baking

baking, cooking with kids, crafts, easter, kids

Bunny rabbit cookies with royal icing

With Spring almost here, and Easter around the corner, we thought we’d rustle up some rabbit cookies – or bunny biscuits as we’ve named them! It was a great introduction for 9yo to practice his royal icing piping, and ‘flooding in’ – we learnt a LOT about icing technique!

bunny biscuits royal icing

There are LOADS of bunny cookie cutters around at the moment, we had one which was my Mum’s and for the tail you could use a flower cutter, or a small circle…

We used up some royal icing which had been in the fridge for a couple of days, and we have some TOP TIPS for you about this…see below!

Ingredients:

50g fairtrade caster sugar
100g butter
175g plain flour

Method:

Heat the oven to 150 degrees C (300 F, Gas mark 2)
Cream the caster sugar and the butter together, slowly adding the flour, mixing together to form a dough, I find we need to add a couple of drops of water, knead together to form a ball.

Roll out the dough, on a floured surface, to about 4mm thick.
Using your bunny shaped cutter, cut the dough, and place your bunnies and tails on a lightly floured baking tray, and bake for about 20 minutes, until golden brown. (feel free to make some spare rabbit tails… to munch on whilst you’re icing the rabbit cookies!)

KidsChaos-Bunny-Biscuits-royal-icing

bunny biscuits

As they cool down, you can make your royal icing (recipe here). Or if you are using some icing which you have been keeping in the fridge, as we were, TOP TIP make sure you really really stir the royal icing to get ALL of the lumps out, otherwise it sticks in the piping bag – and clogs the nozzle so that when you are piping the outline it stutters out, and the line will be all wobbly… 9yo wanted a pale brown bunny, so we mixed in his favourite hot chocolate mix, into a portion of the white royal icing and some more Fairtrade icing sugar, so that it’s quite thick to pipe the outlines. When this outline is dry, you add a drop of water to the remaining brown mixture, so that you can spoon it into the outline, and using a cocktail stick, gently ‘flood’ the biscuit, and prick any little bubble that appear.

Pop the ‘tail’ into position whilst the ‘flood in’ icing on the rabbit cookie is still wet, and pipe on the remaining white royal icing to make a fluffy tail!

red-ted-art-google-plus-hangout-kids-chaos-rabbits

For more Spring baking ideas, check out the daffodil cookies here and if you are after some more rabbit crafts have a look at my denim pocket purse with leaping rabbits here (FREE printable) – and watch our latest google+ hangout hosted by Maggy at Redtedart featuring Anthea, Lizzie, myself and Kelly – a great selection of Bunny Crafts!

For easy to follow instructions on how to make a little gift box from a paper plate, perfect for these cookies, please click here.

Tasty Tuesdays on HonestMum.com

Ali also blogs over on incredibusy.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello! This post was first published March 2014

baking, cooking, cooking with kids

Fun and educational activities to do with your children at home

Creating a productive, fun and educational environment in your home has never been more important to you. Making sure that your children always have a go-to activity to exercise their mind, body or soul is always at the top of your priority list. When it comes to feeling happy in your life, you are always at the top of your game when you’re spending time with the people you love the most. With that being said, you need some activities in your backpocket, so that you always have a good idea. Consider some of the following ideas, and you’ll soon have a whole host of fun activities to do with your children at home.

Board Games

Board games are such a valuable tool when you have children of any age. Getting them involved in classic games such as chess or pucket will not only teach them about strategy, but it can also help to improve their concentration. Getting your youngsters into the competitive spirit with a good board game will always be successful, as someone will always learn a valuable lesson as a result of the game they’ve played with you.

pucket

Cooking

Cooking is one of the most valuable skills you can teach your little ones, especially if they are getting older. Teaching your children how to read a recipe, cook basic meals and be proud of the finishing product is so important. At home you can encourage your kids to get busy in the kitchen, whether they’re baking lemon drizzle cake for guests or helping you cook a full dinner, you can gradually introduce them to the idea of cooking.

Exercise

This is one activity that will never go out of style when it comes to quality family time. Encouraging your youngsters to stay active and move their bodies in a way that feels enjoyable to them is so important. Exercise can come in all sorts of forms, from walking in the park to going swimming with friends. Leading by example with exercise will teach your children healthy habits and it will also allow everyone in the family to get into a good routine when it comes to physical activity.

Watch Documentaries

Parents often feel guilty about giving their kids too much screen time, but sometimes that’s all you need to relax, unwind and learn something new. There are so many fun and educational documentaries that you can enjoy with your child, and it won’t give you any guilt for putting them in front of the television for an hour or two! This is something you can do as a family, and it will spark conversations afterwards too.

It doesn’t matter how old or young your children are, you can get them involved in all of the healthy, fun and educational activities mentioned above. Whether you’re teaching them how to play chess from the comfort of your own home, or you’re cooking up a delicious recipe in the kitchen, there is so much you can do to spend quality time with the little ones you love.

This is a collaborative post.

baking, cooking with kids, create

Carrot Cake recipe with Lemon Icing

carrot-cake-lemon-icing-kidschaos-instagramThe carrot cake is a classic, and this carrot cake recipe’s a super-simple variation on that delicious theme. Just add grated carrots to the dry ingredients, which include both plain and wholemeal flour for extra texture.

Once you’ve beaten in free range eggs and some butter, you’re away – just pop it in the oven. The tangy lemon icing on this carrot cake recipe contrasts with the sweet, cinnamon-flavoured cake to really bring the flavours to life.

fairtrade-carrot-cake-lemon-icing-kidschaosIngredients
200 g (7oz) self raising flour
115 g (4oz) wholemeal flour
350 g (12oz) caster sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
250 ml (9fl oz) butter
3 Large carrots, peeled and grated
4 organic free range eggs
 Icing
2 unwaxed lemons, zested
225 g (8oz) Fairtrade icing sugar

organic-carrot-cake-lemon-icing-kidschaosMethod
Mix together all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
Mix in carrot and gradually beat in Flora Cuisine and eggs. Pour into a greased and bottom lined 20cm (8-inch) square cake tin.
Bake in preheated oven 180°C, 160°C fan, gas mark 4 for 45–55 minutes. Cool on a wire cooling rack.
Icing – Zest the lemons. Squeeze out the juice and add to icing sugar in a bowl with the segments. Mix gently and spread over the cake. Sprinkle with the zest.

Note – make sure your icing is not too runny – we had lots of fun scraping the icing off the board as it dripped through the cooling rack!!

Ali also blogs over on Incredibusy.com and is a lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!

baking, cooking, cooking with kids

Lemon drizzle cake with ground almonds

lemon drizzle cakeWhat’s your favourite cake in your house? Ours has to be lemon drizzle cake…

we’ve have the recipe scribbled down on a piece of paper, shoved in the cake section of Delia’s cookbook, for years… Quite fortunate it’s our favourite cake really, as we sort of OVER-ORDERED the lemons on our Ocado delivery on Friday, and ended up with 12 lemons, yes, TWELVE lemons… oops!

So we wanted to share the recipe with you, and tbh, it makes it easier to find if we write it up on KidsChaos, as we just google ourselves ‘ kids chaos lemon drizzle’… 🙂

Admittedly this recipe doesn’t use all twelve lemons, however we make two lemon drizzle cakes at the same time as it disappears pretty quickly here, and we like to have it in our packed lunches in the week, in place of shop-bought snack bars (so just half the quantities if you only have a 1 litre loaf tin)

Lemon Drizzle Cake Ingredients:

350g caster sugar
350g butter, softened
4 unwaxed lemons
6 eggs
200g self-raising flour
150g ground almonds
A drop or two of milk
200g demerara sugar

Lemon Drizzle Cake Instructions:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160C fan. Grease and line two loaf tins with greaseproof paper. Beat together the caster sugar, butter, and the finely grated zest of two lemons until light and fluffy. Add a pinch of salt and beat in the eggs, one at a time.

2. Sieve the flour and fold in, then add the ground almonds (not essential, particularly if anyone has a nut allergy!). Add a tiny amount of milk to ensure the mixture has a dropping consistency, then pour into your lined tins. Bake in the oven for about 50-55 minutes, until your knife pulls out dry when you test it. Leave it in the tin for now….

3. Mix together the lemon zest, and juice of the lemons with your demerara sugar, then prod holes all over the top of the lemon drizzle cakes and pour over the lemon drizzle, so that it runs into all of the little holes.
4. Allow the lemon drizzle cakes to cool in the loaf tins before turning out.

honeycomb with chocolate fondueFor more delicious #cookingwithkids fun try our honeycomb recipe golden syrup pictured here…

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Instagram is my new favourite thing, Erm, and funnily enough on Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!

If you enjoyed this, check out an updated version with poppy seeds over on incredibusy.com

baking, cooking, crafts, create, key stage 2, kids, travel

Fforest gather – a new kind of family holiday

Cheese makingFforest gather – a new kind of family holiday

Family time together just so special as our boys get older – they are more independent and dare I say a little ‘feral’ this year? We’ve had the best of times and made new friends, made memories, and given us something to look forward to next summer too – why? what? how? you ask? Well, a week at Fforest gather, that’s what!

Over to Spike age 15:

If you’ve not heard about Fforest gather – you’re clearly not following @incredibusy on the instagram – or @coldatnight, which you should remedy forthwith – follow us here and here… It’s through instagram that Mum, and it transpires on chatting to fellow campers at Fforest gather, many others, have ‘met’ Sian and fallen in love with what she and husband James have been doing in Cardigan, Wales for the last couple of years…

A small intimate ‘festival’, not really a festival, but that explains the basis of the event – week long holiday with accommodation (optional, you can also bring your own tent/camper van) and daily workshops you won’t want to miss… a new kind of holiday in fact! Two family friendly weeks of adventures in nature, music, culture, creativity and simple pleasures.

view from our group tentWe stayed in one of the ‘group tents‘ – our family in one end, in two bedrooms, and our friends and their three small children in the facing ‘tent’. We brought our own sleeping bags and pillows, and the shared bathrooms a short walk away were positive luxury compared to some campsites we’ve stayed in! The group tents have a communal cooking, and eating area in the centre – and an amazing view across the fields. However, after trying the first catered meal in the canteen, we decided that we’d ditch the camp cooking, and eat with the majority of the other campers – the breakfast and evening meals were just amazing – and the dining area was super conducive to socialising too.

supper time

The beauty of the Fforest gather is that the workshops, talks, walks, performances and activities are all included in the ticket price. Two sessions a day, one at a very civilised 10am, and the afternoon sessions start at 2pm – Between our two families, we tried Screenprinting, Nature illustration; natural dyeing, canoeing, Tamsin with her pencil and puppet making, Bees make honey with the honey farm, making bacon, smoking fish, making cheese,  cooking with fire; axe & knife craft; yoga and wellness; drumming; beer cocktail classes; bird illustrations, silver ring making;  forest school sessions; den building; tree climbing; wild swimming and learnt about foraging with Jade and coppicing with Bruce – woah, all in one week?!

the pubThe evenings were equally entertaining, with, Music from Eyre Llew, and DJs and chatting, and Fforest Island discs, and beer drinking at the adorable little ‘Bwthyn pub‘. Candle lit, and roaring fire – this little pub is located at the heart of the Fforest camp.

A brief selection of our favourite workshops:
Natural dyeing with Hazel Stark – Indigo Shibori (a Japanese pattern technique) – we were so blessed with the weather, so a day spent outside in the Fforest vegetable gardens, patiently folding, pegging and dipping our canvas tote bags was well spent.

Indigo Dye
Indigo Dye

Bird drawing with Matt Sewell, such a delight; as was the glasses onto inanimate objects with Finn Thomson making faces and giving objects sight – such a fun workshop! Seeing objects – using wire, paper, glue, and a LOT of imagination, in the project barn.

Screenprinting was a really big hit with Lex from Feather studios and her patient partner @morganhenryjames.

 

Cheese making was a revelation (and made for the best photos! #instagramthat) Curds and whey with cheese chief Max – who it transpires, can also tell a tale, and sing a song….

Beer O ClockBeer was high on the agenda for the grown-ups, with Evil Gordon doing a turn talking beer cocktails, Beerbods, and sourdough bread making in the wood fired oven.

Jade Wild Pickings

And then there was foraging! @wildpickings 🍃🌿 Jade took us on a walk; foraging for edible hedgerow wonders – we’ve learnt such a LOT this week 🍃🌿

Oh and Sam! The Newquay Honey Farm Man – brilliant and enchanted!

Seriously, this is an event/holiday/week long party I would recommend – such a lovely way to spend time with your family.
We went with good friends, and came away with even more…

 

beer-cocktails-backstage-fforest-gather
The Farmhouse

bandcamp-beer-fforest-gather
Music from Eyre Llew

beer-cocktails-fforest-gather
Beer cocktails in the Farmhouse

coppice-college-sign-fforest-gather
Coppice College

 

coppice-college-tols-fforest-gather
In the tool shed

walk into Cardigan to visit the PizziTipi
walk into Cardigan to visit the PizziTipi

Sunset over the Tipi
Sunset over the Tipi

Forage baskets
Forage baskets

making Sour dough
making sour dough

Coppice College Woodburner
Coppice College Woodburner

 

Time to plan for 2018… 23 JULY – 5 AUGUST 2018 www.fforestgather.co.uk
A new kind of holiday.
Two family friendly weeks of adventures in nature, music, culture, creativity, making, growing & simple pleasures.
500 acres of bliss. Only 300 tickets available each week.
Week 1 – Monday 23rd – Sunday 29th of july
Week 2 – Monday 30th july – Sunday 5th of august

TO FIND OUR MORE ABOUT FFOREST CLICK HERE

Ali also writes over on incredibusy.com and funcraftskids.com and  aGreenerLifeforus.com

baking, key stage 2, kids

September means birthday cakes in our house, and every year the boys put in their requests for party fun and cake style and flavour… from a Star Wars themed Yoda, to a Dragon (same food colouring, so that was OK!) through to your standard Lemon Drizzle Cake… This year however, the party request was for trampolining, ‘free jumping’ and his OWN chocolate cake recipe! So 10yo-soon-to-be-11yo spent the evening before his birthday MAKING and BAKING his own cake, and a quick dash for some Maltesers in the morning, decorated it himself before we bundled five of his friends off to Acton for some bouncing action over at Oxygen FreeJumping.
RB-cakeWell, we couldn’t be more impressed – all of us (five boys, and two mums) LOVED it – we started off with a game of dodge-ball – this was a great introduction, as we weren’t quite sure where to try first – the Oxygen FreeJumping staff were lovely and organised a game, explaining the rules, so we got stuck straight in! And guess what? I won!Acton-oxygen-dodgeballthis-place-is-jumpingThe design of the venue is stunning, the bold bright blues and yellows are really striking – loved the strong graphics – this place really IS jumping.

The boys’ absolute favourite activity was the Gladiator style jousting area over a large pool of blue foam… they spent AGES battling and giggling, and tumbling into a pit of spongy foam blocks.

I personally loved bouncing on the trampolines around the basketball hoops, probably because a simple bounce helped you score with EVERY throw!

Every participant wears a pair of ‘jumping socks’ which caused some amusement, and then delight that they got to keep them – and it was great to see the kids having such a brilliant time on the expanse of trampolines – we so want to go again!

socks-at-oxygen

jump-at-oxygen

Acton-oxygen
A big thank you to the team at Oxygen FreeJumping, for their fabulous facilities, great family fun, and to the cafe staff who also made us so welcome with great coffee too.

Find out more here:
www.oxygenfreejumping.co.uk


Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and FunCraftsKids.com and is a lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!

baking, cooking with kids, food, gardening

It’s been a lovely colourful summer, people have been grumbling about the on-off weather, rainy, then sunny, then rainy again, but it’s meant we have a lot of green in the fields (and our back garden), picnics in the park (sometimes under umbrellas!) and the multi-coloured fruit in the hedgerows have been in abundance!

The joy of finding all of this free fruit has been a delight, it’s brought smiles to our faces and with the winter months approaching, and summer picnics a distant memory, we’re so glad our Ocean Spray cranberry cartons do much the same, adding colour through the refreshing taste and by delighting us throughout the year (the boys just love them in their school packed lunches now the Autumn term has started).
Meanwhile, we’ve really enjoyed foraging for the fresh (FREE) fruit and made copious crumbles, and cakes and we’ve frozen blackberries for morning smoothies in the winter (TOP TIPs: freeze loose on trays so that you can bag them as single loose frozen fruits, rather than a big frozen clump! We also add dried fruit to our smoothies, and have a jar FULL of Ocean Spray’s dried cranberries, they add a real tangy zing)BlackBerry Crumble KidsChaos

aller farm glampingWe’ve spent a lovely staycation weekend down in Devon too – we seem to have given up camping this year (although the tent WAS out earlier in the summer for a night under canvas with 10yo) As a family, we tried out a bit of glamping, and are totally converted – it’s the way forward, the kids loved picking the red apples in their orchard, chasing after the free range chickens, and feeding the black and white Friesian calves, and we loved waking up to such a fabulous view of the green fields, and the wispy white clouds and blue skies…aaahhhh.

So as we head towards the end of the summer holidays, we are still going for our evening stroll around our own neighbourhood and continue to be overwhelmed by the natural colours which will forevever amaze us – Planet Earth at her best….(can’t beat a good British Sunset can you?!)Sunset-KidsChaos

I’m working with BritMums and Ocean Spray highlighting the everyday moments of colour that give each of us a little lift, just like Ocean Spray adds colour to our day and delights us all year round. I have been compensated for my time. All editorial and opinions are my own.

baking, cooking with kids, crafts

Melted Hama Beads and Perler Bead Craft

A quick one to share with you today – we made some cute Melted Hama Beads (or Perler Bead) Fish! I’ll let you guess which one I did… which one was Maggy redtedart’s and which one my 11yo son created!Hama Bead Perler Bead Craft

You can use cookie cutters with your salt dough for this fun craft, however salt dough is so malleable that you could also simply shape the dough by hand.

Push your hama beads gently into the dough in your desired pattern, place the dough shape onto some grease proof paper, and onto a baking tray and pop into the oven on a very low temperature, and just keep an eye on it! As the perler beads start to melt, bring the tray out of the oven and allow to cool. fun eh?!

For salt dough recipes, check out http://www.redtedart.com/2013/12/02/easy-salt-dough-recipe-stars/

Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!