I love dessert. Especially a warm dessert served with the delicious, thickness of fresh, whipped cream.  Add in the sweetness of marscarpone, sprinkle with cinnamon and there you have it, the perfect combination.  I had some pears that I thought would go well with the cream and marscapone, but how to bring out that delicate flavour?  A sweet, but dry, red moscato in the pantry gave me the inspiration!

What You Need:

• 4 Packham pears
• 1 cup red wine
• 2 whole star anise
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 300mL cream
• 2 tablespoon marscarpone
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

What You Need To Do:

Put the sugar and water into a saucepan and gently dissolve the sugar.  When this is done put the red wine, star anise and the cinnamon into the pan.  Gently simmer until you can start to smell the spices.

Carefully peel the pears, to retain their shape, and place them in a bowl of water, with lemon juice, so  they don’t go brown.  When the wine and spices are smelling good, place the pears, whole, into the liquid.  Poach these for about 15 minutes or until they are tender.  This will depend on how ripe the pears are!

When the pears are soft, take them out of the liquid and set them aside to cool.  Turn up the heat a little and let the wine reduce down until it starts to thicken.  Be careful, and don’t go off typing away on the computer or anything because it will burn!  If you like a really thick syrup you can add a bit more sugar, but make sure you turn the heat down and it is all dissolved before reducing any further.

While the liquid is reducing take the cooled pears and cut them in half, length ways, and remove the core with a spoon.  Cut the halves in half and put them in a bowl, ready to have the delicious syrup poured over them.  The syrup is ready when it is thick and shiny and smelling good!  Keep one of the pears as two halves because you will see that the red wine has soaked into the outer layer of the pear and I think this looks very effective for presentation!!

Whip the cream so it is nice and thick, adding a little cinnamon, for extra flavour.  Gently work the whipped cream through the marscarpone and serve a generous amount with the pears!

Today we had visitors for lunch, so I thought we would just have an easy barbeque. I made the usual salads but thought I would make one special dish! The humble sweet potato is such a rich flavour base for fresh herbs, garlic and onions.

What You Need:

Salad

• 1kg sweet potato
• 6 whole french shallots
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon pine nuts
• 1 1/2 cups baby spinach
• Tablespoon each : Rosemary, Thyme & Oregano
• Olive oil
• Cracked black pepper
• Salt

Dressing

• 50mL olive oil
• 25mL balsamic vinegar
• 1 garlic clove

What You Need To Do:

Start by peeling and chopping the sweet potato into bite size cubes. Peel the outer layer from the shallots and the garlic. It doesn’t matter if there is a little skin left because it will come off easily after roasting.

I send the kids out to pick the herbs, because they love helping, and they also love catching the grasshoppers that seem to love my herbs! I just remove the leaves from the stalks and leave them whole.

Put the potato, shallots and garlic in a baking tray and drizzle with a little of the olive oil. Sprinkle with the pine nuts, a little salt and pepper and the herbs and, using your hands, gently toss the potato so the oil coats everything.

Bake these for about half an hour at 170 degrees Celcius or until the potato and shallots are tender but not too soft. You probably will need to turn them halfway through cooking so they go all golden and yummy!

While they are cooking, and the herbs and garlic are wafting through the kitchen, you can make the dressing. Just mix the oil and balsamic together. When the garlic that is roasting is soft, just pinch one of those from the oven, squash it a bit and add it to the oil and vinegar!

When the potatoes are cooked, let it cool for a bit, before adding it to the spinach because the heat will make them wilt a little. Check that shallots are skin free, and then add it all together in a bowl and drizzle some of the dressing over the top. Toss it gently so the balsamic and oil coat the leaves (they can be a little tough to eat raw!) and the potatoes.

This is also yum as a main meal with a bit of fetta cheese. I like the creamy Danish style!

Ah! Afternoon tea. That time of day you can sit down and enjoy your cup of coffee or tea and a nice homemade treat. We usually have ours at about 4 o’clock, which is ok in summer but not so good as it gets cooler and the days get shorter. Well, not so good for the waistline anyway! Good for us, as we can sit and talk about the day we have had, or muse about going for a walk or doing something other sitting and eating!

Today I made some shortbread, which would have to be my favourite type of biscuit. They are pretty simple to make and and really buttery and a bit chewy with a crunch to finish off!

What you need:

• 250g butter
• 2/3 cups caster sugar
• 1 2/3 cups plain flour
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 1 teaspoon caster sugar for dusting

What you need to do:

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celcius. I use a flat oven tray, but line it with baking paper, so it is easy to slide the wedges off when they are done.

Cream the butter and the sugar in a bowl until the butter is light in colour and has a creamy texture.

Sift the flours into the butter mix and use a flat bladed knife to mix together to form a soft dough. It will seem a bit crumbly at first, and you might be tempted to add more butter, but it will come together. Turn it out onto a bench, floured with a bit of the rice flour, and gently knead it together. Shape it into a ball.

Place the ball onto the oven tray and press it out into a circle about 25cm across. The dough will spread out a bit when cooking so make sure the tray is big enough to allow for the extra. Smooth the edges or, if you like fancy, pinch and flute the edges with your fingers. Prick the surface lightly with a fork (to make it look authentic) and mark the circle into wedges. Sprinkle the caster sugar on top. This will make aout 16 nice sized ones or you could just go for the eight or four if you want!

Bake for 35 minutes or until firm to the touch and lightly golden. Cool on the tray and cut into wedges.

The next step is to make you self a cuppa, sit and talk about your day with your loved ones!

You know when winter is getting closer when the butcher starts displaying nice, big, fat, smoked bacon hocks.  They just cry out to be made into pea and ham soup.  But not just that green stuff you get out of a can, but thick, rich, chunky vegetable and yellow split pea soup.  I love it with lots of bread and butter.  It is really easy to make, and the best part is you only have one pot to wash up!

What you need:

• Large bacon hock
• 2 carrots
• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 potatoes
• 1 sweet potato
• 1 zucchini
• 1 onion
• 1 1/2 cups yellow split peas
• 1 cup red lentils
• 1 can chick peas
• fresh parsley
• vegetable stock
• water

What you need to do:

Boil the bacon hock, in enough water to cover, for about 1 hour (depending on the size)  or until the fat layer pulls away from the meat easily. The meat underneath will be nice and soft and tender.  You might need to keep topping up the water so it doesn’t boil dry!  Set the meat aside until it is cool enough to handle.

Keep the liquid boiling and add the lentils and the yellow peas.  You can add green split peas as well, if you have some, I just didn’t have any today! Let these cook for a few minutes, about ten or so, until you see the peas start losing their hard edges. You may need to add some more liquid ( vegetable stock is good) at this point if it is starting to be soaked up by the peas.

Meanwhile, chop all the veges, and any others you might have lurking in the fridge, and put them in the pot  with the lentils and peas.  I like the soup chunky so I cut them into big pieces as they so cook down a little but if you like it smoother make them smaller, its up to you.  Bring this to the boil.  You can keep adding the stock, bit by bit, if it looks too dry.

Now is the fun part!  Take the bacon hock and peel back the outer layer of fat.  Underneath, you will find the yummy, meaty part. Pull all of this meat from the bone and put it in the pot of boiling veges.  I’m a bit fussy and I make sure there are no yucky looking bits or extra fatty bits before I put it in the soup.  Sometimes you might get a little bit of bone in the meat too so I make sure there isn’t any either.

Now turn the heat down and let simmer for about another 1/2 hour or so until the veges are tender.  When the veges are how you like them, add the can of chick peas.  You just need to warm these through as they are already cooked and you don’t want them too mushy!  I also add finely chopped parsley and salt and pepper at this point and then turn the heat off.

Cut up some of your favourite bread, toast it or leave it fresh, and start dipping!!

This is the first time I have made Tiramisu and really the first time that I have eaten it.  Well, I am impressed.  It is such a quick and easy dessert to put together and the kids love it!  I put a bit of Bailey’s Liqueur in with the coffee because, well, because I had some and I thought it would taste nice.

What you need:

• 1 3/4 cups cream
• 500g Marscarpone
• 1 cup coffee liqueur ( or Baileys)
• 2 cups espresso coffee
• 26 store bought sponge fingers (sometimes called ladyfingers)
• Cocoa powder for dusting

What you need to do:

Whip the cream until soft peaks form.  Fold it through the marscarpone gently, but making sure it is well mixed.  Make sure no kids are around because they are drawn to bowls of soft, creamy, sweet stuff they can dip their fingers into!

Combine the liqueur and the coffee. Pour some into a shallow dish so it only just comes up half the side of the biscuit, because they go soggy very quickly, and it is easier to dip one side and then turn to do the other.

Dip half of the biscuits in the coffee mix and lay them on the base of a 10 cup capacity dish.  Spoon half of the cream mixture over the biscuits carefully spreading it to the edges of the dish.

Dip the remaining biscuits and lay them on top of the cream layer and then cover them with the remaining cream.  Generously dust the top with cocoa and put in the fridge for 1 to 2 hours.  Actually one hour will do it if you really can’t wait to taste it!  If you can stand it, you can actually make this the day before you need it as it gives time for the flavours to meld!

Enjoy!

Well, technically this isn’t a recipe but we were HUNGRY!  And I love anything with melted cheese!

I had some nice multigrain bread in the cupboard and it was nearly three o’clock – way past lunch!

What You Need:

• Bread
• Cheese
• Onion
• Butter
• Sandwich Toaster (Press)

What you need to do:

Butter the bread.  I used multigrain, because we always have that, but some nice thick slices of white bread, fresh from the bakery, would be just as good!

Put the buttered sides together and assemble the cheese and thinly sliced onion on top of the bread.  Add more cheese on top of the onion if you want that extra cheesy, melty, goodness to ooze out a little bit and go crunchy on the sides!!

Toast until golden brown and sizzling.  You want the onion to be slightly cooked so it is sweet within the cheese.

Cut into triangles and consume with gusto!

Enjoy!

I thought I would make something yummy for morning tea today.  I just bought some new flour and some vanilla extract that I wanted to try, and the girls wanted to help so I thought -scones!  They are easy to make and always work out well.  The girls are great helpers, getting everything out for the recipe.  Georgia nearly knows it by heart now!

You need:

• 2 cups self raising flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• pinch salt
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 1/3 cup of water
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
• chunk of butter (about 30g)
• extra milk for glazing

What you need to do:

Preheat the oven.  About 190 degrees Celcius is good.  I use a flat oven tray to cook them on and I just spray it with some cooking spray so they don’t stick.  Always do this first because it saves washing all the dough off your hands later!

Sift the flour, salt and sugar into a bowl.  You can use a wire whisk and whisk the flour lightly if you don’t have a sifter!

Add the butter, chopped into pieces, to the flour and rub it in until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Make a well in the centre of the flour and add the milk, vanilla and about 1/2 of the water.  Grab a flat bladed knife and use it to mix until a soft dough is formed.  You can add more liquid if you need to.  The dough will be a little sticky at first but will come together when kneaded.

Spread a little self raising flour onto the bench and turn out the dough.  Knead the dough lightly, dusting with a little flour if still a bit sticky.  It will come together nicely and feel quite soft and pliable.

Pat it out into a neat little round and use a biscuit cutter to cut about 12 scones.  You may need to scrunch up the remainder and pat it out a few times to get the 12.

Place them on the baking tray and brush with the milk.  Pop them in the oven for about 12 minutes or until they are golden brown and you can smell their deliciousness!

When they are cooked place a clean tea towel over them and let them cool for a bit.  The tea towel traps a bit of the steam and keeps the outer crust soft.

Serve with some jam and cream or honey and lashings of butter.

Enjoy!