Gingerbread men and Zucchini muffins

So hot today! Too hot for baking, but you gotta do what you gotta do!

I spent some time today looking for good recipes to make for this weekend. I am so lucky - I get to attend my cousin's wedding back home (W.A) this weekend WITHOUT children!!! The kids are going to Popeye's sister's place. G is a single mother like me, so I don't think it is fair that she has to feed 3 extra mouths out of her own pocket. So I was looking for easy food to make for dinner and lunch for Saturday and Sunday. While admiring all the food porn on the internet I came across 2 recipes I wanted to try. Gingerbread cut out cookies and Zucchini Cake are both from the ppk.

I made both of them while the kids were at school, but left it until they got home to cut out the shapes of the cookies (Popeye bought me some cookie cutters a while back and this is the first time we have been able to use them!). I waited until later still to turn on the oven. Once the biscuits were cooled, the kids set about having some fun icing them.

They are delicious!

It's funny because a few days ago I told the kids that we weren't going to be baking like this anymore because there are so many raw healthy options we can choose and YM made a point of reminding me of this! I needed to explain to my nearly 9 year old (going on 29) that I had made them to take to G's house - which, it turns out, is fine by him!

The zucchini cake I turned into muffins. I thought these would be handy on the plane for my trip to Perth early Saturday morning. The rest can go in the freezer for lunches. The are not really sweet, but good for a breakfast muffin. I slightly changed the recipe and used a couple of heaped teaspoons of organic cacao powder instead of the chocolate bits. Also, in hindsight, I would not ground up the walnuts into a powder but rather leave the pieces chunky as I like that in my muffins.

I may not post for a couple of days and I will be enjoying the company of my small family (some rellies have even flown from NZ - most of my rellies still live there). Maybe I'll just take some photos and post them tomorrow of what I make for G and her 2 boys and my 3 ferals! I hope she survives the weekend in one piece :)

48 hours of freedom here I come...

Tahn