Carrot & Apple Bites

The Zebra has a thing for biscuits right now, so we whipped up a batch of healthy biscuits that I can also have as part of my breakfast! 

Ingredients:

50g seeds (we used a mix of flaxseed, chia and quinoa)

40g wholemeal self raising flour

35g porridge oats

1/2tsp grated ginger

1tsp cinnamon 

40g chopped dried apricot 

100g grated cooking apple

50g grated carrot 

20g chopped pecans 

20g coconut oil

60g honey 

5g orange zest

1tbsp orange juice 

10g grated coconut 

****preheat oven to 180degs

The best tip I can give for cooking with toddlers is get everything ready and prepared before letting them in the kitchen!

Gently heat the coconut oil until it melts and then stir in the honey, orange zest and juice. Leave to one side.

The best thing about the recipe is its so easy! Apart from the grated coconut, add all the remaining ingredients into one bowl. Mix well and then add in the warm coconut oil and orange.

Split the mixture into 6 or 12 biscuits and place on a greased tray. 6 biscuits mean they have around 200 calories each. 

Sprinkle on top the grated coconut.

Place in the oven for 15-20 minutes until they are golden brown. 

Once they've cooled, all you need to do is enjoy and not feel any snack-guilt! 

"Create a Treat" ornament cookie kit

One of the many present the Zebra received for Christmas was this biscuit decorating pack. The product is dated May 2016 so it won't keep till next year, so we decided to give it a go on our first baking Saturday of the year!

The pack is pretty basic, and although I don't know how much it cost to buy, we could have made it from scratch, in minutes, for pennies.

As soon as the Zebra saw the pack of brightly coloured sugar strands, she went into full blown tantrum until she was allowed to hold them. 

I cut the corner of one pack of icing and showed her how to squeeze it out onto the biscuit. However, it was so thick if just slowly gloobs out in big chunks.

I managed to smear a bit of the icing around and then opened the sprinkles. The whole pack got dumped over one biscuit. Then the feeding frenzy began. Once she had tasted the sugar it was too late, there was no stopping her.

Time to give up and clean up!

I managed to press two biscuits onto the scattered sprinkles and we will have them for dessert later. After a quick taste of the icing - I don't have high hopes!

Would I recommend this product for a toddler? No. Would I recommend for older children. No. 

This is the first ready-made pack we have used and I'm most disappointed.

Gingerbread Rudolph Reindeers

These biscuits look so cute and are really easy to make - they are just upside-down gingerbread men! 

We are still housebound with chicken pox so had to find a recipe that only included ingredients we already had - which was a struggle! This book had the closest we could find...

Ingredients:

125g butter 

85g brown sugar (we used light brown)

175ml golden syrup

375g plain flour

2tsp ginger (we used mixed spice)

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

******preheat oven to 190*******

Start by adding the sugar and butter into a bowl

Mix it well until it's smooth! We didn't have real butter and used spreadable so it didn't take long at all 

Add in the flour, spice, and bicarbonate of soda

Then get mummy to help pour in the syrup 

Mix everything together until it becomes a dough

It's safe to say the Zebra likes cookie dough!!

Put the mixture into the fridge for at least 30 minutes. I didn't have any cling film so used a ziplock bag

Roll the dough as thin as possible

Using a gingerbread-man cutter, make your biscuits

Pop into the oven for 8-10 minutes. It seems our biscuit were too thick and took 15 minutes to cook. The Zebra kept a good eye on them for me the whole time 

They also got a lot bigger while cooking than I expected!

Once they have cooled it's time to ice - the "legs" of the gingerbread man become the antlers! You can either ice the eyes, or use googley eyes for decoration. 

They certainly pass the Zebra taste test! 

Remembrance Sunday

At 17 months, The Zebra is much too young to understand why Rememberance Day is so important (She's also  young to be trusted not to eat the poppy on my jumper). 

I still wanted to acknowledge the day, so we had a theme around the Poppy. A symbol of hope and a fresh start, as well as all that has been lost. 

The Zebra loves baking and we try and make something every week. I like recipes that aren't to hard and allow her to do most the cooking. Obviously some bits, like making the leaves, have to be done by me! 

Trying to be a bit adventurous and tasty, we went for a lemon and poppyseed recipe. Zebra enjoyed squeezing the lemons but soon took to eating them... 

We're not sure what went wrong, but this biscuit recipe was much too wet to shape - even after adding in lots more flour. Luckily we had cupcake cases in the cupboard!

After all her hard work of stirring and pouring and filling cases, it's time to taste the mixture while waiting for the cakes to bake

Using the fantastic Wilton Gel food colouring, Zebra was able to paint the cakes poppy red. I love how even a teeny amount of gel gives such a vibrant colour. Once dried, I was able to add the black centres to the poppy.

As the recipe was originally biscuit not cake, the final bite was a bit heavy an stuck to the cases, however the lemon flavour was delicious and has certainly inspired me to cook with citrus more often. 

Test