I just love using flowers and herbs when making baked goods. One of my favourite flavours is English Lavender, another is Rose. the flavours they impart to baked  items are just wonderful . My lavender shortbread is always a popular item as is my Rose and Pistachio biscuits. These flavours   are so fragrant and beautiful and just work so well with sugar, eggs, cream and flour. They make the most delicious creams, icecreams, cream patisserie,cakes and biscuits and are just wonderful in chocolates. Not long ago I made  Lemon and Basil meringues  which were simply delicious. Its become more popular now to add fresh herbs to sweet treats and it just goes to show how much our tastebuds have developed in the last few years and have opened our eyes and tastebuds to wonderful new experiences. Never be afraid to try new things and flavour combinations, some will work some may not but you do not know if it will until you try.

My darling Man asked me to marry him on the 20th December 2009 and he was answered with a resounding YES

On Saturday 20th March 2010 we went looking at a wonderful venue Called Otimai Lodge in Oratia and we have booked our wedding day for the 8th December 2010.** doing a very big happy dance **

Its so much fun doing the planning and chatting about weddings and along with doing the planning, one of the most important things that need to be planned for is of course the food and drinks that you would serve to your guests.

It comes in many different shapes and forms from things such as a dainty afternoon tea, or a picnic, bbq, breakfast, sit down multi course very formal meal,buffet style, canapes and cocktails, multi day feasts, and many other styles of eating and meals.

Its about gathering those special people around you on your special day and showing and sharing your love for each other as a couple. It should never be about impressing your guests with money, but about the couple themselves and what they both like.

Mountains of money dont necessarily have to be spent to have a wonderful wedding.

Both Bruce and I wanted to get married outside with a picnic meal in a not too large wedding and so thats what we are going to do. Myself and some willing or maybe slightly unwilling helpers will be preparing all the food in the couple of days prior to the wedding and serving it on platters that people can help themselves to while sitting at long tables that look lovely and go with the feel of the meal. Everything will be served cold and very picnic style (but with out the ants and mosquitos).

As part of the dessert course I want to do an array of cookies, biscuits, sweets that come from around the world and are traditional wedding treats, so if any of you have any traditional wedding recipes please please please send them to me and  I will make them , blog about them and credit you with the recipe.

I await your emails and recipes very excitedly

I have been very busy the last week , trialling a new recipe for hot cross buns and , have tweaked the recipe and came up with a delicious version  that you can find on www.hotcrossbuns.co.nz The smells coming from the kitchen are just amazing, with the spices and  gorgous dried fruit,  and then making chocolate eggs, bunnies and treats for a raffle basket ,and making chocolate bunnies to sell at market mmmmm

heres a  couple of pics of the hot cross buns

mmmmm hot cross buns that are handmade with free range eggs

hot cross buns fresh out of the oven with butter

It”s really quite  scary how many people have food allergies now

I’m allergic to kiwifruit and latex they have some of the same enzymes in them. I did some filming last year where I had to wear a latex mask, I came out in a dreadful rash all over my face that lasted for about 4 days. Recently I was in hospital and the area around my bed was a latex free area , but the other beds in the room had latex gloves above each bed and I came out in a rash from what ever was being given off by the latex and all the boxes of gloves had to be removed. You may be wondering what this has got to do with food…….. let me explain about  to this to you.

This is becoming a real problem , so many food handlers are using latex gloves when handling food now that it’s actually concerning me quite strongly. Now I dont have a problem if gloves are required, but I do think society has gone a bit overboard with this practice in general for many reasons.

1. Good  glove practices are not always in place for instance:

the amount of times I have seen people handle food , then handle money , or rub their noses then handle food again …… not acceptable people.

2. Food manufacturers/providers ….. please have good food safety practices in place think about the fact that many people are allergic to latex  and replace all those latex gloves with vinyl or plastic gloves. They are often cheaper than latex and are very food safe.

Make sure you train your staff about allergies and allergens and look at things which make your business less of an allergen risk area.

Also train your staff in the processes that go with  wearing gloves, IE: change your gloves regularly, wash your hands regularly , Take your gloves off before handling money or blowing your nose or rubbing your face, then wash your hands again.

3. Have a booklet or a list of  potential Allergens on site so that if somebody askes you if something has a certain product or preparation method that you and your staff (that you just have given great training to) will be able to talk to the customer and reassure them that their food is safe or unsafe for them so that they can make the choice of eating a particular thing or trying something different on your menu.

4.Have good practices in place that keep your foodstuffs separate ie: Gluten free products or nuts are not stored open but in containers or sealed bags so that they dont get contaminated  by things in the air coming from other foods and viceversa.

Since being in my own business I have made many conscious decisions  with my food that I make and the registered kitchen I work in  to make everything as allergen freindly as possible. I do not bring any peanut products in to the kitchen at all as its such a strong allergen.

Any Gluten Free products that I make are made before anything else is produced and kept totally separate and I make a range of allergen free goodies on a regular basis and have started to make a name for being able to cater for special dietary requirements , that may be for religious reasons or for people with allergens.

I do this because I know what its like to have food allergies , whilst not life threatening for me still is enough to make life very uncomfortable for days and I feel that just because  somebody cannot eat particular things because of what ever reason be it religious or allergic reactions they shouldnt have to miss out on eating good food.

So Food producers/Manufacturers please please start thinking about giving your staff good training both in Allergen Knowledge and Information and also Good Food Glove  handling practices and make our eating times better for everybody.

It doesnt necessarily mean that you have to spend lots of money to teach these good practices , and the rewards you will get from your customers with special food requirements will come back to you in more ways than you think.

This is why I havent posted much on here recently

I have been studying for my Diploma in Culinary arts  This year and that took up a lot of time , it also inspired me to put my ideas for my own business in to action.Last week saw the launch of  Sweet Expectations

This is a gourmet baked goods industry , selling hand made biscuits/cookies , decorated cup cakes, muffins, and other tasty little goodies , all made from scratch and using free range eggs. I am currently selling at Farmers markets and hope to sell to cafes and also online as well. I also will be doing some gluten free products and am thinking of some heart freindly diabetic freindly lines as well as there has been a fair amount of interest in those areas from customers at the markets.

Im currently at Wesley market in Sandringham on Tuesdays and Fridays , and at the Auckland farmers market in Alexandra park on sunday mornings just look for the lady in pink

www.sweetexpectations.co.nz

I will post pictures , Im just having problems loading them up at the moment

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

February’s challenge is a Flourless Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Valentino, inspired by Malaysia’s “most flamboyant food ambassador”, Chef Wan. Recipe comes from Sweet Treats by Chef Wan

I used dark chocolate and flavoured the cake with butterscotch schnapps and then made a passionfruit and vanilla icecream . oh myyy this is a super fudgy delicious cake. Its a rich chocolate flourless cake with a really fudgy texture and a brownie texture on the outside. I made a small one and a large one , this was the small one that I used for the picture , my darling man and I really enjoyed this for our dessert after dinner

This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Baking Soda and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf.
They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

This was my first challenge with the Daring Bakers and it presented some external challenges for me.

I have just moved house and as we are going to be renovating and turning my kitchen area in to a proper kitchen so I dont have a full size oven at the moment . I just have a small bench top induction oven and have not had it long and had to work out how the temp worked on it , but we got there in the end.

I used the first tuile recipe and paired it up with a low fat yoghurt mixed with a rhubarb puree and served with fresh plums and a strawberry meringue on the side. It was a great dessert for a hot summer night.

The tuile was lovely and crispy and light, I made it a bit thick but it still tasted good and went really well with the rhubarb yoghurt and plums.

Well I hope you all had a good year in 2008  and if not that the year ahead is going to be even better.

Life holds so many new things for me in the year ahead. Im hoping to be a bit more on to it when it comes to posting stuff on here, so keep coming back regularly and check it out.

Went over to some freinds house last night and I cooked  a 3 course low fat dinner silly blonde thing that I am forgot to take pictures of the entire meal  but let me create a word picture for you. You can check out the recipes in the recipe section here.

we started off with a vegetable and dip platter

which had yellow capsicum, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms which i marinated in fresh lime juice and black pepper,courgettes, pita bread crunchy bits,  with a cottage cheese and sundried tomato dip and a pea and basil dip .

The Main course was skinless chicken which was stuffed with a little of the cottage cheese dip and slices of sundried tomato, that was then seasoned with black pepper,balsamic glaze, smoked paprika, and a very small drizzle of olive oil and then bbqed  ,I served this with bbqed corn cobs seasoned with black pepper and a small drizzle of olive oil again. A salad of tomato, red onions , cucumber tossed in a light balsamic dressing  and minature baked potatoes stuffed with baked beans, wholegrain mustard and potato were served on the side.
For Dessert I made a low fat chocolate cake ( I got the recipe from Taste magazine  see the links page)

It was a recipe from the latest issue and it had cherries in it, I switched the cherries for fresh raspberries,fresh blueberries and fresh strawberries , and added a little vanilla to it, it was incredible and with only 5gms of fat per slice, I served this with low fat custard, and low fat greek yoghurt and decorated the top with fresh berries.

My freinds just loved it , we are all doing low fat stuff so I wanted to show how we can make a meal from start to finish using  all low fat products and producing great food that if you didnt know it was low fat you couldnt tell

1x 250gm italian herbs cottage cheese

50 gms sundried tomatoes

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

2 tsps garlic crushed

black pepper to taste

chopped fresh parsely (optional)

Method:

finely chop tomatoes and then add all ingrediants together and mix till combined

place in covered bowl untill needed, can be used as a dip for raw veges, on crackers, as a toast or sandwich spread,

I also  used it as a dip for raw veges and stuffed it inside chicken breasts with a slice of sundried tomato which was later bbqed

1 1/2 cups frozen peas

1/2 cup basil

1/4cup chives

1tsp lime juice

150 mls low fat greek or natural yoghurt unsweetened

black pepper to taste

1/2 tsp chopped garlic

Place all ingrediants in to a food processor and pulse untill mostly pureed, a little bit of chunkyness is fine and it gives it a bit of texture.

If  its a bit thick add a little bit of water , dont add too much though or you will end up with a tasty cold soup.

the peas dont require cooking, when you have made the dip just let it sit on the bench for a little bit as it will be very cold, garnish with a sprig of basil