What do you do when you've got a daughter that's passionately interested in cooking and won't take no for an answer? Simple - you end up Cooking With Caitie. :)
Last weekend we were given some Amish Friendship Muffin mix by Caitie's grandmother, so we used it today to make some muffins. It's quite a sweet base, so not so suited for savoury muffins. We decided to make apple & cinammon ones as we had some apples to use up.
So we preheated the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, then combined 1 cup of the muffin mix, 2 cups flour, ¾ cup oil, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 cup sugar, 3 eggs, 1½ teaspoons cinammon and 2 teaspoons vanilla essence.
Caitie was thrilled when she cracked an egg to find a double yolker! :)
Then we added a cup of diced apples, mixed it all together and put in the muffin cases. We baked them for about 20 minutes.
They were just a touch bland, so we decided that they needed a bit of a flavour boost.... So we added a dollop of custard to the inside. Ha ha! Yummmmm!
Today we decided to make pizza for lunch. We used a pizza dough recipe from the Australian Women's Weekly Cooking School for Kids book.
So first we activated the yeast, by putting 2 teaspoons of dried yeast, 1 teaspoon caster sugar, ½ teaspoon salt and a cup of warm water in to a bowl, covering it with gladwrap (plastic wrap) and then putting it in the hot water cupboard for 20 minutes.
When the yeast was ready, we put it with 2½ cups flour and 2 tablespoons olive oil in to a bowl and mixed them in to a dough. Then it was time to knead the dough. Caitie's dad was showing her how she could tell when the dough had been kneaded enough - it should be smooth and elastic, so it can be easily stretched thin without tearing.
Then the dough was placed in a greased bowl. Caitie's dad told us the bowl needed to be greased so that the rising dough didn't stick to the sides of the bowl.
Then it was covered with a clean tea towel and put back in the hot water cupboard for an hour. You need a lot of patience for pizza!
When the dough was nearly ready to come back out, we turned the oven on to preheat to 240 degrees Celsius and placed the pizza stone in the oven to heat.
The dough needed kneading again, then was divided in to two portions. We used a rolling pin to roll it out in to a circle. Caitie found rolling it was easy, but making it round wasn't!
Then it was placed on the hot pizza stone (Caitie's dad did that part, so she didn't burn herself) and covered with toppings. I think Caitie used tomato paste, cheese, tomato, capsicum (bell pepper), onion and bacon. :)
The pizza was baked for about 20 minutes and then eaten. Worth the wait!!
