Gabi's 5th birthday - Pirates and Fairies party

Birthday cake from Vanilla pod

Smartie cookie new recipe

Lemon iced biscuits

Fairy cupcakes

We had a big weekend preparing for the invasion of fairies and pirates - I think I was remarkably restrained in my food preparations. The Menu: Mini Quiche (I bought the baked pastry cases from Coles) my MIL brought the sandwiches, Cupcakes, the biscuits above, a fruit platter, bannana bread, lemon and poppy seed cake (damn forgot to get a photograph of) and that was it.

I used a new recipe for the cupcakes some of them were coconut ones, but I wasn't happy with it so I won't post it as I won't use it again.

The iced biscuits though were great and a nice change from ginger bread men.

Ingredients 250 g chilled unsalted butter, chopped

2 cups plain flour

3/4 cup caster sugar

1 egg

Pure icing sugar

lemon juice

Preheat oven to 180degrees c

In food processer mix the butter and flour until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add sugar and mix to combine. Add egg and continue to process until mix comes together. Knead on floured surface for a few minutes until smooth. Divide in half and wrap in cling wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

Line baking trays with baking paper. Roll out dough on a floured surface to half a centimetre thickness and use cookie cutters of your choice.

Bake for 8-10 minutes until light golden - I went for paler biscuits.

Gabi didn't like the lemon flavour so some were not iced and then later I decided to only use the pure icing sugar and milk. You need the icing to go hard quickly on these cookies so pure icing sugar not icing mixture is what you should aim to use. If you make the lemon icing use 1/2 cup icing sugar sifted to 2 tablespoons lemon juice.

The Smartie cookies are based on the chocolate chip cookie recipe using smarties instead of chocolate chips.

Lamb shank red curry

I can't tell you how this was made, I wasn't at home when it was made by Paul and our good friend Kim who is a fabulous cook. It was the most delicious curry I have eaten in my entire life - yes it was that good. I will ask Paul to tell me how they made it and post it - I would hate to think that I will never have that fabulous flavour in my mouth again. I can tell you how she made the rice it was very simple and fool proof.

One cup of rice to one and a half cups of water - rinse the rice first if you like and drain then add the required water - so two cups would mean three cups etc. Also add a touch of salt.

Bring to the boil without a lid - then as soon as it boils reduce down to the lowest temperature you can get - seal the lid with two paper hand towels between the lid and the pan - this will help absorption of the water. Leave on low for 20minutes, then turn off . Don't remove the lid during this time and leave standing for another ten minutes off the heat before removing the lid. When you take the lid off its ready to serve.

Random scallop dish

This dish is the result of an evening dining with my sister-in-law. She had some scallops left over from the dinner she cooked for us and was unimpressed so gave the remainder to Paul and me.

I promptly cooked them for lunch. As I recall it was a leek and wood smoked bacon sauce with a dash of cream and some organic olive oil drizzled over for good measure. The scallops were very simply grilled on my flat grill.

It was pretty darn good.

Oh in the back ground is some beautiful garlic turkish bread I get from the Rocklea markets - first I lightly grilled it and then we used it to mop up the sauce on the plate. A hint of dill is the last embellishment