Nutty as a Fruit Cake

Fruit cake featured heavily in the Christmas lineup when I was growing up and I distinctly remember that my mum's was the best. She would make this huge pot of fruit (well it seemed huge) on the stove and then it would miraculously turn in to a cake. I used to love eating the boiled fruit and butter mixture from the pot before the flour and eggs were added. It was a miracle any was left for the cake. So some years ago I asked her for the recipe and her answer... "Its the one off the fruit box but I added a bunch of other stuff." Naturally I wanted to know what other stuff which was met with vague replies of more fruit and some nuts and "then I pour booze all over it. Its in the book". "The book" is a raggety old book mum started way back in the 70's which is filled with recipes from all over the place.  What I have discovered is that the recipe really didn't matter. I doubled the fruit and added some extra peel and nuts then like a dutiful daughter poured booze all over it. The result was delicious. I have been making a full size cakes and struggle to finish them (there is still a piece in the fridge from last year) so this time I decided to make mini cakes. Not cupcakes but quarter sized perfect little fruit cakes. These will be gifts for the support staff at my daughter's school. I think they will be a hit. Well I hope they will because those ladies run that place.

My recipe went as follows:
4 cups of mixed dried fruit (in Australia you can buy this in a packet)
1 cup of mixed peel
1/2 cup of walnuts
1/2 cup of whole almonds
1cup of brown sugar
5 oz of butter
1 tsp baking soda
Put above in a large pan with 1 cup of water and bring to a boil. Simmer for a few mins then cool.

1/2 cup of plain flour
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
2 eggs
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix.

Bake at 175ºC or 350ºF for 1.5 hours for a large cake or 35-40 mins for a small cake. The small cake I made was about 10 cm across. For a large cake you will need a 22 cm tin.

The "original" recipe.

Pancake Perfection

I must preface this by saying that these are pancakes not crepes. Pancakes! The fluffy sweet pillowy type you get at real old school pancake restaurants. So for those Aussie readers out there who masquerade crepes with lemon and sugar as pancakes this is not the recipe for you. You can however use this recipe for pikelets. I will at a future date post an amazing recipe for crepes but not today. These are our Dinner Cup pancakes and the recipe is fool proof and easy. Almost always served with blueberry sauce and often with crispy bacon. You will, I hope, notice a pattern which makes it easy to remember.






Perfect Pancakes

2 cups Self-raising flour
2 cups milk

Time to flip...

2 large eggs
2 tbls melted butter (cooled)
2 tsp sugar (optional)
2 tsp vanilla
a generous pinch of salt

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Let sit for 20-30 mins.

Heat a large non stick pan on medium heat. Spray once very sparingly with non stick spray. Pour 1/3 cup of batter in to pan and cook until big bubbles form all over the pancake then flip. I never re-spray and if you have a good non stick pan you should not need to*. Serve immediately with butter and maple syrup or my quick blueberry sauce. 

Quick BlueberrySauce

In a medium glass bowl add

1 cup frozen blueberries

2 tsp sugar

1/4 teaspoon of corn starch (optional)
1 tbls butter (optional)

Put the blueberries, sugar, and corn flour in a microwave safe bowl.

Cover

Microwave on high for 2-3 mins depending on your microwave. You want it to boil and bubble for about 30 seconds. Let cool for 5 mins and it will thicken slightly. Stir in the butter. I say optional for the corn flour and butter because some frozen blue berries are more mushy than others and the butter because some folks just don't do butter. The butter does give a glossy sheen to the sauce.
Serve over pancakes.
Incidentally this sauce is delicious served warm over ice cream and anything else you can think of. 

Tip:
*If you follow this method you will get perfect pancake house pancakes. When you add oil it makes patterns on the surface of the pancake and they are not as tender. 

The happy diners.

Poppy's Lorax Party

My daughter turned 7 last week and after much conversation we decided on a pizza and movie party with optional sleepover. The next question was which movie. I knew I needed a movie so I could figure out the theme of the cake and food. I was so happy when she decided on the Lorax. There was just so much colour and fun things to work with. So off we went and found some fun stuff for invitations. 

Then I searched the internet for ideas. I immediately found a beautiful cake that I knew I wanted to make... Pinterest of course. And a few other Pinterest finds. All in all it was a wonderful party and the girls had a fantastic time. 

I love how the cake turned out. The cotton candy/fairy floss didn't last long. It was a very hot day. 

I found these on pinterest. They were very popular with the girls and super easy to make. Just a marshmallow dipped in white chocolate and rolled in sprinkles. 

Poppy cookies for my Poppy. This is just a simple sugar cookie with lemon icing. 

Cucumber truffula trees

I found a mustache template by googling "Lorax Mustache" and then cut it out with an exacto knife. We used these on the straws and on popcorn bags and also on the goody bags.

These cake pops later became the candle holders. I was worried the fairy floss would catch fire so I decided to put the candles around the edge of the cake. 

The cake pops were a little fiddly but basically they were plain cake pops dipped in white chocolate. I was lucky enough to find these cool straws at the dollar store. I used the same mustache template just shrunk down. I then placed parchment over the template and piped white chocolate with yellow food colouring. The eyes were dots of white chocolate and I drew the pupils with a food writer pen. I just "glued everything in place with melted white chocolate.

I made the "save the trees" banner with cardboard triangles and letters I printed from a word document. I think the font was Baskerville 300pt. I punched holes and threaded it on string. And the tissue paper pompoms (I thought they looked like the tops of truffula trees) are dollar store finds. 

These goodie bags were just orange paper bags I found in the party store. I used a Lorax pumpkin carving template and just printed it the size I wanted on yellow paper. We added googly eyes for fun.

We decided to do a quick take home craft so I found these paper pots and put together this little poem from Lorax quotes and printed it to attach to the pots. The girls planted pompom marigolds and zinnias.

This is the aftermath of hours in the baby pool, planting seeds, pass the parcel, pizza making, dancing, a movie, popcorn, milk shakes, slushies and cake. These kids were wrecked.

All in all this was a great party. The next morning we had fruit and crepes with nutella. Out of 10 girls 5 slept over. Everyone was picked up on time and we were exhausted. What an experience. I think maybe we will leave the sleepovers until they are a little older but we are very lucky that these are all wonderful kids. 

A Very Hungry Caterpillar Party

My little man turned one recently and I love to throw a party. I felt inspired by the Hungry Caterpillar book and so here is what we came up with...

Cute invites

Obviously a Caterpillar cake was essential

Caterpillar food

Cookies for sure













And a few caterpillar decorations

So the garland is cheap paper plates I painted in the style of Eric Carle (meaning all splotchy and not very even) and I found a Happy Birthday sign at the $1 store so I pulled it apart and used the letters. I used construction paper for the facial features. This was a really fun project to do with my 5 yr old. She did some of the painting and glueing.
We got the paper for the table and the napkins and party hats from the Eric Carle museum. They were really cute.
On the table we had all the different pieces of fruit. 1 apple, 2 pears, 3 plums...
I made caterpillar sandwiches. You could put anything in them but I did ham and cheese so the grown ups had food too. The faces were a cherry tomato, with cucumber skin for the antennae and cucumber for the eyes I used the lid from a squeeze bottle for the cutter. HINT: the cucumber is difficult to stick to the tomato so they each either have to be very dry(difficult) or I used guacamole for glue. Use whatever is easiest.
We did fruit caterpillars with honeydew melon and watermelon.
The cookies were the goodie bag this time. It was a butterfly and a poppy. As for the cake well maybe that is another blog. But if I forget and you need instructions I would be happy to help. Just ask...

There was some grown up food and drinks because, well, one year olds don't care and 5 yr olds just want you to go away... hehe. So spinach pie, asparagus soup and salad. Oh and a few pink bubbles.
In truth you could really go a lot crazier than I did but he is only one so I kept it low key. But there is a Very Hungry Caterpillar board game that would be fun. We had a super cute craft planned but never got around to it. The craft was gluing really big pompoms together with giant googly eyes to make a caterpillar. You can also do it on a big craft stick (tongue depressor) for the little kids.



Kids are a gift and this is my way of telling mine I truly believe they are my jewels. It is a labor of love. And super fun! Love you P&A