I’ve had a hankering to try out this Chocolate Chip Cookie Bar recipe from Martha Stewart for a while now. I even linked to it in a quick linky love post on Saturday. I figured I would convert the recipe to metric measurements and more Australian ingredients and share my version of the recipe with you today, complete with some gorgeous photos. As an added bonus I’d also have something for lunch boxes this week.

It all sounded perfectly reasonable, but sometimes this whole cooking caper is not as easy as it seems!

Late yesterday afternoon I googled how much a stick of butter weighed, and decided I could just use self raising flour in place of the flour, baking soda etc, and that is possibly where it all started to go wrong…

Here is my version of the recipe.

Cherry Choc-Chip Failure Cookie Bar Recipe

340 grams of softened butter
4 cups self raising flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 small packet of choclate chips (around 300grams)
1 packet of glace cherries, chopped.

First things first… I fired up the conversion app on my phone and figure out to preheat the oven to 180… this was going to be a cinch.

The butter conversion calculator told me that 3 sticks of butter was 340 grams… that’s a lot of butter and that alone should have been a sign that this was going to make a LOT of cookie bars, but I kind of missed that. By the time I was adding the sugar and whipping it up with my beaters I realised that the bowl I was working in was woefully too small for this large recipe, but I pushed on regardless.

When Morgan asked to crack the eggs into the mix I handed them over. We’d made a LOT of quiches over the summer and his egg cracking skills had greatly improved. The first one went in, no problem. The second one kind of exploded between his fingers with half the egg going in and half all over the floor. Oh well… never mind… I’ll just chuck in an extra egg.

Eggs in and mixed well, add the vanilla and then the flour. By this stage the inadequate bowl was making things rather tricky as we tried to mix in the four cups of flour, the choc chips and the cherries. After working up a huge bicep on mixing arm and losing a large amount of dough to the bench and the flour we were finally ready to put it into a tray.

I got out the builders measure tape with both centimeters and inches and measured up some of our baking trays. I was rocking this conversion thing!

Now I’m not exactly sure what a ’12-by-17-inch rimmed baking sheet’ is… but none of our trays were quite big enough, no problem, near enough is good enough right? The ‘bars’ would just be a little chunkier.

Into the oven… timer on for 20 minutes and off I went.

When I came back and cracked open the oven I realised things were not quite going to plan… The mix had risen, A LOT! It was all but spilling out over the edge of my tray. Damn.

Still I turned it round and left it to cook for the last 20 minutes… it’d be ok. But as the oven timer beeped and I lifted the tray out of the oven and left it to cool, I realised things were probably not ok.

The edge of the cake/slice/giant cookie had risen and browned way too much, yet the middle sunk as soon as I took it out of the oven.

As I tried to lift it gently from the tray onto the board to cut it, the damn thing split down the middle and I could see that while the edges were dry and over cooked, the middle looked decidedly like raw cookie dough. Crap.

So what went wrong?

For starters this makes a LOT of mixture, I should have used a bigger bowl, or better yet, made half the quantity, that would have solved my not big enough tray problem too. The extra egg was probably not the best idea, neither was using all self raising flour… possibly changing on of the cups to plain flour might have helped?

Perhaps a lower oven temp (as well as the right sized tray or less mixture) would have helped the crispy outer, uncooked, sunken inner problem…. maybe?

And I really shouldn’t have attempted to cook anything while also making dinner and dealing with a sick and miserable toddler.

But all’s well that ends well. I managed to salvage a little of the slice to go in lunch boxes, the kids ate the gooey broken bits with a spoon for dessert and I still had something to blog about!

Want to make me feel better about my cooking failure and share one of yours?

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Cherry Choc-Chip Cookie Bar Failure! is a post from: picklebums.com

It’s cold and wet outside, a perfect environment for our Rhubarb to grow like crazy, and a perfect excuse to eat cake!

This cake is best eaten warm, straight out of the oven, while curled up under a blanket on the couch, watching a DVD…. or at least that’s what we think!

Rhubarb Tea Cake Recipe

A couple of sticks of rhubarb (some water and a sprinkle of sugar)
60 grams butter
1/2 cup of brown sugar (or any other sweetener you like)
1 egg
1 1/2 cup of self raising flour
1/2 cup of milk
Cinnamon sugar mix

Wash and cut up your rhubarb into smallish pieces. Pop them into a microwave safe bowl with a little water and a sprinkle of sugar and cook them in the microwave till they are just starting to soften but still retain their shape (or you can cook it on the stove too).

Cream butter and sugar, add the egg and beat well. Stir in the flour and milk alternatively. Set aside some of the pieces of rhubarb to decorate the top of the cake, add the rest of the rhubarb and a little of the pretty pink water and stir it through the batter.

Pour the mix into a well greased cake tin, and arrange the left over rhubarb on the top. Push the rhubarb down into the cake, but don’t let the batter cover it. Sprinkle the top of the cake with lots of cinnamon sugar… or a little bit if you don’t love it as much as we do!

Bake the cake in the moderate oven for 45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Eat it while it’s warm!

You can also make this cake with apple if you don’t have any rhubarb, or a combination of both!

I love to cook with rhubarb, mostly because we always have some in the garden! Some of our favourite rhubarb recipes are Fruit Sponge Desert, Rhubarb Fizz Drink, and Rhubarb and Apple Scrolls.

Are you a rhubarb fan?
Got any great recipes to share?

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Rhubarb Tea Cake Recipe. is a post from: picklebums.com

As the nights get colder we are picking the last of our summer veggies. Our always late to ripen tomatoes, the last zucchini and lots of rainbow silverbeet.

Rainbow silverbeet, or rainbow chard if you live on the other side of the world, is one of our many ‘bonus plants’. They are a bonus because we never plant them, they just self seed and pop up in various spots around the veggie garden.

Rainbow Silverbeet is really good for you. Eat it like you would spinach, add the tiny, very young, leaves to salads, steam larger leaves gently as a side dish, or add to a variety of recipes.

I love plants like that. Great rewards for absolutely no time or effort!

To use up the last of our homegrown veggies we’ve created this ‘rainbow quiche’ recipe… so called because it’s full of rainbow silverbeet, as well as other great things.

Rainbow Quiche Recipe

1 small zucchini grated
2 small carrots grated
a bunch of rainbow silver beat chopped
a handful of cherry tomatoes, or 2 medium tomatoes chopped
5 eggs
1 cup of self raising flour
1 cup of grated cheese
50ml oil
Onion, herbs, salt and pepper.

The exact amounts of vegetables in this recipe doesn’t matter. If I don’t have zucchini, I use more carrots and silverbeet. If I don’t have fresh tomatoes I chuck in some chopped sun-dried tomatoes and olives instead. So it’s great for using up left overs or whatever is in the garden.

Preheat your oven to 180 Celsius and grease a dish or deep sided tray.

Mix it all the ingredients together, pour them into the dish and cook for 30-45 minutes or until cooked in the middle.

The Wooden Crate Kitchenware Give Away

Thanks to my new advertiser The Wooden Crate, I have some gorgeous kitchenware to give away.

The Wooden Crate is an online store selling gifts and home-wares. They have a great selection of gorgeous and interesting items but when I saw this gorgeous green bamboo bowl I was in love! It is made from environmentally sustainable bamboo and comes from Vietnam, and is as beautiful in real life as it looks on the site.

These gorgeous matryoshka cooking accessories caught the eye of my ‘little chef’. They are lots of fun and easy to use. The measuring cups stack one inside each other and keep Noey entertained if we don’t need them for cooking!

One lucky reader will win both the M-spoons (measuring spoons) and the M-cups (measuring cups) as well as the gorgeous green bamboo bowl.

To win, leave a comment on this post telling me what you’d cook using the M-spoons and M-cups. The most delicious, interesting and amusing answer will win.

To enter you must be an Australian resident and provide a valid email address. Entries are limited to one per household.
Entries close 6pm AEST Monday April 23rd 2012, the winner will be contacted by email and announced on this post. The winner must contact me within 5 days or the prize will be re-drawn. The winner’s contact details will be passed on to The Wooden Crate who mail prize directly to the winner.

{disclosure: The Wooden Crate is a paid advertiser in Picklebums. I was given a bamboo bowl, a set of M-spoons and M-cups to review. The ideas and opinions expressed in this post are my own.}

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Rainbow Quiche Recipe – The Wooden Crate kitchenware Give Away. is a post from: picklebums.com

A bunch of Cadbury’s Chocolate was delivered to my door the other day. Some family blocks, a few smaller bars and some packets of the new buttons.

Some days it is good to be a blogger.

The Father Figure and I chomped our way through a family block. He took the bars to work for a snack. I took a family block to a friends place to share. And I sent a packet of the buttons to a friend stuck in hospital with a sick child.

I still had a packet of buttons left. Then I realised that I hadn’t shared any with my kids, not that they usually get to eat chocolate, but it seemed mean that I shared it with everyone else, eaten way more than my fair share but hadn’t let the kids have any.

So one night, right in the middle of cooking dinner, I decided I’d make cookies… you know, because I am insane.

I failed to calculate the amount of trays I owned verses the amount of trays that were already full of vegetables roasting in my oven, let alone the amount of oven space. So what should have been a quick round of cookie baking turned into a crazy juggling act of oven racks, trays, zucchinis and chocolate buttons.

Eventually I got dinner on the table, and served up some giant over the top chocolate button cookies for dessert… and I only burned my hand twice!

Over The Top Chocolate Button Cookie Recipe.

185 grams of softened butter
3/4 of a cup of brown sugar
1 egg
2 cups of self raising flour
2 tsp corn flour
2 tbsp coco
chocolate buttons

Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees, and make sure you actually have enough trays and some non-stick baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar, then add the egg and mix well. Fold in the flour, corn flour and coco. You should probably sift these three ingredients together, but I am too lazy for that!

Place big round balls of dough on the trays and squish a big Cadbury button down into the top of each ball. Cook for 7-10 minutes, no longer!

They will still be very soft when you take them out of the oven, let them cool on the tray (another reason to make sure you have lots of trays) before putting them in an air tight container to store… oh who am I kidding, eat them while still warm and gooey!

Cadbury Give Away

This competition is now closed. Thanks for all the fabulous poems, you really made me laugh! Congratulations to Lara, Kristen, Diana, Kerry and Michelle.

If you want to make your own Over the Top Chocolate Button Cookies or if you’d just like to win one of five Cadbury packs with a 200g block, 175g buttons and 50g bar, then leave a comment on this post telling me, in verse, why you like chocolate. Yep… write a poem, a limerick, or just a silly rhyme. The five that make me laugh the most will win!

To enter you must be an Australian resident and provide a valid email address. Entries are limited to one per household.
Entries close 6pm AEST Monday April 2nd 2012, the winner will be contacted by email and announced on this post. The winner must contact me within 5 days or the prize will be re-drawn. The winner’s contact details will be passed on to Royce PR who mail prizes directly to the winners.

You also have till the end of the week to enter the Cadbury Catch-Up competition to win a trip to the Olympics. More details here.

{Disclosure: I received a pack of Cadbury chocolate to share with my family and friends. I was not compensated in any other way for this post. Opinions and ideas expressed in this post are purely my own.}

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Over The Top Chocolate Cookies Plus a Cadbury’s Give Away! is a post from: picklebums.com

We love a good bun in our house, and Monday is ‘bun shop’ day when we stop in at our local little bakery and get an after school treat before running off to tap and ballet. Our little town’s bakery makes the best ever apple scrolls. They are huge and soft and fluffy and appl-ey and cinnamon-ey and delicious!

For a while now I have been dabbling with making my own scrolls. I am not silly enough to compete with the bakery’s apple scrolls but we’ve made some pretty good cinnamon scrolls and attempted some jam scrolls. And since we always have rhubarb in our garden I thought it was time we tried a rhubarb scroll… with a little apple thrown in for good measure!

Rhubarb and Apple Scroll Recipe

To make the dough…

1 tbsp of instant (dry) yeast.
1 1/4 cups of warm water.
2 tbsp of honey (or golden syrup, or 3 tbs of brown sugar mixed with a little water)
2 tbs olive oil
3 1/2 cups (approx 350g) of bread flour
a pinch or two of salt.

Add the yeast and honey to the warm water, and set it aside till it froths up a little (that way you know your yeast is alive and well). It takes about five minutes.

Measure out the flour and add the salt. Add the oil to the yeast and honey mix then add that to the flour.

I use our bread machine to mix, knead and do the first rise of the dough, but you could definitely do it all by hand if you wanted, or use a mixer with a dough hook.

While the dough is rising make the rhubarb and apple mix.

To make the rhubarb and apple mix…

A big bunch or rhubarb
A couple of green apples
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup of sugar or honey
cinnamon and sugar mix (for later)

Wash and chop the rhubarb into small pieces and put it in a saucepan. Peel and slice the apples and pop them in too. Add 1/2 a cup of water and 1/2 of sugar or honey (more or less depending on how tart you like your rhubarb.

Cook over a medium heat until everything has turned into a pretty pink mush…. about 30 minutes.

Putting it all together…

Find a nice deep sided tray or pan and grease it well (we use a lasagne dish).

Once the dough has risen the first time, give it a quick knead to knock all the air out of it, then roll it into a big rectangle.

Spread the rhubarb and apple mush over the dough as evenly as you can manage, going right up to the edges, then sprinkle it with lots and lots of cinnamon sugar (or not so much if you prefer).

Carefully roll up your dough starting at the long edge of your rectangle, to make a big sausage. Cut it into as even as you can manage pieces… I usually get 12 scrolls out of this amount of dough depending on how big I’ve rolled it. Plonk your cut scrolls into your dish giving them a little space between each other, then cover with a damp tea towel and set them aside in a warm place to rise. It should take about an hour in a warm spot.

Don’t forget to pre-heat your oven to 180 C before they are done.

Once they have almost doubled in size and filled up all the empty space in your dish pop them the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes. Test to see if they are cooked in the middle, if they are still a little doughy turn the oven off but leave the scrolls in for anout 5-10 minutes. Once done, let them sit in the pan for 5 minutes them turn them out onto a rack to cool.

You can ice your scrolls if you like, a cream cheese glaze is divine…. but they are really good warm from the oven so we usually just sprinkle with icing sugar or eat them plain.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Adventures in Cooking from Scratch: Rhubarb and Apple Scrolls. is a post from: picklebums.com

It’s a holiday Monday here today, and that’s my excuse for this lazy post. That, and the fact that the last two ‘from scratch’ items I’ve cooked haven’t quite worked out the way I wanted, so I don’t have any perfect results or recipes of my own to share today.

So instead I am sharing a few links to other people’s perfect recipes, things I’d like to try and cook from scratch…

After the big win with our home made taco seasoning I’m inspired by this list of home-made spice blends compiled by Simple Bites.

Have you ever made your own pasta? I am really keen to get myself a pasta machine and try it, but I am trying to wait until we have our new kitchen but maybe I can’t wait that long…

While I cook most of our sweet biscuits and cookies I’ve never tried to make a savoury biscuit or cracker, and we eat a lot of them so I really should give it a go. This basic cracker recipe is worth a try and even these home-made parmesan crackers look simple enough

I have a long standing love affair with mayonnaise… but it’s always seemed like such a hard thing to master, but this recipe for speedy mayo from Our Wee Farm makes it look easy… well sort of.

I’ve had a hankering to make cheese ever since I read this post at Frills in the Hills, and one day, gosh darn it, I’m actually going to do it!

Is there anything you’d like to give a go? Any recipes you’ve been saving for a moment of sanity so you can try them?

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Adventures in Cooking From Scratch – Things I want to try. is a post from: picklebums.com

It’s zucchini season again.

The time of the year where we try and find a way to eat a zucchini every day so we can keep up with the plants and not to let any grow to the size of base ball bats!

It gets easier to accomplish each year as I find more and more great zucchini recipes.

Here are a few of our favourite zucchini recipes.

Five Things to Cook with Zucchini

1. Zucchini and Potato Fritters.
An easy side dish and you can use veggies other than zucchini too.

2. Zucchini Slice
The quickest, easiest zuc recipe ever. My kids can just about make this on their own!

1 big zucchini grated
1 big carrot grated
5 eggs
1 cup of self raising flour
1 cup of grated cheese
50ml oil
Onion, herbs, slat and pepper.
Mix it all together and cook it for 30 minutes and eat!

3. Zucchini bread/cake/muffins.
This recipe makes a LOT of cake, enough for a small loaf as well as heaps of muffins. It’s a lovely afternoon treat and great in lunch boxes.

4. Zucchini Boats
This couldn’t be easier…. cut the zucchini down the middle (cut it half if you have a big one and need smaller portions) and bake in the oven. Once the zucchini is pretty much cooked, sprinkle with cheese and herbs and bake till the cheese is golden and melted.

5. Carrot, Zucchini and Beef Stir Fry.
This is a favorite treat meal of ours, something we have every once in a while. I often freeze zucchini strips so that we can have it at other times of the year too.

Marinate beef strips in garlic, soy sauce and cummin.
Cut Carrots and Zucchinis into thin strips (add some onion or other veggies if you like).
Stir fry the beef strips in a little oil, add onion, carrot and zuchinni and a little of the left over marinade.
Cook well and serve over steamed rice.

What is your favourite way to cook zucchini?

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Five Things to Cook with Zucchini. is a post from: picklebums.com

Bolognaise?
Or bolognese?

Regardless of how you spell it, I am pretty sure this version isn’t anything like the good people of Bologna make. So technically I should call it something entirely different but ‘I can’t believe there’s not meat in it’ bolognaise is kinda a mouthful, so I’m sticking with ‘Lentil-ese’.

The name sums it up perfectly, it is spaghetti bolognese sauce with lentils instead of meat. I admit I was skeptical when I first tried it, no way would it be the same, and honestly, it isn’t quite the same as a meat based sauce, but it is pretty darn close!

Lentil-ese Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

3/4 cup dried red lentils (see below)
1 tin tomatoes
2-3 tbsp tomato paste
1 zucchini, grated.
A handful of mushrooms chopped.
And onion finely diced (though I leave this out because my kids hate onion)
Garlic – as much or as little as you like
Your choice of herbs – basil, oregano and chives are our favourites.

Now I don’t use any strict measurements for this recipe. Much like regular bolognese, you just chuck in whatever you like and cook it up. So the above quantities are just a very rough idea, feel free to ignore them all together! Same goes for the exact ingredients. If you don’t like mushrooms leave them out all together, or add something else that you do like.

First things you need to do is deal with the lentils, and how you do that will depend on how long you have to cook the sauce. I am always in a hurry so I pre-cook my dry lentils by adding water and either boiling them for a few minutes or putting them in the microwave while I start the sauce. You’ll know they are ready when they go a pale orange colour. If you have hours to simmer your sauce on the stove you could add the lentils to the sauce along with the tomatoes, add 2 cups of water, and let it all simmer away for an hour or two.

So, back to the sauce…

You cook this the same way you’d make any kind of bolognese or pasta sauce. A bit of oil, chuck in the onions and garlic (if you are using them). Then add the tomatoes, zucchini and mushrooms and your pre-cooked lentils (drain the water of them, but it’s ok if they are still quite ‘wet’). Then add a table spoon or two, or three of tomato paste, depending how tomatoey you like it. Let the whole lot simmer away for as long as you can. My husband swears pasta sauce is best cooked for ten hours… but mine is lucky if it gets an hour on the stove!

Stir in your selection of chopped herbs before you serve it with your favourite, or in this house, most kid friendly pasta.

You can also add meat to this recipe. I often add 200 grams of minced beef along with the lentils. The meat gives it a richer, more silky texture and taste, but it is delicious with or without the meat.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Family Food – Lentil-ese (Vegetarian Spaghetti Bolognese) is a post from: picklebums.com

A few of my readers have asked what sort of things are on our monthly menu.

Our monthly menu plan is a bit of a crazy balancing act. Trying to work around day and night shifts, school, kinder (preschool) and all the other things we have on makes things a little tricky at times, but my aim is to make it as easy as possible, which is why I menu plan in the first place.

I try to make nights when I am on my own with the kids as simple as possible, so some meals are super simple. Monday nights we are at dancing till 6:30 so that is always a meal that can be cooked at lunch time and quickly warmed.

I try to cook with what is in season and use what we have in the cupboards so I am not always at the shops. I try to keep a bit of variety in our menu, but I know the kids don’t care if I repeat favourites again and again so sometimes I do.

I try to cook meals that almost everyone likes part of. It is rare that everyone is 100% happy with everything on the table, but when that happens you can be sure we eat that meal at least once a fortnight!

Here are some of the meals that feature on our summer menu plan –

Tuna Bake
Mexi Bake (from Planning With Kids)
Sausages and/or hamburgers and/or Tuna Patties, zuchinni boats and salad.
Chicken, mushroom and broccoli pasta. (recipe coming soon)
Lentil-aise – spaghetti bolognaise with lentils instead of meat.
‘Chicken on sticks’ with salad and flat bread or fried rice.
Porcupine Meat Balls with pasta.
Triangles with chips and salad
Tacos or Burritos
Felafels (recipe coming soon) salad and bread rolls.
Homemade Pizza or Pizza Pockets
Tomato and Zucchini Pasta (recipe coming soon)
Toasted Sandwiches

At the moment I am also cooking lots of pizza rolls for school/kinder lunches, loads of biscuits and cookies and more biscuits for snack and every now and then we treat ourselves with chocolate self-saucing pudding (from Planning with Kids) or Fruit Sponge for dessert.

Ok, so now I’ve shared our menu, what’s on yours??

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Q and A – What’s on Your Menu? is a post from: picklebums.com

Sometimes a nice, fluffy, little bread roll really makes a meal.

Sadly my attempts at cooking bread rolls from scratch have often led to hard, rock like, little bread rolls!

I have not given up however, and recently my bread rolls have improved out of site! They are not quite perfect, but they still make our summer meals of hamburgers or felafels with salad even more excellent!

Homemade Bread Rolls Recipe.

1 tbsp of instant (dry) yeast.
1 1/4 cups of warm water.
1-2 tbsp of honey (depending on how sweet you like your rolls – we are a 1 tbsp kinda family here)
2 tbs olive oil
3 1/2 cups (approx 350g) of bread flour
a pinch or two of salt.

Add the yeast and honey to the warm water, give it a gentle mix and set it aside till it froths up a little (that way you know your yeast is alive and well).

Mix the salt into the flour, then add the oil into the yeast mix and add all that to the flour.

I use our bread machine to mix, knead and do the first rise of the dough, but you could definitely do it all by hand if you wanted, or use a mixer with a dough hook.

Once the dough has been mixed, kneaded and left to rise for the first time, give it a quick knead to knock all the air out of it, then make a rough sausage shape and divide it into twelve equal-ish sized bits (more or less depending on how big you want your rolls to be). Make them into rough ‘roll-like’ shapes and pop them into a well greased baking dish, leave a little space around them as they will rise a fair bit.

Cover with a damp tea towel and leave them somewhere warm to rise. Getting a good second rise seems to be important for the fluffy factor. If it’s cold here I often leave them on top pf the fire box or even in a warm, but turned off, oven to get a decent rise happening.

They need to go into a hot oven, about 200 Celsius, for 25-30 minutes or until they are golden on the top. Once they are done allow them to cool, but eating them while they are still warm is the best thing ever! Which is why I don’t have a photo of the finished rolls… they are gone before I can ever get the camera out!

Have you been cooking from scratch?
I was inspired by Little Eco Footprints Skip the Supermarkets Challenge and Stuff With Thing has inspired me to have another go at hot cross buns!
Have you got any inspired cooking to share?

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Adventures in Cooking From Scratch – Bread Rolls is a post from: picklebums.com