Halloween treats

Just sharing the cupcakes (aka Slime cakes) and some small bread rolls I made up for D to take along to a local community organised 'fright night' last night. They were both last minute knock ups otherwise I might have got some special Halloween sprinkles for the cupcakes - oh well, maybe next year!

The cupcakes

 These were chocolate cupcakes - I always use Dutch cocoa which is a far superior cocoa to the standard cocoa in the supermarket, gives a lovely rich flavour and colour. The buttercream icing/frosting has natural green food colouring. Both D and G rated these very highly! I had extra cupcakes which I left unfrosted, while the frosting looks better for presentation it's too sweet for both my boys! I usually don't pipe too much on top as some folk do for this reason.

Bread rolls

The pumpkin shaped bread rolls were delicious and easy to do, just a little bit of time involved to make from scratch (same applies for the cupcakes!). I found the inspiration on Pinterest (of course!). Lots of ideas for some amazing looking food.

How was your Halloween? What special food do you make?

Season's greetings

Season's greetings to everyone, hope you had a lovely day. It's always a bit of a rush in the build up to Xmas day, especially here in NZ as it coincides with Summer and school holidays. We had a really nice day with family, the weather was warm and overcast and it was pleasant to sit outside on the deck without cooking in the hot sun!

I successfully made a gingerbread house this year. It took quite a bit of time but I did it in stages - baking the gingerbread (cutting out the parts of the house with special cutters) then I froze the cooked gingerbread, before icing it closer to Xmas day.

I will now share a photo of my first attempt at a gingerbread house from last year. You will see just how truely awful it was.....!!!

Some things I learned since are to use my usual gingerbread recipe, not the one I found online containing molasses which no one liked! Ice the house pieces first before assembling, and use the correct sort of icing - royal icing - which is icing sugar, egg whites and creme of tartar. Lastly, put the house together in stages so that the joins are dry and it can withstand the weight of the roof.

Anyway I was pleased with the outcome, will do it again next year. D enjoyed helping me with the icing so it was a lot of fun.

A bit of time out

After some busy weeks of fruit preserving, we had a well-deserved short break away doing some good old-fashioned Kiwi camping. After a bit of a wild night with ex-cyclone Ita hitting us, the next day we tentatively headed off to the tip of Coromandel peninsula - Port Jackson.

The campsite at Port Jackson is a lovely spot right by the surf beach. It has been quite a few years since we were last there and is now a heck of a lot more popular, but fortunately for us the weather had put a few folk off, so the camp site was not too busy. When bad weather strikes, there are often slips along the road and sometimes it is closed, but when we arrived the road was open.

The weather was actually really good for the time of year, we had a lot of sunshine and hardly any wind. We did get a good downpour of rain one afternoon but it didn't last too long.

After a few nights at Port Jackson, we spent a night down at Hot Water Beach further south of Coromandel. Here you can dig into the sand at low tide and the pool fills up with (very) hot water from underground springs. It was crazy busy when we were there as you can see from the photo, but we still had a lot of fun. D was super excited the whole trip, but especially with the hot water pools.

So we're back home now and it's back to the apples and now feijoa harvest. Time to get busy with bottling again!

Happy New Year everyone

Hope it is a good one for you and your loved ones. 2013 had its ups and downs for us so we are hoping 2014 is a smoother ride!

Christmas came and went in a flurry, with much time spent in the kitchen baking up tasty treats for gifts. I also made another chocolate and raspberry mousse layer cake for dessert on Christmas day:

I decorated the cake with a layer of ganache and then some fresh raspberries (from the garden), blueberries and chocolate sprinkles. Rather a lot of chocolate went into this cake but although it was rich, it wasn't sickly or too sweet. Had I more chocolate in the pantry I might have got more creative and put shaved chocolate on top instead of the sprinkles.

'Christmas' plums

 After enjoying loads of juicy sweet early peaches, we are now onto plums and nectarines.

Nectarines and plums

We have various nectarine trees, 'Queen Giant', 'Spring Red', 'Red Gold', 'Tasty Gold'. They are all good! We are trying hard to keep the possums off them, mainly by trapping. We are enjoying them fresh of course and as you'd expect I will be busy making chutney, jam, and bottling and freezing them too.

Lots more stone fruit to come as summer progresses!

The weather has been mixed, hot and sunny, with sudden tropical downpours as well. Hoping to get to harvest my 'Grosso' lavender sometime soon. I probably should have done this a couple of weeks ago before the showers started as it's better when really dry (the scent and less likely to spoil), also more flowers have opened than I would have liked but never mind, it still smells and looks pretty good!

Grosso lavender

Another birthday cake

Hubby celebrated his birthday recently and so it was time to get creative with another birthday cake. I forgot to take a 'before' photo, so here it is sans candles and several slices!

This time a chocolate cake, with yummy homemade raspberry mousse filling, courtesy of a Danish recipe I found here. I used a different chocolate cake recipe though, one I've used previously and knew would be OK - it contains melted dark chocolate plus Dutch cocoa. I probably overdid it with four layers - it was very tall, ha ha!
Three layers with more of the mousse filling as per the Cakejournal recipe might have worked better, so next time I'll do this instead.
However it was a delicious cake, not too sweet at all. None of us are overly keen on very sweet frosting/icing so I also used whipped cream to decorate the top and a sprinkling of some more chocolate (actually a broken up 'Flake').

Time for another birthday cake

Sharing - this year's creation.

Yes it's that time of the year again..

My birthday!

D took this photo, it's a lavender and almond cake, the recipe is from Shaheen's great blog Allotment 2 Kitchen. I decorated the cake with pale pink icing (icing sugar, milk, vanilla essence and natural pink food colouring), silver star candles and silver cachous. The icing was poured over the top and drips down over the edges, I quite like the effect and it's also very easy to apply!

Some South Island photos for your enjoyment

Akaroa Harbour

Moeraki boulders (yep it was high tide!)

Looking across Foveaux straight to Stewart Island from Riverton, Southland

Dramatic Milford Sound (actually it's a fiord - carved out by a glacier)

One of many spectacular rivers in the Fiordland National Park

Beech forest and mountains

Beautiful Lake Wanaka

D enjoying the crystal clear water at the Blue Pools, Makarora River, Haast Pass

One of many waterfalls

Fox Glacier

Mt Cook/Aoraki

Ka Roimata o Hine Hukatere (Franz Josef Glacier)

Mahitahi (Bruce Bay) South Westland - where rimu forest meets the coast

Spectacular bridge along the Arthur's Pass road

Hops in sunny Motueka, near Nelson

Hope you enjoyed viewing these photos!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone!

It's a beautiful sunny day here on Cabbage Tree Farm. I've been out picking my Grosso lavender flowers.

Now I have to tie them into bundles to hang up and dry.

Anyway, all the best for 2013!

Summer Solstice

Today is our Summer Solstice here in the NZ (the 'shortest LONGEST day'), looks to be a beautiful day outside. Hope all is well with everyone and that your Christmas preparations are going well, the stress levels not too high! Always a busy time here in NZ, what with school holidays, summer and Christmas all at the same time.

I've been fairly busy here, doing the occasional spot of gardening, most of the veg are coming along nicely. We are getting regular zucchini (hoorah for zucchini!). I planted the ribbed Italian Costata Romanesco again this year which I think has better flavour that the smooth skinned varieties.

We've also eating beans, lettuces, herbs, spinach/rainbow chard. Cucumbers, chillies and tomatoes are in the wings. Pumpkins, corn, squash and more beans are coming along nicely. Hopefully we should get a good harvest of pumpkins for next year's pigs.

And here's a photo of the lovely hollyhocks, they are very tall (over 6 feet) and deep purple almost black. They obviously like the spot I've got them in. Might grow some other colours further along the fence next year.

Anyway, wishing you all a very enjoyable festive season and all the best for 2013.

Another year wiser?

Well I hope so! Yep it's my birthday, another year on the clock!

As I was working last night I didn't do anything particular, slept a bit then when the rain stopped G and I had a walk around the section planning improvements and checking on the trees and plants.

Since I am the cook here at CTF, it is MY kitchen, I made my own birthday cake! This one is a Hummingbird cake using this recipe which contains pineapple, banana and passionfruit. G pronounced it the best cake I had ever made so that's good!

My lovely sister sent me this fabulous cook book, which won Dutch Cookbook of the Year:

Will be trying out the cheese recipes ASAP!

Looking forward to mastering gnocchi making..

The book has a huge variety of recipes, I'm going to love trying out as many recipes as I can. Maybe I should do a Julie and Julia?! Thanks so much S xx


And these lovely leather gardening gloves from my dear Mother xx:

Not sure how long they will look this new and pretty!!