Handmade gifts

I made a couple of little gifts this year. I made this bauble for my parents using street directory maps of the suburbs they grew up in and the suburb they live in now. It made mum cry so I guess it was a hit! Then I made them for my sisters using their current suburbs, and my Auntie using the suburb she's lived in for the last 30 years. Oh, and I just made one for us today - better late than never!

This is mum and dad's.

I really wanted to make Tassy some Christmas jarmies. My original idea was to buy a nice Christmas Tshirt and make some matching jarmie shorts, but do you think I could find a NICE Christmas Tshirt? I loved one in the Kmart catalogue with a sweet deer on the front, but when I went to buy one I realised they only went up to kids size 6. Do'h! So in the end I appliquéd on a plain red Tshirt, using a design from the Mollie Makes Christmas book (a Christmas present from Lea).

I bought the gorgeous holly fabric in Spotlight before Christmas for the princely sum of $3/m! And I used some vintage trim given to me by a friend, so all up they probably cost less than $2. I had the Tshirt done before Christmas but only did the shorts last night. Again, better late than never!

And all my family got involved in a cookie swap. We have cookies coming out our ears!! We've already eaten lots but here's what we have left! Mine are the pistachio and cranberry wreaths in the first picture and Tassy's are the little reindeer near the bottom.

Cinnamon Roll Cake

Who loves a good cinnamon sc/roll? That's a rhetorical question cos of course the answer is EVERYBODY! I found a recipe for Cinnamon Roll Cake on Pinterest and it sounded SUPER easy. So I tried it the other day. Oh boy. Sooooooo good. Especially when it's still warm from the oven. But good at room temperature too. I posted a pic on Instagram and lots of people asked for the recipe so I'm sharing it here for y'all!

Now I did make some change to the original recipe (which you can find here) and I've included my changes in the recipe I've written for you below. The original called for 250g butter in the topping (as well as 125g in the cake) and I thought that was way overboard, so I only used 125g. I still thought it was too much so next time I might go with 100g or less. But anyway, I've written 125g in the recipe below cos it worked. The recipe also said the topping butter should be softened but I melted mine cos I thought it would be easier. I wanted some cream cheese in my glaze so I made up my own which was super easy. Also I didn't have the right size tin, so I used a loaf tin and and square tin. Next time I might use a lasagne dish cos I'd prefer the cake to be flatter so you can get the height of it in your mouth in one bite. Anyways... here's the recipe.

Cinnamon Roll Cake

Cake:
3 cups plain flour
¼ tsp salt
1 cup sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1½ milk
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
125g butter, melted
optional walnuts

Topping:
125g butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp plain flour
1 Tbsp cinnamon

Glaze:
1 cup icing sugar
2 Tbsp cream cheese
small amount of milk to make it an easily spreadable consistency

In a large mixing bowl whisk together all the cake ingredients except for the melted butter. Slowly stir in the melted butter (and nuts if you like) and pour into a greased 9x13in cake tin.

Mix together the topping ingredients. Poor evenly over cake and swirl in with a knife. Bake at about 180C for 30 mins (mine took more like 40 - so keep checking with the skewer test).

Mix together the glaze ingredients (warm the cream cheese if necessary) and when it's a spreadable consistency spread it over the cake. Cut into squares, close your eyes and enjoy.

Here it is ready to go into the oven. Lookin' pretty.

Popovers

Have you had popovers? I can't remember how I first came across these, but I've been making them for breakfast for a few years. Tassy and I love them. Dave thinks they're weird. I love their crunchy outside and soft inside. They're kinda like yorkshire puddings and are delicious with maple syrup.

This recipe makes 8 popovers and Tassy and I have 4 each for breakfast. :D Nowadays I always use oil in the muffin holes cos it's easier than using butter. I just realised I didn't include the 25g butter or oil in the mixture I made this morning! They were totally fine.

Popovers

½ cup flour
2 eggs
¼ tspn salt
½ cup milk
25g butter, melted (or vegetable oil)
extra butter for muffin tin (or vegetable oil)

220C oven

Grease tin with cooking spray. Put a tiny knob of extra butter (or oil) in 8 muffin tin holes. Bake in oven until hot and foaming (or about 10 minutes for the oil).

Sift flour into mixing bowl. Add combined beaten eggs, milk and salt. Mix loosely with a fork. Don’t overbeat – lumps are OK. Add butter (or oil) and carefully mix in.

Spoon into 8 muffin tins.

Bake for approx 10 mins until puffed up and golden. Serve immediately with maple syrup.

If you make them I'd love to know what you think of them!

One up

Tassy had been planning her tenth birthday party for months. She decided early on that she wanted a video game themed party. Then the pressure was on - constantly "What games can we play?". She wasn't talking about playing video games (good, cos I wouldn't go for that) but video game themed party games. Have you heard of any? No, me neither. More on that later....

I happened upon an awesome idea for invitations on Pinterest. There's a link to the printable pattern there. It went perfectly with our video game theme and our love of pop up cards and books! I SO love these invitations. Although my fingers didn't love them.

Tassy dressed up as Princess Peach, complete with yellow umbrella with a smiley face. I didn't get a photo of her with props but dad snapped this one out the front - also featuring her follow-the-pacman-to-the-front-door. It's a bit hard to see with the dappled light.

I think what might have originally given Tassy the idea of a video game party was an ice cube tray we've had for a while. She asked if we could use it to make chocolates and I said yes. I think her brain ticked on from there... The chocolates turned out pretty cool!

She requested some toad cupcakes too.

Now for some games!

It took me a month or so before I came up with the idea of "Character Bingo". Tassy chose and downloaded 24 pictures of game characters and I put them into 14 bingo sheets. This was no easy task cos each bingo sheet had to be different! But the game was a big hit. After all the work I put into it I won't be deleting the files from my computer so sing out if you'd like me to email you 14 bingo sheets!

While Tassy was surfing the net she found all the versions of Mario through the years and thought it would be fun to play "Chrono-Mario". So I gave each person a pile of Marios and they had to arrange them in chronological order. Can you work out the order?

We also played a version of Celebrity Heads using the same video game characters from Bingo. It was good to have the Bingo sheet to refer to cos I don't think anyone knew ALL the characters. I didn't get a photo of that game {sad face}. And we did pass the parcel too. Tassy thought they might be too old for PtP but I said my friend's 16yo daughter requested it at her recent birthday party LOL.

It must be time for cake! I had been to keen to do a rainbow cake for Tassy's birthday last year but she had other ideas. She also had other ideas for this year but I talked her into a rainbow Pacman cake. :) The cake looked fantastic inside!

Lastly - party bags! I remembered seeing things printed onto brown paper bags on Pinterest a while ago so thought I'd try printing Pacman games onto some paper bags. I found a picture of a game, removed the black background, then attempted printing. My printer must have been hungry cos it ate quite a few of the paper bags. I had about a 50% success rate but I didn't give up and in the end I got enough. I do love how they turned out!

Even before her party day she had chosen her theme for next year. Movies!

Coffee Cake

I was browsing Pinterest on the weekend (as I do obsessively every day) and saw a few coffee cake recipes. All of a sudden I wanted to have my Mum's coffee cake, which I haven't had since I was a child. I said to Dave "I really feel like making coffee cake". He's not into sweet things but he does love coffee and he said "I REALLY think you should go with that...". So I phoned Mum for the recipe but she couldn't remember what recipe she used. She said maybe she used the Nursing Mothers Chocolate Cake recipe, substituting cocoa powder with coffee essence. So I gave that a go. And it was yum. It's only a small mixture so next time I might double the mixture, and maybe instead of a ring tin I'll cook it in a square pan cos I think that's what mum used to do.

How funny are those taaaaaall air bubbles in the cake.

GRANNY JANNY'S COFFEE CAKE

1 cup SR flour
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons coffee essence
1 teaspoon coffee powder
2 eggs
½ cup milk
40g butter, melted

Beat all ingredients with an electric mixer until combined. Scrape down sides and beat on high for 3 minutes. It's a very runny mixture but don't worry, it cooks up great. Bake at 180C for 25 minutes.

Ice with coffee icing and sprinkle with lots of chopped walnuts. This cake LOVES the walnuts.

I didn't use a recipe for the icing - I mixed some coffee essence and melted butter into icing sugar. Not sure what the quanitites would be - maybe a cup of icing sugar, a teaspoon of coffee essence and one or two tablespoons of melted butter.

In other news... my mum now has a blog! Check it out here! Mum - time to do another post!

More Christmas cooking

Here are some super easy mini cupcakes I made recently for a kids street party and Tassy class party. Super easy cos I used a cake mix (shhhh... with my Kitchenaid... which seemed sacrilegious). I iced them with chocolate icing and sprinkled them with crushed candy canes. It's amazing how the peppermint really cuts through and makes them taste so Christmassy!

More Christmas cooking

I usually buy a gingerbread house or gingerbread train kit from Aldi each year. Tassy and I have great fun decorating them and I think they're so beautiful. But none of us like gingerbread, and I hate waste. I usually force myself to eat at least a bit... then pick off the decorations and throw away the rest.

Sooooo this year I thought i would try making a chocolate house. Just a tiny one - not too crazy. Have you ever heard of a chocolate house before? I don't think I have... and I can tell you why. Those things are tricky! Making the walls and roof wasn't too hard - I just drew a pattern, piped the outlines with melted chocolate and filled them in with more chocolate. I froze them then joined them together with melted chocolate, then back into the fridge. But the decorating was tricky... Mostly because I couldn't hold the house without it melting! I think if I ever do one again I'll use different chocolate - maybe choc melts would work better than the Ghirardelli chocolate I had on hand).

Do you like the little heart shaped cutout above the door? Well let me tell you how to make that. Firstly, make sure your white chocolate is nice and hot. Start piping a heart shape and pretend not to be surprised when the centre of the heart disappears inside the house. Of course you planned it, didn't you!

And here it is in all its naked glory.

A bit of Christmas cooking

I've been dying to do some Christmas cooking and finally squeezed some in this week. Tassy and I made these Christmas trees on Sunday. We've made them lots of times and they're easy and really yummy (although making them into cones can be tricky and messy). We put a couple aside for Tassy, Bella and Lucia to decorate the next day.

And I made some cranberry shortbread with white chocolate. I made them early Monday morning before Tassy went to school! It felt good to do something productive so early in the morning!

My extended family's Christmas party is today in Wollongong and we won't be there because we have Dave's family Christmas today in Canberra. They're doing a cookie swap and I didn't want to miss out so I packaged up some and posted them off.

Staying Home

Last weekend was a quiet one here. The only time I left the house was to put the new rego sticker on the car in the driveway. Dave was gaming and Tassy and I watched movies, did some crafting and reading.

A while ago I found this great site for making pop-up cards. I am a sucker for pop-up books and we have quite a collection, including a few by Robert Sabuda. Here are some cards we made from his website. Tassy and her friend Lucy made the rabbit on Monday - I forgot to take a photo of that but it was much cooler than it looks in the picture on his site. It moves really well.

So we started with an easy one. The castle.



Then we got a little more adventurous with the house.



Then Tassy really wanted to make the cake for my sister's birthday.



And they all fold down totally flat. Aren't they great!!



I also did some.... altering? I can't call it baking cos I had bought these plain frozen lemon curd tarts on special in Woolies a while ago. I had one and it wasn't that good... but lying in bed the other night I had a epiphany (I have epiphanies about very important things). Turn them into mini lemon meringues! I love lemon meringue. I made some meringue just using one egg white and a few tablespoons of caster sugar. Tassy and Lucy didn't like them but I've been happily polishing them off. Yummo!

Making Flatbread

So another new thing we wanted to cook in the school holidays was flat bread. I LOVE fresh flat bread (naan......mmmmmm) and when it dawned on me that I'd seen glimpses of some of the Masterchef cooks make it a few times in a limited timeframe I thought hey, I should give it a go! I decided on this recipe, gave it a quick scan and saw that I had to rest it for 30 minutes. OK.... I think I can get it done just in time to have with our Massaman Curry for dinner (I know, different cuisines, but I figured they went nicely together).

So I set to work and left the mixture to stand for 30 minutes, then read the rest of the recipe. Turns out... I should have read the whole recipe first. Cos there's a total resting time of two hours! Do'h! Anyway, I did remove a bit of the mixture without resting it for long and cooked it up for dinner and it was actually pretty good! The recipe made OODLES of flatbread. About 8 pieces, each about the size of a large dinner plate. We had plent of leftovers. And reheating them later I discovered that they didn't like being reheated in the frypan (they went tough) but wrapped in foil in the oven was a winner.

It was so cool how it bubbled when it cooked.



Tassy's enjoying reheated leftovers with some roast vegetable soup. Yummo!

Baking

Tassy and I wanted to try baking macarons and flat bread in the school holidays. They're both things we love.

There are a million macaron recipes on the internet and since it's apparently a pretty tricky morsel to master I thought I'd go with someone I trusted. Bakerella. Seriously, there are four ingredients and not very many steps at all. How hard can it be?

First you have to age your egg whites for a few days. Check. Leaving something on the bench for two days isn't too hard. Then the real prep begins.



Pipe consistent rounds of the mixture... or not so consistent in our case. Leave on the bench for 30 - 60 minutes to develop a hard shell on top. Part way thru I remembered I was going to put some sprinkles on a couple of them. Do'h! Already hard.



Bake. I set the timer for two minutes less than the minimum time given and do'h, they went brown!



But they didn't turn out too badly. They have a firm shell and "feet". They're a little brown and too gooey, and my blue food colouring somehow makes a definite green macaron, but I think I have the urge to make them out of my system now. :)

I filled some with peanut butter ganache and some with white chocolate ganache. The PB ganache is a winner.




I'll be back soon to share our flat bread making adventures (not many photos to share for that).

Best Wife Ever

Sorry girls but apparently *I* am the best wife ever. The husband who never raves over my food, raved over a very simple breakfast on the weekend! I made up this recipe and if I do say so myself these are mighty fine! We loved them! I'm calling them Breakfast Pizzas. Do you want to be the best wife ever? If so, follow instructions below...



Breakfast Pizza
tortillas
eggs
shaved ham
grated cheese

The secret is to cook these babies in an electric frypan with the lid on. The frypan makes the tortillas lovely and crisp and popping the lid on the frypan traps the heat so the egg cooks and the cheese melts.

Are you ready?

Spray the frypan with cooking spray and place a tortilla in the bottom. Break an egg on top and use a fork to pierce the yolk and gently swirl it around to cover the tortilla. Add a few pieces of chopped ham and some grated cheese. Put the lid on and leave to cook until the cheese melts. The egg may be slightly undercooked but that's the way we like it. Of course if you like your eggs thoroughly cooked just cook until you're happy with it.

Here are some pizzas part way thru cooking. I can fit two in my frypan. Tassy and I had one each and Dave ate two, so I did them in two batches.