These disappeared so quickly I didn’t catch a picture first time round (and the only one I got was pretty pants). I think it was a family ploy so I had to make a second round… I’m on to you guys!
Plus, the toddler is well and truly in the “cake for all meals” phase. So more healthy treats round the house required (that look naughtier than they are).
Seriously though, these went down a treat. Think the proof is in the lack of pictures! Ha!
Makes 12
Ingredients
3 cups rolled oats
2tsp baking powder
1tsp cinnamon
1/2tsp salt
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups salted caramel almond milk
1/2 cup chocolate chips
Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees or 160 if fan forced.
Slice banana if only to feed the child a bit while you mash the rest…
Mix all dry ingredients (or let the child do it if you have time to kill washing up the whole kitchen and some of the dining room.
Mix the eggs and milk into the bananas well.
Pry child off the bowl (or move to one side, briefly) to pour banana mush into dry mix mush and mix.
Pour into pre-greased muffin tray and pop into the oven for 20 to 25 minutes.
Find another banana because the child did not eat enough of the slices and requires one more bite of a full banana. Of course.
While cooking, sprinkle chocolate chips on top.
Hide some if you actually want to try them yourself!
So, I’ve been a little quiet on the old baking front. I’ve switched around a few things, pulled up my big girl socks and stepped up the level of organisation at home. Across many levels.
Projects are being completed, we have a clear budget with short term (and long term) goals and we are working better as a team to get shit done.
Lovely and all, but what about baking? Ok, ok. So with the new budget came cut backs on treats. This means no lavish or excessive caking. True story.
So, in true form, I invited friends over for dinner (who couldn’t make it, in the end), purely to have an excuse to male this beast I’d seen roaming around on Facebook.
(Apologies, I can’t remember who shared it originally).
Time: Took 1 hour in my slow cooker, on low. Mine tends to run a little warmer now she’s in her twilight years but it’s always worth checking. Not going to judge if you need to check multiple times (yumyumyum)!
Ingredients:
Chocolate cake mix (Edmonton were on sale so I got the super moist and generally naughtiest looking one)
Chocolate mousse sachet (I had a Greggs one hanging around)
One large block of your favourite chocolate (currently obsessed with Cadbury’s Moro bar)
Instructions:
Make up the cake mix as per packet instructions. Right up to the ‘put it in the oven’ part.
Shake toddler loose from leg and bribe with apple. This will only work for five minutes as this is how long it took mine to realise I was working with chocolate…
Instead of the oven, pop into your slow cooker and smooth a little so you have a sticky spoon to, erm, clean…
Prepare chocolate mousse as per packet suggestions. Put a tiny bit in a tiny bowl for tiny child who won’t let up now she smells chocolate and waiting minutes to lick the bowl ain’t gonna cut it.
Gently pour the remainder of mousse over the cake mixture. Don’t stir it. Leave it in a dirty little puddle.
Break up your beloved block of chocolate and delicately place on top of the mixture. Avoid the sides unless you have a hydraulic attachment in your dishwasher to chip off welded chocolate. If your slow cooker is oval shaped, like mine, it’s accepted not all the chocolate chunks will fit (count them below) so, dispose of the excess as you see fit.
Pop the lid on the slow cooker and amuse the toddler for an hour.
Some eagle eyed amongst us may have noticed a slowly, slowly changing of the tides with the direction of ArtFoundHelen. It started on Instagram and shifted slowly over to FB and finally here, on WordPress.
So, Blue Tin Homestead is an all encompassing name for everything I do. From crafts to kid’s workshops, home grown to homestead.
ArtFoundHelen will still exist in creative form, it’ll be under the Blue Tin Homestead umbrella.
So why Blue Tin Homestead?
It’s literally what I’m known for in my local area. My home, my base, my wee nest is a blue tin home. It just seemed fitting to roll with the name of a place I love so much. Simple.
As previously mentioned, we have a few feijoa in our garden. Even with the child constantly eating them, it was still a little overwhelming to say the least.
I’ve given some away, I’ve fed some to my own child and some I look after, I’ve sent hubby to work with a carrier bag full and yet, here we are; still looming at a mountain of them. So here we go, brace yourself.
Starting off simple: jam.
Ingredients
1kg feijoa
2 lemons
1 cup water
1kg sugar
Method
Wrestle 1kg of fruit from your toddler who, despite having been sat in her trailer for two days untouched, gas now determined she would actually like to eat and throw all of the fruit.
Cut the bottoms off and any rough looking spots. Probably also best to give them a little wash as the kid likes to feed everything to the cat.
Throw the whole lot through the blender (skins too) and admire the relative silence.
Pop it all in a big pan with the water and juice from two lemons your child also tried to eat as she’s convinced all citrus are Mandarin, but couldn’t get through the skin.
Dissolve the sugar and simmer for a few minutes.
Decant into sterilized (read: cleaned and not too manhandled by the child) jars.
Did you know, off the shelf cake mixtures can also make cookies?
Well, not all. Most. That’s still good odds of not making a disaster. Probably.
So, week two of being back and the toddler and I are almost back on NZ time. Bit over 3am wake ups and stay ups now. It’s ridiculous. We’re exhausted but running the charade of not wanting to go to bed before the other one does.
Anyway. Man wanted cookies. Mumma gives very few ducks about the request and found an out. And then forgot to take pictures.
Potential to be vegan, pending cake mix ingredients. Check the damn list yourself though. This mumma is about ready to just eat coffee straight out the bag. Like a horse. Nose bag. Ha…
Winning. On. Every. Bloody. Level.
Pass the damn coffee…
Makes anywhere up to 30, pending size of box (hurrrrhurr*)
Time hours….wait. 20 mins. Pending length of time trapped in endless loops and fork chasing.
Ingredients:
One cake mix packet
One cup oil
Two eggs
Instructions
Warm that oven up. Do not stare into the light. An abyss will open up and you will get sucked into a vortex.
Check child is not asleep. We all need to fight this together and stay up till at least 6pm.
Mix all of the ingredients in one glorious bowl you’ll probably lick clean later.
Roll into little balls and pop on the baking tray.
Wrestle fork from toddler. Lord knows how long she’s had it and did she comb the cat or her own hair with it?
Rinse fork to be sure.
Gently squish each ball with fork.
Laugh heartily that maybe it would have been easier to do this to hubby’s balls than have to deal with a jet lagged toddler.
Plan to do it later anyway as some sort of revenge for something he has no way of preventing.
Feel a bit mean.
Put fork down.
Step out of the vortex.
Put the cookies in for ten to twelve minutes. Set an alarm. You do not have accurate time telling skills right now.
I repeat; set a damn alarm.
Eat them all without even taking a picture for your blog. OR sharing them.
*terrible laugh at my own terrible puns and double entendres. And general filthy mind.
The fence is up! The child is safe and I’m one step closer to getting a dog. Ulterior motive revealed like a terrible baddie in a children’s cartoon program. Mwahahaha. *twirls mustache*
The chook shed is all finished off in time for winter, ha! May need to add some ladies in spring now.
Plotting and cunning plans drawn out for the pig and goat pens over celebratory wine.
The irrigation to the main parts of the garden is all sorted too. We are just looking at bigger, quicker growing trees for the fence lines in order to gain a little shade and privacy as this is where my kid’s corner project will be going.
Tried and tested reduced sugar jam for fellow homesteaders and treat enthusiasts!
In my endless research of what to do with a million berries, I came across a few tips on how to reduce sugar. Given that jam is traditionally the same amount of sugar in weight as there is fruit, and how much my family eats, I was more than keen on saving some sugar (and money at the dentist)!
One that jumped out over and over was the option of the addition of pectin. You can buy this in your local store or, if you want to go all out, make it at home.
Please note, I did this over two days to get the most out of my apples.
Ingredients (for three large jars)
5 apples (crab apples are best if available) I have a new Granny Smith tree just establishing itself so used those
One square of muslin
One lemon
500g berries
350g sugar
Method
Roughly chop your apples and place in a pot of water with a quartered lemon (apparently speeds up the process). Bring to the boil then simmer for about ten mins, till softened a little.
Remove from water, remove the lemon from the mixture and gently drain before wrapping in muslin and placing over a new bowl to catch the lovely pectin.
I left mine overnight, well covered.
Next day, gently mash your berries into a large pot and place on a low heat.
Add your sugar and allow to slowly dissolve, keep stirring.
Slowly add your pectin to the mixture over the heat, mix thoroughly and allow to quietly simmer until desired consistency.
Decant to sterile jam jars and allow to cool.
Eat on toast, cakes, crumpets…anything you fancy!
Let me know how that works for you a s if you tried any other berries in your jam!
The child and hubs in deep conversation, probably about cows
For those who know me from ArtFoundHelen on various Social Media platforms, you’ll know we’ve recently moved (again), but this time to our own family home.
They say when you have children, it changes you and all of a sudden, the world is a different place. Whoever ‘They’ are, do seem to have a point in retrospect.
Ten years ago, if you’d have told me I would be taking great joy in weeding, googling the shit out of how to keep plants alive and planning a mini homestead… I would have told you that is quite to obscene suggestion. But here we are. On a hidden path of not noticed from afar but one which holds more love than I’d ever deemed possible.
The Bold Move
So, as is common in most people’s life wish list, we wanted our own home. A sense of security for our child and somewhere we were proud to call our own. We still can’t quite believe we achieved that goal but here we are!
It’s a terrifyingly grown up position to be in by we figured we’ve managed to keep our kid alive for the first year so, how hard could it be by comparison?!
Little explorer loves her new world
Plans and More Plans
What I’m loving, having been here a month already, is how much more motivated I am about the garden, making things and organising the family unit.
I’m planning on sharing a little of this as we progress as I also enjoy the reflective time I gain from this personally.
Currently, our garden has a small veggie patch with some huge tomatoes and beans. I’ve planted some late potatoes and they’re surviving well.
We also have an apple, plum, peach, cherry, lemon, fijoa and lime tree. There’s also an amazing thornless blackberry bush that’s filled my freezer and cupboards with treats.
We are currently updating and extending the irrigation systems so we can maintain the garden a little easier. This will then allow us more time to build and maintain the animals we’d like adopt; pigs, goats, chooks and a dog.
With an acre of land, we have plenty of space but I also am a huge fan of our beautiful lawn so negotiations are afoot there.
Preparation
While we have heaps of plans, we are also about to go through Winter so my giddiness to start projects is being met with a logical calm from hubs.
There are a few areas of the garden we’d like to tackle on a huge scale and those really need to be sorted before we entertain the idea of placing pig sties. I suppose.
(*pout*)
The main area is a sort of desolate wasteland at the back of the property. Around a quarter of the land is lost to weeds, wild grass and really huge bushes!
Add to that the native trees sporadically placed around and we have an illogical pattern messing up my Spock senses. Ideally, is like to rip it all our and start again. Realistically, that involves at least one digger and a lot of work.
Food Plans
We’ve added another row for planting grapes, blueberries and possibly passionfruit.
My wee veggie patch is about to have a load of fertiliser poured over it and dug over.
All trees are getting stocked up on nitrates and other tree food in prep for winter too.
Back Indoors
I’ve made jam for the first time in my life and baked more in a month than I think I have in my whole life.
Jam was made with the berries in our garden and the crab apples provided pectin so I was able to reduce the amount of sugar!
Berries have also heavily featured in breakfast muffins, pancakes and coulis (jam gone wrong).
The peaches aren’t quite there yet. The child ate all the plums and the apples are just coming of age.
Apple and blackberry pie went down a storm though! As did the home made lemon curd. But that was more for me. In fact, I think I’m the only one who’s eaten any.
Home made tomato sauces for pastas are getting there and I appear to be developing an obsession for collecting jars in order to pickle, jam or store our garden goodies. I even managed my first decent looking (and apparently tasting) banana loaf!
All That And Then Some
So we’re finishing off the fencing this week as that was a top priority. I’m carrying on with maintainence and decluttering both in and out of the house. I refused to have any unpacked boxes in the house after this move. It’s a slog but I’m getting there!
I’m still a stay at home Mum and thoroughly enjoying the immense privilege of being able to be. I’m building back up my creative aspects and working out how I fit in this new environment. I’ve had a few custom orders since moving but not ‘put myself out there’ just yet as I wanted to be grounded first.
Future projects and exciting finds will find their way on here and into my FB and Instagram pages.
Blue Tin Homestead 