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.