Look at all these puppies!

I don’t know where to start in the kitchen.

Hmmm…..let’s see……orange and poppy seed cake, lemon cupcakes, lemon butter, just to name a few. Oh and vodka and orange on the rocks come crumble free time perhaps?

Such wonderful fruits and wayyyyy too many options, that I may just admire them for now and hang out the washing! Ho, hum!

At what point did it become necessary to feel as though we need to throw extravaganza parties for our precious little beings right from age 1????

Inflatable castles, hiring a fairy or clown or even a horse. Yep, guilty!

Do we have Donna Hay to blame?

Every year she puts out her fabulous kids issue and I get all excited about these wonderful, creative food ideas and themes that I am an absolute sucker for it!! It’s all in the styling I’m sure.

Or is it just social pressure that makes us do it?

Well, all the friends in my children’s social circle have one every year, so I would hate for them to feel like the odd one out!

Why is it that every party I organize, from the time I wake, I have butterflies as there is always so much to prepare. Then, there is the general tidying up of the house, so the parents of the guests don’t think we live like animals!!!

Then there is the cake. Don’t get me started! Oh, the requests for animals, Pokemon characters and the like and pirate chests (didn’t that turn out to be a disaster!)

How about games? Right, well let’s try and get those right because we want everyone to participate and not miss out. Whose idea was it anyway, to get all politically correct with pass the parcel and put a lolly in between each layer and then it is rigged so everyone gets a turn to unwrap a layer??? We need to harden these kids up! Life wasn’t meant to be easy sunshine!

Let me tell you about a party we threw for Crumble #2 for his 7th birthday and we played Pin the Tail on the Donkey. One little critter (unbeknown to Cookie Senior and I) decided to put a little something he extracted from his nose right next to the tail. So, when it came to his turn, all he had to do was feel around for it and there you have it.  Bingo!! We have got ourselves our winner! Genius! Is it not?

At the same party, I recall hearing a child say “this party is boring!”

Tell you what, I almost turned him around to use his backside for the before mentioned game!!! Did he not realize I was up until 1 a.m icing a flipping rocket cake?

Now that we have had all our children’s birthdays until December, from now on, it will be K.I.S.S.

That’s right people!

Keep It Simple Stupid!

Because after all, our kids will remember the simplest parties when mum didn’t have a coronary stressing about propping up a treasure chest or dropping icing on the floor because she was frantic trying to be super mum.

I have to say, it all looked so beautiful after we worked out where everyone’s little plot started and stopped and who was having what. Shall we say, there was no method involved at all.

So, here is where we are at now……

Even our dear little garden gnome, wishes he were somewhere else.

“Call this a veggie patch??”

“Wake me up when you have it sorted!”

Okay, little garden friend, I promise this school holidays we’ll make it a patch where you will stand proud!!

You see, we had snails come and visit and our cat used it as his kitty litter box.

I have wonderful memories of my Grandma and Grandpa’s veggie patch growing up on their quarter acre block down on the Mornington Peninsula. They had very organized boxes and veggies were plentiful. I remember playing tag with my siblings in between all those rows of wonderful vegetables, catching butterflies and eating peas straight from the pod. Man, they were delicious!

So, mark my words, this family will be eating home grown veggies in a few months with the “help” from my little crumbles and I shall replicate something I fondly remember as a child! Get the feeling that I am quite nostalgic this week?

All because I heard the click, clacking of someone typing on an old school typewriter.

I have not heard that noise in such a long time.

I recall the Christmas when my sister and I both received an orange typewriter.

Childhood memory....

I thought it was the greatest gift ever, maybe that and the year I got a walkman….I did think I was pretty cool rockin’ out to my mix tape in the Eighties!

I remember feeling so grown up, sitting at my desk (which had a world map on it, seemed pretty cool at the time!)  on my IKEA chair and click, clacking away probably writing absolute nonsense and maybe the odd love letter.  I do that now, only on a lap top!

Then I realised  if I asked the Cookie Crumbles to close their eyes and I asked them what do you hear as we walked past that house, they would have absolutely no idea what was making the noise.

Oh how times have changed!

How pretty are these?

This was for Crumble # 3′s 5th Birthday from a little shop in Victoria St, Richmond. You can get them just about anywhere nowadays.

I love them, nice change from balloons, so cheery!

Cookie crumble #3, celebrated her 5th birthday with a few friends from school last weekend.
We had a tea party and I made these little beauties for her.

They are super easy and I wish I had of counted how many the recipe made, as there were quite a few! I would be guessing at 24 biscuit sandwiches, with lots of little hearts which I decorated. But I guess it depends on the size of the cookie cutter!

You will need:

250g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup of castor sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 cups of plain flour, sifted
2 cups of S.R. flour, sifted

Strawberry jam
White chocolate writing fudge
Colored sprinkles

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees and line a large baking tray with baking paper.

2. Cream together butter and sugar with electric beaters until pale and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla until well combined. Fold the flours through until a soft dough forms.

3. Turn the dough out onto a sheet of baking paper and place another on top. Roll the dough to approximately 5mm thick.

4. Using a large round cookie cutter, cut out your biscuits. Place half on the baking tray and with the other half, use a small heart cookie cutter to cut out the center of the cookies forming a framed window. Place these on your baking tray.

5. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until lightly golden. Remove from the oven and cool completely on a wire rack.

6. Once cooled, spread the base with jam and sandwich with the heart frame cookie to show a window of jam in the center.

7. The smaller cut out hearts can be decorated by squirting the fudge in lines over the cookies and then sprinkled with colored sprinkles. Very pretty!

Don’t mind if I do! Cup of gold with heart vanilla biscuits.
Recipe to come! I want to enjoy this while it’s hot!

I love muesli, but when you buy your supermarket variety ones they are usually a) pretty pricey, b) taste like horse feed or c) are high in sugar.

When I have time I make muesli. Usually 4 batches in one hit and it usually lasts a couple of weeks for the 5 of us. Here is a recipe for delicious toasted muesli:

4 cups of old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup thread coconut
1 cup of sliced almonds
1/4 cup of sunflower seeds
1/4 cup of pepita (pumpkin) seeds
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup honey
2 tsp pure vanilla
1 cup dried fruit, raisins, cranberries, chopped pitted dates, figs

1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees. Place rolled oats, coconut, almonds, seeds and cinnamon in a large bowl.

2. Warm honey with vanilla, either in a small saucepan or a bowl in the microwave. Pour honey over oat mixture and stir to coat.

3. Spread mixture evenly over surface of an oven tray. Bake for 20 minutes until muesli is golden brown. Stir regularly so ingredients cook evenly and watch carefully, as mixture can brown quite quickly.

4. Remove pan from oven and stir in dried fruit, if desired.

5. Set aside to cool to room temperature and then transfer to a storage container.

Check it out!!

Is that Australia in the cake mixture?

Orange and poppy seed cake for my little Aussie’s 5th birthday!

Happy birthday little crumble x