Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Thursday, 15 December 2011
Playdough
The Nursing Mothers' Association of Australia play dough recipe is very good. I used baby oil instead of cooking oil and it has a lovely smell.
Christmas Preparations # 3: Peppermint creams
Interesting when cooking with a toddler. Recipe called for 450g icing sugar to two lightly whisked egg whites and a few drops of peppermint essence. Think my eggs were too big as added a shed load more icing sugar to make it dough like and then it still stuck to everything: me, Erin, the rolling pin, the pallet knife, the tray I put the creams on to dry...
Hey ho.
About 10 of the batch of 50 were near presentable. They were the ones I managed to do once Erin had got bored. A lesson there - wait until the toddler gets fed up and then you can make food you'd actually be happy for people to eat.
Hey ho.
About 10 of the batch of 50 were near presentable. They were the ones I managed to do once Erin had got bored. A lesson there - wait until the toddler gets fed up and then you can make food you'd actually be happy for people to eat.
Saturday, 3 December 2011
Christmas preparations # 2: Advent Calendar - some sewing at last
Managed to finish off the advent calendar I've been planning since September and started just before Daniel was born. In fact, I think I started it the very afternoon before I went into labour. That was one hectic day.
It's a little bit Pinterest inspired and uses a combination of techniques including wonderful Bubble Jet Set for the numbers and some fantastic wonderweb type stuff to stick on the numbers and the letters.
I particularly enjoyed looking for nice old fashioned fonts and thinking though how to actually get it to hang properly as felt isn't the most robust of materials. A hastily ironed on row of tape across the back to give the hanging ribbons something to hold onto did the job.
It could do with a little more embellishment, but that will have to wait until next year as it's already three days late. Erin has been surprisingly good at grasping the concept of one pocket per day, particularly as there are chocolate coins stashed in there. Am sure will find her one day with a mountain of silver paper trying to stuff chocolate into Daniel!
It's a little bit Pinterest inspired and uses a combination of techniques including wonderful Bubble Jet Set for the numbers and some fantastic wonderweb type stuff to stick on the numbers and the letters.
I particularly enjoyed looking for nice old fashioned fonts and thinking though how to actually get it to hang properly as felt isn't the most robust of materials. A hastily ironed on row of tape across the back to give the hanging ribbons something to hold onto did the job.
It could do with a little more embellishment, but that will have to wait until next year as it's already three days late. Erin has been surprisingly good at grasping the concept of one pocket per day, particularly as there are chocolate coins stashed in there. Am sure will find her one day with a mountain of silver paper trying to stuff chocolate into Daniel!
There are recipes when baking for a reason...
I have discovered today that there are acceptable degrees of Janet-type behaviour when it comes to baking. I thought I could adapt the Hummingbird Bakery marshmallow cupcake recipe to cut out the tedious and frankly wasteful melting-of-marshmallow-to-put-in-the-centre-of-cakes stage. But no! A baking disaster ensued...
At first I thought I was on to a winner as the marshmallow expanded and looked like it was melting nicely. But then as the timer went off at 20 minutes, I could see we had a proper disaster on our hands - what on earth happened to the mallows?! Hey ho, gotta give these things a go. Mr WP delighted in pointing out that surely the Hummingbird people had already tried this technique so it wasn't at all surprising it had resulted in crater cakes.
So I made a second batch and decided that simple vanilla cakes with the yummy mini marshmallow topping would do the job nicely enough without faffing about melting things to go in the middle. A little nod to Janet there all the same.
At first I thought I was on to a winner as the marshmallow expanded and looked like it was melting nicely. But then as the timer went off at 20 minutes, I could see we had a proper disaster on our hands - what on earth happened to the mallows?! Hey ho, gotta give these things a go. Mr WP delighted in pointing out that surely the Hummingbird people had already tried this technique so it wasn't at all surprising it had resulted in crater cakes.
So I made a second batch and decided that simple vanilla cakes with the yummy mini marshmallow topping would do the job nicely enough without faffing about melting things to go in the middle. A little nod to Janet there all the same.
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Christmas preparations # 1: Christmas Cakes - UPDATE! Stages 2 and 3
So, the boy continues to be a legend, and he has a bit of a gnarly cold so is sleeping even more. That said, it has taken some time to getting around to feeding the cakes, for a number of reasons...
I made the mix:
And, being rather Janet British Bake Off about following a recipe, substituted gluten free self raising flour instead of plain flour (we'd run out as Mr WP had been in a Hummingbird frenzy again). And this also meant my mum, who loves a Christmas cake, could share in the joy.
So, I baked them:
And they came out with a nice spongey top and a clean skewer etc etc. But then mum tried one and we found they were, horror of horrors, UNDERDONE. Oh no! What to do? Mum said feed with brandy and they'll taste alright. But I just couldn't face an underbake. I could hear Paul and Mary's words ringing in my ears so I consulted Helen and we decided it would be ok to bung them back in the oven for half an hour. This happened today - FIVE days later. Proper Janet behaviour.
So now they look like this and have also had a liberal dowsing with brandy:
Proper rock hard slightly burnt Christmas cake. Yessssss.
I made the mix:
And, being rather Janet British Bake Off about following a recipe, substituted gluten free self raising flour instead of plain flour (we'd run out as Mr WP had been in a Hummingbird frenzy again). And this also meant my mum, who loves a Christmas cake, could share in the joy.
So, I baked them:
And they came out with a nice spongey top and a clean skewer etc etc. But then mum tried one and we found they were, horror of horrors, UNDERDONE. Oh no! What to do? Mum said feed with brandy and they'll taste alright. But I just couldn't face an underbake. I could hear Paul and Mary's words ringing in my ears so I consulted Helen and we decided it would be ok to bung them back in the oven for half an hour. This happened today - FIVE days later. Proper Janet behaviour.
So now they look like this and have also had a liberal dowsing with brandy:
Proper rock hard slightly burnt Christmas cake. Yessssss.
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