Ain’t no party like a Star Wars party (Episode I)

(Wow – it HAS been a long time between blogs – apologies. Full time work (plus a study course for a few months) AND an awesome hubby who cooks most of my meals, doesn’t leave much time to blog and space for inspiration! But stay tuned, ".....there is another")

 I’m always a fan of a themed party; whether its Yule (see here and here), Christmas, or age appropriate birthday themes. Thus, I always have sleepless nights get excited when I have a kids birthday party coming up. Son 2’s birthday was in October, so I started dropping hints early September about what type of theme he would like (It's always a delicate dance between what HE wants and what I think I can work with). His first suggestion was Jurassic World, which had me envisioning lots of fossil and dinosaur related treats (which I had seen around the Interweb). Not a bad start, BUT with the new Star Wars movie (Episode VII:The Force Awakens) coming out a few months later (and us being a house of huge Star Wars fans), I easily steered him in that direction.

 We have always been fans of Star Wars. Husband and I have had several occasions where we watched the original trilogy back to back (one time with special blue colored milk). We went and saw all of the remastered movies when they came out, as well as all of the prequels on opening night. We have shelves of books, boxes of toys, cups and plates,  and even had a large film poster dominating our lounge room for many years. With the newer cartoons of the last few years, I had done a previous Star Wars:The Clone Wars party for Son 1.  We had that party in a park, which did impact on my creativity as I had to be able to transport everything there and back. I was able to have a few Star Wars touches (like lightsaber breadsticks, and we made Stormtrooper masks), but not the whole shebang like I would have with a party at home.

 Now was my chance.

 As with most themed parties I throw, it becomes more about what I DON'T end up making than what I do. With Pintrest and many many Star Wars fans on the internet, there are A LOT of party ideas around! After my Minecraft party (....which I didn't actually blog about), Son 2 liked the idea of cool food labels, so it was also what I could get a good pun name for. 

I did see some great labels online, but some of them made NO sense....

 Han Burgers?? **

  

 No – much more sensible to do Han SOLO! And his friend, Luke Sky-Water!

Printed labels to the rescue

 (In their defense, Americans don’t have Solo as a drink. Hooray for us)

 I did my breadstick lightsabers again - small pieces of aluminium foil wrapped around grissini-style breadsticks. (I even still had the on-off switch colored stickers I had used from Son 1’s party; I kept them “just in case”. Because that's what I do).

   We also had A.T-C.H.I.P.S and Death Star Bites – not very pun-worthy but it was then best I could come up with for potato chips and cheezels (two party staples)!

 Another party staple is fairy bread, which has made it into several parties by way of cookie cutters to cut the bread. Luckily for me, my brother (who lives in Canada) had sent me some Star Wars sandwich cutters (as well as some pancake moulds – if only I could have incorporated them!).

 So that made it easy to have Galaxy bread (as in “… a galaxy far, far away).

TIE fighters on the left, Millennium Falcons on the right 

 For hot food, we had mini Hutt Dogs (straight from Pintrest) and X-wing bites. 

 The X-Wing bites came from trying to think of something to do with chicken nuggets (One of Son 2's favorite foods)! I ended up using chicken fingers (rather than nuggets), and joining them in an X-shape with toothpicks: very low tech but very well received.

 I also made a batch of Wookie cookies (thanks to Ro for the idea). I used a slightly different recipe (its quite tricky to find "tofffee bits"); the Neiman-Marcus oatmeal cookie recipe (I didn't blend the oats to give them more of a textured look). I also attempted to make elongated cookies (more Chewbacca-esque shape) than Ro's round ones; but as you can see, they did that anyway as I didn't space them our enough on the tray (seriously, I was not going to dirty another tray for ONE cookie!). The most misshapen ones were the "quality control" cookies.

Looking more like Adipose from Doctor Who rather than a warrior from Kashyyyk. But still yum.

I also did a a variation on the s’mores that I had been making.

 I had seen a few variations on TIE fighter snacks on Pintrest – usually with cheese biscuits and a piece of cheese in between

Thankyou random Star Wars fan

But by this stage of planning I needed a few more sweet things, so decided to make my own s’mores TIE cookies!   A batch of chocolate cookies cut in a hexagon (very hard to find a hexagonal cookie cutter!), with a marshmallow in-between, held in place by melted chocolate. Yum!

Again with the too-closely spaced cookies! You'd think I'd have learnt....

TIE assembly line: cookies, chocolate, marshmallow, chocolate, cookie

 If I was making them again, I would make the biscuits a bit smaller, like this...

Thankyou other random Star Wars Fan

 (wait, is that peanut butter they've used to stick them together?? Yum!!!)
 I was trying to do them to scale (yes, I did get out a TIE fighter toy and measure it. Beacause that's what I do), but they ended up being about 7cm long which made them quite ungainly to stick together and store. Delicious, just awkward, and the cookie-to-marhsmallow ratio was all wrong.)

  And to offset all that sugar, I also made FruiTIE fighters as well – (smaller) hexagons of melon with a grape or strawberry in between.

 AND in the just-because-its-cool category, I had marshmallow Storm trooper helmets. This one mainly came about because I had been suckered into buying a bag of Jumbo marshmallows from Costco. Which look great, but are quite difficult to toast over a fire, so I still had ¾ of a bag-full! This was fun as I could use the helmet design for the newest trooper from “The Force Awakens” as well as Clone Troopers. The trick with this was tracking down a black food pen, as well as drawing precisely on a spongy surface!

Not terribly drawn, just not super well drawn.

In easy Grab-and-Eat appropriately themed cups.

 And you can’t just eat at a party, you need activities (especially with boys!!). Husband has amassed quite a collection of Star Wars figures over the years, so they got pulled out. And being 7 year old boys, I knew that if I could incorporate shooting things, it would be a bigger hit. So I set up a Star Wars shooting gallery – Nerf guns aimed at different size figurines. We found that Jabba the Hutt was quite difficult to knock over due to his wide base. As was the super sized Qui Gon Jinn.

 Sticking with the idea of Use What You Have , I also organized Trooper Bowling (another Pintrest idea) – I printed out a few Stormtrooper masks and stuck them to the pins on our bowling set. The we could roll our “Death Star” bowling ball to it and see how many troopers got knocked over (and for the Fans out there – yes, I know the Stormtroopers were on the same side as the Death Star, but it worked better that way!).

Definitely too short to be Stormtroopers

 And finally some combat practice. A popular Star Wars party idea was to make your own lightsabers; some parties even made this as an activity. I knew from previous years that the kids didn’t want to MAKE things so much as PLAY with them, so I pre-made these. Super complicated: Step one – purchase pool noodle from shop (in appropriate colours – I had blue and green as I didn’t want any red Dark Side sabers). Step 2 – cut pool noodle in half to make a suitable blade for 7-year-olds. Step 3 – sticky tape “Lightsaber hilts” (printed out from the internet) around the base and voila!

Looks effective, super easy. My favorite

 But make sure to set some rules before you unleash them on each other, or it would be chaos (ours were No Hitting on the Head and only Two people fighting each other at a time).

Working up an appetite AND burning off sugar

 Last but not least, we had the cake. If I had the time I would have made something awesome like this  or even this!!! (I would have loved making the X-wing and TIE Fighters. The oodles and oodles of Death Star building bits not so much). But as I had the kids party as well as a family party in three days I decided to be sensible and go the cake topper route.

Family Party cake

Kids party Cake. Two toppers = better value postage

 Perfect.

 The kids had a ball, the food was a hit and all went home happy.

 The Force was indeed with us.


** I did eventually get this - it was a pun worthy twist on HAMburgers.....

Tra-Dish-onally

 Traditions – those time honoured rituals that can put a big smile on your face and make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, or conversely scowl and fume with obligation. They can have been around for thousands of years or just a nice recent habit that kept going. On the whole, I love A Tradition – something that you often get to do only once a year, which reminds you of the fun times you had doing it in previous years. Some are outdated, some don’t correspond to our hemisphere and some we’ve just adapted for the obscurest of reasons, and some are just, well, Tradition.

 It was Easter the weekend just passed; four days with lots of traditions (some more strictly adhered to than others)

Tradition: we catch up with friends (Mr and Mrs Frenchman) for dinner.

 This lovely tradition has been happening since the early Getting-to-Know-You days of our friendship; in fact I think it was our third or fourth dinner together that we caught up on Good Friday, because I happened to mention that I cooked homemade Hot CrossBuns. Which became that dinner’s dessert. And I think we've caught up every Easter since; 4 days off means 3 nights to catch up, plus there is usually a baby sitter or two available. So it was our turn to host this time. But what to serve?

  I do love the planning stage of dinners. You can start in one cuisine and end up totally in another. I usually start with a dish or a theme in mind and go from there, but this time I had Nothing. Nada. Not even a half inkling. Maybe is the working-full-time thing, where I am cooking less during the week plus being a Bit Worn Out, but I hadn’t the vaguest flash of inspiration. I thought maybe something pork? but that was only because I had seen a few recipes using it recently. Plus it was a white meat…

Tradition: don’t eat red meat on Good Friday.

 Ahhh That religious tradition. This was one I strictly adhered to throughout my childhood – you would always have fish fingers or I & J fish fillets for dinner on Good Friday. As I got older and realized where the tradition came from, I took great joy in eating hamburgers, or spaghetti bolognaise or steak on Good Friday. But this year, it seemed like a good source of inspiration (or madness).

 I would make Fish Tacos. Again.

 Whenever I have a recipe fail (read here if you need a reminder), I always feel I need to go back and Get It Right. Prove that I am the Domestic Goddess that I like to think that I am. So this one had been bugging me for a while, and if Good Friday wasn’t a good day to cook fish then I didn’t know when was!

 Right – so Tacos. Which makes me think of Mexican. And the Tapas Feast that wasn’t. I had the same dinner guests which meant they would have a chance to try the dishes they missed out on (except the pulled pork tacos), such as sherry glazed chorizo and chickpeas and patatas bravas. And now we had a Theme (sort of)

 Dessert is always tricky in Mexican meals, so I decided to ignore that and just cook something yummy. The latest Delicious Mag had a chocolate dessert sections so I had a short list of about 5 to choose from. But I ended up going with the Baked Doughnuts (with whiskey chocolate glaze). Possibly because all the proving and rising of the dough reminded me of hot cross buns, possibly because of the chocolate whiskey glaze (so Easter but so Adult), possibly because I figured I could make non-glazed ones for the kiddies to munch on. But mainly because I had this picture staring at me from benchtops for a week or two

You want to eat them, don't you?!?

 Plus, being doughnuts, this was a dessert that was more …..hol(e)y 

 And I was interested in making Baked doughnuts, as one of the reasons I am reluctant to make traditional doughnuts more often is the whole Frying in a Large Pot of Boiling Oil thing. Which I really should get over as I have about 4 or 5 yummy looking recipes to try.

 Right so mains and dessert sorted, just appetisers/nibbles to organise. Well, that was easy.

Tradition: we start our dinners with bubbles and cheese.

Champagne is a no-brainer. I think most of my celebrations and parties officially start when the cork is popped. Cheese is a Let’s-Be-French tradition that we have heartily adopted (though our hearts probably don’t appreciate too much d’aphinois).

So menu sorted, ingredients purchased and a day off to get it all sorted.

Tradition: I will forget at least one ingredient.

  So this time, it wasn’t a Forgetting, rather than an Assuming – that the ice cream we had in the freezer was vanilla, when in fact it was Cookies and Cream, which is quite yummy but might just be a bit too much chocolate for some. But where to buy ice cream on Good Friday when all the supermarkets are closed? I had hope my local petrol station/mini-supermarket would have some small tubs but alas they didn’t so we switched to cream for dessert. No biggie.

 The chickpeas were another story. Now in my defence they were on the shopping list, just put it down to shopping on the Thursday Before Good-Friday (when people at supermarkets are mental!!) by Mr DG (the artist formerly known as Hubby). Luckily I had two small tins in the cupboard for use in salads, so it just meant a smaller batch, but as it was a Side dish that was ok.

 Not sure what happened to the fresh coriander, I think that was me. But luckily the dried stuff worked ok.

Tradition: The new recipe I try will be almost perfect (but not quite).

 Common hostessing lore suggests you never cook a new recipe when throwing a dinner party. I use dinner parties to try out new recipes! Which as readers will know, usually turns out ok. But more often than not there is something that could be improved. The doughnuts were going along swimmingly, rising and proving. I didn’t have a 3.5cm cookie cutter for cutting out the holes so had to freehand it. The glaze was all made and I was preparing to dip them. However I don’t think I let the glaze cool quite enough as it was still a bit runny, which mean they weren’t as picture perfect as the cover. Still tasted quite yummy, if anything it meant there was more glaze to dip your doughnut in (which is never a bad thing).

 

"Mmmmmm ... double glazed.."

 So all things pre-prepared as much as possible, guests arrived,, champagne popped and cheese munched on while I cooked the dinner. Learning from my mistake, I had the frypan in med-LOW (not med-high) for cooking the fish and had plenty of olive oil in the Good Frypan (the one whose non-stick base hasn’t been scratched and worn away). And the tacos turned out great! My only Point of Improvement would be to not “flour” them until just before cooking (the recipe calls for throwing your pieces of fish into a mix of flour ad spices to coat them). The flour did become a bit like a paste on some pieces, which thankfully didn’t increase their sticking to the pan-ness.

 So with nicely cooked fish, some yummy salsa and sour cream, and tapas side dishes, out Mexican feast was ready to consume.

Front-back: Fish, tortillas, salsa, lettuce, sour cream, patatas bravas
(& sauce) and sherry glazed chickpeas

 Followed up by yummy doughnuts (for those that still had room), it marked another delicious Easter feast....

Not as pretty as the picture but still yum

... even if the glaze slid off and it was cream not ice cream on the side.

What traditions do you like to follow (or ignore)?

S'more and more

 Cooking is such a collaborative process. There are only so many ingredients to cook with (until they find the next super food that is OMG totes amazeballs and will, like, totally Save Your Life!!) and unless you get all finicky and molecular gastronomic (yes, it’s a word), only so many way to cook it. So you take a handed down recipe from Grandma and tweak it yourself, you substitute an ingredient for another you prefer and a new dish is born, you see an idea and think – Hmmm, I can do better than that. Which is my favourite part – seeing an idea in a magazine, on a Pintrest board or in a You Tube video; and making something cooler and (slightly) newer.

 Here are some of my recent creations, or Riffs on the Traditional.

Oreo Ice Cream Sandwiches

I’m not sure where my fascination for ice cream sandwiches came from, but I’m going to blame Ro from Nerdy Nummies, who had these super cute cheeseburgers ice cream sandwiches. And then she followed them up with Captain America ice cream sandwiches! (love the star on that one). And THEN I saw a Jamie Oliver recipe with a sponge like “bread” rather than biscuits. Plus we went to Fat Bob’s Burgers (which I highly recommend) and they had Pat and Stick’s IceCream sandwiches, which were small enough for Son 1 and 2 to have one each – hooray! So it just got  to a point where I felt I HAD to make them. Like when you see a new fashions trend that you think you’d NEVER wear but after seeing it over and over and over, you start to think, “yeah, I could totally pull off harem pants!”.

 I decided to stick with cookies for my “bread” and was going to go with a basic sugar cookie recipe like Ro, but while flicking through my recipe book I glanced at my Double Chocolate Cookies recipe. Hmmm (me thinks) – if I don’t add the white choc chips, that would make a great chocolate cookie recipe. And THEN it would be like an Oreo – chocolate biscuits with vanilla filling – winner!

 I made the cookies using a scone cutter to get a sensible size (which, for those of you playing along at home, is small enough to eat in one hand). Watching Ro’s two rather unsuccessful attempts to make the ice cream centres, I devised my own; allow your ice cream to soften and then spoon it into your cookie cutter (much like making a vege burger); pop these circles on a tray back in the freezer until serving time when you assemble said sandwiches- much less mess and fuss and wastage and faffing.

You will note that the scone cutter didn't make Perfect Circles of Ice Cream.
 Which I kind of like 

 And two big thumbs up from the 5 boys I served them to as well.

S’mores cookies.

 This one was more of a direct substitution. My Cupcake Addiction had a great video on Bake Sale Hacks, which had some really cute ideas. Now while I will probably never make a Twix Pie, I did like the idea of the S’mores cookies.

 S’mores have been another treat that has been kicking around my brain for a while; it’s the whole American thing as well as it taking me so long to figure out What they were, and I STILL haven’t worked out how to make them on a campfire! So these cookies seemed like a great idea for a burnt-finger-less S’more. And while I love choc chip cookies, I did think that the traditional Graham cracker would work better. But as we all know, we don’t HAVE them in Australia, to the vexation of many American ex-pats and those who have partaken of the s’mores while overseas. As luck would have it, Ro had done a video where she made s’mores cookies, as well as the marshmallow filling From Scratch! So I grabbed her recipe, adjusted it for Australian cooking (note – Pastry Flour is not SR Flour or Plain pasta flour; its  something we don’t have Down Under– I got a conversion that its plain flour with cornflour mixed in. OK? OK).

 So I made a heap of graham cracker circles; I was even going to put a smiley faces on them (with two choc chip eyes) and call them Smiley S’mores but thought perhaps too much chocolate? Maybe next time….

  When I added the chocolate and marshmallow to melt, I found that if I had my oven on Really Low it took forever (I blame my electric oven that takes Forever to heat up!) – so I bumped up the heat and kept an eye on them. I found that the freezer is indeed better than the fridge for “setting” them, after which you can then store them in a container until they are devoured by the 9 kids at your lunch-catch-up.

  So with the success if them, it was only a matter of time before I made the link to ….

S’mOreos Cookies

I think Son 1 and I where chatting about whether he could have a s’mores cookie or an Oreo as his “treat”, when I made the glorious link to a s’moreos: marshmallow/chocolate filling but with Chocolate biscuit rather than Graham Cracker. (who was saying something about too much chocolate??). So substituting the cookie recipe from my ice cream oreos worked a treat, and they looked good as that recipe makes quite a dark chocolate cookie, which meant you could see the milk chocolate inside.

 Again heartily munched on by one and all, definitely a Treat rather than Snack, but it gave me the satisfaction of (maybe) creating a new cookie (which will go straight to my Pintrest board)

 What new dishes or baking creations have you come up with?

Christmas Catch Up

 So we've taken down the decorations and recovered from celebrating the New Year; it seems like a goods time to look back on my Christmas culinary adventures for 2014.

 As regular readers would know, this year I made gingerbread trees to give out to friends/family/work colleagues/school teachers/comic book shop guys/the school crossing man. So I ended up making a LOT of gingerbread. Each batch made 64 Christmas tress, and I made 3 batches. That is a lot of mixing, rolling, cutting, baking, piping and bagging. Suffice to say, I don’t want to even think about gingerbread for a few months! Ironically I actually got to taste my first Christmas gingerbread at the weekend (the last two trees left over from Christmas day) and they still tasted good, almost two weeks after baking!

 One thing I did different this year was an attempt at Gluten Free (GF) gingerbread. With a friend who is coeliac and several gluten intolerant friends, I felt bad that they couldn't share in the spoils of my baking. Luckily, the only ingredient that contains gluten in my gingerbread recipe is plain flour (it uses bicarb soda as a raising agent), so I thought it was be a fairly easy substitution. I had some GF self-raising flour in the cupboard from a previous GF baking session which I usually wouldn’t substitute for plain flour. However, using my Science Brain, I remembered that it was the gluten in the flour that bound the baking together and helped it raise, so GF self raising flour was probably closer to non-GF plain flour than non-GF SR flour. All clear??

 And it worked quite well. I went more on Feel than exact measurements when adding the flour; GF flour has a rather different texture to non-GF so I probably had to add more to made the dough sticky enough to roll out. And I think the GF SR flour did make a difference, in that they were a bit more rounded, a bit softer, less crispy-biscuit like (next time I'll buy GF plain flour). But the main thing is they still tasted (and looked) like gingerbread, and my GF friends were very appreciative, even though I didn't get a chance to ice them.

(the darker ones were chocolate gingerbread)

 My next step is to try and make a refined-sugar free gingerbread (have I mentioned that a lot of my friends are very health/diet conscious with a lot of “…. Intolerant” kids???). I figure that I can substitute coconut sugar for brown sugar, and maple syrup for the golden syrup. This will probably affect the consistency and “stickiness” of the dough, so will probably mean a bit of fiddling with the (GF or not) flour. Next challenge will be going dairy free – should be a straight swap with nuttelex for butter which would hopefully cream up well with the sugar. I thought I had almost got everything sorted to finally make a batch for one of my friends (who is gluten, dairy, soy and refined sugar free), who then informed me that she doesn’t eat refined oils, which nuttelex is. *sigh*  My other option is then trying to cream coconut oil and coconut sugar together (and hope that it holds together), mix it with maple syrup and GF flour, and hopefully the addition of ginger will make it still taste vaguely like gingerbread.

 (Or maybe I can just resign myself to not making her gingerbread!)

 Regular readers will also know that I love a good theme, and Christmas is a great excuse to get Creative with Cooking. Last year it was my Rudolph pancakes, which this, year when I made them in early December, Son 2 proclaimed that he wasn't much of a fan of because he doesn't like bacon (Son 2 LOVES bacon, so he didn't see the issue). Nerdy Nummies Ro had made some Snowman pancakes (its the third 'treat') but that wasn't really suitable for an Australian Summer Christmas (but will be great if we go to the snow!). I then came across this awesome blog called The Joys of Boys (they had blog on making Star Wars snowflakes. So cool). They had Santa pancakes, which apart from having a HEAP of whipped cream (which I would think would be that nasty stuff from a can – what is it with Americans and a tonne of fake whipped cream?!?), they also had cherries for the hat. I have a girlfriend whose kids would adore this version (their dad was raised on a cherry farm and they are massive Fresh Fruit Fans), but mine, not so much. So what to use? Coincidentally at this time, one of my girlfriends (She with the French husband) was getting ready to go the Paris to celebrate Christmas with the Hubby’s family. For 5 weeks. And so was clearing out her freezer. As well as a packet of breadcrumbs (which my chickens loved) she also gave me a bag of 5 frozen eggs whites; which were leftover from an awesome chocolate Crème Brulee she had made the last time I went for dinner. Hmmmm – how fortuitous! So on Boxing day (as Christmas morning breakfast was taken up with the traditional croissants and fresh fruit breakfast), I made these Santa Pancakes...

...bacon for the hat, an egg-white omelette (badly) cut into shape for the beard and hat trimming, blueberry eyes and a strawberry nose. I got big smiles from both Sons who then carefully removed the fruit, swapped the bacon for egg and happily devoured them!

 My last piece of Christmas faffing was something that had been hovering around my Christmas Pintrest board for a while – the Christmas fruit tree. There are lots of really cool variations (when you have a spare 5 minutes, type “Christmas fruit tree” in the search engine and check them out). I did like the 3D version, but it didn't seem to be able to support a lot of fruit and as I was doing this for our family Christmas lunch of about 15 adults, I wanted to make sure there was bit available. Plus I knew I would be assembling it after I had hosted breakfast but before jumping in the car to drive to lunch. So it trying to keep things less stressed on Dec 25th, I settled for the 2D version. I had no grand plans as to how it would look (how very unlike me! I must have had my brain filled with other Christmas Organising), but ended up using cantaloupe (or rockmelon depending on where you were born) as “boughs”. Small bunches of grapes were great for greenery, strawberries and blueberries for a touch of colour and some watermelon star cutouts to make it look Christmassy.

 So I hope you all had a fun and festive Christmas with lots of yummy food (as I did) and I look forward to doing it all again in 11 months time

(but maybe not gingerbread this time…..)

Hot Chocolate

 I do love it when you work out a solution to a problem – especially when it doesn't involve paying someone/buying something/spending hours searching on the internet. It can be as simple as a system for taking washing off the line (Things that needs a hot iron off first so they are at the bottom of the basket and will be ironed last when the iron is the hottest), or for keeping you Tupperware drawer tidy (lids all in one spot people!). Thankfully this was a bit more of an interesting problem to solve – how to keep melted chocolate, well… melted.

 After my recent fondant fetish (click here and here and here!), I had started experimenting with melted chocolate as a decorating tool. It started with plans for Son 2’s Minecraft birthday party, which involved making black shapes for Creeper faces.

This is a Creeper. It explodes if you get too close. Just so you know

 While I was wandering the cake supplies shop, I noticed that black chocolate melts were much cheaper per kg than the black fondant. Interesting. PLUS chocolate could be piped in fine lines for smaller creeper faces (which I was planning to put on green rice krispie squares for taking to school) , where as it would be annoying to cut out very small slivers of fondant. AND it always looked so easy when my You Tube bloggers used it – what could possibly go wrong?

 Well.

 Melted chocolate assumes a liquid form. And the hotter it is, the more liquid it becomes, to the point of it oozing and not making pretty straight lines like you are supposed to. Not good when you are a perfectionist bordering on–OCD.

Not my finest work. They either look possessed, evil or stupid (still tasted yum though).

 Melted chocolate also has a tendency to set when it cools. And this doesn't always happen once it is piped out, it can also happen while it sits in your piping bag. Which leads to lumps of semi solid chocolate blocking up your piping nozzle, and it coming out unevenly. Which leads to much Fiddling and Fixing and Touch Ups and Swearing and Stress.

Like a Monet - good from a distance but a mess up close

 At first I thought it was just the colored chocolate, as it took quite a while to melt and didn't really mix together very well. But when I had the same problem using good ol’ Cadbury that I realised it was a Chocolate Issue.

My Groot Sundaes: more "messy" than "gnarled tree" appearance
(click here for what they were supposed to look like)

 So what to do?? I could use royal icing for all of my future decorating. It pipes nicely, colours well and you can keep it in the fridge between times.

(and a little goes a long way)

 But it doesn't taste as nice. And it’s not chocolate.

 So a solution had to be found. Especially with my plans to make gingerbread trees for my Christmas gifts this year.

LOTS of gingerbread trees!  (this was batch 1 of 3)

 At first I tried microwaving the chocolate intermittently, which worked well. I found I could ice and decorate four trees before it needed a minute in the microwave. But I had to unscrew the metal piping tip and scrape out the solidified chocolate each time. Annoying. And stop piping. More annoying.

 I did think about some sort of hot water bath to put the piping bag in, but I have found the no matter how carefully you seal the bag up or pop it in several plastic bags, water still gets in and ruins your chocolate. Not helpful

 There are cool cups (as in Cold, rather than Clever and Awesome) that you can put in the freezer to keep your drinks cool over summer, I just needed a Hot version .

 So I made one myself! Pour boiling water in a large cup, place a smaller cup inside and voila!

 (I shall add a picture here when I take one at this weekend's piping session)

Pop your piping bag in it in between sprinkled sanding sugar or carefully placing cachoos and you are ready to for your next set of trees. So simple, so cheap, so effective, so clever (well, I think so).

Oh! Christmas tree (s)

 So I hope that this has helped you to keep your chocolate hot and your piping pretty.

In other Kitchen News, I received a kitchen blowtorch at the weekend, so look forward to a creme brulee post in the future (which will hopefully not be entitled “What can go wrong with a Kitchen Blowtorch" or "Effective Ways to put out a Kitchen Fire")

Super Soups !

 Is there any meal that says “winter” like a soup? Sure, roasts are great in the cold months, but can also say “special occasion”. Some of the slow cooked meals (like braises and curries and stews (oh my!) can whisper “winter” but can also say “time efficient cook”. But mention a bowl of soup plus/minus a bit of bread and you can practically see the frost on the ground and feel the extra layers of clothing.

 I’ve had a good relationship with soups over the years, especially considering we didn’t get off to a good start. Not liking tomato as a child, I avoided tomato soup and so the only other option was packet chicken noodle soup (or Campbells’ Cream of Chicken if you were feeling extravagant. In fact I think a Can of Soup was one of the first meals I was allowed to make by myself). My mum found a recipe for Chinese Corn soup after we had it out at a restaurant, and this became one of my favorites because of the “stringy egg” ingredient (made by slowly pouring egg into the boiling soup while stirring). One of our favorite family culinary tales involved my dad and the first time he made Corn and Bacon chowder: when the recipe called for a “pinch” of cayenne pepper, he gave a few shakes over the pot because, well, it was a BIG pot of soup, and his grandfather had used cayenne on his dinner the way most people use salt. Needless to say we didn't eat much of that soup (the next cayenne-less batch was much more readily digested). An easy recipe for Mulligatawny soup meant that it became a mainstay for our regular mums-at-home lunches, before being superseded by the even-easier and super yummy Wonton Soup (boil your wontons in a bit of chicken stock, ginger and soy sauce, add bok choy and sprinkle with chopped spring onions). Even cup-a-soup have helped out over the years on the I-can’t-bear-to-take-a-sandwich-for-lunch days.

 I find that the cooking magazines and sections usually start throwing in a few soup receipes around March, so by this time of the year I have amassed a good collection of new ones to try. Regular readers will remember my recent soup related escapades, so at the risk of repeating myself, click here to read about Ribollita with Italian Meatballs and Chicken and Kale soup.

 The next soup that caught my eye was a Bacon and Red Lentil soup. I perked up at the description of A Cheat’s Version of (well, "similar in taste" to) Pea and Ham Soup , which I have never been a fan of, but Hubby is (and I’ve never quite got around to buying ham hocks and making if for him. The shame...). This one had lots of veges and lentils for protein, which is something that I do love about soup in that it can be a complete meal nutrition wise, depending on what you put in it (most have veges, so throw in a bit of protein and a bit of bread on the side and you’ve covered your main food groups!). It started with frying bacon, onion and garlic, which is a good start to any non-dessert recipe. It thickened up quite a bit after the lentils had cooked, and once it was blended it was one of those super thick “stoups” (stew-soup) that you could almost stand your spoon up in. And it was delicious. Probably helped along by the yummy smoky bacon I used, but it was so good I wanted to climb in the bowl. I will be making that one again before the winter is out!

 I then spied a Kumara and Peanut Butter Soup recipe on a fitness clothing website, to which I though “I have to try that. Peanut butter soup?!? Crazy!”. We are big fans of peanut butter in our house, so much that we buy the Skippy 3 Lb (1.36 kg) jars from Costco. I have made peanut butter cookies and brownies and used it in the odd Asian dish, but never soup. I will admit that I wasn't enthused when I had all the ingredients in for the “simmer until tender “ part: it had chunks of sweet potato, red capsicum and tomato floating in  a pale milky water-coconut milk broth. Not very aesthetically pleasing. Thanks goodness for the Blend Until Smooth stage, as it is one of the best soups I’ve tasted. The best way to describe it as a satay sauce soup (flavour wise) with the stodgy-fill-you-up-ness of a good minestrone. And super healthy too – it even used coconut oil! And even Hubby, who when I told him what I was making had done the Polite Decline (“… but I’ll have a taste”) came back and ate a whole bowl. And the Peanut Butter Soup label almost enticed Sons  1 & 2 to try it (almost).

Photo credit to Hubby - thanks!

 So I was going quite well with my soup choices. The next one on my list was Kumara and Red Lentil, which gave me pause. I had already made a soup with red lentils, and this recipe didn’t have bacon. Plus, I had used kumara as well, but this one didn’t have peanut butter. So I took pity on that Recipe, which probably would have been quite nice had we had it first, but would always suffer comparisons to The Others, and I decided not to make it. So it must be about time to go through my “Soups” section and make a few of the stars from previous years. Pasta e fagoli? Thai pumpkin? Or Mexican chicken nacho???

C is for Coconut, K is for Kale

 I have never been into fads. Fashion-wise, I have always been a jeans-t-shirt-classic-pieces kind of girl, rather than the latest So Hot Right Now!!! (but not in 5 minutes) disposable fashion: I have not, nor will I ever own a pair of harem pants.
 So it follows that it takes me a while to jump onto the latest foodie gimmick - whether its a cooking style (hello sous vide), an ingredient (well, chipotle and I are friends now) or superfood. I need to read about it in several different places, maybe see it used in a few recipes and perhaps have a friend chat about their experiences before I'll feel brave enough to buy some and give it a trial. Quinoa and I started this way: I had heard rumblings about this gluten-free-grain-that-wasn't-a-grain that everyone had difficulty pronouncing. I started very slowly by using it in a salad, before graduating to fritters and porridge (which I now LOVE). So it makes sense that it has taken me this long to get around to using kale.

Yes, I know, its the latest superfood!!! Its high in anti-oxidants and has heaps of vitamins and minerals and stuff!!! It's SO versatile!!! (maybe its the enthusiasm that actually put me off, I mean it looks like curly parsley on steroids, how can it be THAT amazing?) But finally, there were a flurry of recipes in a couple of Delicious magazines that were cook worthy, so I grabbed a bunch of kale and got into it.

"It doesn't LOOK that super..."

 The first recipe was a "Ribollita with Italian Meatballs", which is a Tuscan "stoup" - lots of veges in stock with some meatballs to give it some oomph. The original recipe used cavolo nero, but I thought one green was as good as another and so used kale. This is a good way to use kale (or other winter leafy green) as when you cook it in the stock, all the nutrients stay in the dish (said the intro to the recipe). And it certainly did taste like a big bowl of goodness - nice and thick and hearty for the middle of Melbourne winter.

 (no picture I'm sorry - we ate it too quickly)

 Continuing with the soup theme was a "Chicken and Kale soup", which apart from having shredded kale through the dish, also had the chicken cooked in coconut oil (more on that later) as well as almond meal stirred through. Which did make for an interesting consistency, but again tasted quite nice.

"Cloudy with a chance of Kale"

 Probably not as hearty as the ribollita, but then it had about half of the ingredients. But a nice way to use up the kale. We were now down to two thirds of a bunch. Have I mentioned yet that a little goes a long way??

 While the soup was simmering, I gave Kale Chips a try. This was something that I knew had given kale its popularity - a healthy substitute for potato chips!! And so quick and easy - just rub in a bit of olive oil and pop them in an oven, These were "Spicy Kale Chips" and so had garlic, cumin and chilli mixed in with the oil. Quite yummy, but I did have my oven a bit hot (or got distracted and left them in too long) so half of them were a super crisp dark purple color and not very appetizing looking (so again, no picture, though the chickens loved them).  I will try them again with more attention to the details.

 The weekend rolled around and I came down to Hubby making brekkie of scrambled eggs, which reminded me that there were lots of uses for kale in breakfast dishes (which is good as I still had just under half a bunch in my fridge). I was planning on doing kale in scrambled eggs, but realised that didn't have quite enough eggs to make it for everyone. So I switched to what I am christening "Green, Eggs and Ham" (well, bacon). Fry up a few rashers of bacon, then saute your shredded kale in the bacon fat (soooo healthy) and fry an egg.

"Healthy" fry up

 Pop it all on a piece of toast (with avocado or aioli or whatever) and voila!
 

I DO like these Green. Eggs and (Bacon)Ham

 So that has been my Kale adventures so far, and I still have about a quarter of a bunch left to use. Hmm - might have to google some more receipes.

 The next Superfood to enter my pantry is coconut oil. Again, I had been hearing about it here and there (It's great to cook with as it has a high smoke point!!! Its full of healthy fats!!!... and you can look up the rest, there are lots of very long lists), but it wasn't until I has some falafel that my no-dairy-gluten-soy-and-generally-super-healthy friend had cooked in coconut oil was I convinced to try it (it gave them a delicious slightly nutty taste). AND after another friend gave me a jar of oil to try (before I buy!... bought), I had to give it a go.
 First up was cooking our Sunday morning pancakes, which was a perfect use as it didn't get burnt (like butter) when I left in in the pan too long (to get juice, cut up a pancake for Son 2, more syrup for Son 1...), and the subtle coconut flavour went really well with the maple syrup. I then used it as the "vegetable oil" in my standard muffin recipe (instead of the sunflower oil I usually use), and threw in a handful of shredded coconut and before I knew it I had banana coconut muffins! Quite yum. and very moist too.

 And amidst all the reading about how awesome coconut oil is, I read that coconut milk also shares a lot of similar health benefits. Which is great as I love using it in thai food; it always makes curries and laksas taste so decadent. But they suggested using it to cook quinoa porridge (instead of the soy milk I had been using. I'm not lactose intolerant, I just don't like the taste of milk) - which I did. And it was Ah-mazing!! So yummy and nutty and creamy - it didn't taste like it should be that good for you but it was! I know some people will say "Fat is fat and you should watch your intake" but I am a fan of the Good Fat, which is why I always found it hard to stick to low-fat diets in my younger days. Now I try to limit refined sugar but happily munch on nuts and avocado and cheese and I can seem to stay on track diet-wise.

 So I am happy to add these new foods to my pantry and fridge and will keep an eye out for the next foodie fad to come sweeping our way. But I think I will be sidestepping the edible insects craze, no matter how much I hear about it!