Love Sweet Love

At long last, after a year of neglect, it's time to get some love back and some regular posts on this blog.

If you’re still reading, then a sincere thank you and if you’re new here, thanks for stopping by. 2013 was a year when our energies were mainly focussed on welcoming our second beautiful daughter to our family and this world and trying to find some balance with Chris's main job involving a lot of time away. We also started a new chapter of our food adventure creating premium ready meals for your convenience (more on that soon) and big things are on the horizon for 2014, so stick with us. Please, please leave a comment below too as it's always great to know you're there and far more personal and pleasing than looking at google stats!

It's not exactly the beginning of the new year anymore but there's still time to committ to something new for the year ahead and one of the things I added to my personal to do list was to contine to bake regualrly with E. So far we've made post-Christmas gingerbread and these Valentine's Sugar Cookies.

You can find the original recipe here. They're very sweet and delicious. If you're baking with a toddler, I'd recommend pre-baking a batch as E wasn't keen to wait for the dough to chill (30 minutes is enough) or for the baked biscuits to cool pre-icing. Thankfully baking takes just 6-8 minutes and I managed to hold her attention for that. Phew. And, A slept just long enough for us to scoff a cookie or two gleefully...

You will need:

450g flour

225g softened butter

225g caster sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla paste

1 tsp baking powder

A splash of water

A pinch of salt

Then follow this easy step by step:

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

 

Add the egg, water...

 

...and vanilla.

 

Mix until combined.

 

Add the flour, baking powder and salt.

Combine to a dough. Divide into two batches, wrap each in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes- 1 hour. 30 minutes is enough (with or without an impatient toddler). Pre heat the oven to 190'C while the dough chills. Grease baking trays and gather your cutters. Flour a work surface.

Roll out dough to about 5mm thick or as desired. Cut into hearts and bake for 6-8 minutes until the edges are just beginning to brown.

Allow cookies to cool for at least five minutes (while your toddler attempts to eat as many cookies as possible as you are slightly disabled mixing food colouring into icing sugar). Make a simple icing and decorate.

Sprinkle randomly.

 

Eat hurriedly with a smile.

I hope this is the only kind of broken heart she ever knows. Happy Valentine's Day!

A golden Christening celebration.

Even by our standards, last week was an epic one with a near perfect conclusion. A very special gathering to celebrate our beautiful baby daughter's life and the love and light she brings. There were Autumn touches, helping hands and a warming, seasonal menu. We are so blessed.

 

 

 

Divine Double Chocolate Brownies

These brownies were a gift for special friends who had just welcomed an adorable new daughter. They also represented a challenge, letting E loose with cocoa (and coincidentally a white t-shirt). The friends/soon to be brownie recipients had previously explained that whenever they bake with their own wonderful toddler, not only does the recipe yield far fewer biscuits than it should because of tasting but the enitre kitchen and family are quite literally, caked. They even asked how we managed to stay clean to which I jokingly replied with my easy "how to bake clean with a toddler":

1. Don't make anything with chocolate/cocoa except when you fancy a challenge. Go lemon sponge, oat and raisin cookies, flapjacks, light coloured ingredients.

2. Dress toddler in colour similar to that of whatever you're baking (of course this is only ever a happy or unhappy accident...)

3. Focus the camera on the bowl, ingredients, kitchen, blur toddler  to disguise actual mess. 

4. Make smaller biscuits so as to deny the truth about how much the toddler ate/spilled/painted with.

6. Create a toddler who likes to be clean. See below where E, determined to have the cloth close by at all times rocks it as a ribbon in her hair!  I blame her Dad.

These brownies may be a challenge for messy toddlers but they are made to a very simple recipe found here to which we added a whole bar of chocolate in divine chunks for added goo and indulgence.

 Measure out the ingredients

Squish the butter

 Melt butter and sugar together

Measure out cocoa

 If in doubt use the whole lot

Add cocoa to the butter/sugar mixture

Mix

Mess

 Next, add flour

One egg

 Two eggs

Three eggs

Four eggs

I'll just see what this feels like...

...or even better what it tastes like. 

Add the eggs

Uh-oh! Dirty hands

and a cheeky chocolatey face

 Add the chocolate chunks

And always have a cloth close by for cleaning up

 Give it a big stir

Have a final obligatory taste test

and bake until slightly wobbly, first cracks appear. Cool, slice, package and post to a friend in need.