My Little Chef

My younger boy loves to help me in the kitchen, so I thought it would be fun to make a cake showing his love for cooking. I did give him the option of a Mickey Mouse cake or a rolling pin cake. Whenever I asked him, he always told me "roll pin." My first idea was to try to colour some fondant icing brown and cover the whole cake with it, but I couldn't get it the right colour (it turned out kind of a sickly greenish/gray/beige colour). I realized that the cake itself already looked enough like a wooden rolling pin. To finish the look, I made some biscuit/cookie spoons, dipped in chocolate.

For the cake, I made a Strawberry and Mascarpone Swiss Roll. I followed the recipe exactly, using orange juice in the strawberry mixtures. The sponge turned out really well, the strawberries were delicious, but I felt the Mascarpone cheese was a bit stodgy, and there was too much. Next time I will either use a thinner layer, or even replace it with whipped cream. To make the handles for the rolling pin, I just stuck two dates each onto two toothpicks/cocktail sticks, and stuck them into the sponge cake. Couldn't get any simpler.

For the biscuits, I used a simple biscuit recipe, similar to shortbread. You could also use your favourite sugar cookie recipe, just anything that you can roll out and shape. For each spoon, I used two balls of dough, one larger than the other. The larger ball is flattened in the palm of my hand to form a spoon shape, and the smaller ball is rolled out like a snake for the handle.
I then wet the end of the handle and spoon, place the handle on the end of the spoon, fold the sides over, and pinch together. Then turn the spoon over to finish shaping the spoon. You want the center to be pretty thin with the edges thicker to get the indentation look of the spoon, as they do rise when cooking.
Once the cookies have baked and cooled, you can dip the ends in melted chocolate.

Here's the recipe for the cake, by Lorraine Pascal on Baking Made Easy, BBC:

Ingredients

For the strawberry filling

• 250g/9oz strawberries, hulled and sliced, plus extra to decorate

• 2 tbsp granulated sugar

• splash Marsala or orange juice

For the sponge

• 3 free-range eggs

• 80g/3oz caster sugar, plus extra for finishing

• ½ vanilla pod or 2 drops vanilla extract

• 1 tbsp warm water

• 80g/3oz plain flour

• pinch salt

For the mascarpone cream

• 250g/9oz mascarpone

• 2 tbsp icing sugar

• ½ vanilla pod or 2 drops vanilla extract

Preparation method

1. For the strawberry filling, put a third of the strawberries in a blender or food processor with the granulated sugar and blend well. Transfer the strawberries to a bowl and add the Marsala or orange juice. Stir in the remaining strawberries and chill in the fridge. (The flavour gets better the longer you leave it, so do this a few hours ahead if you can, though if you are ready to go now then a minimum of 30 minutes is fine.)

2. Meanwhile, for the sponge, preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5. Grease and line a 23 x 33cm/9in x 13in Swiss roll tin or small roasting tin with greaseproof paper.

3. Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla in large bowl with an electric whisk until the mixture is very pale yellow, foamy and mousse-like. Fold in the warm water with a large metal spoon. (This helps prevent the Swiss roll from cracking when you roll it later.)

4. Sift over the flour and salt and fold in gently with the metal spoon. (Don’t overmix here or you will knock out the air and the Swiss roll will lose its sponginess. The trick is to incorporate all the flour with as few ‘folds’ as possible.)

5. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and level it gently with a palette knife or the back of a large spoon. Bake in the oven for 10–15 minutes, or until the sponge has shrunk a little from the sides of the tin and feels springy to the touch. Remove the sponge from the oven and turn the cake out onto a sheet of baking paper sprinkled with caster sugar. Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then gently peel the lining paper off the sponge and leave to cool completely.

6. Meanwhile, for the mascarpone cream, mix all of the ingredients together in a large bowl.

7. To assemble the cake, trim off any rough edges of the sponge with a sharp serrated knife to get the sides nice and tidy. Spread the mascarpone cream all over the sponge, leaving a small margin so it does not squelch out when it is rolled. Spoon the macerated strawberries over the mascarpone filling and drizzle with a third of the strawberry purée (reserve the rest).

8. With the shortest side facing you, begin to roll up the sponge (away from you) using the baking paper to help. Try to do it as tightly as you can for an impressive-looking finish. Once you have rolled it all up, make sure the join is underneath so it does not come undone. Carefully lift onto a serving plate - you can do this with your hands or use two fish slices or spatulas.

9. Sprinkle with some caster sugar and decorate with extra sliced strawberries. Serve in slices with the remaining strawberry sauce drizzled over.

Healthy Heart Valentine's Dinner

When I was young, I remember how excited I would get for every holiday. It seems that we always did something fun for even the smaller holidays. I want to try to continue to traditions for my boys as well. It seems that most of my memories are the fun things we would do with food, or the yummy foods we ate during each holiday. We'd always have green coloured food or a corned beef and cabbage dinner for St. Patrick's day; April Fool's my mom would do something tricky with the food (like put mushrooms in the chocolate cake), etc etc. I guess for Valentine's Day, I mostly remember making cards for people, which we did do this year, but a lot of times it's the fun food that I remember most fondly from each holiday.

So, to continue that tradition, I try to do fun things with food for each holiday as well. If nobody else in my family appreciates, at least I do. This year I did a "Heart" Healthy Valentine's dinner. I made a beetroot, orange and avocado salad, cutting the beet slices into heart shapes using a cookie cutter. I then used the scraps of beet, chopped up in a minestrone soup, with Ciabatta bread on the side. My boys seemed excited about the heart shapes at first, but then didn't want to eat the beets (my eldest used to love beets, now he won't touch them I guess). Oh well, I got excited about it, and thought it was pretty fun.

I also made some heart shaped jammy biscuits. Use any sugar cookie/shortbread type recipe, roll out the dough, and cut out heart shapes. On half of the larger hearts, cut out a smaller heart in the middle, to place on the top. Place about 1 tsp of strawberry jam onto the bottom heart, spread out, leaving about 1/4 inch edge. Then place the top heart over the jam. Bake as directed for the cookie dough you made. I think they turned out great, and I had a lot of fun making them. The boys loved eating them of course.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Home Made Pizza

We had a voucher for 50% off a pizza order from Pizza Hut a couple of weeks ago, and Paul had been hankering for some pizza delivery for a while. So we ordered a couple of pizzas for dinner one night, and it was quite the disappointment. After that experience, added upon other pizza delivery experiences, that I would much rather make my own pizza. Not only is it WAY cheaper, it tastes so much better, and I can make it just how I like it.

Making pizza at home can be somewhat time consuming, or super fast and easy. It all depends on how much time you have, and what you feel like. You can make a pizza in minutes is you use pita bread, French bread, or pre-made pizza bases. For the sauce, just mix some tomato puree/paste with a bit of water, herbs and season to taste; or use barbecue sauce, or Thai-sweet chilli sauce, or even no sauce at all. For the toppings, the sky's the limit!

If I have the time, I usually make my own pizza dough, using this whole wheat pizza dough recipe as my starting point. I usually double it, and use a slightly different technique to ensure a nice chewy crust, (maybe someday, I'll make a video of how I do it).

Then, I add whatever sauce/topping I feel inspired to use (or whatever I have on hand or need to get rid of).

Today, I made three different pizzas. The first was kind of a supreme style. Red sauce, chopped yellow bell peppers (hidden under the cheese so my boys wouldn't pick it off), courgette, sliced black olives, caramelized onions, and sausage. Really yummy pizza, and one I knew my boys would love. The great thing about pizza is that it is easily customizable. If one person doesn't like a certain topping, just leave it off of 1/4 of the pizza.

The second pizza is one of my favourites. I got the recipe from my Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook: Garlic and Green pizza. Basically, you saute chopped garlic in some olive oil, add chopped greens (usually kale, today I also added rocket and spinach), add sun dried tomatoes, some basil (fresh or dried), and season to taste. Place this on the pizza base (no sauce), and cover with cheese. It is really good.

My third pizza was my invention pizza for the day:

Caramelized Onion and Pear Pizza

Place sliced pear on the pizza base, top with caramelized onions, and cheese (Cheshire/feta/blue cheese, as well as some cheddar/mozzarella). Top with rocket after baking (optional).

I actually really enjoyed this pizza, although next time I will use a little less pear, and more onions. I used a mix of cheddar cheese and Cheshire (similar to a mild feta cheese). I think a Stilton or other blue cheese sprinkled on would go really nicely. The onions were not completely caramelized, but cooked until just starting to colour, since they will cook even more on the pizza. The Rocket added a really nice touch, and gave it some needed colour.