Australia Day Pavlova

I love the blank white canvas of a pavlova, perfect for creating glorious edible flights of fancy.  I topped this billowing cloud with sweet summer peaches, a drizzle of fresh passionfruit, a generous scattering of edible flowers and tiny ruby red strawberries straight from the garden.  The styling seems a bit off for Australia day.  It should probably have been covered with crumbled tim tams and studded with little paper Aussie flags but I couldn't resist a more whimsical approach.  If it was up to me, edible flowers would be scattered on every meal!

In which I randomly resume blogging...

I'm resisting the urge to be completely overtaken by Christmas panic!  This end of the year seems to be an endless whirlwind of christmas parties, school breakups, concerts, Kris Kringles, and catch-ups with friends.  Any one of these events taken individually would be great fun but the ceaseless back to back celebrating is making my eye twitch.  I'm starting to wish I could hide behind the Christmas tree in my pyjamas, with a copy of Great Expectations until the parties are all over!!  I haven't even started my Christmas shopping and it's less than a week until we celebrate with my side of the family.  But instead of spiralling into complete scrooge-like behaviour, I'm popping on the Christmas carols, channelling Mary and trying to emanate an aura of calm ("It's totally fine Joseph, don't worry about the manure.  I'll just birth our baby on this hay bale and he can sleep in the feed trough.")

In pursuit of this calm, today we headed to a local berry farm to pick a mountain of juicy Logan, Silvan, Young and Boysen berries.  We'll package up our goodies for teacher gifts.  It was great to avoid the shops, support a local family and get the kids involved in the gift gathering.

While we're on a berry theme I thought I'd sneak in some pics of the berry tarts I made for last night's CFA christmas bash… because yum!

School girl...

Minty had her first day of school today.  You would never guess from these photos but she had a bout of school refusal this morning!  I thought my only worry would be what to put in her lunch box but instead I had to negotiate the mine field of her emotional freak out!  She woke up with a phantom 'sore neck' and announced that she was excited about school, but sadly she thought because of her neck she'd have to skip today… and tomorrow… and probably all the days after that!!  Eventually we talked her back from the ledge and loaded our little deer in the headlights off to school.  Hopefully tomorrow will go a bit more smoothly!

In case there are any other first time school mum's obsessing over lunch box food as the last opportunity for control, here is a recipe for a super easy healthy cake (dairy free, egg free, sugar free)….

500g mixed dried fruit

2 cups fruit juice (I used orange and lime juice but whatever you have is fine)

2 cups SR flour (or 2 cups plain + 4tsp baking powder)

Soak the fruit in the juice overnight.

Mix in the flour.

Pour into a lined tin and bake for 50mins at 180C.

Super easy and surprisingly yummy.  Thanks Manu for the recipe!

Sugar free first birthday cake

My precious little nephew turned one on the weekend.  All the extended family went back to the winery where we first celebrated his birth for a weekend of fun.

At the request of his parents, I made a sugar free, honey free, sweetener free, super healthy smash cake.  Apparently this is what all the cool hipster kids are having these days.  Sweet stuff is so 2008.

I used this recipe for carrot and date cake and then frosted it using plain greek yoghurt and decorated it with frozen blackberries, borage and coriander flowers and a light sprinkling of edible gold stars for a bit of whimsy.  The birthday boy seemed to love it but I'm not going to lie, there weren't too many takers from the hardened sugar addicts amongst us!!

Happy Birthday little M!

What You Will... Twelfth Night celebrations

I just had to sneak in some quick photos of twelfth night.  Whenever I tell people we celebrate twelfth night they look at me blankly, as if we're celebrating some completely arbitrary day of the year… about as arbitrary as celebrating the 25th or 31st day of December, I say.  Twelfth night has been celebrated for centuries and what other holiday can boast a Shakespeare play written to be performed as part of the festivities?  (Incidentally, wouldn't Minty make a perfect Viola with her pixie hair cut?)

What I love most about twelfth night is the cake, with little treasures hidden inside to give you luck and decide your role for the day.  I made a traditional English style twelfth night cake this year.  Hidden inside the cake there was a...

-dried pea (or chickpea as was the case this year) = King

-dried bortolli bean = Queen

-dried cannelloni bean = Princess (a second 'princess' bean isn't really traditional but I wanted to increase the odds of finding something!)

-clove = villain

-twig = fool  (I used a twig from a rosemary plant so it wouldn't be too scary!)

-rag = the tart

Minty desperately wanted to be the fool this year and Turi wanted to be the villain, which I found amusing since I had always considered these to be the booby prizes! Alas it wasn't to be, the Mr. was this year's villain and our neighbour won the fool.  Minty scored the pea and was crowned King.  Poor little Turi found nothing so we had to tell him the borage flowers on top were good luck when eaten!!

Here is my twelfth night cake recipe.  I've changed the recipe pretty substantially from it's original source so I won't include it here (note the strange use of creme de cacao in lieu of brandy because we'd run out - it actually tasted pretty good!)…

227g caster sugar

227g butter (room temperature)

4 eggs

1/4 cup creme de cacao

220g plain flour

3/4 tspn all spice

100g glace cherries chopped

120g sultanas

3/4 cup blanched almonds chopped

1/4 cup chopped mixed peal

Preheat oven to 150C.  Line 8inch tin with baking paper.  Cream the butter and sugar.  Mix in lightly beaten eggs and creme de cacao.  Sift flour and spices together, then mix into the wet ingredients.  Fold through the fruit and nuts along with dried pea, bean etc for luck.  Pour into tin and bake for 2 hours, 45 mins, covering with foil after the first hour.

You can read about our cakes from previous years here (2012), and here (2011)

A very happy Halloween!

I wasn't really planning on celebrating halloween this year, but yesterday morning I was feeling festive so I threw together some last minute costumes for the kids and decorated the house.  I asked Minty what she would like to dress up as and she told me she'd like to be a vampire.

"Do you even know what a vampire is?" I asked.

"Well… I think it's just like a killing machine in a cape." She replied.  Great.  I'm glad she learnt something at pre-prep, thanks to the endless monster high dolls paraded at show and tell!

Minty was very enamoured with the idea of trick-or-treating.  I wasn't entirely sure whether it would be well received by our neighbours since halloween isn't really a bit deal here in Australia.  I tried to explain to Minty that many of the houses might not have a treat to give her so she decided she could give out treats to our neighbours instead.  I thought this was a great idea and much more neighbourly, so we baked some halloween cupcakes to give out.  Minty piped the icing herself.  She's getting pretty handy with a piping bag for a five year old!

Minty emerged from the first house wide eyed and said, "Something strange happened,  It was almost like they knew we were trick-or-treaters and they gave us a treat straight away!"  Their haul included some biscuits in a paper patty case from a tinned assortment, a home brand muesli bar ("I think these might have come from a shop!" Minty told me in wonderment as she proudly showed me this treat) and a $5 note.  Not bad really.

At bedtime Minty whispered to me, "Thanks for letting me trick-or-treat.  Tonight was the best night of my life."

First egg...

We've had our first eggs!  The one Minty is holding has a slightly wrinkled shell like a well worn leather handbag but the other two eggs laid this morning were perfect.  Thankfully the chickens have also settled down.  I've introduced them to a bigger enclosure which seems to have reduced the pecking order issues significantly.  They even lay down on the grass this afternoon to sunbathe!  I'm not entirely sure whether to find this behaviour endearing or alarming.  Their ungainly postures make the yard look a bit like a chicken hospice!

I made carrot and herb rolls for lunch, using our freshly laid eggs, and served warm with a generous slathering of butter.  Minty adored these but kept referring to them as parsnip rolls despite their obviously orange hue!

The garden is coming along slowly.  I suspect I lack the patience needed for real success though watching seedlings sprout is endlessly rewarding!

In which Betty makes a break for freedom and I make a pink dinosaur cake...

We have chickens!  Three Isa Browns.  I had my heart set on getting Araucanas and/or Marans so that I could have blue and chocolate brown eggs but in the end the price was prohibitive (Marans close to point of lay are about $100 each).  I decided that it was much more practical to start out with something cheap and productive while I learn the ropes!

So far I have to say that things haven't gone entirely smoothly!!  Within the first hour they had broken the ramp to the nesting box, tipped over their fancy new water dish three times and pulled out one of their perches.  Of course when I attempted to fix the ramp a chicken escaped.  I fairly promptly lured it back to the coop with pita bread and patted myself on the back for my superior chicken herding skills.  

However now this particular chicken, who for the purpose of this story we will call Betty, has had a taste of freedom she makes a dash for the door every time I open it.  By dusk the chickens had once again knocked over the ramp and were therefore unable to get into the roosting box for the night (although I must say I am a little suspicious that perhaps they merely knocked it over as part of an elaborate escape plan).  I opened the door to fix the ramp (again) and Betty got out and rushed across into the cow paddock.  This time she was nowhere near as easy to recapture.  In the end I put on my gardening gloves, picked up the other two ladies (Anastasia and Chocolate Brownie), shoved them in the roosting box and locked the door.  I then ineffectually chased Betty around for what seemed an eternity and eventually she went back to the coop of her own accord just to show me who was boss.  Clearly I am going to have to work on my chicken handling skills if this relationship is going to work!

In other non chicken related news, we celebrated my niece's third birthday today.  I made her a three layer chocolate cake with subtle pink ombre marshmallow icing and edible gold stars sprinkled on top.  She asked for a 'dinosaur cake' but since I'm not a huge fan of shape cakes I just put a little triceratops on the cake plate.  Minty even made it a tiny party hat so it would be more festive!