Get your bake on

My little part of Northamptonshire seems to have its own microclimate. While my friends on the south coast upload piles of pictures of them on the beach in glorious sunshine, the weather here has been more hit and miss. Cooler, wet, stormy, bit windy as Effy would say.

Visits from friends and left over clotted cream called for scones... You'll know that D is the baker in this household and he loves baking with Effy, but this time it was my turn to get mucky... Ish. Not going to lie, I made my dough in the KitchenAid, but the rest of the making was (mostly) left in the capable hands of my two year old.

Recipe - makes a lot of smaller scones perfect for smaller hands, tummies and YumBoxes. And you can obviously eat twice as many as they're half the calories.

Ingredients

350g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
85g margerine/butter (I used marg)
175ml milk
Dash of vanilla extract (I used Dr Oetker) 

Extra flour for dusting surfaces
Trex for greasing
Baking parchment is desired

Copeous amounds of jam and clotted cream to serve. Bon.

Method - using a blender but this could be done by hand with a little more time

• Preheat oven to 200/Gas 7
• Mix together flour, baking powder, salt and marg until you have the consistency of breadcrumbs.
• Warm the milk slightly in the microwave and add to the dry mix along with the vanilla until a sticky dough forms.
• Dust the work surface with flour. Turn out dough and fold in until the dough becomes a smoother consistency and holds itself together.
• Because we were making little scones, we rolled to about a 1cm-1 1/2cm deep.
• Cut shapes and lay out on a baking tray that you've greased well.
• Bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes, watching them closely and remove as the tops are turning golden. Allow the cool on a wire rack.
• Eat soon after.

My little baker was thrilled with her efforts, she loved watching the oven (usual conversations of careful, hot apply) and eating some of her freshly made "making".

Easy peasy. All cleared up before the baby woke up.

You're welcome!

Silent Sunday 05/01/2014

Oh. That storm.

Picture this, if you will.

It's the evening that the clocks go forward, back, forward, spring forward fall back back. E has slept in in the morning, napped later and is still merrily watching telly 90 minutes later than normal meltdown time. We anticipate great things for the following morning and stay up a little later than normal.

Reality:

Just after 5am this morning, circa 90 minutes earlier that 'normal' wake up time, taking into the account the clock changes, a little face appears at the door. No milk or talk of bedtime is convincing this one she's going back to bed. Infact she's like a Duracell bunny who's eaten 3 sherbet dipdabs for breakfast. Marvellous.

The consequence of this was that by the time the clock said 8am the morning had felt exceedingly long and my brain was already confused as to what was actually going on. Activities were needed. Here follows a huge photo dump. 

Activity 1: Bake off

Between daddy and daughter. Daddy is the official baker in this household. E's first experience of baking, and in nothing but a nappy, and daddy still in his pjs. And the biscuits are delicious. Aaaaaaand they cleaned up after themselves.

Don't forget your hired help to clean up your biscuit crumbs! 

Activity 2: Autumn walk

In light of the fact that it was sunny, despite the weather forecast I decided that we needed to get out a) because E had new shoes to test drive and b) because it's highly unlikely we'll be going anywhere in the storm tomorrow. So we popped down to the boating lake and collected leaves and acorns, shouted at the ducks and explored their almost empty park. I couldn't quite fathom why on such a lovely day the park was so empty. It seemed that the rest of town knew what was about to happen. Hats and coats and camera and bag of acorns are dumped on a bench while I'm being pulled down slides that my backside doesn't fit on and then out of nowhere a precursor for tomorrow appears. The sky turns black, the winds pick up to the point where E can't stand up and it buckets down. Marvellous. 

And by the time we got home, it was blissfully sunny again.

Oh. One for sorrow. Sigh.

Our afternoon was, thankfully, non eventful and normal service has resumed.

Stay safe in the adverse weather folks and see you on the other side!