Bake-a-rama

I've been cooking myself silly over the past few days - new cookies, a new cake recipe, a pasta dish, something different in the slow cooker and some seriously fabulous roast potatoes! I'll be sharing them with you over the next few days but I have to tell you about the most recent one first.

Last night we had my mum's birthday dinner at our place. It's not really her birthday till later in the week but she'll be away so we decided a few days early was better than not celebrating at all. We had herbed crumbed lamb cutlets, beef and sundried tomato sausages, a garden salad and the best roasted potatoes I've ever had. Ever. In fact they were so good we gobbled them up and I only got a photo of the sad looking leftovers.

The recipe is over at Ree's Pioneer Woman site and was a big hit with all at our table. I skipped the garlic - we all had meetings today so I felt it was probably safer to leave it out - but I'll be making this with all the ingredients very soon.

And yes, we did have birthday cake. Of course we had birthday cake! But I wasn't allowed to bake it. The kids demanded that we buy an ice-cream cake. And who am I to refuse them?

How Many Is Too Many?

Also known as Choc-chip Cookie Recipe #1297!

I came across a Donna Hay book I hadn't seen before at the library last week and couldn't resist it. A whole Donna book of cookies, slices, cakes and desserts! After several days of drooling I settled on making some choc chip cookies this morning. I have a bunch of choc chip cookie recipes - several are on this blog - but that doesn't stop me trying out new ones.

If you like coconut it's fair to say you'll like these cookies. Unfortunately I don't love coconut. But... I have suffered my way through a couple, just in the interests of taste-testing you understand, and they're not bad. The kids think they're lovely, especially because 'they're not hard' - #1 has two wobbly teeth right now and is having difficulty biting into food. Hubby wandered in some time after they were cooked and he's also given his vote of approval.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

from Modern Classics Book 2 by Donna Hay

125g butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 cups plain flour, sifted

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup dessicated coconut

185g milk or dark chocolate, broken into chunks (I used choc chips, because they were in the pantry!)

Preheat the oven to 190C. Place the butter, vanilla and sugar in a bowl and beat until creamy. Beat int he eggs. Stir through the flour, baking powder, coconut and chocolate.

Roll tablespoonfuls of the mixture into balls. Place on baking trays lined with non-stick baking paper, allowing room for the cookies to spread, and flatten slightly. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. Makes 38 (really? I only got 30).

Magazine Monday: Greek Chicken Platter

I tempted fate tonight by including the lemon in this recipe. Actually, I only included half the lemon - I wasn't willing to tempt it too much! Two and a bit hours on I'm itchy but that's it so far so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

This chicken salad was really nice. The roasted chicken was lovely and the salad was bursting with flavour. We often have some variant of warm chicken salad, especially as the weather warms up, but this one was just a little bit different which made it a nice change. I ended up making two versions of the platter - one for us with the olives, etc, as described in the recipe below (and I added some feta) and one for the kids minus those bits but with some carrots and regular cheddar cheese. Both lots went down a treat.

The recipe is from this month's issue of delicious. which, incidentally, features my local area in the piece by Matt Preston. See, it's not just me who thinks this is a great place to be! Oh, and about the lemon - I used the zest in the marinade but none of the juice listed. I'm sure the juice would have added more flavour but like I said, I wasn't willing to tempt fate quite that much.

Greek Chicken Platter

from delicious. October 2009

4 free-range chicken breasts, with skin on - optional (I chose not!)

Grated zest of one lemon, plus a squeeze of juice (from our tree)

1 tablespoon chopped oregano (I used marjoram, from the herb garden)

1/4 cup olive oil

6 bacon rashers, cut into bite size pieces

100g thick Greek-style yoghurt

1 garlic clove, crushed

50g black olives

1 Lebanese cucumber, peeled, halved lengthwise, seeds removed, sliced

12 cherry tomatoes, halved

Salad leaves, to serve

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Place chicken in a bowl with lemon zest, oregano ad half the oil. Season, then turn to coat in the mixture. Allow to marinate for 10 minutes. Place chicken in a roasting pan (skin side up, if using) and roast for 18-20 minutes until cooked through. Cover with foil and rest while you make the salad.

Meanwhile cook the bacon in a frypan over medium heat for 2-3 minutes until crisp. Drain on paper towel.

Stir yoghurt, garlic, lemon juice, 3 tablespoons water and some salt and pepper together in a bowl. Drizzle with remaining oil.

Arrange the bacon, olives, cucumber, tomatoes and salad leaves on a serving platter. Slice the chicken and serve with the salad and the yoghurt dressing.

Sunday Breakfast

Buttermilk pancakes with strawberries, cream, maple syrup and a dusting of icing sugar. A perfect way to start a Sunday.

Right At Home

Here's a picture of part of the back garden. Hubby calls this spot the rain-forest. I usually call it the jungle. It's full of ferns and bits and pieces that like to be warm, damp and in the shade.

It's one of the areas that I've been working on over the past few weeks. Clearing out some of the undergrowth, thinning out some of the plants, finding some hidden treasures buried away underneath the bigger, showier things. While #2 and I were admiring our hard work today something caught our eye.

We crept a little closer for a better look.

We crept a little closer still and found this frog snoozing on an old log.

He was quite big for the back garden - a bit bigger than my palm I'd guess - and though his colours don't show up well in this photo he had splashes of pale, almost translucent, blue and green across his back. We have a couple of resident frogs in the pond but we haven't come across this little froggy before.

He stayed on that log for ages, just enjoying the dappled sunshine, and wasn't at all perturbed when Offspring #2 and his buddy tumbled out of the house to look at him.