What do you do when you realise you should cut back on sugar before all your teeth fall out? Me - I make a batch of muffins of the banana and chocolate chip variety.
I work in a public library and I was shelving some books a few weeks back in our extensive recipe book collection and this book My Smoko Break by Hayley Maudsley caught my eye.
This book brings together more than 200 of Hayley's recipes. Hayley has a Facebook page called My Smoko Break which has more than 120,000 followers. Flicking through her book what drew me in was her stories about life as a mum living in rural Queensland, Australia which are scattered through the book in between her recipes.
Most times it's the photographs of the dishes of food that make me pick up a recipe book but there are no pictures or images in this book and I reckon it works. There's a lot of colour in Hayley's storytelling, her handy tips and tricks as well as her recipes. The book features recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as smoko, dessert, special occasions and cooking with kids.
I have a stack of recipe books at home and MasterChef Australia is my absolute favourite TV show. I'm often asked by my nearest and dearest why I don't use those recipe books more, why I can't cook like the contestants on said cooking show or like my sisters who are both amazing cooks. My answer is four-fold 1) There are too many ingredients, 2) The dishes look too difficult 3) They take too long to prepare and 4) Fear it won't turn out right.
The recipes in My Smoko Break look relatively easy and I tested one by making a batch of banana and chocolate chip muffins. Easy as! Delicious too! I think I'm going to try the Chicken Curry in the Slow Cooker recipe next!
