Cook Bake Teach

Something easy to start off with, these lovely jewelled biscuits. More-ish, crunchy, and with a stain glassed sweet centre! (Excuse the picture...I'll get better I promise!) Miss L has been badgering me to make these for ages....mainly because you get a sweet PLUS a biscuit. What's not to like?! We actually tried them a while ago, following a Mary Berry recipe, but they were a disaster! She suggested you crush the sweets up, but what we found was that the sugar dissolved too quickly in the oven and then burnt. This is an adapted recipe from an old cookbook I had at home and it worked a treat! This recipe will not be for everyone....it's for those with a really sweet tooth!

  Miss L chose to make dinner today, and it didn't disappoint! She went through the cookery books and chose a Sweet Potato & Coconut Soup to rustle up for our delectation. Sweet Potato and Coconut Soup The recipe book in question is the well-thumbed World Food Cafe 2 . It's a fab vegetarian recipe book that features recipes from all over the globe. I think it was the lush picture of the palm tree and crystal clear sea that swung it for her! The soup was wonderfully rich and smooth, with just a hint of chilli. As a French Polynesian recipe, I suspect it was meant to be spicier, but as Miss L was cooking, we kept it fairly tame. Here's the adapted recipe to make it less spicy and 'child-friendly'. I'm sure it's not just my kids that have an aversion to spice. Even Miss L's 4 year old brother Master E wolfed it down, and he can be so fussy. Obviously if you want to make it spicier, go ahead. Yum! ...

Rich and indulgent, these are a super treat. Served on their own or with some vanilla icecream, they make a great pudding as well as a snack.......but be warned......you don't need much! They are fudgey and moist, and topped with an easy chocolate ganache. The perfect crowd pleaser!

So unless you've been living under a rock in the last 6 weeks you'll know that as a country we have been in lockdown because of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. My patience is getting thinner, my waist line is getting bigger and I'm feeling down in the dumps. The only things I have found that gets me out of this slump is cooking. This is something that my 8 year old daughter, Miss L, is finding too. It breaks up the day and you get to eat wonderful things you've made (hence the growing waist line). We've had to have been resourceful with our ingredients, though, not knowing what we're going to be able to get hold of. It's been a culinary mystery tour! The enormity of the situation is overwhelming, but with cooking we feel like we have some control . But then again, maybe this is exactly the right time to learn some new skills and develop ourselves. There are so many skills that are going to be learnt with this blogging venture, for me a Miss L. That'...