Okay I have made my butter. There wasn’t much to it really. I was keen to make what is considered a European style of butter because it is suppose to have more of a buttery flavour, which is always good.

So I took a 300ml carton of 40% fat cream and added one and a half tablespoons of sour cream to it. It is meant to be left in a cool place for 12-18 hours to allow the cultures to develop and slightly sour the cream. It was tricky because it’s been so hot here so I put it in the fridge for eight hours and left it out during the cooler part of the evening for 5 hours.

Then all you do is whip it until the butter separates from the liquid (now butter milk). This was so much fun to watch! The butter is gorgeous and still tastes distinctly like cream. It is very light and pale. I am very pleased with it. I have kept the buttermilk to make pancakes tonight.

However, I’m not sure that the culturing process has made a difference and next time I would not put it in the fridge because I think it was too cold to sour the cream. I kind of knew this when I did it but I think I am so used to worrying about dairy being left out of the fridge that my instincts kicked in. And of course you could skip this all together and just whip cream into butter, takes only a few minutes in a mixer. Next I am onto yogurt!

This wonderful book, On Food and Cooking, arrived in the mail a few days ago and I have been obsessed with it ever since.

It’s so fascinating and the author Harold McGee, is one of those rare writers that can explain technical concepts in a way that I actually get it! I am part way through the first chapter, Milk and Dairy Products. I have to make my own butter now. Here are some interesting snippets:

This is the cycle that cows go through in order to provide us with milk. They are bred and then calved, once their milk comes in the calf is taken away and mum is milked 3 times a day for ten months, she is then allowed to go dry for two months before the next calving. Well that sucks. I wonder it that’s were the saying “Poor cow.” comes from?

Of course milk is pasterised (heated) to kill pathogenic and spoilage microbes and inactivate milk enzymes. And homogenized, that is, pumped at high temperature and speed through tiny nozzles. Homogenisation keeps the milk fat evenly or homogoneously distributed throughout the milk. Both processes affect the nutrient and taste value of milk.

Whether a cream will curdle or not when boiled depends on it’s fat content. To avoid curdling, use cream with 25% or more fat.

I hope I’m not boring you with all this! If not you can check out Harold’s website. I’m going to make some butter and I’ll let you know how it goes.

We have had some super cherries around recently and I just had to make some cherry muffins with them. I used this basic recipe and just added a handful and a bit of chopped cherries. Very good. Even better I made a crumble type topping with almond meal, brown sugar and butter and sprinkled it over the muffins before I baked them…really really good.

Guessing the kids wouldn’t eat the cherry I made half the batch banana by adding one mashed banana (whatever!) and topped them with the almond meal mixture to which I added some meusli. I’m yet to try the banana ones but they look pretty good! The basic recipe is a good one. Wholemeal flour would be nice and also butter rather than oil is another way to go. If I had some coconut I would have added it to the cherry topping.

I didn’t have any muffin cases so cut some from baking paper, which you would think would be a pain in the … but it was quick and easy to cut four at a time.

Every now and then I love to indulge in some really trashy food. I  recently read a recipe (can’t remember where – sorry) that has three ingredients, Tim Tams, condensed milk and coconut – smoosh, roll into balls, fridge, eat. Mmmm. Here’s another one that I occasionaly make for my son Henry. Ham and Cheese Vol au Vents, sadly I took one bite and my body said “No thank you.” An eight year old can eat six of these however!

I made this gorgeous Blueberry Lemon Buckle the other night, you can find the recipe here. It was so good and the aroma from the oven that filled the house was amazing! So yummy. It calls for buttermilk which I didn’t have so I used sour cream instead and it turned out fine. I also used canned blueberries (fresh are too expensive unless in season which is summer) but it would work with frozen also. By the way ‘buckle’  ”is an old American term for a simple, single-layer cake made with blueberries or other berries.” (Food Lovers Companion) The cake is topped with a crumble mixture and then a tart lemon glaze.

Not so good food experience, we went to Splendour in the Grass yesterday and all feeling a little queezy after some questionable food on sticks…mmmm. Anyway saw a cool band called Bridezillas, worth a look.

I’m reading Outliers at the moment, really facinating stuff by Malcolm Gladwell who also wrote Blink and Tipping Point, both also good.

School holidays have taken there toll evidenced by the sparsity of blog posts but we will be back on track next week!

Why would I see how many pikelets I can stack? I don’t know but the answer is 14…keep in mind these are thick, have a small surface area and are motley in size and shape…

I have searched but can’t find a record for a pikelet stack, probably because I’m not sure how many people make pikelets outside Australia and New Zealand (and probbably the UK), or it could be that no-one really cares about pikelet stacks which is fair enough. However, pancake stacks (pikelets older and bossier big  brother) are big news…

Sean McGinlay and Natalie King of Glasgows Hilton Grosvenor hotel made this pancake stack containing 672 pancakes and measuring 75cm and that’s the world record, apparently. Next time you are making pikelets please have a go at a stack and let me know how you go!

More money is coming in for my Women for Women sponsorship. A few more sales has my total up to $132.00. So thanks so much again to all the girls that have purchased a Mia Henry blanket and in doing so helped me towards the goal of sponsoring a woman. A few new blankets to show you..

These are available in my Made It store, except the chicken and egg blanket which has sold, but there are more variations of this one coming in the next week. Also in the next few weeks I will be offering gift wrapping with cards so if you know someone with a new baby I will wrap the gift in gorgeous wrapping and add a card with your printed message and post it off to them, done!

Other stuff…my baking skills have taken a turn for the worse, I have a recipe going into a zine being prouced by the Made It team, available at the Stitches and Craft show, it’s a Raspberry Lemon Meringue Pie and well I just don’t know what to say…

It’s not too bad, the lemon curd melted a bit, I’ll tell you what though it tastes amazing! That’s phyllo pastry with butter and sugar sandwiched between it, obviously meringue and raspberries. I did learn how to spell meringue though so that’s made it all worth while. I do have a habit of making things difficult for myself, surely some biscuits would have been easier. Off to research the “taking photo’s of products post” that I said I would write.

I’m still trying to make healthy snacks for everyone. This is a good recipe from my Edmonds Book for Bran Biscuits. It calls for a cup of wholemeal but I put in a a cup of Milo cereal that I blitzed in the blender and used wholemeal flour. I know Milo cereal isn’t very healthy however these biscuits still have less junk in them than store bought ones and my kids are slowly having their taste buds restored to a more natural state. They taste like mildly chocolate flavored digestives.

I learnt this cool way of rolling dough from the cooking show, Rachel Allen- Bake and it’s a real keeper. She uses two pieces of glad wrap, one on the bench and one over the dough, eliminating the need for that floury mess that then turns into a gluey mess when you clean it up! I extended the idea for the cookies by using the baking paper I planned to bake the biscuits on for the bottom, so I could roll it, cut the biscuits out and then just slide the whole thing onto a baking tray. I did this twice to use up all the dough. Very easy. I love cut out cookies but have found in the past that in the process of moving them from the bench to the baking tray what may have been a gingerbread man on the bench is unrecognizable on the tray,  usually missing it’s head or a limb!

I LOVE cooking shows and could seriously watch them day and night. Just recently I have been enjoying three greats, The Supersizers Go, the River Cottage Series and Lidias Italy. The Supersizers Go is really fascinating and very funny. This is what it’s about, “Restaurant critic Giles Coren and comedian Sue Perkins supersize their way through the cuisine of six different eras in Britain’s history.”. That Sue is such a card, honestly!

Lidia cooks the most amazing Italian food. Healthy and delcious, full of all the good stuff, veges, olive oil, beans, pasta, cheese, garlic etc etc…and how gorgeous is she?!

Okay I have a serious crush on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Just look at the way he is looking at that chicken! He has an intelligent and compassionate view on eating meat and there is heaps of information about this on his excellent website, as well as online courses on how to butcher a pig! Don’t be put off he is an amazing source of food info.

By the by, I have posted today on small world stores, bit sad but take a look if your up for it today. Also the long awaited (by me anyway) Camera Obscura album is out, very nice. Looks like they are touring the US, well worth a look. This is their new clip.

Henry is turning 8 tomorrow. This little guy has taught me so much. Rick and I have had endless conversations about what life looks like for a boy, how it’s different sometimes. I’m learning not to freak out when I just don’t understand why he’s acting the way he is, like stamping on toads in bare feet and then putting them on my skewers or leaping off playground equipment into mud puddles. I remember that little hint of pulling away from mum at this age with Mia and how it was beautiful and sad and I see it in Henry but I think it’s a slower process with him and that’s fine. Anyway here’s his cake…thanks Womens Weekly

The whale was meant to be dark blue and the water light blue but in my attempt to make a lump of buttery sugar “healthy” I got the natural food colouring hence the whale is grey and because the blue was so rank I made the water green with some chemical laden synthetic food colouring I had on hand (I did make the cake from scratch though).

Happy Birthday Buddy!