Tagged cooking techniques, eggs, fruit, recipe

Right. Easter this weekend, so we need a recipe with eggs. Avoiding all the usual culprits, I thought a clafoutis would be good – a nice opportunity to get one last pleasure from plum season. They’ve been one bright spot in a pretty drab year for summer fruit.

I was photographing this for the new cookbook, but they do sink FAST, meaning that I couldn’t get a good enough shot, so let’s keep this recipe as a WEB EXCLUSIVE. Awesome.

Being lactose intolerant I rarely cook with cream. My body can handle a bit of cheese here and there and I always just substitute soy milk without any dramas, but cream is a challenge and since my last pregnancy my body has evolved and it’s now a total no-go zone. But in the supermarket I saw a lactose-free cream (in the long-life section), and thought this recipe was a good chance to give it a go… so far so good. Combined with a lacteeze and I might be back on my way to dessert heaven!

Doesn't this look gorgeous? But wait, there's more...

Plum Clafoutis

These quantities are for the small dish pictured. Double the mixture for a large, family-sized flan dish

Butter for greasing
3-4 tbsp caster sugar
3 plums, quartered
2 eggs
2 tbsp plain flour
1/3 cup milk (soy is fine)
1/3 cup cream
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 190C.

Grease an oven-proof shallow dish. Sprinkle and teaspoon of the sugar over the base. Place the plum pieces around evenly.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until frothy (a minute or until your arm is too tired to bother any further), add the sugar and keep whisking and combine in the flour, milk and cream. Also pop in the vanilla and zest.

Pour over the plums and bake for 30 minutes or so until golden and firm. Serve with ice cream.

Eggs... cream... more!

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Fixing “I’m bored” – Easter School holiday ideas

April 12, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, Craft for non-crafty parents, News, Sweets & treats

The grooviest cake in town!

We’re sticking to home these holidays, so it’s time to trawl the web for my round up of good things to suggest to the little lovelies when they mutter ‘I’m bored’. Last October I posted a bunch of good budget ideas, and here’s a few more (with a vague Easter theme)…

If you’ve ever spent ages pondering how to decorate boiled eggs so that they look like scuba divers, then have I found the website for you! Familyfun.go.com has such great Easter craft ideas, bound to keep you busy for ages. There’s a good unisex Egg hunt container to make here and older girls might like to have a go at making this chocolate lip balm. There’s a mix of colouring and educational Easter themed pages here.

On the Youtube disco these holidays, we’re thoroughly enthralled by the Jackon 5’s ‘Can you feel it’ which has enough fire and explosions to keep even Mr Meat & Potatoes dancing. Although he really prefers the 1978 Green Machine commercial. I catch him (with his dad) watching it ALL THE TIME.

And in the kitchen, I’ve introduced the kids to the joys of marble cakes. I like mine bright – there’s no insipid cooking in the VS kitchen. The cake is pretty firm in texture, which transmits the colour well. A nice glossy chocolate icing would be great, but we were too impatient to see the patterns to wait for that. A scattering of icing sugar is a nice understated finish for a pretty outgoing cake.

You'll have a bunch of very eager helpers for this one.

Psychedelic marble cake

200g butter, softened
1 ¼ cups caster sugar
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
Zest & juice of 1 orange
Food colouring of your choice (I used yellow, green and red)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a Kugelhopt cake tin.

Add the diced butter into a large mixing bowl. Use electric beaters to cream the butter for a minute, and then gradually add in the caster sugar. Don’t rush. Take your time until it is all light and creamy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.

Sift over the flour and baking powder. Fold through. Stir through the zest and juice.

Divide the mixture into quarters. Keep one plain, and then use the food colouring to make the others whatever colour and however vivid you like. Take turns spooning the different colours into the tin. Drag a skewer through to ‘marble’.

Bake for 35 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Dust with icing sugar.

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What a lovely pear

April 5, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, News, Sweets & treats

A lovely pair?

Yes, I know, it’s the worst fruit joke in the world but I just couldn’t resist.

And you’ll have to forgive me – I’m looking for jokes and a bit of cheering up at the moment. Each year around this time, I start to get the seasonal blues. They increase with the cold and dark, turn a slight corner after the winter solstice, but don’t evaporate entirely until mid-August.

I have strategies in place to deal with it – regular yoga practice helps. Getting enough sunlight too. And just trying to enjoy the passing seasons and the particular pleasures they reveal.

Which is why I’m preoccupied with pears this week. Especially these cute mini ones from a market in the Southern Highlands. Apples are good at the moment too. My favourite type is Gala, and they’re freshly picked and filling the shelves right now. They are a happy part of Autumn.

Combine them together and (of course) wrap them in pastry to create a delicious wee snack that warms the toes. This recipe includes prunes, with a hit of fibre that does us all good. Although you’re welcome to omit them and be really naughty and add a dollop of Nutella to your mix instead.

I know they smell great, but try not to burn your tongue!

Apple, pear & prune squares

3 sheets frozen
puff pastry
1 apple (Granny Smith or Gala), thinly sliced
1 pear, thinly sliced
½ cup pitted prunes, finely chopped
½ tsp vanilla essence
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp almond meal
1 tsp caster sugar
1 egg, whisked, for sticking and glazing
Caster sugar, for sprinkling

Icing sugar, for dusting, to serve

Preheat oven to 180C. Line an oven tray with baking paper.

Before the pastry thaws too much, use a sharp knife to score each square into two rectangles. Snap apart. Then score each rectangle into 4 pieces (so each sheet yields 8 rectangles). Break apart and leave to thaw.

In a large bowl, mix together the rest of the ingredients except the egg and caster sugar. Dollop 1 tsp of mixture at one end of each piece of pastry, leaving a 1cm border. Brush the edges with egg, fold over and press the edges together. Brush the tops with egg and sprinkle with a little caster sugar.

Transfer to the oven tray and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden. These will be HOT when they come out of the oven. Dust with icing sugar. Serve plain or with ice-cream.

MAKES 24

———————
And check out these other Vegie-Smuggling pastry recipes…
Chicken sausage rolls
Beef Triangles
Traffic light swirls
———————

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Fuss-free kids parties and macho fairy bread

March 7, 2011 · Filed under Food experiences, Sweets & treats · Tagged celebrations, ideas, parenting

Mr Meat & Potatoes has turned 4.

The festival of him was at the end of a long week and celebrations needed to be simple.

Luckily 4 year old boys are awesome party guests, since they think everything is AWESOME. ‘Cooooooooooolllllll, buzz lightyear’. ‘wwwoooooooooowwwwwwwww smarties’. ‘aaaawwwwwwwhhhhhhh, cake’. Generally they just jump around talking gibberish to each other and playing ‘Ben 10’ (slapping your wrist, making noises and charging off to fight aliens).

I kept the food simple. A massive fruit platter, sausage rolls, cheezels (essential), a bowl of smarties, and a machismo fairy bread. Being that I couldn’t be bothered making chocolate crackles, I just added nutella to the fairy bread, renamed it ‘mud bread’ and the boys were happy.

Strictly adhering to my one-colour cake policy

Rarely do I bother making a cake from scratch for kids parties. Why would I? Nope, a packet cake was the main attraction, with my foolproof, one-icing, one-colour decorating policy. This year (as you can see) it was red, with the fudge-icing-pen drawn web and a spiderman candle. Done in 15 minutes. AWESOME. Last year it was black, which was drab until we popped Lightening McQueen on top and then we had an AWESOME edible tyre.

For the girls, make it a pretty pastel green, sprinkle over flower shaped sprinkles and pop some cute plastic kittens on top. Done. Fancy cakes are well and good for the first couple of birthdays, but geez they come around often and while we all own a copy of The Women’s Weekly Kid’s Birthday Cakes cookbook, I’ve yet to find one you can knock off in less than 2 hours.

Just add Blu-tack...

And games? Well, of course we had pass the parcel. Gotta have that. And I was keen for pin the tail on the donkey, but not organised enough to buy one. But I did have some AWESOME oversized life-like bugs. A bit of Blu-tack, a pen and A3 piece of paper and we had instant pin-the-bug-on-the-boy. And then the AWESOME little dudes got to take bugs home to terrorise their parents with.

...for instant 'pin the bug on the boy' fun

Awesome time, everyone, thanks for coming. Happy Birthday to my little man.

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My domestic sham EXPOSED!

February 8, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, Food experiences, News, Sweets & treats · Tagged cooking techniques, feeding the family, recipe, treats

A boon for modern housewifery, a recipe that relies on rotting ingredients.

Each year, Australians throw away $516 billion worth of food. That averages out to $616 per household. Usually I’m conscientious about this, but lately I’ve had to contend with THE ANTS.

In the last week THE ANTS have invaded and forced me to throw away brown sugar, 5 packets of pineapple/sultanas, flaked almonds, an olive loaf and 3 peaches (they were INSIDE!) They’re even into the peanut butter (we’re now just picking out the dead ones and plowing on regardless). No amount of vacumming, tidying, spraying, drowning or baits is getting rid of them.

They are making me feel like a slovenly housewife. They trail past, mocking my cleaning and trying to steal my ingredients.

And you see, it took a bit of coercing to convince my best-friend that I’d be better off working from home (for less money) and looking after everyone. We’d always been a strictly 50/50 feminist arrangement and shifting to more traditional roles was always going to be tricky for everyone. The new arrangement has been going well for a year now but these ANTS are giving me bad press. It’s depressing.

So let’s cheer ourselves up with cake. And let’s call it ‘bread’ to make ourselves feel less weak-willed. I know that none of us are under any delusions that banana ‘bread’ is healthy. It’s full of butter. But sometimes you just need sweets and if you do, then ease your conscience with a tonne of bananas, dates and walnuts (which are apparently, one of the best plant sources of protein).

Even better, this recipe is actually a congratulations to all of you fellow slovenly housewives who have allowed your bananas to droop and brown. A friend (and master baker) confided recently that the secret to her ‘bread’ was to wait until the bananas are practically liquid. There are not many ingredients and recipes that require you to be quite so domestically impeded. Enjoy.

(The best) banana bread

1½ cups self-raising flour
½ cup brown sugar, firmly packed
½ cup dates, chopped
½ cup walnuts, chopped
100g butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
4 over-ripe bananas, mashed

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a 14x20cm loaf tin and line the bottom with baking paper.

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl. Stir through the sugar, dates and walnuts.

Pour over the butter and mix through. Add the eggs and mashed banana. Mix until combined (don’t overmix).

Spoon into the loaf tin. Bake for about 50-55 minutes until a skewer comes out clean (cover with foil if it starts to brown too much around the 40 minute mark).

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Berry pun headline goes here…

January 21, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, Food experiences, Sweets & treats · Tagged feeding the family, fruit, recipe

Berry nice? Berry good? Berry yummy? The berry best? The food mags are full of good berry puns at the moment. Which means it’s berry season. You’ll have noticed the prices have plunged and since they grow best in cooler climates, they generally haven’t been flood affected.

And the best bit is that they’re so yum that you don’t have to do anything fancier than plonking them in a bowl and you have a delicious gourmet dessert.

Nice and simple for summer.

Berries & yoghurt

Dollop quality vanilla yoghurt in a bowl. Toss over any mix of berries. Top with mint leaves.

The best way to smuggle… fruit

November 23, 2010 · Filed under All recipes, Food experiences, Sweets & treats, The best way to smuggle... · Tagged feeding the family, fruit, ideas, kids products, recipe

Yay! Summer on a stick.

We went swimming twice on the weekend, which means that Summer must be close. For the next few months I will constantly be picking up randomly dumped, sodden cossies and towels, I will struggle to get anyone into bed before 8.30pm and any half decent TV show will disappear for the ‘non-ratings’ period – which is a dinosaur concept that the networks should seriously rethink (note to ‘traditional’ media – Youtube has no such hiatus).

Apart from the crap TV, humidity, sticky sunscreen and mosquitos, Summer is so packed full of so many reasons to be happy. Christmas. Sitting on strange men’s knees. Beaches. Swimming. Holidays. Nectarines. Fireworks. Mangos. Peaches. Cherries. Apricots. Plums.

There are however, some strange little children who are not fond of fruit. Do you have one of them? You’re in luck over the next little while – you can hide virtually any fruit if you blitz it and freeze it into an iceblock. Choose whatever is in season and you won’t need any extra sweeteners. Try out a bunch of combinations until your kids are munching away happily.

And to make it irresistable, invest in fun iceblock moulds. Try this swirly one, or here’s a rocket inspired one.

And what’s in the iceblocks pictured above? The yellow one is mango and peach chunks with freshly squeezed orange juice. The white one is blitzed up rockmelon and vanilla yoghurt. For the other two combinations, you’ll have to buy the cookbook – I do have to make a living somehow!

Off to the pool…

Lunchbox lethargy and a good schoolyard chat

November 2, 2010 · Filed under All recipes, Food experiences, News, Sweets & treats, Vegie smuggling techniques · Tagged family, feeding the family, ideas, lunchbox, parenting, recipe, vegetables

I’m back into the groove of term 4 and the other morning I found myself in the schoolyard way past bell-time, gas-bagging away with my new collection of mum friends. None of us are shy about a chat, we talk kids, schools, educations, housing, ponder why our daughters are all such chatterboxes and we chat chat chat. We see the irony.

Conversation got onto the dreariness of our daily lunchbox scenarios – even I had to admit that my sandwich repetoire is getting a little stale. I’d started the year well, but now mostly opt for cheese, but fancy it up with chutney, mustard or avocado. There are the usual dried fruit options, the odd muesli bar and fruit, fruit and more fruit.

Soggy sandwiches are a major problem in our hot Australian conditions, even with the coolie brick. And then there’s the time factor and the fact that the lunchbox usually gets thrown together in less than 5 minutes.

So what can we do to break the dreariness?

Try and find 20 minutes at the beginning of the week to mix up or bake something interesting that you can dig into for the rest of the week. Try savoury muffins, salmon pikelets, beetroot dip (there’s a good recipe in the Vegie Smugglers cookbook), poach a chicken breast or just chop a batch of carrots and cucumber into interesting shapes.

Have a go at this home made muesli slice. It’s really quick and easy to make and you can modify it to suit the tastebuds of your family.

***Since I first posted this, I’ve gone on to create The Complete Lunchbox Planner, with 40 weeks of seasonal recipes to keep you inspired throughout the year.

Made by mum - not Uncle Toby

Home made muesli bars

Butter, for greasing
2½ cups rolled oats
½ cup desiccated (or shredded) coconut
1 cup Sultana Bran
½ cup All Bran
1½ cups dried fruit (I use chopped prunes, chopped apple and sultanas)
125g unsalted butter
¼ cup grapeseed oil
¼ cup honey
2 eggs, lightly whisked

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a lamingon tin with baking paper, allowing overhang on each of the long sides.

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add the fruit and mix through well.
Place the butter, oil and honey in a small saucepan over low heat. Melt gently till the butter just melts and mix together. Add to the dry ingredients. Add the egg and mix thoroughly.

Press firmly into the pan (roll a glass over to apply even pressure) and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden. Leave in the pan to cool and refrigerate until set and firm before slicing into squares.

MAKES 15 SQUARES

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Nutella toast, a fairy bread lunch and fish fingers for dinner

September 16, 2010 · Filed under All recipes, Food experiences, Sweets & treats · Tagged celebrations, family, treats

And so we find ourselves a whole year on and celebrating the fabulous birth of Miss Fruitarian. 6-years ago I was in shock over the level of pain and blood and general reality of childbirth (did you see the news this week that many women suffer post-traumatic stress post-labour) and proposing to the lovely Indian anaesthetist who took all the pain away.

Luckily for us, Miss F is growing into the loveliest young lady. She’s starting to sprout long legs (not from my side) and a grown-up awareness that give us a clue about her future. Six is a transition year for sure, with missing teeth and a whole new school vocabulary (“like, totally mum”).

But we haven’t lost our child just yet, as her chosen birthday menu proves. Sugar and fat for a whole day and since we try to eat well the majority of the time, I figure a day of sometimes food is just fine.

I have to admit that what I remember most about my own birthdays is cracking out the lunchbox and finding fairy-bread sandwiches waiting. Funny thing is, I never really liked them, kind of crunchy and weird, but the sense of special was unbeatable.

Tradition at school is to take cakes for all the kids (and all the teachers). It’s been a busy week, so last night after an all day conference I was scooping packet-cake mix into patty pans. These baking pans are my new favourite. Like mini-muffins, the cake quantity stays small and cooks in 10 minutes, but doesn’t look so measly. Let’s face it; birthday cakes are all about icing and decoration, so this morning we were dipping in chocolate icing, sprinkles and shoving jaffas in the middle. I think I’ll christen them the birthday nipple cakes!

Not a vegetable in sight...

Granny’s chocolate icing

This recipe gets a guernsey twice a year for the two kid’s birthdays. It makes a great glossy icing, which disguises the packet cake underneath!!!

45g dark chocolate
½ tsp grapeseed oil
2-3 tbsp water
1 cup icing sugar

Place the chocolate, oil and water in a metal bowl over a small saucepan of warm water (make sure it doesn’t touch the water).

Stir until the chocolate has melted and it’s all combined and glossy.

Add the sugar into several stages and use a whisk or fork to get rid of any lumps. Work quickly. Either spread over a whole cake, or dunk your little cakes into the mix, then dunk in decorations and top with lollies.