Another Saturday in the life of Shazz has come and gone, yet again.  A reasonably quiet day, a voting day and a cooking day.

No babysitting today, I didn't have to be up early and yet 7.00 am comes and sleep is gone so up I get. I sneak around making coffee so that I don't wake my kids up.  I love a nice peaceful first coffee of the day.
8.00 am arrives and so do the kids. That signals my departure for the kitchen. Let's get the cooking started.

I had seen a recipe earlier in the week for mint fudge made with mint, not peppermint, mint extract. Never heard of it, never seen it. But aside from that the recipe was easy.  Of course I'm going to change it a bit.
So peppermint choc swirl fudge it is. Easy as pie, melted white chocolate, condensed milk, PEPPERMINT essence, green food colouring and dark choc chips. Into a tin and into the fridge. I licked the spoon...as you do.. yum. Set it for a couple of hours and try not to eat it.

After making the tim tam balls last week with the dark chocolate and red velvet, I decided to make some with the tim tam original.  The kids ate the last lot so fast but then they were pretty good.

Apparently I have the taste for peppermint this week because I figured if I could use tim tams, I could use mint slice biscuits and make balls out of them the same way. But of course I don't have the biscuits, so I need to shop, and because it's our State Election day, I'll vote on the way. Our lucky day, no queues at the polling booth or the supermarket so home pretty quick. So I blitz up the biscuits and stir in the condensed milk, roll the balls and to be a bit different let's  put green coconut on them.

So that was the morning gone. I have a cuppa, the man's out mowing the lawn, the kids are helping and my brain's ticking over thinking about dessert. We are barbecuing again for tea so not much thought needed there. I was just going to make a coca cola cake and then had a change of mind, sort of. Chocolate caramel cheesecake cake. I made the coca cola cake. That involves bringing to boil, butter, oil, cocoa and coca cola and adding that mix to flour and sugar then adding in milk, eggs, vanilla and bicarb soda. That gets poured into a swiss roll tin and cooked for about 25 minutes.( the actual recipe is on a page  here a fair way back)

While that was cooking, I made an onion dip .  So easy. 1 packet maggi onion soup mix(powder) and 300 mls sour cream. Mix together and refrigerate till needed.

Once the cake was cooling I figured I better clean up before everyone arrives. Got that out of the way, and took what I thought was a well earned rest.
Number five son, miss Tash and the chunky one arrive, where did that time go. Miss Tash bought the cream cheese I forgot to buy, with her, so back to the kitchen to make the caramel cheesecake to grace the middle of my cake.  I microwaved the 2 tubs of cheese for 40 seconds to soften it up then I beat the cheese and then beat in caramel top and fill.  That needs to go into the fridge for about an hour.
Lizzy Lou and the kids arrive and while we wait for hubby to finish what he's doing and cook tea, I bring out the dip.

That gets demolished in about 5 minutes so I send the man out to cook the barbie while I make the salad.
We eat and I head back to the kitchen to finish off the cake. I quickly make some chocolate icing, cut the cake in half, place a piece on a plate, cover it with the caramel cheesecake, put the other piece on top, ice it and cover it with strawberries. I whip some cream and dessert is served.

We couldn't fit in the rest, so I have lots of chocolate balls and some fudge to munch on for the next week.

Last week I made some really easy vanilla slice with passionfruit icing and vanilla strawberry two tone slice.
I had actually made it for last Saturday nights tea but didn't get a pic I was happy with (new camera) so I added it this week. They are made with sao biscuits, instant pudding mix and thickened cream. The two tone one is my own design lol.

So thats that. Tomorrow's another day.....