Mushrooms

Growing in the garden - Eat or don't eat anyone??

I missed my birthday

How did that happen - my 2nd blogoversary got forgotten - the ticker no longer works, or is beyond my skills to fix..... so here is cake!
This is the most fabulous cake I have eaten for such a long time..... I have the recipe, in Turkish, which I will, translate, convert to metric and then try - it seems way too easy on first reading for such a great cake, it's creme caramel on a chocolate sponge, all cooked at the same time. The caramel soaks into the sponge.... I had a piece one day, and was dreaming all night of a piece the next day..... fortunately there was some left. mmmm did I say it was good??
My friends are bad, introducing me to something SO good!

Mutlu Paskalya

We went down to one of the chocolate makers on Saturday and the littles got to choose either an egg or a chicken - all the rabbits had gone. There really wasn't bloom on the chocolate, they just got seriously shaken on the way home. Interestingly, rather being sold by the item they were sold by weight.... half a kilo of chocolate divided by 3 littles..... boy child chose the black chocolate... they got lucky and the owner gave them all eggs as well, a hen size chocolate egg, but for free - yeahhay!

Paskalya

Easter is not celebrated here, but in the bakeries there is a special Easter bread called Paskalya - a kind of Brioche with finely ground walnuts on the top. There are lots of variations - we had a delicious one on Friday. One of our Turkish friends dropped one in from a 'famous' bakery. It was delicious and eaten way before I got the camera out so you'll have to have the link...... This is Binur's blog - a seriously good Turkish cooking blog. One of the few that I use for reference to figure out the detail of a dish.... she's good!

Happy Birthday E

A birthday party for N03 today, cake, crisps and sandwiches. Perfect for Monday lunch! The chap is 3 and the oldest in our 'baby group' the youngest will be 2 next week! he's also the only chap! not that he realises yet.... cake was good and similar to this one.

Excited about sardines

I don't think I am one of those folks who waxes on about how much better things are 'back in xxxx' - insert a country of your choice. But.... there is always a but.... I haven't figured out why I can't get good sardines in Turkey, perhaps it's time for a 'State of the Sardines survey', - or is that plain silly? This week, by chance, I got my hands on a FREE can of sardines thanks to the Philippine Embassy - oh they were good, being free they tasted even better. I mashed them up a bit and 'spread' them on toast (I ate them too quickly to photograph!) I love the illustration from the can, somehow it makes the humble sardine look like a whole salmon. They were good - did I say that?

Birthday Party

With 3 littles we go to a lot of birthday parties, this one a Russian/Turkish one - some great home made Russian and Turkish food, and Turkish 'entertainment' for the big people a very good Napoleon cake (this is a bizarre speciality I am developing - and enjoying the process too! - this one had the right balance of vanilla cream and pastry - not too sweet and not too dry!) For the little people, the birthday cake was from Pelit - it was truly amazing, the river was made from jelly - it was entirely edible except for the candles, fence and the large blue firework sticking out of the house's chimney that lasted all of the singing of 'Happy Birthday' - yes, we sang in English!

Pumpkin pie

These are the mini-pumpkin pies, they were good, made with rough-puff pastry as a base, they went quickly. The 2 large pies, well they got eaten before I remembered to photograph them. Yum...... The little cakes were made by the hostess for our Friday gathering. They were good too....

Pumpkin Pie

Turkish pumpkins have green skins, I recently got asked if we have orange or green skin pumpkins in England. Orange - usually. It's all the same inside. Turks candy pumpkin. I make soup, or risotto and for the first time in many, many moons, pumpkin pie. The littles asked for it (they must have heard about it from a book)
So, since today was (another) school holiday, we made pumpkin pie. I used fresh pumpkin of course and since there are no 'pie crusts' here, 500g of short crust pastry and some frozen rough puff for the mini ones.
It was delicious, a little too sweet, but that could have been a counting error, many cooks and all..... We made 24 small ones (fairy cake size) and a couple of big deep ones - a lot of mixture. I did take pictures, but the memory stick is in my camera, under my neighbours couch, where I hid it away from No3. The beginning of our Halloween social bonanza. I hope to retrieve it tomorrow, whilst similarly hoping that no other child has had it's mits on the afore mentioned camera......

Hot Indian Chutney

I managed to snaffle the recipe for this chutney from a friend of a friend who knew the 'secret' - oh it's good..... very good.....

900g (2lb) apples or quinces
600ml (1pt) vinegar
25g (1oz) garlic
125g (4oz) peeled ginger root
225g (8oz) sultanas
125g (4oz) chillies
15ml (1 tbsp) mustard seed
15ml (1tbsp) salt
375g (12oz) dark brown sugar (though I only had perhaps 200g left so topped up with white sugar)

Peel & slice apples/quinces and boil in vinegar until soft. Add the crushed garlic; crushed, chopped & bruised ginger; sultanas; chopped & seeded chillies; crushed mustard seeds; salt & sugar for about an hour and a half. Pot and cover. Makes around 1kg (2 1/2 lb)....

I slavishly followed the recipe - OH SO good...... I was going to give a jar to a friend - no more.....

I've had enough ......

...... of Quinces falling, smushing and getting attacked by the monster slugs that are in the garden. (note to self - take picture of monster slugs) With the 'able help' of No3, I picked the quinces, she arranged them in the basket. We got a reasonable basket full - the slugs have had more - if they are any good will be interesting to see, not being a quince connoisseur I plan on making Hot Indian Chutney with them.... tomorrow....

Happy Birthday Baby...

We celebrated No3's birthday today - this time I have free reign over the cake. I spied a lollipop garden cake on Martha - she adores butterflies, we make her say butterfly - because it's too cute, because she can't say it properly - 'bow-bow-bly' is what we get. I found some butterfly cutters and so used the beautiful MM fondant to make the base, cut the grass and butterflies from coloured MM fondant. I let the fondant set around the lollipop sticks overnight and put the sprinkles at the base..... easy.

T1 and T2's friends were back from various vacations as well as a dear friend +2 leaving, so we had the party a few days early and invited all the littles friends. 14 adults, 15 littles. Fun!!

I have a constant party favour dilemma, so this time I decided to make something useful... We often have to take 'Inside Shoes' places we go, I designed this one handle bag's size specifically for 5yr old inside shoes - it's just the right size to be held in the hand or over the shoulder - of course there were bubbles and a chocolate bar inside...

We had a Fun day.

Shortbread and Oreo-ish biscuits again

We made another batch of the Oreo-ish biscuits - this time I refrigerated them longer - hoping that they would roll - so that we could use the fairy cutter - no - wouldn't work.
SO...
I made a batch of shortbread - this was good with the other cutters we have - even the long necked dinosaur - but no - not with fairies/princess cutters - anyone any tips? it breaks at the neck area....

Smartie Biscuits

Nana brought over good English Smarties, so.... we made Smartie biscuits - the littles were knocked out by them - they are cool.....

Princess Oreo Cookies

I subscribed to Martha's cookie a day email - it's bad, because I want to make more biscuits than I am - I figure there are lots of 'weird' stuff put in commercial biscuits, a batch takes no time to make, and I only ever make them if I have the oven on for something else. This recipe came through and I had to make it - I love Oreos, with cold FRESH (not UHT) milk - ice cold, full fat milk - so I had to make them. Of course I didn't make the cream filling....

T1 got this princess cookie cutter from Nana, so it seemed a good opportunity. The mix doesn't stand up to being rolled out. So we made regular round biscuits and then pressed a star cutter lightly into the top. Made at noon, 4 went to a neighbour but the batch was gone before 7pm. They were good but missing the slightly 'burnt' taste of Oreos - and not as crunchy - but good biscuits. I did of course convert the recipe to metric.

Birthday Cakes

Birthday cakes are the subject of much discussion through out the year in our house - these have morphed between various ideas, finally coming to rest this evening at 8pm as a Spider (it should have been black - but food colouring was in short supply) and a butterfly - a pink and sliver butterfly like the tattoo from the packet of Cheetos..... thank goodness T1 changed it from the proposed giraffe. Spider boy, T2, was a killer whale, a dolphin and various other seaside accompaniments previously. A spider was WAY easier. I made up a double batch of the MM Fondant as per the other 'school' birthday cakes and we used some piped icing, Smarties and chocolate sticks for the spider and just food colouring and silver sugar balls for the butterfly. I'd made the chocolate sponge earlier in the day and there was a modest amount of butter cream. Nana was my able assistant for this endeavour - she is a prize winning cake maker who judges at her local village fete - she thought both the cake and MM fondant were delicious. It was the first time she'd encountered MM fondant and thought it hilarious to watch..... of course the ultimate judges were fast asleep waiting for their 'big' day!

So bad it's good or So good it's bad?

My mom has come to visit. She brought me chocolate - amongst other things. Being a self styled Lindt purist, I didn't expect to enjoy this 300g bar - I can safely say I probably ate 250g of it.... it's good - if you are passing through Schiphol Airport, then they sell it..... mmm....

Cookies

We spent this morning making cookies - the littles would not accept biscuits, as the cookie monster ate cookies - not owning this book and having the text randomly quoted is quite disturbing, not just sentences but huge chunks.

I discovered I have about 3 biscuit recipes, chocolate chip(right) and chocolate chip with nuts(left) had been requested so that is what we made. Martha came to the rescue, but I did to some serious sugar reduction, substitutions and additional nuts - the cookies we made I assume are quite different. They are however delicious - Trust in Martha! We have a play date tomorrow with the best biscuit maker I know - will wait for her opinion, I think they are great!

Let them eat cake

So whilst the cakes would never feature in Good housekeeping - must work on my fondant technique! haha! They went down a storm. T2 featuring in his own rocket and T1 told all the class that her Minnie's had eyes but mommy needed to pain on the mouths - which was of great concern to the teachers. The Fondant was delicious and totally edible - worth the effort. The M&M's/Smarties/Bonibons were there to hide the dodgy joins - but look quite good. I have a small piece of each cake left, which in true household birthday tradition will get eaten tomorrow morning for breakfast..... they'll bounce to school - these two cakes used over 2kg of sugar.....

MM Fondant

You want to do something that's fun - make fondant icing..... I would have preferred to buy it. I went to our local cake shop (who use it a lot) and asked if they would sell me some, the owner went into a lengthy speech about how difficult it is to make, and how she imports it from Holland.... but simply refused to sell me any - sending me to the end of the earth to look for some - but couldn't tell me where. She then suggested that she make me the cake.... and charge me several arms and legs for it..... back to the drawing board, or Internet!
I discovered marshmallow fondant... I'm sure I could get glycerin and can get gelatin -to use the traditional recipe - it seemed so unpredictable.... but this route seemed reliable - alas more expensive - 20YTL (US$13) for a 300g/12oz package of marshmallows!

You all got back on your seats now??
Then again how much does ready made fondant cost??

The fondant is beautiful - silky soft and dazzling white, smells yummy too - and tastes good, but what a performance to make it - only try this if you have another adult handy.... I think the littles were bemused to see me clarted up (sp) with icing sugar and glop.... 30 mins later I had over 3lb of fondant, enough for the 2 cakes I will make for their school birthdays (like the queen they will have an official and a real birthday this year - since their birthday is after school finishes) so the next step is to bake the cake, tomorrow, and get T1 to come up with a consistent request - T2's rocket is easy..... T1 has passed through the solar system (yes!) on to Minnie Mouse - not sure which is worse. Need the cakes on Thursday. She needs to decide (secretly hoping for Hello Kitty!)
No photos of the process, really it was too difficult to corral the kids and icing sugar, and clean my hands but I would thoroughly recommend making it (especially if you can pay regular prices for marshmallows!) and it leaves your hands beautifully soft..... then again hand cream is easier!