Mummy's Little Blog: baking

Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts

Tuesday, 3 December 2013

Guest Blog: 3 great ways to keep your kids happy indoors this winter

As the mum of two very active toddlers the winter months frankly scare me. Especially when I’m trying to juggle launching a business – www.cahootsy.com - and keep them happy and entertained at the same time and away from Cbeebies. So here are a few activities I’ve found that let us enjoy our time together, minimise cleaning up, and lets their imaginations go wild – indoors!

Way 1: Construct a Den

What you need: kingsize sheet or quilt, large Winged clothes horse, wooden pegs, cushions & little stool, pirate or fairy hat or flag for entrance, torch.

This is a great way to while away the afternoon and gets the kids really proactive in scouring the house for ways to kit out their den. The trick is to let them select the spot and help build it with you. Once you put the clothes horse up you’re ready to go with placing the sheet over it, using pegs to hold it in place and for adding the odd accessory. Make sure you leave a bit of cloth for the door flap as half the fun is sitting in the dark with a torch on.

If you need a ‘winged’ clothes horse (had no idea that’s what I had!) here’s a link http://fave.co/1gyzFAm

Alternatively Ikea has a great range of quick assemble and affordable tents for under £20. Check here http://fave.co/1gyzXas

Way 2: Make an enormous batch of Lalo’s famous cookies
(more like a granola bar than chocolate chip cookies. Healthy and very addictive).
Warning: has almonds.

I’m a terrible cook with very little time. Since having kids I’ve had to learn a lot – from the early days of understanding what a great combo squash and blueberries are for a baby (via ice cube trays), to how to present food in exciting new ways and shapes (broccoli “trees”, pots of “gold treasure” sweetcorn or “wriggly worm” cabbage) so that it’s eaten without fuss.

This is one recipe no one can fail to master. Few ingredients, healthy and so much fun to make together. Put them in a glass jar once cooled and they keep nicely.

Lalo’s Famous Cookies (from MY FATHER’s DAUGHTER by Gwyneth Paltrow) http://fave.co/1gyAoS3

What you need
Aprons, hair-tie, giant bowl, medium wooden spoon, large baking tray, baking sheet and these - Preheat the oven to 350°F.

4 cups barley flour, 3 cups raw whole almonds crushed in a food processor (about ten 2-second bursts), 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 cup canola oil (also known as Rapeseed oil – I never knew), 1 cup maple syrup, jam (Strawberry, Blueberry, Apricot)

Get the kids to mix all the ingredients, except the jam, in a large bowl with a wooden spoon. My little one uses her fingers to mash it all up which is fine by me (gets a bit messy but entertaining and means two or three kids can all work on it at the same time).

Ask them to roll the mixture into little tablespoon balls and space evenly on baking sheets lined with greaseproof paper. Get the eldest to use their thumb to make an indentation and fill each cookie with a small amount of jam. Bake until cookies are evenly browned, about 20 minutes.

Way 3: Make your own simple Mister Maker bus panel

My kids are mesmerised by Mr Maker and the stuff he can create. If you’re like me you’ll have tons of little boxes and pouches of paints, craft paper, cardboard, pompoms, etc but its always a pain to get them all out and re-pack them. So a friend who has 3 kids suggested re-creating the Mr Maker bus side out of a quilt.

Here’s how.

Ingredients – large quilt or thick colourful sheet, PVA glue (polyvinyl acetate), large vinyl sheet or plastic pouches, cutter or scissors. All your arts and craft material from around the house organised just as you’d like it. You can label each pouch and the kids get very good at remembering exactly where everything goes back when it’s finished with.

If you’re an arts and crafts free household here’s a handy kit to get you started - http://fave.co/1isSVUh

I use PVA glue to stick the vinyl to the fabric – again, very little time! If you like to get more creative here’s a useful blog from another mum, Ashley, that explains exactly how to get sewing and make it look professional http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2011/08/tip-for-sewing-with-vinyl-it-sticks-making-clear-vinyl-pouches.html

Bio:

Tarika Marshall is mum of two energetic toddlers aged 2 and 4 and COO at Cahootsy, a Q&A site dedicated to products for parents, launching in the UK, and co-founded by her and her husband Paul. Be sure to check out their blog (http://blog.cahootsy.com/wp/) or facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Cahootsy ) to follow their story as they prepare to beta launch next week.

Sunday, 1 September 2013

The great blogger Bake off: week 2

Ok i will have to apologise I am not a great baker but I love the Great British Bake of and saw that there was a blogging bake of I just had to take part! Paul and Mary would be disappointed but me and my son enjoyed making and eating our goodies from this week! I thought I would try something easy and something that we had in the cupboard already so I went for chocolate breadsticks, I thought how bad can they be the kids love them. So there I go to start and my scales stop working so I had to use cups as a way to measure flour for the recipe!

For the Dough:

300g Strong White flour (2 1/4 Cups)

2 teaspoons of caster suger

1 x 7g sschet fast-action dried yeast

1/4 teaspoon of salt

225ml Lukewarm water

For the Finish

75g of chocolate broken from a bar

1, Put the dry Dough ingredients in a bowl mixing by hand then pour in the lukewarm water. Gently press and squeeze everything together untill it creates a smooth, soft dough. Any dry crumbs left add a little bit more water and if to wet add more flour.

2, Sprinkle the work surface with flour , then turn the dough out onto it. cover your hands in flour and flatten and press dough to make a rectenagle measuring 22x30cm .

3, Sprinkle the Chocolate evenly over the dough, starting one end roll up the dough into a spiral, the gradually stretch out the roll to 34 cm long. Then flatten to make it measure 34 x 16 cm rectangle. carefully slice the rectangle into 16 strips that are 16 cm long.

4, Pick up the strip and hold one end in each hand. Gently twist the strip, giving a little stretch, then set it on a lined baking sheet. Do the same with all the strips leaving a 3cm gap between them. Cover the sheets loosely with clingfilm and leave for 20 mins , mean while pre heat the oven to 220'C.

5, Uncover the baking sheets and place in the oven. Bake for 12 mins until golden. An extra 5 mins for a more crunchy texture.

6, Remove the bread sticks from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool down.

Here is our finished product, I went a bit of recipe and didnt measure the sticks or count 16 out. They ended up twice as wide as I would of liked and also forgot as my little girl woke from her nap and distracted me. We ate them dipped in nutella they were good the kids loved them and were so easy to make. They may not be bake of worthy but I enjoyed making them and actually doing some baking!

Saturday, 23 February 2013

Womens Speed Coffee

Today we held a women collective speed coffee morning! the idea is similar to speed dating but rather than look for a lover you were looking for a friend! one of the more important things involved was cake! i got there early and there was so much cake! we have some talented bakers in our church community although my baking was not required maybe my husband had told them about my previous failures in the baking department! these have involved burnt cake, hard biscuits you name it! i keep on blaming the oven!

we had about 30 women attend which was awesome! plenty of tea and cake! conversations were had! i also ate two yes two slices of chocolate cake! was nice to have a break from the kids and sit and talk with out fussing over Aston and Amelie! i am sure my husband enjoyed not having me over his shoulder whilst playing with the kids! he did say he stood on Amelie s hand but that's not too bad!

Anyway back to women collective, the tables looked awesome my friend who got married last year had loads of country chic accessories left from her wedding so we decorated the tables with these! all in all was a successful morning hopefully some new friendships made or even new support networks for some women! our next event is community action in our local area! exciting! Womens collective ministry is new to our church after my friend Chelser saw a missing gap and prayed into it and heard whispers from god! a year later in November 2012 we were having our first ever womens collective weekend away! its amazing to have a group dedicated to empowering and supporting the women of our church community!