Tip: colouring fondant red

I love working with fondant when it comes to making my kids' cakes. It's kind of like year nine art class all over again, and despite my reluctance to start a new project, I always come away feeling ok about my efforts as a mummy who decorates!

Red fondant is a tricky one, though. Where we live it has to be ordered and sent and as I am a last minute kind of girl, who have birth to similarly last minute kind of children (I want a train cake...no - Yoda... hang on, I think I want a red ninja cake... or...) I just never get my act together in time to do anything as grown up as ordering ahead. Plus, I am a Scrooge and like to keep things cheap and cheerful where possible.

So... having made both Mater Truck and a Red Power Ranger Samurai cake this year, I thought I'd share my secret to 'el cheapo' red fondant icing.

Paint it.

As in with a paint brush.

Easy, isn't it? I use a watercolour brush and red food colouring and have found that two quick coats gives a beautiful sheen - and limits the amount of red colouring your little munchkins will ingest (not a fan of all those E numbers or hyper kids).

Breakfast for Dinner... part 2

When 'daddy' works late, I often stick to simple cooking. I know it sounds awful, but if I have no adult audience I lower the bar a little bit. Is that awful?

Anyway, because I pride myself on serving my children nutritious (if sometimes unconventional) meals, this meal has become a favourite of mine - and Mr Z's!

Cheap, easy and nutritious, straight from the Lazy Mother's Handbook! (That's the term I use to refer to my shortcuts)


Special Scrambled Eggs

Ingredients: eggs, 1/2 cup of diced/grated vegetables per egg.

(this recipe is just an example of what you can use and serves 3, you can use whatever you have in your fridge)

6 eggs
1 large carrot, grated
1 medium onion, fine diced
2 mushrooms, fine diced
1/2 tomato, diced (or handful of cherry tomatoes cut in half)
handful of frozen corn
2 rashers of bacon diced
1/4 cup of grated cheese
olive oil

1. Fry onion and carrot until softened in a small amount of oil.
2. Remove from pan, fry bacon bits
3. Add onion and carrot back to pan, add other vegetables and stir until they are warmed through.
4. Crack eggs into the pan, keep stirring until eggs are cooked
5. Add cheese and remove from heat
6. Serve


If you need to bulk it up a bit, you can add precooked rice to the mix.

School holiday fun

This is the first time we'll be spending more than a week at home in over six months. No school, no work, absolutely nothing to do... hooray!

I have all sorts of things to mend, sort and tidy but we'll also make time for some holiday fun :) Filling two weeks seemed a bit daunting until I asked the kids what to do with sixteen days at home. Here is the list we made:

* newspaper craft - pirate hats and boats (Dunno where she saw this, but I love it cos it's cheap!)
* jewelry making (the plastic bead and elastic type)
* pet rocks
* face painting
* grocery shopping (*Mr Z* came up with this one! Again, cheap and cheerful, who knew they were so easily pleased?)
* sewing a dress (am thinking a pillowcase dress will be simple enough to make together)
* find a new playground to play in
* Sleepover at Nana and Papa's (hooray! We can have some kid-free time)
* treasure hunt in the backyard
* golf (Daddy can take them to the driving range and I might have a nap!)
* open a cafe on our balcony
* get haircuts (it seems I won't even need to bribe them)
* build a city with lego and wooden train tracks
* have a fire in our backyard (if it ever stops raining)
* movie night in our PJs
* Masterchef -ing (more about that later)

Can't wait to start ticking things off the list!