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Well hello there. It has been a while..I’m just back from an fantastic holiday. And am I’m feeling great. I’ve got loads of new things to share including lots of recipes for little chefs and not so little chefs.

I’m putting my current wellbeing down to having loads of sleep, hanging out with great friends, drinking lovely juices (and quite a few cocktails, beers and champagnes), eating lots of fresh unprocessed food and indulging in loads of massages.

I’ll be doing another post with details of my trip to Lombok, Gili Air and Bali. Including all the best places to eat, drink, shop, relax and be pampered….stay tuned.

As you can imagine I’m keen to hold onto my fresh as holiday feeling now that I’m back to reality. I’d love to hear any other tips of how you keep the holiday vibe alive….

This post is from the Blog of Wholesome Productions Kids Cooking. Subscribe to our Newsletter now for a 5% Off Voucher, plus easy kids recipes and great ideas for little chefs!

I know it’s a bit of a cliché but I really can’t believe how quickly time flies… One minute you’re at the hospital with a brand new baby in your arms. The next you are organising their first birthday party.

Ok, there’s quite a few (hundred) things that happen between. Which is one of the reasons you have not seen me hanging out here much at all of late.

Here’s the cake that I made.  Luckily Joshua is too young to put in cake requests, so I kept it simple and hired a cake tin from Plenty for $5* (bargain) in the shape of a number 1. Then thanks to a couple of greens vanilla cake mixes (lovely, rich and moist) and 40 mins in the oven I was done.  All that was left was to let the cake cool to ice and decorate.

Yes the icing job is a bit hit and miss… but it was a H.O.T. day and I had a small person at my feet. Well that’s my excuse anyway.

Oh and I also found another use for my star cookie cutters – pretty little sarnis – you have to use the naughty soft sugary bread, but hey I’m ok with that every now and then. The kids wolfed down the hummus, and the vege and cheese ones.  And the adults seemingly inhaled all the smoked salmon, philly and lemon zest!

Luckily, I snaffled the shape left overs as I made them.

Happy birthday little man. Xxx

*$5 per calendar day.  Plenty Kitchenware is at Balmain 02 9818 5532 and Bondi Junction 02 9369 4520

This post is from the Blog of Wholesome Productions Kids Cooking. Subscribe to our Newsletter now for a 5% Off Voucher, plus easy kids recipes and great ideas for little chefs!

Take advantage of our pre Christmas Sale to get Kids Cookware at 25% OFF now!

The big discount is for a very limited time and storewide excluding Kids Cooking Party Kits.

Check out our latest products here

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Check out this super colourful cupcake idea we saw on the CuteFood website!

It just goes to show there is so much fun you can have when encouraging your kids to get baking!

This post is from the Blog of Wholesome Productions Kids Cooking. Subscribe to our Newsletter now for a 5% Off Voucher, plus easy kids recipes and great ideas for little chefs!

Photography by John Lonegan

Part of the process includes taking his two children on regular trips to the markets to teach them where food comes from and who grows it. “To me it’s just about getting the kids out there”, Justin says.

Read the rest of this great article by Grant Jones at taste.com.au

This post is from the Blog of Wholesome Productions Kids Cooking. Subscribe to our Newsletter now for a 5% Off Voucher, plus easy kids recipes and great ideas for little chefs!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRhTIOXgbAM

It seems the folks at Masterchef HQ are keeping the on-air date under wraps. We’ve had it confirmed that they have brought the start date ahead from the original October date, but we have only heard whispers about the 7^th September or the 12^th of September - but no one really knows.

We do know that it looks like a lot of fun and that the younger chefs are going to give the older chefs a run for their money. Tempering chocolate when you are only eight years old – amazing!  Some of the mains they are ‘plating up’ look fantastic too.

Wonder if they’ll have a Young vs Grown Up Chefs challenge?!

This post is from the Blog of Wholesome Productions Kids Cooking. Subscribe to our Newsletter now for a 5% Off Voucher, plus easy kids recipes and great ideas for little chefs!

So now is the perfect time to check out our latest Kids Cooking Kits and Kids Cooking Party Kits. Find everything you need to encourage you little ones to become mini master chefs at the Wholesome Productions online store!

Offer available for a limited time.

This post is from the Blog of Wholesome Productions Kids Cooking. Subscribe to our Newsletter now for a 5% Off Voucher, plus easy kids recipes and great ideas for little chefs!

A great piece from Jane Willson that first appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on January 19, 2010.

It’s the question you don’t want to hear: “Are your kids good eaters?” Er, not really. OK, no.

The messages are everywhere: diet is crucial; impart a love of food and the affair will last a lifetime; encourage kids to get their hands dirty in the vegetable garden and they’ll beg for the green stuff, and never single out “healthy” food as though it’s any less joyous than a bucket of hot, salty chips.

And then there’s my dad’s line: “Don’t fuss, they’ll never starve.”

True, but parents’ instinct to send their children to bed full is a tough one to fight. And it’s troubling when you’re constantly desperate to concoct a delicious, nutrition-packed dish that will bring them around.

Enter writer and cookbook author Amanda Grant, most recently consultant to The Silver Spoon for Children, a beautiful book catering to the burgeoning market of cooking with kids. Like most cookbooks these days, it’s an impressive hardback, art-directed to within an inch of its life but with an emphasis on step-by-step illustrations and simple pictures of each dish. There are 40 “favourite Italian recipes” in what is the first children’s edition of a book widely considered to be that country’s food bible.

The “getting started” tips include handling knives and cracking eggs and the recipes are mostly fun, with lots of usual suspects including pizza, pasta and lasagne. (Though I still struggle with the perfect bechamel and the seven-year-old lost interest when the constant stirring became too much like hard work.)

There are also recipes with a twist, such as beans with sausages, one of Grant’s daughter’s favourites. The original recipe calls for wine but she improvised with apple juice.

I decide to share my sad secret with Grant, a Britain-based nutritionist, healthy eating advocate and mother of three. Her children are 10, eight and six. “They’ve all gone through the difficult times,” she says, possibly trying to gauge whether I’m referring to “a stage” or a more serious case.

“There are two things I stick to, as a busy parent. I only ever cook once [even if she and her partner eat later] and I don’t ever offer an alternative.” Children, she insists, will eat if they are hungry.

She might have me already. I typically try to take a hard line on alternatives but the dad is the weak link. The three-year-old may barely give her meal the finger, before moving on to a bowl of strawberries.

Grant says she always has at least one vegetable on her kids’ plates. “Even if they don’t eat it, it’s there every night,” she says. “I do say they should taste everything but you have to respect there are some things they will dislike.”

Grant is also big on not dumbing down food. “Most children actually welcome things that taste good and have flavour,” she says. And having spent a lot of time in Italy, she says she’s struck by how at ease most children are when dining in restaurants there. Not to mention the welcome absence of kids’ menus. “There’s quite a lot we can learn from that,” she says.

The next piece of advice is to involve them in the kitchen. We certainly do that. Each of them will enthusiastically make pancakes, bake a cake or assist with a meal but will inexplicably lose their appetites when it hits the table (except for the sweet stuff).

My eyes glaze a bit, too, when Grant says she believes in giving kids a varied diet. It’s not bad advice, just obvious and I’m a little fatigued from trying to do it. I try to keep my disillusionment in check, pushing away thoughts of foods my eldest once ate but has since abandoned – she and I debrief when I get home. “Look, Mum, I’m getting better,” she says. Maybe she’s right. And in a few years I, too, will be able to write it off as “just a stage”. In the meantime, we have one happy dog.

The Silver Spoon for Children, Phaidon Press, $29.95.

Beans with sausages

Beans and sausages are a classic combination: simple and delicious. In this recipe, you pour some apple juice in with the beans, which may sound a bit strange at first but it makes for a really wonderful sweet sauce for the beans.

8-12 good-quality pork sausages (depending on how many you want to eat)

2 cloves garlic

2 tsp olive oil

2 fresh sage leaves

400g tin cannellini beans, rinsed

and drained

100ml apple juice

Freshly ground black pepper

Turn on the oven to 190C. Prick the sausages all over with a fork. Put into a heavy-based roasting dish, add the whole garlic cloves with the skin left on and the olive oil. Put the roasting dish into the oven for 20 minutes.

The sausages will turn lovely and brown as they cook in the roasting dish — this will help colour the beans and the gravy juice later. Put your oven gloves on and take the roasting dish out of the oven. Using tongs or a knife and fork, carefully turn the sausages over. The sausages will then go brown on the other side when they go back in the oven. Very carefully spoon out any spare fat that has collected in the bottom of the dish. Roughly tear the sage and add to the sausages with the tinned beans. Add the apple juice and stir. Wearing your oven gloves, put back into the oven for another 20 minutes until the beans are hot and slightly soft. Carefully stir everything with a wooden spoon and add a little freshly ground black pepper. Serve with some fresh cooked green vegetables. If you like, you can serve the beans and sausages in a pretty dish.

Serves 4

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“As a parent, I have always thought the best presents are the ones made by your children, along with the cards they have designed.

So, I decided to see if my family could rustle up eight presents for under £20 — within a day. We made toffee, truffles, fruit loaf and a host of other edible treats to give away.

Mind you, given how many of the truffles were eaten along the way, it was nothing short of a miracle that any of them made it into the bags we’d prepared.

Festive treats: Tamasin Day-Lewis has her Christmas presents all wrapped up with a little help from some children.

And even more of a miracle that all eight presents were made and wrapped in five hours flat — giving me the rest of the day to restore the kitchen to its natural state!”

HOKEY POKEY CINDER TOFFEE

(makes five bags)

Use either a teacup or mug to measure as it makes life easier — and fill right to the brim.

Ingredients:

1 cup light muscovado sugar

4 heaped tbsp golden syrup

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method: Place a sheet of non-stick bakewell paper on a large baking sheet or tray. Melt the sugar and syrup together in a large pan then boil for 4 minutes until the mixture is molten, bubbling — and has darkened considerably.

Stir from time to time as it bubbles. After 4 minutes, stir in the baking soda. The mixture will froth and quadruple in size. Remove from the heat and carry on stirring as you pour it on to the baking tray. Leave to cool and set before smashing it into shards for the bags.

Cost: Less than £1 per gift

CHOCOLATE, FIG, PRUNE AND WALNUT LOG

(makes two)

Ingredients:

2 cups chopped dried figs

1 cup pitted Agen prunes

1 cup raisins

1 cup dark 70-75 per cent chocolate, chopped

2 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup walnuts

1 cup unrefined icing sugar

Method: Place the figs, prunes, raisins, chocolate chunks, cinnamon and vanilla in a food processor and blend to a paste. Add the walnuts and pulse briefly so that they stay chunky.

Scrape the mixture out, divide into two and place the first piece on to a sheet of cling film that you have dredged with unrefined icing sugar, and roll into a thick sausage coated with the sugar.

Place in a cellophane bag and tie the ends cracker-style with ribbon before placing in the fridge to firm up.

Slice thinly, when ready to eat.

Cost: £5 per logs

WHITE CHOCOLATE AND RASPBERRY TRUFFLES

(five bags, makes eight per bag)

Ingredients:

400g fresh raspberries

2 x 200g bars white chocolate

Up to a walnut sized piece of butter

Method: Put the raspberries in a single layer on a tray and freeze for an hour to almost frozen before you start.

Line a baking tray with a sheet of foil. Melt the white chocolate in pieces in a bowl that is floating in a pan, with some gently simmering water in the bottom of it.

Keep the bowl over the hot water while you work.

Put the raspberries one at a time on the end of a skewer and dip into the melted chocolate until covered.

Place on to the silver foil to cool. If the chocolate looks like it is hardening or separating, stir in a few tiny pieces of butter.

When all the raspberries are coated, place the tray in the fridge to set.

Once ready, place in bags and decorate.

Cost: £8.76 (less than £1 per present).

EARL GREY FRUIT TEA LOAF

(makes 1 x 900g or 2 x 450g loaves)

Ingredients:

400g mixed dried fruit such as Muscat raisins, unsulphured apricots chopped, cranberries, blueberries, sour cherries

120g dark muscovado or molasses sugar

300 ml hot Lapsang, Earl Grey or Jasmine tea (loose leaf for the best flavour)

225g self-raising flour

1 large free range egg, beaten

Method: Put the dried fruit and sugar in a bowl, pour over the hot tea and leave overnight or for at least 6 hours.

Stir before you go to bed and again before you use. Pre-heat the oven to 180c/Gas 4. Grease and line 2 x 450g or 1 x 900g loaf tins.

Sift the flour over the fruit in the bowl and add the beaten egg then fold everything in together.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 1 hour if it’s one loaf or 50 minutes if it’s two, before sticking a skewer in.

If the skewer comes out clean the loaf is cooked, with the bigger loaf it may take up to another 15 minutes depending on your oven.

Cool in the tin on a wire rack before turning out. Wrap in greaseproof and foil and store in a sealed container, it keeps well for a couple of weeks.

Cost: £6.50 per small loaf (I used expensive dried fruit, can be half the cost if you use a cheaper brand).

GINGERBREAD HEARTS, HOUSES AND STARS

(enough for six)

Ingredients:

110g softened unsalted butter

100g light muscovado sugar

170g golden syrup

400g plain flour

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

ICING:

1 egg white

55g unrefined icing sugar (approx)

A squeeze of lemon juice

Method: Preheat oven to 190c/gas 5.

Put the butter and brown sugar in the bowl of the Kitchen Aid or whisk with an electric beater until light and creamy.

Add the golden syrup, sifted flour, ginger, sifted bicarb and mix until you have a smooth dough.

Roll out the dough between sheets of non-stick baking parchment to about 4mm/1/4 in thick.

Cut out the gingerbread with a shaped cutter (try stars or trees) and place them on a baking tray lined with non-stick baking parchment.

Bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden and just brown around the edges.

After a couple of minutes remove with a palette knife and cool on a rack until they’ve firmed up.

Meanwhile, mix the egg white and sifted icing sugar together with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Pipe your decorations and add silver balls or what you will. Leave the icing to set. Cost: Approximately £1 per gift.

MINCEMEAT

(makes six small jars)

Ingredients:

340g each sultanas, raisins and currants

170g flaked almonds

3 eating apples, coarsely grated, skin on

400g dark muscovado sugar

150g mixed peel

1 tsp grated nutmeg

1?2 tsp each ground cloves, mace, ginger and cinnamon

150g beef or vegetarian suet

Grated zest and juice of 11?2 organic lemons

Zest of an organic orange

120 ml of whatever alcohol you like; I used Jameson’s whiskey and Cognac

Method: Mix everything together in a large bowl and pot. Turn the jar every few weeks, for the alcohol to permeate, for a long-life.

Cost: Less than £1 per jar

MINCE PIES

(makes 12-15, depending on size of tart tins)

Ingredients:

225g plain flour

120g unsalted butter

1 beaten egg

Mincemeat

Method: Preheat oven to 180C/Gas 4.

Sift the flour directly into the food processor and add the cubed, fridge-cold butter. Pulse for about 20 seconds to crumb, then add 1 tbsp cold water and blitz until the mixture coheres into a ball.

Remove and flatten with the heel of your hand on a sheet of cling-film.

Wrap and refrigerate for an hour.

Roll out on a floured board and cut with cutters.

Grease the little tart tins and fit the pastry in.

Add the mincemeat with a teaspoon.

Brush the edges of the pastry with cold water and seal the top deck of pastry on before brushing the tops with beaten egg.

Bake for 12-15 minutes. Check the pastry is browned and the filling hot. Cool on racks. Cost: £2 per batch

CHOCOLATE FUDGE

(makes around 40 pieces, eight per bag)

Ingredients:

450g unrefined granulated sugar

170 ml milk

3 tbsp Green and Black’s cocoa powder

55g unsalted butter cut into cubes

A few drops of vanilla extract

Method: Stir together the sugar, milk and coca until the sugar feels like it has dissolved.

Cook gently in a pan allowing the temperature to rise slowly.

You need the temperature to reach 115C on a sugar thermometer.

Warm the thermometer first in hot water before putting upright into the pan.

When the fudge has hit 115C, remove the thermometer back to the hot water and dip the base of the fudge pan in cold water for a minute to arrest the boiling.

Drop in the little chunks of butter, still without stirring.

Cool. When tepid add the vanilla and beat together. Pour into an oiled tin.

When cold, cut the mixture in squares and chill.

Cost: Around £3 (assuming you have the vanilla extract and cocoa already).

POMANDERS

Tie the ribbon around the fruit. You can then hang it on a bough and spike the fruit with as many cloves as you can so that the orange peel doesn’t show. Patience!

Cost: Around £1.99 for a bag of Clementines, plus a bit more for the cloves.

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