Recipe - Lavender Heart Cookies

Lavender, its bushy hedges wafting a delicate scent in the winter sunshine, is one of my favourite herbs. It is hardy, smells wonderful, cleanses the air of viruses and repels insects. All these virtues and you can bake with it too! I was going through my recipe books yesterday, looking for something new to try in the biscuit baking line and saw a recipe for Lavender Heart Cookies. Every time I’d glanced through the book it had always intrigued me, but I'd never tried it before, as the idea of using lavender in baking seemed a little bizarre...interesting but probably getting results of 'yuk Mum, what are these bits?'

Anyway, in the spirit of culinary adventure, I thought I'd have a go. The ingredients were minimal - butter, sugar, flour and flowers! Lavender florets. So off I went to pick the lavender. Not much was required, just two tablespoons of fresh florets (the little purple flower bits off the main stalk), so I had a nice therapeutic moment selecting the best stalks from my lavender hedge, which is still producing new flowers despite it being the middle of winter here. Then came the mixing all the ingredients together into a crumbly dough, which is more crumb than dough, but eventually did all work together. After its rest in the fridge, I tentatively rolled out the dough, still crumbling madly, but it was eventually persuaded to stay together by an insistent rolling pin. I churlishly refused my youngest daughter’s offers of help in cutting out the hearts...mean of me, I know, but this was my journey of exploration not hers, this time!

They came out of the oven, fragrant and golden. The moment of reckoning drew near. Children, scenting new baking, gathered around. The girls uncritically tucked in, my son, the conservative connoisseur, turned away, but changed his mind at the appreciative noises around him. A cautious nibble and he was convinced – I was not trying to poison them...!

Here's the recipe in case you'd like a culinary adventure too!

Lavender Heart Cookies
115g/4oz butter
90ml/6 tablespoons caster sugar
175g/6oz plain flour
2 tablespoons fresh lavender florets

Cream together the butter and 60ml/4 tablespoons of the sugar till light and fluffy. Stir in the flour and lavender and work it in, kneading with your hands till it comes together into a soft ball of dough. Cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for 15 minutes. Roll out on a lightly floured surface. Stamp out the cookies with a heart shaped cutter (alternatively a fluted-edged round cutter). Makes about 18 with a 5cm/2inch cutter. Put carefully onto a lightly greased baking tray and sprinkle the remaining sugar onto the top of each shape. Bake at 200C/400F for about 10 minutes till golden. Leave the cookies on the tray for 5 minutes, before putting on to a cooling rack.

So my experiment was deemed a success. The adults, later that evening, also liked them. ''Elizabethan'' suggested my sister-in-law, and "packaged in a pretty box they'd make a great gift". I have to admit here that, given the choice of a chocolate biscuit or a lavender one, the children would unanimously vote for chocolate, but the fact that they considered them edible at all, when they knew they had flowers in, is pretty high praise for this recipe. I was the one who surreptitiously finished them off the next morning with my tea. That fragrant flavour on the palate, clean yet sweet, was irresistible!

Copyright 2006 Kit Heathcock

About the Author:
Kit Heathcock - worked and travelled in Italy for many years, is passionate about food and loves being a fulltime mother. Co-creator of http://www.aflowergallery.com home of original flower pictures and http://www.food-and-family.com
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Halloween Snacks for kids

Halloween Snacks

Instead of the usual sandwiches, at Halloween why not surprise the kids with these spooky snacks!

Pumpkin crackers
A round cracker with a slice of red cheese cut into circle on top. Decorate to look like a pumpkin with either soft cheese piped or a white cheese cut into shapes.

Skull sandwiches
Cut two slices of bread into skull shapes. Cut eye and mouth shapes into the top slice. Spread with butter. Spread the bottom slice thickly with jam and place the top slice on letting the jam ooze through the gaps.

Devil egg eyes
Slice a hard boiled egg in two. Scoop out the yolk and in a separate bowl mix in some mayonnaise. Spoon egg mixture back into boiled egg. To make the eye look bloodshot use tomato ketchup.

Ice scream eyes
Scope of raspberry ripple ice cream with a cherry on top. Add strawberry sauce for more blood.

Bat wings
Arrange chicken wings on a plate to look like bats.

Dried scabs
Simply a bowl of dried fruit. Red berries and raisins look good.

Blood and guts
Make up a red jelly and allow to set. Chop up jelly and add red fruits for a gory look.

Fangs
Slices of peeled apple with a strawberry (blood) sauce.

Witches fingers
Simply cocktail sausages with red or green peppers. Cut a small (1cm) slice out of the top of the sausage to form a shelf for the finger nail to rest. Cut the pepper into finger nail shapes and add a bit of soft cheese on the back to stick it onto the sausage.

Witch heads
Cover a fairy cake with green butter icing (or add green food colouring to cake mixture – a lot less messy and time consuming). Cover an ice cream cone in melted chocolate and allow to set. Add a little spare butter icing to the base of the cone to stick it to a chocolate digestive to form a hat. Cut up some liquorice laces and add to the top of the fairy cake to form hair. Place the hat on top. Use dolly mixtures for eyes and pipe black icing to form the rest of the face.

Blood
Any red fruit juice or squash.

Mud
Chocolate milkshake, mixed with ice cream and crushed chocolate flakes.

Lastly why not serve up crisps in a bowl with plastic skeleton or bats for decoration.

For other recipes and activities for the kids go to www.b4school.co.uk

About the Author:
www.b4school.co.uk
b4 school is an online magazine for parents with fantastic competitions, features, reviews, activities, crafts, recipes and local information.
Added: 12 Oct 2006
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Sandwich Rolls

2 3/4 cups (675 ml) Five Roses All Purpose White Flour or Never Bleached, or with Wheat Bran

1 tbsp (15 ml) sugar

1 tsp (5 ml) salt

1 tbsp (15 ml) Instant yeast

1 cup (250 ml) water

1 tbsp (15 ml) olive oil

1 beaten egg

Reserve 1/2 cup (125 ml) flour. Mix remaining flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a bowl. Heat water with oil until warm to touch (50ºC/125ºF). Stir warm liquid into dry ingredients. Mix enough reserved flour to make soft dough that does not stick to bowl. Turn out onto floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic about 8 min. Cover; let rest 10 min. Divide dough into 10 or 12 equal portions. Shape each portion into small elongated loaves. Place in tight rows onto greased baking sheet. Cover; let rise in warm draft-free place until doubled in size about 30 min. Brush with beaten egg. Bake at 190ºC (375ºF) for 15 to 20 min.

For "free" recipes call Five Roses at 1-800-561-3455 or visit www.fiveroses.ca.

- News Canada

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Recipes Include Basic Ingredients That Give Tasty Results

The recipes for many foods call for nothing more than: flour, sugar, salt, eggs and cream. Not so good to eat yet is it? That's because basic ingredients are nothing without the proper amounts and preparation techniques. In reality many of the same ingredients occur over and over in different recipes.

People attending parties of all kinds are preoccupied with the foods which have been prepared for the occasion. When they are duly impressed with a particular sampling they are naturally curious about the recipes. Most people can guess the main ingredients but for special occasions there is invariably a secret ingredient that takes the dish a step above the ho-hum of everyday foods.

Be kind and share the recipes. Some are too shy to ask but they probably want to know how to bake that walnut/chocolate chip pie. It may just be one of the many recipes that can be found in many women's magazines throughout the holiday season. Still not every guest reads those. Stacking recipes up on cards next to the dishes on a buffet table is one good way to offer them freely.

Recipes for the main dish or a chef's specialty can be printed up as invitation inserts or just enclosed with the annual Christmas letter. The recipes for old family favorites can even be used for the art on the Christmas letter when printed in script. Recipes found in the cookbooks of departed relatives are especially treasured and should be shared. Maybe an old recipe using birch sugar or something equally unusual would be a nice choice for this purpose.

A collection of these favorite recipes is an inexpensive but memorable gift idea. In the hands of the right recipient it can be a gift that keeps on giving for future generations to enjoy.

About the Author:
Mrs. Party... Gail Leino is the internet's leading authority on selecting the best possible party supplies (http://partysupplieshut.com), using proper etiquette, and living a healthy life while also teaching organizational skills and fun facts. The Party Supplies Hut has lots of party ideas with hundreds of free coloring sheets, printable games, and free birthday party activities. Over 100 adorable Party Themes (PartyThemeShop.com) to fit your birthday celebration, holiday event, or "just because" parties is at the Party Theme Shop. Party themes include cartoon characters, sports, movie, TV shows, luau, western, holidays, and unique crazy fun theme ideas.
Article Submitted On: November 06, 2006
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Recipe - Summer Smoothies

The summer sun swelters outside. Inside it is warm, the fruit bowl sits lusciously on the window sill, bursting with seasonal plenty – peaches, mangoes, grapes as well as the year round banana. All of the fruit is at point of perfect ripeness, begging to be eaten right now before it descends into a pool of pulp. It could have stayed in the fridge and been brought out in economical relays to ripen for a day, but there is something about a full fruit bowl, a promise of health and succulence, that time and again makes me arrange it as a still life, as I unpack the shopping, only to be wrong-footed when it all ripens at the same time. Typically the children are only bothering to eat apples, which last forever in the fridge. Desperate measures are called for.

It is time to make smoothies. Even children, who wouldn’t give a second glance to raw fruit, can usually be beguiled by a smoothy. It is also a special treat for adults, an easy thing to do for visitors who drop by, when it’s too hot for tea. Any ripe fruit can be used, even if it is slightly overripe, as long as it still smells good and not fermenting. You get a mega-dose of vitamins, plus calcium from the yoghurt and milk, almost a meal in itself. Healthy eating in a glass!

Giving a recipe for a smoothy is hardly necessary. It depends on what you have in the house already. Use this example as a template and adapt and change it as you like. As long as you use fruit that is truly ripe, it’ll be delicious. The one essential piece of equipment is a liquidiser or food processor, without that I’d just have to force feed the children the fruit as is, it is far too laborious to puree fruit by hand on a hot summer’s day. The joy making smoothies is the effortlessness.

No set quantities, but as a guide I’d use one mango with one or two bananas. Just peel and stone the fruit, fling it into the liquidiser with a large dollop of plain yoghurt and a cup of milk and blitz. If it is too thick for your liking add more milk. Chuck in some ice cubes for instant chill factor.

A tip for dealing with mangoes: without peeling, slice off both the long sides as close to the stone as you can., cut the flesh in a criss-cross fashion to make 1cm cubes, without going right through the skin, then push the skin up to invert the cubes into a mango hedgehog! The children eat them like this and a very messy business it is, needing a bath afterwards.

Suggestions for fruit combinations:
Mango and banana
Pear, berry and banana
Peach and berry
Strawberry and banana
Peach, apricot and banana

Any fruit in the whole wide world can be added to this list, experiment with whatever is in season and make up your own combinations.

Bananas make a good background for most other fruits and give a good velvety texture, besides being the most likely fruit to have around overripe. If you want to move away from the healthy fruit scenario, you can use bananas with a few teaspoons of hot chocolate to make a scrummy, decadent milkshake. Or go the whole way and put a blob of vanilla ice-cream in too. I remember as a child, my mother adding a raw egg to ours to build us up. It made it wonderfully frothy, but then nobody worried about salmonella in those days – I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a guaranteed source of salmonella-free eggs.

If you have berries of any sort stashed in the freezer, you can throw in a handful still frozen and watch the colour transform as you blitz. Mulberries, blackberries, youngberries, blueberries all add deep colour and plenty of useful nutrients, loads of anti-oxidants – instant immune boosters in winter, if you can keep them until then. I usually freeze strawberries as puree, when the strawberry harvest overwhelms us, so can bring it out for a change later on in the year. The other berries I freeze whole, stalks and leaves picked off, so they are ready to use. You can also buy frozen berries in mixed packs, which would work fine.

Whatever fruit you’re using, let the children press the buttons on the liquidiser and then dole out the smoothie, in glasses with straws, easy in the knowledge that the vitamin quota for the day is being filled.

Copyright 2006 Kit Heathcock

About the Author:
Kit Heathcock - worked and travelled in Italy for many years, is passionate about food and loves being a fulltime mother. Co-creator of http://www.aflowergallery.com home of original flower pictures and http://www.food-and-family.com
Article Source: www.iSnare.com