Recipe for making a super tasty pesto sauce – here’s how to make it yourself:

Ingredients for making the best pesto ever:

• 1 – 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 large bunch of fresh basil , (40g)
• 50 g pine nuts
• 3 tablespoons good quality extra virgin olive oil
• 50 g Parmesan cheese
• A pinch of sea salt

Pesto Making Method
Pick and wash fresh basil leaves (preferably home grown) in cold water and set aside. In a small pan, lightly toast your pine nuts in olive oil on a medium heat for a few minutes. Peel and crush the garlic in a pestle and mortar – Pesto is supposed to be a bit chunky, not super-smooth so it’s best to mash using a pestle and mortar but you can use a blender or food processor instead if you lightly pulse.

Add in the washed basil leaves, extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of sea salt and finely grated Parmesan cheese, using a little water to thin if needed. Then continue grinding and pounding your pesto until the texture is smooth.

Useful Pesto Making Tips

• Pesto will keep for a long time in the refrigerator with a layer of olive oil on top.
• Substitute pricey pine nuts with walnuts or pecans instead. Whichever nut you choose, make sure you toast them first.
• Pesto freezes beautifully. Just fill the trays with pesto and freeze. Once frozen, pop the cubes out and seal them in a freezer bag.

Pesto is so fun and easy to make, you’ll enjoy getting the kids involved especially when they can use it as a wonderful pesto pasta!

This is an amazingly easy Rock Cake Recipe for scrumptious treats in less than 30 minutes. A perfectly simple rock cake recipe suitable for kids (with a tasty coconut twist) makes approximately 12 amazing rock cakes and takes only 20 minutes to cook.

Our kids are always keen to try out their cooking skills and we have adapted this traditional favourite for tasty results.

Rock Cake Ingredient Shopping List

225g self-raising flour
75g caster sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
125g unsalted butter, cut into small pieces but not melted
150g dried fruit (a mixture of mixed peel and currants – or anything you have in the cupboard)
50g desiccated coconut (the extra yummy bit)
1 large free-range egg (preferably home grown!)
1 tablespoon semi-skinned milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Rock cake making method

Step 1. Warm up your oven

Preheat your oven to 180c and line two baking trays with grease proof baking paper.

Step 2. Rock Cake Mix

Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder in a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture forms fine crumbs (or do this in the food processor), then mix in the dried fruit and coconut.Step 3. Beat it!

In a clean bowl, beat the egg and milk together with the vanilla extract.

Step 4. All together now

Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir with a spoon until the mixture just comes together as a thick, lumpy dough.

Step 5. Lick the spoon!

Make golf ball-sized dollops of the mixture onto the prepared baking tray. Leave a decent amount of space between them as they will rise during baking.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden-brown. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for a bit then pop your rock cakes onto a wire rack to cool down.

Remind your parents (and siblings) that the chef gets to lick the spoon AND eats the BIGGEST rock cake!

Everyone loves banana bread and it’s probably a thing at the moment because the global lockdown banana-bread craze makes perfect sense when you consider that bananas are now the world’s number-one fruit.

Bananas are inexpensive, kids like them, banana bread is easy to make and keeps for days. Making banana bread as a means of avoiding food waste isn’t a new idea, it’s the go-to recipe for using up overripe brown bananas. Although banana bread tends to be high in carbs, it can be a source of protein with the right ingredients. Protein is an essential nutrient needed for the growth, repair and recovery of muscle. It also helps to stabilize blood sugar levels.

There’s plenty of mashing and mixing so get the kids involved – you know the results are going to be delicious.

Easy Banana Bread Recipe

Time 90 minutes.

Banana Bread Ingredients

5 medium over ripe bananas
1 ⅔ cup self-raising flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
⅓ cup caster sugar
⅓ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

Banana Bread Baking Method
Preheat your oven to 160C and line a loaf tin with baking paper, this is healthier than greasing the tin with butter.
Mash 3 of the bananas really well and set aside until needed. Chop the remaining two bananas into bite-sized chunks.
Place the self-raising flour, cinnamon, caster sugar, and brown sugar into a kitchen mixing bowl and combine using an electric mixer – adding in the eggs, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, and mashed banana to the bowl with the dry ingredients. Stir in the chunks of the two remaining bananas, these will make for surprising flavouisom bites.

Scoop the banana bread mixture into the prepared lined tin and bake for an hour or until the banana bread is cooked through (a metal skewer inserted into the center should come out clean).

Allow the banana bread to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before carefully turning onto a wire rack to cool down completely.

Banana cake and banana bread have similar tastes, but has a few slight changes in recipe, banana cake is a bit sweeter. Keeping with the usual rules and reputation of cakes, banana cake is meant to be more of a dessert, hence the sweeter taste.Banana bread tips & tricks

Useful Cooking Tips for Banana Bread

• Use overripe bananas, the best bananas for banana bread are overripe bananas that are speckled and half black or dark brown
• If you don’t have ripe bananas for flavour, roast them in the over for a bit to toast the bananas until they are brown
• Inject further flavour the darker the sugar you use the more ‘malty’ your banana bread will taste.
• Banana is the ultimate flexible recipe – add walnuts, chocolate chips – use your imagination!