All too soon the school holidays have drawn to a close. As teachers we love school holidays. We've had some lovely family times, completed a couple of projects, and caught up with some of the friends we don't see during the busy school term. As per tradition we made tasty afternoon teas for our guests. This is my delicious Chocolate Mud Cake with Toffee Frosting. The cake is super easy to make and the toffee frosting makes a nice change from butter cream. It's a good keeper, so if like us you have multiple groups coming, one big cake will last 2 to 3 days and many hungry people.
I also made this popular favourite, Sticky Lemon Slice, as well as Panforte (recipe to be blogged soon).
These are a super Simple Sausage Roll recipe that are perfect for whipping up when time is short. The recipe is simple enough for the children to easily help with its making. We've made them a nice dainty size for little hands. They can be either refrigerated or frozen once assembled, then quickly cooked when required.
Simple Sausage Rolls
1 x 450g tube of sausage meat
1 small onion, finely sliced
1 peeled and grated carrot
1 egg
2 slices of bread - blitzed into crumbs
1 teaspoon salt
ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
3 sheets of ready rolled puff pastry
1 egg extra for glazing
Preheat the oven to 200deg. C. and line a baking sheet with baking paper.
In a large bowl combine the meat, diced onion, grated carrot, egg, bread crumbs, salt, pepper and cumin. Stir well to combine.
Cut each pastry sheet in half, spoon the sausage mixture evenly along the centre of each rectangle of pastry and smooth out.
Use a pastry brush and water to dampen one side of the pastry. Roll the pastry over the filling. The water will seal it together.
Beat the extra egg, and using the pastry brush again, glaze the tops of the sausage rolls.
Cut each rectangular into individual sausage rolls - each about 3cm long.
Place on the lined baking sheet and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown.
Leave the sausage rolls for a few minutes to cool a little before transferring to a serving platter.
It has been lovely to see all our friends and relations. Our Little Miss has been missing small company, and it's hard to believe that 6 years of motherhood has flashed by. Happy days xx
It has been a wonderful weekend for our family. Our darling little blossom turned five and we had a great party hosting all her fabulous little buddies.
Things were a little frantic on Sunday morning, and both us had been cooking for the best part of two days prior to the party. Little Miss got up really early with a mind full of party activities.
There is nothing better than sharing some cake with your best buddies.
I made a rosewater sour cream cake decorated with cream cheese frosting. I didn't take any tutorial photos, as time was too short!
Butterflies were the order of the day.
I made Profiteroles, Lemon slice, Chocolate Mud cup cakes, the Cookie Jar selection, Jellies with fruit and Quince cupcakes - I'll be blogging those soon. Mum made some Chocolate crackles, just like when we were children!
The man-of-the-house made all the savoury treats and cut the fruit selection.
Party Dancing and musical cushions time! We had a great time with all our friends. Thanks so much to you all for making this such a special day! School days here we come...
Our holiday Plunket group catch ups are an eagerly anticipated part of our social calendar. We try not to talk about it too much in advance because Little Miss 4 can't help herself but formulate elaborate plans about how she will entertain her friends and what we will serve them. This time around, having lacked small company over the holidays, we had to keep reminding her that it was not her birthday, so we were not to get too carried away with the activity planning.
Having recently dined at Harlequin Public House, LM4 was obsessed with the '10 minutes with the cookie jar' dessert, so we re-created it for our buddies - minus the stop watch of course. Here is a little exposé of what we served our Plunket buddies: the recipes are hyperlinked to the original blog posts.
The Cookie Jar, with Afghans, Shortbread and Chocolate Chip Cookies. LM4 was so excited about loading up the cookie jar.
Quite a lot of biscuit baking happening that morning.
Sticky Lemon Slice Its always a crowd favourite!
Passion fruit Cupcakes with Raspberry butter cream. To make the raspberry butter cream I just added 2 tablespoons of raspberry jam to the butter cream at the end of the mixing process.
Here is the Chocolate Chip Biscuit Recipe:
100g butter
75g sugar
150g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 175deg. C
Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Fold in the sifted flour and baking powder. Lastly fold in the chocolate chips. Form into biscuit shapes by either rolling into small balls and flattening or, as I have done, using a soup spoon to press the mixture into a biscuit shape. Place the biscuits onto a lined tray and bake for about 10 minutes. The biscuits will be soft until they cool, so best to leave them on the tray.
I'm not sure where the last (almost) 5 years has gone, but our little Plunket group has grown and flourished; little brothers and cousins have swelled the numbers, and now school days loom for our darling babies. Some of us have gone back to work and others stayed at home, but we are all united by the sharing of our journey into motherhood.
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