Classic Victoria sponge birthday cake

I was all set to make MacMan a wonderful rich chocolate birthday cake complete with ganache, until he said he'd rather have a regular sponge cake with home made plum jam in the middle. He didn't even want any buttercream filling, though did relent to having some icing sugar dusting on the top!!
There are lots of victoria sponge recipes, though to be honest they don't vary a huge amount. This month's Taste magazine conveniently had a nice sounding recipe, so I used that one as the magazine was to hand.

Classic Victoria Sandwich

Beef fajitas with avocado, corn and red onion salsa

It was MacMan's birthday on thursday. We had invited friends over for dinner on the Friday, but I wanted to make a bit of a party tea on his actual birthday just for The Family. The budget meal feature in taste had a recipe for fajitas. I thought this would be fun idea for the kids to put together their own wraps. As well as the avocado and sweetcorn salsa, I made a tomato salsa with spring onions, capsicum and cucumber. I didn't season the steak with an Old El Paso sachet as suggested, but instead marinated it with paprika and crushed garlic for about 20 minutes.

Beef fajitas with avocado, corn and red onion salsa

Thai fish cakes with fresh cucumber pickle

I'm continuing in my quest to get MacMan to eat (and enjoy eating) more fish. This recipe was another from the Taste magazine budget feature. It was really easy to prepare, and very tasty too. Even MacMan cleaned his plate - result! I served the cakes and pickle with some plain rice.

Thai fish cakes with fresh cucumber pickle
Serves 4

Pickle
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 cucumber
3 spring onions, sliced
1/2 tsp crushed chilli

Fish cakes
450g white fish fillets, skin and bone removed (I used red cod)
1 tbsp (or to taste) Thai red paste
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp fish sauce
60g round beans, sliced (I used peas instead)
4 kaffir lime leaves, sliced (optional)
500ml peanut, canola or soya oil
2 tbsp roasted peanuts
lemon wedges to serve

• Place vinegar and sugar into a small pan over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil and cook for 5 minutes at boiling point. Pour into a small mixing bowl and leave to cool.
• Remove the ends from the cucumber. The recipe says to peel, and then to slice into long thin strips. However, I like cucumber peel, so to remove it seems to me to be removing the best bit. Therefore I chopped it into small cubes, peel still on. Place in the bowl with the vinegar mix. Toss in the sliced spring onion and chilli (which I ommitted as I thought the dish would be spicey enough with the fishcakes). Cover, and set aside.
• Pop the fish in food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add the Thai red paste, salt, fish sauce, beans and lime leaves. Blend until mixture holds together.
• Tip out mixture onto a board, and knead together. Shape into about 20 balls and flatten each one into a cake.
• Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Cook the cakes each side until golden brown.
• Serve with chopped peanuts and lemon wedges, with the pickle on the side.
  
  

Phoebe's fabulous oatmeal-raisin cookies.

I was a huge fan of 'Friends' in the 90s. To the extent that I (like 50% of the female population) even had a 'Rachel' haircut!
This recipe is taken from the 'Cooking with Friends' book. It was featured in the episode when Phoebe had to break it to Rachel that Paulo was a cheat, so makes some of the 'best oatmeal-raisin cookies in the world' to help ease the blow. Rachel thinks they're gorgeous, and wants to know why has she never tasted them before. Phoebe explains (as only Phoebe can) that she doesn't make them a lot as she doesn't think it's fair to the other cookies!
The Princess of Power had a friend over to play today, and requested cookies. I gave these a shot, and I have to say that they really are very lovely. I'll have to be very diplomatic to the other cookies from now on!

Phoebe's fabulous oatmeal-raisin cookies
Makes 24 large cookies

12 tbsp softened butter (I measured 180ml in a cup measure)
3/4 cup soft brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups rolled oats
1 1/4 cups plain flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups raisins

• Preheat oven to 180C.
• Cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla until smooth.
• Stir together oats, flour, baking powder and soda in a separate bowl. Stir the dry ingredients into the batter until combined.
• Add in the raisins.
• Heap desertspoonfuls of the mixture onto lined baking sheets. Leave at least 5cm between each to allow room for spreading.
• Bake until the cookies are golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. (I cooked mine for 12 minutes, for that lovely typical chewy American cookie).
• Cool cookies on sheets for a few minutes, and then transfer to a rack to cool further.

Potato and Lentil Curry

This month's cover of Taste magazine caught my eye, declaring 'Chic dining on a shoestring'. The feature gives a week's menu, with all of the dishes apparently costing under $20NZ (about £7.50) for a family of four.
Most of my planned menu for the following week is taken from this feature. Anything that helps ease the purse strings is welcome, and the recipes sound delicious too!

Potato and Lentil Curry
Serves 4

I chose this particular recipe first as it required tomatoes and lentils. I had quite a lot of the salsa and lentil mixtures left over from yesterday's Jamie Oliver dish. So I didn't follow the recipe from the magazine to the letter, but used it as inspiration! I added half a teaspoon or so of each garam masala, cumin, ground coriander, and paprika to the oil as I wasn't using 'Indian Spiced' tomatoes. I also added a tin of coconut milk to make my rather spicey curry acceptable to Twirly Boy.

Jamie Oliver's salsicce con lenticche verdi e salsa di pomodoro

Phew. Sorry to any blog watchers that I've not updated recently. Twirly Boy went back to school on 7th February after the loooong summer holidays, and the Princess of Power back to playcentre. The start of the new school year has also seen the start of various activities for both the kids. It's been a fun couple of weeks getting into our routine again, but I haven't had much chance to blog. The Family haven't starved though, honest Guv! I've been cooking and baking as ever, I just haven't had chance to write about it.

This recipe is from Jamie O's Italy. I first bought it when it was newly out. To be honest, I've not given the book a really good try out, as at the time we hadn't eaten meat for about ten years, and a lot of the recipes are meaty. Now that we're back in the land of the meat-eaters, I have promised myself that I'll give the book a good test run in the next few weeks. I've wanted to go to Italy ever since I swooned at the period drama 'Room with a view'. Sadly I've not made it to Italy - and now I live so far away I'm thinking it may be some time before I get to visit the culinary mecca. For now I'll have to make do with occasional dips into this lovely book.

Salsicce con lenticche verdi e salsa di pomodoro
Or sausages and green lentils with tomato salsa

The recipe calls for Italian sausages, or good fat Cumberlands. It's bit of a running joke amoungst British ex-pats that it's impossible to find a decent sausage in NZ, so I'm afraid Cumberland were out of the question, but 'London Pride' variety did perfectly well.
This was really delicious, and quite unlike anything in my existing 'repetoire'. MacMan and Twirly Boy both cleaned their plates. The Princess of Power, however, told me that 'No like it, mummy'. As she had refused to actually try any, I'm not quite sure how she knew this. But two out of three ain't bad.

Valentine Jammy Dodgers

Tana Ramsey's Jammy Dodgers remain a firm favourite with The Family. I made heart shaped ones today, and even managed to find a diddy heart cutter in a local kitchen shop for the centres.
Happy Valentine's Day!!