I know this is not my usual topic but I thought I might diverge just this once. You see, I felt sorry for  the one million giraffes guy - he’s getting desperate to prove to his friend Jorgen that the people of the internet can in fact produce one million Giraffes before 2011.

Being of a slightly geeky nature, from time to time I feel compelled to help him get his one million giraffes. I’ve submitted several already, including one made out of macaroni. Why? Because I can. I like to do my bit for internet culture. So without further ado here is my Giraffe for the week. Yes I know it’s a pretty poor excuse for a Giraffe, but hey, it’s drawn on the back of a scrap of paper with ball point pen, not exactly great art materials!

If you too would like to be a part of the Giraffe movement you can send them into him here at his blog One Million Giraffes and check out the Giraffe of the day!

I have a confession to make. I’ve made these a lot, and I’ve never shared them with you. I actually always feel guilty about making these cinnamon rolls, because they are simply amazingly good but not really that good for you. I always eat far too many of them, and invariably make a second batch after the first one has vanished in about 2 minutes flat. I’m not sure why I don’t just make a double batch in the first place. I love these, and I feel very guilty about it.

I don’t think they should be meddled with though, no low fat margarine, sugar substitutes, or lite cream cheese, these cinnamon rolls deserve only the best butter, sugar and full fat cream cheese you can find. It’s what makes them SO luscious, spicy and delicious. You cannot be in the same house as these cinnamon rolls and stop with just one. Grown adults have been known to lick the pan and scrape the last smears of icing from the bowl!

I know, I’m raving, gushing and pouring on the praise rather thickly. But what can I say? These are one of my all time favourite things to eat, and everyone in my house seems to feel the same way. If you’ve been looking for a delicious cinnamon roll recipe, this is probably the one you’ve been looking for. The recipe is slightly modified from a very talented bread baker Linda Stadley from What’s cooking America. Thank you Linda for sharing this recipe. I’ve just given directions for making by hand here, but if you would like bread machine, food processor or stand mixer instructions please refer to Linda’s website.

Harvest Cinnamon Rolls

Linda Stadley

Makes 15 Cinnamon rolls.

• 1 cup milk (heated approximately 1 minute in microwave)
  1/4 cup warm water (110 degrees F.)
  1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  1/2 cup butter, room temperature
  2 eggs, room temperature and beaten
  1/2 teaspoon salt
  1/2 cup granulated sugar
  5 cups bread flour
• 3 teaspoons instant active dry yeast

• Cinnamon Filling
  1/2 cup butter, melted or softened
  1 cup firmly-packed brown sugar
  5  heaped tspns ground cinnamon
  3/4 to 1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Make cinnamon filling and set aside.

Soften the butter; set aside. In a bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon; stir in chopped nuts (optional). You might like to sift the brown sugar and cinnamon to make sure you don’t have any large lumps.

Make Cream Cheese Icing and set aside.

Cream Cheese Icing
2 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup icing sugar
1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

In a medium bowl, combine cream cheese and butter until creamy. Add icing sugar, vanilla extract, until well mixed and creamy. Use the icing at room temperature.

Make the Cinnamon rolls.

Put dry mixture in a large bowl Add the liquid ingredients, butter, and egg. Mix with a knife until it starts to come together into a rough dough. Turn out on to a lightly oiled bench top and knead until elastic - roughly 10 minutes.

Place back into the large bowl - cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 10 minutes.

After dough has rested, roll and stretch the dough into approximately a 15 x 24-inch rectangle. I haul out the measuring tape for this and try to make the edges as even and straight as possible, this makes it easier when you come to roll it up.

Brush the 1/2 cup softened butter (in the Cinnamon Filling) over the top of the dough with a rubber spatula or a pastry brush. Sprinkle Cinnamon Filling over the butter on the prepared dough. Starting with long edge, roll up dough; pinch seams to seal. NOTE: Rolling the log too tightly will result in cinnamon rolls whose centres pop up above the rest of them as they bake.

With a knife, lightly mark roll into 1 1/2-inch section and then slide a 12-inch piece of dental floss or heavy thread underneath. By bringing the ends of the floss up and criss-crossing them at the top of each mark, you can cut through the roll by pulling the strings in opposite directions. Kit likened it to a garotte! I like to make mine slightly smaller than this and get 17 rolls, I bake 12 in a rectangular pan and 5 in a small square pan.

Place cut side up in prepared baking pan, flattening them only slightly. The unbaked cinnamon rolls should not touch each other before rising and baking. Do not pack the unbaked cinnamon rolls closely together.

Cover and let rise in a warm place for approximately 45 to 60 minutes or until doubled in size (after rising, rolls should be touching each other and the sides of the pan).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F or 180C and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool slightly. Spread icing while still warm - they’re best served at this point. They are still fine at room temperature though if there are any left to cool down that long!

Linda gives more detailed instructions on freezing and storing these. This is the version I like to make with my low tech approach in the kitchen.

I know you’ll love these cinnamon rolls. The smell of cinnamon rolls baking at home is just incredible, when I make these everyone in the house keeps checking the oven timer to see when they’ll be ready. I dare you to stop at just one!

Just to let you all know, this is a photo heavy post.

I have so many things I want to tell you about today, so you’d better grab a coffee before you start reading, get comfortable, put your feet up, and try to imagine a chilly winter’s day in the south of the South Island in New Zealand. If you live here you won’t have to try hard at all! The leaves have mostly fallen from the trees except for a few stubborn ones that won’t stop clinging, and the mornings and evenings are so cold you can see your breath. It’s mid winter and it really feels like it.

Last week my darling Leah turned 22 years old! Two days later it was my birthday and I turned .. well I got older! We delayed our birthday dinner until the weekend until we had more time to make a nice meal to share.

It just so happens that Kit gave me a pasta machine for my birthday, I told him not to buy it for me, but he went ahead and did it anyway. Not that I am complaining too much! It turns out a pasta machine is a gift for everyone, even small boys! Isaac could not wait to pull all the bits out of the box and try to assemble it.

Pasta for the birthday dinner at the weekend was a must of course! Ravioli, three different varieties. Butternut and Almond, Mushroom and Ham, and Spinach and Feta. It was only when I thought about it that I realised that I would be making ravioli for seven people. That’s a LOT of ravioli to make. Then was reminded of those lovely Italian grandmothers making ravioli for their families and knew if they could do it, I could do it too.

The plan for Saturday was to spend the day making pasta and to have it all ready to cook while we went down to the Mid Winter Carnival Lantern Festival. Next year perhaps we will be organised enough to make a lantern to carry.

Leah and I started to make the pasta fillings and the dough, with Isaac doing his best to assemble the pasta machine and turn the handle on the crank as fast as he could. He’s been completely fascinated with it since he first peeked in the box.

We had to work on the table, since my bench space in the kitchen is not that great, and we needed plenty of room to move and spread out those beautiful ribbons of pasta dough.

Leah is wearing a superfast hat that I made that I’ll share with you in another post

After a few minor hiccups - dough sticking to the table, dough too sticky, too much filling, pasta bike not cutting, air bubbles, and Isaac turning the handle in the opposite direction half way through rolling a sheet and cat jumping on the table we finally felt we had the technique perfected. I have a whole new respect for those Italian grandmothers I can tell you!

We turned out wonderful silky lengths of pasta, cut, filled and carefully dusted so they would not stick, before long we had a big pile of plump ravioli ready to be dropped into bubbling water when we got home.

If you’ve never made pasta at home before you will honestly wonder why you haven’t before. It’s so simple. You do need to take a little time for rolling and shaping your pasta, but really, there is nothing quite as satisfying as seeing a pile of homemade pasta and the velvety texture is nothing like pasta you would buy in a shop. Besides I think it’s fun! I’ve given you two methods here for mixing the dough, food processor and by hand. Apologies there is no “cooked” photo it was way too dark by then, but I assure you they were excellent!

Basic Pasta

Serves 6-8

• 500 grams of flour (Tipo 00 if you can manage it - this is very fine ground flour but all purpose is ok to use.)
• 5 free range eggs
• semolina flour for dusting

The ratio is 100 grams of flour to one large egg.

Variation:

If you wish to make a butternut or spinach flavoured pasta omit two eggs and replace with puréed butternut or spinach in the same amount. Cooked and pureed beetroot works well also. We coloured our butternut and almond ravioli dough with butternut, so it is a little more orange than the others. Make sure if you are adding puréed vegetables to the dough that as much moisture as possible has been removed from the veges. If you find your dough a little wet, add more flour.

This is the butternut pasta dough above, it was the most beautiful rich golden colour.

Method: Mixing by hand

• Place the flour on the bench top in a mound, make a well in the centre - crack your eggs into the well. Stir with a fork initially to combine your eggs into the flour slowly mixing in a circle towards the outside, once your dough starts to form switch to using your hands to bring in the remaining flour and knead gently until your dough comes together into a smooth dough that is not sticky. Use additional flour if needed. Wrap in cling wrap and place in the fridge to chill for one hour.

Method: Food Processor

• Place all ingredients into a food processor, pulse until it comes together into a ball of dough. Remove and knead gently by hand for a few moments, ensuring your dough is not sticky and using additional flour if needed. Wrap in cling wrap and place in the fridge for one hour to chill.

Now that you have your dough you can either roll it by hand or you can use your brand new pasta machine that your husband gave you to roll it out.

There are various methods for filling and making ravioli we decided to do it this way, which on reflection was perhaps not the best method, since there was a lot of dough wasted, but it did work.

• Roll out a strip of pasta dough to about 1.5 mm thick and about 14 cm wide Cut it in half down the centre - longways to make two strips 7 cm wide each.
  NB:For larger sized ravioli do not cut down the centre, you will need to roll out an identical piece.

• Place teaspoonfuls of your filling on one half at regular intervals along the dough.
• Brush the dough around the filling with a little water and then place the other strip dough carefully over the top pressing from the edge of the filling in an outwards direction so that you do not trap air bubbles in your filling and sealing your ravioli.
• Then cut your ravioli to size, ensuring there are no holes in your pasta.
• Dust lightly with semolina flour to stop from sticking to each other.

You can cook them at this point or freeze them. They will be fine covered in the fridge for a couple of hours also.

Butternut, Almond & Sage

• 1 medium butternut - roasted, flesh scooped out and drained.
• 75 grams ground almonds
• 4-5 fresh sage leaves finely chopped (or 1/2 tspn dried sage)
• freshly grated nutmeg to taste
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix all together

Spinach and Feta

• 400 grams of Fresh spinach - steamed, drained and all moisture pressed out.
• 100 grams Feta cheese patted dry and crumbled

Mix all together - this is enough for half a batch of dough, double the quantity if you wish to make the whole batch the same flavour.

Mushroom and Ham

• 200 grams finely chopped mushrooms
• half a small onion finely chopped
• 2 Tbspns sherry
• 50 grams of ham finely chopped
• salt and pepper to taste

Cook all together until most moisture is gone and drain in a sieve. May use a few breadcrumbs to bind if you wish. This quantity is enough for half a batch of dough - double it if you wish to make the whole batch the same flavour.

Serve your ravioli with a sauce that compliments your choice of filling. We had a classic Alfredo sauce with the fillings above since it worked well with all of them.

We made ours various sizes and shapes, depending on the filling so people could choose the ravioli they wanted easily.

One tray of finished ravioli, organised by type by Isaac. You can see they are less than perfect in shape, but as long as they don’t have holes in them and no air bubbles, they will be just fine.

Once we’d assembled the ravioli we set out for the Octagon to watch the Lantern Festival and fireworks. I really want to share this with you, Isaac loved it. One of the joys of being a parent is getting to see your children look in absolute wonder at things they are seeing for the first time.

The trees in the Octagon (our town centre) were all strung with fairy lights, set up in the centre there was a small stage with a band playing. There were waffles, sausages and hot coffee for sale close by, the aroma’s mingling and wafting slowly in the still night. The roads were all blocked off, small children ran around slightly terrified and excited about being out, in the dark and walking on the road!

The photos are all somewhat blurry because of the movement of the lanterns as people walked and danced along, but I like them, they convey a sense of action and movement in the dark. The lanterns are all made from tissue paper, cane and glue. They are lit from the inside with candles which flicker and jump in the dark. The theme this year was the ocean.

Stilt walkers were dressed as hermit crabs (at least that’s what I thought they were!) Drummers with little hats like sea anemones and dancers a swirl of colour.

Giant shells and pointed strands of seaweed marched past, bobbing in the dark.

For something that is just made from tissue and cane, they look pretty amazing.

Seahorses drifted past, starfish, blue waves emerged and small children and adults wrapped up warmly walked along with dolphins bobbing on the end of sticks. In the dark it looked like they might be swimming through the air.

Fireworks boomed and made Isaac laugh loudly with genuine excitement as we walked up the hill to the car. Then it was home with cold noses and fingers to warm up with piping hot ravioli, thick chunks of sweet rye bread, green salad and old fashioned Lime Pie for dessert.

Happy mid year everyone!

Kit hates apricots. I love apricots. Kit hates white chocolate, so do Isaac and Leah. I like white chocolate. Ryan and Leah hate fudge type slices. I love fudge type slices. This easy, no bake slice has all of those features. Chunks of white chocolate dotted through a fudge slice and scattered with clumps of sunny apricot pieces and green pepitas for crunch.

I figured that in making this I might actually get to eat most of it myself and have some to offer to people that happened to call in. Well, it turns out that despite having features that everyone in my house finds completely abhorrent except for me - this slice is absolutely delicious and everyone likes it. They’re all eating it!

My secret plan of actually getting to consume more than one or two pieces of it failed utterly. The rather large container filled to the brim with this moreish creation seems to be emptying at the usual rate, that’s because this is very, very, good.

Don’t let the simple list of ingredients fool you, there is something about this combination that just works.

White Chocolate, Pepita & Apricot Slice

Line a 24cm slice pan with baking paper and set aside.

• 250 grams of butter
• 175 grams of brown sugar
• 375 grams of sweetened condensed milk
• 500 grams plain cookies - crushed (I used one plain package and one malt flavoured)
• 2 cups of roughly chopped dried apricots
• 1 cup of green pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
• 200 grams of  chopped white chocolate plus extra for drizzling

In a large saucepan place the brown sugar, condensed milk and butter. Heat gently stirring continuously until thick like caramel sauce - remove from the heat.

Add in the crushed cookies, chopped apricots and pepitas, mix well. Cool slightly and add in the chopped white chocolate and mix again.

Press into your lined pan and refrigerate for one hour.

Cut into slices and drizzled with a little melted white chocolate if desired.

Store in an airtight container.

Do cut this after roughly an hour, it does not need to be stored in the fridge after it’s cooled. If you keep it in the fridge for longer than an hour before cutting it will be a little too hard to cut.

Also don’t count on getting more than a couple of slices for yourself if you live with other people!

I first made these muffins not all that long ago, but I was quite taken with their texture and flavour. They have yoghurt added to the mix which gives a beautiful crumb. Muffins are one of those week day standbys, 5 minutes to mix and 15 minutes to cook and you have a tray full of muffins ready to be eaten.

I always think muffins are best the day they are made. They do keep of course, but there is nothing quite like a muffin right out of the oven, still warm with the smell of fruit and spices wafting through the house.

My first version of these muffins contained big fat pieces of golden peach and teeny cubes of cream cheese. I gotta tell you they were delicious! This particular muffin base goes well with just about any fruit combo you desire. For those of you with strawberries and raspberries in season, try using fruit flavoured yoghurts to compliment your choice of fruit. Southern hemisphere folk try plums, apples and pears, even open a can of fruit from the pantry if it’s too cold to go to the shop - you won’t be disappointed.

This mix also stands up well to the addition of wholemeal flour, try substituting half wholemeal and bump up the fibre content. These really don’t need a whole lot more explanation, just trust me, these are good! It’s a fun recipe to play around with and experiment a little. These tasty little morsels had a mixture of poached plums and apples dotted through them.

Fresh Fruit Muffins with Crumble Topping

• 2 cups flour
• 2 tspns baking powder
• 1/2 tspn baking soda
• 1/2 tspn salt
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of yoghurt (plain or flavoured)
• 1/2 cup of oil ( canola or grapeseed is good)
• 1 tspn vanilla
• 1 cup of fruit of your choice chopped into chunks

Crumble Topping

• 1/4 cup of flour
• 1/4 cup of brown sugar
• 2 heaped Tbslpns rolled oats
• 2 tblspns chopped nuts (almonds/pecans or walnuts are good)
• 1 tspn cinnamon
• 3 Tblspns softened butter

Preheat oven to 180C/350F Grease and line muffin pans

Make your crumble mix first in a small bowl mixing everything together well.

In a large bowl beat together sugar and eggs until pale

Add yoghurt, vanilla and oil and mix well.

In another bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to the wet mix and stir gently until just incorporated. Do NOT overmix this will make your muffins tough.

Gently fold in your fruit until just mixed through. Spoon into muffin pans filling them 3/4 full.

Bake roughly 20 minutes or so until top springs back nicely when pressed slightly.

These muffins are fantastic warm but keep well for a couple of days also IF there are any left.