on the monkey trail

kitchen and garden diaries

Monthly Archives: June 2012


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Lego Ninjago Rise of the Snakes Birthday cake; part one and part two

Birthday cakes need to be a bit special, involve lots of sweets and, at our place, be mainly based on the idea of chocolate overload. At the moment, Lego Ninjago is the Birthday boy’s current obsession. I’m not too good at cutting out shapes from sponge cake and icing with different colours. I’ve actually never purchased food colouring (although I expect there’s plenty in the smarties) it just looks a bit chemical when it’s sitting in it’s little bottle. Kind of like not minding eating a rabbit stew when it’s served up in an Italian trattoria but not wanting to buy a whole rabbit to cook myself I guess.

I find, the easiest way to incorporate the kids favourite thing in their birthday cake is to literally stick the toys on the cake with a side helping of sweets. Not as impressive as creating a cake ‘the the shape of’ but a lot less stress. Let’s face it , all the kids really want to do is pick the sweets off the top anyway!

For this cake you can use any kind of sponge. I tend to return to the birthday cake recipe of my childhood (or close to it) which came from The Dairy Cookbook. This one is just under a cup of butter creamed with just under a cup of sugar, 3 eggs, a cup and a half of self raising flour and 1/2 cup of cocoa with a splash of milk. Rather randomly it also had half a cup of prune puree because the outer cakes are gluten free almond, chocolate, prune and orange cakes so that the man of the house could be included in the festivities and I had some leftover prune puree. However, given the number of children who can be expected to lick the icing off and pick off the sweets it’s not exactly worth making a masterpiece of a sponge unless it is with the polishing off of the leftovers yourself in mind (which is indeed always at the back of my mind).

The icing is melted milk chocolate, a little spoon of yogurt, cocoa and icing sugar. Just because.

So, part one.. ‘Rise of the snakes’ Chocolate cake, chocolate icing, smarties, fruit jellies and an outer ring of chocolate , prune, orange and almond cakes (at home for birthday supper).

 

Part two; ‘Rise of the snakes’  Large chocolate cake with chocolate icing, smarties and fruit jellies (for the party…no gluten free on this one as we don’t have any gf guests coming and the man of the house will be too busy entertaining a bunch of 5 year olds to eat cake.. still have some leftover cupcakes for later)

 

 


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hello, goodbye

Since I shared this blog a few months ago it has been rather lovely and encouraging to see people are reading it. It is particularly fabulous to see people reading it from all over the place. 57 countries (I just counted), which makes me smile. I always say that living in Wellington sometimes feels like a strong gust of wind could blow you off the edge of the world, so it’s nice to know people are out there, connected a little bit, anchoring me down in some strange abstract way. This post is my way of saying  a big hello and welcome.

And the goodbye? It’s just temporary! I’m optimistically packing our summer gear and leaving the Welly winter for a month in sunny England. I hope I’ll be too busy catching up with family and friends, eating food I haven’t cooked and reading books that have been patiently waiting far too long to be opened to blog…. but things rarely go as I think they will and perhaps the lure of cooking and photographing a big fat chocolate cake will get the better of me.

Also, I’ve updated the ‘about’ page and I’ve finally joined twitter… you can follow me @themonkeytrail.


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anti-toast lunch scramble

Toast. Oh, I do love toast. My personal favourite is lashed with butter and then scraped with a little marmite (English marmite of course). The thing is, sometimes (often) I think I can just run on toast for hours on end. All the hours between breakfast and dinner. The drop offs, the pick ups, the playgroups, the meetings, the chores, the swim classes, the puzzles, the lego, the park.

Sometimes I feel invincible after a couple of slices of toast, but mostly I feel like I’m running on empty (which in turn makes me reach for the chocolate slab). A big protein bomb at lunchtime is actually more of an energy boost and so increasingly I’m trying to step away from the toaster and make myself a decent lunch that is still super quick and easy.

This scramble  is just eggs, spinach, a courgette, some leftover hot smoked salmon, turmeric, salt and pepper. There is no recipe, it’s just a couple of random green things and some salmon held together with eggs. You could make it a million different ways (maybe not a million but you get the idea). The point is,  it’s easy to be a tiny bit creative with what you have to hand and make lunch a little bit more fabulous (and filling). For some other ideas like this check out Helen’s post over at Barefoot and Soul on ‘breakfast fuel’ (which could just as easily read ‘lunch fuel’)


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hello darkness my old friend

A few weeks ago, I was feeling quite chipper and I wrote this post. It was definitely on the perkier side of normal for me, but it’s nice to spread some good vibes now and again. So it is with mixed feelings that I begin this post. I don’t want to burst any bubbles because I really believe in all that stuff. I do live by it, and it definitely does help me to cope with the chronic sleep deprivation that is my reality…most of the time.

But, some days, days when you are clinging on to the rope that you find yourself precariously hanging to, are days for some deep dark indulgences. Some days, you feel compelled to do exactly the reverse of what’s good for you. Some days, for the atheists amongst us, when prayer is not an option, then a strong hot coffee and a seriously large slab of chocolate are really your best bets to carry you from one breath to the next. And let’s just leave the word moderation out of this post shall we. There are days when moderation is a very fine thing, and days when we laugh in the face of moderation, and it’s the best laugh we’ve had all day.


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on books

I’ve started a new page ‘on books’. It seems to make sense to. I am after all one of life’s great book lovers. A copy of the page is below. Just the start of it….

on books

Books have always been one of the big loves in my life. Cook books are just a  part of that, but an important part. Here are some of my favourites. You won’t find any links to buy them online because I like to support independent bookshops. I fear for a future in which there is no place to browse real pages. Here in Wellington, our local bookshop is the fabulous Unity Books.

‘Ottolenghi’ 

It’s just a bit different and a great source of inspiration. If you haven’t discovered it yet (and I only did recently) then I’d recommend you pop into your nearest bookshop and seek it out.

Kitchen Diaries, Nigel Slater

I like everything that Nigel Slater has written and I like his Kitchen Diaries the best of all. He writes well, he cooks well, he makes me hanker for carefree days wandering between the cheesemonger and the fighmonger and the vegetable market to concoct something simple yet fabulous. Nigel, you have my heart on a plate.

Jamie Does…

Jamie is a pretty cool guy. A flavour seeker and frankly a bit of a revolutionary. His travel / cook books are a real treat. Thanks Jamie, but please spend a little more time at home for a while – four kids can be a bit of a handful.

Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon

I’m including this amongst my favourites because it’s played quite a significant role in how I think about nutrition recently, although I have a bit of a love / hate relationship with it. It is a truely interesting and eye opening book on many levels, but it’s also just a tad too earnest and frankly, at times, a little intimidating…and absolutely crying out for some photos. I think the world might be a touch healthier if every kitchen had a well thumbed copy of this book to hand, it’s just a shame it all has to be so serious.

 


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roast chicken, ginger and coconut curry and buttery, gingery, sweet sticky chicken sticks

If you are having a bit of a trying day then it is an excellent idea to get a chicken in the oven roasting. If for no other reason than the fact that the smell of roast chicken is extremely reassuring. It is a nourishing hug of a smell that allows you to potter around dealing with all manner of dramas, safe in the knowledge there will be something good to eat come the end of the day.

I wasn’t sure what the afternoon was going to bring yesterday, there were some pretty dicey moments in the day let me tell you. However, as it turned out there was enough of a a lull in the poxter fiesta to throw together a very quick roast chicken curry. This is not the stuff that masterchef dreams are made of. Just look at those great hacked up lumps of carrot. Neither is the photo very stylie or artfully lit.. but it tasted just fine, almost as good as the well deserved glass of wine that accompanied it.

Fresh chilli, garlic, lots of fresh grated ginger , turmeric, fried in coconut oil. Add roast chicken, carrots, celery, tin of chopped tomatoes and tin of coconut cream. Salt, pepper, simmer and add some baby spinach at the end.

As you know then I’m usually a big believer in adapting the adult meal for the kids .. however, I’m also of the opinion that when kiddos are poorly then you do your absolute best to make food special in a kid friendly special kind of way. My guys are usually pretty happy with some plain roast chicken but it’s  too common a meal to be world rocking stuff around here. So I put some of the roast chicken to one side to make some buttery, gingery, sweet chicken sticks. I make them by melting a good chunk of butter and into it grating some garlic, fresh ginger and palm sugar. The palm sugar is the secret ingredient. It gives the chicken a sticky sweetness. You toss the chicken chunks around in the pan until they get a brown, slightly caramalised coating. Then thread a couple of pieces onto bamboo sticks.

Of course another benefit of having a roast chicken on the go is that you get to make chicken stock. The stock was doubly useful today. Firstly to bulk up the leftover curry into a soup for lunch and then as a base for a quick risotto with hot smoked salmon and peas tonight.

All that from one bird. It’s kind of a miracle really, and the irony of the bird being a chicken is not lost on me.


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amidst the chaos of the day, dark chocolate, almond, ginger and pear cakes

Melt a few rows of dark, dark chocolate with some chunks of fresh ripe pear, a little grate of fresh ginger and 50g of butter. While it’s melting whisk 4 eggs with 1/2 cup raw organic sugar, 2 cups ground almonds, 1/2 cup of cocoa and 1 tsp of baking powder. Pour in the chocolate etc and beat it all together. Bake in muffin cases for about 15 minutes in a 180 oven.

Just because the kids are poorly, and work is frantic, and visitors have gone home, and sleep is hard to come by, doesn’t mean you need to go without your pud.


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favourite muffins for when you need to feel better

My usually ravenous four year old has almost no appetite at the moment. I guess swarms of angry looking pox marching across your face will do that. I baked his favourite muffins today to try and coax him into eating something. Happily it worked. How could it not?

100g melted butter beaten together with 1/2 cup of raw organic sugar and a large soup of natural yogurt. Then in with 2 eggs and 2 cups of flour. Today I used one cup of plain flour and one cup of ground almonds (figured if it was going to be all he ate today we’d at least get some nuts in for protein… but then he somehow found some space for a little ice-cream this evening so turns out he was doing quite well on the protein front!). 1 tsp baking powder. A cup of frozen raspberries / blueberries and a few chocolate chunks.

The smell of baking certainly makes a pleasant change from the rather overpowering aroma of pine-tassel / calamine that’s been dominant around these parts of late.


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rather exciting spinach salad

Some things in the world are dazzling without adornment. Strawberries for example, or ice crystals, or sunrises. Other things need a little help to push them over the line from being rather dull to rather wonderful. Salad, for example. Some people might enjoy sitting down and tucking into a pile of plain spinach but I like to mix it up a bit. It just makes life a little more exciting.

This salad has raw celery, some left over crumbled manchego cheese, toasted pine nuts, avocado and persimmon. Dressed with oil and balsamic.

The kids didn’t feel they needed that level of excitement in their salad so just stuck with the avocado. I guess life is exciting enough anyway when you’re a kid.


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free-style friday baking ; chocolate and raspberry cake (gluten free)

I often find myself amongst the minority. I find politics interesting, I find watching sport dull. I vote Green. I don’t like cats. I don’t even like kittens. I enjoy free-style baking with the kids.

It’s not like I’d put it up there on my wish list of things to do in an afternoon alongside a few quiet hours browsing a bookshop alone, but when we’re all at home with nothing pressing to do, I’m pretty keen to let them get in amongst the mixing bowls.

To make an easy gluten free cake I’ve found a mix of 3 or 4 eggs with 1/2 cup sugar / 70g butter / 2 cups of ‘flour’ (mix of ground almonds / rice flour / puffed amaranth ) is a good base and then you can freestyle a bit.

This cake is a simple chocolate and raspberry. Get the kids whisking up some eggs (I used 4) with 1/2 cup raw sugar. Melt a couple rows of dark chocolate over some hot water with around 70g butter. Add a cup of ground almonds, cup of brown rice flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 cup cocoa to the eggs. Add a couple of spoons of full fat natural yogurt. Pour in the melted chocolate / butter. Add a cup of frozen raspberries. Bake for about 30 mins.

There are several highlights for the kids in making a cake like this. Whisking ; always a winner. Scooping yogurt. Licking the yogurt spoon. Sneaking frozen raspberries. Scraping the chocolate off the melting plate. Yes they make a mess, but they make a mess regardless,  and with baking  there’s a chocolate cake fresh out of the oven at the end of it all.

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