Play Dough Recipe

Does anyone else have children that start playing with play dough and end up putting it in their mouth? Occasionally mine do, so I like making my own play dough just in case it gets eaten. The only down side is that it doesn't quite last as long as the store bought one.

I collected my few ingredients - flour, cream of tartar, salt, water and oil. Then we measured it all into a saucepan according to the recipe:

1 1/4 cups of Flour

1 cup of Water

1/2 cup of salt (to prevent the play dough going off)

2 Tablespoons of Cream of Tartar

1.5 Tablespoon of Oil

We cooked the play dough over a high heat for 5 minutes and stirred constantly until the dough came together into a sticky lump. It does look wet and very much like goo until the last minute when it all comes together.

Now we have fresh play dough all ready to use. My favourite time to use it is when I have just tipped it out of the pot and it is warm.

Rainbow Cake

My son wanted my to make him a rainbow cake for his birthday. To start with I thought he wanted a swirly marble cake (I'm not sure why since he didn't ask for a marble cake). After a few hiccups we discovered that he really wanted a cake similar to one my fabulous cousin made last year when we were visiting her. That made it easier. All I had to do was get the recipe from her and make it.

The hardest part of this cake is sorting all the m&ms. Good thing I have lots of willing helpers and don't mind the helpers taking payment via the occasional m&m that disappeared into their mouths and not the bowls.

After the m&ms are sorted, the cake baked and cut into shape, the only part left to do is ice the cake and stick all the m&ms on in rows.

Painting with Little Children

One of my biggest problems when painting with my children is the paints either spilling or getting mixed up.

We recently started using egg cartons to divide the paints up and it has been quite effective. I put a squirt of each colour in to the bottom of the cups and then the kids can use the paints. I make sure that there is a container of water. So far we have avoided mixing the colours up, and this is after the children had been painting for almost 40 minutes uninterrupted.

Hand Print Art

Time to make another set of canvas art. This time, since I found 4 small canvases in my cupboard, it is going to be 4 hand prints. One for each child.

We painted the canvases in 4 different colours and then used hands to put a print in the middle of it. All that is left is to sign a name down the bottom of each canvas and put a date on it. Maybe one day my children will look back at these prints and be able to compare how much they have changed/grown.

Magnetic Peg Planes

In our house our fridge is our noticeboard. We stick notes, invitations and artwork up on the fridge because this is the central location here. We all congregate around the kitchen while I am cooking. We come and go through the kitchen multiple times a day, so it is really the ideal place to display information. I finally decided to re-make our tacky magnets from our local MP.

We made some peg planes to stick on magnets and use to hold our artwork up in style. I did discover that my boys don't know what bi-planes are. We did have to go and visit the War Memorial to confirm that there really are planes with two main wings, one on top of the other.

Gingerbread houses 2012

This year we decided to change the recipe we used to make our gingerbread houses and make the gingerbread houses much smaller. We found that the bigger ones look prettier and can fit more decorations on them, but that the children just east all the lollies instead of eating the gingerbread. This recipe is one that the children like eating, so I was hopeful it would be more successful.

Ingredients:
125g margarine
1/2 cup of Caster Sugar
1 egg yolk
2 cups of plain flour
3 teaspoons of ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon of bi-carb soda
1/4 cup of golden syrup warmed for 20 seconds in the microwave

-beat butter and sugar until creamy

-add egg yolk and mix thoroughly

- sift flour, ginger, pepper and bi-carb soda together and then add to the butter mixture along with the golden syrup. This should bring the dough together into a thick stick ball of dough

- knead dough on lightly floured surface and roll out to a 1/2cm thickness

-cut the house pattern out of the dough and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 1 house and a few tiny biscuits to taste test.

I used the computer to make house shapes to print out so I could use them as templates for cutting out my gingerbread house pieces.

It is a good thing that royal icing can make up for our wonky house pieces!

The children had a lovely time decorating the houses and then eating them.

Biscuit Wreath

This year my oldest son wanted to take in a gift to share with all the teachers from his school and he wanted it to be something edible. While we were sitting in a waiting room at an appointment he found a picture of a biscuit wreath and decided that this was exactly what he wanted to make.

We made a butter biscuit recipe with white chocolate added to the mix for a richer biscuit. Once we cut out the biscuits we 'glued' them together into a wreath shape with melted chocolate. I thought this was easier than a royal icing alternative and the children could manage without my help.

White Chocolate Butter Biscuits

200 grams of butter

1 cup of caster sugar

1 egg

2 1/4 cups of plain flour

100 grams of grated white chocolate

Extra 150grams  white chocolate for joining the biscuits

Icing sugar for sifting over the finished wreath

Cream the butter and sugar then add the egg and mix well.

Slowly add the flour and grated chocolate to the mixture. 

Once the mixture comes together in a big lump put it in the fridge for half an hour.  

Roll the mixture out and cut out various sized stars, place on a baking tray and put in the oven at 180C conventional or 170C fan forced. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until they start to colour - these biscuits are not meant to be brown, so stay close to the oven when cooking as the chocolate in the mix ensures that they go from cooked to burnt in a few minutes!

Once the biscuits have cooled, melt the extra chocolate and use it to glue the stars in a wreath shape. Sift icing sugar over the top to finish.