The Splat Cooking Blog

Muffin Wrap in purple

Wahey, our new range of muffin cases, muffin wraps and scallop wraps has arrived!!! I was really excited until it’s meant I’ve spent the past 2 nights uploading them onto the website and still haven’t managed to get the scalloped ones up – they’ll have to wait until I get back from holiday mid August, but they’re worth the wait, they’re fabulous.

Alison and I rebelled, we’ve had the muffin cases made 2.5mm taller than the UK standard, it makes the cakes much easier to ice, they look nicer and a 3 egg/150g mix gives you exactly 12 perfect cakes, rather than having 12 cakes that are too full to ice or a dollop of mix left over at the end which is a pain. Try them, we’ll prove it to you.

The muffin wraps come in mini and normal size, in red, yellow, orange, dark green, light green, purple and hot pink and the scallop ones come in all those colours plus polka dot and lots of other designs.

We’ll be offering wholesale options for 5000 cases of one design, so if you’re running a bakery or cupcake business drop us and email and we’ll sort out pricing for you.

Just finished a really exciting summer workshop. I’d planned to have the children make home made pasta, fruit mousse, focaccia, ice cream, sorbet and some kind of biscuits if we had time during the day. However, in the post arrived an intriguing package from MSK, a sample kit for apple caviar – so change of plan, we’re going to make all that stuff plus a bit of molecular gastronomy at the end of the day.

We all had a great time making pasta, doing yeast experiments and seeing just how big the yeast could blow up a balloon – pretty big and knowing when your egg whites are at the right consistency – you can tip the bowl upside down over your head the the egg whites stay in the bowl – Do not try this at home without permission of a grown up! So a bit of molecular gastronomy to get us warmed up,

When the children had eaten lunch and filled up on delicious ice cream and sorbet we got the apple caviar kit out. Unsure if it was going to work as I’d never tried it before and wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen – well, it was totally fantastic, brilliant, thoroughly spectacular. The children loved it, some of their parents joined in when they came to collect them and they said when they left that this was the highlight of the day.

So molecular gastronomy workshops will be coming soon, watch this space.

Making pasta with Splat

We ran a series of children’s cooking workshops at the Northmoor Trust . Glorious sunshine, a stunning location and the promise of a huge variety of gastronomic treats brought over 14,000 visitors flocking to the 2009 Children’s Food Festival on June 27 and 28.

The trust have posted a photo gallery here, if you look closely you’ll see us making pasta.

“A case for cakes” from International Lifestyle Magazine

A Case for Cakes

Ali told me I had to start blogging all the wonderful stories I tell the team in the office after cooking club, so here goes.

On Saturday this children at my Saturday Morning Cooking Club made Spring Rolls. Last Thursday evening my mate Spencer who’s family owns Noodle Nation – the best Chinese restaurants in Bucks dropped over a pack of fresh spring roll wrappers to me – thank you Spencer.

Saturday morning comes and the children have obviously started to lose the plot a little, they usually do at this time of year, too long a term, too tired, too excited at summer holidays coming soon. Anyway, within about 10 minutes the whole atmosphere had changed. You could hear a pin drop. The children aged 7 to 10 were totally engrossed in making the filling for the spring rolls.

Shredding chicken, podding peas, cutting spring onions with scissors, peeling carrots – I chopped the peppers and carrots, mixing up the flour and water paste, making and mixing the two dipping sauces, then rolling up the actual rolls. It was a hive of activity and felt wonderful – this was a group of around 8 of us all preparing a dish together, chatting, tasting – this is what cooking is about.

I cooked the spring rolls with strict instructions to the children NOT to come near the stove with the hot fat – good lesson in dangers of deep fat frying.

Well, I can honestly say that I’ve never tasted a spring roll that good. They were light and crispy and the filling was delicious, so were the dipping sauces. We all agreed that if we ever had a spring roll in a chinese restaurant that was thick and greasy with no filling except for bean sprouts we’d send them back, now we know how to make them and how good they can be this does cause a few problems eating out!

Very proud teacher.