The Bear's Water Picnic

This evening, we read The Bear's Water Picnic by John Yeoman and Quentin Blake. 

It's a very heart-warming story about a group of animals going on a picnic and were disturbed by loud croaking noises from the frogs.  The frogs wanted to join in but the friends wanted to move to a quieter spot.  However,  they found themselves in a situation only the frogs could help.  They discovered the benefit of working together and making new friends.

As usual, I almost always enjoy the illustration of the books as much as I enjoyed the story.  This particular book is illustrated by Quentin Blake and he also illustrated a lot of Roald Dahl's book.  Love the vibrant colour, expressiveness and the clear outline of his picture. . 

Chocolate Mud Cake

I had baked this chocolate mud cake a couple of times.  I came across the recipe in New Zealand Women's weekly magazine.  It's a recipe featuring a product from manufacturer. They look simple enough to make.   Found out this actually tastes a lot better if you let it sit overnight. The texture is very rich, and kind of 'mud cake' like.

So here's the recipe if you would like to try making it:

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups self raising flour (I used 1 and 3/4 cup plain flour with 1 and 3/4 tsp baking powder)
1 3/4 cups sugar  (I used 1 and 1/2 cups sugar)
3/4 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1 cup Mayonnaise (I use the real stuff, not the 'lite' version)
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups milk

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 175 degrees.  Sift flour, cocoa, baking soda and baking powder into a large mixing bowl and stir in sugar.  Add egg, mayonnaise, vanilla and milk and beat together on low speed until combined, increase speed and beat at medium for 2 minutes.  Pour into a lined 23cm cake tin and bake 40-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out with a small amount of fudgy mixture.

To make chocolate ganache icing melt together 150gms dark chocolate with 1/4 cup cream and 30gms butter until smooth and dark.  Let cool then spread onto cake  Serve with summer berries, cream and extra chocolate sauce. (I have skipped the ganache and just dust with icing sugar. I will attempt chocolate ganache icing perhaps another time)

note:  I had to bake my cake for more than 50 minutes (or nearly an hour) until the skewer come out with only small amount of fudgy mixture.

Abel loves this cake and it's my go to cake if he asks for chocolate cake.

Lunch from Poisonous Pete

 

I work in an 'industrial' area in New Plymouth.  I usually bring my own lunch. If I don't, I have the following options: I drive down the street to buy my lunch, or drive another 5 minutes to a Subway plus a bunch of tiny takeaways, or I buy from the food truck that comes to our car park at 12 noon every day. The truck would sound it's horn and our dear receptionist, L will usually call out "POISONOUS PETE" . That's a pretty special nick name if you ask me.

 

Pete is a lovely guy, small built and wore glasses.  He offers EFTPOS on his truck and he had cold selection (pasta salad, fruit salad, slices, burgers) or hot selection, like pies (many sorts marked by different symbol) and sausages etc.

 

Today I brought my tin salmon and meslun salad but I really felt like a pie.  So when I heard the horn, I went out and bought my steak pie.  The steak tastes nice.  There's enough gravy and steak in the pie. Definitely satisfied my craving to have a warm lunch.  

Latest read - Stupid Baby by Stephanie Blake

It's now a ritual for Abel and I to stop by the library on our way back from Kidzone twice a week.  It's a way for us to spend a bit of "Us time" and for him to pick some books and me to pick magazines.

As the library system here is slightly different to that in Auckland, I find our current method work quite nicely.

Abel has decided to pick this book. The title puts me off a bit - it's called Stupid Baby. BUT Abel doesn't read yet so he has picked it purely based on the graphic of the book. The book is an instant hit with Noel. First of all, Noel finds the title hilarious. 

The story is about Simon who has a new baby brother.  This is an 'excerpt' from the back cover:

"When's that stupid baby going back to the hospital?"

"But Simon, he's your little brother: You know perfectly well he's here to stay."

"Forever?"


It's a sweet story and now the boys have requested that we must borrow POO BUM the other book written by the same author. Boy, I look forward to reading poo bum.

Happy reading.

Shade House's Apple, Walnut and Sultana Loaf

Those of you may have seen my FB posting, I was searching for a loaf pan. There are so many sizes available. To cut long story short, I found a Wiltshire silicone one at Farmers with the dimension closest to that of my recipe. Needless to say, I am really pleased.

Here presenting my first loaf on my new loaf pan, Shade House's Apple, Walnut and Sultana Loaf.
This recipe was given to me by A, my ex-colleague.  This recipe I believe is from the Foodtown magazine.  I made it for my church get together after service.

Here's the recipe with my modification:

1 3/4 cups peeled, cored, diced apple (I actually forgot to peel mine, and I used Pacific rose (a sweet red apple)
1 cup brown sugar (I used 3/4 cup as Pacific Rose is a sweet apple)
100g butter ( I used 100ml oil)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp flour salt
1/2 tsp each: baking powder, ground nutmeg (I omitted the latter as didn't have it in my pantry)
1 tsp each: Ground cinnamon, baking soda
1/2 cup each: chopped walnut, sultanas
icing sugar for dusting (I omitted as didn't have it in my pantry)

Preheat oven to 180c. Line and grease loaf pan (I used 21cm x 6.5 cm base measurement)
Combine the apple, brown sugar, melted butter and egg in the bowl. Mix well.
Sift the dry ingredients.  Mix them into the apple mixture with the sultanas and walnuts- it will be quite chunky.
Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Cool, then turn out of the pan onto a cake rack. Dust with icing sugar to serve.

Makes about 10 slices.

Verdict: Hubby gave thumbs up.

Note:
It's delicious served with butter.
I think I will try the following variation: Using wholemeal flour and try out with Granny Smith Apple (green).

P is for popcorn

This week Abel learns the letter P at Kidszone. They made popcorn on the popcorn maker and a bunch of other activities. Abel asked to make popcorn at home so I researched on making popcorn on the stove.

This activity is also excellent for Noel i.e he was able to apply fractions while reading the recipe.

I bought a bag of popping corn from the supermarket and Noel read the recipe. As I wanted to double the recipe he needs to decide total cup of popcorn to use and the amount of oil.

 

Here, Noel is helping to mix the honey evenly on the popcorn while Abel is busy eating his portion of popcorns.

 

For this activity:

 

We used:

 

2/3 cups popping corn

4 tbsp of oil

One pot and lid 

 

As we heat up the oil, we put in the popping corn.

Due to lack of experience and 2 super excited kids, we popped a whole pot of popcorns but because I wasn't 'shaking' the pot enough, quite a bit of popcorns were burnt underneath.

 

We flavoured the popcorns with manuka honey.  The above box will be tomorrow's snack.

 

 

Currently reading

We are currently reading Animal Stories by Dick King-Smith



There are 8 short stories of about 15 pages long - still a little long for Noel to read by himself but he likes that I read for him. Abel would listen too but I guess his mind wanders off half way.

The boys will take turn to choose their stories. We read them in block of time i.e. when Jake and Mil goes to buy fish at the fishmonger, we would read the stories. If they go into the veggie shop, I will then continue the story. It made time past very quickly.

So far, we had read stories about the mouse and mammoth.  There are several pictures in each stories - perhaps a bit long for Abel but Noel is enjoying it a lot.

Dick King-Smith also writes many other brilliant stories. One of his famous book is called The Sheep Pig (which is made into movie "Babe") .

I wonder what story they would choose next.

Making Anzac biscuits

For Anzac day long weekend, Noel asked to make Anzac cookies. He had apparently already baked that at BOS (his school in Auckland) as a class project.

So when we were at Countdown, he also picked a recipe there.  It's Chocolate dipped Anzac biscuits but we omitted the Chocolate dipping part.

This activity was great because Noel gets to read the recipe, and him and Abel got to roll the mixture into balls before the balls were flatten with a fork.

Below, they were very pleased with their own work.

Yummy, crunchy Anzac biscuits.

 

Here's the recipe that I use:

 

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup flour

125g butter

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup dessicated coconut

3/4cup soft brown sugar

2 Tbsp golden syrup

2 Tbsp boiling water

 

 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 c.  Line a baking tray with baking paper.

 

2. Combine the rolled oats, coconut, flour and soft brown sugar in a large mixing bowl.

 

3. Melt the butter and golden syrup together.  Dissolve the baking soda in the boiling water and add to the butter mixture.  Pour into the dry ingredients and mix together.

 

4. Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls.  Place on the tray and flatten with a fork.

 

5. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden.  Remove from the oven.

 

 

This recipe indicates that it makes 24 biscuits. We had more than that as the balls that the boys rolled were not uniformed in size. 

 

Also note that baking time varies with oven.  As this is a new oven for me, it took me a long time to figure out the time required to bake it.