Cheesy bacon and egg pies

Quick idea for school lunch boxes, or perhaps an after school snack. Or you could just make a batch of these and keep on hand in the fridge for hungry people for breakfast. Or a picnic. Just about anywhere really!

Scotch eggs

I've never made scotch eggs before, but I have always wanted to try. I think these crumbed balls, with the bright yellow yolks in the middle look so pretty. Just like a little surprise package.

We were recently invited for a swim at a friend's house and I offered to bring the an antipasti platter for the evening meal. I made these eggs as a part of the platter. I made extra so we could also try them at home, served with a simple green salad for a light dinner in the hot weather. The little people thought they were really great and even helped me making them, which was a nice activity for us all.

You have to invest a little bit of time to make these eggs, as there are a few steps, and chilling in between, but I think it was worth the effort.

These would be an excellent addition to your next picnic. The eggs would travel well in a sealed container and would be great with some cheese and a little chutney. Yum!

Chorizo and haloumi skewers

I'm back! I've been away a little while, settling the little people into school. I did naively think that I might have some more time for blogging/cooking/myself once I had two children at school, but unfortunately no. Not at the moment anyway. There have been lots of meetings, sports classes, music classes, new friends to meet, and a birthday for the young man thrown into the mix. I am ready for a holiday please.

Here are some skewers I made for a picnic we had with some friends. The picnic was held in the middle of the afternoon, and everyone was asked to bring some snacks and drinks and a blanket to sit on. Luckily we had a nice sunny day and a beautiful, peaceful park. The children had a great time playing in the sand, climbing and running about with their friends. The parents also had a great time sitting in the sun, eating and having a laugh.

Here's the recipe - happy picnicking. (You could also make these skewers for a bbq or party food.)

What you'll need

Makes approximately 30 skewers

500g Haloumi cheese, chopped into 2cm cubes
200g chorizo sausage (or any type of dried sausage that you prefer) sliced into 1cm pieces
1 yellow or green capsicum, deseeded and sliced into 2cm squares
1 punnet cherry tomatoes
Juice of 1 lemon

Bamboo skewers, soaked in water for 10 minutes.

What to do

Assemble all the ingredients. Place the ingredients onto the skewers. I started with haloumi, then sausage, capsicum, tomato, haloumi, finishing with sausage. For the vegetarians, just leave the sausage out and add some more capsicum and tomato.

Once you have assembled all the skewers, place them onto a baking paper-lined baking tray. Heat the grill in your oven to high heat. Then grill the skewers, turning once during cooking. Grill for approximately 10 - 12 minutes, until the haloumi starts to go slightly brown and the tomatoes start to blister and wrinkle.

Remove from the oven. Place in a serving container with a lid and squeeze over the lemon juice. Put on the lid, take to your picnic and enjoy while sitting in the sun, drinking a glass of cold prosecco.

Upside-down banana cake

Serious yummy cake alert!

This was a 'spur of the moment' cake baking, as I had four over-ripe bananas in the fruit bowl that needed to be used.

We had a play in the park planned with school friends so I thought a cake might be something nice to take along to share.

Banana cakes are not as common here in Austria as they are in Australia, but I made one anyway.

This cake has a slight twist, in that the banana isn't actually in the cake, but is on top. But the flavour permeates all the way through in this recipe, and in my opinion, any cake with banana in it is a winner.

I will freely admit that I am not a cake baker. I am not a precise cook; I prefer to add a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And cakes don't take too kindly to adding a bit of this and that. Generally cakes may refuse to rise or be rather dry and inedible, which I don't take too kindly too!

The other thing about baking cakes is that when you make a cake, it has to be eaten. I don't like to give the little people too many cakes and sweet things, even if it is homemade, and the man of the house doesn't eat much cake, so that leaves me, and my waist-line doesn't take too kindly to that. Maybe I need a few more kids in the house, then problem solved.

Back to the banana cake though. I found a recipe for upside down banana muffins, but I didn't want to make muffins, so I adjusted the recipe to make this cake. It was very much enjoyed at the park, and enjoyed at home and in the kindy lunchbox. I cooked this cake one afternoon, and ate it the next day, and it is still lovely and moist two days later.

You could serve this warm as a dessert-type cake with icecream or cream, or as a 'normal' cake cut into slices. This would also work well baked in a loaf tin, although you would half the quantity of the mixture.

In a first for me, I used vanilla seeds straight from the pod. I'm not sure this added anything special to the taste of the cake, but it was what I had - no vanilla essence to be found in the local supermarkets. The smell of the pods was wonderful and very different to usual bottle of vanilla I have in the cupboard.

What you'll need

* Serves 20 - 24 medium pieces of cake.

4 small ripe bananas - thinly sliced
170g butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup cater sugar
2 eggs
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla essence (or seeds scraped from half a vanilla pod)

What to do

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Melt half the butter and the brown sugar in a saucepan over low heat. Once combined and melted, remove from the heat. Line a 30cm x 20cm cake tin (approx size) with baking paper. Pour the sugar and butter mixture into the bottom of the cake tin, then layer the sliced banana on top. Set aside.

Make the cake batter.

Cream the remainder of the butter and caster sugar together with an electric mixer until pale and thick. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after adding each.

Sift in the flour, cinnamon and baking powder. Then stir in the milk and vanilla. Mix until just combined.

Spoon very carefully over the banana and smooth out the top.

Bake for approximately 35 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes away clean.

You can leave this to cool for 10 minutes then turn out and serve immediately while still warm. It would be lovely with vanilla icecream or cream.

Alternatively, turn it out onto a platter after 10 minutes let cool for half and hour, then store in an air-proof container until the next day.

* I was not very careful when I poured the batter into the cake tin over the bananas; dumping it all into the middle of the pan. As a result, all the banana shifted to the outside of the cake. This made the outside bits of cake deliciously gooey, but I thought the inside bits needed something extra, so I whipped up some lime and coconut icing for these bits of cake.

Mini Meatloaves

Here's an idea for a quick and tasty dinner.

I whipped up these mini meat loaves in 20 minutes after a day spent at the pool and playground.

The meat loaves were quick to make, needed only a few ingredients and tasted and looked great.

What you'll need

*This recipe made five meatloaves and served two people, with one loaf left-over for lunch the next day.

For meat loaves
500g beef mince
1 packet rissole mix (Maggi brand in Australia) or faschiertes fix (Knoor brand in Austria)
1 egg
10 slices prosciutto (allowing two for each loaf)
1 tsp vegetable oil

For gravy
1 tbs flour
1 tsp soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce (optional)
1/2 cup water

What to do

Place the mince, rissole/faschiertes mix and egg into a bowl and mix well.

Form the mince into small loaf shapes. I used about a handful of mince,
and patted it into shape.

Wrap one or two slices of prosciutto around each loaf.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat. Add the oil. Once hot, add the loaves and reduce heat to low. You don't want to burn the prosciutto before the inside of the loaf is cooked, so cook it slowly.

It should take about 10 minutes for the loaves to cook through.
You should turn them once during cooking so they are well browned.

If you want to check they are cooked in the middle, you can break one open with a knife to have a look. You won't need to season this as the rissole mix is already seasoned and the prosciutto is salty also.

When the meat loaves are finished cooking, make the gravy.

While the heat is still under the pan, sprinkle the flour into the pan around the loaves. With a spoon, move the flour around to soak up the meat juices and flavours and cook it for 1 minute. Once this is done, add the water and mix it through with the spoon to remove any lumps.

The gravy may look a bit light-coloured, so you can add the soy sauce/Worcestershire for a little colour and flavour. But if your gravy is already dark, don't worry about it.

Serve immediately. We ate ours with potatoes sauteed with rosemary and a garden salad. 

Pancakes

My children and I like to have hot, fresh pancakes for morning or afternoon tea.  

My Mum, Aunties and Grandparents also cooked pancakes for me when I was little. It was so lovely to come home from school absolutely starving, as you always seem to be as a child, and find a fresh stack of pancakes with butter and jam ready to be eaten.

Pancakes are so quick to make and the children can help. You can add in any fruit you've got that needs eating also. Banana pancakes are beautiful, especially if the bananas are extra ripe and brown. Today I had a handful of cherries that I chopped up and used. Any berries go really well as cooking them makes them extra sweet. 

For me, there must be butter and jam, honey or golden syrup to serve with these. And you must serve them warm, straight from the pan.

Satay

Today we ate chicken satay. I haven't cooked this for ages, mostly because I've been too busy cooking lots of other yummy things, and also that peanut butter is not that common on the supermarket shelves here in Austria. But today I went hunting and found it close by.

This recipe is a slight adaptation of my Father-in-law's recipe. He is generally known as a wiz in the kitchen and cooks especially-great Asian food, which is strange given he originally comes from Austria. I can imagine that there were not too many Asian restaurants here 50 years ago.

Meatballs and Tunaballs

Oh meatballs...how I love thee.

I think that meatballs (rissoles in OZ) are the ultimate easy lunch or dinner, so great for kids (and grown-ups) and travel well for lunch boxes or picnics. Yesterday, after spending all morning watching my boy and husband at a soccer tournament, and subsequently inviting friends over for an early dinner, I was wondering what to cook. The day was hot, there was a combination of children, vegetarians, wheat intolerant and regular hungry people to feed.

Here's what we ate:

Meatballs - combination of pork and beef mince (with basil tomato sauce)
Tunaballs - with potato and herbs (with olive tomato sauce)
Polenta - great filler for non-wheat eaters (recipe to follow later)
Spaghetti - for the kids
Salad with honey roasted pumpkin and carrots (recipe to follow later).

Saturday night early dinner