Emma, my little darling daughter absolutely loves these cupcakes. Its an excellent activity if you have a play date and have run through all your options to entertain the children. You can keep the children busy with lending you a hand right through. My chocolate cupcake recipe is a ‘no-fail’ recipe and a favorite of the judges among our winning display at the Brussels bake off.

Feeds: 24 cupcakes | Prep time: 15 mins (if its part of a play date) 10 mins (regular prep time) | Cook time: 30 mins

INGREDIENTS:
Cupcakes:
24 cupcake baking forms and 24 cupcake
275 gm flour (plain)
3 tbsp good quality cocoa powder
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 and 1/2 tsp soda bicarbonate
3 tbsp golden syrup
3 eggs
215 gm castor sugar [alternative: fine sugar]
225 ml regular milk
225 ml sunflower oil
Buttercream icing:
2 packets of icing sugar
regular butter
food color of your choice (for chocolate icing, no need for food color and use cocoa powder instead)
2 tsp peanut butter (check for allergies first) [alternative: 2 drops of vanilla essence]

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Get the children to prep the cupcake baking forms with the cupcake papers.  Heat your oven at 160°C. Separately in your stand mixer bowl, add flour, baking powder, soda bicarb, cocoa powder, sugar and mix well.
2. Add golden syrup, eggs, milk, oil and mix well. Pour into the cupcake forms (fill it 3/4 only) and once done let the happy monsters lick the mixing bowl.
3. Bake cupcakes for around 30 mins. 20 mins into the baking process check the cupcakes with a wooden tooth pick. If it comes out clean, take the cup cakes out and place on cooling rack.
4. Mix icing ingredients in a mixing bowl. Fill into a piping bag and ice cupcakes once cool. I love to follow these easy piping techniques.

The flavour of squid ink linguine is easier to work with than I thought, so do not let it intimidate you. This recipe is delicious, easy to put together and definitely makes you look like a pro. The colors of this recipe makes it very visually appealing.

I combined this linguine with shrimp fried in butter and garlic. Now that is a match made in heaven 🙂

Feeds: 4 decently hungry people | Prep time: 10 mins | Cook time: 15 mins

INGREDIENTS:
Linguine and sauce:
250 gms squid ink linguine
1 clove garlic sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp chilli flakes (alternative: paprika powder)
3 tbsp anchovies from a jar, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
330 gms of cherry tomato puree
1/3rd jar of green and black olives chopped
fresh basil
pinch of sugar
salt to taste
Shrimp:
large shrimps with shell (sliced on top to de-vein)
2 tbsp butter
1 clove garlic chopped
salt to taste

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Use a deeper wok like cooking pot. Heat olive oil and fry sliced garlic till golden. Add tomato puree, chilli flakes, achovies, olives and cook for 10 mins. Set aside.
2. Boil linguine until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup of the water when draining the pasta. Add this reserve pasta water, to the pasta and sauce and cook for 3 mins to get the sauce into the pasta.
3. Heat butter in a separate pan and fry chopped garlic until golden. Increase cooking heat a bit. Arrange shrimps with shell on top of this. Sprinkle salt on top. Flip shrimps over only when it turns a bit brown. Set aside.
4. Arrange pasta in a dish, place shrimps on top. Garnish with 2 leaves of basil.

This summer, to keep Emma busy and engaged, we grew a couple of easy vegetables in our garden at home. Pumpkin was one of them. We planted a couple of them with the hope that at least one would survive, but to our good luck they all did. So we ended up with a lot of pumpkin.

Here is an easy, yum, comforting and healthy recipe which is particular helpful midweek, when you are tired and very tempted to order take-out. Note the long list of adjectives before the word ‘recipe’ above, because this recipe is no-fail and a winner. Give it a try and you will know what I meant by that 🙂

Feeds: 4 decently hungry people | Prep time: 10 mins | Cook time: 15 mins

INGREDIENTS:
1 tbsp oil
5 cups of pumpkin, cubed
1 white onion chopped
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1/2 can tomato block [alternative: tomato puree will work too]
1 tsp chilli/paprika powder
1 can coconut milk
1 tsp ginger garlic paste
pinch of sugar
salt to taste
1 large handful of spinach leaves chopped [alternative: frozen spinach is fine too]
1 cup boiled chickpeas
1 cup red lentil

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Heat oil, fry onion and once golden add ginger-garlic paste.
2. Next add turmeric, chilli, cumin powders, salt and sugar and fry. Add tomato blocks/puree and cook till oil layer forms on the top (note: this happens pretty quickly).
3. Add chickpeas, lentil, pumpkin, spinach, coconut milk and stir. Cover and cook until pumpkin and lentils are cooked.
4. Serve with steamed rice.