wordless Wednesday

wordless wednesday

baby bunting

Bunting is very in at the moment. I feel like you can barely turn around in the blogosphere without tripping over a string of bunting! I think bunting is really cute, but up til now I haven't made any. This has been for a number of reasons, but mostly because I haven't anywhere to hang it once done! But a friend at work needs a bit of cheering up, so we are putting together a basket of things for her, and I thought what is more cheerful than a string of baby bunting. Teeny tiny triangles in bright colours, just perfect for hanging up over your desk!

I followed pink milk's easy tutorial, but obviously did a lot less rows!

I also made my friend a load of oaty lindt chip biscuits...

Chocolate and bunting, the perfect cheer-you-up!

cooking up big

I am a big fan of the cook-up. I always have been. Even when I was just cooking for myself it would seem I could never cook less than 4 serves. I love to cook, so once I am making something I figure I may as well make a lot of it! In the past this has worked out well for my hungry housemates and friends living nearby. In more recent times, it has worked well with little-miss-e. At least 2 nights a week we eat 'freezer food' cooked up and frozen some other night, ready for tired-after-work-need-to-eat-now kinda meals.

I have, however, been finding it harder to cook like this in recent weeks, mainly due to the adjustment of going back to work. So our freezer stocks have started to look a little depleted. But today, after a big pot of pumpkin soup (made by me) and some left-over beef stroganof (made by my lovely husband) I am starting to feel back on track.

So tell me - what is your favourite freezer meal? Do you like to cook up big?

the easiest biscuits you'll ever make (healthy, sugar and gluten free)

So, there's not been much crafting going on 'round here. Mostly because I am still stuck on the frog/snake puppet and am yet to finish that, or to work out what my next project will be. But also because we have been the house of sickness, on top of my return to work, little-miss-e starting childcare and other adventures in normal life. So, there's not been a lot of craft to show and tell.

But I have been baking, and I wanted to share these biscuits with you. They are easy, healthy, sugar free, gluten free and my one year old LOVES them. Basically they go like this:






Take 2 bananas and a cup of oats*. Mix, spoon onto trays, then bake about 10 min at 180 C...




That's it!

 

I've been making these like crazy. They are super easy! I've added and adapted as I go along. I often reduce the amount of oats and add in other stuff instead - dessicated coconut, almond meal, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds or qunioa flakes... Sometimes I put in a spoon of peanut butter, some currants or cinnamon or vanilla... Given little-miss-e is so little, I tend to make teeny tiny biscuits that are barely a teaspoon-ful. She loves them.

It is worth noting they don't store all that long, a few days at the most. But I pop them in the freezer and then they last and last (at least until we eat them all!) Little-miss-e loves to gnaw on them frozen, or they defrost pretty quickly cos they are so small.

So there you go - the easiest biscuits you'll ever make.

Give them a go!


*NB: Oats are controversial in the gluten free world, but my lovely gluten free husband can eat them, so they are counted as gluten free here on marjoryjane.

Gluten free pizza dough

So I received a request for my Gluten Free Pizza Dough recipe (see my previous post about gluten free pizzas). It is pretty easy to make - we make it in the bread machine using the dough setting. It is a bit of a throw together dough, but it works and turns out delicious!

1 Cup (and a bit, about 1/8C) of water
1 tea salt
1 tea sugar
splash of olive oil
2 3/4 Cups gluten free plain flour
1 tbs yeast
about 3/4 tbs Xanthan Gum

Put all ingredients in bread machine on dough setting. Once done, divide half and roll each half out to make your pizzas.You will probably need a little extra GF flour to dust the rolling pin and your surface with.
We then pre-bake the bases for about 15-min, until they start to go that rosey-pinky-brown, as then the pizzas don't take as long to cook.

Cover with your favourite toppings (one of ours is zucchini, thyme, garlic, olive oil, lemon zest and cheese) and bake until done.

Enjoy!

one

This is what has been keeping me busy. Well, not the cake exactly, but the little-one for whom I made the cake. Yep, it is little-miss-e's first birthday this weekend and that comes on top of a very very busy month. So busy that in fact the present I've been crocheting for her birthday is not yet finished... (opps). Still at least the cake is, and gosh did she enjoy it! I had planned on a complicated cake, something out of the Women's Weekly Birthday Cake Book. Except I don't actually own the book as I am yet to convince my mum to pass on her copy. So we went for something much simpler (although the cake recipe is from an old Women's weekly cookbook), with my lovely husband suggesting the design.

We also have been having a bit of a chat about birthday traditions. Thinking about what kinds of birthday traditions we have grown up with and what traditions we want to have in our family. To be honest, we haven't really come up with much (other than cake and presents...). How about you? Do you have any interesting family birthday traditions?

home made muesli bars (with recipe) (gluten free)

I saw ana over at i made it so post a recipe for granola bars the other day. She made them sound so easy. So after double checking that granola is the same thing as muesli (don't you love it that we supposedly speaking the same language), I decided to try them out.

ana talked about the princples of muesli bars before her recipe, so I just made it up from there. They were easy to convert to gluten free and basically mine went:

1 cup rolled oats*
a handful of sunflower seeds
a handful of pumpkin seeds
a handful of currents, then another for good measure
a handful of dessicated coconut
a drizzle of maple syrup
a couple of handfuls of gluten free plain flour
some raw cashews that I crushed in my mortar and pestle
an egg, then I decided it was too dry, so added another
now it was too wet, so I chucked in a handful of toasted muesli and a bit more flour.

Then in the oven at about 170 degrees for about 30 min.



Not an exact science, but they certainly turned out lovely, with a hint of cinnamon (from the toasted muesli I tossed in at the end). The only issue is that they have turned out a little on the hard side, so little-miss-e, being nearly 1 and only having 4 teeth found them tricky to manage. I am hoping they will soften up in the next few days (if they last that long...)

Thanks ana!

*note: there is some contention as the whether oats are gluten free - my lovely husband can eat them fine, so we seem to think that they are.

Gluten free malva pudding recipe

My lovely-(gluten-free)-husband is not from 'round these parts. The other day I had to explain to him the entire story of 'The Man from Snowy River' (though at least he did already know about Banjo Patterson - as in: "didn't he write some poems or something?"). Anyway, I digress...

My lovely-(gluten-free)-husband is not from 'round these parts. And as such, we expected some cross-cultural issues to crop up from time to time (see above). But there have also have been unexpected cross-cultural delights. These include being introduced to a whole cuisine, and for me, especially a whole new range of baking and dessert delights. Rusks are one example, and Malva pudding is another, (oh and milk tart, but I'll talk about that another day)

Malva (pronounced mulf-fah) pudding is fantastic! It is also known as brown pudding, and is easy and delicious, just the perfect winter dessert. This recipe here is adapted from some close family friend's. I've made it gluten free and reduced the sugar a bit (as it is quite a sweet dessert). I made this the other day as we were taking dessert to a friends, and everyone had seconds, some even had thirds - so there was none left for a pic!

So without any further ado: Gluten free malva pudding

1 cup Gluten Free Plain Flour
Pinch of salt
1/3 cup raw sugar
1 Tbs butter or margarine
2 eggs
1 1/2 Tbs apricot jam
300 ml milk
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Sauce
375ml evaporated milk (Ideal Milk)
1/2 cup sugar
125g butter or margarine


Method
Oven at 180 °C
Mix Cake flour & salt together. Add Sugar and mix. Rub in butter.
Beat eggs and jam together and mix with milk.
Mix in flour mixture.
Mix bicarb and vinegar and mix into flour mix.
Put in pan and bake for 20-30 minutes.
Sauce
Heat up all ingredients for syrup, until sugar and butter is melted, but do not boil.
Pour over hot pudding and leave to stand for syrup to draw in cake.
(Eat with cream or ice cream or custard or all three!)

Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday

just hanging with little-miss-e

Wordless Wednesday

Amazing French Fudge Cake

Ok, so this cake is amazing! There is no other way to describe it. It is amazingly easy, amazingly gluten free (amazingly you'd never notice) and amazingly delicious. In fact it has trumped every other cake I make (to the point that it is the only cake my lovely husband ever chooses!). It's so amazing you don't even need a photo! (Which you can also read as "it's in the oven at the moment and I haven't taken a pic of it yet"). The recipe comes from an amazing friend, but is on a scrappy bit of paper and I always struggle to find it and then worry that maybe I've lost it. So I thought I'd share it here with you and then I won't lose it and you get the chance to make it too!

Amazing French Fudge Cake

Gently melt together:

• 200g dark chocolate
• 180g butter
• 3/4 C caster sugar

Mix well, then add

• 3 tbls gluten free self raising flour (or you could use normal flour) and mix well
• Add 3 eggs and mix well

Place in greased cake tin and cook for about 10 min at 200 degrees Celsius.
Reduce heat to 180 degrees C and cook for a further 30 min.
Turn off oven but leave the cake in the oven for a further 10 min.
Once cool, cut into squares and dust with icing sugar.

Amazing!

Good Friday

In our home, Good Friday is a time for reflection

image from here

and a time for enjoying home-made hot cross buns...

Gluten Free (South African) Rusk Recipe

My lovely South African husband loves it when I make him gluten free rusks. So, I thought I'd post my gluten free rusk recipe, as it took me quite a search to find a recipe, and then a few goes to adapt it to our liking. It's based it off a family recipe combined with this recipe, (with a number of changes) and out of my head.

A couple of things worth noting, even before I had little-miss-e I would set aside a whole afternoon to make these (it takes even longer now). So they are quite an undertaking, but well worth it!

Here it is: Gluten Free Rusks (all measurements are Aust. Standard)

Egg Mix:
600 ml buttermilk
4 eggs
1 Cup raw sugar

Seed Mix:
1/2 C currants
1/2 C pumpkin seeds
2 C gluten free cornflakes

Oil Mix:
1 C oil
225g melted butter

Flour Mix:
3 1/2 C white rice flour
6 1/2 C Gluten free plain flour
10 teasp xanthum gum
10 teasp baking powder
3 teasp salt

Ok so, place flour mix in a big bowl. Add seed mix and fold through. Make a well in the middle and add the egg mix and the oil mix. Stir through, then knead gently with your hands. It should be a soft dough, which kind of feels velvety from the buttermilk (I quite like the way it feels, does it show?).





Once mixed, roll into slightly-bigger-than-golf-ball sized balls and place nestled into tins lined with baking paper.

Bake for about an hour and ten minutes at 180 degrees Celsius (until golden on top).







Remove from tins and gently halve each ball, using a fork.
Place on trays and bake again at 100 degrees Celsius for 2-3 hours, until nicely brown.

Wait until cool and serve with coffee for dunking!

And then all you gluten free-bies can have:

'n lekker koppie koffie met beskuit op die stoep 
(a delicious cup of coffee and a rusk on the veranda)

rusks (but not the baby kind)

The other morning as I was getting out of bed, I asked my lovely (but not a morning person) husband whether I could get him anything. 'Coffee...' was his mumbled reply, then after a pause he added '...and rusks.' 'Rusks!' I exclaimed - I knew we'd bought all that rice flour for a reason, but I'd completely forgotten that I could make rusks. I then got pretty excited, and my lovely husband rolled back over and listened to me bubble over with the idea of making rusks. I've made them before, and in more recent times discovered and then adapted a gluten free recipe, but I haven't made them since I was pregnant. Actually, I was planning on making them when I was about 38 weeks, I'd even bought the buttermilk - but then little-miss-e arrived a little early and bang went that idea.

But getting back to this week: I spent Wednesday making rusks - for those who've never experienced them, rusks are from South Africa (like my lovely husband). They are basically a biscuity-type thing that is very hard and very dry, and the only way to eat them is to dip them in your morning coffee. They are delicious and lots of fun to make, but do take a lot of time. And as I discovered, even more time when one factors a 7-month old into the mix.

So I'd love to say that on Thursday morning I was able to present my lovely husband with coffee and rusks in bed. However, he got up before me to go to the gym, so instead I enjoyed coffee and rusks myself whilst feeding little-miss-e her breakfast.

mmm, gluten free rusks... - I'll post the recipe soon!

Wordless Wednesday

 

wordless wednesday

 

wordless wednesday...

Wordless Wednesday