Almost 1/2 a dozen rose cupcakes!

At Christmas I made some turkish delight for great nanny as a present, which involved the use of rose water, something that has since been sat in the cupboard abandoned since.  So after a brief scout on the internet I found that you can use it to make rose water cupcakes!! So I thought Alyssa and I could make 1/2 a dozen rose cupcakes and give one to granny and one to nanny as little mother's day gifts, and obviously a couple for Alyssa's mummy and the rest of the family!!

So Alyssa put on her favourite new apron, and we set to work.  After cheating a little bit and practically melting the butter in the microwave,  I let Alyssa cream together the butter and sugar pretty much all by herself before we added the rest of the ingredients.  A word of warning rose water smells beautiful, but tastes absolutely awful, I am so glad I tried it before letting Alyssa try it!! It has a very strong chemical, ethanol kind of taste when it's on it's own, but tastes wonderfully floral in cakes, turkish delight etc. 

I did change the recipe slightly using a little bit of milk instead of cream cheese when making the butter cream, but the result came out good anyway and that is all that matters.  Once everything was ready we practiced some counting putting the cupcake cases in the bun tin, before letting Alyssa spoon the mixture in.  The only problem was that the recipe was halved to make 12, but a few cheeky tastes here and there, meant we had 11 and a bit!

Once they were all baked and cooled we decorated a couple and added some pretty sprinkles, they were very yummy, but in future I would be tempted to use chocolate butter cream or maybe put chocolate chips inside for a more turkish delight taste, the children were not overly keen, and daddy thought it was too floral, so I think some chocolate would balance it out, but definitely a nice idea for mother's day, or even valentine's day instead of the usual idea of 1/2 a dozen roses!!

mixing!

counting!

bowl licking

Yum!

Egg box Daffodils

The final piece of our Mother's day gift, along with our Simnel cake, and our Cards is a lovely bunch of flowers, egg box daffodils to be precise.

The Aj's both seem to really enjoy painting, it really helps Arthur to concentrate and Alyssa just likes to put the paint in her mouth more that on the paper, but also copy her big brother.  I think it also helped that we had a vase of daffodils on the table that Arthur had picked, so we were able to discuss colours such as what colour is the stem/petals.  Alyssa really enjoyed being let loose with a paint brush and part of an egg box,  Arthur was happy to attempt to paint it all over and get his hands covered in paint.  I then cut some rough petal shapes and stems out of a cardboard box, and let them paint those, Arthur wanted to paint more and more but we didn't have enough egg boxes so I then just let them both paint freely for a while as they were enjoying themselves so much.  The whole thing may mot be completely covered in paint, or look very neat, but it was made specially and that's what matters most!

"Need a touch more paint!!"

'Can't quite pick this up!'

"Ah got it!'

Free painting

Beautiful!!

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Simnel cake!

To go with our wonderful Mother's Day Cards that we made the other day for Granny and Nanna, we attempted a bit of traditional baking.  A Simnel cake was traditionally made by young girls working in service as Mothering Sunday was the one day of the year they were allowed home, however now it is more commonly and Easter cake thanks to the Eleven marzipan balls on top representing the twelve apostles minus Judas!

Recipe:
350g currants
100g Sultanas
75g mixed candied peel, chopped
225g Plain flour
5ml ground cinnamon
5ml ground nutmeg
175g butter or marg
175g caster sugar
3 eggs beaten
milk to mix
apricot jam or beaten egg to use under marzipan top
Marzipan
Lined 18cm cake tin
Oven 170c for first hour 150c for final three hours

First of all we creamed together the butter and sugar, I really wanted Alyssa to get really involved in this as I am hoping that it is something we can do every year for mother's day to bring bake the Simnel Cake tradition a little bit, so once Arthur and I softened it up a bit we let her have a go, then we tipped in the rest of the ingredients and mixed it all up into a scrummy cake mixture, so scrummy in fact that Alyssa had a cheeky taste!! I sense trouble baking with these two in future, lots of extra mix needed to replace any they both 'taste!'

Once it was all cooked and cooled, we had a bit of time in the playroom whist this happened, we set about rolling out the marzipan and making the balls to goon top, Alyssa really seemed to enjoy having a go at spreading, and Arthur enjoyed stealing the marzipan!  I also let Alyssa have a little go at rollingout the marzipan with the rolling pin.  Arthur had the very important job of making the balls, as Alyssa is too small to be able to attempt them, so we had 22 varying sized, individually unique little balls to go on top.  All that was needed then was to brown it under the grill with a brushing of milk, and try not to eat it!!

Creaming the butter and sugar

Cheeky taste!!

Spreading the jam (with mummy's help!)

Adding the balls

Rolling

TA DAH!!! MMMMMMMMM!!

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