Busy making for Christmas

Just a teaser post :)

Flavourings and icing

These are the ingredients I'm currently using. 

Any ideas what I'm making?  

Chocolate steam buns

I have quite a few things to write up. The nice weather has really got my creative juices going. We love Char Sui Bao here and I wanted to make something using the bread outer as I wasn't confident that I could make the Char Sui the same. I decided on Salmon, so I cooked the Salmon in the oven and filled the Bao with a mixture of tomato, cucumber and cooked courgette. The outcome was lovely however, I wanted something sweet.

Salmon Bao

I had an idea, we always have chocolate and I had coconut cream. So I melted a tablespoon of chocolate chunks and added two tablespoons of coconut cream to the melted chocolate and used this mixture to fill the Bao dough. Steamed the bao for 10 minutes and they were ready.

Over flowing chocolate Bao.

Recipe

I used this recipe for the Bao dough. For the chocolate filling:
3 tablespoons of chocolate
6 tablespoons of coconut cream

Melt the chocolate however you would normally, I used the microwave method 30 seconds, stir, 30 seconds, stir etc until melted. Then stir in half of the coconut cream, once it has been stirred in add the rest of the coconut cream. Divide the dough up into 24 balls. Take one ball and make a big hole add a teaspoon of chocolate/cream mixture and then pinch together carefully. Try not to let the mixture touch where you are going to pinch the sides up as it won't close properly. Steam for 10 minutes, I only have a little steamer so steamed them in batches of two. Let them cool down slightly and eat.

None of these buns made it to the next day or to dinner for that matter, they should have a slightly coconutty taste but it shouldn't be overpowering. I'm sure the coconut cream could be swapped out for normal cream for those who aren't dairy free.

Yummy!

Scratch meals

While wandering around food shopping in a jet lag induced daze. We came across Scratch meals which contain everything necessary to cook a meal and all prepped ready to go. Perfect for me after flying 7 hours. It serves two people, however in our house it also served a little person as well.

It says it'll take 8 minutes which is slightly longer than a ready meal but a lot nicer and more healthy. I think it took us 10 minutes which wasn't a bad time for a nice meal. 

As you can see the instructions are simple to follow. We will be trying another of Scratch's meals again soon. 

Organix Paste Pots.

Well, we finally tried the Organix paste pots as we needed a few small meals for Nate for the evenings. We've found that Nate is ready for his dinner after we have eaten as he eats tea just before we pick him up from Nursery. It was a good time to try the paste pots I bought a little while ago.

We decided to use the Red Thai paste pot.

I made a couple of changes to the recipe, I didn't grate the carrot I chopped them up small instead. Also Nate isn't very keen on peppers so I decided to use baby corn, which he loves. So after sweating the onions and red pepper for a few minutes. I then browned the mince.

The desiccated coconut and paste pot go in. At this point I got a little worried as the mixture seemed very dry and I have to say I added a little bit more water than specified in the recipe. I think next time I would probably add some tomato paste along with the water

For the last few minutes the sweetcorn goes in. I portioned them out to four Nate sized portions with pasta instead of rice as stated in the recipe and froze them. I had a little taste and have to say they are quite nice, you get a lovely taste of the lemongrass and it is a perfect introduction to Thai curries for Nate. 

Dairy Free Pizza

Not too long ago Nate's nursery said he wasn't eating his tea. It didn't take us long to work out why, all of the other children were eating pizza while he had toast with vegemite. They asked if I could think of an alternative so I went home and made special pizza's for him. I use a basic pizza dough, there is one on the BBC website that works well. Once the dough has had it's first rise. I divide it up into small balls and stretch it out by hand.

Once it has been stretched by hand, add a little tomato paste this time I used sun dried tomato paste.

On top of the paste, I added sliced courgette. Normally I get the baby courgettes as they work better on the small pizza's.

Just for a fresh tomato taste sliced baby tomatoes.

Then some sweetcorn and sliced pastrami for this pizza, I've used sliced ham or pre-cooked chicken before.

I freeze them on a slip of greaseproof paper individually on a plate and then after half an hour package them up with cling film and send them up to nursery individually packaged. Nate loves them and if he sees me making them has to have one for his supper that night. They are perfect for a quick supper if we need something for Nate. 

Easy lunch

Today, we didn't know what to have for lunch and were a little bored of sandwiches. I had a quick look in our fridge and we had the jus rol croissants and ham and pasta stir in. That looks like an impromptu lunch with no dairy. 

 First of all I added a little of the paste to the croissant. I only put it on the base of the croissant but you could add more but not all of the way to the tip otherwise it would get a bit messy.

 Then I added a little ham, once again you could add more but I felt this was enough as the croissants are only small. Roll them up, like you would normally.

This is how they came out after 15 minutes in the oven. Yummy!

Dairy Free cooking

Nate is Dairy Free due to suffering from an intolerance to Dairy along with Soya so we are constantly looking for recipes and ideas. At the moment we seem to be baking biscuits every fortnight, Nate likes to help with the rolling and cutting the biscuits out. I found a recipe for a simple biscuit which is very nice.

Here is our variation
165g Plain Flour
100g Dairy free spread
50g natural caster sugar
1tsp ground ginger

We roll it out to roughly 3-4mm thick use cutters (the fun part) to cut biscuits out and bake at 160C for 14 minutes. Our oven can be fiery so it may be best to check the biscuits often.

Nate cutting out his biscuits

Another thing we love here is rice pudding, we've had to change it a bit for obvious reasons as we used to love it with clotted cream stirred in at the last minute. 

I found a recipe last year that was made with coconut milk, and black rice. I decided to give it a go. 

Nate's Portion in a heart bowl

"Yummy in my tummy"

Now the black rice turns a purple colour and does stain little people so best on a nice hot day when you can strip them down and then pop them in the paddling pool. 

I don't have the exact recipe for this as I have made this different each time. This is the basic outline:

3/4 cup of black rice (we found the black rice in a small local Asian shop)

1 small can of coconut cream

20g sugar (I've limited the sugar due to Nate having it and the coconut cream is also sweet)

1 1/2 cups of Water

Put the rice, coconut cream and water in a saucepan bring to the boil and then add the sugar. Turn down to a simmer. Simmer for an hour, keep an eye on the pan as you may need to top the water up.
Enjoy!

The rice has a slight bite to it but it went down well here.