In My Kitchen: August

Welcome to the first Saturday of the month where I share everything I have made over the previous month. It's been a busy month. I've had a couple of fun foodie experiences plus a trip to Bali and got some baking done too!

Do you ever get sucked into the recipes that go viral? I am particularly susceptible to baking related ones. During September the recipe that went viral In Australia was for Kingston biscuits with peaches, and I was absolutely going to try it. For those who don't know, Kingston biscuits are two coconut/oaty biscuits that are sandwiched with a chocolate cream. They are not the biscuits that I reach for normally (hello Shortbread Creams) so we had to go and buy some. It turns out it was lucky I could find them because apparently there was a shortage of them in both Australia and New Zealand this month.

The idea is that you empty a packet of biscuits into a baking tray, tip a can of peaches (including the juice) on top and bake for around 20 minutes. We chose to do individual serving in the microwave which was that you break up 4 biscuits. Cut up a few peach slices and put it on top of the biscuits, add a tablespoon of peach juice and then microwave for around 45 seconds. It was actually pretty delicious. Now there are lots of different variations out there such as chocolate biscuits with a can of cherries. We might try a variation at some point. We'll see!

The rest of my bakes this month came from Emelia Jackson's book, You Had Me at Cake, which was the Lamb's Ear Cook Book Club selection for August. The theme ingredient for the month was chocolate, so my first two bakes were chocolate flavoured and then I moved to different flavours. 

Chocolate Chiffon Cake - Chiffon cakes are my absolute favourite thing to bake. I love whipping the egg whites and then mixing it to create the batter, and then the lightness of the cake once it has cooked and then cooled by tipping upside down (as long as you are using the specific tin). The cake was then decorated with whipped cream and Maltesers.  This was good!

Chocolate Meringue cake - Next up I tried the Chocolate Meringue Cake which featured a denser chocolate cake with a chocolate meringue baked on the top of it! 

Peach Crumble Slab Cake - I then chose to make this peach cake, mainly to use up all the leftover peaches from the viral recipe. It was so good. Actually, they all were!

Pandan and Toasted Coconut Swiss Roll  - The last thing I made during August was the Pandan and Toasted Coconut Swiss Roll pictured at the top of this post which was inspired by our trip to Bali where I ate quite a few pandan flavoured desserts.  I had to go out specifically to find pandan flavouring. Now that I have some, there's a fair chance that there might be some more bakes. I am entering my pandan and coconut era!

We did have a bit of a local foodie adventure during August when we went to Chandon winery for a fondue experience. We took a drive through the Yarra Valley, which is a wine area about an hour and a half away from us. We did something called the Coldstream Food Trail which has about 10 stops on it, although we only did 4 stops. We stopped at a brewery and then went to a place called Coombe Yarra Valley which is a lovely place that has been created in the former home of world-famous Australian opera singer, Dame Nellie Melba. From there we did some cider and cheese tastings. The main reason we went out there was to do a Fondue and Bingo lunch at Chandon which was a lot of fun! I mean, fondue and sparkling wines...what's not to love. It was a beautiful clear winter's day and a lovely way to do some exploration of just one tiny pocket of the Yarra Valley. We did see some amazing looking restaurants that we will go back and visit again at some point!

While we on holidays in Bali, we did have a couple of great foodie experiences. One was something called a Rijstaffel, which translates from Dutch as rice table and is basically a pile of rice which is then surrounded by all different types of accompaniments. We had people stopping to ask us what it was. It will definitely go down as a memorable meal! 

We also had a floating breakfast in the private pool of our villa, which seems quite decadent! Not something to do everyday but a lot of fun!

Our final foodie adventure in Bali was to do a cooking class where we helped create a number of dishes. Everyone had to help chop, grind down pastes, cook different dishes including a pandan and coconut crepe dessert. It was a really fun experience. I posted about these experiences here.

Our collection of travel related souvenirs are growing, as is our magnet collection. We recently bought a magnetic board which we are using to display all of our magnets, which I think is much better than trying to cram everything onto the fridge!

We also bought these bowls while we were in Bali. I suspect that they are going to be mostly for display purposes but I do like them!

New recipes

Chocolate Chiffon Cake -

Kingston and Peaches dessert

Chocolate Meringue Cake

Peach Crumble Slab Cake

Pandan and Toasted Coconut Swiss Roll

Thai Beef from Nat Thaipun's book Thai

Mexican Beef - from Poppy Cooks: The Absolutely Delicious Slow Cooker 

Weekend Cooking posts from the last month

In My Kitchen: July

Library Loot!

Truffled Chicken with Champagne Sauce

What We Ate on Holiday: Bali

Kate & Frida: A novel of friendships, food, and books by Kim Fay

Weekly Meals

Saturday - Nasi Goreng
Sunday - Ham and Cheese sandwich
Monday - Pork chops, mash, broccoli
Tuesday - Enchiladas
Wednesday - Tuna pasta bake
Thursday - Japanese Chicken Curry
Friday - Take away

I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings.

In My Kitchen: June

 

Single serve chocolate chip cookie - I saw this being talked about in the RecipeTin Eats Facebook group and the idea of just whipping something up and having it straight away. It's funny though, on the recipe it talks about being able to make this single serve, albeit huge serve, and have it cooked within 20 minutes. To be fair, I am pretty sure I could find a chocolate chip cookie recipe where you could cook a whole batch in that time. This was half of the single serve and it basically was the size of the plate. I did love the way that you add the chocolate chips on top of the cookies while it was still hot!

French Apple Cake - This is another RecipeTin Eats recipe, this time for a French Apple Cake. It was very easy, and very delicious! Will make again!

I did end up buying a cookbook this month. Home Food by Elizabeth Hewitt was the cook book of the month in May for the Lambs Ear Cook Book Club. I originally borrowed the book from the library but we enjoyed everything we tried so I ended up buying it! I do want to try not doing that every month, but I think I am on track to buy the June book as well!

We did go to the most amazing Japanese dinner in June. It was a 5 course meal with free flowing alcohol, plus there was a cooking demonstration for every course, and cultural demonstration such as drumming, Judo and more! It was such a fun night.

New recipes

Single Serve chocolate Chip Cookies (RecipeTin Eats)

One Pot Pizza Mac (Recipe Tin Eats)

French Onion Rigatoni (Elizabeth Hewitt)

French Apple Cake (Recipe Tin Eats)

Coq au vin blanc pie (Lucy Tweed)

Aloo Muttar (Lucy Tweed)

Weekend Cooking posts from the last month

In My Kitchen: April/May

Afternoon Tea Diaries: Paradox

Hot Chocolate on Thursday by Michiko Aoyama

Two South American Films

Weekly Meals

Saturday - Out for dinner
Sunday - Coq au vin blanc pie (new)
Monday - Aloo Muttar (new)
Tuesday - Pork and Apple Sausages, mash and gravy
Wednesday - 
Thursday - Beef Stir Fry
Friday - Take away

I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings.

In My Kitchen - April/May

Welcome to the first Saturday of the month where I share everything I have made over the previous month. Actually this month, I am bringing you two months worth of post. In April we spent two weeks in Turkiye so there wasn't a lot of baking going so here's what I baked in my kitchen during April and May!

Honey Sponge Roll - This is an old favourite recipe because it tastes great and it is pretty quick to come together! I first posted this recipe here.

Apple and Marmalade Crumble - I am a member of the Lamb's Ear Cookbook club and their selection for May was a book called Home Foods by Elizabeth Hewson. They also usually select an ingredient for the month as well, and this time it was apples and pears so this recipe ticked both the boxes. I was tasked with providing dessert for a Mother's Day family lunch and this got thumbs up all round!

Vanilla Chiffon Cake with Salted Caramel Sauce - It was my husband's birthday in May and when I asked him what he wanted he said a chiffon cake and then said with salted caramel and this was the result. I cheated and used salted caramel topping but it worked.

Pear and Sticky Ginger Cake - This is another recipe from Home Foods, and it was great! It kind of served double purpose because it was light in the form of a cake but we also heated it a little and had it as a dessert!

I got two new cookbooks recently. As soon as Emelia Jackson announces a new book, I know I am going to buy it! Her latest book, You Had Me At Cake came out recently so I was excited to receive it!

In theory, I am trying to not buy every cook book that I see. I had also tried a couple of Poppy O'Toole's books before from the library and I was underwhelmed so when I borrowed her book Poppy Cooks: Actually Delicious Slow Cooker Cook Book I really didn't expect to find much to cook, but we loved it and cooked multiple recipes. There were also lots of other recipes that we still wanted to try so I ended up buying this one. I wrote about this book here.

I posted about our trip to Turkiye a few weeks ago, and we have some fantastic food memories. While we were walking through the Grand Bazaar we saw lots of different things we could buy as souvenirs, but this set really caught our eye. I love that you can use it either with the individual little sections or as a whole set. 

One thing that we loved during our trip was all the Turkish tea which was usually served in tulip shaped glasses, which is a traditional shape, given that tulips are native to Turkiye. We visited a pottery factory and we picked up these cups. 

Whilst we drank lots of normal flavoured Turkish tea in Turkiye, we also had lots of apple flavoured tea and now we have picked up this apple flavoured drink. I am not sure that it is the same but certainly it's hitting the spot when we have it as a hot drink on a cold day. It is pretty sweet though.

New recipes

We tried quite a few new recipes over the last couple of months!

Beef Rendang - From Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Slow Cooker Cook Book by Poppy O'Toole

Sausage and Broccoli Pasta - From Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Slow Cooker Cook Book by Poppy O'Toole

Marry Me Chicken - From Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Slow Cooker Cook Book by Poppy O'Toole

Tomato and Paneer Curry - From Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Slow Cooker Cook Book by Poppy O'Toole. We have made this several times now! (Recipe)

Apple and Marmalade Crumble - From Home Foods by Elizabeth Hewson

Vanilla Chiffon - As requested by my husband for his birthday

Pear and Sticky Ginger Cake - From Home Foods by Elizabeth Hewson

Spiced Rice with Crispy Mince and Jammy Tomatoes - From Home Foods by Elizabeth Hewson

Ramen - From Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Slow Cooker Cook Book by Poppy O'Toole

Curried Beef Cottage Pie- From Home Foods by Elizabeth Hewson

Weekend Cooking posts from the last month

Le Assaggiatrici (The Tasters)

The Actually Delicious Slow Cook Cook Book by Poppy O'Toole

Taste of Two Continents Food Walking Tour - Istanbul

What We Ate on Holidays: Turkiye

A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang by Lee Onhwa

Cook the Books: Call of the Camino by Suzanne Redfearn

Weekly meals

Saturday - Italian Meatballs
Sunday - Spiced Rice with Crispy Mince and Jammy Tomatoes (new)
Monday - Ramen (new)
Tuesday - Enchiladas
Wednesday - Out for dinner
Thursday - Spaghetti Bolognaise
Friday - Curried beef cottage pie (new)

I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

In My Kitchen - March

Welcome to the first Saturday of the month where I share everything I have made over the previous month. It has been a pretty quiet month in the kitchen in March. I went to India for work early in the month and then was sick for two weeks when I got home so there wasn't a lot of cooking going on! It will be another quiet month in April as we are away for Easter and then going on holidays for the last two weeks of the month! 

What I did make are two older recipes that I have made before.

Double Choc Zucchini Bread - I have been making this recipe occasionally for at least twelve years since I first saw it at BethFishReads but it has been a while. At Lamb's Ear Cook Book club the star ingredient for March was zucchini so it seemed like a good opportunity to make it again! We still have half the loaf in the freezer. Maybe we can take it away with us on the Easter weekend. I shared this recipe here.

Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt - This is another recipe that I have made several times over the last few years, but it has been a while. The reason I chose to make this .....it all comes down to how it looks in the mixer! It looks so good when you are mixing it up! Oh, and it tastes good as well. I shared the recipe for this cake here.

One of the favourite things that I ate while I was in India was a Bengali dessert called Mishti Doi. I am determined that I am going to try and make it so I went to my local Indian wholesale supermarket and bought the clay pot that it goes in. There are only three ingredients in it which are milk, yoghurt and jaggery. Of course, then I had to buy jaggery too! I am going to try and make it, although that might not be until I get back from holidays

New recipes

Chicken and Chorizo Orzo

Beef Bourguignon

Chicken and Orange Tray Bake

Weekend Cooking posts from the last month

In My Kitchen: February

Afternoon Tea Diaries: Victoria: The Place to Be at Oxi Tea Rooms

What I Ate in India

Cook the Books: The Language of Food by Annabel Abbs

Weekly Meals

Saturday - Beef Stroganoff and rice
Sunday - Beef Bourgignon (new)
Monday - Pork chop, mash, broccoli
Tuesday - Takeaway
Wednesday - Chicken and Orange Traybake (new)
Thursday - Eggs on toast
Friday - Red Curry Salmon (new)

I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

In My Kitchen: February

Welcome to the first Saturday of the month where I share everything I have made over the previous month. For the second month in a row it was a busy month in the kitchen. I don't think that will be the case in March but never say never!

We started the month by having a family dinner. We made roast pork, cauliflower cheese as well as tried a new way of doing potatoes which was Crispy Potato Gallette from Donna Hay's latest book, Sunshine, Sea Salt and Lemons. This book was the February cook book for Lambs Ears Cook Books Club and I really enjoyed cooking out it. (review here) The potatoes were a hit, as was the Chaja Cake which I made for the second time this month. This time I took a few shortcuts but everyone was happy with it. There were no leftovers!

Last month we tried the viral Japanese Cheesecake. We used Greek yoghurt and pretty plain biscuits. This month we made it again but this time we used a Lemon Curd yoghurt and Anzac biscuits. It was so good! Indeed, we ended up making it two weeks in a row it was that good. You do need to let it sit for at least 12 hours as Anzac biscuits are very hard so they need that additional time to soften up a bit.

Last year, it was announced that there was going to be an Arnott's cook book released and I knew I had to have it. It's a bit gimmicky really, which shouldn't really be a surprise, given that it is recipes made with Arnott's branded biscuits, but I will try a couple more things out of it in due course. This month I made Vanilla Slice which is made using SAO biscuits instead of pastry. It was good, but I think I would use a different container next time so that it gets a bit more height on the custard. 

We did have a cherry tomato crop to harvest this month. I say crop, but there were only three that were ripe. I am not complaining though, given that we didn't even plant the tomato vine, it just started growing in pot out the front. 

Do you ever look at what people have in their trolley/shopping cart and think ....I need to try those. Last time we went to Costco I saw a family that had two boxes of these Taiwanese Pineapple shortcakes, and I thought I really must try those. When we went to Costco recently it was top of my list. The box is super cute. The contents are.....you know...fine. 

Lastly, one of my work colleagues gave me some homemade jam this week and for breakfast last Saturday I had it on crumpets! It was so good!

In terms of our eating out adventures, this month we had two adventures. My husband isn't one for the big gestures but we have always done something for Valentine's Day. This year we went to lunch at a winery which is about 15 minutes away from home. We have been meaning to try this winery ever since we moved into the area. It won't take us another 3.5 years to go there for a meal again!

We also went to afternoon tea at Oxi Tea Rooms again. We have been three times now, and I know that we will go again. They change the menu every six months, the food is amazing both in looks and taste and it is a phenomenal experience! This time, the theme is Victoria - The Place to Be and it featured local produce. In addition to the set afternoon tea menu, they offer some a la carte options. We chose to have the Koala but there was a cherry dish that looked absolutely amazing! I will share more about the visit in an Afternoon Tea Diaries post soon. 

New recipes this month

Crispy Potato Gallette - delicious! (Donna Hay)

Tomato and Mascarpone Tart - easier than it looked, especially if you use shop bought pastry (Donna Hay)

Japanese  Cheesecake - Lemon and Anzac Biscuits - so good we made it twice

Thai Chicken Meatballs - Really good (Donna Hay) (recipe)

Japanese Pork Curry - We've bought enough curry sachets now to make this several times again

Korean Fried Chicken Burgers - Another winner from Donna Hay. Will be having this one again.

Weekend Cooking posts from the last month

The Oyster Catcher by Jo Thomas

Sunshine, Lemons and Sea Salt by Donna Hay

The Golden Spurtle (movie)

In My Kitchen: January

Weekly meals

Saturday - Butter chicken and roti
Sunday - Tuscan Chicken Pasta Bake
Monday - Beef Stir Fry
Tuesday - Chicken, tomato, bocconcini with past
Wednesday - Baked Pumpkin and chicken risotto
Thursday - Pork Schitzel, mash, broccolini and mushroom sauce
Friday -Take away

I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

In My Kitchen: January

Welcome to the first Saturday of the month where I share everything I have made over the previous month. For the first time in months, I had a lot of activity in the kitchen, and I have to say I really enjoyed it!

First up I made Hummingbird Cakes to go with my Cook the Books post about Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees by Aimee Nezhukumatathil which I posted last week! I had been craving something with cream cheese frosting, and these hit the spot! And bonus, I will now be able to find the recipe whenever I want to rather than just stumbling on the bit of paper on occasion.

Jamie Oliver's Cook Book Club has taken a bit of a nosedive, so I have gone back to looking at my Australian cook book clubs for inspiration. This year, the Lamb's Ear Cook Book Club has a book of the year, the monthly cookbook and new for this year is an ingredient of the month. For January, the ingredient was stone fruit, so I went searching through my books and found a recipe for something called Chaja Cake from one of the cookbooks I got for Christmas, Everybody Loves Cake: Sweet Bakes and Stories by Alisha Henderson.  This cake (pictured at the top of the post) originates from Peru, and oh my goodness, it was so good. It is a super light sponge, filled with peaches, dulce de leche and cream, and then the outside is smothered in cream and then the sides are covered with crushed meringue. It was so good! So good, in fact, that I am making it again today, although this time I am going to use store bought dulce de leche. When I next have a gap in my Weekend Cooking posts I will share the recipe.

Continuing on the stone fruit theme, Donna Hay shared a recipe for Upside Down Pavlova on her Facebook page and so I made that too. You can choose whatever combination of fruit you like but I used fresh peaches and plums (we won't mention the blueberries that had been in the freezer for too long) and then you top it with meringue and bake it! It was another delicious recipe, although I think that I needed to buy the fruit a couple of days earlier so it was a bit riper! I actually have Donna Hay's latest cook book out from the library at the moment because it is the February book of the month. I think I am going to end up buying it!

Have you tried the viral Japanese cheesecake? The idea is that you take a tub of yoghurt, you put some biscuits in it and put in the fridge to set. When you eat it, it is supposed to taste like cheesecake. Now, cheesecake is one of my favourites, so I had to try it. We tried it with Greek yoghurt and very plain biscuits. It does have a cheesecakey texture, particularly because the biscuits soften and so are reminiscent of the base, and it doesn't taste bad, but it still tasted very Greek yoghurty. I would try it again with maybe vanilla yoghurt and different biscuits or there is a brand here that does lemon curd swirl yoghurt and I have heard that is good with Anzac biscuits

I have bought more cook books so far this year than I did all of last year! I mentioned earlier that the cook book club has a book of the year, and that is The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater. My idea is that I am going to read with the seasons, so when he is writing about July I will read it in January, but I haven't kept up yet. I will try to do better in February.

The other book I bought is Arnotts: The Cook Book. Late last year I went to a book event where the bookseller was talking about the fact that there were three books that she couldn't keep in stock and this was one of them. It is a bit gimicky in that it is recipes that are made using Arnott's biscuits but there are some things in there that I will make. I think I will most likely start with Vanilla Slice but we will see.

In terms of new things in my kitchen this month, there isn't much. In mid January, we went to Perth for the weekend and spent time with my aunties and one of my cousins. Every time I go over there, my aunt buys me a bottle of spearmint milk (yum) and I get new wine recommendations. We don't drink a lot at home but I will go out and buy whichever wine we like after going over there. This time, we tried these two wines from Aldi. Given that I seem to have a bit of a peach thing going on at the moment, I particularly enjoyed the Peach Bellini wine although the Limoncello is very drinkable too

I did buy some new summery everyday place mats and table runner which you can see in some of the photos

In terms of other foodie events, it was our  meetaversary in early January. Apparently we can't call it an anniversary now that we have a wedding anniversary as well. It was 9 years ago that we first met, so we went out to dinner at the Meat and Wine Company. It was a delicious meal featuring lots of meat (naturally given the name of the restaurant) and some South African flavours. 

Last weekend we went to a new show that is on at the casino in the city. It was called Piper's Playhouse and is an interesting mix of Paris cabaret, magic, drag, burlesque and circus type acts and lots of champagne. The acts were very, very good, and the night was a lot of fun. After the show, the venue turns into a piano bar and the crowd really got into it! I think even the pianist was a bit surprised by some of the things that the crowd did last night! When I head about it, we had to try one of the desserts which was this shoe.  The shoe that you see above is actually all made of white chocolate and was filled with fresh berries and served with cream and berry sauce! Really it is just berries and cream but it certainly looks impressive.

Weekend Cooking posts from the last month

Cook the Books: Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Blog Tour: The Boulangerie on the Corner by Susan Buchanan

The Sweet Life Café by Helen Rolfe

Japanese Chicken Curry

Dinner at the Night Library by Hika Harada

Three Japanese Books Set in Cafes/Restaurants

In My Kitchen: December

New Recipes

While I am not doing the 52 new recipe challenges this year, I do still want to keep track of new recipes I try so I will add them here each month

Hummingbird Cakes

Chaja Cake

Japanese Cheesecake

Roast Chicken

Japanese Chicken Curry

Crispy Lemon and Garlic Chicken

Weekly meals

Saturday - Out for dinner
Sunday - Swedish Meatballs with mash
Monday - Baked Tuscan Chicken
Tuesday - Chicken Stir Fry with noodles
Wednesday - Pressure Cooker Spag Bol
Thursday - Out for dinner
Friday - Out for dinner

I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

In My Kitchen: December

Welcome to the first Saturday of the month where I share everything I have made over the previous month. Like the last few months, motivation has been hard to come by when it comes to baking!

I haven't really been baking much and then I decided that I needed to make some Christmas biscuits but couldn't decide what to make. In the end, I made four different types! The first two were a classic shortbread and then a pistachio, sour cherry and white chocolate version. These are both made from the same base recipe. Shortbread is one of my husband's favourite and I have made these before using the recipe from Emelia Jackson's second book Some of My Best Friends are Cookies. 

The other two recipes came from Advent by Anja Dunk. The first recipe was one that I made last year and was Chocolate Meringue Kisses. The new recipe that I tried was Weihnachtsroschen or Christmas Swirls. These are meant to be neat circles which you then put a dollop of jam into the centre. When I made the dough, I did try to pipe it into circles but the dough was way too stiff to pipe so I ended up just rolling it into balls and then putting a thumbprint into the dough and adding the jam. The dough was really fun to play with as it had a lovely feel.

For breakfast on Christmas day we had pancakes with berries and cream. That meant that we had a ton of berries left over, so I decided to make a relatively simple no bake cheesecake which is vanilla with a ginger nut biscuit base. It is one that I have made and shared the recipe before. What I didn't do is take a picture! Oh well. I will have to make it again at some point.

Christmas for us is very traditional. Robert and I started on Christmas Eve with a heap of prawns (pictured above). We then had the pancakes for breakfast and then went to lunch at my sisters. We always have a very traditional lunch, no matter the weather. Fortunately, it was quite cool this year so it was perfect for a hot lunch. We started with Prawn Cocktail, and then the main course of roast turkey and vegetables, ham and bread rolls. For dessert, there was a selection (shown above) but the centrepiece is always the homemade plum pudding that my sister makes which is then set on fire just before serving it!

Speaking of Christmas, I did quite well in the foodie Christmas gifts department. I was given new kitchen scales, Everybody Love Cake by Alisha Henderson and a baking mat, some chocolates and a bottle of Baileys (not pictured).I also got the pet treat maker and Christmas baking kit when we played Naughty Santa. If you don't know what that is, basically you take turns to open presents but then someone else can either choose to open a present or they can choose to steal your present and then you get to choose to open or steal! 

At the front you can see new kitchen scales. This was a welcome gift as the ones I have been using for years were starting to play up. When you turned it on and pressed the button to make it get to 0, you had to wait as it slowly went into the negative. It usually ended up at around -15g, so if you wanted 100g you would have to do the maths and say if I want 100g then I need the scales to say 85g! I am looking forward to not having to do maths when cooking!

We have been talking about buying a drinks fridge to put in the garage. We had decided that we were going to wait for the Boxing Day sales to buy one, but then someone put one up on our community Facebook page for $50 so we snapped that up instead. Fortunately, it seems to work fine

I mentioned last month that we love a free glass and this month we picked up 6 champagne glasses. One of our supermarket chains, regularly has promotions where you get points for shopping with them, and then you can exchange those points for whatever the promotional items are. Currently, they are giving away European glassware. Given that this supermarket is where we do most of our shopping, it doesn't take too long to accumulate enough points. We got 6 glasses and I think we probably still have enough points to get more glasses. We'll see.

52 Recipes Challenge

A tthe beginning of the year I declared that we were going to try 52 new recipes in the year. I mean, that's only one new recipe a week which feels doable. It turns out it was not! To be fair, at the end of June we were on track but since then we have tried very few new recipes, so we only ended up trying 38 new recipes for the year.

I don't think that we will be doing this challenge again this year!

Here are the new recipes we tried this month.

Pork Schnitzel

Crumpets

Weekly Meals

Saturday - Pork chops, baked potatoes and coleslaw
Sunday - Roast chicken, potatos
Monday - Chicken Shwarma
Tuesday - Smash Burgers
Wednesday - Out for dinner
Thursday - Steak, mash potato and broccoli
Friday -

Weekend Cooking posts from the last month

Best of 2025

Afternoon Tea Diaries: Palate Through Time: Before at Oxi Tea Rooms

Christmas at Hollybush Farm by Jo Thomas

In My Kitchen: November

I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

In My Kitchen: November

Welcome to the first Saturday of the month where I share everything I have made over the previous month. When I say everything, I mean not much. I am struggling with a bit of motivation to make things and hubby seems happy to just have the same old, same old, so I haven't been making much and when I do make something it is an old favourite. 

The first thing I made this month was Banana Bread which is always a winner. I like banana bread with either choc chips or with cream cheese frosting, but Robert just likes plain banana cake which he then has with butter. Now I really want cream cheese frosting on something!

I did try one new baking recipe this month. About 6 weeks ago or so I shared a quote about making scones from a book. In the comments CLM from  Staircase Wit shared a recipe that her family uses for choc chip scones. Rather than being the traditional round scones, these ones were made in wedges with quite a different method. They were good but I have now been asked to make normal scones with jam and cream. I think that is more about the cream rather than the scones because my husband is a cream fiend.

We spent the first couple of weeks in the month slowly making through the bag of chocolates that we bought in duty free in Colombo. We bought a bag as we were going through duty free in Colombo and we really enjoyed them. We wanted to buy another bag in  Male but they were charging $41USD which is crazy expensive.  We ended up buying them again as we transitted through Colombo at a much more reasonable $17. It's still expensive but not extortionate.

Another thing I was excited to pick up in duty free was this bag of treats. We discovered them on our first trip to the together 7 years ago. I then came home and realised we hadn't eaten the last lot that we bought when we were last in the US. 

We did get some new glasses this month. They were the free ones that you get from Hungry Jacks with a meal. I don't know why but we really like these glasses and we have quite a lot of them with different patterns on. They are a great size and they feel like they are good quality.  I guess we are just suckers for a freebie.

So there wasn't a lot of baking, but what there was is a lot of foodie experiences. The weekend we got home from our holidays it was our 6th wedding anniversary. I wasn't a hundred percent sure of how tired we would be after the holiday so we didn't plan anything that weekend so we didn't go out to celebrate until the week after.

Our anniversary dinner was at something called Le Petit Chef and Friends. Basically it is an animation than uses your table cloth and plate as a screen and tells a story about each course that you are going to eat. It was a lot of fun and the food was surprisingly good as well. The steak was one of the best pieces of steak I have eaten in the last few years and the dessert was amazing, served in a rush of dry ice. I forgot to take a picture of the dessert. Apparently there are at least 6 different versions of this so you could go again and have a different experience. There are at least two other types of this kind of show, so maybe we will do another one eventually

Last week I posted about our three eating on trains experiences recently, two of which occurred in November. One was at a burger joint that is in a repurposed commuter train carriage which is on top of a multi story building, and the other was a fancy meal on Q Train - a moving restaurant that serves good quality regional produced. 

Finally, last weekend we went to do an afternoon tea at a place called Oxi Tea Rooms. We have been before, but the menu changes every six month and this was a completely different experience. I will post more about this in a couple of weeks, but hopefully this photo shows just how amazing the food looked!  We did also score a couple of spoons that one of the courses was served on. This is because it was the second last day of the menu that we had and so presumably they didn't need them anymore!

52 Recipes Challenge

Here are the new recipes we tried this month.

Jollof Chicken and Rice - I made this for Cook the Books

Choc Chip Scones

Weekend Cooking posts from the last month

What We Ate on Holiday's: Sri Lanka and the Maldives

Joanna Lumley's Spice Trail Adventure

Cook the Books: Maame by Jessica George

Eating on Trains

Weekly meals

Saturday - 
Sunday - Pork chops, mash and cider gravy
Monday - Pressure Cooker Spaghetti Bolognaise
Tuesday - Chicken Parma, Chips 
Wednesday - Spanish Tuna Pasta Bake
Thursday - Out for dinner
Friday - Steak and salad

I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page