Fudge

250g brown sugar
375g can sweetened condensed milk
100g butter cubed
2 tbps liquid glucose (available in the baking section of the supermarket)
200g dark cooking chocolate finely chopped - best quality you can afford.

Mix everything except the chocolate together in a glass bowl and place in the microwave for 3 minutes. Take it out and stir with a metal spoon. Place in microwave for 2 minutes. Stir again. Repeat until the mixture has been cooked 5 times.

Stir, allow bubbles to go down and the whole thing to cool a bit and then add the chocolate. Mix until melted. Pour the mixture into a slice tin lined with foil or baking paper. Set in the fridge.

I mark cutting lines into it before it goes completely hard.

Then... try not to eat it all at once.

Bread

I got really hungry for chappati bread (unleavened flat bread from Pakistan) the other day, so I decided to make some.

Unfortunately it turned out tough and burned. Not good enough by half. It certainly didn't measure up to my memories of eating our friend Izzat's chappatis in Rattanbad when we lived in Pakistan.

Thank goodness for the internet. I looked up how to make chappatis and came up with a few tips which made the following day's attempt a lot more acceptable.

Here's how I did it.

I mixed half wholemeal flour and half white flour with a little salt and enough water to make a soft, sticky dough. Apparently this makes a softer chappati. I kneaded it in my Whizz Power Mix for about five minutes and let it rest for half an hour.

Then I rolled out small balls nice and flat - the edges need to be flatter than the sides so that it helps the chappati puff up. Mine are not quite round. I wish I was more perfectionistic and could get them perfectly circular. Oh well. They all go down the same way.

I cooked them in my heavy wok - although it's not quite right. They would have done better over gas, but it was ok with an electric burner. The pan was pretty hot. I cooked one side and pressed down gently with a tea towel to help it puff up in the middle. Then cooked the other side.

Unfortunately I ate way way way too many of these. Then I did something even worse and deep fried them to make poori. Even more yummy, but bad for the waistband of my jeans...

Toffee

Here's a yummy toffee recipe that's healthy and extremely digestible* too. Obviously, if you don't do nuts, it won't work...

1 cup honey
1 cup peanut or other nut butter
2 tbsp butter

Boil the honey in a pan gently for about 8 minutes. It will froth up and go a golden brown colour. Remove from heat and stir in the butter and nut butter. Pour into a flat pan lined with baking paper, or spoon into candy cups. Refrigerate until hard, but eat at room temperature. Before it goes rock hard, cut into pieces. It will be difficult to cut once it has set.

*Honey is apparently more digestible than sugar because it is a one-molecule carbohydrate and does not need to be broken down. In fact, every ingredient in the recipe is a single-molecule, unless you use peanut butter with additives in it.

Gingerbread mania

Our daughter's birthday party was very successful. I judge success in the following ways.

- I had everything done before the party started.
- Children (and some parents) came.
- They ate and drank happily, with no cordial and only marshmallows as lollies on the table. Yes, there was other food...
- They made and decorated their cookies with enthusiasm and enjoyed the games.
- They went home.
- The house got cleaned up and I sat and watched a video for the rest of the evening.
- My daughter beamed the entire day.

One of our activities was making, baking and decorating gingerbread cookies. My sister-in-law, who is American, wanted to know the logic behind calling these 'cookies' when we call every other type of sugary/wheaty snack 'biscuits'. (I think it is to do with the idea of it being home-made, but my mother pointed to the ongoing Americanization of our language...) Sister-in-law has recently become an Australian citizen, but is yet to master the finer points of culture.

Today some parents of the party-goers complimented me on the taste of the cookies. They must have pinched them out of the children's bags when they were asleep. For the record, here's the recipe:

115g/4oz unsalted butter, softened
115/4oz brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
115/4oz golden syrup
400g/14oz self-raising flour
5ml/1 tsp ground ginger
2.5ml/1/2 tsp cinnamon
1.5ml/1/4 tsp chilli powder*

Cream butter and sugar. Beat in the egg and golden syrup. Soft in dry ingredients. Gradually mix to make a stiff paste. Turn out onto a board and knead gently until smooth. Wrap and chill for 30 minutes. Then bake at 180C for 10-15 mins until golden brown.


We're away for four days. See you all soon!


*The secret ingredient is the chilli. It adds a beautiful little bite to the ginger.

Continuing the health kick

Dried fruit is healthy, right?

Not necessarily. Most commercially dried fruits use sulphites as a preservative. It keeps the fruit nice and plump and colourful.

Trouble is, in just one commercially dried apricot the sulphur exceeds the recommended daily intake for a child.

So a child munching on dried fruit for snacks will be ingesting really high levels of sulphur. And sulphites have been linked to asthma and excema amongst other things.

I've stopped buying sulphur dried fruit and only buy naturally dried now. The taste is great, the colour is less, but I'm happier inside.


And while I'm on the topic: here's a great recipe for fruit (and vegie) leather.

Use really ripe fruit, or else soften it a little in the steamer.

With a bamix or kitchen whiz thing, mix together any combination of fruit plus a little honey. In my last lot of fruit leather, I used steamed carrots, pears, apricots, sultanas and a secret ingredient - goji berries. (These are apparently a complete source of protein, and protein is what my little fella needs a lot of.)

Add water if needed to get it to a nice thick globby consistency.

Lay some cling wrap on a tray and spread the fruit mix over it - about 3-5mm thick.

Put the tray in your car, park it in the sun with the window down 1 inch and in 6-8 hours, you have beautiful fruit leather. Great for snacks.