Local cook book hot off the press

It’s a cook book for kids with a definite family flavour.

Horsham Down’s Claudia Aalderink and daughter Isa have produced What’s Cooking, a cookbook packed with mouth watering photography and recipes to match.
It started, says Claudia, as a Wintec Media Arts project, the final one for her degree.

“And I knew I wanted to do something special with Isa. She wants to be a chef one day – it would be amazing if she actually does this, and has a cookbook from when she was 11.”

The project took 12 weeks to produce, with lots of brainstorming at the start.

“We planned every shot, and did it mostly on weekends. It’s really awesome to have it out there now,” says Claudia.

There is a chocolate birthday cake recipe marking Isa’s twelth birthday, as well as a host of vegetarian food, museli slice, Dutch pancakes, caramel popcorn, cheesy twists and Claudia’s favourite, mudcake heart.

“I collect heart shapes. It’s a bit like a sponge, and a bit like brownies, but thinner.”

Isa’s favourite is the recipe for ginger kisses.

“And we’ve put our own little touch into each dish, a few extra spices or something to make them special,” she says.

One hundred books were printed, all locally, and within the first three weeks almost 30 sold. They are also at Paperplus, in Rotatuna.
And copies have been packaged up and are off to Holland, for the family there.

“We worked on the recipes together, planned together, it was fun. We had the whole table full of cook books, want this and that, brainstormed and then got cooking.”

Claudia is a photographer, and took special care with these. Best of all, they say, they got to eat the results.

Feedback has been great, Claudia went to her Wintec tutor halfway through and is fairly sure of an A+. “He was impressed, and said, just keep going, this is going to be awesome.”

And as for young Isa who attends nearby Horsham Downs school, the response from classmates has been great.

“There’s a lot of surprise that I’m on the front of a cook book.”
The books sell for $40 each. “This would have come down if I had more books printed, but we thought it better to just do 100. Part of any profit will go to Isa, and maybe one day she will do something nice with the money. Maybe we’ll go to Greece together.”
Possibly they might need to do another book – something which neither rule out.

“It is possible. We could do something on vegetarian cooking. Who knows, this one was a great experience,” says Claudia.

To find out more about the cookbook, email Claudia here.

Eet Smakelijk!

Share this page: