CHOCOLATE BROWNIES

This recipe is adapted from a book from Nigella Lawson. It is the easiest thing to do for school cakes or parties.

You need:
- 165 g butter
- 165 gr dark chocolate
- 250 gr sugar
- 115 gr plain flour
- 3 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- a pinch of salt

Melt the butter and chocolate in the microwave ( 50 second at high temperature; if it is not melted put it back another 20 seconds and so on). Separately mix the eggs, sugar an vanilla and add it all to the butter and chocolate (do this carefully if the chocolate is still hot). Combine the flour and salt and add it to the mixture. Put it all on a lined tin and bake on a 180 degrees preheated oven for 25 minutes.

CHEESE CAKE

To undo the damage of the pheasant, and under pressure from one of my sons, I ended up agreeing to do a recipe for cheesecake that we found in one of their children magazines. I have to recognize that it was yummy.

You need :
- 250 gr ginger biscuits
- 100 gr melted butter
- half a teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 400 gr Philadelphia cheese
- 200 ml cream
- 100 icing sugar plus 3 more tablespoons
- strawberries and raspberries
- water

You should use a loose bottom tin for this.
Crush the biscuits with a rolling pin until you get crumbs . Mix them with the melted butter and press them down on the base of the tin. Let them cool for at least 45 minutes.
Mix the cheese, cream, sugar and vanilla extract. Put it all on top of the biscuit crumbs and put it back in the fridge for at least 4 hours (preferably overnight).
Put a handful of strawberries and raspberries in a pan with two table spoons of icing sugar and 3 table spoons of water. Boil it all under very low hear for around 5 minutes. Then blend it in a food processor. When this is cool put some fruit on top of the cake and add the fruit puree on top.

The children helped with it all but crushing the biscuits was their preferred bit.

PHEASANT

The children were put off big time by the smell of the raw pheasants. They were not too impressed with the roast pheasant either and would swap this for chicken any day. Adding lots of redcurrant jelly convinced them to eat this, but it was definitely not a winner.

You need:
- two pheasants
-4 onions (cut in eights)
-4 apples (cut in quarters)
- 6 cloves of garlic (unpeeled) one lemon
- olive oil (you can use butter instead)
- salt
- thyme or rosemary

Salt the pheasants and cover them with the herbs and olive oil. Put them in a roasting tin. Add the onions, garlic and apples to the tin, add a bit of salt, and sprinkle them (and the pheasants) with the lemon juice. Roast in a 200 degrees preheated oven for 45 minutes. Before serving peel the garlic (which should be soft by now)  and mix it well with the juice so that you get a sort of thin gravy.   You may need redcurrant jelly too...