Look at what we ate tonight!

The girls ate their's while watching a christmas film....

And I'm eating mine at this very moment.

No words!

 Frank's

  Mima's mushroom 

 I just tried this one....salted caramel ice-cream covered in hazelnut chocolate and the white chocolate domes are full of vodka - Amazing. Half for me half for max

 Just about to try this one

If you live in sydney, you have to go to Messina and eat ice-cream. It's by far the best I've ever eaten!

©Michelle Schoeps 2013

All photos taken by Michelle Schoeps

Curry in a hurry

I've had people far and wide ask me about my butter chicken recipe.....it looks amazing - yes?

Well I can assure you it doesn't take a genius to make this.

All you need is chicken thighs, cream and a jar of my all time favourite Butter Chicken sauce - yes, it's out of a jar!
And it's organic!

Make some rice, chop up some coriander, a dollop of whole natural yogurt and dinner is ready!

Much better than take away

How to make it:

Simply clean the chicken thighs of excess fat dice the chicken up - brown it off, in either a little ghee or olive oil
 

Then in goes your jar of sauce(and a little extra chilli if you like your curries HOT)

Cook in a low oven around 160c for an hour or two(or until the meat breaks up very easily) Then add the cream and cook for a further 20min and dinner is served.

If you can't wait and want it done quicker you could use chicken breast, but I love how melt in the mouth thigh becomes after slow cooking.

This is great meal to freeze and have on hand at a moments notice.
As simple as that and OMG so delicious!!

©Michelle Schoeps 2013

All photos taken by Michelle Schoeps

So while we're all showing off our Christmas trees...here's mine!

Not a year has gone by where we haven't had a real tree - until this year.

Max always whinges about the mess that the real ones make and how it's always dead when we get back from Melbourne and 'HE'(Max) has to clean it up! So this year Max got his wish(and might I just add that this year in Sydney would have been the perfect weather for a real tree as it's been freezing)anyway it was either no tree(because we're going to melb - on the 22nd!)or a fake one.

Fake it is!

I was after a white tree just like Heather's but then I remembered the ones in Papaya which I've had my eye on for years, so I bought one.

And how pretty does she look? 

 

 

The girls and I put all our favourite decorations on whilst Wilco looked on in absolute amazement, as we've found out he LOVES Christmas.

His favourite saying this week is "Santa going get me a BIG digger!"

Fingers crossed my sweet baby boy.

  

Then as is tradition in our house a Christmas movie before bed, followed by a Christmas story.

©Michelle Schoeps 2013

All photos taken by Michelle Schoeps

In my kitchen magic doesn't happen unless there's chaos!

We have a one off Tasty Tuesday Tuckshop tomorrow and Kaye and I are making the Lemon cakes. And I was given the task of finding a recipe and tweaking it so that it was gluten free and as healthy as a cake can be.

Both of us had made batch after batch, but still hadn't nailed one. So I did what I do best, made a really big mess in my kitchen (Is the saying,"a good cook is a tidy cook"? Is that the saying babe?)anyway I can put all those tidy cooks to shame as I'm the single most messiest cook in the world! I work best when my kitchen is chaotic - though Max would probably disagree!

So I believe we have a winner Kaye!
I've done 50, any chance you could do the same?

Here's my recipe, my inspiration came from Sophie Dahl's Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights and Tessa Kiros' Apples for Jam and lemons!

You'll need:

to make 24 + 10 mini ones

6 eggs

pinch salt

2 cups of fine raw sugar

Zest and juice of 6 lemons

250g melted butter

1 1/2 cups of yogurt

2 cups of finest polenta 

2 cups of rice flour

2 teaspoons of baking powder

2 cups icing sugar

How to make these babies:

Pre-heat oven to 180c

Whisk 6 eggs and a pinch of salt in your KitchenAid till they are tripled in volume - should take 10min

Add 2 cups of sugar slowly so the air doesn't come out of the eggs 

Then add your melted cooled butter very slowly

Followed by the juice and zest of 4 lemons and the 1 1/2 cups of whole yogurt

Once mixed well turn the mixer off and remove the bowl to fold in the flour

Fold in the flour and baking powder a little at a time till it is all well Incorporated

Put a tablespoon and a half in each case or you could bake it as a cake (not that I've tried it, but I'm sure it would work - just adjust the cooking time.

Bake them for 20 min depending on your oven

Let cool then ice them.

For the icing:

Mix 2 cups of icing sugar and the juice and zest of 2 lemons - the icing needs to be very thick like hard paste, so you may need to add more icing sugar or less lemon juice
1 teaspoon per cake is plenty and a little extra zest to garnish

There was no chance in hell I wasn't trying one - they look so good...OMG they're unbelievable! (if I do say so myself)
Whatever you do don't skimp on the Lemons, that's what makes these cakes so good, they're really Lemony.

Those kids are plain LUCKY!

©Michelle Schoeps 2013

All photos taken by Michelle Schoeps

It's beginning to look a lot like Christams.....

It's my favourite time of year so I'm going to soak every second of it up.

Starting today with the girls dance concert(priceless)followed by a music concert, a one off Tasty Tuesday Tuckshop,a visit from the one and only Aunty Haylee and baby grace, finishing with Mima's year 6 farewell and then in the car to drive home to Melbourne to spend a traditional Bavarian Christmas with Papa(my dad) - Bliss!

OMG and I almost forgot another cooking class with Daniella at Cucina Italiana - so excited!!!

And the lead up to this Christmas is alot of easy, throw it together dinners.

This is what I've been feeding my troops over the last week.

Will post something a little more exciting in the next couple of days.Promise!

Once my Christmas tree is up!!

BUTTER CHICKEN AND BROWN RICE

BREAKFAST CRUMBLE EATEN WITH YOGURT

WITH A LITTLE RICOTTA SALATA 

©Michelle Schoeps 2013

All photos taken by Michelle Schoeps