Making More In My Kitchen

 With the kids home because of school holidays, its very important to have the cupboards full with baking. It stops the temptation to buy things we don't need, and makes great bribes (I mean encouragement hee hee) to behave and be helpful. Yes even the teen boys :)

I started with making Afghan biscuits, don't need a lot of ingredients for these. A great use for our walnuts :)

Next Gingerbread Men, DS8 helped with the icing. Next time will make car ones. As DS8 does like his Gingerbread cookies :)

Then I made Feijoa Jelly. This is my first time, and I was please to see it's as easy as making Crab Apple Jelly. A great use of fruit that kids weren't eating (the small sized feijoas, that a teaspoon don't fit). Now I know they will eat on pikelets and scones (with some fresh whipped cream YUM!)

Look at those beautiful Autumn colours. Feijoa and Crab Apple Jellies make a pretty stain glass window for my kitchen :)

Now I can focus on catching up on washing (got behind after boys came back from camp), and cleaning. Need my lounge back :)

Autumn In My Kitchen

Do you love the colours of Autumn? I sure do :)
Even better when you find them in your kitchen with the autumn flavours to go with them.

Washing crab apples to make crab apple jelly. I love the red, oranges and yellows.

The finished Crab Apple Jelly is also very pretty with the sun shining on them. Had them by the kitchen window to cool.

Orange of carrots and the browns of walnuts. Getting ready to make carrot cake.

Homemade Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing. YUM! Perfect for an autumn afternoon tea (or dessert)

Also made chicken stock for tonight's dinner, more for comfort food then colours. The carrot cake I made double batch so half could go into the freezer for a day when I don't have time to bake.
Came away from the kitchen today very happy. now DH has cooked us dinner :)

Very Hot Summer Day

In the morning had to take a walk in the garden to cool down from a hot night. My sweet peas are flowering lots. Love the different colours, very cheerful.

 

Look what I found, our 1st passion fruit. I saw the beautiful flower, but didn't think it would fruit. Pleasantly surprised.

 

And look our 1st blackberries. I have to help support the vines onto the fence, as they were going exploring.

  

3 days worth of eggs (but we did use 3 for baking on Thursday). Will be using more today with baking and dinner. Our Brown shavers are laying now (those beautiful brown eggs), and with the others we are getting about 6 eggs a day. I should start recording our eggs, see how many we get per month (and year).

 

Our Waste Not Want Not Cup Cakes. They are really Banana Cupcakes, the bananas were at the bottom of our fruit bowl and starting to go brown. So we needed to use them, then some of our eggs. Also these patty cases were from a Christmas present. They were for shortbread biscuits that come in a box, (biscuits all eaten). Perfect for our cupcakes, since I had run out of patty cases. Made 12 cupcakes. I also added some wholemeal flour to them, with plain flour. Partly to make them abit healthy. But mostly to stretch our flour supply to last till I can shop next week.

 

With 8 of our eggs, and 2 of our courgettes made this Courgette and Carrot Quiche for dinner. Served with some our Butter Beans, picked this morning. Large slices were very filling. Yes we are still slowly going through our courgettes. I have a few more dinner ideas for them yet. Then I will start freezing them.

Busy Easter Monday

With DH home for a short holiday, I made use of his help. And was able to have a very productive day.
Started on Sunday night with making overnight Easter Cookies with the whole family. I found this recipe in Sophie Gray's "Destitute Gourmet more stunning food from small change" book.
They are called the Easter Story Cookies, and are a great way to share the Easter Story with children.

The end result we enjoyed on Monday morning. Yummy Easter Story Cookies

 We made the cookies as we shared the story, and then placed in a hot oven to cook overnight (the oven turned off though). And in the morning woke to these yummy treats, alot cheaper then buying the kids Easter Eggs.
After breakfast and a quick clean of the kitchen, I got ready for a day in the kitchen.
Made a Coffee Cake with Coffee icing, to use up the last of the old coffee beans.
Then I made Raspberry Jam. It's my favorite jam, and last year had been buying it at the supermarket. And around $3 it had been adding up. I wanted to see if I could make it cheaper. First I picked up some jam making sugar (it has jam setting mix in it already), brought 1kg for $3.60. Then 1kg of frozen raspberries for $4.

Ingredients ready, and the jars from last year.

Made more then expected, thankfully had some extra little jars. These 2 little jars are in the fridge ready to use.

Fresh Raspberry Jam on fresh bread. Perfect treat :) 

Conclusion with the Raspberry Jam, it was well worth making. Made about 5 jars (the 2 small jars together is the same as 1 jam jar), so $1.52 per jar bets buying from the supermarket.
While making jam I started on dinner in the crockpot. Beef stew with some of the last tomatoes, and courgettes from our garden. Later added dumplings to the stew to make it more filling (as we had an extra person for dinner).
I also did some extra baking, being school holidays, with the children inviting extra friends over, helps to have extra baking.
Made Chocolate Chunk Cookies and Gingerbread Biscuits.
Lastly made more stewed feijoas for breakfast, and from the leftover feijoa juices made a feijoa jelly for dessert.
At the same time was keeping the kitchen clean, dishes washed. And was able to wake up today with my kitchen ready for breakfast.
Now that my DH is back at work, I can have time now with my children.

Thrusday - Baking Day

Today's the day I need to fill a couple of containers with baking to last us till next baking day hopefully.
Will be making coffee cake with coffee icing (to use up some coffee beans, that have been stored in the cupboard). Will also make 2 batches of biscuits, chocolate chunk cookies and gingerbread men. And if I have time will make a peppermint slice.
After the baking will clean up the kitchen. Hopefully will have that done before dinner time. Dinner will be Clara's Poorman's Meal (from my Clara's Kitchen cookbook)
Better get children to school now :)

Home Baking Day

Ok not baking but it is one of our garden sunflowers in the kitchen.

Gingerbread biscuits

Shortbread biscuits

Filled up one container with biscuits today. Was my first time making shortbread, and found it very easy. Made the shortbread in the food processor with 3 ingredients. 250g Butter, 1 cup icing sugar and 3 cups flour, mix together. Then roll out and cut into shapes and bake for about 15mins. They taste good, but maybe I need to work on the cutting out shapes for them. Made alot of biscuits. The gingerbread is not to hard to make too. Next will be making chocolate cupcakes with nutty fudge icing.

Would rather be in the garden

But stuck inside with kids and a baby. Outside the sun is shining, wonderful after days with rain. The birds are singing, and weeds are growing (I so want to deal with those weeds). But at least I can tend to our seedling growing inside. And when I'm busy feeding baby, I can keep an eye on DS11 who is baking a cake.

Our seedlings growing. We don't have a green house yet, so our bedroom window has to do.

Cute little Butternut Squash seedling.

Homemade plastic house for our Sugar Baby Watermelon seeds. Hope they grow.

DS11 baking a cake in our little kitchen. Can't wait to try it.

Today we are going to eat cake. Didn't DS11 do well.

I did sneak out and picked a strawberry for my morning tea. Sun kissed sweet strawberry.