The latest blog post from Suze who has been in the kitchen baking....

A few days ago we arrived back in Switzerland after spending three wonderful weeks in Australia visiting family and friends for Christmas.  As well as the inevitable jet-lag, we were also adjusting to the Winter temperatures after leaving behind in Australia soaring Summer temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius. Now our bodies were in shock: Clearly we needed plenty of sleep (at the right time...), but also some healthy hearty meals to kick us back into the Swiss Winter Spirit!

For some quick, easy and healthy meal-related inspiration, I regularly use the Kids am Tisch App (Kids Am Tisch Website) .  Our two year old daughter is now well and truly in the “fussy eating” stage and therefore I gravitate towards the recipes which are helpfully marked as “Gemüse-Verweigerer” - these recipes provide great and simple ways to incorporate vegetables into meals in a “hidden” way.

Our daughter is a big fan of bread and she does (sometimes) eat sweeter vegetables so I was fairly confident that she would love the Pumpkin Bread recipe that I found on the Kids am Tisch App.  I also liked that this recipe contained only a few ingredients which were all readily available as well as short, easy-to-follow instructions.

Although it was my first time baking bread, thanks to the clear instructions it was easy, requiring just four main steps: 1) cooking the pumpkin and blending it with some butter; 2) adding in the dry ingredients and an egg to form the dough; 3) kneading the dough and leaving it to rest at room temperature for about two hours (thanks to my husband Greg for demonstrating his kneading technique which he uses when baking his delicious hot cross buns for Easter); and 4) baking the dough for around 45 minutes. 

In hardly any time at all the kitchen smelled of lovely freshly home-baked bread.  It was like we had been suddenly transported back to Winter, re-starting our body clocks back into craving Swiss Winter comforting foods, warming all our senses and activating again our appreciation of the Swiss Winter Spirit!  Goodbye to the relaxing Australian scorching hot Summer, and hello to the cosy Swiss snowy Winter! 

The final verdict of the Pumpkin Bread?  My husband and I enjoyed it with a delicious home-made soup, thick with lots of warming and healthy Winter vegetables.  More importantly, our “Gemüse-Verweigerer” toddler couldn’t get enough of “Mummy’s Bread” that evening - a thumbs up from my little hard-to-please food critic!