Category: Uncategorized

Some days my girls can be brilliant. Eat their meals, play nicely, minimal nagging. If faced with the Health Visitor or Nursery Teacher I’ll smile and say how good they are. 

Some days it’s like they’re conspiring together to push me over the edge. For example, last week we get up (5.30am standard). I free-pour coffee into a mug and after boiling the kettle 5 times between tantrums and dramas, actually manage to get hot water on top of it. Make them breakfast (Weetabix), which they don’t eat so the bowls are left on the table. Get each one dressed while they complain. Brush hair. Complain even more. Youngest wants teletetubbies. Oldest hates teletubbies. More tears. I treat myself to a moment of peace, washing some dishes. In comes oldest: “I need a wee wee” bah! Grab the potty: “can you use the potty please?” I then make the fatal mistake of turning my back; oldest stands up, youngest grabs the now full potty and in a flash is covered in pee. The cabinets are covered in pee. The just washed dishes are covered in pee. 

Without fully thinking I strip youngest out of the pee-soaked clothes and down to her nappy and ask (beg) my older girl to take her into the living room while I clear up. Not 2 minutes later I hear, “Maaaammmy, Rory’s making a mess” and walk in to the youngest wearing only her nappy, covered in Weetabix, rubbing Weetabix into the carpet with both hands. It’s 8am. 8am! How are we going to make it to lunch?

When it’s too early to drink wine, chocolate is surely the answer. This Millionaires Shortbread is undeniably indulgent so feels like a grown up treat but is simple enough that your little people will love whipping it up (and eating the melted chocolate).

You will need a 12″ by 9″ square tray or cake pan. Ideally lined with baking or greeseproof paper

Ingredients 

200g real butter 

200g self raising flour

100g cornflour 

100g caster sugar 

1 tin carnation caramel

300g milk chocoloate 

Couple of squares white chocolate if your feeling posh.

Preheat your oven to 180°C or gas Mark 4

In a large bowl, combine the butter and sugar. Then add the self raising flour and cornflour. Get your hands right in there to bring the mix together. Your kid(s) will love this as it’s stupidly messy and yummy. If you manage to stop them grabbing their hair or face with doughy hands your a better grown up then me.

Press your shortbread dough into the tray until it’s spread evenly. We had alot of eager toddler fingers on our dough…

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden on top. Remove from oven and leave in tray to cool completely. 

Keeping in the tray spread the caramel from the tin over the cooled shortbread and pop in the fridge. 

Now 300g milk chocolate is a shedful of chocoloate. But I really feel this recipe calls for it. Most recipes will say melt the chocolate slowly over a pan of simmering water but that would be a full scale disaster with my two. So we blast in the microwave initially for 20 seconds then 5-10 second bursts, stirring in between until melted.

Pour over the caramel layer as evenly as you can. We used a palette knife to spread gently over the caramel but a spoon will do as long as you go easy (possibly a mammy or daddy job rather than toddler).

We then melted a bit of white chocolate in a cup, poured little dollops into the milk chocolate layer, and swirled about a bit. This is purely for ponciness and is completely optional.

Pop back into the fridge to set completely (2-3hours). When set cut into squares and devour! 

Since joining Instagram I have been sucked into the perfect world of the #InstaMum. There seem to be hundreds of stunning fashionable mums with perfect makeup and not 1 millimetre of Ready Brek in their hair. One popular hashtag is #WhatMamaWoreMonday, where these beautiful parents display their designer outfits, usually with heels. I’ll scroll through whilst wearing my grey leggings and faded vest, sitting on bedsheets with stains that could be milk or toddler wee (it’s been a long night so who’s to say), thinking I must be getting something wrong here? They look amazing and I’m literally Worzel Gummidge.

But I’ve realised that these mums do not really exist. They look fab for an Instagram pic but five minutes after they are probably shouting at their 5 year for trying to catch a fart in a jar or wiping the hands of their 2 year old who wanted to find out what gravy feels like. I’ve realised because I’m so guilty of this too. I’ll put a happy smiling photo of the girls up on Facebook and neglect to mention the 4 meltdowns, 3 wet knicker accidents and a projectile vommit incident which resulted in the 3 of us having a shower simultaneously before lunchtime #SoF-ingBlessed. 

So in celebration of the mythical perfect mum, we’re scoffing another mythical creature- Unicorns! 

UNICORN BISCUITS 

This is a basic biscuit recipe and food colours or shape of cutter is completely optional. If you do colour your dough I really recommend a paste or gel colour as you’ll get a far better result. We got the unicorn cutter from Hobbycraft.

Ingredients 

300g plain flour

150g caster sugar

250g butter

1 egg 

2 tsp vanilla essence

Gel or paste food colours of your choice

 (We used blue, pink and purple)

Preheat oven to 180° C or Gas mark 4

Line 2 baking trays with baking or greeseproof paper.

Giant bowl at the ready! Mix the butter and sugar together until combined, then stir in the egg and vanilla. Add the flour and mix until you have a fairly stiff dough.

Separate your dough into three balls and gradually add food colouring until you have your desired colour. You’ll have to knead this which is quite therapeutic if you’ve had a morning like mine involving scraping Weetabix out of your Converse.  If using paste colours you’ll need very little (think a toothpick dipped in).

Bring your different coloured doughs together and roll out. The kids will love this as it takes very little rolling to get a fab marble effect. My girls thought this was amazing! So much so that they ate large quantities of it and eventually mixed it into a lovely greenish blob…

Roll out to quite thin, 1-2cm, and use your cutter to press out shapes. Again this is toddler-tastic 😊 if it’s a bit sticky add more flour and also use plenty of flour on the worktop and rolling pin. 

Pop onto your lined trays and bake for about 10 minutes or golden.

Once cool, decorate however you fancy 😀 we used a basic icing made from 100g icing sugar and about 3/4 tablespoons of water and sprinkles. 

Each night before turning the lamp off Mr Baking and I will say “goodnight, see you in the morning”. Then we’ll laugh and laugh, safe in the knowledge we’ll have a further 4 conversations before sunrise whilst seeing to our wakey children. Our girls are not ‘good’ sleepers.

As a result I live in a mombie (mom zombie) daze sometimes with odd shoes or only one eyebrow drawn on. If I’m asked a question that requires any answer other than a nod, I do a look like Joey from Friends doing ‘smell the fart’ acting.

So I live on caffeine and a healthy amount of sugar normally eaten in the form of chocolate or cake. These choc chunk cookies are a great happy medium as we use blocks of chocolate which gives a proper chocolate hit and a cakey type dough which is more chewy than biscuity*

You will need two baking trays ideally lined with baking paper or well greased if you have none to hand. Preheat oven to 170 degrees C

Ingredients

• 125g butter
• 100g caster sugar
• 100g soft brown sugar
• 1egg
• 225g plain flour
• 100g bar of chocolate broken into chunks or chocolate chips
• Pinch of salt
• Teaspoon vanilla

It’s time to get your giant toddler proof bowl out again. Mix your butter and sugars together until well combined then add the vanilla egg. (I was feeling cocky recently and let my 2 year old break an egg. Terrible idea- do not try this at home).

Pop your flour, salt and chocolate in and mix to form a sticky dough.

With a tablespoon gather a heaped spoonful of dough and lightly roll into balls as per below. These bad boys will spread right out so space them out as much as possible.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden and fairly massive.

Enjoy 😊

*biscuity is probably a real word.

If you have little baking experience but have decided to fully embrace the hot mess that is Baking With Kids you may be wondering what kitchen basics would be of most use. Here is a quick guide of our most commonly used items that should get you off to a brilliant start.

1. Weighing scales. Pretty self explanatory but you’ll need even a very basic set of scales to measure out whatever ingredients your child will later eat/toss about the room.

2. Large bowl. Again I find the bigger the mixing bowl the less chance of flour ending up on your neighbour’s cat.

3. Cake tin. If your looking to make a simple cake some 8″ sandwich tins or a 2lb loaf tin are ideal.

4. Muffin tray. My kids would bake cupcakes daily (sometimes we do) and a 12 cup muffin tray is a must to avoid wonky cakes. If wonky cupcakes is your thing however then crack on. I won’t judge.

5. Rolling pin. If you do decide to venture into the mysterious and exciting world of biscuit making (or dare I say pastry 😲) then a rolling pin offers certain benefits over a gin bottle. Firstly it’s completely round and has a handle at each end and secondly it’s far more socially acceptable in the world of baking with children.

6. Cookie/pastry cutters. There’s plenty of fun shapes for kids about in most supermarkets but if your starting out a good set of round cutters from Tesco or Poundland will keep your child very happy.

7. Measuring jug. If you haven’t got one this will come in handy for anything involving liquids or as an additional giant coffee mug when you’ve not done the dishes yet.

8. Baking sheet/tray. Again if you haven’t got one this really is essential. Come on mate, sort it out.

9. Baking paper. I’ll always advise you to grease a tin or baking sheet as it helps the baked goods come away easier. However if you can line the tin/tray with baking paper you’ll be doing yourself a big favour. Your cake/biscuits etc should lift off beautifully.

10. Patience. See what I did there? It’s actually really hard work parenting sometimes and we all lose patience now and again. If you are getting ready to bake with your little ones make sure your feeling the chill and that your kids aren’t on the verge of a pre nap tantrum. It will make the experience so much better for all of you because, as I’ve said many times, there will be mess.

Autocorrect likes to change ‘flapjacks’ to ‘flashbacks’. There’s an irony here in that while the kids and I were concocting the flapjacks I had several flashbacks to when my house was clean and to when I could watch an episode of Game of Thrones without a little voice coming down the monitor…

Flapjacks are great aren’t they? Because they’re mainly oats you can feed them to your kids for breakfast with minimal guilt and because they’re crumbly you can pick away at the ample crumbs 😊 (of which calories do not count).

Ingredients;

150g butter

100g Brown sugar

5 tablespoons golden syrup

250g porridge oats

50g sultanas

1 grated apple

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 160c / Gas mark 3 and grease a 30x23cm or 12″ x 9″ roasting tray.

Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup together over a low heat until all has blended and is a bit gloopy. You don’t want to boil this or get it too hot. NB this part is very much all you but your kids will be loving life at the next stage.

Mix your remaining ingredients together in a big bowl (less chance of oats in your toddlers hair) and pour in the butterey sugary mixture. Let your little ones go to town on giving this a good mix! As there’s no flour or raw egg it is particularly yummy uncooked (see below).

Pop your now well combined and half eaten mixture into your prepared tray and smooth down with a spoon. Bake for about half an hour until fully golden.

My top tip for cutting these is to leave them cool completely before cutting and removing. However this did not happen at our house this weekend. Between kids and husband ambling to get at the tray I was lucky to get the one crumbly picture of the finished goods!