Successful...and not so much!

I have tried another of Mary-Anne's recipes recently - her Apple Crumble Cheesecake bars. They are essentially the raspberry oat slices which I have made previously, but with fruit puree instead of jam and a cheesecake layer in the middle. They are very lovely...although I did manage to use my food processor, blender (for the puree) and Kitchen Aid all in one sitting so pretty heavy on machinery. But that may just be because I'm lazy! Here's her recipe, and my photo...

You will see that her bars appear to have a thinner layer of cheesecake than mine...I put this down to her using her favourite 20cmx25cm tin, whereas I stuck to my 20cmx20cm tin...

Then today I tried out a new couple of dishes for dinner. Now my boys (my sons that is, I am not including Leigh in this!) are not the most adventurous of eaters - that is, they like what they know and they know what they like! Leo has always been better at trying new things than Zachary and it has taken us a good while to expand our usual run of dinners out from beans on toast, homemade chicken burgers and homemade fish cakes. There are now a reasonable variety of dinners which we can all share and don't make Leigh and I feel as though we're eating the same 7 dinners every week (although toad in the hole and tuna pasta bake feature quite frequently!).

This has led to us not really trying new dinners any more, or at least if they are new, basing them around a staple which the boys like and will eat readily. So the Good Food magazines we get each month are mainly used by us for the cakes and treats, and sometimes bread. I regularly tell myself that I will try to cook one new dinner each week and I regularly fail at this. But tonight I took the bull by the horns and we had sweetcorn and sweet potato burgers with courgette fritters; the reasoning being that the boys like sweetcorn and they can eat the burger buns if the burgers are not popular, and they like pancakes - the fritters are basically just savoury pancakes with courgette in them.

Well, the burgers tasted great (thanks to Leigh who put them together yesterday) but were still an incredibly soft consistency even after being in the fridge overnight so it was a bit like eating mashed potato in a bun. But not a disaster, and the fritters were good too (despite the fact I forgot to season them...sweet chilli dipping sauce anyone?).

Leo managed a fritter (admittedly it was with a BBQ sauce dip...) and a couple of mouthfuls of the burger, although he did announce when he saw it that he didn't like potatoes. Our usual tactic with this is to tell them that it's just the middle of chips and that has had some limited success. Not tonight. Zachary wore his "I'm only eating this because there might be some pudding in the offing if I do" face for the entire meal (except when he was eating the bread), rubbing his eyes constantly as if to emphasise the effort he was making with a dinner which was really not all that nice. He had a couple of bites, but pretty much gave up when he heard there was to be no pudding tonight. Oh well, at least he's getting past the stage where he tries something new, claims to like it and then when he's presented with it a second time, looks really pained at having to eat it!

So, fritters worth a go for a second time (Leigh and me only!), burgers probably not so - tasted good, but consistency just too soft. Onwards and upwards!