Eat This! - Swirly Biscuits

We needed to make some biscuits at quite short notice, and with kids these are the easiest thing in the world, and very satisfying.  You don't need to use cutters (hooray!) and they can play with the dough like playdough.

I feel I should apologise for the rather hideous plate, but as I said these biscuits were for a purpose which shall be revealed in a later post.

3 ingredients:

2oz caster sugar
4oz butter
6oz plain flour.

Couldn't be simpler.

On a side note, I don't spread butter on my bread, but I often need it for cooking (but not often enough to keep it in the fridge).  I keep it in the freezer but then this raises the problem of remembering to get it out in time to warm up before baking time.  Except it doesn't. If you grate frozen butter it warms up super quick and is ready to use in no time. If you aren't using a food processor for the recipe, just use the microwave, no-one wants to grate frozen butter by hand!

OK, cream butter and sugar and mix in flour.  Divide the dough into an appropriate number of balls and let each child choose a colour.  If they're old enough (mine aren't) let them loose with the food colouring.  I highly recommend gel food colourings rather than the liquid ones. You get a much better result and they don't make the dough/icing/whatever too soggy. Wilton do some nice ones which are available in cake decorating shops, Hobbycraft etc. Once the dough is all coloured, squish each ball into a pancake and then pile them up on top of each other.  We did double the recipe here and made two piles with different order of colours to make two kinds of biscuit.

The best idea here is to put a sheet of clingfilm underneath and then one of top.  This makes is easy to roll out and very easy to move it round the table so everyone has a go.

If I'd have thought about it beforehand, I'd have tidied up the kitchen for the photoshoot.  You take us as you find us.

Once it's rolled out (not too thin, somewhere between 5 and 10 mm) you need to roll it into a sausage.  It's pretty hard to take photos of the process when you have 3 kids having fun!

Cover the sausage in clingfilm and put it in the freezer for 10 mins or so until it is solid.
Then the fun bit.  Slice the sausage up (about 5 mm thick) and reveal the swirl!

Bake at gas mark 4 or 5 for 10-15 minutes.

Honestly these are serious fun. I wish all biscuits looked like this!

The Saltmarsh Murders by Gladys Mitchell - Book Review (AUDIO)

288 pages

If you like Agatha Christie, but wish it was a little more unusual and comedic, then this one is for you.   Yes, some of it is a little out of kilter with modern views (it was written in 1932 and the black characters are as you can imagine), but it is genuinely funny.

A blandings-esque (and I say that in the Jeeves and Wooster sense rather than the more recent adaptation) jolly romp through a complex mystery.

The audio version is read by Gordon Griffin.  He's done a marvellous job here, setting exactly the right tone.  Sometimes you listen to a book that is totally ruined by the reader, but when you get a good one the result is better than when you read it yourself.

A keeper.

Eat This! - Snow Eggs

My friend Jodi from Little Fishes playgroup told me about these and I said I'd try it and blog.  So here we are...

A new (to me) way with eggs. I've called them snow eggs, but I don't know what the proper name is.  If you do them with duck eggs they are called fluffy ducks apparently.

So the first step is to separate the eggs and whisk the whites up to soft peaks. Now come on, don't say that's going to take forever, it takes a minute at most with an electric whisk. Then take a slice of toast (I put a bit of marmite on mine) and put a couple of spoons of the egg white on the toast.  Make a well in the middle and pour the yolk in. I accidentally popped the yolk when I was seperating it, but it didn't matter.

Then put the rest of the egg white on the top, and top with cheese.

10 mins at gas mark 4 and there you have it, crispy and fluffy and then beautiful soft yolk.

Novelty Birthday Cakes

I know that buying birthday cakes is lot less work, and that you can get some lovely ones in the supermarkets now, but the fact is I like making them.  I relish the challenge and it's a creative outlet. Moon's birthday is next week so I'll be blogging again soon about her cake, but the Bean has just had her birthday so I thought I'd do a little post about hers.

I've written before about my adventures in cake making: Peppa Pig, Pingu, cupcakes, and a Dinosaur.  Since she loved her 2nd birthday dinosaur so much, the Bug asked for another one for her third birthday.  Well that's easy!  Pushed the boat out a little more on that one, and went for diplodocus rather than triceratops, and made it her favourite colour.

These cakes are easy, people.  There's a tutorial for the dinosaurs in the link above.

The Bean last year requested a butterfly and flower cake and asked that it be pink and purple.  Well the butterfly was pretty easy, just a sandwich cake cut in half with cupcakes down the middle.

And yes, it's pink and purple the whole way through.  How to do that? Split the cake mix in two and colour it, then put dollops of each in the tin.

The flowers were so popular I only got time to take this rubbish photo before they were gobbled.  Yes they are cake pops with regal ice petals.  I made them buy 'threading' the petals onto the dried cakepop while it was upside-down and letting them set before turning them the right way up again.  I wasn't too pleased with them to be honest, they were a bit too big and next time I'd do them smaller and take a bit more time.

As an aside I do like cakepops, but I don't like the new cakepop makers.  They do defeat the point a bit.  In a proper cakepop you have a mixture of cake and butter icing inside and that is what makes them so marvellous.

Now, those of you that know me, know that I'm not a big fan of pink.  Or fairies.  So when the Bean said she wanted a fairy cake for her birthday this year my heart sank.  Still, I believe very strongly that the kids should have their own opinions and likes and dislikes, so a fairy cake it was to be.  However there is room for a bit of sneaky influence when you are a Mum.

Yes, it is a fairy cake, but it's hardly pink at all!  And she loved it.  I'm quite pleased with this dumpy little fairy actually.

 She's made totally out of shop-bought regal ice, and is holding a little butter icing flower.  I made the dress using this fab little leaf cutter set from Lakeland. I did find the head a bit difficult though.  I need more practice with that, but D did point out the first head was way to big and she looks infinitely better with this one.

You know what?  This was one of the quickest novelty cakes I have done.  It's just two hemisphere cakes on top of each other.  I secured them together with a couple of BBQ wooden skewers just to be on the safe side and then iced her up.  I like the little butter icing snails too.  The little mushrooms are made from shop-bought snowflake cake toppers with a ball of icing underneath.  Sainsbury's is still selling these of in packs of 16 or so for 20p after Christmas. They basically last forever, so worth getting a few, I'm sure they've got lots of uses.

 

Nell Sweeney Novels by Patricia Ryan - Book Review (KINDLE)

      

324 pages, 276 pages, 276 pages, 244 pages

I know it's a bit cheeky to lump all of these together, but I read them straight one after the other, and four posts seems a bit much. What a coincidence that two of them have exactly the same number of pages.

These are period American crime novels.  It's a genre I have avoided for some time after reading the appalling The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld.  Oh my that was a dreadful dreadful book.  But I digress.  These on the other hand are lovely.
For some reason I always find books containing Opium dens rather funny, but I don't know why.  There's a lot of detail in here about how to prep your opium for den activity and descriptions of the sort of paraphanalia you might need.
Otherwise it's rather likeable nonsense.  Bit of crime; bit of unqualified, unlikely detection; bit of romance; bit of stereotyping.  All in all they are easy throwaway reads, perfect for a holiday.

I'll happily read the rest when they are cheap on Kindle.

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve - Book Review

304 pages

Firstly, I haven't posted a picture of the cover here, because this picture is so much better.  My copy has the worst cover possibly in the history of fiction.  Some very very bad decision by Scholastic has done Reeve no favours.  Happily, this error seems to have been rectified in more recent editions, and joy upon joy WETA are working of a film adaptation with Peter Jackson.  Hoorah!

So you may guess from that, I loved this book. I knew from the first sentence I was going to love this book and it didn't disappoint.

This is the first in quite a series of 4 books in the Predator Cities series. The concept of Municipal Darwinism is, as far as I am aware, wholly original.  The plot doesn't take the route you expect and it is a jolly good adventure from start to finish.
Also, for a kids book, it is pretty gory and has some properly nasty characters.  Which is nice. I'm rather ashamed that it has taken me this long to read Reeve, but I shall certainly be reading the rest of the series.

There's a couple of places where the text is slightly clunky or childish, and one incredibly flowery passage that doesn't quite sit right, but other than that I have no complaints.  Except for the cover.

You should read this.

Dissolution by CJ Sansom - Book Review

463 pages

CJ Sansom is one of the best crime writers around right now.  I'd claim that he is the best, but I haven't read all crime in existence  so I won't.  He writes a combination of two of my favourite genres: crime and history.  He clearly knows what he's talking about.
This is the first in a series of books following the life of Matthew Shardlake, a hunchbacked lawyer that gets caught up in solving crimes often against his better judgement, and often because politically it would be unwise to refuse the work.
The characterisation is excellent.  Shardlake himself is quite likeably unlikeable, which is impressive in itself.  The sights, sound and smells of the 16th century are so real that you are totally absorbed.  This is one of those proper books that sucks you in and leaves you living half in the world of the dissolution of monasteries while you try and conduct your everyday life.
I've read this one before and I'll read it again.  This series is a definite keeper, all the hardcopies are on my shelf and will stay there. Highly recommended.

Eat This! - Lamingtons

I didn't make Lamingtons this year (which I usually do on Australia Day) but I did see that they have bit to UK mainstream by being included in the new Guardian Cook section that comes with Saturday's paper.  I'm guessing every family has their own Lamington recipe, so just to wade in I'll give you ours.  Oh my, I love these things.  Mum used to make big piles of them for my birthday cake, and it seems the novelty of our family recipe is the use of a bit of lemon in the icing.

For the cake (you can use any sponge really, and it's great with slightly stale cake as it holds together better)

125g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla

Cream butter and sugar and beat in the eggs.  Fold in the flour alternately with the milk (+ vanilla)

THIS MIXTURE WILL BE VERY THICK, DON'T WORRY!!!!

Bake at 180 degrees for 30 - 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

When the cake is cold cut into chunks of whatever size you fancy.

For the icing:

3 table spoons boiling water
2 table spoons cocoa
30g butter
2 cup icing sugar
lemon juice to taste

Melt the butter and stir in the cocoa powder. Stir in the icing sugar and add boiling water as necessary. Keep the icing warm as it will solidify quickly when cold!  Add lemon to taste.

NOW THE MESSY PART!  Dip the cake into the icing and then roll in coconut.  I always end up making more icing as it gets so messy and I end up using more than the recipe.  The coconut coated icing will dry almost immediately, so do the dipping while the icing is still hot. I guarantee you will be coated in icing and coconut by the end of this.

Yum.

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian - Book Review (KINDLE)

This year I'm trying to review all the books, TV series, and films I see so that I can keep track.  At the moment there's a bit of a glut because January was a busy month!

So yes, Master and Commander as per the title.

This was a book club read, and I had it on the 'to read' bookshelf in any case so I was quite pleased.  I'd bought it ages ago as one of those books I thought I really should get round to, so here was the perfect excuse.

I didn't not like this, because what's not to like.  OK there was a not of navy schmavy talk about different sails and ropes and whatnots, but since I found the first passage  explaining it all completely incomprehensible I just skipped over any others I came across. Now, once I got to book club I discovered that in the hard copy you get a diagram that tells you all the sails and stuff and that would have made it a hell of a lot easier, but on the e-read you don't so I was none the wiser by the end of the book.

The characters are lovely and funny and nicely observed.  I didn't totally believe them, but I didn't think they were absurd either.  I liked them, and that is the key. The captain (sorry that is probably the wrong term, another thing that's hard to understand), Aubrey, is wonderfully thick, and the doctor, Maturin, is marvelously odd. He also has a brilliant name.

Other than that there's not much to say, because nothing happens.  That's a bit harsh, but really, there's several times you hear about something happening because one of the incidental characters is talking about it, but that's it.  You hear about it in passing. Also the narrative keeps skipping in what seems like important places.  It's all set up for a big scene, and then suddenly you are somewhere else on a ship having lunch.  448 pages of a nice read, but not much going on. No wonder there's 20-odd books in the series.  I'd happily read more, but I'm not going to go and buy the set.

Having said all that and damned the thing by faint praise, there is one scene between Maturin and a French counterpart that totally makes the book for me.  I laughed out loud, which doesn't happen too often with books.

Boots from an old jumper

I posted on facebook not long ago that I had upcycled an old jumper into some boots.  Wow this generated a lot of interest, and so many people asking me for details in person as to how I did this.  If I had known in advance people would be so keen I would have done a photo tutorial!  So here's the best I can do. (Another disadvantage of doing this after the event is that I've been wearing them round for a couple of weeks and they are dirty.  Sorry about that.)

Firstly, I didn't really make the boots.  I bought some super-cheap Primani ones. Then I simply chopped off the sleeves of an old mens jumper (not an old man's jumper) and glued them on.  It's not rocket science, and it's hardly even economically valid, as you can buy boots that look a bit like this for next to nothing.  But hey, I like to do this sort of thing.

So...cut the sleeves off and decide which will be the right side.  Then turn them wrong-side-out.

Take the boots and run a line of hot glue round the very bottom of the boot and pull the sleeve over and stick it down.  Fold it over and stitch round if you have a) the time b) something to stitch to.  By luck rather than judgement the boots I bought had a sort of piping round the sole so I stitched to that.

You'll then probably need to just put a bit of glue around the inside ankle (the bit where the leg joins the foot of the boot) just to gather the fabric in nicely so it stays nicely on the foot bit.

Then fold the top of the sleeve down (you might need to just snip the cuff if it's too tight) and sew or glue some buttons on.  Glue round the top if you like. I found that wearing the boots while doing the ankle gluing and folding down bit was easiest.

Incidentally, a hot glue gun is something every person should have in the house.  Useful for so many things.

Homeland series 2 - TV

Ah series two, I didn't really think they could string out this story any more, but they kind of pulled it out of the hat. Of course Brody still has a face like a parrot fish, but there is a notable moment in episode 10 where Carrie forgets to do the crazy 'I've got schizophrenia' eyes.  She looks quite normal.

Now to Quinn.  Well it took me a while to work out who he was, and it was only after a couple of episodes of me telling D "he looks very English, I'm sure he's not American with a face like that" that he wiki'd at and confirmed it's some bloke that used to go out with Keira Knightly.  Maybe he only likes to associate with fish-mouthed people. Anyhow, he was an excellent addition.  Was he a double agent?  Was he black ops working for Esterhase (Estase? Esthers?)  Who on earth is Tarka Dal? Why would they want to kill Brody anyway? Lovely.

Honourable mentions to Dana's angsty face and Carrie's crying face. Ooh and the bit where Roya behaved like a woman with conviction instead of a Carrie-esque crazy look weakling.

I'd almost given up on it in the final few of episodes where it got a bit dull. But then they blew the whole lot up. Excellent. The broadcasting of Brody's terrorist video was not far short of genius. Oh wow I was praying that Saul (Sol?  I need subtitles for the names!) would just give a little smile to show it was his doing...but they are keeping us guessing. So we end series 2 with the same question about where Saul's allegiances lie, and safe in the knowledge that his fabulous grooming will be centre stage for the next series.

I'm surprisingly looking forward to it!

Les Mis - Film Review

Before I start I should admit I have never seen the stage show.  There, I've said it.  I know, it's disgraceful etc. etc. but the fact is I had a teacher in school that absolutely drooled over it and it put me off for life.  Only the epic movie trailer changed my mind.

I think I must be the only person in the world that didn't like the Les Miserables movie.  More and more facebook statuses are coming at me with tales of floods of tears and hearts touched and I'm starting to think I have a heart of stone.  But then I remember that, no, I actually just don't like Acting.  The culprit here is Hugh Jackman.  What's so disappointing here is that he can actually sing (check Happy Feet and Flushed Away for example), but in Les Mis he gives such a Performance and really puts his all into Singing that it leaves me cold. I don't have anything against vibrato per se, it's just not necessary on every single note, and when it is clearly not natural for your voice, but put on for the Musical Performance, it really ruins it.  Honestly it's not over stating it to say I was relieved when he died.

Now the even more controversial part....I liked Russell Crowe's performance. Here is a man that can play a baddie so sensitively that you totally understand where he is coming from.  I mean the words are all there in the songs, but I believed it from Crowe. And yes, I nearly shed a tear at his demise. I felt more akin to him than to Jean Valjean.  Maybe that says more about me than about the acting.

Yes, Hathaway was incredible, and the fact that everyone is saying it might water it down a bit but it's true.  Who knew?  She was amazing.  Ditto Eddie Redmayne.  Beautiful.  However the real star of the show for me was Aaron Tveit.  Who?  Indeed.  Young American, and boy can that guy sing.  I could have watched the revolutionaries for the entire movie.  I actually wished I had done I'd have left feeling happier.

As a side note, Samantha Barks has the thinnest waist I think I have seen in the modern age.  Apparently she was discovered on a reality talent show.  She was fabulous and let's be honest here, given the choice between Eponine and Cosette only a fool would go for the latter.

And finally...why make the first scene so epic when the rest of it is quite stagey?  How incongruous and misleading to those of us quite uninitiated.

Screw your courage to the sticking place!

This book is good. No it's great.  560 pages and I read it in less than a week.  That's saying something for someone that doesn't get as much time as they would like to read.  I even shed a little tear when it finished because I didn't want it to end.  I'm not going write a full review yet, as I am reading it as part of my book group and I don't want to spoil the discussion.

Nice rug!

Spotted this rug in the Guardian Style section on the weekend

it's by Sonya Winner and it is beautiful. Lovely lovely lovely. It costs two grand. Wow I can only imagine having two grand to spend on a rug. Actually I can't. I can think of a million better things to do with two grand. I bought this rug from IKEA years ago for, I think, 20 quid. I'm not saying it's better, I'm just saying we all do the best we can with what we got.

Also I don't think I'd be too chilled out if the kids weed on Sonya's rug. I bet it is not machine washable.

Playdough Monsters

I've written about how easy it is to make playdough before...and it is still a firm favourite! I've discovered that it keeps much longer if you reduce the salt content considerably. OK maybe it is more likely to get eaten but the Bean and Bug seem to be past that stage now. In my experience the salt never put them off in any case.
We've increased our selection of playdough toys with some rather nice monster parts found in a charity shop by Granny.
Here's some recent art and monster making that took place chez atomicyoghurt with the girls and their friends.