Yesterday morning was particularly challenging. I should have realised that it was going to be a long one when Atticus insisted on wearing daddy’s Santa hat on the way to school. I thought I had left the house with three happy children when it was located and the other two didn’t raise a single objection. I failed to realised that the Santa hat would in fact cause a meltdown of gigantic proportions as I didn’t have the foresight to name it before leaving the house and I refused to let my little gingernutter take it into school. He also had to keep on readjusting the hat so he could see where he was going while walking! We must have looked quite comical walking down the street and me yelling to remind him to readjust his hat. Oh and that is not mentioning the fact that it got drenched thanks to the beautiful school run shower we had this morning. In hindsight, I should have remembered to pick up the hat for the collection, but hey ho no-one is perfect and it was still somewhat soggy. I was delighted that he had forgotten about the hat the following morning and we avoided a repeat of the argument at the classroom door!
So to cheer myself up after the traumatic and rather damp school run, I decided to make some sesame toast shapes with Ophelia. You can cut these into any shape you choose and they are perfect as croutons in soup if you fancy getting children involved in Christmas food preparation. Mine also enjoyed them as a fun addition to their beans on toast. These are lots of fun to make with kids. Seb and Atticus (at 6 and 4) would be able to manage these with minimal parental input. Ophelia needed some help, but she did enjoy trying to spread the margarine and use the cookie cutters to cut out shapes before splatting them in a plate of sesame seeds. Yes they could be considered somewhat wasteful as you are stamping shapes out of bread. Alternatively you could just slice the bread into triangles or squares to avoid the wastage.
Ingredients
- Bread (we used 50/50, but white or wholemeal would work too)
- Butter or margarine (we used an olive spread)
- Sesame seeds
Method
- Preheat the oven to 150°c fan and line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or greaseproof paper.
- Spread one side of the slice of bread with butter.
- If you are using shapes, cut the shapes out with the cookie cutters.
- Put the some sesame seeds on a plate in an even layer.
- Put the buttered side up into the sesame seeds so that they stick and place them sesame seed side down onto the surface.
- Spread the back side of the shapes with butter and put on the sesame seed plate so that both sides are covered.
- Place in the preheated oven for 20 minutes.
- Remove and turn them over and return to the oven for a further 20 minutes. They will look golden and crisp when finished cooking.
These will keep in an airtight container for a couple of days so can be made in advance of any festive celebrations. Ours didn’t survive 12 hours with the three kids and their dad! I hope that you enjoy them.
Anyway, so back to baking. I always get my way when cake is involved. Simon knows not to try and change my mind when I have an idea for a bake. So when I decided that I wanted to run some sweet mincemeat through my brownie batter with some flaked almonds there was no opposition despite the fact he isn’t a fan of sweet mincemeat. In the end, he did try one and ended up liking it so I am glowing in my victory!
Now we are in December I have my festive hat on vis-à-vis Christmas recipes. I found some discounted turkey steaks a while back and placed them in the freezer until I was struck with inspiration for a dish that the kids could make for dinner one evening.
We added a sprinkling of dried bread crumbs to create a contrast in textures. Essentially, the turkey acts as a high protein pizza base – it didn’t take much convincing for my children to eat this! This means that if you do have any leftover turkey breast after your Christmas dinner, you could consider following this recipe, but grilling it to heat the meat through and melt the topping.
The kids loved spooning the pesto out of the jar and counting the same amount of tablespoons of cream cheese and then mixing it all together. They did a really good job of spreading it on top 
of the turkey steaks and then counting out bits of mozzarella to make sure all the steaks got their fair share of mozzarella. I think they had the most fun sprinkling the breadcrumbs and trying to make sure they landed on the steaks rather than the baking tray (with varying degrees of success, but they seemed to make a game out of it). As children are handling raw meat in this recipe, keep a close eye to ensure no little fingers end up in mouths.
friendliest and most expensive month of the year. I hope you are all well prepared as I find that it is also the most exhausting. Exhausting because of everything going on and also because you have to contend with not only all the activities, but also the inherent excitement that Christmas brings. The excitement levels of my children always end up making me snap or shout at some point, bringing the inevitable mum guilt that I am spoiling their fun. This year I am trying my best to avoid that scenario. I shall let you know how I am doing slightly nearer Christmas.
Anyway onto happier thoughts. I have had these breadsticks on my brain since I started this blog back in March. Just after Christmas last year I stumbled upon 
The breadsticks we made were two different flavours. Unsurprisingly the red strand was tomato flavoured and we used garlic salt to flavour the white strand. 
This was a beautifully hands on activity with the kids and all three of them had so much fun squishing and squashing the dough together and rolling out the sausages. They did need help to twist them together, and yes they do look 
homemade, but they all had a lot of fun and were delighted to make something Christmassy. As each child always had a job whether it be kneading the dough, making more 
snakes or having a go twisting the tomato and garlic strands together, it meant there was no bickering! We found that all of ours ended up being different sizes, but I had one baking tray of bigger ones and a second with smaller ones so the smaller ones were removed from the oven earlier than the others.