Banana and Honey Ice Lollies

I've never bought an ice lolly for my son which has led to full on, lying back, kicking, screaming because he wanted more.  Apart from my son's behaviour (and not wanting to reward it), it's not going to make you feel too bad giving him two.

It's also a great way to use up and store bananas which are past their best as you do want them slightly over-ripe.

Rhubarb Cake

Rhubarb is such an odd fruit.  It's almost a twisted fact of nature that rhubarb is great at this time of year, just as we should be donning our suncream and sunglasses.  Then you have a spring like this one.  Days of dismal rain and almost tempted to switch on the central heating.

So rhubarb suddenly has a strange purpose.  The joy, if you like, in the drizzled disappointment of British weather!

After initial reluctance, my son loved this cake and so did I.  It lasted for 2 further days in a tin and I also froze some wedges which defrosted in the microwave beautifully.

Great served warm as a pudding with silky double cream or custard or cold as a cake.  Ok, I'm not winning any prizes on health here but I figure it's still healthier than a chocolate bar, and, cream aside, it's pretty low in fat.

Chocolate Custard (low sugar)

Custard.  I never make it from scratch but I do make it from custard powder.  It occurred to me when making some custard from custard powder the other day that custard powder is simply cornflour (cornstarch) natural flavouring (vanilla) and colour (normally a natural colour like annatto).  I don't have much annatto floating around the house and there feels like something wrong about making white custard even though that's the colour it would be if not made with eggs, so my idea was to make chocolate custard.

This would be great hot with chocolate cake, poured over banana (if you want to keep on my 7 a day routine), on it's own or allowed to cool in small pots and eaten cold like blancmange.  It's pretty low sugar too with only 1 tsp added sugar per portion.  There's more sugar in a fromage frais!

Fruit Crumble Bars

I'd looked online for a fruit crumble bar recipe which I thought wasn't a load of faff.  I failed to find one so this is what I came up with.  It's simple and you could switch in whatever fruit you have in the fruit bowl looking past it's best.

Although plums aren't seasonal in the UK at least, they are in South Africa and the UK are a major export market.  Irrespective of what you think of imported fruit and vegetables, these plums were lovely.  Juicy, delicious and sweet but unfortunately my son on a whim has decided he doesn't like plums or maybe he's aware it's not UK plum season.  Who knows?  Stranger things have happened than my son deciding to put his foot down on carbon footprints.  Well he is 3.

If you are sticking to more locally sourced fruit, why not try using frozen fruit instead?  Raspberries might work well but will probably need boiling down more so they're not too wet.

Apple and Almond Cake

A big hit with my 3 year old and grown ups, this is a cake which is equally at home with custard as pudding and as a cake.

The basic mix is based on a victoria sponge (so not sugar free) but by adding apples into the mix, this pads out the cake meaning you get something which feels special without needing layers of sugary icing or jam so still a treat but perhaps a less guilty one.

This makes one shallow cake, which I think is the best kind to have with custard or cream.

Best Pancake recipes

Pancakes; I'm a bit of a fan; in fact, one of my very early recipes was for a sugar free American style pancake recipe so I thought, with Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake Day or Mardi Gras) looming on 4th March this year, I'd tell you about my favourites!

The point of Shrove Tuesday was to use up all of the rich ingredients in the house like eggs and sugar before the traditional period of fasting and reflection of Lent.  Pancakes though are a fantastic way to make food quickly and easily and make a meal out of eggs (mostly, see below!)  Eggs are a great way to include vitamin D into your diet which is often lacking in our bodies at this time of year (as I look outside to the frosty ground and sun shining weakly on my garden!)

All of my recipes are made without added sugar or are low in sugar unless you add some with the topping with syrups or icing sugar which makes them great even for babies.

Egg Free Pancakes - great for all ages

It never occurred to me that you could make American style pancakes without eggs and you wouldn't be able to notice the difference.  The only way I knew was, one time when making my normal sugar free pancake recipe, I made it as normal then got confused thinking I had more eggs in the fridge than I thought.  I was convinced for years I'd miscounted, but, this morning I gave it a go again and I was right, you don't need the egg!

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with eggs at all and they're a great source of vitamin D but they are also a common food allergy and, if you don't have eggs in, you can still have delicious pancakes!  Result!

Simple Baked Southern Fried Chicken

Ok, sorry to remind you but we're approaching New Year and the time for those resolutions.  What will yours be this year?  Lose weight?  Stop smoking?

Have you ever noticed how resolutions are always about what we don't want rather than what we do want?  That's a bad thing because we're not wired that way.  Don't think about a pink elephant.  Go on, think about ANYTHING else apart from pink elephants.  Don't think about it.  You're thinking about it aren't you?  You can't help yourself!

Anyway, in general, I'm always of the opinion that a bit of what you actually fancy is better than 101 diet products.  Let's face it, if you buy diet biscuits, you eat more biscuits don't you?  Go on, we all know the truth...  So although I'm not a huge fan of dieting per se, I also managed to lose quite a lot of weight in the last two years.  You didn't know that about me did you?  I am now a shadow of my former UK size 16/18 self and am now a comfortable size 12, size 10 in Fat Face or White Stuff on a good day with a fair wind behind me (and size 8-10 in US terms which is even better!)

I can't pretend that I'm healthy all of the time either.  It's not true.  I do exercise but I also occasionally eat chips and, very occasionally, fried chicken.  But that said, I can't bring myself to actually fry chicken at home, I can feel my arteries hardening at the thought and there is something a bit gross about the extreme fattiness of it.  If I ever do buy fried chicken (from a certain well known High Street chain), I always drain it on the paper towels to make it a bit less greasy before eating.

So this recipe is good all round.  Lower in fat but also much less greasy which is a good thing and makes it tastier.  No frying smells to stink out the house and you can feel slightly more virtuous for having your cake (or chicken) and eating it!  Just don't eat 10 pieces because it's 'healthier'!

How I decorated my Christmas cake (and I'm rubbish at this kind of stuff)

I'm no sugar crafter.  You will see this from my results but although an amateur, I am quite pleased with how my cake turned out this year and the big secret was, it was so easy.

There is no hard stuff here but I'll give it to you with all the short cuts...  You don't even need an icing bag!

Baked Cherry Custard

This isn't a sugar free recipe but at only 2 tsp added sugar per portion and a step towards your five a day, it's not terrible!

I started trying to think of a custard recipe, then thought "what fruit could I include" and before I knew it, it was almost a clafoutis except a gluten free one.  Best served warm or cold not hot.

Low Sugar Mini Cherry Tarts - Great for kids or grown ups

I'm showing my age now, the urge to type "damn fine cherry pies" was very strong.

As I said in my last post, I promised to write up a recipe for the pastry leftovers.  Because I don't know how much pastry you might have, the quantities are per tart.  Please adjust for the number you have!

This isn't sugar free.  Jam is laden with sugar but there is around 1-1.5 tsp jam per tart and only half of that is sugar, not massive amounts of sugar at all, much less than a commercial tart.

Gingerbread men

...or considering the time of year... Gingerbread Mummies!!!

I posted a recipe for Gingerbread men a while back (or ninja bread men, I do like a play on words!)  This though is adapted to give a lighter result which is less dominated by anything other than the ginger flavour.  I found the treacle in the old recipe tended to drown out the spicy warmth.

Quick Ginger Biscuits

My son had a hankering for some biscuits after nursery.  I must be mad because what do I do after a hard day at work?  I only go and make some!

Not masses of sugar here but certainly just treat food.  When they cool, they make a pretty crunchy biscuit but my son loves biscuits like that.  While still warm they're a bit softer so don't be surprised if they're still soft when you take them out of the oven.  This was a recipe from my mum but originally from my aunt.  The recipe was originally to use 1lb of flour!  That must have made 40 odd biscuits!  I know my son eats a lot but...

Hidden Vegetable Sausage Rolls for the Whole Family

I've often said it's great to have a hidden vegetable recipe up your sleeve to ensure your kids are getting enough of their 5 a day.  All kids go through their fussy stages and vegetables are often the victim of it.

Watermelon Ice Lollies Great for Toddlers

If I can encourage you to do one thing this summer, which is setting out to be a scorcher, is buy an ice lolly mould.  Ice lollies are so expensive to buy and often full of sugar, artificial food colourings and other stuff which isn't all that great for kids.

Much better is to make your own lollies out of fruit or fruit juice with a little added sugar if needed.  Even if you do add something to make it sweeter, it's still far more natural, lower in added sugar and can count towards their 5 a day!  In fact, one of these ice lollies contains 60g of fruit and only around half a teaspoon of added sugar.

So here is my latest ice lolly recipe.  My 3 year old said "I like pink lollies best" when he had one of these and was upset when I wouldn't give him one at 6:30pm because it was bath time!

Ninja bread men for kids (or Gingerbread men)

My mother is my inspiration in life in general.  Incredibly intelligent she didn’t have the breaks in life nor the education.  At the time giving a woman an education was seen as a waste of time and money.  How much we have moved on.  I was lucky enough to have all the opportunities she didn’t and she encouraged and supported me through everything in life, every bump, every triumph, every disaster and here I am with two degrees a Dr of Chemistry and she still is far my superior.

It’s funny how we learn how to love and be loved first from our parents.  My Mum shows people she loves them through food and I have inherited this from her.  This was the first ever recipe I made with my son and I remember making it with my Mum when I was little.  I also handily got some cool “Ninja” bread man cutters from an online shop which I loved and so did my son but he made some hearts for me too.

This does make a very traditional, crisp gingerbread man with a strong ginger flavour which is how I had them when I was little.  If you prefer them a little softer, take them out a little earlier or it might be an idea to substitute the flour for self raising (they will spread though).  If you like a milder flavour, cut down on the ginger a little.

Lemon and Tangerine Curd

This recipe is due to a shopping mix up I had too many eggs the other day.  I should explain.  After years of moaning about internet food shopping, I have succumbed.  Although I still say that it's no quicker, at least it's time I'm sat on the lap top ordering food intermittently sorting out a lego emergency with my son rather than time I'm walking round a supermarket with a podcast on trying to ignore the awfulness of it all.  And let's face it, we all hate supermarkets.  Sorry supermarkets, and shooting myself in the foot for any future sponsorship opportunities but yes, it's true.  We hate you.  We hate walking round you, we hate the crowds, we hate the fact you always seem to have run out of something we need, we hate the rising prices but mostly we hate ourselves for not having the time, money nor energy to go and shop from little local stores who lovingly hand craft each loaf of bread with their hands.  Ok, that's not true, I do often buy bread from Hambleton Bakery because it's excellent and when I get the chance I buy sausages from Grasmere Farm.

It annoys me though the pictures of TV chefs complete with basket walking into their local butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers, embracing the proprietors with open arms like long lost friends.  Balls.  Who has the time?  I very much think we need to support local producers who produce good food but for one, not all high street food shops are all that good (a particular failing of fishmongers in my opinion) but if the opening hours coincide with my working hours, sorry, it's not an option.

So, I have embraced the devil supermarkets out of necessity like 90% of the population and, even more so now, I've embraced internet supermarket shopping.  Why?  Well I work four days a week.  I currently commute 400-450 miles a week.  I blog, I try to exercise 3-4 times a week and in all this I also try and spend time with my son and occasionally open a book.  It's tough and something has to give.

So my latest internet shop arrived with eggs which were two days after their display until date.  So I needed a recipe to use eggs.  I still had some lemons in the fridge from when I'd been really ill a few weeks before (emergency honey and lemon) and some tangerines in the fruit bowl.  A fruit curd seemed like the obvious choice.  Not sugar free, not healthy but very tasty.

Quick tips, use a bowl which fits into your pan a bit.  You need a good contact with the steam and the bowl.  I didn't to start with and it took quite a long time to thicken.

Proper Cocoa

This is probably a recipe for older kids and adults.  Forget hot chocolate, it's not that nasty overly sweet confection, this is the good stuff, the real stuff, the thing you crave when it's chilly outside...

Quick Mulled Wine (adults only of course!)

This is a quick, one person cup of mulled wine.  The evenings are drawing in and it always seems to me that there is one person who doesn't like mulled wine too much (or insist it's a drink for Christmas only and it's only allowed in December) so this is a quick recipe without feeling like you need to make a full bottle worth.

Patriotic Pavlova!

Well it's coming up to the Diamond Jubilee and it certainly feels like we've been having a lot of celebrations recently in the Mamacook household.

Pavlova is one of the easiest desserts to make; it's an absolute doddle, not expensive either (depending on your choice of fruit) and an impressive dessert centrepiece.  I've not gone for the meticulous decoration with fruit to show a Union Jack, frankly even though I'm feeling the patriotic fever this year, that seems a bit too twee but I have gone for a mixture of red and blue fruits; with the white cream and a recipe from a Commonwealth country, what could be more appropriate?

I'll tell you a secret...  Not only is this so easy to make, the hardest bits can all be made the night before leaving you with some minor assembly work when your guests are around (which can even be achieved with glass of champagne in hand.  I'm such a Slummy Mummy at the moment!)