Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer

once gave Santa's sleigh a lift.  And when mixed in with maltesers, makes a really simple gift.

Move over Bernie Taupin, there's a new kid in town.

Reindeer Noses

You will need:

1 bag of maltesers
1 bag of either red foiled chocolate balls or a bag of mixed m&m's and a willingness to eat everything that isnt red.  yum.  If youre in the UK a rather large supermarket chain beginning with T and ending in esco sells the ones I've used.
1 cellophane bag per person


Lob 8 maltesers and 1 red chocolate of choice in to the bag.  Tie with your pre-prepared rudolf labels.  Go.  

Requires absolutely no adult help once a child is
a) able to count to 8; and
b) able to resist eating the majority of the maltesers.

So, should be fine once they hit retirement.  Maybe.

Merry Christmas, Love Milly

I'll have a blue christmas without you

I have a craft related injury thanks to a bit of a slip when machine quilting at the weekend (yes, that does hurt as much as you imagine) so one trip to a&e later and my finger is in a ridiculously over sized bandage which hinders my ability to do anything let alone craft.   So this week I am without hand meaing we went for a tried and tested craft that I know the small one can do almost entirely alone.  She just needs me to boil the kettle and the rest is down to her.

Rockin' robin

to save you searching back through the blog you will need
bag of bird seed
cookie cutters
one sachet of gelatine
straws
greaseproof paper

plus, to Christmas it up a bit
glitter
Christmas ribbon


This amount has made 6 large bird seed feeders and 4 small ones (so would probably make 7 large ones if you want them for gifts).   I wouldn't recommend making more than one sachet at a time because you want to make sure all of the seed is covered in gelatine.

Lay out a sheet of greaseproof paper on a flat surface.

Make up the gelatine according to the instructions on the packet and add the seed in.  Throw in a bit of glitter.

Chop up your straws to make holes for the ribbon.

Place your cookie cutter on the paper and sprinkle a little glitter inside.  The right way to do this is to put silver all over, pink at the top and blue at the bottom.  Anything else is wrong. FACT.  

You may need to wear a woolly hat at this stage to prevent glitter getting in your hair.

Fill your cutter with the sticky seed and press down with the back of a spoon.  Sprinkle some more glitter on top.  

Shove the straw in place and leave to dry overnight.  

 

We're at that stage now, so I'll do an update when they're dry.  We've also tried a little mini seed chain so if they work, I'll put a picture up.

Making Christmas, making Christmas

lalala

Yes, its still October and yes, I've said the C word.  I admit that I'm a bit of a Christmas maniac - I'm the type of person to put a tree in every space of our house and I fully intend to infect the small one with this fever so by the time she is a women in her 30s she will still get excited at the first holidays are coming advert on the tv.

We've actually been quite busy crafting over the last few weeks on Christmas gifts from Milly, but nothing is finished.  This is one of those spanning lots of weeks project so you will have to come back if you want to see the final product.  Its the lord of the rings of craft projects, if you will, only with fewer potential endings and no elves.  Ok, maybe elves.

Not bread again

...said Milly when I announced we were making salt dough

1 cup flour plus some for rolling
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup salt
1 tbsp oil (optional - I find it makes the dough easier to work with)

to make that in to a Christmas decoration

absolutely anything to cut out a shape
absolutely anything to make impressions in the dough (optional)
a rolling pin
assorted paint (we used a metallic paint from tesco, a gold glitter paint from ELC and some white paint from asda)
a decision on how to hang it and either rings or string depending on what you choose


Mix everything together and that's it really!  If its too dry shove in some more water, too wet add flour.  

We decided to make some impressions in the dough using some snowflake cutters I had for last years Christmas cakes and then cut out shapes with cookie cutters, but you could use just about anything really - finger print impressions and a circle cut using an egg cup would be great.

Once cut decide how you're going to hang them.  We're trying a combination of ribbons which require cuts in the shape, string requiring a hole (I used a cocktail stick to form this), and rings which I will buy at some point in the next couple of days and glue in place.  We had rather a lot of dough left at the end of our cutting so we made little beads too so miss can have a princess necklace.  Not sure Kate would wear a salt dough necklace but you never know.

There are lots of cooking instructions on the web for salt dough.  I normally bake mine at 100 degrees for 3 hours (or until they are firm but not coloured in any way) but I wanted to try the microwave method.  For this you apparently simply place in the microwave for 1 - 2 minutes and bing they're done. Unfortunately I bing almost set my microwave on fire and bing made my kitchen smell of bonfires.   If you know how to do this without causing a major crisis then go for it.

Once cooked and cooled, its time to paint, and that's what today's activity was for us

Witch costume also optional

Next I will varnish them and then we will put them all together and attach them to the labels we've made (instructions coming soon).  But that's an activity for another day!  One without witches I imagine.

When rhyming goes wrong

Milly loves rhyming and will happily sing song her way through bizarre combinations of words, birds, sirds, flubberlerds.  Many make absolutely no sense but its cute to listen to, until it goes very wrong and then you have to not react to luck, suck, duck f... you see where I'm going with this.

So today we're making food that has no rhyming risk factor.  I have a feeling this may become a theme over the next few weeks, or until the next phase hits.  Please dont let it be a reoccurance of "where do babies come from?".

Nice Ice Rice Flice Buns Huns Suns Guluns

1 batch of basic bread mixture recipe here 
75g sugar
1 egg

Icing sugar
Food colouring
Assorted sprinkly goodies.

Extra flour for rolling.
Vegetable oil to prevent the bread sticking


Make up the basic bread mix with the sugar and egg added.  Alternatively take any white bread mix / recipe and add the sugar and egg, leave to prove in an oiled bowl for 30 minutes.

Remove the dough and smack around a bit.  Make tthhhhhssssss noises at the same time.

Divide in half, and then divide each half in to 5.  Hand over to your miniture person and have them split each portion in half and form a ball shape.  Dont expect equal quantities but its nice for them to learn the concept of half and double.  Roll each ball in to a sort-of-sausage.  Its much easier for them to roll the dough (which is rather sticky) if you get them to flour their hands slightly before you start.

Milly demonstrates a dough sausage

Add each sausage to an oiled tray, cover with oiled clingfilm and leave in a warm place to double in size before baking in my oven at 170 degrees for 10 minutes.  Keep an eye on them - they do cook quickly so can turn just as fast.

Remove and allow to cool completely.  Open every door and window in your house so everyone gets a chance to smell freshly baked bread.  Pat yourself on the back for making the neighbourhood jealous.

Make some thick icing for the top - we went for tiffany blue and bubblegum pink (see, I can be foody when I want to be).  Pour on to a side plate and press each bun in to the icing.  Top with funky sprinkles and shove in the fridge to allow the icing to set.  Eat the left overs.

Scoff, cough, loff, bo....maybe not.

You have to ask the right questions.

Question : Would you like to make pastry Milly? 
Answer : In a minute.

This is basically how the first hour of our morning went.  Honestly it was my fault because at some point in time I asked if she wanted the Disney channel on and Jake and the Neverland Pirates is always going to superior to anything I say. I turn in to an adult from those Charlie Brown and Snoopy cartoons as far as the small one is concerned.   I thought I made perfect sense but her toddler ears were hearing whaaaa whaaa whaaa.  So a change of tact was required and instead it became:

Question :  Would you like to make pastry, then we can put it in the fridge to go cold enough for you to roll out and cut in to shapes?
Milly translation : whaaaawhaaaa whaaaa roll whhaaaawahhhaaaaa cut out  whaa

but I used enough child friendly words in my overly long question to break through the power of the cartoon and away we went.

Whhaaaa whaaaa apple pie

 For the shortcrust pastry

100g plain flour
50g softened butter (it really does need to be butter, so set a reminder to leave it out)
20g icing sugar
1 egg

For the filling

2 - 3 medium eating apples
2 tbsp sugar plus extra for sprinkling over the top
1 tsp vanilla extract
Rind and juice of 1/2 orange


To make the pastry sift the flour and sugar together, add in the butter and get your hands in there!  Rub the butter and flour between your fingers until it looks like squashy sand which smells nice.

Add roughly half the egg and bring the pastry together with your hands.  Wrap in clingfilm and bung in the fridge for half an hour.

Watch an episode of Jake and the Neverland Pirates.  By the end of that it should be time to...

...finely chop the apples and place in a bowl.  We didn't cook these, mainly because I prefer the texture of whole chunks of apple rather than apple puree, so they need to be pretty small.  If you want to cook the apples, then chop whatever size you want and cook with the orange juice and vanilla.

Add the rest of the ingredients, stir well and put to one side.

By this time your pastry should be nicely chilled so remove from the fridge, flour your surface and hand over to your small person to have fun with a rolling pin and assorted cutters.  

Once you've finished the rolling stage give the apples another stir.  There is going to be a lot of liquid at the bottom of the bowl so drain some off if you have a dive in there toddler who doesn't care about soggy bottoms.

We decided we were going to make decorated free form pies simply because they're easy to do.  Whatever you choose, cut your pastry to suit the case and fill with the apple mix.  Top and brush with the remaining egg.  Sprinkle on the sugar (or sugar and a touch of cinnamon) and bake for 20 - 25 minutes at 160 degrees in my oven, or until golden brown.

To make free form pies just cut the pastry to size for your toddler once they've finished rolling and they can do the rest.   Under 2's will need a little more guidance but its still a great one for them to assert a little independence in the kitchen.  Push the pastry in to the case, slightly over fill and then push the pastry back over the filling.  Decorate with pastry shapes.

With the remaining pastry Milly made an apple tart for Areal who, being a mermaid princess, prefers them to pies.  She also has a fondness for toffee ice cream.

I could cook apple pies all day every day.  Its one of the first things that I was taught to cook as a child by my grandmother.  One day I might make a pie that tastes as good as hers.

Party planning

The small ones birthday is rapidly approaching and so its time to try out some new ideas and recipes.  I asked some friends for their tried and tested cream free cakes and got this recipe : Easy chocolate cake from the bbc (thanks Mel).  They're right, its easy.  I halved all of the quantities and used less water, but this is simple enough that a child can run solo until the boiling water point.  Once cooked and cooled slightly, I filled them with peanut butter. 

So that's the birthday cake sorted but I also wanted to add in a savoury recipe.  I'm on a bread free diet at the moment so I thought I'd torture myself a little.

When is a pizza not a pizza?

I googled that question and there appear to be lots of answers involving Nepal and a handful of restaurants.  That is not where we're going with this recipe.

1 batch of basic bread maker dough (or bread dough of your choice) * see below
1/4 jar pesto
1/2 ball mozzarella
1 cooked chicken breast
2 tbsp chopped green olives
Black pepper

Prepare your dough.  Once risen turn out and roll in to a rough rectangle, about the size of a standard oven tray.

Spread the pesto over the dough and dot the other toppings over.   Try to keep any thicker toppings in line with the longest edge.

Roll from the longest edge, flour your knife and cut in to one inch thick rounds.  These aren't going to be perfect because of the size of the toppings so squish them about a bit.  Add to an oiled tray, pushing each slice against the last, and leave somewhere warm to rise for 30 - 45 minutes.  They should be the size of the tray 

Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Tear and share, as the law of these thing go

I think we're going to try the next ones with a rosemary and tomato sauce, goats cheese and black olive and a pepperoni and mozzarella.  Basically if you can imagine it on a pizza, you can shove it in this bread.

Daddy Dough

Mr Geek has been baking bread for close to 2 years now and is a bit of an expert in my opinion.  This is his basic machine dough that will make a medium / large loaf, 8 - 10 rolls or a tear and share pizza bread.

1 1/8 cup tepid water
3 cups strong white flour
1 tbsp oil (he uses vegetable)
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp caster sugar
2 tsp dried active yeast

Bung the lot in the machine, select the dough option and away you go.  If you're putting it on the timer, add the wet ingredients in first, followed by the flour, salt and sugar and finally add the yeast.

Slave to the Gogglebox

Last week I decided that we were going to do more savoury recipes in the coming weeks.   Hubby bakes bread and it always looks like such fun that I thought perhaps we could work up to that, starting out with a sweet bread and breaking in to savoury types later on.  So today should have been spent making cinnamon rolls, an item that not only have I never made but I've never actually tasted.  Unfortunately when I started looking around for recipes they all said things like mix together and leave for 2 years to rise.

Patience is only a virtue for those who don't work in the afternoons so I decided to use the bread maker, found a recipe to base our morning on, got the ingredients ready....and then watched the Great British Bake Off on tv and all plans went out of the window.  Savoury can wait - I wanted cake!

Actually its upside down

(said Milly to my mum)

This makes 6 small cakes.  If you want to make a large cake, double up on everything and add some extra fruit. We used a very shallow brownies tin which meant we didn't want lots of berries in there.

A good handful of berries of your choice (we used a mixture of strawberries and blueberries)

25g unsalted butter

25g light brown sugar

1 lemon

2 eggs

100g self raising flour

100g caster sugar

100g whatever fat floats your buttery boat

Chop the strawberries to blueberry sizes bits.  Milly is old enough to do this herself, which was shouted at me when I offered to help out.

Whilst your toddler is asserting their authority, melt the butter and sugar in a pan.  Remove from the heat and toss in the berries.  Shove on the side.

(Basic viccy sponge coming up).  Cream together the butter and sugar.  Add in the eggs one at a time.  Add the zest of about half of the lemon (and juice if you want - I didn't).  Add in the sifted flour.  Its an often repeated recipe on here.   Apparently it also makes the best mix to lick at the end.

Add a spoon of the berry mix to the base of each of your cases or tins.  Top with the cake mix and bake for about 20 minutes at 160 degrees.  Do remember to put a tray underneath because the fruit juices and caramel mix will probably go everywhere.  Of course I did this and wont be spending my evening cleaning the oven.  

Turn out on to a tray or plate and shove the tin in to water before everything gets sticky.   Ice the top if you want to but, in all honesty, this is a pretty ugly cake.  Tastes good though so I forgive it.  It would be gorgeous served warm with a good blob of clotted cream.

Beauty is only cake deep

and since I'd found that recipe anyway, I made the rolls

Recipe here

but I halved everything, ignored the nuts and sultanas and made a topping of icing sugar, vanilla and milk.  I also rolled from the short edge, chopped in to 8 exactly equal sections (honestly) and cooked them in a muffin tin.   If you have an under 2  give them the cinnamon sugar to sprinkle and the finished rolls to ice.

Mill ices cakes and gets the tea ready

I think that's Christmas morning breakfast sorted for this year.  They are very very yummy.

Here Comes the Sun

do do do doooo


You know how you go to the loo and the phone rings, or you buy the dress you've been looking at for ages only for it to go in to the sale the next week?  We're talking about the sort of thing Alanis Morissette would turn in to a mislabelled song.  Well, today I am daring Mr Sod to do his best with that law. 

Its been months since I was able to hang out a full load of washing without sky watching and keeping my fingers crossed the rain would stay off long enough for it to dry, so I am certainly not in need of enough pegs to fill my line.  If we suddenly find that summer hits next week you know who to thank.

When is a peg not a peg?

You will need:

Assorted wooden pegs

Paint and brushes

A black marker pen

Assorted glitter, glue, sequins, gems (optional)

A plastic plant pot, empty tin or cardboard frame shape (optional)

Take whichever item you are going to peg (the pot, tin or frame) and work out how many pegs you will need to cover the area completely.

Set out all of your pegs and paint assorted designs on them.  If you have time then paint them on both sides and on the inside.  Ours is a bit limited today but the beauty of this is that you can always unpeg them and do more another day.

Once they are dry, outline any painted shapes with the marker and add the embellishments as required.

Clip in place on your chosen item.  Alternatively use on a ribbon / string notice board, attach a magnet to the back and use as a picture / note holder or glue on to a baton to hang small items from (ideal for childrens necklaces and bracelets).

We turned ours in to a paint brush pot

At some point we will take them all off and paint the inside, but thats a craft for another day.

Holidays are coming, holidays are coming

Even thinking about that advert makes me smile.  I am a complete diet coke and Christmas addict, so its my idea of heaven.  Clearly its June so no coke truck is heading my way and instead we're off on our first family seaside holiday.  Milly is almost falling over herself with excitement and the idea of having her own pool so getting her to do anything other than talk about swimming has been a task and a half.  Unfortunately for fish girl its fathers day and my mums birthday when we are away so she's had to do something not related to water.  For me, the problem was finding something that wasn't baking and wasn't bulky, so we went with the card that doubles as a gift by creating a fridge magnet...

Smile please

You will need:

1 willing child

1 sheet of magnetic paper

1 card blank

A camera

A pc and printer

Assorted embellishments

A way of attaching the magnet to the card - we went for a mini peg

Ask your child what they want to say in their card.  Ideally you're looking for 3 or 4 words that aren't can we go swimming, are we going swimming now or I can swim with one armband.  Clearly that's far too many words.  We settled on I love you daddy.

For each word decide on a picture that represents that word.  You can go for the easy option of holding signs, go for YMCA style cheerleader letters (Give me an I), act out the word or use props.  When I told the small one that I would be taking a picture of her making an I, she grabbed her magnifying glass.  Kids will often think of something much more interesting than us mere parents.

Once you have your pictures, shrink them to about 25% (or they will probably be too big to do anything with unless you have a super duper uber amount of memory), and line them on top of each other photobooth style

Print on to your magnetic paper and cut to size. 

Then you just need to attach to the front of your card and decorate as you wish.  I had some star beads so wrote daddy on the front with a sharpie.  Mill is very excited about reading at the moment so this appealed to her.  

We've also gone for a useful home made gift.  The hippy in me is rather in to upcycling as those who follow me on pinterest will know.  Unfortunately the things I find that look great would require me actually buying the products brand new to upcycle, which probably defeats the point of this exercise (hanging monkeys bowl I'm looking at you).  Since I have zero ability to let go of the small ones baby clothes I decided to do something useful with those.

When is a dress not a dress?

Now, I made a bit of a faff of this I admit, so there will be a round two with real instructions.  But here is the theory...

You will need:

2 / 3 different fabrics - I used a pair of the small ones jeans and her old dress

A sewing machine and cotton

Fabric paint (I used dylon 3D)

Dressmakers carbon paper

Snap fastening or velcro

Fabric 1 (outside main colour) : 6 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2), 3 inch x 2 1/2 inch square 

Fabric 2 (outside border colour ) : 2 1/4 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2), 3 inch x 2 1/2 inch square

Fabric 2 or 3 (lining) : 8 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2)

hem width : 1/4 inch

 

Sew together the two small squares of fabric.  Trim the bottom corners and turn the correct way around.  This will form our fastening.

Sew each of the three types of fabric together.  The fastening should be sewn in place so it sits on the outside of the case and flaps down.

If you want to make a padded case, you will need a piece of fusible bonding or lining fabric and place behind the lining fabric.

Once you have two long pieces of the case place face together and sew around 3 edges, leaving the top lining edge open.  Iron the hemmed edges and turn the right way around . Sew the lining edge. 

Iron the top edge of the case so the lining sits correctly and add the fastening to the edge of the fastening square so the glasses are secure.

Once you have all of that you can decorate it (or not - the next one I make will be for me and wont have kiddy pictures on it).  I asked the small one to draw a picture of daddy which I then transferred on to the fabric with the carbon paper and painted over.

Holidays really are coming!!!

Humidity is rising, Barometer's getting low

No man rain to be seen though.  In fact no rain of any type which means the house is about 8 million degrees, or there abouts.  The thought of spending the morning in the kitchen with the oven on gives me the shudders.  Fortunately fathers day is coming up so with busy ourselves with other things for the majority of the day (more on that next week) but it wasn't enough to hear "can we make cakes now" on repeat, so I caved and went for an easy option and decided on shortbread.  I got as far as the kitchen before remembering this weeks scouts fail - no golden caster sugar.  I do, however, have a small mountain of brown sugar so lets give this a go...

Better than toddler meltdown shortbread

50g brown sugar

140g - ish plain flour

100g room temperature butter or margarine

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

20g chocolate chopped in to small chunks or a handful of chocolate chips.

2 tsp caster sugar

Preheat my oven to 160 degrees.

Measure out the sugar and add to a bowl.  Make the mistake of putting it in front of your child.  Remove when you hear "mmmm, this tastes nice".  Add the fat and cream well.

Add in the vanilla extract and chocolate chips and give them a good stir.

Sift in the flour.  I normally start with 100g of flour and then keep adding until I have a nice dough.  Tip the bowl and it should fall rather than stay in a sticky mess.  Never ever demonstrate it not being ready by tipping the bowl over your head.  This action will stay in toddler memory until a point in time where you are in a crowded situation - probably a wedding - and will be re-enacted with soup. 

Gently roll out the dough on a well floured surface and cut in to whatever shape you wish.  Sprinkle the last of your caster sugar over the top and bake in my oven for 15 - 20 minutes (depending on biscuit thickness).  You want them firm to the touch but only coloured on the edges.

Remove from the tray and allow to cool.

They were a lot better than I expected in all honesty.  Brown sugar can sometimes make me go cccccccchhhhhhhhhh when I taste it but I think the chocolate and vanilla helped out with that.

Of course we didn't just want to eat one on a day like this so we took two and shoved a scoop of ice cream in between them.  You could turn this in to quite a fancy pants pudding if you did delicate thin biscuits and posh ice cream.  Top with a drizzle of melted chocolate.  Yum!

Be Prepared

I never attended brownies or guides as a child.  The lack of brown owl in my life is quite clear, poor hard-done-by that I am, in my complete inability to prepare properly for the things I have planned.  Most of the time my cupboards are stacked well enough for me to get away with it but this week was my first Mummy and Milly Day disaster.  The weekends baking (I didn't photograph it all) resulted in the use of 24 eggs so, of course, this morning I was completely out and therefore the planned orange mini loaf was not going to happen.  Tears were threatening from Mill so it was over to my backup recipes and no eggs means just one thing to me - biscuits.  We had those cookie cutters I bought a couple of weeks back too so Milly was a very happy girl.

Disaster Saving Biscuits

40g golden caster sugar

135g plain flour

1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa

85g butter or margarine 

Juice of half an orange

Cream together the fat and sugar.  You don't need to go OTT with this but get the fat as soft as possible.   If you're well prepared and you've got the butter out in advance it should be soft enough to let your child do this bit.  Ooops.

Sift in the flour and cocoa powder (you already know the best way to do this) and mix with a fork until it starts to come together.  Pour in the juice and mix a little more.

Now for the fun bit.  Get your hands in and bring it all together until you have brown playdoh.  If its still a bit wet and sticky at this stage throw in a bit more flour, too dry and add a touch more orange.  You want something that looks like a big ball of soft yum rather than something that covers your hands in goo or breaks into little crumbs.

For under 2's get it to this stage and then hand it over for them to have some fun with rolling and cutting.

Flour your work surface (throw in a bit of cocoa if you care about white flour on chocolate biscuits - we don't so I didn't) and roll out your dough until its around 1/2 cm or there abouts.  Cut out whatever shape you want

Add the shapes to a tray covered in greaseproof paper.  They can be reasonably close together because they aren't really going to increase in size.  Bake for around 10 minutes and allow to cool on the tray for around 10 minutes.

Once cooled, decorate in any way you wish.  We went with orange icing (3 tbsp icing sugar mixed in with a few squeezes of orange juice to make a thick paste), assorted sprinkles, mini fudge pieces and fresh strawberry slices.  These would be lovely made in to a sandwich with a chocolate filling.

Unintentional Dora Face-Palm

Who needs eggs and brown owls anyway.

Is this my lunch?

I was running solo in the supermarket this bank holiday Morning (I sure know how to have a good time).  Milly was swimming with daddy so I actually had the chance to take a look around instead of behaving like I'm a supermarket sweep contestant.   As a result I came home with a hand mixer, a huge bag of cookie cutters in assorted shapes and the joy of knowing that I will never again get arm strain from mixing frosting.  Its good timing because I'm baking some charity cakes at the weekend and there are 48 of those bad boys to frost.

Unfortunately Mill decided this morning that, in addition to her normal breakfast, she wanted toast with assorted toppings (one with butter, one with jam, one with cheese and one with cheese and jam - I kid you not) which she then faffed with for an hour so our planned use of cutters will have to wait until next week.  However, I still wanted to use my lovely new mixer and I had peanut butter in.  Its a no-brainer really.

There is nothing finer in life than cookie dough

120g plain flour with 1 tsp baking powder or self raising flour

40g brown sugar

40g caster sugar

1 egg

2 tbsp smooth peanut butter (thats what we had, use crunchy if you want)

2 tbsp (or more) chocolate chips

zest of half an orange (trust me - it really lifts it)

50g butter or marg

My oven : 160

Cream together the butters and sugars with my lovely new hand mixer.  Divide the metal thingies between the two of you and lick them clean.  When asked, this is not the childs lunch.

Whisk the egg and add that to the creamed mix.  Make a face like youre sucking lemons when asked if they can taste it at this stage.  Stir in the orange and chocolate.  Repeat face.

Shake shake sifting dance in the flour (and baking powder) and mix well.  Now you can taste it.  Remind yourself that this definitely is NOT your lunch regardless of how much you want it to be.  Lick the bowl and any spoons anyway.

Now its entirely up to you what you want to do with the mix.  I took approximately a tbsp of mix, rolled lightly in to a ball and flattened slightly on a tray but you could just blob it on if you want to.  Make as large or as small as you want - its an anything goes cookie.

Bake for around 20 minutes or until brown.  

This could be your lunch if you wanted.  I'm not the food police and there are days when I want nothing more than a tube of pringles and a pot of garlic dip.  Besides, it has orange in it so its practically fruit.

Despite their obvious goodness, we had them for pudding.  For lunch we went with muffin pizzas, which are great fun and a regular part of toddler diet in this house.

1 English Muffin per child (the other half can go through 3 without a problem)

Any form of pizza sauce or ketchup (for fussy veg haters cook up a tin of chopped tomato, finely chopped carrot, courgette and celery, reduce and then blend - I used to freeze this) 

Oregano

Black pepper

Mature cheddar cheese

Pizza toppings

Cut each muffin in half and toast slightly.  You dont really want any colour here, just to firm them up.

Hand over to the small one and let them have fun.  Expect mess.

Milly decided on ham, olives and sweetcorn today.  Shove under the grill for about 10 - 15 minutes or until the cheese is bubbling.

This is definitely your lunch Milly.

Back to Basics

Mummy and Milly day was cancelled this week.  Mill had her boosters so probably spent the day plotting her revenge and I had an illness that made me sound like this "nngggnggngggggggghttt" and to breathe out of my ears.  Instead, we spent the morning watching Mr Men episodes (the original ones, not the dreadful remake) under a blanket on the sofa.  Instead, have some recipe information.

I have a basic cake recipe that, with some minor adjustments, gives you the ability to create any cake in the world, ever.  Ish.

Victoria Sponge and Friends

50g self raising flour (or use plain flour and baking powder - about 1/2 a tsp should do it)

1 egg

50g butter or margarine

50g sugar

Preheat my oven to 170

Measure out the flour, sugar and fat.  I tend to use margarine because most days I am surprised I remember my own name, so getting butter out in advance to soften would require a week of reminders, an alarm and a packet of postit notes.

Allow your child to break the egg (fish out the shell if you're eating it) and whisk whilst you get on with the harder job of creaming together the fat and sugar.

Pour the egg in to the creamed ingredients and mix togegger (I am never correcting that speech mistake - we love it).

Sift in the flour (we do the shake shake sifting dance to this - maybe I should do a tutorial) and stir through.

<< jazz hands >> That's it really.  This is enough to make 6 fairy / cup cakes or a thing single layer sponge cake.  Takes about 15 - 18 minutes in my oven, but they can burn quickly so keep a watch for the last few minutes.

The quantities are easily expanded to make larger cakes.  Double it to make a reasonable single layer sponge, triple to make one you can cut in half or a loaf, quadruple to make a real sponge cake with cream in the middle *drool*

Now for the extras

Clockwise L- R : Nutella cupcakes with nutella frosting, chocolate and cream filled "hedgehog" loaf, dinosaur cakes, chocolate butterfly cake, chocolate orange marble cake, chocolate "pizza" cake, chocolate sponge, chocolate loaf.

Vanilla - the easiest.  Add a drop of vanilla if you're doing a very simple cake.  Don't bother if you're going to drown it in frosting.  "oh mother, we've missed out the vanilla" has never passed Mills lips so I don't think it matters so much with toddlers.

Chocolate.  Add 1 tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder to the flour and 1 tbsp of milk once all the ingredients have been mixed.  Throw in a handful of chocolate chips if you have them.

Orange.  Add the zest and juice of half an orange at any point you want.

Lemon.  Add a tsp of lemon juice and the zest of half a lemon at any point.

Chocolate orange.  Replace the milk in the chocolate mix with the juice of half an orange, plus the zest.

Christmas.  Add 20g sultanas (or raisins if that's what you have), 20g mixed peel, 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1 tbsp milk.  This works best on fairy cakes and is great with cinnamon frosting.

Nutella.  Melt 2 tbsp nutella in a microwave for a few seconds (it needs to be soft but not liquid).  Add a tsp to each filled fairy cake and swirl around a bit to mix.

Marble.  Take two (one chocolate, one not) and blob in to the tin.  Swirl together.

Pink.  Take pink colour.  Add.  Sigh

Once you have your cake just decorate with any sort of cream, frosting, fruit, melted chocolate combination you want.  Most of it will be inhaled before it gets near the cake, so always double up.


Sometimes the simple options are the best though.  A couple of bowls of headache coloured icing and assorted sprinkles can keep the small one happy for quite some time.

Please note, I do not keep my child in pajamas all day but they do make excellent messy play outfits!

You can never have too many baskets

Has anyone in the known world ever said this?  I doubt it.

Tissue paper flowers that dont smell of tissue or flowers

Cut out two circles of tissue paper in different colours, one slightly smaller than the other, plus one circle of yellow or orange tissue whilst your child asks if its ready yet over and over again.

Make a cup of tea and put your feet up.

It is ready now.  Hand over the circles plus glue, glitter, sequins - anything you fancy really and allow them to get to work.  Glue the smaller circle on to the larger one, scrunch the yellow into some sort of ball and glue to the middle.  Add as much glitter and other junk as needed to make the worlds most freaky flower.  Pinch behind the yellow tissue and set to the side to dry.  Repeat.

Once they have the hang of flower making there is no end of things they can do with these.  Stick to the front of a card, add to ribbon for floral bunting, use on gifts...because, after all, you can never have too many baskets

The daddy gift array part 1

In my head I see that programmatically.  In three languages.  Geek.

One of the benefits of Mummy and Milly day is the ability to make home made gifts for his lordship (thats not an insult incidentally, I bought him one of those title in an envelope gift packs several years back).  Unfortunately one of the downsides to having a threenager is their apparent inability to keep anything a secret as our recent make daddy an easter card craft day went.  I think that secret lasted a good ten minutes.

"Daddy, we have made you a card".
"Milly, its a secret"
"BUT I WANT TO TELL DADDY"
*sigh*

His birthday is in a couple of weeks so its thinking cap on time only with the added pressure of him not finding out in less time than it takes the glue to dry.  Of course, he's reading this so no hints on here darling.


This time last year, we made this...

The container is from John Lewis, but anything airtight would do.  Then we had great fun sticking on foam letters and sticky gems from hobbycraft.  Of course, this makes it completely impractical since you can't wash it but a good wipe out will do the trick.  Ours is still going strong a year later.

Daddys its good to share biscuits

175g plain flour 

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

100g sugar

1 tsp unsweetened cocoa 

125g butter (or whatever fat you want to use)

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Family sized bag of m&ms 

Hide the m&m's.  This could be the most important stage of the entire process.  Then preheat the oven.  Again this is going to be for a fan oven, but I went for 160.

Sift together all the dry ingredients.  We have a set of digital scales and its great for learning numbers and the concept of greater than and less than.

Hand your child the egg and a whisk.  Depending on their age they might need a bit of help with cracking it, and you on stand by to fish out all the bits of shell.  Let them get on with whisking whilst you cream together the butter and sugar.  Pour in the egg and vanilla, and mix.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Beat the dry ingredients in to the wet a little at a time.  If you find its too runny add a little more flour.  You dont want something in between a frijj shake and playdoh.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Discuss what makes something a half and roughly divide the mix in to two bowls.  Add the cocoa powder in to one and mix through.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Spoon a little of the mixture on to a baking sheet.  These things expand more than you expect so leave some room if you're in charge or accept that you're going to have a giant mutated cookie explosion if you aren't.  Each bowl should make about 8 cookies.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Squash the cookie down a little bit and introduce the m&ms.  Yes, you can eat the brown ones.  Add 4 or 5 sweets in to each cookie and press down firmly.  For younger children its nice to have them count everything out.

Bake for about 15 minutes. 

It is now ok to lick the spoon.

And not a square bracket to be seen.  Geek out.

In the beginning

We parents all start our craft journey somewhere slightly different.  For some its crayons and mark making, for others its rolling around in paint that you hope is as washable as the bottle claims, and for the really unlucky its your best lipstick on your newly decorated walls.

For us, it was chocolate and the date, according to facebook, was April 3rd 2010 which makes Mill a little over 18 months.  I'm sure we must have done something before then but this was the moment when I realised that these memories of just the two of us would last for a lifetime.

 I'm not sure there is anyone who hasnt made Rice Krispies cakes , but here is the recipe anyway

It doesn't have to be Easter to enjoy a mini egg.

Chocolate and lots of it

Rice Krispies or any brand of rice type breakfast cereals

Assorted sprinkles

Mini eggs

Before you start, its a good idea to put out the cases ready for filling.  Close your eyes and imagine your child after consuming a family sized dairy milk in approximately 17 seconds.  Its not good is it.

Melt the broken chocolate over a bain marie.  Once melted pour in to another bowl because the original is now hotter than the sun.  Allow to cool slightly.

Allow the small person to pour the rice based cereal in to the chocolate.  This will go one of two ways : the cereal will enter their mouths or the cereal will cover the floor, but hopefully enough of it will go in to the chocolate at the same time.

Mix with a large wooden spoon.

Fish out your childs head from the bowl

Fill each of the cases with as much assistance as possible.  Its good for their co-ordination I believe, plus its also quite funny to watch.

Hand over the sprinkles and mini eggs and stand well back.

Chill the finished products in the fridge until hardened, bath your child and never, ever serve to guests.