Wookie Cookies!!

As some of you may or may not know from reading these posts, we are a Star Wars family!! I am a late comer, after being introduced to Star Wars really more when I met my husband, the children however  have no choice in wearing Star Wars t-shirts and playing with Star Wars toys!  So on May 4th (Star Wars day!) I thought it would be fitting to make some Wookie Cookies.

Normal people on a Sunday tend to have a lie in, unfortunately in this particular house lie ins don't really exist, so by 615am I was bleary eyed making some coffee to start my day, and warming up the morning milk for the Aj's.  With three hours to go until I had to leave for work and already hyper children, how this is possible I will never know, I decided that it would be best to amuse them making the cookies before I went to work, with the bonus that I could also take one to work with me. 

The recipe makes quite a few, and we are attempting to not eat so many biscuits etc at the moment, so I decided to half the mixture, which I thought would be great to talk through with Arthur,  half of two eggs is one egg etc etc.  However whenever I do this something always goes wrong and I always forget to halve at least one item, this time it was the eggs, although I didn't realise this until I ate one and it tasted mainly of Egg!! I must remember to write out a separate recipe if I decide to do this again.

 The children enjoyed taking in turns mixing the ingredients, which is always nice to see, and drawing in the flour they had knocked all over the side.  Then whilst the cookies were in the oven, Arthur helped me make the mixture for pancakes for breakfast as he'd asked for them specially, I could always continue the theme and say they were Death Star pancakes, unfortunately though I am never very good at getting small round pancakes.  Daddy did well whilst I was at work though and make 'Pizza the hut' toast pizzas for lunch, he was very dissapointed that Arthur didn't want to watch any Star Wars though!
 

Drawing in flour

Sharing the job of mixing

Alyssa has a solo go

Cake mixture for breakfast??? Why not!!

Wookie Cookies!!

Pizza the Hutt

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St George's Day 2014

Today is St George's Day in England, legend has it that he was a Knight who bravely killed a dragon to save a princess.  In order to celebrate this, after showing the Aj's various you tube videos portraying the story, we rein-acted the story with their toys.  We also played in the cardboard castle from my previous post Knights and Castles, for a bit of dress up fun. 

We also had visitors coming in the afternoon, so I thought it would be nice if we baked some cakes to offer them, and keeping with the knightly theme I decided to use Arthur's castle baking mould that he has had for a long time, but we haven't used yet. 

Arthur helped me weigh out all the ingredients, he's become very familiar with what is needed to bake cakes, and was counting the eggs and telling me we needed flour and sugar!  I then let Arthur and Alyssa have a go at bashing some chocolate buttons (liberated from an Easter egg!) in order to make chocolate chip buns.  I then made the very silly mistake of letting the two of them loose with the hand mixer! They were being well behaved and Arthur let Alyssa hold it as well, however the angle they held it meant that cake mixture sprayed all over the counter, up the wall, over the cookbook, the kettle... everything!

They then took it in turns to spoon the mixture into the mould, and enjoyed the best part f the baking process, licking the spoon and bowl, it was really hard to tear it away from them they we enjoying it so much.  Unfortunately the cakes didn't come out like they should have, I think I may have tried removing them too early, but they tasted lovely all the same.

Breaking the chocolate

Spraying, I mean mixing!!

Dolloping!

More dolloping!

Tasting!

TaDah! Oh!! Not quite right!

How they were meant to look!

St George saving the Princess!

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Hot cross buns!!

I've been looking forward to doing this with the Aj's as I have never made Hot cross buns before, and I was interested in learning how to create the crosses and what they are made of.  On the morning Alyssa had had a terrible nights sleep, so was still in bed when we started, I decided the best thing to do was to make the dough first thing, then distract them with breakfast and getting dresed for the day whilst they were set aside to rise!

We started of by measuring out the flour and adding the butter, then I got Arthur to 'tickle' the flour to rub the flour and butter together, I also helped with this as well as it's quite hard for him to do. Then we added the other dry products, once he had had a chance to sell the spices.  Then he confidently mixed the wet ingredients into the flour and stirred it all together.  Having an electric scale I thought it would be a good idea to show him the numbers when weighing and get him to look for a five when weighing 50g etc to introduce some number recocnigtion, which he seemed to enjoy!

Once the dough was ready we had to roll the mixture into 8 balls, however Arthur wasn't very good at this as he was too interested in playing and stretching the dough rather than rolling it, but he was having fun so I just rolled all the others till all that was left was his one.

As i've said it was time for breakfast and getting dressed (and mummy to clean up) whilst the dough was rising then I mixed together the paste for the crosses, and helped Arthur squeeze the shapes out using a sandwich bag as a piping bag.  Then it was all down to Arthur to brush with the golden syrup, which I had warmed in the microwave for easier use.  During all this Alyssa was still asleep, in fact she was still asleep when they came out the oven so she missed the whole event.  She did however get to eat one of the buns for breakfast, so I think she planned it that way all along!  They were very very big however compared to the usual shop bought ones, so in future I may make double the amount, or just be greedy and have large ones!!

Adding the spices

"tickling the flour!"

Getting stuck in!

Mixing it all up and getting messy!

Adding the crosses!

We did take a picture of the finished buns, but it seems to have disapeared from the files, but theyy did look and taste great! I promise!


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Homemade Hobnobs

Today the Aj's and I were invited to a friends house to play and have lunch, I felt it would be rude to turn up empty handed, so decided to make some homemade Hobnobs to take with us.

Arthur first of all helped me to weight out all the dry ingredients, then took in turns with Alyssa to mix them all up.  I then took on the task of mixing all the wet ingredients as they needed to be done on the hob.  Then Arthur had the important job of mixing it all together and dolloping the mixture onto a baking tray, we ended up with relatively big biscuits, but still had roughly half the mixture left to make fresh biscuits another day, Arthur enjoyed controlling the making of the biscuits and gently patting each blob down into a biscuit type shape. 

Then it was  time to put them in the oven and try our hardest not to eat all the leftover mixture, which tastes just as good uncooked, as well as try and not eat all the biscuits before we arrived at our friends as they are scrummy!!  The rest of the day was spent running in and out of the garden between rain showers and enjoying plenty of warming hot chocolate with our biscuits.

Mix one

Mix two

"If I distract everyone I may just get a sneaky taste!

Dolloping!

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!

 

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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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Soda bread and all things Irish!

Today is St Patrick's day, so after breakfast we used YouTube to watch some Irish dancing and jigged around the front room, I then put some Irish music on to listen to in the kitchen whilst we made Soda Bread.  I really let Alyssa get involved properly for the first time this week, Arthur added the lemon juice, after tasting it and pulling amazing faces, and the let Alyssa stir.  Then we started sifting the flour, Arthur really enjoyed making it 'snow' then said "Alyssa's turn!" so glad to see him starting to understand the process of taking turns, esp with Alyssa.  When it was a dough, I let Alyssa play with it and touch it for a little bit, and she immediately started to push it like kneading, and prodding it.

After the baking I let them amuse themselves in the play room whilst I stuck little shamrocks all around the house, leading to a little rainbow with a pot of special 'rainbow salad' made by the Leprechauns for dinner.  After a little game of potato rolling racing for a bit of active fun, I told Arthur a little bit about Leprechauns, then 'noticed' a shamrock I had stuck near the door.  Arthur got so excited pointing to all the shamrocks saying "there's another one!" then he saw the rainbow and got even more excited.

I then told him that the shamrocks were magic too, and gave him a crayon and paper and showed him that rubbing the paper made the shamrock magically appear, which he thought was brilliant!!

Unfortunately neither of the Aj's were impressed with the salad, and didn't eat it, but they thoroughly enjoyed the soda bread with some cheese and ham.

Mixing the milk and lemon

Alyssa's turn

Playing with the dough

All baked and looking yummy!

Having a quick game of potato racing

'

"A rainbow!!"

The Leprechauns treasure

Shamrock trail

Crayon rubbings

YUUUUMMMMM!!!

MMMMMMMMM!!

Pasties and tin mining for St Piran's day!

Here in sunny (if only for the morning!!) Cornwall, it is St Piran's Day, he is one of the patron saints of Cornwall and also of tin miners, after supposedly discovering tin.  The Cornish flag also known as St Piran's flag, is believed by some to represent the white tin metal against the black tin ore.

So bearing this all in mind, today took on a bit of a mining theme, first we made fresh pastry to make three different types of Cornish pasty, cheese and onion, mixed vegetable and a sweet filling of apples and sultanas for afters.  Arthur loves making pastry as it means he gets to push buttons on the Magimix food processor, whilst we did this Alyssa played with some flour in a bowl stirring it around, and eating it!  Whilst that chilled in the fridge, Alyssa fell asleep, and Arthur and I prepped the fillings and tidied up a bit, I gave him a normal dinner knife so he could 'cut' the vegetables with me on his very own chopping board, to entertain him whilst I cut the rest.  We then got down to making the pasties, Alyssa played with some pastry dough whilst Arthur helped me cut the rounds out, and then placed the fillings in whilst folded and crimped.  I then let him make his own special one all by himself and he did really well!

Whilst the pasties were cooking I took the Aj's upstairs to the front room, where I had secretly turned under the table into a 'tin mine,' by covering up with blankets and duvets, and hidden little balls of tin foil in a blanket for the tin.  I then gave Arthur his fireman's helmet as a hard hat, and his axe, and a small torch to see by.  He really enjoyed playing in his mine and finding the 'tin', and Alyssa had fun crawling in and out of the tunnel.  Soon the pasties were ready and I taught Arthur the Oggy chant and handed the pasties to the mine workers to eat.

We then went for a little walk to a local mine to look at the building remains,  Arthur was very excited and wanted to take a closer look at it all, but I couldn't leave the pram with Alyssa asleep again (poorly baby!) and I also didn't feel to comfortable exploring with all the recent storms making the ground underfoot slippery.  It was a shame daddy wasn't with us to help explain what some of the buildings were and what they did to make it even more interesting for Arthur, so we will definitely go for another walk up there again some time!

'Cutting' the veg

Alyssa rolling and cutting

Making his own special cheese pasty

Sealing the edges

"Proper Job!!" Arthur's is the middle one

Ready for the mines

Oggy time!

The mine

Venturing inside the buildings

Mine shaft