Delicious Christmas Cookies

Mama’s Tips for cooking at home:

Make sure you have a grown-up with you when trying these recipes out. Have them read through the recipes first and help you with anything that might be difficult or dangerous.
Always wash your hands before starting any cooking.
If you wear an apron, you won’t get so messy while cooking.

Remember to clean up after you’ve finished cooking! Just like Mama!

Ingredients:

Cookie Ingredients Icing Ingredients
3/4 cup soft butter 3 egg whites
1/2 cup sugar 450g icing sugar
1 egg 2 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla Decorations
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tablespoon water

Directions:

1) Beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
2) Beat in egg, vanilla and salt.
3) Gradually beat in flour. Add water, a few drops at a time, only until dough starts to come away from side of bowl.
4) Wrap dough in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.
5) Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly grease 4 cookie sheets.
6) On lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8” thickness. Cut out various shapes using cookie cutters.
Reroll scraps and cut out. Make small holes with wooden pick if planning to hang cookies.
7) Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until beginning to brown around edges. Remove cookies to wire rack to cool before decorating.

ICING:

1) Beat egg whites in small bowl until foamy.
2) Slowly beat in the icing sugar. Continue to beat until thick and creamy. Add just enough water to get a good spreading consistency.
3) Tint with food colouring, if you wish.
4) Spread evenly over cookies.
5) Decorate with sprinkles.

Potato wedges are a great alternative to chips if you fancy a nice hearty accompaniment or side dish. This recipe uses the oven to bake the wedges, making them much more healthy than if they were fried. Great wedges deserve great condiments, so make sure you have plenty of ketchup, mayonnaise, sweet chilli sauce, sour cream, salsa or what ever you have in the cupboard!

You don't have to wait for meal times to enjoy these; they make a great snack to enjoy in front of a film, or serve them cold with a bit of salad and whatever else you like!


Mama’s Tips for cooking at home:

-Make sure you have a grown-up with you when trying these recipes out. Have them read through the recipes first and help you with anything that might be difficult or dangerous.
-Always wash your hands before starting any cooking.
-Vegetables should be washed before cooking. Stay healthy!
-If you wear an apron, you won’t get so messy while cooking.
-Remember to clean up after you’ve finished cooking! Just like Mama!


Ingredients:

4 medium sized baking potatoes, cut into wedges
Olive oil
2 rosemary sprigs, chopped
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon cajun spice
Salt
Pepper


Directions:

1) Pre-heat the oven to 190˚C.

2) Place the wedges in a roasting pan.

3) Drizzle the oil and the remaining ingredients on top.

4) Coat the wedges in the oil and ingredients. Use hands!

5) Bake until crisp and golden for 30-40 minutes. Be careful to let them cool down a bit first as they will be hot!

Aside from cooking up some delicious food ideas for breakfast, lunch and dinner, Mama is mindful that we all sometimes need a little bit extra between meals. Snacking is often thought to be a bad idea as crisps, chocolate and other treat foods are all too readily available these days. But snacking need not be a completely guilty pleasure! Here we have listed some of Mama's favourite healthy snacks to help give you some ideas about the kind of things you can eat without weighing heavy on the scales, or on your conscience!

Breakfast Bite


For a tasty top up around breakfast time, try breaking up a granola bar or cereal bar over some yoghurt and drizzle with a bit of honey for sweetness.


Fruit Kebabs


A different twist on a savoury classic; chop assorted fruit and thread on a wooden skewer. Try different combinations until you find your favourite!


Cheesy Sweet Potato

Provided you use reduced fat cheese, this is a good, warming snack once in a while! Bake a sweet potato until cooked and top with some melted cheese.


Smoothie Deluxe

Blend some low fat yoghurt with a banana (essential to make it thick!) and whatever other fruits you like. Berries such as strawberries, blueberries and raspberries work particularly well and produce some great colours!

Mama Visits Hamleys!

Mama braved the wind and rain to make a very public appearance at Hamleys on Saturday to help launch her brand new game, Cooking Mama 3! We were on hand to take a few pictures with Mama and her adoring fans at the famous London toy shop. Some of Mama's helpers we also there to show off the game by handing out Nintendo DS consoles with copies of the Cooking Mama 3 so Hamleys shoppers could try Mama's latest creation for themselves.

Have a look below to see how it went. If you are in any of these pictures, get in touch and we will happily send you a copy!

Ding! It's ready! Cooking Mama 3 is out today! We've decided to put the official trailer up here for all the Mama fans who haven't had a chance to see it yet. Just click the link below!



To celebrate the release of her latest game, Mama will be making a live appearance at Hamleys in London this Saturday. If you would like to meet Mama and play the game for yourself come down to the GAME concession in the famous Regent street store this Saturday between 11:00 and 17:00! Hope to see you there!

Pasta bake is one of those fantastic dishes that lets you use up all the things you have lying around in the cupboards, although we've added a bit of cream to this one to make it a bit more of a tasty treat! This recipe uses lasagne sheets for the pasta element, but you can substitute this for any type of pasta that you might prefer. Tubular pasta works just as well; try penne, rigatoni or macaroni for a different kind of dish that even fussy eaters will love!

Great for feeding a hungry family or group of friends, this recipe will make enough for quite a lot of people so make sure you have plenty of people around. This does require a hot oven to make, so if you aren't a grown up yet, make sure you have one with you to help!


Mama’s Tips for cooking at home:

- Make sure you have a grown-up with you when trying these recipes out. Have them read through the recipes first and help you with anything that might be difficult or dangerous.
- Always wash your hands before starting any cooking.
- Vegetables should be washed before cooking. Stay healthy!
- If you wear an apron, you won’t get so messy while cooking.
- Remember to clean up after you’ve finished cooking! Just like Mama!


Ingredients

2 onions 1/2 tin tomato puree
1 packet mushrooms 1 tub of cottage cheese
1 teaspoon butter 2 tins tuna
250ml cream 1 cup grated cheese
Fresh or boxed lasagne sheets
1/2 cup of water with a teaspoon sugar stirred in


Directions:

1) Pre-heat your oven to 180˚C.

2) Fry the onions and mushrooms in the butter.

3) Add the tuna, cream, tomato puree, cottage cheese and the water
with sugar. Mix these well together.

4) Pour some of the mixture into a greased, oven proof dish.
Place a layer of lasagne sheets over the mixture. Pour
more mixture over the lasagne sheets. Keep on layering
until you have used up all the ingredients or until
the oven dish is full. The last layer on top needs to
be a sauce layer to make this dish work!

5) Sprinkle the grated cheese on top.

6) Bake for 20-30 minutes. The cheese will also have melted.

7) Serve! A bit of salad or crusty bread are great accompaniments.

As the winter nights draw in and Jack Frost nibbles at your nose, there's nothing quite like a bowl of good home-made soup to help you embrace the season with a smile on your face! What makes this particular minestrone soup even better is that the recipe uses a lot of seasonal winter vegetables which are plentiful at the moment. As a dish served throughout Italy, minestrone has no particular set recipe, so you can use whatever vegetables you have lying around if you can't find the ones on Mama's list!

For an extra treat, add a little grated Parmesan cheese on top and serve with an Italian-style bread such as ciabatta, for a warming winter meal. Before we get started, here's Mama's house rules again:

Mama’s Tips for cooking at home:

- Make sure you have a grown-up with you when trying these recipes out. Have them read through the recipes first and help you with anything that might be difficult or dangerous.
- Always wash your hands before starting any cooking.
- If you wear an apron, you won’t get so messy while cooking.
- Remember to clean up after you’ve finished cooking! Just like Mama!


Ingredients

1 onion, chopped
1 celery, sliced
1 leek, chopped
8 cups water
3 carrots, diced
4 vegetable stock cubes
1 turnip, diced
3 big potatoes, diced
1/4 cabbage, shredded
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup spaghetti
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1 tin butter beans
1 small tin tomato puree


Directions

1) Fry the onions until they are glassy.

2) Add the leeks, carrots, turnip, cabbage,
celery and fry until they appear wilted.

3) Dissolve the vegetable stock cubes
in the eight cups of water and pour
over, then cook on a medium heat until
the vegetables are cooked.

4) Add the potatoes and cook for another 10 minutes.

5) Add the beans, parsley and spaghetti and
cook until the spaghetti is ready (refer
to cooking time on the spaghetti pack).

6) Serve, but be careful to let it cool down a bit first!