Alexandra Tylee, the owner of Pipi Café, a little pink building in Havelock North, wrote this gorgeous cookbook for children and for families to cook from together. Filled with the kind of food we like to eat now, mostly plant based, it includes plenty of gluten free, dairy free and vegan options.
Egg & Spoon begins with recipes which would be perfect for indulgent weekend breakfasts. What child would not want to start the day with strawberry chocolate toasted muesli, or a healthy popsicle made with layers of chia jam, natural yoghurt, and muesli?
Breakfast is followed by chapters on baking and puddings, in-between meals, foraging, smaller meals, larger meals, and celebrations. The recipes range from very basic (how to boil an egg /make a vegan chia egg) to more challenging celebratory treats like a chocolate and strawberry frozen roulade.
Sprinkled throughout the book are basic skills such as how to keep safe, chop an onion, fold ingredients and melt chocolate.
We had fun trying out some of the recipes:
The Roast blueberry and banana ice-cream, made in a flash in the food processor with just 3 ingredients, frozen bananas, blueberries, and maple syrup turned a striking purplish-red and was irresistible!
Teriyaki Salmon on Sticks. The Asian marinade made with ginger, garlic, soya sauce, mirin, maple syrup and olive added a delicious sticky sweet and savoury flavour to the salmon. Cutting it into small squares and threading it onto bamboo skewers was fun to do.
Avocado and Corn Tacos: We loved this quick and healthy dinner made with the news season’s avocados.
The gluten free Cauliflower pizza base. We did not quite manage to achieve the crispy pizza base hoped for. But as it remained flexible, we simply filled it with grated cheese and smashed avocado and turned it into a family size sandwich.
The chocolate rice bubble recipe is a new twist on an old favourite, made with rice bubbles, coconut oil, maple syrup and dark chocolate. Alexandra suggests you can add anything else you like such as seeds, marshmallows, dried fruit, or nuts.
I really like the way she encourages children to be adventurous and to throw out the rules.
‘If you feel like adding a bit of this and some of that then I say go for it. That’s how you learn what works and what doesn’t’ she says.
The recipes in Egg & Spoon are inexpensive, tasty, creative, and fun to make. And the playful illustrations by Giselle Clarkson add greatly to its appeal. It is a great cookbook to make children excited about cooking.
Reviewer: Lyn Potter
Gecko Press, RRP $39.99