Today Master 6 scored himself a day off school, just because. Not because he had an appointment or because he felt unwell. Just because he felt like a day off the daily grind of Grade One. Who can blame him?!

Last night when we told him he was free to stay home and if he wanted to he could cook something from his new cookbook "Cook it together" by leading food expert Annabel Karmel, he was so excited that he couldn't sleep (hence the wee bags under the eyes in the pic!). There are so many great recipes to choose from in this easy to read cookbook for kids, that choosing was not easy.

Despite the recipes all including fresh healthy ingredients that Liam would not normally jump at, most seemed to appeal to him as they formed part of a yummy end result. All of these simple recipes feature step by step photos of other little people cooking, which makes this recipe book more visually engaging and motivational.

I was quite surprised by Liam's choice to make the sweetcorn fritters. He has a real sweet tooth and there were a few tasty sweet recipes that I was sure would be his first choice. We had made pancakes together for breakfast, so perhaps the concept of whisking flour, water and egg was not too foreign and therefore a safe choice for him.  Either that or the term "sweet" (in "sweetcorn") was perhaps misleading him to think it was a dessert?  As we began to cook the fritters he revealed that he chose the corn fritter recipe as he was quietly hoping by frying the corn it would turn into popcorn in the pan. Ah ha, mystery solved!

The recipe turned out as simple as it claimed, and fun for everyone involved. We're glad Liam was able to learn a little more about the grain sweetcorn and he did not need any encouragement to sit down and eat his lunch today -since he had created the meal himself, he was ever so curious to eat it. And that he did from start to end. Cook it Together would make a great Christmas gift for the budding Mini Masterchef, and retails at $26.95. Check out Cook it Together here. 

The first step is to go to your pantry, open the doors and remove that blue box of Kraft mac ‘n’ cheese. The second is to empty the contents of the box into the rubbish bin, and put the empty box in the recycling, because one thing will still be useful to society while the other will not.

Macaroni cheese is the comfort food of choice for many, both young and old. How many school children reach for a box of instant mac and cheese when they arrive home hungry? But parents, there’s no reason  to resort to powdered orange cheese and preservatives, when making it from scratch is so easy and far more delicious. Plus, call it macaroni au gratin and suddenly the former preserve of quick meals just got real fancy. Macaroni cheese with bacon, leek and peas regularly turns up on our home menu and is a favourite of both Josh and Wolf (as you can see from the picture, he is lightly covered in sauce). For parents of picky toddlers, this is a great meal. It’s easy for the little one to self feed and if they’re running low on calcium and refusing drinks of cow’s milk (like Wolf, rather inevitably) this recipe contains milk, two kinds of cheese and butter, taking care of today and tomorrow’s dairy requirements. Swiss cheese is great for young children as it has a sweet, nutty and mild taste. Other great combinations could include different sorts of cheese, meat or veggies; goats cheese and leek works really well as does small pieces of pork sausage with a mild parmesan.

Ingredients

500g grams macaroni or any tubular pasta

200g Swiss cheese

100g Tasty/cheddar cheese

1 large leek, diced

3 rashers bacon, diced

1 cup frozen peas

400mls whole milk

40g butter

40g flour

olive oil

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees. Cook your pasta in a pot of salted boiling water until al dente. Drain and set aside.

2. In a pan add some olive oil and sauté bacon and leek until leek is translucent and bacon is cooked through.

3. Grate the Swiss and tasty cheese, but keep them separate. The Swiss is for the sauce, the tasty for the topping.

4. The next two steps basically detail making a béchamel sauce. In the same pot add your milk and bring it to the boil. At the same time, in a small pot, melt your butter till bubbling then add the flour, stirring constantly until the mixture bubbles as resembles wet sand. Take off heat and set aside.

5. When the milk is boiling, take off heat and add your flour and butter mixture. Whisk until combined and return to heat, whisking constantly for about a minute until it bubbles and thickens.

6. Add the nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste. Add the grated Swiss cheese and whisk to combine thoroughly.

7. Add the pasta, leek, bacon and frozen peas to the cheese sauce, stir to combine thoroughly.

8. Pour this mixture into a large oven-proof casserole dish and top with tasty cheese.

9. Bake in oven for 25 minutes or until top is golden brown. Serve immediately.

You can prepare the entire thing the day before and bake it the evening of. If by any accident you have extra cheese sauce left over, just pour it over some steamed broccoli or cauliflower and have a gratin for the next day!

Everyone should have a chicken soup recipe up their sleeve. It’s a cure all, wholesome and warming, and exactly what you need when you’re not feeling your best. Keeping up with my current theme of things to eat when you and baby are sick (sadly we’re not getting better very quickly), this is a chicken soup recipe that I’ve adapted from the one I make at work. We make about 60 portions per week but it sells out within days. You could skip the first three steps and use store bought chicken stock, but personally I recommend making your own chicken as it allows you to control the flavour and sodium levels. It does mean starting out the day before or starting dinner a few hours in advance, but this is such a simple recipe. It’s a great thing to make if you’ve roasted a chicken the night before. This is so easy to make that Josh cooked it last night while I shouted instructions from under a blanket on the couch. If he can do it, then anyone can.

Chicken Soup

1 chicken carcass

1 chicken breast (you could save one from the roast chicken)

2 onions

4 cloves of garlic

sprig of thyme

4 carrots

half a bunch of celery

small coin sized piece of ginger

2 spring onions, finely sliced

1 cup of frozen peas

1 cup of small pasta for soup, like risoni or stars

salt and pepper

olive oil

1. If you have purchased a chicken carcass or de-boned a chicken yourself, place it in an oven dish with the chicken breast, a large carrot roughly chopped and an onion, halved, skin on. Roast this in an 180 degree oven for about half an hour until it the carcass is caramelised and golden brown and the chicken breast cooked through. If you’re using the carcass from a roast chicken and a saved chicken breast then don’t worry about it!

2. Place the roasted carcass, chicken breast, carrot, onion, two cloves of garlic, thyme, piece of ginger and a couple of celery ribs from your half bunch into a large pot and cover with water. Add two pinches of salt and a some cracked pepper or a few of peppercorns.

3. Bring the water to the boil and then reduce heat and allow your stock to simmer for at least 3 hours. Remove carcass and chicken breast. Remove any meat from the carcass and reserve with the chicken breast. Discard other solids in the stock by straining stock through a sieve.

4. Shred chicken breast meat.

5. Dice remaining carrot, onion, and celery. Finely chop garlic. In another pot add a slug of olive oil and sauté onion, garlic, carrot and celery until the latter two are tender and the onion is translucent.

6. Add your chicken stock and bring to a the boil.

7. Add pasta to soup. Keep and eye on it and keep stirring as this sort of pasta easily sticks to the bottom of pots.

8. When pasta is cooked add shredded chicken meat and frozen peas. Cook for a further five minutes and then remove from heat.

9. Season with salt and pepper to taste, garnish with finely sliced spring onions.

Steps 1-3 can be done up to five days in advance. This makes three adult portions of soup plus 2 baby serves enough for a large dinner and lunch the next day. Soup will keep for up to a week. This recipe multiplies extremely well!

I have an abundance of naval oranges at the moment. They are so cheap at the market and they have been consistently beautiful and heavy with juice. However, Wolf has gone off oranges, in fact gone off all the fruit of the season, when fruit used to be all he ever wanted. His dad tends to snack on baked goods rather than fresh fruit and you can always rely on him to let fruit rot in the basket until it’s soft enough to start oozing through the cracks. What with the endless illnesses contracted at child care and the generally poor weather, Wolf needs some vitamin C in him if he’s going to survive the Winter. My mum being a nurse and also visiting my dad in hospital as a child, I remembered that every patient’s tray meal comes a little tub of jelly. Watery, sugary, inevitably red coloured stuff it is, but it’s a good way of getting a little sugar and water into your system when you’re not feeling your best. I certainly ate a lot of it lying in bed post-birth. However, really proper jelly is made of fresh fruit juice or pulp, gelatine, and little else. Of course jelly, like ice cream, is generally associated with summer when we need our most refreshing, but this is good for a little sick boy or girl who is turning their nose up at the fresh stuff.

Real Orange Jelly

200mls fresh orange juice (from about three naval oranges)

3 leaves of gelatine (6 grams)

100mls of cold water

1 tablespoon sugar

1. Pour orange juice into a small saucepan and gently bring to the boil. When boiling dissolve the sugar.

2. Soak gelatine leaves in water until soft. Remove from water, squeezing out any excess and add to the boiled juice.

3. Whisk gelatine into juice until completely dissolved and mixed through.

4. Pour jelly mixture into a shallow tray. Place in fridge to chill until set, about 2 hours.

This makes a nice firm jelly that is still soft to eat. I used a large rectangular container for my jelly so I could chuck a lid on it and keep it in the fridge easily after it set. It was only about 2cm deep so I was able to make it just before dinner and have it set by the time Wolf finished his bath. The jelly tastes exactly like a fresh orange, only ridiculously easy to eat. This gives 3-4 baby serves or one adult serve. For larger recipes, just follow that you need 6 grams of gelatine for every 200mls of liquid. Don’t use pineapple or kiwi fruit as they contain enzymes that cause gelatine to not set.

Bananas are a real friend to mothers. They’re one of the earliest solid foods your baby will taste, and often a toddler favourite when nothing else will do. Bananas are a fail safe. Most of the time. So as per usual you when you did your weekly shop you bought a big hand of bananas thinking junior would make them disappear in no time. But this week junior is having nothing of it. This week it’s all about apples, but they have to be diced and stewed, NOT fresh and sliced. Your bananas have browned and gone mushy, and no one in your household eats over-ripe bananas. Here’s where this banana bread recipe comes in. It requires only a few more household ingredients to make. Not only will you appear incredibly resourceful, but you’ll have something delicious for any visitors or for your afternoon tea. People will lavish praise on you. And when your baby-daddy comes home to it’s warm and delicious smells, your already goddess-like appearance in his eyes will increase a hundred fold. Thus giving you a bargaining chip when you approach him about that $400 il tutto nappy bag you want. Especially since it’s going to arrive tomorrow via express post.

Ingredients

3-4 large over ripe bananas

2 eggs

125 g brown sugar

100 g butter, soft

200 plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons powdered cinnamon

pinch salt

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 175 degrees celcius. Line a baking tin about 18 x 28cm in size with a little butter and a sheet of baking paper.

2. Mash banana flesh with a fork.

3. In a separate bowl cream soft but not melted butter with the brown sugar until combined.

4. Add eggs to butter and sugar mixture one at a time, whisking each in until fully combined.

5. Sift flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt into the mixture and fold together.

6. Add mashed banana and fold together.

7. Pour mixture into your prepared pan. Dust the top with a little cinnamon.

8. Bake in oven for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown on top and the centre springs back when pressed.

Make sure you cut yourself a piece a few minutes after you’ve removed it from the oven; chef’s benefit. Kids like this recipe too; it’s a sweet treat you can give them guilt free. This makes a nice large loaf that could last up to a week, if only everyone wouldn’t eat it all. I do recommend using a wider flatter tin as opposed to a higher loaf tin, as this eliminates the stress of your banana bread being uncooked in the middle. If you feel like being silly and decadent, a handful of chopped dark chocolate into the mixture makes this another dish entirely.

Every time I make a chicken and vegetable pie, I am reminded of the best and most important day of my life. I had surprised Josh with his favourite pie the night I went into labour. I’d had what I thought were some pretty interesting Braxton Hicks contractions all evening as I diced veggies and cut pastry. Now and again I would pause in my cooking and clutch my belly and then shake it off  as though the pain had been that of a mild burn or knife nick, an hourly occurrence of a heavily pregnant cook (or if you’re me). The lovely golden pie came out of the oven as Josh arrived home from work and we managed to watch an entire episode of Masterchef and get through half a piece of pie each before we realised that Braxton Hicks my contractions were not. I was on the floor writhing with pain within the hour. I absently watched a Twix ad three times in my non-writhing moments and so craved one during and after the birth. Before we made a dash for the hospital, I had the presence of mind to tell Josh to wrap up the pie and place it in the fridge. Beyond that all I remember is traffic, pain and a lot of time with my legs open. And my first ever experience of anything properly mind altering, as I sucked down enormous lungfuls of nitrous oxide. When we brought baby Wolf home a few days later, we had our leftover pie for lunch. It tasted better than ever.

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts

2 rashers of bacon

3 cloves of garlic

1 onion

half a bunch of celery

3 carrots

1 ear of corn

a cup of button mushrooms

1 tablespoon flour

¼ cup cream

¼ cup of chicken stock

1 egg, beaten

Basic shortcrust pastry (or alternatively 2 sheets of store bought shortcrust of puff pastry)

175g butter

350g plain flour

pinch of salt

¼ cup water

Method

1. Place butter, flour and salt in food processor. Gradually add water while processing until mixture becomes single piece of dough. Remove from processor and lightly knead on a floured surface, wrap dough in plastic wrap and place in fridge. You can do this the day before if you like.

2.Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Finely chop garlic. Dice bacon. Roughly dice all veggies to around the same size, say about 1.5cm and remove corn kernels from the cob.

3. Roughly dice chicken breasts into 2cm cubes. Lightly coat with flour.

4. In a large pot heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil and gently sauté garlic and bacon. Add all veggies except mushrooms. Sauté until carrots are just tender.

5. Add mushrooms. Add chicken and brown but do not cook through.

6. Add stock and cream to chicken and vegetable mixture, stir through mixture until combined

7. Season mixture and allow to cool

8. Meanwhile grease pie dish. Take a third of your dough and roll out to a rough 2mm round. Line pie dish with pastry and lightly dock with a fork to prevent pastry shrinkage. Brush with beaten egg and place into oven. Cook until pastry has just begun to colour. This basically prevents any chance of uncooked pastry base, the biggest fear with making a pie.

9. Pour chicken and vegetable mixture into pie base. Brush the edges of the pastry base with a bit of beaten egg.

10. Roll out another pastry circle and place over your pie. Using a fork, press the uncooked pastry top into the edges of the cooked pastry base to ensure a good seal. The beaten egg will help this also. Cut a small cross in the centre of the pastry top to allow steam to escape and prevent the pastry from getting soggy. Brush lightly with more beaten egg.

11. Place in oven and cook for about 20 minutes until pastry is golden. Serve immediately with a lovely green salad.

This is quite possibly the most forgiving and versatile recipe I have ever made. Honestly, I’ve substituted potato flour when I had no plain, mixed almond meal and coconut when I was 50g short, and once, after three nights of no more than 2 hours sleep, I over measured the flour and ended up with a mix that wasn’t quite double, but still yielded 20 perfect little cakes.

Given that these can be made with any kind of ground nut meal, the possibilities are endless. I’ve just recovered from an obsessive need for a certain choc/hazelnut spread (eaten straight out of the jar!) and decided to try and re-create it in friand form using hazelnut meal. It worked and is delicious! Using ground coconut fills the house with the smell of summer as it bakes and creates a lovely moist cake. The more traditional almond meal friand with either peach or raspberry (or both) will always be the favourite in my house, although I think the chocolate coconut I baked today may just top it!

These are a simple treat to prepare and don’t scream ‘Gluten Free!’, in fact, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love a friand with their mid morning beverage. I just hope that this batch make sit to my Mothers Group tomorrow unlike the last dozen that never stood a chance!

Basic Friand Recipe

150g almond meal

1 ¼ cups pure icing sugar, sifted

¾ cup gluten free plain flour

5 egg whites at room temperature

150g cooled, melted butter

Peach & Raspberry - finely grated rind of 1 lemon

150g mix of peach & raspberries (or as a single fruit)

Choc Raspberry Hazelnut - substitute hazelnut meal for the almond meal

1 T cocoa powder, sifted

150g raspberries

Choc Coconut - substitute ground coconut for the almond meal

1 T cocoa powder, sifted

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

You’ll need a 12 capacity muffin tray, lightly greased. I love my silicone friand/muffin trays. NOTHING sticks!

2. Mix appropriate nut meal, icing sugar, flour and flavouring (cocoa powder or lemon).

3, In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy. I find the more you whisk, the lighter the end result.

4. Add to the flour mixture and fold in to combine. Stir in melted butter and fruit if using.

5. Spoon the mix into the trays. I use an ice cream scoop to make each friand even, as I apparently have an inability to bake without either ending up with left over mix, or not enough!

6. Bake until golden. This can take anywhere from 20 minutes in a decent oven to the 40 minutes it takes in my geriatric one.

7. Cool in the trays for around 10 minutes then turn out and cool.

Brew yourself a hot cup of coffee, pinch a piping hot friand, grab the latest baby magazine and sit and relax! (even if just long enough to eat the friand in one bite before the little one wakes.)

Whether it be during illness, post-vaccinations or just one of those weeks, sometimes Wolf can be a very fussy eater. It can be hard to get anything more than toast and bananas into him. I’ve tried to instil Wolf with the spirit of a gourmet, but right now he displays all the worst characteristics of the sort of food critic you’d throw out of your restaurant. Admittedly Wolf is still getting over the tail end of a nasty week long virus, which the whole family shared.

On the plus side his aim is bang on; if you want a lamp chop - a former favourite - lobbed right at your face Wolf is your man.

My fail safe in these situations is pasta. We’re also going through another finger food stage where anything served via a spoon is a cause for tantrums. Carbohydrates keep baby from getting hungry and a sticky sauce full of good things ensure that while Wolf enjoys one of his favourite foods, he’s still getting some nutrition in there.

Pesto is really easy to throw together, especially if you have a food processor (mother’s essential arsenal), and you can hide a lot of green goodness in it. Pine nuts, an essential component of pesto, are actually the seed of the as a opposed to the fruit, so not actually a nut. Also, though raw garlic is usually used, I like to roast it for a milder flavour that is more baby friendly. Using spinach adds extra iron to your pesto, but you can replace it with rocket or any robust green. I bet everyone has a great pesto recipe, and I find this one works for me. This makes enough for three adult serves and one baby serve, with enough pesto leftover for a very delicious chicken sandwich for mum’s lunch the next day.

I like to use penne because even if Wolf is in an extremely fussy mood and tries to wipe off the sauce, he can’t extract the stuff inside!

Pesto Pasta

1 packed cup fresh basil leaves

5 garlic cloves

1 cup grated good quality parmesan, grated

¼ cup pine kernels

2 packed cups of baby spinach leaves

½ cup olive oil

salt and pepper

500g penne pasta

1. Set a large pot of water to boil with a pinch of salt. In a 180 degree oven, roast your garlic cloves, skin on, for about 7 minutes, until garlic is fragrant and soft. Remove flesh from skins.

2. Spread your pine kernels on a baking tray and place in the oven. Toast until golden brown. This will happen very quickly, within about 5 minutes so watch it carefully.

3.In a food processor add your basil, roasted garlic, pine kernels, spinach leaves and a couple of good splashes of olive oil. Process until smooth. You will need to periodically add splashes of olive oil to your mixture to help everything break down. Season to taste.

4. Add penne to boiling water and cook until al dente. Drain.

5. Put penne back in pot and add pesto mix. Stir until all pasta is coated with sauce.

6. Serve with extra grated parmesan on top.