Issue 4 of the Little Cooks Dora the Explorer magazines brings us the Amazing Apple Cake. Unfortunately, by the time I got to actually making the cake, the black spot on my apple had turned into a gaping big hole inside. I didn’t stick around to find that worm. Instead, I found a half a cup of frozen berries in the freezer, and topped them up to a full cup with boiling water. The result was a delicious, moist berry cake that didn’t last the day – we gobbled it up in one sitting!

Ingredients:

• 150g self-raising flour
• 65g soft brown sugar
• 1tsp cinnamon
• 1 cooking apple (or 1/2 cup frozen berries, topped with boiling water)
• 1 small egg
• 2 tbsp rapeseed oil
• 65ml milk

Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas Mark 3

Directions:

1. Put the flour, sugar and cinnamon into a mixing bowl and mix it all together

2. Ask an adult to peel the cooking apple, cut it into quarters and take out the core

3. Carefully grate the apple slices into the bowl, (or pour the berry mix in) then mix well

4. Crack the egg into a small bowl, then add it to the mixing bowl

5. Add the oil and the milk and stir it all together

6. Use your spatula to spoon the mixture into your cake mould filling it nearly to the top. (With this issue of Little Cooks we received a butterfly cake mould. There was more than enough batter for the mould so we also filled four cupcake cases from one of the previous issues.

7. Put in the oven for around 45 minutes, then cool.

And finally, I topped it with a simple icing sugar, vanilla essence and water drizzled over. The recipe recommends topping with banana and strawberries or small sweets.

Delicious. I’ll definitely try it again, and with apple next time!

I’ve never liked chicken livers. I’ve certainly never gone back for seconds – until James Martin made them.

This week Aviya and I went to London for a More To Mushrooms event where chef James Martin did a cooking demo for a small group of bloggers and journalists. The theme of the event was quick and easy mushroom recipes and I learned more about mushroom than I ever thought – like the fact that we totally overcook mushrooms. While he made some fantastic dishes, it was the chicken livers that caught me by surprise. Here’s a newsflash: cooking chicken livers through, ruins them. They need a quick fry and that’s the end of that. And then they are totally palatable!! Here’s the recipe James Martin made for us:

Ingredients:

• 4 slices from a white bloomer
• 30g butter
• 6 rashers bacon cut into lardons
• 400g chicken livers
• 200g chestnut mushrooms, cut in half
• 50ml white wine
• 110ml double cream
• 3 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
• salt and black pepper

To make:

1. Toast the bread and set aside
2. Melt half the butter in a frying pan set over a high heat, add the bacon and fry until it starts to crisp. Add the livers and mushrooms, and saute for 1 minute
3. Pour over the wine and cream and stir all the ingredients together for 2-3 minutes, but no more, to ensure the livers stay pink in the middle, then remove the pan from the heat
4. Add the parsley and season with salt and pepper. Serve with slices of toast.

Delicious!

I really like the Little Cooks recipes, because they’re generally pretty simple, and not too unhealthy either. I was quite excited by the Strawberry Sundae recipe as I thought it would be nice and healthy and fun to make. Unfortunately it really wasn’t and I can’t say we’ll be in a hurry to make it quite like this again. It was so, so sweet, even my sweet tooth and I couldn’t finish it.

The first attempt was by the book. Ingredients were:

• 10 strawberries mashed, plus 5 or 6 to slice for decoration
• 25g caster sugar
• 3 tablespoons plain yoghurt

1. Mush the 10 strawberries until it’s a nice thick mixture.
2. Add the sugar and yoghurt and mix it all together.
3. Stir the mixture into your sundae glass until the glass is nearly full.
4. Slice the remaining strawberries, then put them on top of the Sundae to finish it off.

As I said, it was simply too sweet, Ameli had a few sips then abandoned it. I couldn’t finish it either. It was tasty, just so incredibly sweet!

We tried it again with:

• 5 strawberries and a handful of frozen summer berries and a few aside for decoration
• 3 tablespoons plain yoghurt
• Two tablespoons honey

It was really tasty this time, not too sweet and much healthier. We could also pop it in the freezer for a little while to make it slightly more ice cream like.

The adapted version is perfect, and the mixing bowl and spoon that came with the Dora the Explorer Little Cooks Collection book 3 were suitably perfect for the task at hand!

(These can also be frozen if you have lolly moulds. They make a nice out of the freezer treat.)

We’ve taken a bit of a break from baking, since our labour cake and having a baby and all that, but we’re back, and we’ve got plenty of catching up to do as our Dora The Explorer Little Cooks Collection mags are up to issue 7 already!  None the less, here’s the recipe as we did it for issue 2′s very tasty Butterfly Biscuits. 

I love savoury biscuits, and I love cheese so this recipe really appeals to me – but it does use a lot of cheese.

There is a new favourite recipe in town, and I cannot get over how good it is. Additionally, it’s a vegetarian recipe, and for a meatless recipe to hit the spot so completely is pretty unusual in our house. This is one of the babymoon, cook-ahead and freeze recipes we did, but obviously you don’t have to cook ahead! Hope you love it as much as we did. (You can find the original recipe here, but below you’ll find our simpler version with our own adaptations – for example we didn’t have shitake mushrooms on hand!)

Another thing – these are rough guides… if you have more parsnip or less potato, for example, it’s not going to be the end of the world. Work with what you have.

• 850 g parsnips , chunked
• 500 g potatoes , chunked
• 2 carrots , sliced
• 1 large leek , sliced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 75 g butter
• 1 onion , chopped
• 250 g closed cup mushrooms , halved
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• 250 ml red wine (optional, but the alcohol will burn off anyway)
• 350 ml vegetable stock
• 1 tablespoon tomato purée
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 sprigs fresh rosemary , leaves removed and chopped
• 4 tablespoons milk

Directions:

1. Boil the potatoes and parsnips until tender.
2. Steam the carrot and leeks over the potato pan
3. Meanwhile heat the oil and a third of the butter until foamy. Add onion and cook for 5 minutes.
4. Add mushrooms and garlic and fry over a high heat until softened.
5. Sprinkle flour on mushrooms and toss to coat.
6. Add wine to mushrooms, along with stock, puree, cinnamon and bay leaves and bring to boil.
7. Stir until sauce thickens and simmer for 15 minutes.
8. Drain the potatoes and parsnips
9. Melt the remaining butter and gently fry the rosemary – this releases the sweetest, most amazing fragrance.
10. Add the seasoned butter to the potatoes along with the milk and mash until smooth.
11. Add the carrots and leeks to the mushroom mix and season.
12. Place the mushroom mix in your freezer containers, then top with the mash. If you’re cooking immediately, grill it in the oven until it’s golden on top.
13. If you’re freezing, wait for it to cool and freeze.

When you’re ready to eat it:
1. Transfer to oven proof dish
2. Defrost
3. Heat grill to high, and grill until golden brown, and serve with salad or vegetables.

We have been getting so many leeks in our winter vegetable boxes that I’m starting to feel a little ‘leek-ed’ out, if I’m honest! I thought I’d try something different from the usual, and this recipe turned out to be an amazing winner! You’ll find the original recipe here, but here’s how we made and adapted it.

Cottage Pie Filling

• 600 g lean ground beef or 600 g cooked beef , shredded
• 2 onions , peeled and diced
• 1 large carrot, diced
• 1 ounce butter (25g)
• 1 -2 tablespoon fresh mixed herbs, chopped
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 tablespoon tomato puree
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce or similar
• 250 ml beef stock (OR 250 ml red wine mixed with 2 teaspoons sugar. We went for the wine, since the alcohol boils off anyway)
• salt
• pepper

Cottage Pie Topping

• 1 kg potato , cut into small even sized pieces
• 2 large leeks, cleaned and sliced into rings
• 2 ounces butter (50g)
• 2 -4 tablespoons milk
• 4 ounces mature cheese, grated (100g)
• salt
• pepper

Yesterday I shared a Banana muffin recipe from the Little Cooks Collection and today I have the opportunity to share more about it with  my readers, and offer one of you the opportunity to win a subscription of your own!

The Little Cooks Collection is based on Dora the Explorer. While Ameli has never seen an episode of the TV Show, she has thoroughly enjoyed the magazine.

You can see for yourself what each magazine holds, but I’ll walk you through it anyway.

Each copy comes with a freebie, and in the end you’ll have this whole collection of usable kitchen goodies – I say usable as they’re not just toys, they can actually be used in real cooking. 

The mag starts with fun activities around what you’re cooking with, so in the first issue you bake Banana muffins and have a page of ‘circle the banana’, colour this and get your goodies ready activities.

Next up you have the recipe pages. Nicely illustrated, and easy to follow, the recipe – at least in the first issue – is really simple and quick to do, with minimal clean-up. (Often children’s recipes seem to require masses of bowls and mixing and preparation – this didn’t at all!)

While your muffins are baking in the oven, there are plenty activity pages for you and your child to do together. There are fun facts, more snack ideas – banana ice cream, simple smoothie, banana breakfast and a banana lolly-  drawing activities, cutting and sticking activities and once you’ve had enough of all that, you can eat your muffins and read the story together. 

Overall there’s a good few hours of activity in each book and you can add to and take away from it as you wish.

I didn’t really expect much from the goodies that come along with the magazine, but have been really impressed. The plate is dishwasher safe (I think, since it survived the dishwasher!) and the silicone cups are totally fabulous. They fit in our muffin pans, although that’s not essential – the hold themselves up, as compared to the paper cups that tend to flop about a bit. Once out the oven they cool pretty quickly, and they they peel off the muffins without taking chunks of muffin with it. The result is a beautifully smooth finish on your banana muffins, without fishing bits of paper out your mouth either! The silicone cases have really impressed me so much, I’m on the lookout for these in the shops so we can buy another set (the first book only costs 99p).

For subscription information, check out the website. (Issue 1 is 99p, Issue 2 is £2.99 and thereafter they’re £4.99 every two weeks.) You can pick these up at your local supermarkets and so on, but if you subscribe you also get a whole bunch of free goodies.

Competition

One reader will win a subscription for the Little Cooks Collection complete with all the goodies that come with a subscription. To stand a chance to win,  head over to the subscriptions page and let me know which free item you’d most like to receive (if you win you receive them all anyway, but which is your favourite?)

For an additional entry, (which is not compulsory, and is not sponsored by Facebook and which has nothing to do with Facebook or its employees) you can like Diary of a First Child on Facebook and leave a comment below to say you have. 

This competition finishes at 23:59 on 26 March  and the winner will be randomly drawn. Winners will be announced here and on the Diary of a First Child Facebook Page. Please check these to find out who won. 

AND THE WINNER IS: Sarah Oztoprak

Please read the competition rules.

You do not have to tweet or share this competition to enter, and doing so does not give you additional entries unless otherwise stated, but doing so helps ensure that I can keep bringing you competitions! You can subscribe to Diary of a First Child by RSS  or to our competitions only RSS feed or email. You can also follow us on Facebook or on Twitter. We hope to see you back again soon!

I absolutely love baking and cooking with Ameli. It’s something we do regularly enough, and it’s fun for both of us, most of the time. While I don’t tend to use ‘dumbed down’ recipes specifically on her behalf, it is sometimes easier if I’m just looking for an afternoon activity for us to use a child friendly recipe that has few ingredients and little effort.

We came across the Little Cooks Collection, featuring Dora the Explorer and decided we’d try out the recipes.  You subscribe and receive two magazines a month, complete with recipes, activities, and a child’s kitchen set to collect.

The first recipe was for Banana Muffins, so here they are with our take on it:

This recipe is supposed to be for four muffins. Four seemed a low number to turn the oven on for, so we immediately doubled it and somehow ended up with 11 muffins – no one was complaining!

Ingredients:

• 2 bananas
• 80g soft brown sugar (although we used white as that’s what we had)
• 4tbsp rapeseed oil (that’s 60ml)
• 2 small eggs or 1 large one
• 130 ml (1/2 cup) milk
• 200g self-raising flour

(I think next time I’ll add a pinch of salt too, to deepen the banana flavour.)

Instructions:

1. Peel and mash the banana in a bowl
2. Mix in the sugar and oil
   
3. Add the egg
4. Pour the milk and stir together
5. Add the flour and stir
   
6. Spoon the mixture into your Dora muffin cases (we only had four so used paper for the rest – but the silicone muffin cases are excellent and I’m going to look out for another copy of the first book so we can have another set of the silicone muffin cases which come with the 99p book.)
   
7. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes at 190C/365F/gas mark 5

The book also recommends adding either 50g of chopped nuts, blueberries or apple pieces. I think that can only add to the flavour so we’ll try that next time. Something else that works well with banana is coconut, so we could try that too.

Flavour-wise this is a really basic recipe and I do think salt could bring out more of the banana flavour, but it’s perfectly suitable for  children and packed in an air-tight container makes a lovely breakfast for the next day too.

Simplicity-wise, however, there couldn’t be an easier recipe for a two-year old to follow with Mama’s help – older kids will need even less help.

Find out more from the Little Cooks website, where you’ll find information on subscribing, all the freebies you’ll receive and you can see what the inside of the magazine looks like too. We are loving the Little Cooks series, and highly recommend them!

I’m really bad at OAMC – that’s once a month cooking for us novices – and once something’s made it into the freezer, it’ll stay there for ever and a day. We do prefer our fresh food, but obviously that’s not always convenient.  With our recent sickness the vegetables have been stacking up, and I had to do something with them all – that’s two weeks worth of veggies – so I decided to stock up the freezer with some healthy meals to give us a cooking break when we’ve had our baby and our family have been and gone.

Here are a few items off the menu I cooked in preparation for our babymoon.

A few things to consider:

• We’re not vegetarian
• We’re not vegan
• We’re not free-from anything (dairy, gluten, egg etc)
• This menu is based on seasonal produce

So adapt it as you would any recipe, to make it suit you and your family.

These are links to the original recipes, but I’ll update the links to the adapted versions as I post them over the next few weeks too.

• Traditional English Cottage Pie With Cheese and Leek Topping
  A ground beef recipe with onions, carrots and seasoning, and a topping of potato, leeks and butter, topped with cheese. A luxury meal, tasty and filling and perfect for winter. 
• Baked Butternut Squash and Parmesan Cheese
  Either a side dish or a main, the butternut is topped with Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, nuts and thyme leaves and baked. 
• Mushroom, Herb and Parsnip Pie
  A slightly more complicated recipe to put together than the others, but oh my goodnessit is worth it. The flavours in this are phenomenal. I can’t wait for the babymoon, just for this dish! 
• Pepper & Honey-Roasted Roots
  Quick, simple and easy, these are chopped veggies in a lovely and unusual dressing, which they’re currently in the freezer in, so the flavour should be nicely infused by the time they’re cooked as either a side for two or a main for one.

This is the only recipe I won’t be changing reposting individually, as we didn’t change much (i.e. when I’m cooking home foods I don’t peel vegetables unless they really need it as much of the nutrition is in the skin. I also adapt the ingredients to suit and use what we have available), so in short:

• Carrots, cut in chunks
• Celeriac, cut in chunks
• Parsnips, cut in chunks
• Clear honey, roughly cracked black peppercorns and olive oil, to cover

1. For cooking ahead, mix the vegetables with the honey, peppercorns and olive oil, and freeze.
2. When you’re ready to cook it, let it defrost at room temperature.
3. Heat the oven to 220C / 425F. While you’re doing that, heat oil in a roasting tin on top of the stove, and when it’s hot, fry the vegetables until they begin to brown.
4. Place the tray in the hot oven for 40 – 50 minutes then remove, drizzle a bit more honey and salt over, stir through and serve.
5. Enjoy!

It’s Mother’s Day in the UK soon, and there’s little nicer than waking up to breakfast in bed. So, my advice, Mamas, is tell dads or older children to glance over here for some healthy, simple, child-friendly recipes brought to you by the HGCA. These recipes are so simple, children could make them (with supervision please!) and even not too kitchen savvy dads should manage!

Before I lose you completely in the gooey yumminess of pancakes and brownies, here are some interesting facts about something we all know, but know little about: Rapeseed Oil.

• Rapeseed oil is produced from the oilseed rape plant and comes from the same Brassica family as broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower.
• Rapeseed, along with linseed, are the only oils grown and bottled in the UK making them the best oils for those trying to lower their carbon footprint and eat local.
• Sometimes labelled as ‘vegetable oil’, rapeseed oil is lower in saturated fat and high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats like omega 3 and 6 that can help to lower cholesterol when consumed as part of an overall healthy diet.

Add a flower and a Mother’s Day Card and it’ll be a treat indeed.

CHOCOLATE & CRANBERRY BROWNIES

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 25-30 minutes

Makes 12

• 3 medium eggs
• 200g soft brown sugar
• 150g self-raising flour
• 50g cocoa
• 100ml rapeseed oil
• 50g dried cranberries
• 25g milk chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180oC, gas mark 4. Base line a 22cm square tin.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together until pale and creamy. Sieve the flour and cocoa together and gently whisk into the eggs, then whisk in the oil.

Pour into the prepared tin, scatter over the cranberries and chocolate chips if using. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Cool slightly before turning out of the tin. Cut into 12 pieces.

Cook’s tip

Replace the cranberries with any other dried fruit such as apple or chopped dates. For an extra healthy option, replace the flour with self-raising wholemeal flour.

Estimated total cost: £2.44

Estimated cost per brownie: 20p

FRUITY BUTTERMILK PANCAKES

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 10 minutes

Serves 4

• 150g self-raising flour
• 2 medium eggs
• 2 tbsp honey
• 150ml buttermilk
• 1 tbsp rapeseed oil + extra for frying
• 100g fresh blueberries or raspberries

Place the flour in a large bowl. Whisk in the eggs and honey then gradually whisk in the buttermilk and 1 tbsp oil to form a thick batter. Stir in the fruit.

Heat a little extra oil in a frying pan and using a tablespoon, spoon some mixture into the pan to make 4 pancakes. Cook gently for 1-2 minutes each side until golden and cooked through. Repeat to make 12 pancakes.

Cook’s tip

For an extra healthy option, use self-raising wholemeal flour. Ideal drizzled with honey or maple syrup and scattered with fresh fruit.

Total cost: £1.76

Cost per serving: 44p

And Happy Mother’s Day, Mamas!

** This post was originally posted on April 2nd 2011. This is a repost.