We used to live just outside the village,
in a new built house that saw 3 successive extensions in 10 years. To accomodate our growing family: 4 girls NEED a lot of room. There's all the clothes, the dress up stuff, the riding gear, the magazines, the pushbikes, the "grocery store" (ALL pink of course...yeuck! 
) with all the boxes of supplies carefully kept and cellotaped by mum, and so on.
One great thing about growing up with 3 sisters is that you always have someone to fight play with
If we weren't rollerskating the length of the balcony (which went all the way alongside the house), cashing strange foreign coins on the old till dad salvaged from a closing butcher's shop, or following clues hidden in trees around the garden to retrieve our afternoon snack (I know, we had a cruel cool babysitter), we'd be...either playing "muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum...I'm BO-RED" or cooking!
We all have a sweet tooth, so the cooking was more often than not a pudding of some sort. Creatures of habit, we'd normally do the same recipe again and again for a while, then move on to our next new favourite. One of those favourites was a "3 flavours cream"- vanilla, coffee and chocolate (what else!). It's very simple to make, the tricky bit is assembling it: you need to pour all 3 custards into a large bowl at the same time. they kind of hold ungainst each other making a perfectly kitsch 3 colour dessert.
I'll make one next time I have "3 hands" in the kitchen to add a photo (might be a while, not sure I can count on Tom yet?). But here's the recipe: chocolate cream: 30g of cornflour, 1/4 l of milk, 150g of chocolate. Melt the chocolate in a bain marie (in a bowl sitting over a pan of boiling water). Remove from the hob when all melted. Mix the cornflour with a few tablespoons of milk to start with then add all the remaining milk. Pour in a pan, heat up and add the chocolate little by little. Keep whisking until you reach boiling point. Remove from the gas. Coffee cream: 30g of corn flour, 1/4l milk, 1 expresso cup of very strong coffee, 80g of caster sugar, 10g of butter. Mix the cornflour with a little milk then all the remaining ingredients except the butter. Bring to boiling point whisking all the time. Remove from the hob, add the butter and stir until melted. Vanilla cream: 30g of cornflour, 1/4l of milk, 60g of caster sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 10g of butter. Same principle as for the coffee cream, replacing the coffee by the vanilla.
When all 3 creams are ready and still warm, pour all 3 in a large deep bowl. You must pour all 3 at the same time so they hold against each other creating a tri color pudding. Refrigerate overnight and enjoy. Yummm! That recipe comes from one of my oldest cooking book "100 desserts, 50 trucs", like the quatre-quart recipe , another really easy one to make with kids.
coming soon: Broadoaks Pig Farm, Funny Face breakfasts and Wiston Tea Rooms
....to be continued.......
