5 reasons to bake with kids – featuring easy halloween cookie recipe for you to try together

5 reasons to bake with kids – featuring easy halloween cookie recipe for you to try together

Some of you may think I’m a bit crazy for admitting to this but here goes..I LOVE baking with my kids. I don’t stress over sticky fingers or flour on their clothes. I don’t get in a panic over buttercream icing in their hair or eggs smashed on the kitchen tiles instead of on the side of the mixing bowl. I embrace the chaos and love nothing more than to spend an afternoon in the kitchen, creating memories and yummy treats to share with my little ones. Due to my complete adoration of baking with my babies I am always surprised to hear other mums declare they can’t stand baking with kids. It baffles me that the mess of the kitchen and the inevitable imperfect bake at the end of it all are strong enough reasons for them to hang up their mixing spoon and apron until the kids and the risk of a flour explosion is eliminated. Baking with kids is so much fun and something I really believe every parent should try, even if it’s just the once. Need convincing? Well, here are 5 reasons you should bake with kids and my lovely friend Pam from Pams Bake and Baby Blog has even provided you with a really simple chocolate chip orange cookie recipe to try with your little ones today. View Post

Easy Batman biscuits to bake with kids

Easy Batman biscuits to bake with kids

My boy Leo is obsessed with Batman. OB-SESSED! Whenever he plays little imaginary games I can always hear him chatting away about Batman and The Joker. He asks me to make up stories about Batman fighting all the bad guys and he loves playing with his Batman and other superhero Duplo figures. So, it is not hard to imagine how excited Leo was to go and watch The Lego Batman Movie earlier this year – he loved every second of that film and is already asking when we can buy it on disk (DVD to us grown ups). After our cinema trip to watch Lego Batman I decided to treat Leo to some homemade biscuits, another one of his favourite things, and together we baked these ridiculously easy batman biscuits. If you have a little Batman fan in your life too, I can guarantee these biscuits will go down a treat. View Post

Get your face on a cake – Caketoppers photo cupcake review

Get your face on a cake – Caketoppers photo cupcake review

When it comes to cake, I am a little bit obsessed. I love the stuff. If it wasn’t frowned upon I could easily have cake for breakfast and when people respond to the question ‘do you want a piece of cake?’ with ‘OK but just a slither’ I think they’ve got issues. Who in their right mind would just want a slither of the good stuff? You are probably wondering why I am going on about cake, well it’s because recently I got to try out some amazing cupcakes from Caketoppers and these cakes were extra special as they were decorated with photos of my family. View Post

A very cakey day at The Cake College

A very cakey day at The Cake College

I love cake. I mean, what’s not to love right? Cakes look amazing, taste amazing and there is no way you can be in a bad mood if you’re eating cake. Gosh, I love cake so much I even revealed my baby’s gender by baking cakes! When my Mum said she had booked to go on a celebration cake decorating course, I asked if I could come to as, although my bakes normally taste good, I wouldn’t ever describe my cakes as pretty. So last Saturday morning we got up bright and early and headed off to The Cake College in Berkshire for a day full of cakey fun. View Post

Easy and fun Easter cake recipe

Easy and fun Easter cake recipe

It is that time of year again. The supermarket aisles have been taken over by chocolate eggs, Spring is in the air and parents across the country are gearing themselves up for a 2 week half term. Yes, Easter is almost here, or eat-chocolate-for-breakfast day as I like to call it. Although most of us enjoy just stuffing ourselves silly with the obligatory chocolate egg or five on the big day, a bit of Easter inspired baking is always fun too. I have my nieces and nephews coming over for tea this evening and I thought I would make them a cake as an early Easter treat.

I like to call this cake the Peek a boo bunny cake and, although it may look like your average sponge cake, it is stuffed full of Mini Eggs and Minstrels. This cake is very easy to make as it is just a traditional sponge recipe with a bit of fancy decoration.

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Gingerbread muffins with rum buttercream

I love baking, I particularly love baking in the weeks leading up to Christmas and my all time favourite treat to bake is gingerbread, Leo has inherited my love for these biscuits bursting with spices and flavour and he has been asking for them for over a week now. A while a go I baked a gingercake and iced it with spiced rum buttercream and it was amazing, if I do say so myself. So yesterday I decided to adapt this recipe slightly and voilà, the gingerbread muffins with rum buttercream frosting were born. If you don’t know me personally and have not been subjected to eating things I have baked before, you should know that my treats are no show stoppers to envy those of Mary Berry herself – although they may rarely be pretty, they always taste good. For the little people in you life I would suggest icing them before you add the rum to the mixture, the rum comes through quite strongly. I am not sure if you can get drunk via cake but I wouldn’t want to risk it!
So here is the recipe, Gingerbread muffins iced with rum buttercream, topped with festive gingerbread men (a lengthy title I know-suggestions welcome!)…  

Ingredients…

For the gingerbread men,,,
2tsp ground ginger
1tsp bicarb of soda
1tsp cinnamon 
3 tbsp golden syrup
1 beaten egg
2oz butter
3oz light brown sugar
For the muffins
5oz butter
5oz dark brown sugar
5oz self raising flour
3 eggs 
1tso ground ginger
1tsp cinnamon
1tsp cloves 
1tsp allspice
For the buttercream
Morgans spiced rum
6oz icing sugar
3oz butter

Method
This recipe makes 6 large muffins or 12 smaller cakes. The gingerbread recipe will make approx 12 small ginger bread.

1. Sift flour, bicarbonate of soda and all the spices together into a large bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture resemble fluffy breadcrumbs – if you’ve not made gingerbread before it is a messy process!

2. Mix in the sugar and add the beaten egg and golden syrup. Mix until all the ingredients are combined.

3, Wrap dough in cling film and put in the fridge, My mixture ended up a little runny so I left in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

4. Slightly flour a large surface and a rolling pin. Roll out dough to desired thickness and cut out gingerbread men. I had planned to stand mine on the frosting but they ended up too big and heavy, if you want to try this then I would say use the smallest cutter you can find or go free hand if you’re feeling brave.

5. Place on a greased baking try and bake for 15 minutes on 180/gas 4.

6. While the gingerbread men are cooking measure out all ingredients for the muffins.

7. Mix sugar and butter in a food processor until combined. Sift in the flour and all the spices and mix well.

8. Add the eggs gradually and mix. The muffin mixture will look really runny but that’s ok, these cakes are really moist.

9. Add 6 large muffins cases to a baking tray or 12 cupcake cases and add mixture evenly. I over filled mine by accident and some of them exploded a bit (see photo above, oops) so make sure you don’t add too much to each case.

10. Remove gingerbread from oven and leave to cool on a wire rack. Bake muffins at 180/gas 4 for 15-20minutres. They are done when they are firm but still have a bit of a bounce when you press the top.

11. Remove cakes from oven and leave to cool. Measure out half the icing sugar for frosting and mix with the butter.

12. Once combined, add the rest of the icing sugar and stir until smooth. Add 2 bottle caps full of spiced rum (or more, depending how boozey you want the cakes to be!) and stir. If the mixture goes too runny, keep adding icing sugar until desired consistency.

13. Put icing into a piping bag and decorate cakes once they have completely cooled. I am not very good at piping so I am sure your cakes will end up looking more attractive than mine!

14. Top with gingerbread men or if your biscuits end up too big (like mine, ahem..), just lie them down for a little rest on the side.

15. Eat and enjoy 🙂

Do you like baking at Christmas time? If you enjoy muffins, gingerbread men and rum, then you really should give these a go, what’s not to like? 🙂

Mummuddlingthrough
A Cornish Mum

My Random Musings

Time to bake: Banana and blueberry bread

                               

Baking is something I have done since I was a little girl. It started off with watching my mum bake cakes, to making those from the box cupcakes and then on to baking cakes from scratch myself. I have so many fond memories of baking with my mum and I couldn’t wait any longer to introduce Leo to the fun of baking.

Leo and I spent yesterday afternoon baking banana and blueberry bread, a slightly healthier option to cupcakes and there were lots of steps to the recipe that Leo could join in with.

So here it is..

Banana and blueberry bread


Ingredients
– 3 ripe bananas
– 1/3 cup melted butter
– 3/4 cup caster sugar
– 1 beaten egg
– 1 tsp vanilla (I used almond extract as that’s all I could find in Lidl!)
– 1 1/2 cup flour
– 1 tsp baking soda
– Pinch of salt
– 3/4 cup blueberries

** If you don’t have scales like mine that have all different measuring units then don’t worry, you can convert these American cups to your preffered units here **

Method

1. Mash up bananas using a potato masher.

This is the fun bit and Leo loved getting involved. He was more interested in eating the bananas rather than mashing them up but he soon got the hang of it!

2. Mix in the egg, butter and vanilla extract.
My little helper enjoyed mixing up the slushy ingredients but I had to keep an eye on him as he kept trying to eat it off the giant spoon. A toddler and a raw egg is not a good mix!
3. Mix flour, sugar, salt and baking soda together then fold in the blueberries.
I did this as there was no way I could cope with flour all over the kitchen!
4. Add the dry ingredients to the banana mix and stir together until all ingredients are blended together and it resembles a kind of dough- I kind of just guessed when it looked right!
Leo helped me stir everything together but he kept pinching blueberries when he thought I wouldn’t notice.

5. Put mixture into a greased loaf tin (or if like me you don’t have a loaf tin just use a baking tray) and cook for an hour on gas mark 4, until cooked all through the centre. If you’re not
sure then stick a thin knife in it, if it comes out wet then it’s not done.

Before the bread went in the oven Leo had one last attempt at stealing a blueberry.

6. Remove from the oven, leave to cool then remove bread from the tin/tray.

7. Eat and enjoy!

This recipe is soo easy and your little one can easily get involved too! I thought I would find baking with Leo quite stressful but we both had loads of fun. Whenever Leo got bored he just went and played with toys and came back once he felt like helping again.

The banana and blueberry bread is really yummy and there is less than a third of it left today so we must make a good team in the kitchen.

** I followed this recipe from alaskafromscratch , making a few alterations to make it easier from me and Leo **

The Twinkle Diaries