Homemade Fruit Leather sweets

So we still have fruit left from PYO. So I decided to have a go at making some fruit leather. It is so simple!

First choose any fruit and blend with a hand blender. I made 2 batches, this is kiwi, gooseberry and apple, and the other was pure strawberries. You can add sugar or sweetner to taste. You could also add any other flavourings like almond essence to cherries or raspberries, or vanilla or cinnamon to apple etc.
Then pour the mix onto a baking tray lined with cling film. Try and make it as evenly spread as possible.
Then place in your oven on the lowest possible heat setting and leave for 6-8 hours or until it no longer leaves a dent when you press it. If it is not evenly spread you may need to moisten the edges with water to make sure the middle is cooked before the edges frazzle.
Remove from the oven and slice as you wish. I made small squares for sweeties, you could make roll ups or use some of the kids playdoh cutters (cleaned obviously) for more interesting shapes.

An Amazing Strawberry Cake

Nothing in the world beats a fresh Strawberry sponge. It is so wonderfully summery and British, evocative of   tea parties and the sound of cricket balls hitting bats as the game is played by gentlemen on the village green on a warm sunny day.

And it is so quick, bung all the ingredients for a simple sponge in the mixer, throw it in a couple of cake tins and bake for 20 mins. Whip up some fresh cream and slice or half the strawberries and when the cake is cool pile it up! Yum yum. And even better when you have just been out picking the strawberries yourself!

Strawberry picking

Our end of week outing for the fruit topic was a trip to the local fruit picking (PYO) farm.
We had a great time despite the weather being rather grey.

We all discovered that we love fresh gooseberries. A perfect end to the week - a new found fruit to enjoy!

The cafe there (Cairnie Fruit Farm) had some great treats. I loved the idea of this cookie on a stick lolly.

And this fine looking cone was in fact a cupcake baked in a cone with vanilla butter icing and a strawberry.

We picked 4 kilos of fruit, time to get creative with the pickings!!!!

A glut of walnuts - Walnut, Parsley & Goat's cheese pesto

Our recent trip to my sister-in-laws beautiful French abode saw us return home laden with a big sackful of walnuts their garden. I am not actually very keen on walnuts but these walnuts were lovely as they hadn't any of the bitter taste of the skin, I think because they were quite young still.

So I spent 2 days shelling the little beggers, so that they didn't take up as much space for moving, and set about thinking what to do with them. 

I found some interesting recipes but decided to stick to one of my favourite things, homemade pesto.

I made this batch with walnuts, flat leaf parsley, a hard goats cheese, olive oil & lemon juice, salt and pepper.

It served as an accompaniment to pasta, but was also delicious mixed with a bit of plain yoghurt as a dip for crudites.

Dinosaur watermelon carving at Summer Mummy School

This week we have been learning all about fruit at 'Mummy school'

Because we are moving from Scotland to England over the summer holidays, the boys are going to end up being off school for 10 whole LOOOOONNNNNGGG weeks!

So, to help them remember everything they learnt to do so well this year, (and to stop me going quite so insane!), we have decided to go to 'Mummy's school' for an hour a day, while the smallest boy is having his morning nap. Each week we will choose a topic.

This week was fruit. This is what we have done;

Thought of every fruit we can think of.

Made a banana smoothie

Been shopping for a fruit we have never tried before, weighing it on the scales and buying it with coins.

Surveyed family and friends for their favourite fruit and drawn a bar graph

Coloured in pictures of fruit found on the net

Drawn our own pictures

Completed various fruit related literacy and maths worksheets (free online downloads)

Read a free online book about fruit that was really cute

Carved a watermelon into a dinosaur shape (after last years success with a shark - see here)

Gone to the library and got out books about fruit

We are going pick you own fruit picking at the weekend and we plan to make some fruit leather with the pickings.

Made a fruit salad.

Illustrated the seasons with the seasonal cycle of an apple tree

Next week will be the very original.... Olympics. Today we kicked it off by watching the torch procession come passed Nanny's house on the Skype video chat! It froze at the exact moment it came passed!

The Park Farm Cookbook

Granny is now a published celebrity chef!

For her birthday we created a photobook of all her most loved family recipes. I am please to say that she seems very chuffed with it! It is available for purchase here!!!!

I just love photobooks and all their home made and personalised gift potential.

Nursery Teacher Gift Idea

Teacher gifts are always tricky, and when it's nursery it's even trickier because there are lots of them!

 My friend is a primary school teacher and when asked what her preferred end of year gift was she said "Wine is always the winner, you can't go wrong because even when it isn't very nice you can always cook with it!"

So I give wine to the primary school teachers, but it felt a bit wrong to walk into nursery with 3 bottles of red! So I started thinking along the sweet treat line, but thought that they probably get overwhelmed with sweet treats all in one go, and had a eureka moment of making them some cookie dough that they can put in their freezer and slice and bake as the urge comes to them.

I used my best chewy cookie dough recipe (find it here) and made three flavours, cinnamon oaty raisin, peanut butter choc chip and mint choc chip.

I hadn't made the mint choc chip ones before so I had to use trial and error a bit. I made the basic choc chip (though you could use mint flavoured chocolate) and then added a bit of peppermint essence (about 2tsp) and a bit of my new paste colourings to make the perfect vivid green!!!

On a side note, I am so excited that I finally got around to getting professional paste food colourings for baking. They have changed my life - well, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, or maybe not - my life is truly that sad!) They are such amazing value for money as you use just a tiny spec and get more colour than you get from a whole bottle of the stuff you get from supermarkets. I got mine here. I only bought yellow, red and blue as you can mix to make any colour yourself.

I dressed them up with a little poem we wrote to make it more personal and some baking/storage instructions. We did get some funny looks as we walked in with them on the last day, and some mothers asked me why I had made a green sausage but the teachers were absolutely delighted with them. I'm not sure who picked which but I think I can guess based on their three personality types!

A very yummy barbeque

Summer fruit pavlova 

Turkey mince Caesar burgers

Fathers Day Interview

This year as part of our fathers day celebration we undertook a Fathers Day Questionnaire Interview as past of the boys card to Daddy. Here is what they said. (Questions were taken from a few of the different, many and varied Father's Day Questionnaire ideas you can find on the internet, plus some of the boys own ideas) We hope to make a tradition of it, at least until Charlie is big enough to answer too!


1. What does Daddy do at work?
Ollie;  He cooks salads. He is a Chef
Max; Makes some food
2. What does Daddy do at home?
Ollie; He relaxes and watches the racing cars and kisses mummy.
Max; Sleeps
3. What does Daddy like to watch on TV?
Ollie: Rugby
Max: Football
4. What does Daddy do after you have gone to bed?
Ollie; Makes dinner and watches farm programmes
Max; Kisses me goodnight
5. Who does Daddy love?
Ollie; Mummy and us
Max; MEEEEE!
6. What is Daddy’s favourite food & drink?
Ollie; Salads & Beer
Max; Pancakes & Beer
7. How do you know when your dad is happy?
Ollie; Because he has a smile on his face and kisses you
Max; When he is smiling
8. What makes Daddy cross?
Ollie; If we shout or if we fight 
Max; I don’t know
9. Name something that your dad is really good at?
Ollie; Cooking and making lego with me
Max; He can do tricks; like exercising 
10. Name something that your dad is not so good at?
Ollie; Maths
Max; Climbing up trees
11. What does your dad do for you that your mum can’t?
Ollie; Makes loads of money, and does good lego
Max; Making lego
12. What three adjectives best describe your dad?
Ollie; Hard working, loving and helpful
Max; Crazy or sumfin?
13. What is your favourite thing to do with Daddy?
Ollie; Playing on the Wii with him
Max; Playing lego with me and Ollie
14.   What do you like the best about your dad?
Ollie; He laughs a lot and smiles and is really happy to see us
Max; When he does shaking to music
15. When is the best time to talk to Daddy?
Ollie; On the weekend
Max; At bedtime
16. What is cool about your dad?
Ollie;  He knows about cool music
Max; Daddy’s not cool.
17. What do you know about your dad that other people may not know?
Ollie; He put love in his salads
Max; We are getting him a present
18. How much do you love Daddy?
Ollie; A million and nine hundred and seven
Max;  I love Daddy a hundred times; more than a house
19. If you could buy Daddy any present in the world what would you buy?
Ollie; a big machine full of beer
Max; Another coffee machine
20. Is there anything you want to say thank you for?
Ollie; For being the best Daddy in the world
Max; Thank you I love you.

Strictly Come Dancing Party- Glitter Ball Birthday Cake

Glitter/Mirror Ball Birthday Cake - like the Strictly Come Dancing trophy?

The other Strictly Come Dancing themed party item I made was the cake! It was ambitious (for me anyway) but I was up to the challenge, ably assisted by my mum and friend. I had to be as my sister is always upset that she can't be at my boys parties, not because she loves her nephews so (though she really does) but because she wants to eat their cakes!

Glitter Ball Cake - in progress

I forgot to take any photos while I was making it until this point!

My mum baked 2 cakes for me. Lovely chocolate cakes and she rented a soccer ball (dome) mould to make the 2 halves of the whole ball.

I then sandwiched these, one on top of the other with some chocolate butter icing. I spread the whole ball with a thin layer of butter icing to ensure the fondant icing would stick. I used grey fondant icing. I rolled a large circle, lay it over and then cut away the excess to ensure it folded around the ball to the base plate. I rolled the remnants as thin as I could and cut it into squares. I stuck these onto the original fondant layer with a little heated peach jam. 

I sprayed this whole thing with edible silver lustre spray. And sprinkled with ample edible glitter!

I decorated the plate with some black fondant shapes (from patchwork cutters) and moulded a 3 and a 0 out of pink fondant (around silver-foil forms) And stuck these to the top of the cake with cocktail sticks.

I also copied the font from Strictly Come Dancing to write my sister's name (Julia) in pink icing and stuck this on to make it look more like the Strictly Come Dancing trophy in cake form!

And ta-da!!!

The only trouble was getting it up the bumpy, windy, hilly, narrow roads to the venue on my own. Unfortunately I had to brake suddenly to avoid a car coming the other way and the top slip across the bottom and looked less than perfect on arrival!

Strictly Come Dancing Party Glitter Ball Pinata

 The last item I made for the party was a Glitter Ball pinata.

In retrospect should have sprayed silver under the squares as if you looked carefully could see  the newspaper)

You can just about see the pull string at the bottom (attach the string inside to a wide bit of card so pulls the whole base out)

Punch balloons covered in 2 layers of newspaper dipped in flour and water - drying outside (as drips!)

Boys playing with the punch balloons first

I thought about this for a while and did some online research. This is the youtube clip I found on how to build one. I didn't follow it exactly. I wanted it to be a pull-pinata rather than a bash one so I made a trap door as shown here. I made the squares a ruler width as that was easier and quicker. I ended up using no more nails to stick them on because that was all I had to hand. I filled it with metallic foil wrapping paper that I cut into little square/rectangles, glitter and a few sweeties (though not too many as I was worried about how strong the trap-door would be!) I made it with the image in my mind that my sister would pull it open at the end of the night (after it had served it's dual purpose as a glitter ball decoration) and get showered with confetti and glitter.
It worked well except that there was no where to hang it!

Strictly Come Dancing Surprise Party!

This weekend was my sister's surprise 30th birthday party. So now I can post freely without fear of giving the game away! 

As usual I had a few creative ideas up my sleeves that I just couldn't stop myself making! 

First I made some judges paddles. I envisioned everyone holding them up as she walked in. A bit cruel but as the older sister I feel I am entitled! So I made these out of cardboard, spray painted the fronts gold and silver with a bit of extra glitter. I painted the backs black and then using a homemade template sprayed the number 30 on the front using black spray paint, for speed. They didn't have the most perfect finish but they got the point across!!!

They also doubled as fans for the entire evening as a bonus!

More strictly party posts to follow...

Cookie monster beanbag aim & throw game

This was another monster inspired game that we made and played at Max's monster party. Simple as simple can be, just a cardboard box, painted blue with a mouth cut out and two eyes stuck on to look as much like Sesame streets cookie monster as possible. And some simple felt, cookie shaped, beanbags to toss into the target from a distance. All cobbled together in less than 30mins and cost basically nothing!

Other monster games we played (other than the monster modelling kits shown below), included;

Monster Tag

Pass the monster

Monster statues

Monster dancing to 'monster tunes' such as Monster mash, Lady gaga Monster, She's a monster, a beautiful monster & What's that coming over the hill?Is it a monster?

Monster modelling kits as a Monster party game

More from the monster back log! Here are some homemade monster modelling playdough kits I made as in-party entertainment! They made for a nice change to the usual party games. They were super easy to pull together, I just made a couple of batches of homemade playdough (see the homemade playdough post) and put a couple of balls in a sandwich bag with some googly eyes, pipe cleaners and cut up straws. I then made up a header on powerpoint, printed them off and stuck them to the top of the bags.
We broke them out during the party but you could just as easily give them as great monster party favours.

This was my favourite though!

Monster mouths

What a super cheeky monster1

I just realised there is a load of stuff I intended to post from Max's party that I never finished. So here is one about some special straws I made, to make the monsters that came even more monstery! Inspired by another pin. This one in fact. I made them from foam sheets like I used for the feet, just glueing together with pritt stick and making up some mouth shapes.