No cook vanilla scented purple glitter playdough

If like me you sometimes get the playdough out and find it's gone a bit hard or you fancy making the world of playdough a bit more exciting you can try and make your own. Whilst I can't pretend I enjoy the messy side of baking and being crafty with a baby/toddler/prechooler, I do love being creative and finding new things for G to discover and do. (You know you're a mum when you find yourself unintentionally quoting CBeebies)!

There are loads of simple recipes out there on the web but like my salt dough recipe I thought I'd do this one in grams. I'm always a bit frustrated at having to convert to grams, ml's if I follow one on the internet with not having cup measure's for the kitchen. The amounts never turn out quite right and I end up with the dough being too wet. One day I'll remember to get myself a set when I actually have some spare pennies!


Recipe:

• 250g plain flour
• 1 tsp glycerin*
• 1 tbsp oil
• 300g Salt
• 200 ml boiling water
• 1 tbsp cream of tartar
• Glitter*
• Vanilla essence*
• Sugarflair Gel Colour of choice*

* These are optional ingredients and can be varied.

1. We mixed the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. 
2. We then added our chosen colour of glitter to the mix.
3. We then added the oil and the vanilla essence.
4. After that I took over from my little girl. I added a small amount of gel colour to the hot water and mixed until dispersed. I then added the hot water to the dry ingredients, stirring in bit by bit.
5. I then with careful supervision let my little girl start stirring again when the dough had begun to form. We then added the glycerin. 

If your playdough seems a bit wet/too sticky just add more flour until you feel it's right.
You can choose to add the gel colours afterwards and kneed them into the dough. This makes it much easier if you want to make multiple colours of dough.

What is great about making your own dough is that you can vary the additions to it to suit you.
I add glycerin now when I make dough after reading a great tip online about it making the dough shiny. We added glitter as we love glitter! My little girl chose which gel to use and we used vanilla as that's what we had in. It would have been nice to do a lavender scented one this time to match the colour she chose. You could use almond, lemon, rose, orange, lavender, herbs, spices, the list goes on.

There are many ways to play with dough. We usually use a big box of cutters, some playdoh tools and mummy's silicone cupcake cases. This time we got out some candles and other bits for a different sensory experience. G loved sticking things in the dough instead of rolling out and cutting or rolling into balls.

I've heard of people making dough using conditioner or bubble bath. We've got some cornflour in now so that will most likely feature in our next messy kitchen experience!

Apple, Orange and Cinnamon Strudel

As mentioned in my first basic budget tips post I always check the reduced sections when out grocery shopping. At the moment there always seems to be fresh puff pastry packs, usually anchor, in the chilled reduced section. I grabbed one and a 'roll back' short crust for some planned cooking/baking later in the week. You can freeze these blocks so don't worry if you spot some reduced and don't have any imminent baking plans!


 I love baking. It's an activity I like to involve G in, so the more simple the process the better at this age. Ready made pastry also obviously saves time which there never seems to be enough of! Cooking/baking everything yourself instead of buying it ready made from the shop isn't always cheaper like people like to preach (though this one would be if pastry was done from scratch - but it then still depends on what you're already stocked up on) but you can get past the problem of not finding exactly what you want.


I thought it would be nice to try out using orange juice and rind instead of the usual lemon for this recipe.

Our strudel turned out lovely but possibly a bit on the sweet side for those who don't have a sweet tooth.
Not everyone uses egg so feel free to leave this out if you prefer.


Recipe


Ingredients:

• Block of puff* pastry 500g
• 4 ready to eat apples
• Sultanas
• 50g Brown Sugar
• Flat tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• Orange rind and 1-2 tbsp juice
• 1 tsp margerine/butter
• 1tbsp flour
• 1 small egg (optional)
• Icing sugar for dusting

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180oc
• Roll out the puff pastry on a floured or icing sugar coated surface
• Roll into a large oblong shape
• Peel, core and chop apples into small chunks or thin slices
• Grate orange and add rind  to the apples, then slice and add the juice of one half of the orange. Make sure the apple is coated.
• Add chopped apples, sugar and a handful or two of sultanas to your mixing bowl
• Add small knob of butter/marge
• Add the cinnamon and nutmeg and mix well
• Add 1tbsp flour, mix well.
• Add the egg and mix well
• Place mixture in a straight line along side of the pastry (leaving a gap between the mixture and the bottom edge of the pastry).
• Fold the pastry over, sealing the filling inside.
• Make horizontal slices in the top (up to you how many) to allow steam to escape.
• Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until golden brown.

We served ours with custard the first time and ice cream the next. It's not keeping inline with my getting fit and healthy but it's a lovely pudding for the cold Autumn and Winter months.




*Strudel is also often made with filo pastry, the method is just slightly different when filling.

White & Dark Chocolate Cookies

I followed quite a basic recipe for these. They turned out quite well but next time I'll be following one online and trying out some corn starch for optimum results.

This makes a small batch, it yeilds about 10 - 12 large cookies.

Ingredients:

150g Dark chocolate broken into pieces

Half a small bag of white chocolate chips

225g SR flour

50g Caster sugar

50g Light brown sugar

125g Margerine

1 large egg

1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Method: 

• Preheat oven to 180oc
• Cream together the margerine and two sugars.
• Add in the egg
• Add in the vanilla Essence
• Fold in the flour
• Add in the chocolate and the chocolate chips

Put dollops of the cookie mixture onto a baking tray covered with baking paper.

Leave plenty of space between each one as they really do spread out. Some of ours didn't have enough space so didn't turn out a lovely round shape as we had to cut them apart from the others.

Bake for approx 12 minutes.

This was fun to do with G. Cornstarch is on my next shopping list and I'd like to try out some peanut butter cookies too.

Salt Dough - not just for Christmas

Suffering from exhaustion today* and needing to opt for a day in I decided it would be good to do some simple crafty activities with G.
After breakfast we finished off one of her birthday presents - a glitter by numbers if you can call it that. Like sand art where you peel off paper with numbers on which correspond to a certain colour of glitter. The underlying surface is adhesive allowing the glitter to stick and create the picture.

That didn't take long as we'd already done the majority so I needed something else entertaining but simple so opted for doing some salt dough.

Mixing with uncle Matt

The first time I ever made salt dough with G was the festive season. I made a batch to make Christmas decorations with before her second Christmas when she was just 16 months.
She had great fun getting stuck in!





We made it a family thing and my brother, sister and niece came round and all made some salt dough and cut it into festive shapes. I pre coloured some of our dough and a couple of days later we painted them together. G had fun splodging the paint on and I finished the uncovered areas and we added extra decorations of glitter, decorative balls (again from my cake decorating supplies) and baby pasta left over from a sensory session. I added the glue on some of them as you can tell and let G then sprinkle (read chuck) the glitter on.

Most people would probably only think to do it at Christmas time but there's really no reason why you can't do it anytime of year.











I've made it a with her a couple more times since then and with being older she was able to sit and decorate them by herself.
If painting though I would recommend not using watery paints as it can make the shapes soggy and result in all the hard (but fun) work being chucked in the bin!











Today we used some of mummy's special gel colours that I normally use for cake decorating.

Here is the recipe that we followed:

225g Plain flour
250g Salt
100ml Water

 Gel colour of choice (optional)

I've given the measurements in grams as unlike the majority of baking lovers I don't have cup measurements and it annoys me I can never find recipes for these kind of things in grams! So for anyone else who has that awful dilemma ha, I hope this helps.




Only a very small amount of the gel colours are needed as they are very strong. We added them to the water before it was added to the rest of the mixture.
You can also use liquid food colouring if you prefer but you'll need a lot more and the colours won't come out as strong.


You can use whatever cutters you like. This time we used a mixture of G's playdoh cutters, some cookie cutters, one of my sugar craft plunge cutters and we also just rolled up shapes by hand.
When finished with the fun part we placed all the shapes onto a baking tray and baked for 2 -3 hours at 100oc.

Here is the batch we made today, we've yet to decorate them.

When baked and fully cooled down you can decorate however you/your children like or just leave plain and thread wool/ribbon/thread through pre-made holes and use where ever you see fit.
We like to paint ours and add bits and bobs as shown above. It's a fun crafty activity and can also be a thoughtful and cheap option for a gift or you could perhaps use them for gift tags.


What would you and your children create with salt dough?

*written on 29/09/2014

Blackberry and Apple Pie

So we went blackberry picking (brambling) last week in Bramhall park amongst other things with my sister and two of G's cousins. After our park adventures we made apple and blackberry crumble at my sisters house. The next day I took G to a nice little park closer to us and after a long play in the park I spotted loads of ripe blackberries (which I was quite excited by) so I took another haul and washed and refridgerated them and the next day we made apple and blackberry pie! I am tempted to go and pick some more before they all go and freeze them to use them for more baking or to go with yoghurt etc. Free fruit is always a good thing!

I'd already made flapjack in the morning and we did this when G was back from a tiring session at nursery so we were a bit lazy and cheated by using pre-made short crust pastry. 

It's not always the best idea to get pre-made pastry when on a budget but I got the shortcrust ready to roll block  by Jus-RolTM which is cheaper (and slightly less lazy) than the ready roll sheets and as luck had it the pack I picked up was reduced in price also! The blocks also have more pastry (500g) whereas the sheets were (320g) so I would have needed two of them.

G made good use of my sugar paste cutters I use for decorating her birthday cakes and made some lovely decoration for the top of our pie using the left over pastry.

We just went with the flow (like people would have before they had recipes to follow/like I do with much of my cooking ha) and what would fit in our pie tin, however there are plenty of specific recipes on the internet if you'd like one.

Here is our quite short and slightly vague recipe:

Ingredients:

• 2 to 3 Large Bramley (cooking) Apples
• 350g Blackberries (roughly - we used a lot, did not weigh but basing on how many blackberries in supermarket cartons).
• Short Crust Ready to Roll Block (500g)
• ~50g Light brown sugar
• A little milk (we used soya) to brush the pastry

Equipment:

• Peeler and/or knife to peel and chop the apples
• Baking tin 9 inch
• Pastry brush



brushing with the soy milk

• Sugar Paste cutters (optional)

Method:

• Set oven at 175oc (we have a fan oven). 
• Grease pie tin/dish.
• Separate pastry into two balls. Roll out one to fit your pie tin/dish. Use a sharp knife to remove any extra pastry.
• Peel and slice apples. G placed half of them in.
• Sprinkle in first layer of blackberries.
• Sprinkle first layer of sugar.
• Repeat. There was room for more fruit after (we used 2 apples, next time would use 3).
• Roll out second ball of pastry to create lid. I also cut a strip of pastry to go round the edge of the pie to help seal the lid.
• Make a couple of air holes in your pie lid (ours got covered by leaves).
• Brush lid with little milk.
• If wanted create decorations with any spare pastry. G made leaves, flowers and stars for ours. Brush these with a little milk also.
• Set tin/dish on middle shelf of oven and bake for approximately 30 - 40 minutes. The lid should be golden/browned. Ours could have been browner but the decorations had started to catch.

Placing her pastry creations on the lid

 We used some of our half price Tesco's finest ice cream to have with it. It was lovely!

Soda Bread

Baking is something which I enjoy and sporadically takes place in our house. When I do it now it more often than not involves my now turned 3 year old. It's fun for her and I've slowly learnt to not worry so much about how messy it gets. It's a good activity when the weather is bad or a break from whatever we are doing at the time. It's usually just a simple recipe to make it easier as baking with a child but also as we're not often stocked up on lots of exciting ingredients due to lack of funds.

My mother used to make us soda bread when we were little and seeing it being made on one of CBeeBies shows recently reminded me. That along side it's simplicity and it being budget friendly meant I decided to to make it in our next baking session.

Ingredients:

• 250g/6oz self-raising wholemeal flour
• 250g/6oz plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 435ml buttermilk

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6/fan 180C and dust a baking sheet with flour. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Pour in the buttermilk and mix it in quickly, then bring the dough together very lightly with your fingertips. Now shape it into a flat, round loaf.
2. Put the loaf on the baking sheet and score a deep cross in the top. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. If it isn’t ready after this time, turn it upside down on the baking sheet and bake for a few minutes more.
3. Transfer to a wire rack, cover with a clean tea towel and leave to cool.

I got my recipe from bbcgoodfood.com and changed it slightly to suit our needs.
I didn't have buttermilk so we used normal milk and stirred a couple of spoonfuls of lemon juice into it 5 minutes before using it. I also used white flour not wholemeal and left out the oats (not used in simple/ traditional soda bread recipe's) due to my health conditions. 
I altered the volume of milk to accommodate these changes.

Mixing

The recipe tells you to handle the mixture very gently but this wasn't going to be something I was worried about as I wanted G to get stuck in and experience it. She often can get funny about getting messy hands but enjoyed this part and the needing as well as the earlier mixing parts. 

Getting Stuck In

We used 450ml of milk and our dough was a bit too sticky and needed more flour so I have altered my recipe to 435ml milk for this post.

Lovely warm with jam

We had our bread warm, G tried hers with margerine and I had jam (which she's not a fan of). If you haven't tried it before I would suggest only eating it warm as it's much nicer then. It would be nice to make it again in the Winter.