The Splat Cooking Blog

Whahey, double page spread in last week’s Body and Soul in The Times all thanks to Rosie Millard who was wonderful and Phoebe her lovely daughter. Apart from making me out to be a bit scary…….I’m a pussycat really, not formidable at all, well not all the time anyway.

Anyway the link is here so have a look http://women.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17909-2412444,00.html

We have just finished running our half-term workshop and we have certainly had a fantastic time, hope the children did too.

We had four 4 year olds who were just so keen and interested in food and cooking I felt very proud of them. No tears, tantrums or wanting Mummy (who had all run away to get some shopping done) and we didn’t have to use the ‘colouring in’ fall back at all.

Everyone worked really well together over the whole 3 hours and the children all made some wonderful seasonal dishes. Some of the older children got very creative with the bread dough.

Most of the children tried the Sweet Potato Cake we made for the break and this was really popular, just about everyone tried the Butternut Squash too, it’s amazing what children will try under peer pressure.

This is just so much better than hacking into London everyday, apart from being pretty exhausted i’ve got a huge grim fixed on my face just by thinking about the children today and how enthusiastic they were.

Well done guys.

Really excited, Debbie Brown, cake decorating goddess has agreed to run a workhop for Splat. We decided to go for Saturday 16th December to do Christmas Cakes and it has been a bit of a nightmare getting a hall to run the event.

Quite a few of us at Splat are huge fans of Debbie and I, personally, have just about all her books and they do look a bit like the photo of the one Debbie did but usually with a ‘flat tyre’ on the Noddy Car or the ‘no the fairy castle is meant to be wonky, it is more authentic that way’. I think the best one was my predilection for not reading instructions and recipes properly………OK, mostly not reading them at all or only when it goes dramatically wrong.

Anyway, for my son’s first birthday cake I did Debbie’s Spot cake and thought that I had a spare square piece of cake, so promptly ate it whilst claiming that Debbie hadn’t got the recipe right in the book, that little square would have made a really good small gift….you guessed it….then I could not find the last little gift to cover, doh! Serves me right for being greedy and not reading the recipe and no, I will not learn and I still do not read recipes properly or instruction manuals (thought I had better get that one in before Peter (beloved husband) does.

So if you want to book on Debbies workshop and learn how to do it properly without a proverbial ‘flat tyre’ then her workshop is listed on the Workshop section on the website. Saturday 16 December from 10-4pm in Princes Risborough.

Star Cooks, the cookbook for children with recipes contributed by 24 of the top chefs was launched at Hamley’s Toy Store in London today with all proceeds of the sales of the book going to Fareshare Charity.

The Splat Team were at Hamleys running an Icing Workshop for almost 100 children attending the book launch, including the children of some of the chef’s contributing to the book.

A huge amount of hard work went into this as at the last minute we were asked to make the biscuits for the event too, so for most of Thursday and Friday last week the head office team put their well-earned Food Hygiene certificate to good use and spend two whole days making up gingerbread biscuits. Well, we started on Wednesday and the Kenwood Food Processor didn’t last long, poor love, it’s quite old and not quite up to making 10 batches of gingerbread in the same week, never mind in the same day. Emergency phone call to KitchenAid and off they very kindly despatched a Food Processor on a shining white steed – Ok then, a courier in a van. This arrived on Friday morning much to the delight of Lizzie and Cathy – it’s quite sad really, how much excitement this generated with all of us. So we’ve had a memorial service for my old Kenwood and KitchenAid have officially taken over our Kitchen – as they should, brilliant equipment.

So yesterday Alison and I spent the afternoon making up royal icing, I drew the short straw and ended up doing the black and pink icing colour – guess what colour my fingers are today! Having to explain to lots of press, celebrities and publishers at the event that I don’t have dirty fingernails and I’m not bleeding – it’s the food colouring (yeah right!)

The children were wonderful and produced some fabulous biscuits, you know it’s going well when you’ve got 40-50 7-14 year olds and they’re very quiet because they’re concentrating so hard. We also had some keen 2 year olds and younger who had trouble seeing over the top of the tables, but they managed lovely sparkly icing and had a great time.

The Fareshare people were great, I confess I didn’t know much about the charity until the last couple of weeks but they do such a great job redistributing food to people who really need it and educating people about food hygiene and nutrition who really need to know. Have a look at their website http://www.fareshare.org.uk.

I should have been running in the Great North Run today with Cathy’s husband Jamie and this would have been by far the less stressful and easier option but no way would it have been as much fun. I’ve deferred my race number until next year when I probably won’t have as good an excuse as this but it means that i’ve got another year to get training and I don’t think I’ll be in the really, really, old veterans category but you never know.