Shortbread cookies use the sweet short crust pastry as a base. After it is just a matter of having a few cookie cutters at home. Children can decorate them with coloured sugar balls, sultanas, nuts or fondant.
Ingredients:
250 g plain flour
125 g softened butter
125 g white sugar
1 egg
Method:
In a large bowl, mix all ingredient together and form a ball. Over a few movements, knead it on the kitchen bench to ensure cohesion (20 seconds max). Rest for 15-20 minutes.
Dust the kitchen bench with flour to prevent sticking. Place the dough on the kitchen bench. Dust the top similarly. Roll with the rolling-pin to 6 to 8 mm thick. Ensure the bottom is not stuck by lifting the pastry gently. Add more flour underneath of necessary.
Using cookie cutters make the shapes and transfer them onto a baking sheet covered with baking paper.
If the children want to decorate, use sultanas or pieces of nuts or sugar balls. Smarties work well too.
Bake 10-15 minutes on 160 degrees Celsius until light blonde. Remove from the oven and slide the base on a cooling rack using the baking paper. Allow to cool.
This is pretty much as guilt free as chocolate cake go: no butter and pretty low sugar. What I like with this butter-free chocolate cake is that it is also much easier to digest than a traditional chocolate cake. Why? How? Simply by replacing the butter by very (like very) thinly grated zucchini (a.k.a. courgette). And if you are on a gluten-free diet, you could also replace the little flour in there by GF flour.
Before you start:
You need a good quality cooking chocolate (in Australia, the 70% cocoa Nestle Plaistowe is suitable)
The zucchini: 200 g of zucchini and no more (a bit less is fine). I have now done the cake a few times, trialing a few variations. The last one used 180 g of zucchini and was fine! However, if you add more (which I also did), the cake loses some of its moisture from a denser texture. Two hundred grammes zucchini is one average size piece of vegetable. You need to peel it and remove the ends. Then weight it. Grate it over a bowl and make sure to keep all the juice. I was asked the question: can you use the blender. I tried, it works, just a bit much more washing-up than the grater for little saving, your choice.
The flour: the flour weight is only 50 g. If you go for a gluten-free option, you can either use cornflour but then you need to reduce it to 35 g as corn flour absorbs more moisture than wheat flour, or use one of the GL flour mix.
Ingredients:
4 eggs
200 g dark cooking chocolate
80 g caster sugar
200 g thinly grated zucchini (see note above)
50 g plain flour (see note above)
100 mL milk (of your choice)
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Butter and flour well a 20 cm round cake tin.
Break the chocolate in pieces and melt with half of the milk. You can either use the microwave on one minutes settings full power, repeat if not fully melted either with 30 second or another minutes (it depends on the power of your microwave). Once the chocolate is melted, stir until smooth and silky, add the remaining milk.
In a clean bowl, separate the egg yolks from the whites. Beat the yolks with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the zucchini (juice included). Add the chocolate to the mix.
Finally, mix in the flour.
Beat the egg white to snow and carefully fold into the chocolate mix.
Pour into the prepared tin. Place in the oven, reduce the heat to 160°C after 10 minutes. The cake should cook in 20-30 mn depending on ovens. Remove when the centre is no longer wobbly when gently pressed with a couple fingers. Allow to cool down in the tin for five minutes before transferring to the serving dish: turn over a metal rack and then over the serving dish.
Tip: if you have a child helping you tell them to mix in the flour and cocoa starting from the centre, always touching the bottom of the bowl , let them enlarge the circle as the centre gets darker. This technique will avoid lumps.
Tip: wondering what happens if you don’t reduce the oven? The cake will cook quicker and can lose a little moisture but not that much, it will still be quite moist.
And if you are wondering about the taste brought by the zucchini, I will tell that if people don’t know about it, they are unlikely to guess. Once you know, you will possibly note a taste a little more “earthy”, but, to be honest, nothing preventing the cake disappearing in minutes and for zucchini-advert kids to take a second or third helping!
This black and white cookies recipe is taken from the Williams-Sonoma Baking Book. It is a recipe my eight year old daughter decided to do on her own. As the recipe provides measurement in both the imperial american systems and universal metric system, there was a little confusion for her upfront on the different values. Once that was sorted out, she ended up doing the cookies pretty much on her own (I was downstairs working). With or without help from adults, this recipe is a great one to teach children some basic aspects of baking: making a shortcrust, measuring, diving, measuring, using egg yolk as a “glue”.
Makes about 40 cookies. Below is the recipe taken from Williams and Somona. The tips are my addition.
This type of cookie is made by forming dough into a log or rectangular block and chilling it thoroughly. You can also use different types of dough together (vanilla and chocolate, peanut butter and chocolate) to make patterned cookies. Cookies are then sliced off the log or block and baked. When slicing the dough, give the log or block a quarter turn after every half dozen or so slices to keep the cookies perfectly square or round.
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour (315 g)
1/2 cup sugar (125 g)
Pinch of salt – Tip: remove if using salted butter
250 g cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 whole egg plus 1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbs unsweetened Dutch cocoa powder
Tip: for the butter, you can use soft butter or half melted butter. When you rest the dough the first time, either leve it longer or use the freezer.
Method:
Tip: I am not using a food processor here as in the original recipe. I find that best learning is achieved by doing by hand and also the mixing is not really hard, so does not warrant the use of a food processor.
In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar and salt. Then, add the butter, vanilla and egg yolks until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs and eventually holds together. Divide the dough in half. Transfer one-half to a lightly floured work surface and knead in the cocoa until incorporated. If the dough is very soft, wrap in cell-wrap and place in the fridge for 15 minutes.
Lightly dust the work surface and a rolling pin with flour. Roll out each dough half into a 8 by 21 centimetre about one centimetre thick. Trim the edges to even out.
Tip: instead of trimming the edges, you can use a dough scrapper to push and distribute the dough in a rectangle.
Place each rectangle on a large baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate until well chilled, about 30 minutes (Tip: or 10 minutes if using the freezer). Meanwhile, in a small bowl, beat the whole egg until blended. Set aside.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Using a sharp knife, cut each rectangle into 4 strips about 2 cm wide (you should have 4 strips of each color). Arrange 2 chocolate strips and 2 plain strips in a checkerboard pattern, brushing the beaten egg between the strips and gently pressing them together. Repeat with the remaining dough. Wrap in plastic wrap and use a knife to square off the edges of each block. Refrigerate until well chilled, about 30 minutes or 10 minutes if using the freezer.
Preheat an oven to 180°C. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets or line them with parchment paper. Remove the blocks from the refrigerator, unwrap and cut each crosswise into slices 6-8 mm thick. Place them 4 cm apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the cookies feel firm when lightly pressed, about 15 minutes. Let the cookies sit on the baking sheets for 2 minutes, then use a spatula to transfer them to wire racks to cool completely.
This dish recently made it on our menu in our household, often for a sunday night. It is a great dish for many reasons:
It is a real no stress dinner, super mega easy to do;
Everyone likes it;
It makes use of pantry items (all these cans of bans my husband likes to buy when he does a grocery top up), in other words, all you need from the fridge is sausages!
Depending on the numbers to feed, I serve it with or without soft polenta.
Ingredients:
2 cans of beans of your choice: red kidney, mixed beans, chick peas, white beans, ….although no breakfast ready baked beans please
1 can of crushed tomatoes (or whole, you can cut them roughly)
If the beans are in brine, i.e. not in brine (our were mexican salsa recently), one jar of past sauce of your choice
1 to 2 sausages per person (I also like to use lamb forequarter chops)
one onion
2 small zucchini if available
rosemary or thyme from the garden
Method:
Open the tins of beans, rinse under water except if in tomato sauce.
Place in a large roasting dish, the beans, the sliced onion, the can of tomatoes, the sliced zucchini and the jar of pasta sauce (if using).
Place the meat thoughout.
Season with salt and pepper
Bake on oven 200°C for 30 to 45 minutes (until the meat is cooked)
For the soft polenta
Boil one cup of milk with three cups of water and 1 tsp of salt. When it is boiling, add in rain, one cup of polenta (corn semolina). Stir with a whisk or wooden spoon, reduce the heat to half and cook for fie minutes. If the mix dries out too much, add a little water. Set aside. Add 1/2 cup of grated cheese. Stir. Serve.
If you have been to France, you would have seen the Flan Patissier in bakeries or maybe had a serve in a bistro. The flan patissier is a classic french dessert, it is alike a baked custard. Some versions of the flan patissier include a shortcrust pastry. My version does not have it. I grew up with that version, I prefer it as such. The pastry makes unmoulding easier, otherwise I do not find it adds much to the dessert as a whole.
To make it quite thick – I find it looks amazing like that! – you will need either a narrow baking dish (17 cm diameter) or you need to double the recipe like I did for the photo session!
Serves 5
Ingredients:
2 eggs
1/2 vanilla bean (you can also use some of the vanilla powder you find in gourmet spice shops)
80 g white sugar
700 mL of milk
75 g of corn flour
300 mL of cream
Method:
Heat up the oven on 180°C, butter and flour the tin (use a spring form one if you have one).
Note: if you are making the single proportions above, you can use a ceramic tart dish to bake it it and serve it directly as such (my Mum always did that!).
Scrap the vamilla beans and place in th milk. Heat up the sugar, milk and cream.
In the meanwhile, whisk together the eggs and corn flour. Once the milk is hot, pour the equivalent of a laddle in the egg mi and mix well, add the rest. Mix well before returning to the saucepan and, using a whisk, keep stiring. The custard will thicken. Once it becomes thicker remove from the heat an transfer to the prepared tin. Flatten the top with a spatula.
Bake for 45 minutes or until browned to dark on the top. It may look a little burnt, don’t worry this is normal.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool before unmoulding.
Serve warm or completely cooled down at room temperature. If unmoulding, first use a sharp knive to make sure the flan does not stick to the edges of the tin.
Tip: you can add soaked sultanas, a couple spoons of rhum or chocolate chips to make it a little different.
After trialing a few recipes to make sure my 16 years old niece who has become a fan of this little hot cakes could reproduce crumpets in France, I am putting here my pick of the recipes trialed.
If you want to read about the comparative testing, go to the post dedicated to it HERE.
Otherwise, get some flour, sugar, yeast, milk, salt, bicarbonate of soda and a little butter and get cooking!
Makes 6 medium crumpets.
Ingredients:
200 mL of milk
125 g of flour
1 tbsp of butter chopped (10 g)
7 g of dry yeast
½ tsp of salt
½ tsp of sodium bicarbonate
1 tsp of white sugar
Method:
Warm up half of the milk with butter and sugar. Add the remaining milk. Why do it in two go, you may ask? This will ensure the temperature of the mix is initially hot enough to melt the butter and sugar but with the total volume of milk just warm. The yeast would not like it otherwise!
Add the yeast. Set aside for 10 minutes.
Add together the flour, sodium bicarbonate and salt.
Mix well (use a whisk) until completely smooth.
Set aside for 45 minutes.
Use non-stick crumpets rings.
Oil the bottom of a crepe frypan or non stick fry pan slightly. Heat up the frypan then reduce to ¾ heat.
Add 2 tablespoons of batter in each ring. When bubbles come up and have popped up regularly over the surface of the crumpet (2 to 3 minutes), remove the ring (it should come undone pretty easily by just pulling it up. If the crumpet is not fully cooked on the top, flip back and lightly cook for 10-15 seconds.
I made these gluten free porridge cookies (and the recipe) one day as I had enough of seeing left over porridge go to the compost bin.
Now, if you are coeliac, you may need to be careful, this recipe contains oats, which has a protein that can trigger an immune reaction (but not always).
Ingredients:
1 egg
230 g of porridge with sultanas. If you need to cook the porridge, use 1 volume of oats for 2 volumes or water or a mix of water and milk (I prefer a mix).
100 g of white sugar
100 g of butter
1 tsp of raising powder
230 g of brown rice flour
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C
Melt the butter and mix it with the leftover porridge to loosen a bit the mass.
Add the sugar and the egg. Mix well.
Then mix in the rice flour and raising powder.
Place little mounts, about the size of a tablespoon on a lined baking sheet. Bake until light brown.
Cool down on a wire rack.
Note: the dough is quite wet and sticky but not runny, it keeps its form when spooned on the tray. If your porridge is quite runny, you will need to increase the flour a little.
Making and eating pop cakes was an amazing experience for the children. Not only did they get to make the pop cakes and it tasted great, they also got to see them grow or “pop up” in the oven. They found that very exciting! And then they rushed to eat them!
Pop cake moulds are silicone moulds with bite size prints, the mould have a bottom part and a top part. My mould upper part is transparent, this is how they saw them rise.
I used for the base recipe a very simple cake recipe called a “quatre quarts” which you can translate as “four quarters”. The recipe has the same weight of eggs, flour, sugar and butter. To ensure they little shape filled up the whole space I did increase the quantity of baking powder a bit.
Once the pop cakes are ready, we dipped them in melted some white chocolate and shredded coconut (and 100&1000s).
Ingredients:
3 eggs
flour: the same weight as the eggs
caster sugar: the same weight as the eggs
butter: the same weight as the eggs
2 tsp baking powder
100 g white chocolate
shredded coconut
Toothpicks
Method:
First weigt your eggs, this will be your reference for the flour, butter and sugar.
Preheat oven to 180°C.
Beat the sugar and eggs together with a whisk (or using an electric mixer) until pale and creamy.
Then melt the butter and add it once cooled to the mix.
Add the flour and raising powder and mix, being careful not to do lumps (best to swap the whisk for a wooden spoon and start mixing from the centre out expanding the size of the circle as you go).
Spoon the mixture in each bottom print to the top.Place the lid and bake until ready about 15 minutesTip: the mould print with the holes is the top one (it allows for the steam to escape)
Remove from the prints and allow to cool down on a cooling rack.
Melt the white chocolate and place some shredded coconut in a bowl.
Using a toothpick, pick a little cake ball, dip in the white chocolate then in the coconut. Enjoy!
Tip: if you have left over cake mix, make a couple of muffins with it! Perfect for the lunch box!
At the moment it is all about pears. Did you notice? They have arrived in many kind and are just beautiful. My favourite to eat is the Pear Williams, when they are just ripe and full of juice. For some reasons, many Australians like their pears stone hard. I just don’t get it – apart for having a less messy fruit – because a hard pear has so little flavour compared to a ripe pear!
When it comes to dessert, pears can be used a number of way. My latest addition to the blog is the “Poire Belle Hélène”, the hero dish of the week. There are plenty more family desserts with pears either comforting or elegant, all delicious! Here you go:
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The Poire Belle Hélène (Pear Belle Helene)
A French classic, elegant, light and always impressive. The pears are poached in a syrup often composed of white wine, spices such as cinnamon, vanilla, cloves and served with a hot chocolate sauce.
Now, this is a family’s favourite, as much for children as for adults! It takes 5 minutes to make. A great way to use pears that need eating! Soooooo easy. Recipe: HERE!
The Pear and Chocolate Tart
A chocolate glazing hiding a melty creamy pear filling! This is a little more elaborate, not your mid-week type of dessert as it takes a bit more time to make. But yum yum yum! The photo is not exceptional I realise, time to do it once more and this time do mouth watering photos.
Another simple poached pear and its yogurt cake
Poached pears can be served just as such because they are truly beautiful. This pears were poached similarly to the “Poire Belle Helene“. The yoghurt cake is HERE.
The ever simple pear tart
If you are after something simple, not fancy, stop here. A pear tart is just that, similarly to an apple tart.
Use option B of the “Everyday apple tart” recipe and add the almond meal. Pears are juicy and the almond meal will soak up the juice and avoid a soggy tart.
We love shepherd’s pie at home. There is the classic shepherd’s pie made with beef mince, onions and tomato sauce and there is the special kind made with leftover meat from a large casserole or a slow cooked piece of meat. This is the one I am covering here.
In France, where I grew up, we don’t call them shepherd’s pie but “hachis parmentier”. The dish takes its French name from a French chemist who played a key role in promoting potatoes as edible. The English name refers to the social class of those for which potatoes was a daily menu staple. It is also called “cottage pie”, similarly referring to those who lived in cottages. There is in English a subtle difference between the cottage pie and the shepherd’s pie. The first one being made with beef, the later one with lamb meat.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
FOR THE MASH
5 medium to large potatoes for mashing
Butter (15 g)
1 cup of milk
FOR THE MEAT LAYER
Two cups worth of meat leftovers.
If there is some juice/sauce, do not discard it, we will use it.
If the sauce and meat is a bit blend, use half a jar of tomato sauce (a nice pasta sauce)
Method:
the mash potato
1.Fill a large saucepan to 2/3 with water, add 1.5 tablespoons of rock salt, bring to a boil.
2. In the meanwhile, peel the potatoes and cut them in large chunks. Add to the water when ready.
Tip: if you cut the potatoes in small dices, you will soak them with water and the flesh will become too watery, so keep the chunks at least 3 cm on the side.
Tip: potatoes do not need to be added to boiling water, it is perfectly fine to place potatoes in cold water and then heat up the saucepan.
3. When the potatoes are cooked (soft in the middle when inserting a knife), drain them, add butter and milk and with a potato masher, mash the potatoes. If the mash is a bit dry, add a little milk making sure to add only a little at the time.
MEAT AND ASSEMBLY
4. Heat up the oven to 200°C.
5. In a frypan (or a sauce pan but a frypan would be quicker as it is wider), heat up the meat and sauce. Add tomato sauce if necessary. You can choose to add at this stage some grated carrot, grated zucchini or even peas. You can add spices, salt and pepper. It all depends of the quantity and taste of the meat you have.
Tip: Grating vegetable allows them to cook throughout
Tip: You can choose not to heat up the meat and place it directly in the dish, just ensure that you leave the dish long enough in the oven to ensure it is hot before serving as the mash will already be hot.
6. Once all is mixed up, place the meat at the bottom of a roasting dish, add the mash. Use the teeth of a fork to pattern the top of the mash. Add a few little nuts of butter (4 max) here and there. Optionally, add a little grated cheddar cheese.
7. Place in the oven until the potatoes peaks are brown.
Tip: If the meat and potato mash are already hot and you are short with time, just place the pie under the grill for 5 minutes.
Shepherd’s pie with leftover lamb casserole, fresh herbs are not necessary as they will heat up and some (like on the photo) will not provide any added value.Use a fork’s teeth to criss cross the mash, it gives a nice finish. Cheese is completely optional. I often only put a few nuts of butter.A table! / Dinner is ready!
Walnut, Honey, Orange and Ricotta Muffins, or maybe in short the “back to school” muffin. Why? Because the flavours match the season of the first month back at school. These muffins are great for lunch boxes. They keep for a few days in an airtight container or you can freeze them.
This is one of my own recipes, fresh off the press by trying to marry the ice taste of ricotta with something that children will go for. I made another recipe that day, equally nice, the raspberry and ricotta muffin (CLICK HERE).
This is an easy recipe.
Makes 15.
Ingredients:
1 ½ cup of ricotta
250 g of plain flour
2 tsp of raising powder
130 g of melted butter
200g of sugar
3 eggs
3 very large tbsp. of honey
Juices of 2 small oranges (1.5 if large ones)
1 cup of sultanas
2 cups of walnuts
Method:
Pre-heat oven to 180°C
Mix the ricotta, sugar and eggs until the mix is completely smooth (no ricotta lumps left)
Add the honey and orange juice.
Add the flour, raising powder, sultanas together, mix well. Then add the walnuts and mix.
Using a large spoon, spoon mixture in muffin cases and bake until well golden.
Here is a raspberry and ricotta muffin recipe which is another great way to use excess ricotta, something different to making ricotta pancakes (which is really good too!). I made up another ricotta muffin recipe the same day, they are pretty good too: Walnut, honey, orange and ricotta muffins (CLICK HERE).
Makes 15
Ingredients:
1 ½ cup of ricotta
250 g of plain flour
2 tsp of raising powder
130 g of melted butter
200 g of white sugar
3 eggs
1 cup of milk
2 cups of frozen raspberries (do not thaw them)
Some coarse granular sugar for the top
Method:
Pre-heat oven to 180°C
Mix the ricotta, milk, sugar and eggs until the mix is completely smooth (no ricotta lumps left)
Add the flour and raising powder, mix well
Add the raspberries gently.
Using a large spoon, spoon mixture in muffin cases. Sprinkle with granulated sugar. Bake until well golden.
The recipe has the same weight of eggs, flour, sugar and butter. To ensure they little shape filled up the whole space I did increase the quantity of baking powder a bit.
This is a very easy tart. A recipe from 
