Sweet treat for breakfast

I've always been told that the most important meal for the day is breakfast, something to give you a good kick-start in the morning and get your body working. When I was a teenager and really conscience about my weight, I used to try and skip breakfast, but my Dad cottoned onto this pretty quick so would pretend to read the paper while I ate breakfast, but really he was watching me eat and making sure I was being healthy (couldn't get one past him).

Now I'm an adult, I'm still pretty irresponsible when it comes to breakfast. It's not a weight thing anymore, I just prefer to have a coffee in the morning, which generally gets me through to lunch time. Although, I do LOVE going out for breakfast - I'm a complicated person :-).

Anyway, last week I saw this amazing looking breakfast bake via Pinterest and I really wanted to make it for the girls (and the few boys) in my office. I bought all the ingredients over the weekend but until this morning, when my toddler dragged me out of bed at 5.25am with the line "Mummy, I need to do wee wee", I didn't really have the time to make it. So, with my early rise this morning, here is a mid-week sweet breakfast for my hard working teammates! Enjoy.

MORE STRAWBERRIES

Another weekend, another trip to the markets! And once again strawberries were the item to buy in bulk, which of course I did. So, with another weekend with a fridge full of strawberries, I contemplated what to make with them. I could possibly make some strawberry and banana smoothies, or maybe a strawberry mousse cake, or even the classic strawberry shortcake. However, with no visitors planned for the week, I thought I should try something a bit simple. I instantly thought of biscuits with a buttercream filling. So with that, the task was set.

I wanted to make a chewy, golden biscuit, something similar to an Anzac, however I wanted honey to be the stand-out flavour. I played around with a few ideas and settled on a mix between an Anzac and an oat biscuit. After my buttercream success last week, I decided to go with this new method and finish it off by adding a strawberry puree. The result was a fluffy and smooth cream with the sweetness of the strawberries an absolute hero. I can see these being a delightful addition to the next high tea I bake for! ENJOY.

 

Attempt at a classic

There are always foods that hold special memories, or even just remind you of a feeling, when you eat them. Cupcakes remind me of visiting my grandma when we were little and eating her "little cakes". They were just a basic vanilla cupcake recipe, but to us they were a little bit of magic that melted in our mouths. Whenever I have a salmon sandwich I get the urge to cut it into as many tiny squares as possible, like we use to do when we stayed at my other grandma's house. My sister and I would sit around her table and squeal with excitement as she manged to squeeze in an extra row. And trifle is not trifle unless my Dad's cousin makes it, and only at Christmas. Every Christmas we would all stuff into our already full belly's Ray's trifle, which was soaked in port with rich custard and homemade sponge. Thinking of it now makes me smile as I remember all the delicious Christmas' we spent together as a family.

Another food which spurs memories for me are Kingston biscuits. My Dad use to buy them to have with coffee after dinner. Anything with chocolate we devoured as children, so of course we would sneak as many Kingston's as possible. I was browsing some of my favorite blogs recently and found this recipe on Raspberri Cupcakes for Oat Cookies with Coconut Milk Ganache. It was a must to attempt. I have much to learn about properly rolling biscuits and not over filling the centers, but they still tasted amazing - a biscuit which resembled an Anzac with a chocolaty coconut filling. If you loved Kingston's as a child, or even now, I recommend you try these biscuits and the amazing revelation of using coconut milk instead of cream in the ganache.