Looking for a Christmas gift for nieces and nephews? Or any child who's tastes and preferences you're not sure about? You feel like a proper idiot buying a toy for the 'in' TV show only to find it is one they don't like. Something like the Junior Jamie Baking Kit is the perfect alternative, plus you'll win brownie points with the parents (in both senses of the word!). Sainsburys has the Junior Jamie Baking Kit in the half price sale, reduced from £12 to £6. Delivery is free if you can collect at a store, otherwise it is £3.95.

Click here for your Junior Jamie Baking Kit at Sainsburys

Even if they're not interested yet (and truthfully, all kids love cooking when it comes to making cakes and biscuits) you can get little ones interested in cooking, with the Junior Jamie Baking Kit.

There's quite a lot included. You get five metal cookie cutters, a non-stick baking tray, a wooden rolling pin and a printed cotton oven glove. Much better than adding to the massive pile of plastic tat that the kids will be undoubtedly getting on December 25th. This could also make a fabulous stocking filler. My son loves cooking and I'm seriously tempted to get this myself. Problem is he already has a couple of cooking sets of his own!

Thanks to sharonlilley2 at HUKD!

I'm VERY excited about this 9l maslin pan on sale at Amazon for £18.74, instead of £49.95.

• Click HERE to march off with your own maslin pan (Expired)

I've entered a homely, domestic phase!

I can think of nothing I'd rather do than pamper my husband and be busy (in between all the usual work busyness!) in the kitchen making things; this is NOT my usual behaviour.

I made the Christmas cake last week and will be pouring brandy on it, every Wednesday, between now and early December.  NOW, I want to make all sorts of festive chutneys to eat with all the left over cold Christmas meat.

And I want to make JAM; to eat with home-made scones, of course!

I've never made jam in my life (I've never made my own Christmas cake either - I'll let you know how it tastes in 11 weeks or so!) and there's so much fruit around at the moment thanks to the very cold winter, warm spring and wet summer we've had, that apparently, this is a great jam-making season.

SO, I beetled off to find out what equipment I needed and, in the process stumbled across this absolute BARGAIN of a maslin pan.

It has an encapsulated base which is important, apparently, because it provides an even heat distribution when cooking.

It also includes a useful measuring gauge for measuring ingredients and liquids and has a handy pouring spout, sturdy carry handle with easy pour helper handle; awesome.

By all accounts, this sort of thing is rarely cheap so if you're tempted to have a bash at making your own preserves you should order one sooner rather than later.

I've ordered mine!

I received a Mini Cupcake Maker from Kelkooselect, to try my hand at baking mini cupcakes!

Mini cupcakes seem to be really popular lately. I’d never heard of them until the last year or so, but you see them everywhere now! I think it’s maybe a psychological tactic though – thinking you’re only eating a little small cupcake, regardless of the fact that you eat twice as many as a normal sized treat!

The cupcake maker is similar in size and design to a toastie machine. I used the simple batter recipe which was on the instructions of the cupcake maker. I had planned on making quite a few cupcakes so I decided to triple the recipe (having no idea how many it was going to make).

You can use the cupcake maker as it is, simply pouring the batter into the holes. Or, you can choose to use little cupcake cases, which is what I decided to do. I thought it would cut down on the potential mess and make things easier to tidy up.

There was a fair bit of trial and error involved when I first used the cupcake maker. I wasn’t sure exactly how much batter needed to go into the cases, considering they needed room to rise. I also wasn’t really sure how long to leave them in for. The instructions suggested 4 minutes, but I ended up trying a few different lengths and settled on a 7 minute cooking time. I believe the appliance cools slightly with opening and closing between batches, so that’s probably why it needed a bit longer than it said on the destructions.

I feel the size of the cupcake holes is good, and it’s really handy that this is all in one appliance. If I’d just been filling the little cupcake cases and popping them in the oven, I don’t think I would have had as good results. The batter made the little cases spread out, but the cupcake maker shaped the baking batter into the perfect cupcake shape.

I tried out a few different flavours with the cupcake batter. I mixed one little batch with peanut butter, one batch with nutella, one batch with peppermint food colouring. The peanutty cupcakes were lush! I had also bought a cupcake decorating kit from Sainsburys, which came with various icing pens and sprinkles. It was fiddly to decorate the little cupcakes, but they looked like a lot of effort had been put into them. I also cut off the top and filled a few with sugar cream icing, and made them into little butterfly cakes.

In the end, tripling the batter recipe wasn’t a great idea. I made about 70 mini cupcakes, and still had batter left over. It was hard to judge the quantities. But everyone enjoyed the little cupcake treats!

As I had used the cupcake cases, the appliance was really easy to clean when cooled – a little wipe over with some kitchen roll did the trick.

The mini cupcake maker is incredibly pink! That’s not normally the sort of colour I would actually choose for my own kitchen, but I know many people love pink appliances and accessories.

With various kitchen appliances, I sometimes buy something... use it regularly for a couple of months and then it hides in the cupboard for all eternity. I think I will be cracking out the cupcake maker for special occasions though, making special treats for birthdays and Christmas.

(Image credit: modomatic on flickr)

Sometimes cooking for a family is a REAL faff, especially if you're the one doing it all the time.

Culinary inspiration can abandon you, you're bored of cooking the same old things week in week out, month in month out, and dare I say it...YEAR in year out!

Combine that with the life of a parent being a busy one, ferrying kids around here there and everywhere - to gymnastics, to swimming, to karate, to playdates etc, there just isn't time to spend ages in the kitchen.

There are lots of recipe books on the market for making quick meals BUT...not all of them come with an iPhone app (yes, I'm still in app mode).

James McIntosh is an award-winning cookery writer who believes...

"...that anyone can cook a great family dinner costing less than a fiver using everyday groceries.

"I'm here to help you produce fantastic results with an everyday budget and everyday food. I don't believe in fuss, just keeping it simple."

Awesome, that's just the sort of kitchen talk I like to hear; I'm off to see what I can cook for dinner tonight that isn't spaghetti bolognese!

Amazon are currently selling this Breville 3.5 litre slow cooker for half-price; £22.79 instead of £45.99.

• Click HERE to go to Amazon

Slow cookers are fabulous things and as I'm writing this I'm wondering why on earth I don't have one.

I love stews and anything that can be bunged in in one go, turned on to simmer and left for hours to become lovely and tasty whilst I go and do something less boring instead (guess who's going to be ordering one of these as soon as this deal is written *grin*).

Life really is too short to spend a lot of it in the kitchen.  Not only can you save yourself a load of time cooking in a slow cooker, but as it's all done in one 'pot' you'll save a whole load of time on the washing up...or rather it won't take everyone else as long to wash up.

This Breville Slow Cooker has a clear lid to let you see what's going on on the inside, it has cool-touch handles and a removeable ceramic bowl for serving things at the table.

Happy slow cooking!

Suddenly you remember - tomorrow is the cake sale at school/party at Brownies/your turn to bring cakes for the PTA morning. Please allow me to introduce you to the Lamington. This cake is a staple of every cake sale/birthday party/gathering in New Zealand, Australia and, I'm told, South Africa.

I don't know why Lamington cakes aren't more popular in the UK. They're easy to make, and quick too. In brief, a Lamington is a small square of sponge cake (or butter or pound cake) dipped in a liquid chocolate icing and rolled in coconut. The end result is as pictured above. And even the more inexpert cook will be able to come up with something similar. My effort is below; it has been YEARS since I made any. But I think they still looked pretty good.

I took a shortcut. For my Lamingtons, I used three packets of Sainsbury's Basics Sponge mix (22p a packet; 66p in total). You'll also need three eggs (Iceland 12 for £1 = 8p each; 24p in total). By this stage I had spent 90p, overall I'd estimate it cost £1.50. Just follow the instructions on the packet. Use a timer - it is amazing how long 3 minutes actually is when you have to hold a heavy handheld mixer.

For baking, I used a large, crockery baking dish. Do use greaseproof paper to line the dish, even if you're using a non-stick tin. I have made that mistake before. If you butter the dish first, the paper will stick down to the shape of the tray and make it easier to pour the mix in.

One tip I came across while looking for Lamington recipes is to refrigerate the sponge for at least two hours, and up to 24 hours. You don't have to do this, but I did found the dipping process a lot easier after it had been in the fridge a few hours.

Once you've got your sponge, you need the icing to dip the cakes into. The Edmond's CookBook (bestseller in NZ since 1927) has this recipe:

• 2 tablespoons of cocoa
• 6 tablespoons of boiling water
• 25g of butter, melted
• 2 1/4 cups of icing sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla essence

But then I found that I had no butter! So I used this recipe on Taste.com.au. It worked just fine although without perhaps that rich gloss you get from the butter.

Cut your sponge into squares, about the size you'd consider a portion for one person. Dip the squares in the icing. Now for this, I used another tip I found while researching this post. I used two forks. One holding the sponge from underneath, and the other fork to hold the sponge in place. For the coconut I had two plates. One to put the cake on while I sprinkled generous handfuls of the coconut over it, turning the cake around with the forks.

And that's it. The dunking part takes a while, but otherwise it is pretty quick. My son had a great time with it as it doesn't matter if you drop the cake in the icing mixture. Just fish it out again. Nor does it matter if the sponge cake happens to come apart. You just have two slightly smaller cakes. Be warned though, this is hugely messy when little fingers are involved.

What is your favourite quick and easy cake recipe? I'd love to hear them, and we had great fun swapping ideas on the Pumpkin Recipes post written for Halloween! Although, I bet you can't get much quicker than the three-minute cake in a cup.  Check it out here. Perfect for those times when you just NEED cake but possibly not the sort of thing you can take to the cake sale...

Kids love cooking and baking.

At some point though, for most of us, the enthusiasm for cooking wears off only being gripped, every now and again, by the sudden desire to create something Jamie Oliver or Gary Rhodes would be proud of.

• Click HERE for some great cook book deals

Maybe it's because we HAVE to cook rather than just because we want to.

I'm going to try and rekindle my childlike love for messing around in the kitchen by investing in some of these fab and fun looking cook books and whipping up some culinary masterpieces with my youngest.

I'm really drawn to a couple of them (there are 10 on offer) the first one being this Cookbook for Boys - it's billed as a no-frills, no messing around book for boys to sink their teeth into and not feel girly in the kitchen and is £3.99 instead of £9.99.

The other one I quite fancy is this Children's Book of Baking - I'm a sucker for cheesecake and this little review from a girl called Sophie has me sold..

This book is great, simple and easy to use. My mum and I have gone through quite a few of the recipes and have found that the cheesecake was AMAZING!

...it's £3.99 too, rather than the rrp of £13.99.

If that wasn't enough to get you excited, if you buy two or more books from the Food and Drink section (you don't HAVE to buy kids reciepe books to qualify) The Book People will throw in 'Carribean Food Made Easy' by Levi Roots for free (the Reggae Reggae Sauce guy from Dragons Den? You didn't see it? It's great sauce, try it!)

Happy cooking!

The great outdoors. Fresh air.  Sleeping under the stars. Meals cooked and eaten under the sky. There’s something of a great adventure about camping. Maybe it is being outside. But I find that I have simply the biggest appetite! So I’ve scoured the internet and asked PlayPennies parents for their easiest and yummiest ideas for camping meals. Here’s what I found!

If you’re after information on what to cook the food on, then take a look at last weeks feature: Festivals, Camping, Food and Cooking.

The easiest option is to simply eat out, or buy convenience foods. But what’s the point of going camping if you do that? OK so I’m not talking from the vantage of experience here. I have yet to take a family camping holiday! I might change my mind after I’ve sat stirring a pot over a fire with the sun blazing down. But, I really do want to do a bit of cooking outdoors myself. It is part of the fun and experience, isn’t it? Plus it is much cheaper. I’m on a mega tight budget – one week for less than £100!

Be prepared!

Preparation isn’t just for scouts and guides. The key to a happy tummy when you’re camping is to make sure you plan before you go. I’ve been told to make a daily menu up, and then take the right amounts of food for each meal bagged up. That way you don’t have to measure and you don’t have to take whole packets. Will let you know how that works out.

On the other hand mum of two teens, Karen, takes a more laid back approach.  “Buy food daily. Also camping is the time for packet mash and everything out of a tin (not if you're hiking, obviously).”

Kay, mum to three and grandma to two, says “We used to do three day hikes. We'd start off the first night with steak and veggies, and then graduate to things that wouldn't spoil for the next two days. Bagels and peanut butter travel well. Make some homemade granola, lots of water, bread and hard cheeses. Oh and peanut M&Ms - absolute must have food when camping”.

Nicki plans out her meals before heading off. “I usually make up a spag bol or a nacho bean/mince mix for the first day. I freeze it; then it defrosts on the trip in time to reheat the first night. By the last night we're on tins of spagetti.“

One Pan Wonder

If I’m going to be cooking on my hols then it has to be quick, easy, tasty and light on the washing up. Preferably, I’d like to just use one pan. Two ideas I have come across that sound promising are to take your wok, or slow cooker . Both make sense, although the slow cooker only works if you’re in a campsite with power hookup.

I use my wok like a saucepan all the time, and have found it is fab for making quick casseroles at home. With a slow cooker you’ll have a nice hearty stew at the end of the day without having to slave over a hot fire. Genius!

BBC Good Food has a page of the yummiest looking one-pan recipes for camping .

Or try this simple recipe idea from PlayPennies dad Phil “When we go fishing, we bring tins of tomatoes (or light cartons from Sainsburys), puree, garlic etc for a sauce and slice up some salami to add to it. All of which, along with the pasta, won't spoil before use.”

I’ve had more than one person tell me to make my own bread on the fire each morning. I’m really still not sure about that. I found a video on making campfire bread on Videopedia http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Cook-Campfire-Bread---Bannock-18630405. It looks easy enough but I am definitely not sold on the idea. Especially after seeing what looks like a spider crawling out of the berries he tips into the mix. Maybe I’m not really cut out for this after all!

And finally

Really want to impress the family in the next tent? I found these recipes from Annie Bell’s latest book The Camping Cookbook, handily available online here. Not sure I’ll have the courage to try out the ‘fish in a newspaper’ one. You wrap the fish up in wet newspaper and cook it on the BBQ. I’d probably manage to burn the campsite down!

However, as yummy as Annie’s recipes sound, they also seem like too much hard work to me. That sort of culinary fannying about is the sort of thing I prefer to do at home in the comfort of my kitchen. Not stooped over a gas ring or portable BBQ, while trying to chop vegetables without getting grass or insects into the mix.

Claire recommends starting every day “with a big fry up. A large breakfast really sets you up for the day, and can often skip lunch and just have a small dinner.”

So here I am, about to go camping as a family for the first time, and I feel more than a tad under prepared. Any advice, or tips, anyone has to give will be gratefully received!

Ooooh look!  Lovely shiny saucepans!

• Click HERE and for this saucey(pan) deal from Tesco Direct

There are a few occasions when I wish I had a few more saucepans - when 'the family' come for dinner, christmas time or when the urge takes me to get a bit Nigella in the kitchen.

However, buying pans at normal prices just to have a few spare ones is expensive unless you wait and take advantage of deals like this when they pop up; Tesco have reduced the price of these pans from £59.99 to £29.99 (did you notice my cooking pun there...?).

These Ready Steady Cook Bistro pans are made from stainless steel and they have oven-safe handles with silicone sleeve coverings, so no more feeling the handle slipping out of your hands if they're wet.

The pan sizes are: 14cm milkpan, 16cm, 18cm and 20cm saucepan with lids and a 24cm open frying pan.  The lids have large holes to allow you to drain pasta and small holes for straining veg', rice and smaller things and all the pans are dishwasher safe.

If you have these delivered to a local store then you can pick them up and avoid paying for delivery otherwise standard next-day delivery charges will apply (which is £5).

Use this code -  TDX-HMCR - to drop the published price of £29.99 to £24.99.

Thanks to sunriser over at HUKD

If there's one thing I miss about living in a city, it has to be Wagamama. Their chicken ramen and the yasai katsu curry are practically to die for. Sob! But these recipes and many more can be yours, in the shape of the Wagamama cookbook and DVD, now £9.45 at Amazon, down from £14.99.

• Click here to buy the book and DVD

There are 23 customer reviews of this at Amazon with the majority of customers rating it 5 out of 5, so have a browse through those if you have any queries or questions before buying.

This purchase qualifies for free delivery to the UK with Amazon's Super Saver Delivery, and you can also opt to have it gift wrapped.

The DVD apparently offers 30 minutes of cooking techniques, showing you the skills, tricks and approaches to guarantee success.

Sounds like a fab Christmas present for someone with a love of cooking and an appetite for tastes of Japan!