RECIPE .......................................... Photo by Chloë King ....76....
RECIPE .......................................... Foodini Club Postal cookery kits for kids Anyone who has watched a child lose interest in a magazine as soon as the plastic tat is ripped off the cover knows many kids’ activities offer little bang for your buck. The surprising joy of Foodini Club, therefore, is the sheer quantity of fun it provides - starting with the old-fashioned delight of having a parcel delivered. Foodini Club are a <strong>Brighton</strong> start-up offering beautifully presented products to help parents and kids aged 4+ get adventurous in the kitchen, for £3.75-£15 a month. Their range includes a Recipe Card Club, double and single local subscriber boxes with store-cupboard ingredients, and a postal kit containing dry ingredients. My six-year-old daughter Saoirse and I are trying one of their quarterly seasonal specials containing four autumnal recipes, preweighed ingredients for two tasty snacks and a bonus craft activity. We begin by taking a trip to South Farm in Rodmell to pick pumpkins, which gets us even more excited about cooking our veg. Back at home we sacrifice one, Saoirse scooping the seeds and me carving. All the recipes in our kit - two savoury, two sweet – use roast pumpkin puree, so while our pumpkin cooks, we do some drawing. Saoirse is inspired by the cute Foodini Club illustrations and decides to create her own stepby-step instructions. After that, her attention turns to the pack’s craft activity and we make paper pumpkins out of card and pipe-cleaners that double up as perfect Christmas baubles. This occupies us until tea time, so we’ve already enjoyed more entertainment than a standard recipe would provide. We blend the roasted pumpkin and, satisfied with our work, put it in the fridge for later. The next day Saoirse chooses to cook the ‘Pumperolls’ - a version of the Scandi classic cinnamon rolls with grated apple, pumpkin and maple syrup. It’s a more complex recipe than I would usually choose to make with her, but we get on great. Here’s how to cook them: Grate one apple, mix with 60g pumpkin puree, 1tsp cinnamon, ½tsp ground ginger, 3tbsp maple syrup, and cook over low heat for 15 minutes. Warm 120ml milk with 50g butter or oil, add 1tsp of fast action yeast, 3tbsp maple syrup and leave to bubble for ten minutes. Combine your dry ingredients – 150g plain flour, 130g wholewheat flour, 1tsp cinnamon, ¼tsp nutmeg, ½tsp salt – with another 60g of pumpkin puree and the milk mixture. Stir to a dough and turn onto a floured worktop. Knead for five minutes, return to a bowl, cover and leave to double in size for about 45 minutes. Roll the risen dough on a floured worktop into a large rectangle about 1cm thick and spread the spiced pumpkin mixture all over. Roll into a long sausage, slice into 8-10 rounds and arrange on a lined baking sheet. Turn your oven to 180°C and leave the rolls to rise for 20 mins while it heats. Bake for 20 mins or until golden, turn onto a wire rack to cool and glaze with a little more syrup before gobbling them up. “They’re yummy, scrummy diddly-umptious,” says Saoirse. Chloë King foodiniclub.co.uk ....77....