Summer Cupcakes.....

We have a series of birthdays throughout July here (at least 1 a week) so after the first we get a bit tired of normal cake. My mum also is gluten intolerant so she cant enjoy them all either. So I was flicking through Harry Eastwoods book and spotted the perfect summer cupcakes! We only made a small batch at first but they really are yummy and perfect for breakfast as well as a snack later.

Raspberry and Elderflower Cupcakes

Ingredients

2              medium eggs
140g        caster sugar
200g        grated courgette
80g          rice flour
120g        ground almonds
2 tsp        baking powder
1/4 tsp     salt
120g        raspberries

3 tbsp      elderflower cordial

Method

Preheat oven to 180 C
Line muffin tin with 12 paper cases

Whisk the eggs and sugar (a freestanding mixer is best here) for 5 minutes until very light and pale.
Grate the courgette and add to the egg and sugar mixture.
Mix through the flour, ground almonds, salt and baking powder and cordial.
Gently fold through the raspberries.
Divide equally between the muffin cases.
Bake for 25 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

A Gardeners Hymn

This is to share with all the gardeners out there, I saw this recently and felt I had to share it with you!

The Gardeners Hymn

All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all.

But what we never mention, though gardeners know it’s true, Is when He made the goodies, He made the baddies too.

All things spray and swattable, Disasters great and small,

All things paraquatable,

The Lord God made them all -

The green fly on the roses, the maggots in the peas, Manure that fills our noses, He also gave us these.

All things spray and swattable, etc.

The fungus on the goose-gogs, the club root on the greens, The slugs that eat the lettuce and chew the aubergines.

All things spray and swattable, etc.

The drought that kills the fuchsias, the frost that nips the buds, The rain that drowns the seedlings, the blight that hits the spuds.

All things spray and swattable, etc.

The midges and mosquitoes, the nettles and the weeds, The pigeons in the green stuff, the sparrows on the seeds.

All things spray and swattable, etc.

The fly that gets the carrots, the wasp that eats the plums,

How black the gardener's outlook, though green may be his thumbs.

All things spray and swattable, etc.

But still we gardeners labour midst vegetables and flowers, And pray what hits our neighbours' will somehow bypass ours'

All things spray and swattable, etc.

© Barbara Robinson

The Little House......

“A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin”

If you follow my “What I’m Reading This Month” you’ll notice that I have a few mentions of Laura Ingalls Wilder. My copies are now dog eared  A series of 9 books which tell of her travels across America as one of the first pioneers these books have been very much loved by hundreds of children. They start off very much like JK Rowling’s book with the narrator matching Laura’s age in each book.  A preconception is that these are “girls” books, not helped by the appalling Disney TV series. However from the first the book tells the stories of bears, wolves, panthers, hunting and Indians! I have just started reading the first – Little House In the Big Woods to my eldest boy and he cant wait for the next evening and the next chapter.

“The wind was rising and wildly screaming. ... thousands of rabbits were running.... Snakes rippled across the yard.
Prairie hens ran silently, their necks outstretched and their wings spread.
Birds screamed in the screaming wind.... Great flames came roaring, flaring and twisting high.
Twists of flame broke loose and came down on the wind to blaze up in the grasses far ahead of the roaring wall of fire. A red light came from the rolling black clouds of smoke overhead.”

A fascinating series on struggling with the American wilderness, the drudgery of milking the cows, the destruction of tornados and the fear if snow blizzards. And she also wrote in stark contrast to her hard pioneer life the story of her future husband who lived on a fairly well to do farm and whose parent barely struggled.  The last of her books – The First Four Years is the only book which I feel lets the series down by the time she had unfortunately passed away before she had been given a chance to rewrite with the same glow and enchantment of her others.
If you have half an hour one day to fill I do suggest you read a couple of chapters of these classic and wonderful books!

                                                   

"Wild animals would not stay in a country where there were so many people. Pa did not like to stay, either. He liked a country where the wild animals lived without being afraid.
.... There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only Indians lived there."

Mud Pies

Having decided I would bake in the kitchen this afternoon my two decided they wanted to bake in the garden! My mum always allowed us to make pies in the garden and we used to decorate them with whatever came to hand – daisys, dandelions, poppies etc

So mine headed off very happily with a bucket, trowel, lunch box and whisk!

So heres the recipe:

Ingredients

Mud

Water

Grass

Daisys

Worm for flavouring

Method

Find a nice patch of weeded earth and select only the finest bits. Carry to your mixing bowl or bucket and add lots of water! Add a bit more mud and worm for seasoning and place in a mud lined dish.

Place in the sun to bake until dry and then decorate with daisys and grass to serve!

Top Ten 5 minute Boredom Busters

 Since the summer holiday were coming up I thought that for my ten things this month I would provide you with ten 5 minute boredom busters. If you’re looking for something longer why not check out my previous post of ten free things 10 Free Family Things

1 -  Cress Shapes.

One for the younger members of the family -  

Put about ten sheets of kitchen roll on top of each other and soak them on a plate.

Place some cutters on the sheets and sprinkle inside the cutters with cress or mustard seeds.

Carefully lift up shapes and water the towel (not the seeds) every day and in a couple of days you should have some lovely cressy shapes.

2 - Food Games.

Place a selection of food on to a tray and blindfold your kids.

See if they can guess the flavours

3 – Make a mud pie.

Grab a spoon and some pots and go create – maybe a biscuit for the best looking pie – mine using daisys to decorate but let your imagination run riot!  

4 – Crayon muffins.

Great if you lots of bits of broken wax crayons as in my house!

Pre heat over to about 150

Pop some liners into a muffin tray.

Take the paper liners off the crayons and pop them into the cases.

Chuck in the oven and immediately turn it off.

The wax should then melt as the oven cools!

5 – Make some salt dough.

SALT DOUGH RECIPE:
2 cups of Plain Flour
1 cup of table salt
1 cup of water

OPTIONAL
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil (makes it a little easier to knead)
1 tablespoon of wallpaper paste (gives the mixture more elasticity)
1 tablespoon of lemon juice (makes the finished product harder

You can then use things like a sieve to make hair or leaves to leave a pattern. Leave in the air to dry and paint them when completely dry!

6 – Tray game.

Ok i did get this from Charlie & Lola but it is a good game.

Pop a load of objects (clothes pegs, shoe, spoon etc) on to a tray. Let them look at the train for a minute then see who can remember the most.

 7 – Marzipan animals.

Put a block of marzipan into a mixing bowl and add a drop or two of your favourite food colouring and roll it round till marzipan is coloured.

Roll into different size balls and pinch together to make different animals!

8 – Make some sparkly beads.

Normally one for the girls but with the right colours the boys love it to!

Get some sticky back plastic and cut it as long a drinking straw and width should be slightly longer than your middle finger.

Peel the backing off (place sticky side up) and place the straw at the bottom of it.   

Chuck glitter, tinsel, tissue paper etc all over it (leaving about about 1.5cm at the top)

Roll up straw over the glittery mess and seal with the unmarked bit.

Cut up into little tubes and you have some lovely beads to string or play with.

9 – Water fun.

Place a towel on kitchen floor or outside and pop out on it a range of bowls and spoons and objects. Measuring jugs etc etc. See what floats and how much water you fit into different objects.

If outside chuck a couple of drops of food colouring into to make coloured water.

10 – Worm collecting.

If like it has been the past week raining nonstop chuck on your willies grab a bucket and spade and go and collect some fat wiggly worms!

National Cherry Day

So today is apparently National Cherry Day. A couple of little facts are that surprisingly Cherries have some of the highest levels of disease fighting antioxidants you find in fruit! In Washington in America they annually celebrate this lovely fruit for TWO WEEKS! Not only do they taste great but you can use their pips (stones) as an alternative to a hot water bottle (less chance of getting burned!) In the olden days (couple of centuries ago a very posh and fancy dessert was to bring to the table a cherry tree in a miniature pot and for the guests to eat them straight off the tree. And I think we all know the game played with the left over stones....Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man thief.  However I don’t think anything taste better than a homemade cherry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or drowned in cream!

For the pastry

300 g plain flour

2 tbsp icing sugar

1 large pinches salt

170 g chilled unsalted butter

170 g cream cheese

60-80 ml single or double cream

For the filling

1 kg pitted sour or sweet cherries

235 g caster sugar, if using sour cherries, 140g if using sweet

1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 small lemons, juice only

3 rounded tbsp cornflour

To serve

cream, vanilla or white chocolate ice cream

1. For the pastry: sift the flour into a bowl with the icing sugar and salt.

2. Using a pair of knives or a pastry blender, cut the butter and cream cheese into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs, with the odd larger knobble here and there.

3. Pour in enough cream to mix to a soft dough. Gather up the dough to form a ball, knead very briefly to smooth out, divide in two, then chill both portions in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

4. For the filling: mix the cherries with all the remaining ingredients. Let the mixture stand for 20 minutes, then stir once more.

5. Preheat the oven to 220C/gas 7.

6. Roll out half the dough to line a 23cm pie plate or shallow tart tin. Roll out the second half of the dough to form a circle to cover the tin. Put the circle on a sheet of baking paper and chill both the dough-lined tin and the circle in the fridge until needed.

7. Pile the cherries into the lined pie plate until it becomes a gently swelling mound.

8. Brush the edges of the pastry crust with water, then lay the pastry lid on top. Trim the edges, then crimp together firmly. Cut a hole in the centre of the pie to allow steam to escape.

9. Bake for 20 minutes, then reduce the heat to 180C/gas 4 and bake for a further 30-40 minutes until the thickened cherry juices bubble up through the central steam hole. If the pastry is darkening too rapidly, cover loosely with tin foil.

Tidy Trays.....or safely eating out!

I’m a mum to two lovely boys and when my eldest was first learning to feed himself I hated going out. The highchairs are never clean and with the increased danger of swine flu and other bugs and beasties we just hated it and avoided it as much as possible.  Same thing with my youngest...until we heard of Tidy Trays!

We were very lucky to be sent one to review and since I have gone out and brought another one for my friends youngest! They are a lovely waterproof elastic fabric which slips over your own highchair tray and most restaurants (trust me I tried!) and also has an extra pocket for sippy cups or in our case for storing peas in. They are BPA, Lead & Phthalate free and with being machine washable also help protect against H1N1.

They fold up into themselves (the cup holder) and fit very nicely into handbags or your diaper bag and come in either Pink or Blue. I do think this is an amazing product and every parent should have one. Mine comes along with me everywhere now whether I’m grabbing a muffin at the local cafe or having a lovely lunch at a posh restaurant.

If you’re looking for one they’re priced at 14.99 (or three bottles of sanitizer!) and you can buy them online here : Tidy Trays or in places like jojo maman bebe.

Clarins Daily Energizer

Heres my vblog on what I thought about Clarins Daily Energizer range  which launched recently. Its is now available to buy from the Clarins website. With prices starting from £10.50, it’s the new beauty treat you can afford. The beauty experts including the girls at Glamour magazine swear by this new ‘must-have’ range! Please let us know what you think, if you’ve tried it!

What I'm reading this month....

 Its a bit of a vintage "what I'm reading this month" Marley & me, Anne Of Green Gables & The Woman In White are just a few of my favourite books so I go back to read them a lot.

In a dire attempt to start getting my house properly organised!

A wonderful tale (cant watch the film) but do skim read last couple of chapters!!

A classic, exciting tale where mystery and intrigue & horror are together in a

 far better format than modern tale

I dont think this needs any introduction! A firm favourite!

Written by the lovely @scuppered on twitter!

Gluten Free Yummy Peach Muffins

 With all these gloomy mornings and wet days I wanted something warm comforting but still slightly sunny so I flicked through Harry Eastwoods Red Velvet Book and came across her peach and poppy seed muffins. As she swaps vegetables or fruit for fat these are incredibly healthy and yet sooo scrummy you could eat all 9 at once! I now have these for breakfast during the week (especially if I  can convince my mum to cook them!)

And for all the celiac out there they are of course gluten free to!!

Ingredients

2 medium free range eggs

120g caster sugar

200g peeled and finely grated sweet potato

100g white rice flour

100g ground almonds

1 table spoon of poppy seeds

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

1/4 teaspoon of salt

3 small peaches cut into small cubes (or 1 regular tin of peaches cut up)

Method:

1) Whisk the egg and sugar together for 3 minutes, until fluffy and light.

2) Use a wooden spoon to mix in the sweet potato, ground almonds. Then sieve in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Finally add in the poppy seeds. Mix well.

3) Add in the chopped peach and mix well again.

4) Spoon the mixture into muffin cases to the top, make sure you use a muffin tray to bake them. Then they need 3o minutes in the oven at 180 degrees or gas mark 4.

5) Once ready turn them out on to a wire rack to cool

Should make 9 muffins!

Ever heard of When I Was A Kid?

I don’t know about you but I’ve had enough of plastic toys where bits fall or break apart after a couple weeks worth of play and then get flung to the bottom of the toy box.  With two very robust boys I’m always on the lookout for toys which last, are well made and have “play value” My two still play with some of the toys that survived my husband’s , his siblings and numerous cousins childhoods and these are the sort of toys I want for my children. You remember the wooden toys which last no matter how many times they got dropped or played with? The toys which use to keep us quiet for hours while we played new and different games or tried to figure out the Rubik’s cube or cat’s cradle? Those toys!

Slightly disgruntled after some Christmas toys had broken only weeks after I was reading on twitter some mums who were mentioning how wonderful Paul Warner from When I Was A Kid was and how great the toys were. Obviously I had to take a look and to be honest I did expect the high prices that the local toy shops have but GOSH!!! On the website were a lovely range of toys, wooden traditional & fun and without the costly price of the high street or more boutique toy shops have.

Not only are the prices cheaper than the shops, the customer service is amazing Paul also hosts a Birthday Club where if you spend £25 a year (not in one transaction!) he’ll send your little a free extra gift on their birthday!

With prices starting in their pocket money range at £1 they are definitely worth checking out and don’t forget if you have parties coming up check out their party bag toys.

Here’s a selection below of just a few of my favourites......