FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD

EASTER PARTY

Easter is almost here again! Easter eggs have been in the shops for months and Hot X Buns are just tempting me with their smell. Mmmmmm Hot X Buns..... So I thought I would share with you a little party I put together for Miss A and her cousins!

We started off with the hunt. I made little baskets for everyone and cut out little bunny prints with clues on them. The kids found a little treat at every stop, like bunny poop = mini marshmellows, chocolate bunnies and other little treats! I will se






FOOD!!!!!

Aunty Mandy makes thee best donuts! Always a hit at parties! Mmmm, I could easily eat one or two of these right now! Maybe even more! They are so scrummy! 
My fave thing to make is cupcakes! And I love Paper Eskimo cupcake cups, found at Stevens. I will post where I found the printables, as soon as I found the site!
We also had white and pink mini meringues, fruit puffs, fruit sticks, juice, fruit pieces, easter-shaped bikkies and chocolate milk!!!













KIDS PARTIES

I love making party food and having little parties for my girl! In 3 & 1/2 months, my big girl will turn 5(eek! school girl!) and we will celebrate Master K's first birthday! So now is about the time I start trawling through ideas for parties. Girls are so much easier to cater and create for, well, not easier because there's so much choice out there, I guess much more fun! Boys, well.... Pirates or transformers or cars! But really, Master K is only 1, and it's more about celebrating his first year and also thanking the people that have had a helping hand in his first year.
Anyway, I thought I would share Miss As 4th birthday. She LOVES Rainbows! So Oma (my mum, who had come up from Wellington) set about hanging colourful streamers and balloons in the lounge...
This is the best pic I have of the dance hall/our lounge.
These are Miss As cousins, they had a great time shuffelin, shuffelin!
The pi`ece de resistance was the birthday cake! I found a buttercake recipe (can't remember which one, maybe Donna Hay??), seperated into 8 bowls, mixing up the different colours and cooking a couple at a time in springform tins. Made a tonne of buttercream icing for in between the layers and around the cake. I did try to squash sprinkles on to the side but gave that up, and just decorated the top with pebbles! It has skewers through it to keep it from toppling over.



Master K was 5 days old and some may have thought I was nuts attempting to make it but I had it set in my mind that this is the cake my big girl was going to have, plus it really wasn't that hard, Mum was here to help out but Master K just slept. And slept. And slept.

Blowing the candles out with Oma

Cake cutting with the help of Aunty M and Cuzzy Noah
(can you see the rainbow to the right? I had a long canvas
lying around so painted a rainbow along it, now hanging
above Miss As bed)








Mumma loves being in the kitchen, whether it be baking or cooking. I love making people happy with food, saying thank you with food or food as a gift. Most of the time I can do it within the budget, sometimes I like to splash out on special ingredients.
I have some awesome cookbooks with food that looks amazing and is mostly very simple! Annabel Langbein's Freerange Cook is fab! And I have recently become obsessed with Donna Hay, she loves to keep things, Fresh, Fast and Simple! I sit down with a coffee and drool over the recipes in her books, even her magazines are inspiring!
My challenge this year is to recreate the amazing meals in these books and also from my Pinterest boards too!
Here are a few of the things I have made so far this year...

PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES
wheat free!!!


MINI CHOCOLATE ECLAIRS
Mmmm Nom Nom

EASY PEASY CHEESECAKE
My Hunys Birthday Cake


PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES 
Recipe from Healthy Food Guide

This recipe is so simple even the kids can do this!

1 cup crunchy peanut butter (for a healthier version use low fat, salt free kind)
1 egg
3/4 c brown sugar
1/2 t vanilla essence
1/2 t baking soda
1 c dark chocolate drops

Preheat oven to 180C and line two baking trays with baking paper.
Mix all the ingredients together until well combined.
Roll teaspoonful of dough into balls and place on baking trays, no need to flatten here.
Pop in oven for 10-12 minutes.
Leave to cool on bench, away from sneaky little hands!

See! Easy!


SCONES!!!!

Oh my golly gosh! Today I came home from work to find my SIL had not only had my two mischeifs for the day, with her 3 kiddiwinx, but had also made thee most yummy pinwheel scones filled with cream cheese and caramelised onion!!! Heavens!

Mandy's Caramelised Onion and Cream Cheese Pinwheels!
I have been trying out new scone recipes because they are just never how I want them to turn out, SIL googled the Edmonds recipe, which has been lost from my well used copy of the Edmonds Cookbook. (For those non-kiwis, this is an essential in every household! Either you have one or you grew up with one in your house!) So here is the Edmonds recipe. Adapt it to how ever you may like it at the time!



Best Ever Scones


Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 15 minutes
3 cups Edmonds standard plain flour
6 teaspoons Edmonds baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
75g butter
1 - 1½ cups milk, approximately
extra milk for glazing

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 220oC.  Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.  Cut butter in until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
2. Add 1 cup milk and mix quickly with a knife to a soft dough, adding more milk if needed. Knead a few times.
3. Lightly dust an oven tray with flour.  Press scone mix out on floured bench or tray, cut into 12 even-sized pieces.  Place on oven tray, brush tops with milk and place in top half of oven to bake

4. Bake scones for about 10 minutes or until golden brown.  Once golden brown with crisp crusts, remove from the oven and allow to cool. Cooling on a rack will give you crisp crusts, while covering them with a clean tea towel will give a soft scone.    






GIANT DOUBLE CHOC COOKIE



Oh Me Oh My! Look what I found on Pinterest!!! I absolutely MUST give these babies ago!






Yield: 12 very large cookies
Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cubed
1¼ cup sugar
2 large eggs
½ cup dark cocoa powder
2¼ cups all-purpose flour
¼ tsp. coarse salt
1 tsp. baking powder
2½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350˚ F.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.  In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter and sugar.  Beat together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes.  Blend in the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl as needed.  Mix in the cocoa powder until well blended.  Add the flour, salt and baking powder to the bowl and mix on low speed just until incorporated.  Fold in the chocolate chips with a spatula.  Transfer the dough to a work surface and knead briefly by hand to be sure the ingredients are well combined.
Divide the dough into 4 ounce portions (or divide into 12 equal pieces).  Roll each portion of dough into a ball and flatten just slightly into a disc.  Place on the prepared baking sheets, a few inches apart.  Bake 16-20 minutes.  Let cool on the baking sheets 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

P.S 1 stick of butter is 125g.

Thanks Annies Eats! I better stop googling at your other recipes before I put on weight just browsing your site. I do have a thing for White Chocolate too, so this recipe may also need trying out too, Chewy Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies


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