Recently, while pondering where we shop for our food, I shared that our monthly grocery budget was $550. I got a lot of comments and emails from people asking me to share our budgeting secrets. I promised I would… but to be honest I’ve been putting off this post for a while.

I am no budgeting guru.
I don’t have any amazing tips or tricks up my sleeve.
We don’t use any fancy system.

So if you are here looking for life changing budgeting tips, best you click away now, before you are disappointed.

If you are determined to keep on reading then I’m happy to share a few things we’ve done to keep our spending under control, perhaps they will be helpful to others, or perhaps not.

What’s in The Budget?

Ok, lets see what our budget actually covers…

$550 a month covers basic food for our family of six, as well as groceries and staples like toilet paper, cleaning goods etc.

It covers about half the nappies we use, the other half are reusable cloth nappies.

It doesn’t cover the occasional take out meal or after school bakery snack. It doesn’t include anything my husband might spend on snacks or food while at work (though he usually takes leftovers and snacks from home which are part of the budget). We also often buy items like laundry detergent or dishwasher detergent in bulk which is outside of our usual monthly budget.

We are also acutely aware that we can’t maintain this budget forever. Over the past 12 months we’ve upped our budget by $100 and as our children grow and eating 12 nectarines in 24 hours becomes a regular thing, our budget will have to grow with them.

How Do You Do That?

The short answer is…. I don’t know, we just do!

And the long answer? Well here are a few things that I think help us come in under budget each month.

We use the envelope system.
Put simply, at the start of each month we put the grocery money in an envelope and when it’s gone, it’s gone. I’m a visual person. I need to see it to know where I’m at, so this helps me keep track of spending, and stops me just chucking things into my basket without thinking.

We do a big shop once a month.
Once a month we drive into the suburbs and stock up on a months worth of staples at Aldi. I do a basic monthly menu plan and over time have learned how much of things we’ll need to get through a whole month. We pick up fresh fruit and veg and a few other bits and pieces locally each week, but the majority of our shopping is done monthly. My goal is to not end up at the shops every day and to use what we have. This is getting harder to do however, the bigger our kids get, the more they eat and I am struggling to fit a months worth in a single trolley these days!

We try to eat what is in season and we grow some of it ourselves.
Some years are better than others when it comes to growing our own food, but it kills me to pay big bucks for a zucchini in winter when I know that we’ll have more than we can possibly eat at the end of summer, so I just don’t. We are getting better at storing or preserving the things we’ve grown too. Last year we only bought two jars of jam, and we go through at least a jar a month! We also have some lovely friends who are happy to have our excess produce in return for things they’ve grown or have access to. One friend keeps my kid’s three minute noodle addiction supplied in return for fresh eggs every fortnight.

We don’t eat lots of meat.
We enjoy eating meat but right now our budget doesn’t stretch to a lot of it. Instead we eat a few vegetarian meals, we like tuna (a lot), and I usually use less meat than the recipe calls for and make up the difference with things like beans, lentils or extra veg. We also choose less expensive cuts of meat… chicken and minced beef are pretty much our staples. Our kids idea of a treat is a whopping great leg of lamb!

If we can do without, or use something else we do.
I don’t buy many commercial cleaning products, just a lot of bicarb and vinegar. We probably use half cloth, half disposable nappies at the moment. We don’t really buy expensive personal grooming products like face cream, or hair products, we just don’t use them (you can probably tell!). We use cloth instead of paper for things like serviettes and wipes.

I try to make lots of things from scratch.
Our shopping baskets are not 100% free of snacks and treats but I try to make at least half of the school snacks and sweet treats we eat myself. The same goes for things like tortillas, bread rolls etc. This is definitely a work in progress for me, and I often splurge on this stuff when I am feeling stretched and just can’t face having to roll out another darn tortilla.

I’m a tight-arse.
Yep, you read that right. I’m a tight-arse.
I think that is the single biggest thing that keeps our budget in check. I don’t like to spend money unless I absolutely have to. Sure… I can impulse buy with the best of them, and now and then I manage to justify splurging on things we don’t really need, but I get terrible buyers remorse and that definitely keeps me in check. I also get a strange sense of pride for being able to feed my family well and live comfortably within our budget. I dream of one day being able to buy an enormous, locally grownm, organic, leg of lamb every week, and one day, when we are not on a single income and trying to build our own house, we will do just that. But for now, our priorities don’t put expensive food at the top of the list and I think we are doing just fine.

So there you are…. nothing earth shattering really, but that’s how we do it.

How about you?

How do you manage to stay within your budget and feed a growing family?
Got any great tips for finding grocery bargains?
Any recipes that are family friendly and economical?

Please jump in and share your ideas and information in the comments, or if you have a blog post you’ve written on the subject please include a link so we can come have a read.

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Muddling Through a Food Budget. is a post from: picklebums.com

I’ve been living in denial for the last week or so, but there is no getting away from it… my girls go back to school on Thursday and my big boy has orientation at ‘grown-up kinder’ (ie 4 year old preschool). That means I am back making the dreaded school lunches, and this year I have a kinder lunch to make too!

I need a little inspiration. A little something to jog my memory and help me remember what it was I fed these children last year, and the year before. Surely if I managed this stuff before, all be it a little begrudgingly, I can do it again?

I’ve trawled back through my archives and rounded up some back to school cooking ideas. Some of these recipes don’t fit my ‘cooking from scratch’ goal 100% as some of them contain ingredients that are already pretty heavily processed which I’m trying to reduce or avoid, but I feel that making those items is still better than buying 100% shop bought, super highly processed, full of crap snacks.

I am a work in progress. I don’t think we will ever be totally, utterly, processed food free. I will never make every single thing we eat from scratch, and I will never cut out every ingredient that I couldn’t possibly grow or somehow make myself at home. I am going for the 80/20 rule (thanks Shae) and I’m not beating myself up over the rest.

Homemade School Snacks

Homemade Pizza Rolls
Big Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Cornies Biscuits.
Thousands of Biscuits – tiny cookies made from freezable dough.
Apple Spice Cakes
Berry Bars.
Breakfast Muffins

Are you trying new things and cooking from scratch?
Got any recipes or ideas for school snacks to share?

You can read more about what motivated me to begin cooking more from scratch here. And don’t forget to visit Little Eco Footprints and join in Trish’s Skipping the Supermarket Challenge.

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Adventures in Cooking From Scratch – Back to School Snacks. is a post from: picklebums.com

My kids would eat tacos every night of the week and never tire of them.

They like soft tortillas with their tacos… lots and lots of them, but those things are expensive, not to mention full of all kinds of crap. Speaking of crap… there is a lot of that in store bought taco seasoning too. For a long time I thought about making my own taco seasoning and tortillas, but it all seemed too hard. In reality, it’s actually not hard at all!

So here it is, my first adventure into cooking from scratch….

Taco Seasoning

Taco seasoning is one the of easiest, most forgiving, ‘from scratch’ things I’ve ever made. What’s more, you probably have all the ingredients you need in your cupboard right now… or something else that would do just as well!

There are many great ‘recipes’ for taco seasoning online, I have pinned a few on my ‘family food’ board on pinterest, but I don’t follow any of them to the letter. Here is what usually, probably, sometimes goes into our home made taco seasoning…

Homemade Taco Seasoning Recipe

2 tsp chilli powder – or hot paprika works ok if you don’t have chilli powder but maybe put a bit less.
3 tsp garlic
3 tsp ground cummin
3 tsp mixed herbs
3 tsp sweet paprika
2 tsp salt
1 tsp flour/corn flour

Mix well and store in a sealed container. You can adjust the ingredients or amounts to your taste… Put in less chilli if that is not your thing, leave out the herbs if you don’t have any, put in less salt, or none at all if that is what you’d like. This is very forgiving but I’ve found the taco-ish flavour comes from the cumin, garlic and a little something spicy and in my opinion the salt is important too. Use as much or as little as you like!

Soft Flour Tortillas

Making your own flour tortillas is a little more work than the taco seasoning, but it’s not hard. A little time consuming, yes… but not difficult! There is no yeast, no waiting to rise, just lots of rolling out little circles, though (thanks to an enabling friend) I have been coveting a tortilla press which would make it a sinch.

Homemade Flour Tortilla Recipe

4 cups of flour – bread flour is better, but regular flour works ok too.
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup of ‘shortening’ – animal fat works really well but you can also use a vegetable oil or butter
1 – 1 1/4 cup water (generally I need the extra 1/4 cup)

Combine all the dry ingredients. If you are using shortening or butter cut it into small pieces (if you are mixing by hand I’d melt the shortening/butter first). I dump the dry ingredients into my food processor with the dough attachment (which is actually terrible for kneading proper bread but ok for this) then add the shortening and set it to a medium speed as it mixes I pour the water in slowly, stopping when the dough begins to come together. I poke it a bit with my fingers and scrape down the sides of the food processor to decide if I need to add a little more water… you are looking for a firmish dough, a little like pastry dough. You can also mix by hand and knead well for a little while until you get a smooth pliable ball of dough.

If you have time wrap the dough and pop it in the firdge for 20 minutes. Cooling it will make it easier to roll out, but I never have time for that!

Divide the dough into around 12 balls, more or less, depending on how big you want your tortillas to be. (We usually make more smaller ones, so everyone gets lots). Roll them out, the thinner the better in my opinion, but by about number 5 I give up on the perfect thinness and just get them done.

Heat a frying pan to medium hotness, pop a tortilla in the pan and cook till you see it start to bubble and puff up, then flip it over and cook the other side. Place cooked tortillas on a plate and cover with a damp tea-towel to keep them nice and soft.

These are fabulous eaten while they are still warm, but you can warm them a little in the oven or microwave if you cook them a little ahead of time. Unfortunately they don’t keep well… in fact mine go hard and rather like cardboard the next day, but that’s ok because there usually isn’t any left overs anyway.

With home made ‘salsa’ (really just cut up tomato and cumber with some balsamic vinegar cause that’s what my kids like!), lettuce from the garden and loads of cheese, there is never anything left over after this ‘cooked from scratch’ meal!

Read last week’s post to find out why I am on this crazy mission to make more home made food, and stay tuned for more recipes, failures and adventures in cooking from scratch!

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Adventures in Cooking From Scratch – Taco Seasoning and Tortillas! is a post from: picklebums.com

We are all still enjoying the lazy days of summer holidays, and no one more so than me! No set bed times or getting up times, being able to plan as much or as little to do as we please, eating at whatever time suits our activities for the day, and long stretches swinging in the hammock dreaming up big plans for the year. These are things that our holidays are made out of. But I am becoming more and more aware of how few lazy days we have left and how soon my day dreaming will have to turn into actual doing.

I am not one for making new years resolutions or grand ‘all or nothing’ type goals, but I do like to spend some of my down time thinking about how I can make the craziness of the busy days more organized, productive and better for my family. At this time of year I am inspired by lots of ideas, books and blogs and I am often left wondering how these motivating ideas could be worked into our lives.

One of the ideas that has inspired me this summer is Little Eco Footprints ‘Skipping the Supermarkets Challenge’.

In the past our family has been inspired to consume more local produce and be mindful of where the things we buy come from, so Trish’s idea to totally stop using all of the ‘super chain’ type stores really struck a chord with me. I dislike the monopolies of the super chains, the fact that they make so much profit while the primary producers receive so little and especially the disconnect between the food we eat and the items we consume and where these things really come from. But, to be totally and brutally honest, the idea of never shopping at a supermarket or super chain, even for a little while, scares me.

There are many excuses that I could use to explain why we couldn’t possibly take part in this challenge…

We have a groceries budget of $550 a month (I must apologies I put down budget at $450 initially which was our old budget, my husband pointed out that it is $550 a month now that the kids eat 12 nectarines in a day) and there is no way we could manage without using some of the super chains.
We don’t have many options or alternatives where we live – there are no food co-ops, no CSAs no bulk stores and to get to these things would mean an hour or more of driving.
We are renovating our house ourselves, there is no way we could do that without visiting that super duper chain hardware store… and often.

I could go on, but it’s easy to make excuses, and while they might make me feel better in the short term, they are not very helpful.

What is helpful is thinking about the things we can do.

Perhaps we can’t avoid supermarkets totally, but we can avoid them sometimes. We can make more informed choices about the ones we do visit, and what we buy from them. We can look for more alternatives that work for us. We can visit our local farmer’s markets (there is one close every weekend). We can choose the smaller locally owned supermarket. These may only be small changes but every little bit count, and I think just being more aware is a positive thing.

One thing we can definitely do is make more of our food from scratch.

It’s something I have been steadily building on for a while now. Cooking food from simple, real, ingredients, using less pre-made, chemical laden, convenience type food and ingredients. Not only do I feel this kind of food is healthier, it also means we spend less, we drive into the supermarket less and we lessen our dependency on those super chain stores.

Now I am not a total zealot. We still use and enjoy some convenience foods and even the occasional take out and we do so without guilt. My goal is not to eliminate these things from our lives all together, but to cut down on them, and to be more aware.

I am not a super confident cook, nor do I have much success experimenting and making things up in the kitchen, but most of the ‘made from scratch’ food items are really basic and a whole lot easier than I ever imagined. I have a growing list of things I can cook from scratch – pizzas, bread, cakes and even home grown popcorn!. But there are many more things I would like to try. Some things are not practical to try at the moment when my kitchen still has no walls, or ceiling and zero storage, but I’ve been putting off others that are quite doable even with only half a kitchen.

Do you make many foods from scratch?
Over the next few months my goal is to be more aware of what we buy from the super chains and look for more alternatives, but mostly to cook more from scratch, to try new recipes and to share my success, and failures, with you. So keep an eye out for my ‘made it from scratch’ recipe series!

Do you think you could avoid all super chains for a year? a month? forever?
If you are keen to give it a go, then pop over to Little Eco Footprints and sign up for the challenge. I’ll definitely be following along reading Trish’s journey with interest.

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Thinking About Food – Cooking From Scratch is a post from: picklebums.com

I don’t know why, but I always get the urge to bake things at this time of year. It’s a little crazy considering it has just started to get hot here, and we are crazy busy, so standing in front of a hot stove isn’t exactly relaxing, but still…. there is something about Christmas that urges me to cook!

Here are some things I’d like to bake this year, though in truth I’ll be lucky to make even one or two things from this list. Still… it’s nice to dream big and make fanciful plans at this time of year too!

Gingerbread Madness!
Gingerbread and Christmas go hand in hand, but you don’t have to make gingerbread men, or even cookies…

Black Berry Gingerbread from Mt Hope Chronicles – And of course our berries are just beginning to ripen!

Gingerbread Cheese Cake Bites from Created by Diane – Gingerbread on the outside, cheesecake in the middle… oh my yum!

Fun and Easy for Kids to Make and Eat.
I have kids who love to cook, so I always try to save recipes and ideas that are quick and easy so that they can really get involved…

Rock Candy Lollipops from Science Bob – Edible science, how cool!

Fairy Fudge – This is our version of Rice Krispy treats and I think if you used plain white marshmallows, christmas sprinkles and cut them into star shapes (inspired by A Pretty Cool Life’s Valentine Rice Krispy Treats) they’d be perfect for Christmas!

Cookies! – Our favourite ‘Hundreds of Biscuits’ recipe is easy enough for small people to help with and makes enough cookies to give as gifts to everyone! Try choc-chip and crushed candy cane!

Bake a Gift!
We love to give home made, home baked gifts.

Rhubarb Fizz – Last year we made bottles of this sweet pink fizzy drink to give to friends and family and it was a hit!

Raspberry Swirl Marshmallows from Mowielicious – So pretty and so delicious, but I don’t know how you’d wrap it!

Raspberry and Nectarine Freezer Jam from Simple Bites – With the summer fruit now in season this is the perfect time to make this east jam as a gift. Get the kids to colour in one of our printable Christmas labels and your gift is good to go!

Smores Pops from Tip Junky – I am just trying to work out what biscuits I could use for these as we don’t have graham crackers here and I’ve found plain sweet biscuits just too sweet. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Something Special for the Big Day.
It’s always nice to make something special to share on Christmas day, but I try not to go too over board and keep it to something reasonably simple that I am not likely to muck up!

Meringue Cupcakes with Raspberry Curd from Whisk Kid – Having recently mastered pavlova I reckon I could manage these.

Festive Fruit Salad from Babble – The blog says for Fourth of July, but with all the stars and red and white it looks like Christmas to me and perfect for a hot Aussie Christmas day.

Chocolate Raspberry Forest Cake from Chocolate and Carrots – This cake looks divine, but what I really like are the chocolate trees! With great instructions and photos these would make any cake look like Christmas!

Are you baking some special holiday treats?
Do you have a favourite recipe or link to share?

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Twelve Things to Cook This Christmas. is a post from: picklebums.com

Lots of rain + some sunshine = bucket loads of strawberries!

Over the past few weeks we have had strawberries coming out of our ears. We have made muffins, and smoothies and cupcakes, and pie and we’ve eaten so many fresh strawberries I am actually kinda over them (I never thought that would happen), but they still keep coming. The only thing left to do is make jam.

Now strawberry jam and I haven’t seen eye to eye in the past. In fact I refuse to have anything to do with the whole process for fear of making another batch of Smoky Mountain Strawberry Jam. Jam making is the domain of The Father Figure, my only contribution is to wash and sort the berries, and eat the finished product.

We use a very simple recipe from A Year in a Bottle by Ally Wise with only a minor change or two…

Strawberry Jam Recipe

1.5kg of washed, hulled strawberries
1.5kg of sugar
1/4 cup water
2 lemons

Scrub the lemons clean then cut them in half and juice them. Add the lemon juice, water and strawberries along with the left over lemon rinds into a big pot. Bring them slowly to the boil, stirring off and on and let it bubble for ten minutes.

As the berry mix cooks warm the sugar in the oven on low, then add the warmed sugar to the pit, return to the boil and stir constantly until the sugar is dissolved.

Cook the jam until setting point… now that is the hard part because we’ve found that strawberry jam doesn’t really set. It will always be runnier than other berry jams, so don’t get caught out and burn it like I did!

Make sure you have enough clean jars and lids. We warm ours gently in the oven while the jam cooks. Allow the jam to sit for ten minutes then pour into the warm jars and seal.

This makes about 6-8 medium sized jars of jam.

Home made strawberry jam is the perfect gift, and to make it even more groovy I’ve designed some free printable jar labels.

These labels look great on jars of jam, but you could also fill jars with other goodies like home made fudge or even store bought treats. The labels would even look nice on tins or other containers. Last year we filled empty milo tins with goodies to give as gifts. Or simply use the round labels as gift tags.

The labels come in a coloured version and a black and white version so the kids can colour them in and add a little of their own style.

You can download the coloured labels here and the black and white labels here.

There will be a new Christmas themed printable each Monday until Christmas! Follow me via facebook, or subscribe via rss to make sure you don’t miss out. Be sure to check out Week 1′s Christmas Printable – Christmas Postcard Template – just add your own photos and you are ready to print! And last week’s printable – Christmas Letter Writing Set – perfect for a letter to Santa.

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2011 Christmas Printable Series – Jar Labels and a Strawberry Jam Recipe. is a post from: picklebums.com

Do your kids chop and change their minds about what they will and won’t eat in their school lunches??

My girls will happily eat fruit slice every day for a month, and then suddenly, one day they bring it home untouched declaring that they don’t like it, it’s disgusting and if I ever dare put it in their lunch again their eyes will roll out of their heads in frustration.

What’s with that?

I try hard not to loose my mind and just look for something else to bake to fill up their bottomless pit stomachs and whinging mouths!

This week I tried out a new chocolate chip cookie recipe. Reported to be ‘the fluffiest, chewiest, most amazing chocolate chip cookies ever’ according to Apple a Day blog where I first found the recipe, and she’s not wrong. These are delish and only crumbs came home from school!

Here is my slightly modified recipe for Big Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies.

185 grams of softened butter
3/4 of a cup of brown sugar
1/4 of a cup of sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups of self raising flour
2 tsp corn flour
1 cup of chocolate chips

Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees. Cream butter and sugar, then add the egg and vanilla and mix well. Fold in flour and corn flour and then stir through the chocolate chips.

Place table spoons (or bigger!) of dough on well greased trays and cook for 7-10 minutes, no longer!

These cookies are forgiving when it comes to the mixture (I left out the corn flour by mistake first time and they still came out ok) but they are not forgiving when it comes to cooking. Do not over cook, ten minutes is enough! The cookies will not brown, they stay very blonde. When you see them starting to go slightly brown around the edges, take them out, or they will be crumbly not chewy.

Win a 4 My Earth Lunch Wrap Pack

This Competition is now closed and the winner has been notified.

I have a fabulous new advertiser here at picklebums – 4 My Earth. They sell a range of unique products all aimed at reducing out impact on the environment.

Rebecca from 4 My Earth sent me a pack of their cool lunch wraps to try out, the cookies in the photo above are packed in a snack pocket from the range and we’ve been using the other wraps and pocket for a few weeks now and love them. The lunch wraps are machine washable and are actually really easy to use. I also love that they have a clear and easy spot to name them!

For those at schools who require ‘rubbish free lunches’ these would be awesome! We are almost rubbish free just because I hate throwing money in the bin and with these wraps we’ve managed to get rid of the plastic wrapped bread rolls as well. These would also be good for general kitchen use, I read a tip on the website about using a wrap instead of cling wrap for dough which is just brilliant, it’s such a waste to use cling wrap for the hour pastry dough needs to go in the fridge and then chuck it out!

4 My Earth has one value pack of lunch wraps to give away. Their value pack includes one of each type of wrap and pocket in various designs (not all the same design as pictured)- a really great way to try them out.

To enter, pop on over to the 4 My Earth website and take a look at their range of products. Leave a comment letting me know what your favourite product is and you’ll go into the draw. The winner will be chosen next Thursday, November 3rd. To enter you must be an Australian resident and must provide a valid email address.

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Big, Fat, Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe and a Sandwich Wrap Give Away. is a post from: picklebums.com

I’m not sure what’s come over me, but lately I’ve been busy making bread, lots and lots of bread!

Before you think I am total whiz in the kitchen, rest assured that I use our trusty bread machine to do all the hard work. I let it mix, knead and rise the dough the first time, then I do the rest. I’ve found this works really well for all kinds of yeast recipes and it makes them a lot less scary for a novice cook like me.

So in case you are hankering to make bread too, here are some lovely bread making links!

A Good Basic Loaf?
I’ve tried so many basic white bread recipes that I can’t even remember which was good and which wasn’t! This Amish Bread recipe from She {Hearts} It looks good, so I might try that next.

Rhonda over at Down To Earth has a fabulous Bread Making for Beginners post. This is what got me started on making bread.

Here are some bread recipes that we make all the time: Basic pizza dough or foccacia, Naan, and simple flour tortillas,

Bread Sticks or Sticks of Bread?
I am keen to try my hand at making bread sticks, so I’ve been saving links left, right and centre.
These sticks of bread from Clover Lane look easy and sprinkled with garlic salt and parmesan they sound delish!
These Crusty Baguettes are the real deal, I wonder if I can manage to make them super crusty?

Sweet Breads or Buns?
Cinnamon scrolls are a big hit in this house and I think this version with raspberry from The Curvy Carrot sounds so yum! For when I am feeling slack, I might try this quicker, less fussy cinnamon scroll bread from My German Kitchen in the Rockies.
We also make this cinnamon scroll bread quite often, and I am thinking about what else I could swirl into the bread…. jam? berries?

Getting Fancy with Bread.
This Peek-a-boo Pizza recipe from A Handmade Childhood looks super fancy but is actually quite easy. You can also substitute the filling for other things like apples or berries! Yum!
Rosemary and Olive Bread from A Hint of Honey, doesn’t seem too fancy and my kids would adore this!
Pull apart breads are everywhere at the moment! I want to try this cheesy version from A Little Bit of Everything.

Do you make bread or cook with yeast? Care to share your favourite recipes, or ones you’d like to try out?

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Lovely Links – Lets Make Bread is a post from: picklebums.com

Desert or Dessert?
No matter how many little rhymes or tricks I read about I never seem to be able to remember which is which! But who cares how you spell it, as long as it tastes good right?

At the Pickle Farm we like a special treat every now and then, and one of our favourite treats is an easy fruit sponge dessert (I think that’s right?).

The ancient Women’s Weekly Cookbook that has the original recipe calls it Apple Sponge Dessert, but it’s works well all kinds of fruit, and more importantly it is quick, easy, cheap and delicious! All the things I like in a recipe!

Here is our slightly modified recipe :

Fruit Sponge Dessert

The sponge cake part:
60grams butter
1/4 cup of sugar (castor, regular or brown)
1 egg
1 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup milk
1//2 teaspoon vanilla essence (but I always forget this and it never matters)

Cream butter and sugar, then add the egg and vanilla and mix well. Add the flour, sifted if you can be bothered, and stir in the milk.

The fruit part:
4 apples, or a combination of fruits to make up enough fruit to cover the bottom of your cake tin or casserole dish.

Plain apple is nice, as is a combination of apple and rhubarb or apple and mixed berries. We had some frozen strawberries, raspberries, loganberries and blackberries from last summer’s harvest so used just berries last night which was delicious.

Pre-cook your fruit till it is soft, add a little water and sugar while cooking if needed.

Putting it all together:
We use a 20cm deep cake tin, or a similar sized casserole dish, but anything around that size would do. Grease your dish well then put an even layer of fruit across the bottom. Top the fruit with a layer of cake batter, spread it out as best you can. Sprinkle some cinnamon sugar over the top and pop it in a moderate over for about 30 minutes or until golden brown on the top.

Serve warm with cream or ice cream if you have it, or not if you don’t!

This is one of our favourite deserts… I mean… desserts. What’s yours?

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Family Food – Fruit Sponge Dessert. is a post from: picklebums.com

I was invited to brunch last week. I don’t often get invited to ‘brunch’. I guess I am not really a ‘brunch’ kind of person. I mean in a perfect world I’d eat breakfast at 10am every day, so who needs brunch? But not only was I invited by the lovely Louisa from Brand Meets Blog, but also by Kelloggs and the invitation sucked me in with the promise of coco pops!

I didn’t actually get to relive my childhood school holiday memories of a big bowl of coco pops with ice cold milk, but I was treated to a glorious grown up ‘brunch’ and some surprisingly interesting conversation about cereals. (I know, who’d have thought breakfast cereal could be interesting!) I was also sent home with a good bag full of cereal and other goodies.

But what to do with the ten different boxes of cereal we now have in our house? Given that we have a wall-less kitchen and little to no storage we seem to have boxes of cereal stashed in some very odd places. So this morning my boys and I decided we’d bake some ‘Cornies’ and begin to use up some of our stockpile.

This is an old family recipe. My copy of it is written in my mother’s handwriting and I think it probably came to her from my grandmother, or possibly she stole it from the PWMU cook book, but either way it reminds me of my childhood and it’s yummy and that’s all that matters.

Cornies

125 g butter
3/4 cup of sugar (any kind, we like to use brown sugar)
1 egg
1 cup of self raising flour
1 cup of sultanas (mixed dried fruit is good too)
Cornflakes for coating, slightly crushed.

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and mix well. Add sultanas and then flour, stir until the mixture comes to together. It should be a fairly soft batter. Put a handfull of cornflaks in a bowl an crush them a little with your fingers. Drop teaspoons of mixture into the cornflakes and roll around until formed into a rough ball and well coated. Put on a well greased tray. Keep them well spaces as they will spread when cooking. Bake in a moderate oven for approx 10 minutes or until the cornflakes just begin to brown.

I was almost at the end of rolling the little spoonfuls of mixture in the cornflakes when I had the brilliant idea of using some of the new Just Right cereal that came in my goodie bag. It’s berry and barely flavour and I don’t know exactly what they do to this stuff, but the bits of puffed barley have some kind of sweet juice on them and combined with the dried cranberries and raisins it’s pretty darn delicious. So I chucked a handful of that into the last of the cornflakes, taking out the cranberries and raisins to stir through the last of the mixture. Unfortunately I was almost out of mix when I had this revelation so there are only a few biscuits with the Just Right mix on the outside but oh my are they delicious! I am guessing that Just Right is probably a tad too expensive for us to be buying it just to put on the outside of some biscuits, but Izzy is loving it (though it hasn’t tempted my died hard non-breakfast eater, Zoe) so we may just be buying another box in the future anyway!

If you are looking for other cornflake cookie recipes, pop on over to Toushka’s blog, where she’s shared a recipe for chocolate cornflake cookies or Afgans, also something I remember from my own childhood! Yum!

Disclaimer – I was not paid, or even asked by Kelloggs to write this post, but I may have been swayed by the Cornflakes box they had printed with my blog logo and face on it!

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Family Food – Cornies Biscuits is a post from: picklebums.com