How to dine out with kids

While we've dined out a lot less in the last 15 months, it's still something I love to do. Most of the time these days I have a toddler in tow, though, which changes things a bit. I've been gradually refining my strategy over the past year and would like to think we've got a system, which I thought I'd share in case it helps other parents get out a bit more.

Of course, just by posting this I have doomed our next excursion - be warned if you invite me out for lunch. ;-)

Little Monkey's first cafe visit. The service was a bit flat, har har. 

1. Choose your venue well
The first step is making sure the place you're going is kid-friendly. Depending on the age and personality of your kids, the definition of this will vary. I know Logan Brown do great kids menus at certain times, but it's still not somewhere we'd take our Little Monkey - perhaps when he's 10 or so but not yet.

If you need a high chair check if they have them; if you know your little one won't sit still for the whole time choose somewhere with a play area or a safe outdoor space so they can burn off some steam.

If you bring a blanket little
babies might even go to
sleep under the table

2. Make sure you're well-equipped
Generally we let our little one roam free, but that's not really appropriate at our favourite cafe. They are very accommodating and have high chairs but are not really a kid cafe, so there's no play area. That means a longer-than-normal stint in the high chair for the small person, so I always make sure I have a couple of not-often-seen toys in my bag, along with a small snack (I finally understand the appeal of mini boxes of raisins!).



3. Be strategic with the food
Depending on the occasion you can shorten the wait time for little people - if we go for brunch we'll often order right when we arrive, rather than waiting for table service. Sure, we don't get to linger as long, but nicer to have a happy family meal than having to scoff the food as quickly as possible to avoid a meltdown (or worse, when the meltdown has already occurred).

Food, entertainment, same thing. 

It can also work well, if the small person is eating (and especially if you know they will linger over the food) to buy them something from the counter that they can have straight away, while you wait for yours.

4. Be willing to jump ship if everything falls apart
Hopefully this won't be necessary... But sometimes things just don't go to plan. We haven't had this happen yet (though on one occasion we came close, and I spent quite a while pacing outside in an effort to calm the Little Monkey down) but it's always at the back of my mind. I figure if everything goes wrong I'm going to be too stressed to enjoy my meal anyway, so I might as well get it packed up to take away and save everyone else the drama.

5. Clean up
You don't have to vacuum or anything, but just because you're not at home doesn't mean you don't have to pick up the floor food. Sure, the wait staff are there to serve, but they're not really paid to be picking raisins you didn't even buy there off the floor. I reckon it's proper to do a quick sweep for detritus strewn by the little one before you scarper.

(hopefully the need for this will abate with age...)

6. Leave them behind sometimes
I'm all for bringing Little Monkey out and about and teaching him what good food is, but sometimes it's nice to go somewhere on your own, whether it's coffee for one while the small one is at daycare or a degustation at a high end restaurant for a special occasion. Revel in the freedom!



All of these things should hopefully combine to permit a relaxed dining experience, at least as much as that's possible with kids in tow.

Do you have any tips that I've left out?

Mrs Cake's ultimate easy crowd-pleasing chocolate cake

This is like the little black dress of recipes. I know it off by heart and it's such a great basic chocolate cake. It's no chocolate nemesis torte, but it works consistently and is easy and inexpensive to make.

All dressed up for my sister's 21st

It's ideal for parties, because you can dress it up as much as you like and you can easily double the recipe and feed screeds of people. It was the staple birthday cake in our house growing up (I believe 21 years ago today it became a Bananas in Pajamas cake for my sister - happy birthday Cathie!) and despite being fed to hordes of sugar-hungry kids at parties or our enormous extended family at Sunday Tea there would always be leftovers for the next day.

In fact, there's a fair bit of photographic evidence of this cake in my life - because in the olden days before digital cameras people usually only got the camera out for milestones, like, say birthdays. Oh look, cake! The photos above show my christening, 1st birthday and 4th birthday (I guess the party wasn't rocking enough for our liking?).

The recipe has three stages - creaming the butter and sugar, which is a technique I'll cover in more detail later in the week, is the first. I recommend using a bowl with a shield if you have one, or if not use the biggest bowl you have!

Then the dry ingredients get added, and then the milk and baking soda get warmed to activate the raising agent and beaten in to the mix. Easy!

It makes a pretty runny batter but cooks up beautifully... Although I *may* have gotten slightly distracted in the last five minutes of cooking so this is slightly more cooked than I'd like.

Usually I trim the top to flatten it out, which has the added bonus of being able to taste-test (especially good if you're, say, giving it to your neighbour to thank them for helping sort out a flat car battery and want to make sure it tastes good, hypothetically speaking of course). Then I flip it over and ice it upside-down.

This time I used ganache, which I whipped up to make lighter and fluffier. I then sprinkled a few crumbled freeze-dried raspberries on top and voila! Cake time.

Does your family have any special celebration recipes?

Chocolate Cake
1 cup/285g sugar
1 egg
1 Tbsp golden syrup
125g butter
2 cups/300g flour
4 Tbsp/20g cocoa
2 tsp/8g baking powder
300ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp/5g baking soda

Preheat oven to 160 C. Grease a 22cm cake tin.

Cream butter, sugar, golden syrup and eggs together. Add flour, cocoa and baking powder and mix briefly to combine (it doesn't have to be fully mixed, and will look crumbly).

Warm milk, vanilla essence and baking soda in microwave for about 2 minutes, and then gradually beat into the rest of the mix just until the batter is smooth.

Pour the batter into the cake tin. Bake for about 40 minutes until the cake springs back if gently pressed or a knife or skewer comes out without goo (it doesn't have to be clean - so long as any crumbs that come out are cooked).

Ice using ganache, cream cheese icing or whatever suits.

Note: this recipe can easily be doubled - in fact I've halved it because the original makes such a big cake. If you do, I recommend using two 26cm tins and baking in layers, with cook time of around 30-35 minutes. You can do the layers one after the other if you only have one tin - just remember to regrease it in between. 

If you cook it in one layer it will take a lot longer to cook - around an hour - and the edges will likely end up a little dry, which can be overcome by drizzling with sugar syrup or just by ensuring lashings of icing. 

You can also use different size tins but cooking time will vary and a larger tin will make a flatter cake. It also makes great cupcakes; the recipe above makes 18 cupcakes, which take 15-18 minutes at 180 C to bake. 

A quick and dirty (clean?) laundry makeover

Along with the wardrobe for our master bedroom, we also got shelving systems for our laundry and the Little Monkey's room at the same time. We bought from Wardrobes Direct, and we found the pricing extremely good compared to the options at the big hardware stores, and there were more colour options and the shelves are custom made to size.

You know it's not good when this is the best a real estate photographer can do...

The laundry is very far down our to-do list. It has some moisture issues, since the bright spark who built it thought it was a good idea to use the retaining wall behind the house as the back wall without any kind of moisture barrier. Therefore there's a possibility that we'll need to pull it to bits entirely at some point, but there was no venting for the dryer (and no clothesline) when we moved in, so we're biding our time in case the issues aren't as severe as they first looked.

We don't use the cupboards because they're actually the retaining 

wall and therefore quite damp - hence the mess on the right! 

In the meantime it was not only a giant mess, but also not very child safe. Which was a shame, since watching the washing machine and dryer in action is apparently super entertaining for small people.

I didn't get any action shots, but assembly of these shelving systems is pretty easy (even easier when your walls are sarking - no need to use gib anchors or search out studs). There's a top rail which gets screwed on, then vertical hangers which hook onto the rail and then also get screwed onto the wall. Then you just hook the shelf brackets onto the hangers, place the shelves and screw them on so they won't budge.

Then we had to shift the clothes airer, as it was in the space now occupied by shelves. This involved unscrewing the hooks from the ceiling, shifting them into their new location (these do want to go into ceiling battens if possible because of the weight when loaded), and then adjusting the string so that it still hangs level. This last part is the fiddliest bit but is mostly just trial and error.

The airer now hangs over the door, which means if we load it up at the door end we can't close the door, but that's fine - we tend to just use it for the odd non-dryer-proof thing, and when I get my proper clothesline there'll be much less drying things inside (can't wait!).

I couldn't turn on the light for the after photo because it was inadvertently disconnected by the sparky... One step at a time! 

So here's the end result - it's not super flash, but it does make it a lot easier to do a load of laundry, and also to locate our various cleaning products whilst keeping them away from little fingers. And being able to hang shirts instead of stuffing them into an ironing bin should make everyone's favourite chore slightly less awful.

Laundry storage
Budget: $150
Timeframe: 1.5 hours
Who did the work: Me and my dad
Actual cost: $135
Learnings: We should have done this ages ago because it makes doing laundry easier and it was very quick!

Ti Kouka: The Cake Family's Favourite Cafe

Ti Kouka is my favourite cafe. It's the best. It's like my second family. And they have great food.

When I was working in corporate land my office was just a few doors away, and so I would make a regular morning pilgrimage to get a hot chocolate and a scone (I don't drink coffee).

Their hot chocolates are magnificent - they feature some kind of magical spice blend which takes it far beyond what you expect from a cafe hot chocolate. Every time I get one of these delicious beverages the first sip is like coming home and sinking into a comfy sofa.

Their scones are always good, too, buttery and light. They usually have three or four flavours including a couple of cheese variants, but my pick is the date and caramel one. You have to be in early for them, though!

If a lunch date is more your thing a side of chips is pretty much required. You probably won't need the extra food but you do need to try these triple-cooked beauties. They come with ketchup, harissa and aioli so your sauce preferences should be covered, and they are impossibly fluffy inside while being crunchy and perfect outside. I have been know to skip the main menu and just have chips (in fact, Little Monkey is probably about 50% made of these chips, considering how many of them he made me eat before he was born).

Last time I was there for lunch I had the TK platter, which varies from day to day but is a generous array of all sorts of pickles and morsels along with plenty of Leeds St Bakery bread to schmear and dip.

These days my best shot at getting to TK is if I convince Mr Cake we're in need of a weekend family brunch outing. It's not a hard sell - usually I suggest it and he vehemently agrees. Or he suggests it and I vehemently agree. Either way, it's our go to.

They're pretty good at looking after (and doting on) the Little Monkey - they don't have a kids menu as such but are very happy to adapt to suit, so we usually just ask for a piece of bread and some jam for him. And for the grown-ups - well, there are heaps of delicious options on the brunch menu, but if pancakes are available I'm having pancakes! The specimens above are from our most recent brunch a week or so back, and featured candied mandarin, marscapone and a side of maple syrup (because all good cafes serve the maple syrup on the side so you can decide how much to pour). Mr Cake opted for the scaled up version, which added mandarin marmalade and bacon for a couple of dollars extra.

I reckon these guys do the best pancakes in Wellington (happy to test that assertion but I'm yet to find any that come close) and they change up the menu pretty regularly. Honorable mentions of the past go to the gingerbread pancakes (glory!) and the caramelised banana pancakes which came with chocolate pouring sauce and praline.

So basically, an all round rave review. I struggle to find anything bad to say about them - probably the worst thing is that their awesomeness is the worst-kept secret in Wellington so they tend to be pretty busy, so it pays to book if you're going at a peak time.

Do you have a favourite cafe that's like a second home to you?


Ti Kouka Cafe is located upstairs at 76 Willis Street, Wellington, phone 04 472 7682, www.tikouka-cafe.co.nz.

DIY - a rustic barn door

One of things we've done to this old house of ours is move a bunch of doors. The configuration of the main living areas (particularly the kitchen) weren't at all conducive to the family life we want (and perhaps also the desired lives of all the other people who viewed the property in the nine months or so that it was on the market!).

My amateur plans showing the original door locations and the proposed changes.

The kitchen was at the back of the house, in a small room which doesn't get much natural light. Because it was the kitchen it had doors to everywhere off it - the entrance passage, a bedroom, the dining room and the bathroom/laundry passage.

We've turned the old kitchen into a guest bedroom, so it now only has one door - which meant we had to create some new doorways as well.

The tiny doorway into the passage.

The trickiest of these was into the bathroom/laundry passage. The doorway is from the dining room, but the passage itself is quite narrow so there's not a lot of room for a door, and putting a pre-hung door (as we used elsewhere) into that hole would have made it narrower still. The discovery of some weirdly-configured studs in the corner, losing us another 50mm or so, put the nail in the coffin of Plan A.

We couldn't put a cavity slider in without wrecking a wall that otherwise didn't need to be touched - so instead of doing something unobtrusive and subtle we decided to make it a glaring feature, by sourcing an oversized feature door and installing it with an industrial looking barn slider track. Obviously.

We wanted a door that was quite tall - our walls are 2.7m tall, and to make a good feature we figured the door needed to be in scale with that - and wide. We figured the best place to start looking was at building recycling places, since the size we wanted would likely cost a bomb new, and with the rustic hardware we can accommodate some pre-wear.

Wellington's building recycling places didn't turn up anything big enough, but my Dad went through some Christchurch yards (which are enjoying some good times right now - if you're doing any work in Canterbury it's definitely worth looking at secondhand for your building materials!). He found a couple of good options, and after checking out photos and getting measurements we chose a 2180mm x 1100mm tongue and groove beauty.

It cost $295 so still not cheap - but cheaper than new.

The track is from Sopers Macindoe, and was $317 (though the price on their website currently is a lot higher - maybe look out for specials?). It came with all the bits and pieces and not only looks pretty flash but runs like a dream so I think worthwhile.

We had to wait for the door to make its pilgrimage north, well-wrapped and perched atop a motorhome, before we could install it. It arrived this week, and the installation only took around an hour.

It's a two person job - I don't think it would be possible to hold the rail up and bolt it in at the same time - but pretty straightforward.

Some slightly scruffy looking but strongly fixed pieces of timber provide the anchoring we need

The trickiest part is making sure your wall is strong enough. Ideally all five fixings along the track would go into studs. We knew we could make sure the two above the door had strong fixings because the back of that wall is still unlined, so we added a couple of extra bits of timber in behind. Unfortunately only one of the the remaining three bolts went into a stud - but our walls have sarking behind the gib, so we tried our luck and found that it felt very secure - luckily, as I wasn't keen to take the wall linings off!

You do need to put the stops on before you attach the track (and in the right place... Ask me how I know!) but otherwise it's just a matter of measuring, drilling and bolting the thing up. 

Prepping the door involved making a groove along the bottom - a couple of runs of the circular saw sorted that out - and attaching the runners to the top. And then the bit that runs along the groove in the bottom of the door needs to be screwed to the floor.

Once everything is fixed in place the door is lifted onto the tracks, and a couple of wee bracing knobs (see above, just below the runner) get turned to sit under the track and screwed in to prevent it jumping.

A before photo from a couple of months ago - slightly different vantage point but you get the idea

And voila! We have a pretty cool-looking door.

We were planning to paint it white, but now that we've seen the door in the flesh (and in our house) we're leaning towards refinishing the wood. There are a couple of holes from its previous life that will need plugging, but I think that'll add to the rustic charm. What do you think? Do you like the wood or would you go for a fresh white?

Birthday season and my top 5 cake recipes

I see that Stuff is warning us that our wallets are about to take a thrashing, because the heaviest birthday season of the year is imminent.

I knew this actually, because a) I am one of these peak-birthday babies (though my birthday is only the 21st most popular day of the year, it does fall within the 19 September - 1 October window) and b) we are total nerds and looked at birthday frequency for the Little Monkey's birth announcement (his is 348th on the list - we were going for niche).

Anyway, in light of the season I though perhaps it'd be helpful to share my five favourite cake recipes, in case you want to make someone feel special.

1. Kumara and ginger cake

I made this one for my birthday one year and it was a winner (even if it doesn't look like much).

It's flavoursome and pseudo-healthy, and really quick to put together. If you want you can jazz it up with cream cheese icing, or shower with icing sugar and leave as-is. Either way, it's delicious.

2. Chocolate nemesis torte

This is about the opposite of the kumara ginger number - dense, very rich, definitely not healthy (but who looks for that in cake anyway) - this is a rock-your-socks-off kind of cake. This is serious dessert cake, and must be served with ice-cream. And preferably also salted caramel sauce.

3. Caramel cake with brown butter icing

This caramel cake is more of a production, and requires attention to detail, but your efforts will be rewarded. The brown butter icing in particular is worth the process - I hadn't fully appreciated the glory of butter before I made this cake. 

Definitely for the sweet-toothed, I recommend starting with small slices!

4. Chocolate carrot cake

For a bit of a twist, combine two of the most popular cake flavours and what do you get? This glorious confection! Like most veg-based cakes it's pretty much guaranteed to be moist, but the chocolate pushes it to a whole new level. And - bonus - it's a chuck-everything-in-a-bowl-and-mix kind of affair. Easy!

5. Bienenstich / Bee sting cake

And now for something completely different - this German recipe is really more bread than cake, but the combination of rich custard filling and sticky nut topping means it's going to be eaten as cake so I reckon it counts. 

Despite the technicality I'd be pretty happy to be presented with one of these on my birthday... So who's baking? ;-) 

So tell me - are you a peak birthday baby? And what cake would you like for your next birthday? 

Lavish cherry chocolate meringues

Last week the Little Monkey's Gran came to visit for a couple of days, and she loves meringues. I had some egg whites in the fridge we needed to use up, so it all just seemed to slot into place.

The awesome thing about this recipe is that it appears decadent (and in fact you could easily pay $4+ for one of these beauties in any number of great cafes around the country) but the recipe is no trickier than your bog standard afternoon tea meringues of yesteryear. Which is to say, if you can whip egg whites you can make it. 

It takes about 10 minutes to put together, and around 75 minutes to bake, so although it's not an insta-dessert there's not a lot of working time (well, assuming you have some kind of electric beater - if you're using a whisk it may take a little longer).

It does rely heavily on freeze-dried fruit, which is a bit of a specialty but easy enough to track down if you know where to look (and well worth looking for). I used the Fresh As stuff, which is readily available from specialty food stores (mine is from Moore Wilson's) or you can buy it online. At about $10 a bag it's not cheap, but it packs a powerful flavour punch and lasts for yonks in the fridge.

The fruit goes in whole and the chocolate I coarsely chopped, so there were plenty of big chunks. 

I split the batch in two and tried both raspberries and cherries, but the raspberries were prone to getting stuck in teeth, which made cherries the preferred option of my tasting panel. You could sub in a different fruit if you prefer, though - so long as whatever you use is dehydrated so that moisture isn't introduced to the meringue it should be fine.

Baking meringues is basically just an exercise in evaporation - these turn out a little chewy, which I love, but if you like a dryer, more brittle meringue bake them for longer.


To serve, we had a generous two meringues each, with a bit of cream whipped with vanilla bean paste. And it was delicious. The meringues are slightly chewy and very flavourful. If you prefer unchewy you can bake them for a while longer.

What flavour combo do you think would work well? Are you a meringue fan?

Recipe adapted from BBC Good Food

Baking Basics: whipping egg whites

I realised the other day that though I post heaps of recipes in the hopes that you can share in the deliciousness, some of them have techniques in them that aren't necessarily obvious, so I've decided to do a series on some of the basics of baking.

For many of you I'm sure this is second nature (though you might be able to offer extra tips that I've skipped), but not everyone has a chance to learn this stuff, so I figured before I go sharing the incredible cherry chocolate meringues we scoffed over the weekend perhaps I should run through how to whip your egg whites up.

Fat is the enemy of fluffy egg whites, so its important to ensure that your beaters and bowl are good and clean. They will whip up a bit quicker in a stainless steel bowl, whereas plastic, whilst it'll work, can be a bit slower.

These trusty beaters have produced many delicious pavlovas

I use electric hand beaters, but a stand mixer makes the job even easier (just watch closely), and a rotary hand beater or whisk will do the trick as well, with a bit more effort on your part.

It's best if your eggs are at room temperature, so if you keep them in the fridge its better if you take them out a couple of hours ahead of using them. Slightly old egg whites are more stable, which is good news if you made custard a few days ago and haven't used the whites yet, but freshly cracked is fine.

Do make sure there is no trace of yolk. I prefer to separate eggs with a three bowl system - one bowl for the white of the egg I'm working on, one for yolks, and one to transfer the whites into once successfully separated. This means if you break a yolk and it gets mixed up with the white you can set that egg aside (omelette for lunch, perhaps?) but the rest of your egg whites remain usable.

Ready? Fire up your beaters!

 

There are a few different stages in this process. The gentlest stage is when the egg whites are foamy and bubbly but don't hold their shape at all.

Then there's soft peaks, which means when you take the beater out of the bowl a soft peak will form, but after a few seconds will sink back into oblivion. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of this because multi-tasking distracted me at the key moment. Sorry!

Firm peaks stand up when you remove the beater but soon flop over onto the rest of the fluff.

And finally, stiff peaks are, well, stiff peaks.

You can go too far; the egg whites will lose their gloss and look almost grainy (mine above are on the brink - if you look at the edge of the bowl you can see it's beginning to lose its gloss). Evidently adding an extra unbeaten egg white can redeem you if this happens, but I haven't tried it so can't vouch for this trick.

Once beaten, egg whites are not stable so you need to beat them as you need them, They can be set aside for a few minutes, but if you try to do as I once did and prep the ingredients, then go out for a couple of hours and come back to put together your dish... Well, it might not end so well.

Adding sugar makes them more stable. Depending on what you're making, sugar is added at different stages, too - for my meringues the egg whites need to be at the stiff peak stage first but different recipes have different techniques (e.g. macarons, which you only beat until foamy before adding sugar). Generally it does need to be gradually incorporated, though, to ensure it can fully dissolve. You don't need to spend years on this step, just beat for a few seconds (3-5) between each spoonful of sugar.

And there you have it! Beautiful glossy meringue.

I'd love to know if there are any techniques you'd like me to cover here - and also if you have any extra tips if you're an egg white pro. And check back tomorrow for the meringue recipe - I mentioned the chocolate, right? ;-)