recipe

Baking Across America – Bing Bars

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One of the things that will always make me feel like a kitchen goddess or just a half decent mum is if I bake something in the morning, before people are up for breakfast. We had a plan for Saturday and I imagined baking these Bing bars, breakfasting, then being able to take photos on our picnic blanket in the botanic gardens with dappled summer sun and warm blue skies and butterflies and green grass and happy children and … and life happened, instead. I prepped the night before (the virtue! the smug!), and was very glad I did because, if you haven’t tried this, pitting and chopping cherries to get 450g of them takes a long, long time. And then it was a Bad Night, where I was ditched from bed by E before midnight and she was awake and coughing and S was awake and awake and awake and Glenn wasn’t feeling great and I slept on the sofa and while it’s not such a problem it was also not very comfortable. 

Having been a Bad Night, though, meant that E and S both had significant sleep-ins, so I could get on with baking this without endless “Mummyyyyyyy” interruptions. Extra kitchen goddess points for simultaneously making scrambled eggs for breakfasts as well as Biscoff toast and juices and cups of tea and sourdough toast and oh look at that more scrambled eggs. As the cherries took a while to cook down into jammy goodness, I also tackled some of Washing Mountain and felt extra smug. 

This recipe was definitely not next on my list of what to bake from this book (Baking Across America by B. Dylan Hollis). I was planning on trying one of the northeast cookies, I think, but my mind just kept coming back to these. I mean, what even are Bing cherries? As it turns out, they’re cherries. Normal cherries. And Australian cherries are just sold as Australian Cherries, but Bing is one of the varieties grown and sold – Google has been my friend – so instead of resisting the urge and baking something else, I caved. We have abundant cherries at present so I didn’t even buy frozen, but risked buying two punnets and pitting and chopping them myself. Next time – and there will definitely be a next time as this was definitely a winner and has been definitely requested for lunch boxes – I will use frozen. 

I am not one for selfies, but if I were, you would have seen my face in various stages of delight to worried to concerned to wide-eyed to panicked to blissed out to shocked to satisfied. What a ride. I think I possibly cooked the cherries down a little further than the recipe intended, because when it came time to transfer the mix onto the base, it turned out to be toffee. Pro tip: make somebody else wait to do what they want in the kitchen so that they clean out that tough sticky mess for you. Ahem.

Maybe it’s my Scottish heritage, but rubbing cold butter into oats and flour and sugar just makes things right. It settles me. Makes me feel connected to generations of Scots bakers before me, even if the butter isn’t really cold because this is Brisbane in summer and nothing is staying cold for more than two minutes out of the fridge. I had a slight moment when it came to the egg wash, as I drizzled it on as instructed and in the moment it took me to pick up my pastry brush, all the egg was soaked into the topping. A valiant effort was made to no avail, so one portion of the slice is impressively tan while the remainder looks ordinary but bland.

One thing I appreciate about this book is the absence of serving numbers. Who’s to say if a cake will serve 24, 12, 3 or 1? Exactly. I cut this slice into 16 squares which is a perfect amount for sating the sweet tooth but not going sugar crazy. Girls, as mentioned, loved it. Glenn is not much of a sweet tooth so had a half piece – see, it could serve 32 if it was just Glenn eating it – and seemed to enjoy it.

I was determined to take some photos outdoors, so when I took the girls outside in the afternoon we also took out the picnic blanket. What a thrill! We were just in time for late afternoon sunshine. Girls were mighty disappointed to be not eating the rest of the slice, but did their best to sneak bites anyway. We clearly left some crumbs around because every dog out for an afternoon walk was very excited, and one owner even brought her dog right into our garden. Wild.

Baking Across America – Peach Cobbler

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“Mummy, whatever you’re baking in here, it smells *awfully* good”. With that ringing endorsement from C, here beginneth the journey of Baking Across America and a peach cobbler from Georgia. That is, as close as one can get when one lives in Brisbane and has zero access to Georgia peaches. However it is that they differ from Alabama peaches or Queensland peaches.

One of my Christmas presents from Glenn was B. Dylan Hollis’ book, Baking Across America. I have been devouring it whenever I can ever since. With books like this, I love to then make the recipes – I mean, duh. But in a methodical fashion, rather like Julie and Julia but without the stress. Being me, I would normally start at the beginning and be orderly about it. However, each area contains recipes with summer fruits and recipes without, and I know if I went through systematically I would give up fairly quickly from dejectedness over lack of ingredients. As it is, I have already sent my husband out searching for fresh cranberries without success and I will be taking girls with me for a full-on excursion in quest of them at some point. Peach cobbler was chosen because peaches and Brisbane summer seemed quite doable.

I ordered a box of imperfect peaches and let them ripen a tad, which meant that some of them did that weird thing of having foul spots while still being hard. Still, I washed eight instead of the instructed five and was glad I did. One was wonky on the inside, and two of them were tiny, so I figured this amounted to about the amount of five Georgia peaches. With girls watching Nightmare Before Christmas and Glenn relaxing on his sofa, I set to work and was instantly in a happy place. It has been a long time since I baked a dessert, or baked anything from a recipe book that was not for the purpose of lunchbox snacks or freezer snacks. Methodically slicing peaches and removing the flesh from the stone and transferring to a saucepan and repeating the process, knowing that this would turn into a tasty dessert, was an instant endorphin rush. I must do so more often.

This turned out to be a “trust the process”, er, process. I should probably point out here that I think I have both made and eaten cobbler once in my life before, and not any time recently. So my knowledge of cobbler process is limited and vague and reaching back a long, long way into my memory. Still, I expected peaches then batter, instead of melted butter then batter then peaches and juices then sugar, in a process that looked shockingly wrong and rather unphotogenic. Trust the process. Because, as I was fairly confident would happen, what looked entirely ugly and as if I had most definitely read the instructions entirely incorrectly, turned out to be exactly what it ought to be. A peach cobbler. Lovely soft cinnamon sugar peaches amid blobs of sweet batter. 

A surprise, though, was the ultimate in jammy goodness hiding in sporadic pockets beneath the dough. We’re talking not just scooping out as much as possible for the next serving, but letting out an actual gasp of delighted surprise followed by furtive side eyes so as to sneak more of it. It was almost black, and it was camouflaged with the spots of stickiness that had to be worked to the extent that I felt my arms had earned another serve, and it was amazing. 

Furthermore, this was one of those desserts that seemed to be a new creation the following day. I let the girls have a serve (with ice cream!) for morning tea. When cleaning up, I had a morsel of peach and ohmygoodnessme it had caramelised and gooeyfied and … I just can’t. It was glorious. 

Meal Prep Monday (14/07/2025)

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A few things happened this weekend. Friday was the Friday for a fortnightly funky food farm box of fruit and veg. I add a dozen eggs to this order because we love eggs. By the time we came home from the park at lunchtime, it was waiting for us at our front door. S very enthusiastically carried the eggs to the kitchen while I watched helplessly until she had speedily and carefully put them on the bench. 

Then through some glitch in the system, the other dozen eggs I had ordered to be delivered from Woollies – first extra large, then I had to change it to large, then that wasn’t in stock so it would be jumbo – well, it made me feel like a magician. Or more accurately, a magician’s assistant, most likely a volunteered audience member, as I found not one, not two, but three dozen jumbo eggs in our delivery. 

Having 48 eggs did affect my weekend food plans, I must admit. That, and the other thing that happened which was the hot water system beeping every 10 seconds on Saturday. Every. Ten. Seconds. No. Matter. What. It turned out to be needing a battery change. Yes, this was the day I found out they have batteries and yes, I had asked the internet and ChatGPT for help, and no, nobody told me this until our real estate phoned me and told me. Thank goodness we had some of the right size battery in stock. But this did mean that irritability was high, and that Saturday washing was put on hold. Baking took over.

So. Friday dinner was salmon bake from my childhood (5 eggs). Saturday morning breakfast was scrambled eggs (7 eggs). I made “sheet pan eggs”, as this person calls it, which is usually in our household baked by Glenn in a round pan and called eggy pizza. Same deal, though – lots of eggs (10), lots of vegetables, a bit of cheese, baked until set. Great for breakfast or lunch or a snack. Great to have on hand for when you ask a 4yo what they want for breakfast after the time you actually normally like everyone to be eating breakfast and the 4yo says enthusiastically, “eggy pizza”, and the first reaction is, “but it’s too late for that”, but the second reaction is, “but that’s okay because I made some on Saturday!” This one had broccoli, cherry tomatoes and capsicum in it. Also to be mentioned in the delivery oddity was an extra bag of frozen strawberries, which I hadn’t really wanted in the first place, either (I was aiming for raspberries). S helped me make strawberry and chia jam with some of our bonus strawberries. I made chocolate chip zucchini strawberry muffins (2 eggs) – these are a new favourite, I think – and zucchini and blueberry baked oatmeal (2 eggs). 

Sunday was prepping some sandwiches for school lunches. Today, with E home with me and both of us not well, I boiled some eggs (4 eggs) and made some chocolates. I think of them as “loaded chocolates”, as they are dark chocolate mixed with a hefty dollop of nut butter, and combined with, in this week’s batch, dried blueberries. There are, um, not as many now as were made this afternoon…

With other fried eggs for breakfasts, our 48 eggs are down to 12, which seems like quite a normal number, and I feel well-stocked for lunches and snacks and breakfasts. For now.

Meal Prep Monday (16/06/2025)

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Friday and Saturday were fairly light on in the food preparation department. Cornflake cookies were made, which are apparently for me now. C, it turns out, doesn’t like the flavour of cornflakes, and E bit into a crunchy bit and hurt her mouth so apparently is never eating cornflakes or cookies ever again. Sigh. S has eaten some for me, but unless she spies the cookie jar, it will be Milo cereal for her. (Seriously. How do toddlers and preschoolers do this? She seems to eat nothing but Milo cereal and occasionally yoghurt. E had about 2 months when she was nearly 2 when I swear she just ate peanut butter and blackberries. That was an expensive time). To make up for the apparent cookie fail, on Sunday I made nut butter cookies and added chocolate chips to the tops and, guess what, nobody wants to eat them either. Make them without the chocolate chips and half the batch is scoffed as soon as fingers have braved the hot-from-the-oven cookie trays. It looks like I will be living on cookies this week.

Friday I also made a very healthy chocolate mousse then made it less healthy to make it more dessert-y and edible for girls. Thankfully, they had filled up on pizza dinner so I have chocolate hits ready to go in the fridge. Score.

Saturday was yet another flop which I will chalk up as future snacks. E was really wanting doughnuts so I finally made the (ultra healthy) jammy blueberry doughnuts from Jamie’s superfoods book for breakfast. It was a frustrating experience because I had neglected to soak our ordinary, not-expensive-Medjool, dates overnight, and also because we have a mere chopper and not a glorious food processor. I am debating whether I cave and buy one now in the sales or if I wait until the chopper dies then replace it. Hm. Decisions. It is definitely becoming more necessary. Anyway, there were leftovers. I have snacks.

Sunday was spent making the fail nut butter cookies, as well as doing hard boiled eggs, sandwiches, carrot oat slice, and what I think of as “Everything Balls”, or “Use it up slice”. This started off as the Eat This My Friend muesli bars and then I went crazy a few weeks ago and added a bunch of things that were needing to be used. You know. The 1/4 cup of almond meal. Tablespoon of walnuts. Slightly less than 1/3 cup chia seeds. The dregs of 4 different nut butter jars. Some sneaky powders of super greens or berry immunity. I mean, I started with the basic recipe and just embellished a bit. Squashed some into the mini muffin holes. Rolled some into balls. I thought for sure this would be a mummy-only treat, but before I knew it, S had demolished 4 balls. I kept meaning to cover them in chocolate but after not very long there didn’t seem to be much point. This weekend, though, I made sure to get the chocolate hit happening, so the minis are covered in a blob of chocolate and the balls are mostly half-covered, with a few glorious pieces entirely covered.

Delay in posting due to the futility of taking photos after 10pm. I’m glad I did this post, though, as I had totally forgotten about the doughnut snack option. I see there is a slight delay in work starting soooo first snack for the day is going to be a purple doughnut. 

Meal Prep Monday (02/06/2025)

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I am inspired. One of my Facebook friends shares, it seems, everything that she makes for lunches and treats and dinners, and every single photo is terrible and unappetising. A page I follow, on the other hand, shares what she eats and what she makes for healthy everything, and everything looks fantastic and healthy and an Anna Thing To Eat. In my “I can do that, too” mentality, and with the amount of food prep that actually happens Friday-Sunday (usually), I now plan to do a roundup of that on Mondays for you. You’re welcome. Actually it’s also part of me reminding myself of achievements. If I feel like I’ve just been opening yoghurt pouches and doing the washing and chopping up oranges and doing the washing and separating squabbling children and doing the washing and sorting the washing and doing more washing, noting the other things really helps. Yes, I did all those other things too, but now I also have a record of the snacks and other things prepared. Lots of them include chocolate chips.

Friday normally gets me baking something but we had stuff to do so, no. Saturday morning, though, I baked sweet potato and apple oatmeal, sweet potato and banana chocolate chip bread, and “4 ingredient peanut butter banana bars”. That’s in quotes because, as is so often the case with recipes with a small number of ingredients, whoever did the recipe didn’t actually count. Out of bananas, peanut butter, vanilla, oats, salt, baking powder and chocolate chips, some of those are clearly more special than others. I am not, however, game to omit any. And also, I couldn’t find the silicone loaf pan I wanted so as the recipe makes 6-8 bars, I used a 6-hole silicone muffin pan and I will be making these again. New favourite, despite the lack of accountability (ha pun).

You may have noticed a theme with both bananas and sweet potato. We suddenly had a glut of 12 very ripe (black) bananas. Although I love Our Go-To Banana Bread, I had made it recently as bread and muffins and mini muffins and there was only so much I could take. With recent baking and Saturday’s baking, I cleared the build-up just in time for a fresh bunch to start going spotty. Good times. The sweet potato was from our farm box. Not the most recent one. The one a fortnight before that. I didn’t weigh it, but it was about the size of a toddler’s torso. Glenn used some in a couple of meals. I reserved some for baked oatmeal and then had enough to try this bread as well. The bread is fantastic and will be made again.

Less exciting meal prep but very necessary meal prep happens on Sunday evening. If we have eggs, I hard boil four of them. C and I both enjoy them during the day. Everyone else does, too, but E and S are not so adept at peeling or biting without the egg bouncing away. I also do a batch of overnight oats which will do me for three breakfasts. I did not do either of those things for a few weekends in a row and I was really feeling it. Mornings were a bit more rushed. Snacks were a little less varied and less protein-rich. I’m back on track now, though, and much relieved.

Top left: Sweet potato and apple baked oatmeal https://thenaturalnurturer.com/baked-apple-sweet-potato-oatmeal/

Top right: Sweet potato and banana bread https://thenaturalnurturer.com/sweet-potato-banana-bread/

Bottom left: “4 ingredient peanut butter banana bars” https://sammibrondo.com/peanut-butter-banana-bars/

Bottom right: hard boiled eggs. I draw on them so we know they’re boiled and not not-boiled. I am not good at drawing flowers.

Anzac Biscuits. No Coconut.

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I have searched.  For my whole adult life, I have searched, yet I have not found.

Until today.

Today, I was successful.  And so I am doing my first post in almost a year in order to have an easy reference, every time.

I’m talking, of course, about the perfect Anzac biscuit recipe. Chewy. No ridiculous add-ins.  And, most importantly, no coconut.  Here’s a link to the recipe if you want to jump right in (although the site does not, at present, have a crucial ‘Jump to Recipe’ button so you may be scrolling a while).

My grandmother – the one I knew – told me she baked Anzac biscuits to send over to my grandfather and his mates.  I do have the recipe she used, but it uses coconut, a fact which deflates me every time I think about it.  

After many years of fails, this morning I searched for an Anzac biscuit recipe, chewy, no coconut.  The original, pre-1925 recipe came up.  It is a winner.  

I managed to make these without any “help” this morning, so they were done in less than an hour.  I know the recipe says about 2 minutes for prep and 18 for baking but those people aren’t doing leg lifts to keep small children away from hot ovens, or squat lifts to show hefty kids what’s in the bowl, or batting little fingers away from the butter, or admiring the magnet creations on the fridge, or asking kids to please stop fighting over which show to watch or so help me I am taking the iPad away and ohhhh did the battery just run out well we had better plug it in then and maybe you can, you know, play.  Quietly.  And brush your hair.

Ahem.

Ingredients

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup plain flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar (I used white caster sugar)

125g butter

2 generous Australian tablespoons of golden syrup

1 teaspoon bicarbonates of soda

Water in the kettle

Method

Line two baking sheets with baking paper.  If you are free from distractions/have a slow oven, turn it on now to 170C, otherwise don’t stress it just yet.

Mix together oats, flour and sugar in a large bowl.

Put the butter in a pan over medium heat.  Turn the kettle on.  Once butter has melted, add golden syrup and stir until dissolved.  Bring it gently to the boil – now is a good time to turn on the oven – then remove pan from the heat.

Mix 2 tablespoons boiling water and bicarb and stir until dissolved.  Add this to the butter and syrup and stir until it froths.

Pour the frothy hotness into the dry ingredients and mix well.  

I like to divide the mix in half now, just by making a little line in the dough/batter with the mixing spoon.  Jewellery off.  Do remember to put it back on later.

Plop dessertspoons of mixture on the trays.  This works out perfectly for generous dessertspoons, in a 3-2-3-2-3 layout on each tray.  Children may be coming in now to “help” which means really to taste test which is fine for this egg-free recipe.  Make each blob of mixture into the nicest ball you can, then squash each a bit or a lot, depends on your helper/s’ enthusiasm and delicacy.  If you’re not getting little ones to help, then a gentle squish with your hand or a fork or a bowl or something could work too, I guess.

Clear all children from the area and put both trays of biscuits into the oven.  The recipe says for 15 minutes and then something something but 15 minutes produced very much done biscuits so I left it at that.  Leave them on the trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling tray.  Once completely cooled they can be eaten or, I suppose, stored in an airtight container for months.  Apparently.  I have no experience of Anzac biscuits being uneaten after a week.  Sorry.