I made a Croquenbouche from the masterchef recipe last night. I halved the recipe, only used 6 eggs and bought the custard from Woolworths cause there's only so much time in a day.

Chicken Strogranoff

INGREDIENTS
1 diced onion
500g sliced mushrooms
1kg diced chicken
1 cup flour
salt n pepper
paprika
3 tablespoons of tomato paste
1 tin diced tomatoes
500ml chicken stock
1 glass white wine
20g butter
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 bag of baby spinach

METHOD
Cook the onion and mushroom with the butter in a pan on high heat. Toss the chicken in a bag with the flour seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika - adjust spices to suit your tastes. Add olive oil to the pan and add the chicken. Cook well. Add the wine and tomato paste. You can add an extra tablespoon of paprika at this stage if you want more. Add the baby spinach and cook until the spinach wilts. Add 1 tin of diced tomatoes. Pour in the chicken stock and simmer. Deglaze the pan as you stir on simmer. Add sour cream, stir, and serve on rice or pasta.

Chicken Pie

Shred sweet potato, pumpkin and potato. Cook in a small amount of butter till tender but not mushy and set aside. In the same pan brown some diced chicken. Make a white sauce from butter, 1 TBS dijon mustard, 2 TBS white wine, milk and 2TBS pl flour. Add some crumbled mersey valley tasty cheese and whisk. Combine all and cook in puff pastry. Twas delish.

Out with the gals

Last night I went out to dinner with the Duffy Crew. 3 of us mums who live within a few doors/streets together. We were celebrating Miranda's bday so I made a no bake chocolate ripple cake. Recipe from a friend of my sister's. I completely stuffed it up but it was still delish. We ate at Lemon Grass in Woden which has the BEST Thai food in Canberra.
The no bake cake is
2 pkts Choc ripple biscuits (cookies)
1/2 C Tia Maria
1/2 C milk
300ml cream flavoured with 1tsp coffee, 1 tbs caster sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla
Strawberries

Soak the biccies in the Tia Maria and milk and layer with strawberries and the flavoured cream.

I stuffed it up and forgot the milk for the 1st layer so just soaked the biccies in milk for the 2nd and 3rd layers. It was poetent but delish.

We also shared a bottle of champers and a 2003 cab sav from Centennial Vineyards in Bowral. SUPERB!

Back

Well you can see by the gaps between posts that the whole Duck cake just did me in. However I am back in the kicthen again so bring forth new food life.
This was a little something I threw together one night with whatever I had.
Gnochi, feta cheese, roasted sweet potato and roasted pumpkin, some browned chicken, baby spinach leaves and topped with passata, sun dried tomatoes and cheese. Bake in the oven till brown and serve. Yum.
Here's the before cooking and after cooking pics.

The cake

Here you are Blog World. The duck cake for Sam.

Biccies

One of the mums from Playgroup made every baby their own name out of shortbread. How amazing is this!!! She made about 20 for the kids.