I seem to be spending a lot of time in the kitchen lately.
First there was the Welsh Rarebit muffins, the brownie and the gingerbread from last week.
It seems to be a little bit of muffin mania around here because I ended up making a batch of Anzac muffins which my kids LOVE. I can't even remember where I got the recipe from for these but it's something I stumbled across years ago and is full of rolled oats and grated apple. They're perfect for a snack or a quick blitz in the microwave from frozen and enjoyed for breakfast.
Because it's nearly Christmas I wanted to make some gingerbread muffins so I searched for an easy recipe that the whole family would enjoy. This is the first one I found and tried and let me tell you they are pretty amazing and sooooo easy. Most of them have gone already so I'll be making another batch in the next day or so and I've decided that these will be part of our Christmas morning breakfast.
I might even make sure the batter is made up the day before and then all I have to do is bung them in the oven so we have lovely, hot fresh muffins on Christmas Day.
Muffins aren't the only thing I've been making. We're having a bit of a get together here on Christmas Eve so I decided to make my Thai sausage rolls.
I found the recipe for these in a magazine YEARS ago and they've always been a hit. Then I somehow lost the recipe and only recently decided to find a similar one by googling. I forget to about doing that half the time.
What do you know that the first recipe that came up in the search engine was the same one I had all those years ago. (Click here if you want to try it.)
They're made out of chicken mince, some sweet chilli, coriander and a few other ingredients.
The recipe uses 3 sheets of puff pastry but I find them easier to roll up with a little less filling so I use about 4-5 sheets and cut 6 out of a roll instead of 5. As a result I ended up with about 52 little sausage rolls instead of the 30 it said in the recipe.
These freeze really well and I only have to reheat them in the oven on Christmas eve.
It's not all been baking around here either. Little Miss R was a Zookeeper for a Day during the week.
The Zookeeper experience is an amazing programme put on by Australia Zoo during the school holidays. This was part of Little Miss R's birthday present back in October and she has been waiting (not so patiently at times) for these school holidays so she could participate.
There were 10 kids in her group and they got to go behind the scenes at the zoo and do a few extra things that you don't get to experience on a usual visit.
Not only did she help prepare the food for the lemurs but got to go on the special raft over to the lemur island which is not part of the usual zoo experience. She got to sweep and rake out the rhino enclosure (one of the other kids had to pick up the poo - much to her relief).
She got to hold a diamond python and a blue tongue lizard and had a tour of the Australia Zoo Animal Hospital.
The kids also had their lunch while they watched the Crocoseum show as well as plenty of other things they got to do throughout the day.
We dropped her off, extremely excited, at 8.30am and picked her up at 2pm, still excited but pretty tired.
If you have kids from the ages of 6-15 and you're near this area then it's a great holiday idea for them to do something a little different. They have different programmes designed for different age groups and our girl really wants to do the Extreme Reptile programme now which has really surprised me.
We'll see about next year then!
xx Susan
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