At the moment, I am not getting much opportunity to bake. I miss it. I need a school fundraiser or something!! Once a week, I bake something sweet for the children to have in their packed lunches or as a yummy treat when they come in from school.  I always want to have something in the house that I can offer to anyone who pops in. To have a tin with something in is what makes a kitchen homely I think. Normally I love experimenting with dairy free baking, but as I’m on the SSS 90 Day Plan at the moment (you can read about what I am up to here and here) I am going all out on baking with butter, cream and milk, so I can’t be tempted. This one is full of it! I LOVE caramel and I am of the opinion that Millionnaire’s Shortbread is just one of the best slices ever. This recipe adds some extra goodness with oats and coconut getting in the mix.  My theory is that although the …

At the moment I am on the Joe Wicks, aka The Body Coach, 90 Day SSS Plan.  I fancied a challenge and my body needs some care after all the neglect of repatriation and back surgery. The rest of my family are not on the programme so they still get treats. The trick for me is to make them with dairy. That way I won’t be tempted. Take these Rice Krispie bars for instance.  Made with a large Galaxy milk chocolate bar I had hanging around. Once that is in, there is no way I am going anywhere near them, even though they smell so pretty. That said, I have some ideas of what I am going to do when I finish the SSS Plan (Joe is an advocate of occasional treats, I’ve seen the cheesecakes his brother makes!) which I will share with you at the end. Ingredients 50g coconut oil (could be butter but this probably makes them a little healthier) 200g milk chocolate 100ml golden syrup 150g Rice Krispies A handful of …

The Louise Cake is a classic Kiwi tea time slice. I imagine that it’s been around for decades, because first of all it’s called Louise so it must date back to the Seventies at least. It doesn’t have any fancy ingredients, a simple treat that goes very well with a cup of tea and a yarn. It’s made up of three layers; “cakey” biscuit bottom, jam and coconut meringue topping. What I love about this, is that you can easily make it gluten and/or dairy free, it’s nut free too so you can pack it off in the children’s lunch boxes or donate it to a school cake sale.  Plus you can have fun with the middle layer; it could be any flavour jam, or lemon curd, caramel or if you can eat nuts, you could spread Nutella in there. Oh my gosh, I want to do that right now! Despite having three layers, it is quick and easy to make and it looks really pretty. I’ve used the recipe given by Natalie Oldfield in …

I don’t want to sound like one of those smug women who brags about how she cooks everything from scratch, knows the exact vitamin content of every meal she serves up and would just die if her child discovered Haribo. Mainly because I am not that woman. Frankly I think the love of Haribo is genetic, so my children don’t stand a chance. However I do like us to have a baseline healthy, balanced diet. I am genuinely fascinated by food and cooking, so it’s not too much bother for me to learn recipes, try out something new and explore what works for my family and what doesn’t. I’ve been enjoying making homemade pizzas for a few years now.  At first I did everything from scratch, even the tomato sauce but as I think it’s a pack of lies that strained tomatoes will ever reduce down to a thick sauce, I have learnt to cut some corners here and there. Making pizza dough is really easy and produces so much tastier, more satisfying pizzas. Unlike …

My children’s favourite biscuit is probably the Cookie Bear Hundreds and Thousands biscuits. I can’t remember what brand makes them over in the UK but these are the ones we prefer here in NZ.  They are a pretty simple biscuit and therefore just asking to be made at home. If I make them myself then I know what is in them and the children still get to eat gaudy coloured biscuits.  Everyone’s happy.  Except maybe not the Cookie Bear because he doesn’t make any profit this way. I did a test and these work just as well with Gluten Free flour so you can do a GF version if you need to.  Even more people are happy!  Well, still not the bear… This is taken from The Primrose Bakery Book by Martha Swift and Lisa Thomas. Ingredients: 85g unsalted butter, at room temperature 100g golden caster sugar 1 large egg 1 tsp vanilla extract 200g plain flour (can use 200g Gluten Free flour) 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt For the icing: 150g icing sugar 2-3 tbsp boiling …

If you like your biscuits or cookies crunchy and crisp then look away now because these aren’t those.  These are soft, doughy, melt in the mouth cookies and they are fabulous!  Their origins are found in ‘the hummingbird bakery’ cookbook, but I have altered them over time to become dairy free so I can eat as many as I like. It’s Sunday today and these are great to bake now because you can have them as a yummy  afternoon treat and then the rest will keep as packed lunch treasures for the children and the just-got-in-from-work-and-I-can’t-wait-the-five-minutes-it-takes-for-you-to-get-my-dinner-on-the-table hubby snack.  Oh and they are super good for the just-got-back-from-dropping-off-the-children-and-need-a-cup-of-tea-before-I-start-being-productive nibble. Ingredients 200g coconut oil (room temperature, soft) 300g brown sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon coconut extract (I figure if I’m using coconut oil I may as well go all-in on the flavour) 400 g plain flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda 225g dark chocolate, roughly chopped (obviously needs to be dairy free to keep this recipe DF) Recipe Preheat the oven to 170C and …

This is coming a day late because I wanted to do a blog on food and I made this for friends who were coming over for dinner.  By the time they left it was too late for blogging so I am doing two today, this is the one I owe for Saturday. I’m experimenting a lot with ‘free-from’ baking at the moment.  I’ve been dairy free for a while now and I have so many friends who are gluten free (it seems pretty prolific over here but perhaps it’s become fashionable in the UK since we left?).  Whenever we talk about going out for treats or even just a nice coffee in a local cafe our biggest complaint is that there’s nothing interesting for those of us who have sensitive tummies.  You might see a gluten free brownie or friand but there’s almost never anything for a dairy free girl like myself.  I love a challenge and I love baking so I’m really enjoying trying to create cakes and bakes that are super tasty and …

The Sachertorte was another technical challenge on Series Two of GBBO and trying this out timed well with me needing to bake a cake for a friend who was moving into his new home, on his birthday.  I thought this would be homely but special. It needed to be gluten free so I exchanged the normal flour for a gluten free version.  As it’s a dense cake using almond meal already I didn’t think it would make any difference.  I’m pretty sure it didn’t.  I think the main thing I was hoping for was a smooth, flat top on the cake as in the actual technical challenge all the bakers got a ridge round the outside because the cake sunk in the middle and it meant when the ganache went on it looked lumpy. There were some little air bubbles and a few cracks but all in all a nice finish I thought. Now for the ganache.  Heat up cream and when you can see steam, take it off the heat and stir in the …

If you read my blog or know me even only slightly you will know that I have a growing love of baking.  And more specifically I love Great British Bake Off.  Confession: I actually have a relatively serious intension of applying to go on the show sometime in the future. So I figure it won’t harm to get my self “game ready” for that moment when the notion turns into  a completed application form.  And so begins my Great British Bake Off training, which I plan to document on my blog and will entitle as above so if you are not in the slightest bit interest in this subject matter you can click on by… There are a few parts to my training.  One simple thing I have pledged to do is try out hard recipes, ones that I would normally not bother with, like macarons, pastries, little fiddly things.  And every week I will bake at least one type of bread. This week I watched the Masterclasses of Series Two.  This has Mary Berry and Paul …

You know when you come in from picking up the children from school, they are grumpy, the laundry needs sorting, the house is a mess, your husband is coming in late from work and you want to cook something quick for dinner that there’s a good chance your children will eat?  When this is the situation for me, I turn to Italian recipes and Spaghetti Bolognese is definitely my go-to 20 minute recipe.  Carbonara would be just as quick but I’m trying to be dairy free, I can make a tasty dairy free lasagne but it’s not fast enough… Jamie Oliver is a personal hero of mine and I have his 30 minute recipe book, I’ve yet to get the 15 minute one but I’ve seen a few episodes of that series.  I think the concept is fab and I’m grateful he’s put time and thought to come up with the recipes.  However I do think he forgets the washing up and the fact that you have to grab things you need, wait for things …