Culinary Quill Awards

Party Food for Girls is one of the finalists in the NZ Guild of Food Writers Culinary Quill Awards, winners will be nominated tomorrow night, so wish me (and Arantxa, my daughter and co-author) luck! This is the only children's book in the awards (there isn't a separate category - I guess that there aren't enough kids' cookbooks to have one) so it great to be a finalist among all the grown-up books!

Anyway, here are some images from the book, I guess that grown-ups could eat these too!

If you pin any of these remember to credit as such: Images from the book Party Food For Girls by Alessandra Zecchini and Arantxa Zecchini Dowling, photos by Shaun Cato-Symonds, New Holland Publishers NZ © (I know that it is long, but you wouldn't break copyrights law, would you?)

Images from the book Party Food For Girls by Alessandra Zecchini and Arantxa Zecchini Dowling, photos by Shaun Cato-Symonds, New Holland Publishers NZ ©

Vanilla Cupcakes with Italian Butter Icing

Here is a recipe from my book Party Food for Girls, I haven't made it in a while, but I needed a sugar hit, and I just felt like baking... it happens!

Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients

120 g butter

3 eggs

130 g sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla paste

200 g self-rising flour

60 ml milk

Italian butter icing for the topping (recipe on page…)

Fresh or sugar flowers to decorate (optional)

Makes 12 cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Line a 12-muffin tray with cupcakes paper cups.

Melt the butter in a jug, either in the microwave or in the oven (while the oven is warming up for the cupcakes). Place the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl and whisk, using an electric beater, until the mixture looks light and pale yellow in colour. Slowly add the melted butter and the vanilla essence or paste. Keep beating at a low speed now; add half of the flour followed by half of the milk. Add the rest of the flour and milk and keep beating making sure that there are no lumps. Divide the mixture between the 12-cupcake cases

Bake for about 18-20 minutes, until golden brown at the top. You can also check by inserting a toothpick into the cupcakes: if it comes out clean the cupcakes are ready. Remove the cupcakes from the tin and let them cool down.

Prepare the Italian Butter Icing (recipe below) and decorate your cupcakes.

Italian Butter Icing

Ingredients 

160 g unsalted butter

2 egg whites

160 g sugar

10 ml water

A few drops of pure vanilla essence

Cut the butter into small cubes and set aside at room temperature.

Beat the egg whites until they form a white peak, and then add 100 g of sugar and beat for 10 more minutes.

Put the remaining 60 g of sugar in a small saucepan (possibly use a single-handle saucepan or a milk pot, which are easy-to pour). Add 10 ml of water to the sugar. Place the saucepan over the stove at a very low heat and bring it to boil. Simmer for 2 minutes, stirring gently with a metal spoon, and making sure that the sugar doesn’t stick to the edges of the pot. The sugar should melt but still look white. Don’t boil it for too long or it will turn into brown caramel; if this should happen wash the pot with warm water and start again.

Resume beating the egg whites and very carefully (don’t burn yourself) pour in the sugar syrup. Beat until the meringue is cold and then turn the speed of the beater to the lowest setting. Add the butter, little by little and beat it in until well mixed. Add the vanilla essence and beat for one more minute.

Scoop the icing into a decorating pastry bag and decorate the cupcakes as shown in the pictures.

And this is the cover of the book, the very same recipe, with the difference that at present I don't have many edible flowers in the garden a part from a few violets. Next time I'll wait to have lots of flowers, as they are the prettiest decoration ever!

I am a finalist in the 2013 Culinary Quills Award!

I am entering this recipe in Sweet New Zealand, the monthly blogging event for Kiwi bloggers. Our October 2013 host is Lucy from Lucy eats, click here to enter. Sorry Lucy, I meant to do a sugar free dessert and this is not! But I may have time for another sugar-free entry this month! :-)

Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Party Food for Girls a finalist in the 2013 Culinary Quill Awards

Thank you New Zealand Guild of Food Writers, and congratulations to the other finalists in the Book Quill Award:Glenda and Claire Gourley, Annabel Langbein, Allyson Gofton, Penny Oliver, Lesley Christensen Yule and Lauraine Jacobs.

Meringue snow flakes and doilies for the Christmas tree

More ideas for more white Christmas tree decorations. Meringues are classic, in the past I used the meringue wreaths from my book Party Food for Girls, and this year I was very happy to see that Franci and Vale from La Signora dei Biscotti blog made them too, so if you would like this meringue recipe in Italian click here, and if you like the recipe in English you can find it in Party Food for Girls, available from Amazon, The Book Depository and many other online bookshops. If you live in New Zealand you can find it in good bookshops and, of course, in the library.  

Meringue wreaths, from left: page 54 and page 65 of Party Food for Girls

This year I decided to make snowflakes, it is a little harder as they can break more easily (also I didn't want to make them too big!) but they are beautiful!!! Same recipe as the wreaths and they will last for years (if you decide not to eat them, that is!).

Another idea is too use paper doilies, like the ones that you find under small cakes or cake slices in fancy cafes. I found two different sizes, the smallest that I could, and not only they look really nice and classy, but they are inexpensive and fill the tree nicely. To tie them up I used white embroidery cotton.

The tree is nearly ready, I will post a photo in the next few days!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Fan Mail

A couple of months back I posted about taking part to the Wordsmith tour of schools, it was a lovely experience, and lots of children got inspired to pick up writing as a career. Then last month the event organizers send me a parcel full of fan mail from one of the schools we visited, and I was so moved by all the letters, poems, cards and recipes that the students sent me! I was going to post this before but I am always running out of time these days, anyway, here are some photos.

Thank you Henderson Intermediate School!

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Arantxa making sugar roses with fondant video

This is my second entry, featuring Arantxa, for this month's Sweet New Zealand, hosted by The Kitchen Maid. I hope that you will like it! 

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Frankfurt Book Fair, a few photos

Very happy to have my book Party Food for Girls at the Frankfurt Book Fair (did you know that New Zealand is the guest of honor?). Here is a photo with New Holland Publishers NZ MD Belinda Cooke (Belinda you look radiant!)...

And here is a photo of Peter in front of our stand, Oratia Media / Libro International.

Bums and Roses at the Going West Storyfest

Pretty cupcakes for the Storyfest

Party Food for Girls was once more on tour, today at the Storyfest with another sugar roses' workshop for children (of all ages) and a baking demonstration too. We started with baking cupcakes at 10am, and then we moved to our workshop table to show the kids how to make sugar roses and decorate their own cupcakes.

 

Arantxa and Martina teaching the children how to make sugar roses.

Next table down we had lovely Dawn McMillan (pictured here with Libro International children book editor Carolyn Lagahetau). Dawn is the author of I need a new bum!, an hilarious new book all about ... Bums! She was at the Storyfest with illustrator Ross Kinnaird who did a lot of sketches for the children present. And we had so many children around, all reading books and attending all the creative workshops that Storyfest had to offer. 

Literally hundred of children came to our stall to make sugar roses, here is what some of them made.

I would like to thank Martina and Arantxa for helping all day long (9:30 to 4:30!), and everyone at Going West for organizing another wonderful Book & Writers Festival. Well done!

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Dino is famous, and the winner is... (actually, are!)

Is this really me? Says Dino Yes it is me! Look at me, I am famous!

Dino is happy! We were shooting my dinosaur minestrone and I just thought that it would be nice to have a 'model'. I went up to Max's room and picked up Dino, who has been in our family since Max was a baby (11 years), just to see how he looked! Well, I think that Dino is exceptionally cute and well kept too for an 11 years old soft toy! And guess what: he made it, he is in this issue of Little Treasures Magazine, and I can assure you that both him and Max are over the moon about it!

Minestrone with dinosaur pasta and tomato soup with animal crackers

Out now,  Little Treasures Magazine

Pumpkin soup with bruschetta, cauliflower and broccoli soup, red beetroot soup with puff pastry grissini,
and Asian noodles with veggies

And now for the winner of this competition. But I should say winners, in all senses! As usual I put the name through the Randomizer, and below is how they came out:

There were 40 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. Fance e Vale
2. Stefania
3. 2 Amiche
4. Michelle
5. Artu
6. Iana
7. Paola
8. Ester
9. Chairina
10. Sastuki
11. Isabella
12. Mariangela
13. Melissa
14. Jennifer
15. Astrofiammante
16. Wagashi Stories
17. Alice
18. Valentina
19. Anotosh
20. Kitchen Flavours
21. Gaia Celiaca
22. Lo
23. Le cognate
24. Mariint
25. La gelida anolina
26. Sandra
27. Barbara
28. Vanessa
29. Katrina
30. Sweet Snow Flakes
31. Elena
32. Natasha
33. Chiara
34. Food, Fun
35. British Mum
36. Cheryl
37. Lucy
38. Lisa
39. Shatzy
40. Veronica

Timestamp: 2012-05-26 07:50:13 UTC

First of all i would like to congratulate Franci and Vale, who have a beautiful blog, La Signora die Biscotti. But this is not the reason why I say winners. When Stefania wrote her comment she said that the first person to write is never picked because she is already number 1 in the list, so the odd weren't with her, but she was graceful enough to start the comments and lead the way for all other entrants. And look at this! She came number 2! I am sure that everyone who knows Stefania will agree with me: she also deserve the prize! So Araba Felice, you won a copy of Party Food For Girls too! 

Thank you to all who entered the competition, I will run more in the future so stay tune, and 

congratulations to the winners, I hope that you will all enjoy the book, and make something from it.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

1020 views, and Party Food for Girls as a giveaway to celebrate

I got close a few times, the closest was 959 in October, and I often thought that I would never reach 1000 page views in a day, and then yesterday....

Pageviews yesterday

1,020

(copied and pasted from Blogger statistics)

Yuppy!!!! 

Well, it may be an isolated case, some days seems to be better than others, but still, a cause for celebrations, and since it is all your merit, dear readers from around the globe, I am offering another

Party Food for Girls book as a giveaway to one lucky person!

Just leave a comment to this post to enter. Don't need to follow this blog unless you like it, but if you do that would be sweet! :-). Contest open worldwide. You have time until this Saturday! Good Luck!

Miniature cupcakes and sugar flowers, and a sugar craft workshop for children

I make all types of cupcakes, but I have to say that I prefer the smallest ones. In fact some of my cupcakes are becoming smaller and smaller, and so are the sugar roses and flowers which go on top of them! Here are some details with my fingers, to show you the sizes. And yes, I like miniatures!

I still make big ones though, and I just made 24 large and 36 small cupcakes for yesterday becasue Arantxa and I went to this:

It was a long day teaching children how to make sugar roses, and we even got a couple of volunteers from Waitakere College to help: first they set up the table with us, then we thought them how to make the roses (they are art students, they learned fast!!) and then the children started to arrive and I got too busy to take photos! All I can say is that I took with me 60 cupcakes (big and small) and about 5 kg of fondant and finished it all! We made hundreds of flowers and the table was constantly busy with little fingers working. A quick estimate would be that each rose is about 20g (maybe 10g for the actual rose, and 10g got dropped, eaten or 'lost' in the process) so count our roses!!!  Well, hopefully someone took some good photos of when we were surrounded by kids, all I can say is that after that we spent Sunday really relaxing!!! Thank you to the Corban Estate Art Centre,  all the volunteers, and all the attendees at the festival!!

Last thing to show you: since I had some chocolate fondant left over, I mixed it with a little almond and a little strawberry fondant and roll it out (it looks like a precious wood veneer!) then cut it with a hearth biscuit cutter, added a stick in the centre and secured two hearts with a little raspberry royal icing (another left-over). Very sweet, but pretty to look at. I will work on this 'veneer' pattern though, I loved it!!

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Inspirational pins for Easter

From Party Food for Girls, eggs colored with natural vegetable dyes,

recipe by Alessandra Zecchini (in the April Dante Newsletter), photo by

Shaun Cato-Symonds

Alessi-mania, a serious talk about eggs, and breadsticks instead of soldiers

Iced animal biscuits for Ester

Bunnies? Fondant and marzipan, or sushi?

Natural: quail and chicken eggs are beautiful enough as they are, and for an interesting touch,
eggs decorated by the children with Italian prehistoric patterns

Wow, a full Easter page without Chocolate! What do you think?

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

White and Red Party Table

Arantxa just had her birthday party, a few days before her actually birthday, which will fall during the Easter Holidays. The theme colours were white and red, very effective. Of course there were a lot of cupcakes, decorated either with white royal icing or whipped cream. Red details were cherries, homemade sugar roses, or paper red flags. Plus meringues!

The main cake was a plain vanilla cake decorated with cream and shredded coconut and topped with coconut balls (red candles were added later). There was another smaller cake filled with cream and jam and topped with icing sugar just in case one of the kids didn't like coconut. Pizza, popcorns and tortilla chips and dips were also served.

Drinks were kept chilled in a drink bucket, and we made ice cubes with white and red flowers.

Vol au vents filled with feta and herb cream and tomatoes, and white camembert with more red tomatoes and crackers

Photos and Recipes  by Alessandra Zecchini ©