I’ve been looking to buy the jars for Isaac and I to do this for a long time now. It’s been very difficult to find jars that are just right. I’ve wanted to make a pie in a jar with Isaac for quite a while, ever since I saw this idea on Our Best Bites.

Who can resist a pie in a jar? That’s right up there with kittens and baby chinchillas on the cute scale. Poking pastry into small jars is just right for small fingers, and there does not need to be any heat involved if you make your fillings in advance to be popped inside the crust.

Silvermoon from Dragon Musings was having a Kids in the Kitchen Blog event so that was the required motivation to get this little project underway. Although I have to admit I would have made these pies regardless. I think having a single serving pie in the freezer is a great idea.

Don’t just think sweet pies. Think small savoury pies too, filled with chunks of steak and mushrooms, chicken and bacon, smoked fish with creamy bechamel topped with mashed cheesy potato. Sweet pies like rhubarb and strawberry, apple and cinnamon, apricot and apple or blackberry and peach can be heated and a cold scoop of icecream plopped on the top of the jar and just eaten as is.

These can go right from freezer to oven, no defrosting if you choose preserving jars of some kind. A small savoury pie can be a perfect afternoon tea when kids arrive home from school, team it up with a drink and some fruit and you have a filling snack to keep them going until dinner. If you can keep a few jars about, when you have pastry scraps or fruit languishing in the fruit bowl you can turn them into a teeny pie very quickly. They might make interesting conversation too for guests for a casual lunch or dinner.

Isaac and I made Apple, Strawberry and Rhubarb pies, I just happened to have some strawberries and rhubarb in the freezer so that seemed ideal. I tossed in a cinnamon stick, a little cornflour and some brown sugar to sweeten the filling slightly. The filling was all ready just for him to spoon into the pies.

You’ll notice there are a lot of photos in this post, I could not help myself, they were just so cute!

Fruit Pies in a Jar

• 1 packet of ready rolled puff pastry
• pie filling of your choice - cooked
• wide mouth preserving jars
• tiny shape cutters or a sharp knife to decorate with.
• Milk to brush the tops.

Choosing your jars is important, they need to be as wide at the mouth or wider than the rest of your jar to get the pastry in nicely and the pie out easily. You may like to eat the pie right from the jar, we did. I found these little jelly jars at my local shop, they are only small, just 4 oz but perfect for a single serve.

Line your jar with the pastry. We cut a disk for the bottom and the top and a strip to go around the inside of the jar, and pinched them together.

Put in your filling - do not fill all the way to the top leave a little room for movement.

Use a fork around the edge to press the pastry together and decorate with pastry scraps. Brush with a little milk and dust with icing sugar if cooking immediately.

Bake in a hot oven 220C/428F for 10-15 minutes.

If you are going to freeze it and put a lid on it, do not take the pastry all the way to the top.

Isaac had the most fun designing a variety of tops and patterns for the pies using a tiny star cutter. He got the hang of it very quickly and was soon quite confident making the little pies.

He came up with a lot of variations.

We brushed them with the milk and dusted them with a little icing sugar.

I popped them into the oven and we watched them through the oven door.

The best part was that he got to eat one for afternoon tea! I believe his exact words were “This pie is awesome!”. The interesting thing was that he ate the rhubarb, before he has always complained about it being sour. But I guess when you make things yourself, they always taste better.

It would be easy to make some small apple crisps and crumbles, you could even do mini cobblers if you were feeling creative. This was a lot of fun to do and I will continue to keep the little jars full in the freezer, ready just to put in the oven at a moments notice.

This was the one that Isaac picked out to eat.

Of course, there was a pie for the supervisor too.

Things Isaac learned making pies:

• 1.It’s hard to get pastry to do what you want and stick in the right place.
  2.You have to press hard when you are using a cutter.
  3.It’s easier to poke the shape out of the cutter than to try to pull it out.
  4.Pastry is sticker than playdough
  5.Rhubarb tastes good when you cook it yourself.
  6.You have to work out where to cut your shapes to fit them into a piece of pastry
  7.You can stop the pies burning if you tell Mummy she better check them again, because you noticed they were cooked and she didn’t.

Yummy pies! A great cooking project for kids and it’s nice to have some teeny tiny pies in the freezer.

I know I promised Nancy croissant for the weekend, but I am afraid I just got too busy with an unexpected trip into work and helping some friends move house. Since croissant are time consuming to make I really needed a free weekend to make them. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed that next weekend will be croissant!

So I present to you a fairly typical weekend quick baking project with a twist! Lemonade scones. They are not made with old fashioned lemonade, they are made with soda, like sprite, 7UP or what ever your local brand of clear mostly flavourless soda is.

These are so simple that initial thoughts are that they cannot possibly be good. But they are light and sweet and the cream in them adds the fat that is so important for scones. I doubled the recipe to make a large number for the hungry people that I knew would be lifting furniture and boxes. I had a lovely jar of bright orange home-made apricot jam from my mother that I teamed up with these.

These scones are best eaten on the day they are made, they really do not keep well, but it does not seem to be a problem to get rid of a batch fairly quickly!

Lemonade Scones

• 3 cups of self raising flour
• 1 cup of cream
• 1 cup of lemonade soda (Sprite/7UP etc)

If you measure your cream first, then your soda and use the same measuring cup - beware .. this is what you’ll get! Personally I think this is quite fun and like to do it this way- but be ready for it! Isaac was most amused by the soda mushroom.

Mix all ingredients together gently to make a soft dough, either add more liquid or flour a little at a time if your dough is too dry or too wet.

Shape into a rectangle roughly an inch to an inch and a half thick and cut into circles with a 3 inch cookie cutter or the rim of a glass. I’ve even been known to use the rim of a vase or jar rims if that’s all I can find. Really most things can be improvised and there is not a lot of need to have fancy stuff in the kitchen.

Place on a lightly floured tray, brush the tops with a little milk and bake at 220C/428F for 10-15 minutes. You can put them fairly close together - this will help them rise up and give good height to your scones.

Yep that is all there is to it!

This recipe makes roughly 12-14 light and sweet scones.

Snuggle your scones up in a clean tea towel or cloth and serve them with some butter and jam. Scones are always best slightly warm, but not straight out of the oven.

I promise I’ll get to the croissant next weekend - although I suspect I might have to get another lot of chocolate for them, it seems to have mysteriously vanished….

Some time ago we went to a café with some friends of ours who have two very cute little kids. They are Belgian, so French is their first language. Isaac had a salad, in it was a nasturtium bloom. He asked why there was a flower in his salad and we told him it was edible. Isaac being an adventurous kind of kid - picked up the flower and promptly ate it.

Our friend’s son - a slightly younger child, got this completely horrified look on his face and exclaimed in a very shocked tone “Maman, il mangeait une fleur!” - “Mummy - he ate the flower!” It was really very funny. It did make me think how even though there are many flowers that are edible - we rarely eat them!

I’ve been eyeing up my next-door neighbours nasturtiums since last year. I was not brave enough to ask her if I could have a few for some butter and to make some nasturtium pickles. But this year, I dragged up the courage asked very politely and went over and picked a container full of the seed pods and a bowl full of orange and yellow flowers.

Leah just happened to telephone me as I was about to make the butter and let me know that she was coming home from camping in Twizel (pronounced Twai -zil) a day early, complete with a side of fresh salmon from High Country Salmon. The salmon farm was close to her camp site in the shadow of Mount Cook; her timing could not have been better, salmon with nasturtium and lemon butter was on the menu for dinner.

I also took the opportunity to try pickled nasturtium seed pods, which are supposed to taste somewhat like capers.

Look at these little guys - they look like tiny green Triamble pumpkins.

More about those and the pickling method later in the post.

The butter was a cinch and took next to no time at all to make. I really enjoyed watching the colours blend. The petals have an ever so slightly peppery herbal taste - very pleasant with lemon. The recipe for the butter is based around one from Old Fashioned Living.

Salmon with Nasturtium Lemon Butter

• 1/2 cup salted butter slightly softened
• zest of one small lemon
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 3-4 tablespoons finely chopped nasturtium blossoms (chop first, then measure)

Mix everything together, place in a covered container and refrigerate. If you want a completely blended butter - use your food processor. I liked mine with the little flecks of colour in there, so I preferred to chop rather than blend.

The Salmon

• 1 large piece of fresh salmon
• 1 additional lemon
• 3 Tblspns fresh parsley
• black pepper to taste

Place your salmon on a large piece of baking paper in a dish with high sides. Make sure your baking paper piece is large enough to wrap around the salmon and seal with a fold.

Spread a thin-ish layer of nasturtium butter on top of your salmon, sprinkle with the chopped parsley, add slices of lemon and a good grind of black pepper to the top.

Seal your salmon inside the paper - wrap it up sealing the edges by folding the paper over itself. Cook in a moderate oven until a fork inserted into the thickest part of the fish can flake some easily

Serve with a little of the butter and lemon sauce created while cooking drizzled over the top.

Your salmon should be melt in the mouth tender with a lovely lemony peppery flavour, with a slight herbal taste from the nasturtiums. The nasturtiums will retain some of their orange colour as they cook down, so your salmon will have beautiful reddish orange slivers of nasturtium on the top.

The Nasturtium Capers - Pickles

I was keen to make these as we use capers quite often with fish, and those little blighters are expensive! I’d read about nasturtium seed pods making a good substitute and this seemed like the perfect time to try it. I found this recipe on The Splendid Table.

What we are talking about is not the flower buds, but the seed pods. When the nasturtium flower has finished - this appears. You need to pick them when they are still green and smallish; if they are golden or yellow they will be tough. Late summer is the time to pick them. You need to look under the leaves closer to the main stem to find them.

There was something really satisfying about hunting for them and putting them in a bowl, knowing I was making something nice to eat from something most people would just walk past and never give a second glance. I felt a bit like one of those wonderful earth mother type women who have wildly growing gardens, tie dyed skirts, homespun jerseys and chickens. Maybe I’d like to be one of them? Kit says I’m not serene enough to be one of them, unfortunately he’s right.

There is a textural difference with the nasturtium pods. They are crisper, juicer, slightly peppery and have the salty briny taste that you expect from capers as well. They are also slightly larger. In many respects they are more complex tasting.

• 2 tablespoons salt
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup green nasturtium seedpods
• 3/4 cup white wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 fresh bay laurel leaves, or 1 dried
• 2 3-inch sprigs fresh thyme

Brining: Bring the salt and water to a boil in a small saucepan. Put the nasturtium seed pods in a heat proof glass jar and pour the boiling brine over them. Cover and let them soak at room temperature for 3 days. When you pour this over you will see them go from bright green to a much paler lemony green.

This is what they will look like after a little while in the brine.

Pickling: Drain the nasturtium seed pods in a fine sieve and return them to the jar. Bring the vinegar, sugar, bay leaves, and thyme to a boil.

Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the seed pods and let cool.

Cover the jar and refrigerate for 3 days before using. They’ll keep for 6 months in the refrigerator if covered in the vinegar.

So easy!

The pods all brined and pickled and ready to eat.

It was fun to try something new and different and my family, although all somewhat hesitant, they were interested in eating something a little unusual. They thoroughly enjoyed the food adventure. Be daring! Go pick those Chive flowers, Nasturtiums, Dandelions, Roses and Calendula - find something to do with them that makes you a little excited about how it might turn out!

Just a little safety warning, not every type of flower is edible - so have a look here on What’s Cooking America for some general good advice and a list of edible flowers. I don’t want to hear about anyone having a conversation with a rock after eating some weird flower they should not have.

Kids in the Kitchen is my semi-regular post on including children in your kitchen activities. There are all kinds of learning opportunities for kids when they get to take part in food preparation. If you want to avoid having a picky eater - this is the way to go!

Isaac saw a cartoon on TV, where they made a smoothie. Being the budding foodie that he is, he took a mental note of the recipe for the smoothie and decided that we should make it because it was “quick and healthy” according to him. I asked him what the ingredients were and I was a little dubious - it was milk, lemon and “nice bananas good for eating”.

I suggested that we put some other things in it to make it taste a little better, but no, it had to be just as the cartoon said it should be. I suggested that we taste test the cartoon version and see if we liked it, and then decide if we wanted to put other things in it. Isaac also told me that I had to put it up on my food website for people to learn from - so I’m doing as I was told.

So we went off to the kitchen and set about making the smoothie.

Tip in about 2 cups of milk and add two bananas - (good for eating bananas)

Squeeze some lemon - squeeze HARD

Show Mummy where you think the milk should go up to on the blender- because that’s where they filled it up to on the cartoon.

Put your hands on the lid of the blender while it goes around - because that’s what your mother does.

The Result:

The Taste Test:

The Verdict:

“This actually does not taste that good!”

So - we made a couple of modifications to the recipe

We added

• 1/2 cup of boysenberries
• 1 Tblspn of honey
• 1/4 cup of yoghurt

and gave it another whirl in the blender

The Result:

The Taste Test:

The Verdict:

“This is really REALLY good!”

Things Isaac learned making the smoothie

1. You cannot rely on cartoon recipes to give you a good smoothie experience

2. Mummy knows how to make good smoothies

3. Boysenberries sink when you put them in milk because they are heavy

4. Boysenberries make milk go purple and not black like you thought they would.

5. Lemons are really hard to squeeze with your fingers

6. Smoothies make you feel really full

Isaac loved making the smoothie and was so proud of himself for memorising the recipe from the TV. It’s a shame that the TV recipe was not so great, but good that we could make a delicious smoothie anyway.

Grab your kids and find something to cook with them and don’t worry about the mess they leave behind knowing that you taught them something important and they got to spend some quality time with you.

I’ve put off posting this recipe for some time, because I simply could not get a photo that even made this look edible. It just looked like a big brown murky mess. It looked more like somewhere a frog would live, than something you would eat.

But this soup despite it’s appearance is really a great soup in almost every way. It’s not likely to be the type of soup that you would serve to a dinner party, but it is the kind of soup that you would ladle out big hearty servings of to your family with crusty warm bread at the end of a cold day. My kids call it mud soup - because honestly that’s what it looks like if it’s blended up a bit.

It also has the bonus of being very economical to make. Leah and I worked out that it cost roughly $1 a serve and a serve is complete meal in itself. Destitute students take note - this soup is cheap and good! You’ll make your mothers happy if you eat this soup. It’s nutritious and filling and like most soups low in fat. I tend to make a vegetarian version, but you could make this with beef or chicken stock if you preferred.

Have you ever really looked at a lentil? I love looking at green lentils, each one is like a little painting in it’s own right, swirls of green, blue, brown, orange, black and yellow, no two alike. Small, unique works of art. I love to make this soup, not just because it tastes good, but because I get to look at the lentils - yes .. I know .. slightly odd - but we’ll keep that between you and me.

French Green Lentil Soup

This quantity makes enough for roughly 12 good serves - I always make this amount and freeze half of it. It freezes well - but you will need to add a little more stock to the thawed soup when you reheat it. You can halve the recipe easily

It’s also quite delicious with slow roasted tomatoes plopped on the top to serve, if you want to make them bake the tomatoes in a 120C/250F oven for 2 hours with a little olive oil, salt, pepper and a light dash of balsamic vinegar.

• 4 cups french green lentils (De puy)
• 1 medium carrot diced
• 1 medium onion diced
• 1 large leek diced
• 1 Tblspn ground cumin
• 2 Tblspns garlic chopped very finely
• 1/4 cup of olive oil
• 3L/roughly 3 quarts vegetable stock
• Salt to taste
• pepper to taste

Soak lentils in cold water for 2 hours.

Place in a large saucepan olive oil, carrots, leeks, onion, cumin and garlic on medium heat. Sauté until leeks and onions are transparent.

Add in drained lentils and mix through - add roughly 3/4 of the stock stock, bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer.

Put the lid on and stir every now and then add in more stock if needed if the soup is looking very thick. It normally takes roughly an hour to an hour and a half - it will depend on the lentils though, I’ve found they will vary in cooking time. So you need to test the lentils for doneness periodically.

Soup is done when lentils are tender and have a smooth texture - add salt and pepper to taste.

You can cook the soup past this slightly chunky texture and toss some of it in the blender if you prefer a smoother soup.

But I love it like this, full of texture and hearty.

Do give this one a try, it’s been a family favourite for a very long time and is a great cold day recipe.