Blueberry pancakes

(These are actually with white and dark chocolate chips instead of blueberry)

250g flour with baking powder, 4 separated eggs, 200g milk, a bit of vanilla, 75g sugar, blueberries (200g? As you like them) and a good few scoops of greek yoghurt or similar.

Mix flour, egg yolks, sugar and milk, then whip the whites and fold in with blueberries. Fry pancakes in tablespoon-sized dollops. Ramsay suggests to serve them with fresh blueberries and yoghurt and honey. Kids liked them with maple syrup and/or nutella.

'Bed' rolls

a.k.a. Pizza Dough. For bread machine.
 1.25 cups water, glug of olive oil, 450g flour, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp yeast. Into bread machine and roll into little balls and bake in the oven when finished. Lovely for breakfast or as tiny dinner rolls.

Veggie options for pasta night

• Veggie carbonara with cream, cheese, sweetcorn, mushrooms, tofu, beany stuff of your choice, nutmeg, etc. 

• Chinese noodle version with fine-chopped firm tofu with ketchap manis, fried onions garlic and ginger, five spice, soy sauce, sesame oil,  herbs of choice. 

Nut Roast

I guess you could do pretty much anything but here's one that went well.

Remains of 'veggie tofu burger' including tofu, pureed cannelini beans and corn kernels, kaffir lime leaves, ginger, garlic - plus fried onions and garlic, mushrooms, chopped nuts, an egg, herbs of choice, some seasoning and light paprika.

Into a ramekin (or whatever you're baking it in) and oven. Turn out. Serve as veggie option instead of roast.

Once again, the veggie option was more popular than the meat, and the pork was pretty tasty.

Mocha Cake

Easiest cake you'll ever find. Pretty much foolproof too.

100g golden syrup, 100g soft brown sugar, 100g butter -> Into a bowl and microwave until all melted. Or you can do it on a stovetop, there's no difference.

Add 140ml either strong coffee (for mocha) of milk (for plain chocolate) cake, then add 1 egg. Yep, just 1 egg.

Measure out 200g self-raising flour (or the equivalent), 25g cocoa and add it to the mix too.

Bake on lowish (160 or so) for a while - 45 minutes at least for a standard 8 inch cake. It's not a big cake but enough for an afterschool snack for five kids. Very moist, and dead easy.

Chelsea Buns

1 cup milk, 1 egg, 50g melted butter, 500g plain white flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 75g sugar, 2 tsp dried yeast.

Into the bread machine to do its thing and make the dough for you.

Now, usually chelsea buns are filled with dried fruit but our kids aren't that keen on that so I do lemon marmalade and chopped white chocolate instead. Roll out the dough into a rectangle, spread whatever filling you're making, roll up into very large sushi roll and cut cylinders to stack tree-ring wise in a baking tray. Allow to rise. Bake on high until they're lightly coloured.

As soon as they come out, lather them over in a mix of orange blossom water and sugar (you'll need to heat it to get the sugar to melt) so they're sticky and delicious. Turn the little suckers out and separate them while they're still warm.

I think I have yet to meet someone who didn't go crazy about these.

White bread (bread machine)

Mind you I'm sure you can bake it as a normal bread as well. In the meantime,

1/1/3 cups water, 500g (4.5 cups) flour, 1.5 tsp salt, 25g butter, 2 tsp dried yeast, 1 tbsp granulated sugar.

Into the machine. Bake.

Voila

Tofu veggie burgers

For the burger night veggie option. I much preferred these to the meat.

Blend firm tofu (a fair proportion), cannelini beans and corn kernels (more sparingly) with an egg until smooth. Add kaffir lime leaves, ginger, seasoning, and whatever else herby stuff you'd like, then add breadcrumbs to get just the right consistency for a burger. Cook as normal. Absolutely delicious.

About 200g tofu, 1 egg and a handful of the beans and corn made about four nice burgers.

I'll take a picture next time. These ones disappeared too fast.

Chocolate Berry Pastries

Apparently these are 'Breakfast Of The Year.' Easiest breakfast since sliced toast. 

Cut a sheet of frozen puff pastry into squares, put an appropriate amount of Nutella and berries in a corner, fold each into triangles, seal with a fork and bake on high. Dust with icing sugar and serve hot. 

Big discussion amongst the kids today as to how frequently they should be served for breakfast. Some thought they were so special they should be kept for once a month, others thought to hell with that let's have them at least once a week. So there you go.