Category: Kids Cooking

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Festive Flapjacks

I never do things by half. I read the quantities in a recipe and my brain seems unable to process how much a recipe will yield despite clear measurements. I am so prone to doubling recipes and then having enough cake or dinner to serve a family twice our size. That said, when I make sweet mincemeat at Christmastime I always remember the kids are hit and miss with mince pies and Simon definitely isn’t a fan. So I never double the mincemeat recipe; it already creates enough for me to have pretty much a daily mince pie all year round! While this does, at the moment, sound wonderfully appealing, I am not so sure I would appreciate a mince pie for my birthday in April or even to mark the summer solstice. 

As not everyone likes mince pies, I did put my thinking cap on back in the autumn and came up with some alternative bakes to lace with my homemade sweet mincemeat. My first thought was brownies (see my previous post) and my second was flapjacks. As I am sure I have already mentioned more than once, I LOVE  a good flapjack. So easy to make and the illusion of being healthier than a cake or brownie while still feeling like a treat. We decided to add some of our homemade marzipan to our flapjacks too to augment the Christmassy and festive feeling of these yummy delights. Further thought also makes me realise that these would also be perfect for after Christmas as a way to use up any leftover mincemeat.

Seb chopping the homemade marzipan. Shop bought marzipan would also work well in this recipe.

Ingredients

These flapjacks also work well with gluten free oats. They don’t contain any extra sugar added in as the mincemeat contains sugar and dried fruit. The amount of mincemeat gives a subtle seasonal flavour. You could add 50-75g more if you want a stronger flavour of it.

  • 150g butter/margarine
  • 6tbsp golden syrup
  • 200g mincemeat (we used homemade, but a jar would work well too.)
  • 175g jumbo oats
  • 250g rolled oats
  • 80g marzipan

Method

This can be cooked in a brownie tin, or in individual muffin cases (we used silicone ones) 

  1. Preheat the oven to 160°c fan and either grease and line a brownie pan or use a muffin tray (silicone liners or paper would both be fine.)
  2. Put the butter, golden syrup and mincemeat in a heavy bottomed pan and put over a low heat to melt and combine.
  3. Meanwhile, chop the marzipan with a table knife or a child safe knife.
  4. Put all the oats in a large mixing bowl. Once the butter mixture has fully melted, remove from the heat and pour it into the oats and mix thoroughly. This ensures that the children are not handling the hot saucepan.
  5. Add in the chopped marzipan and mix again so ensure it is evenly distributed.
  6. Place in the oven and cook for 25-30 minutes until golden. Remove from the oven and gently slice while hot and leave to cool fully in the pan.

If you do manage to cook this before Christmas or even decide to give it a go after Christmas to use up any leftover mincemeat I would love to hear from you.

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Bacon, Brie and Cranberry Muffins

It is easier to cut the brie when it is straight out of the fridge as it is less sticky!

In my head, bacon, brie and cranberry is inextricably linked with Christmas festivities. While it is true, it normally comes in a sandwich or maybe even a pie, I wanted to make something a bit more transportable and with a lower potential of creating a sticky mess with little fingers. These muffins work both hot and cold so can be eaten fresh from the oven or even once cooled on the way home from school or while waiting to see the man in the red suit. I bet the aforementioned man would also appreciate one to help him on his long journey on Christmas Eve!

I have never been particularly fond of the smell of meat cooking.  This is probably because I am a vegetarian. Early in our marriage, I banished my husband from my presence as he smelt of chicken. Moreover, while working in East London, I  used to get off the tube and there was a greasy spoon which served bacon butties every morning and seemed to do very good trade. I remember having to hold my breath as I walked past as I really couldn’t stand the smell of bacon cooking.

Anyway, fast-forward 6 years and I am now at the stage where I can cook meat for the kids and Simon. I frequently cook bacon and I don’t even have to hold my breath now! This may not seem like a big thing, but for me it really is! I was determined that I wasn’t going to insist my children be vegetarian; it is their choice just as it was mine.

Ingredients

Makes 12 large muffins or 15 slightly smaller muffins.

  • 250g self raising flour
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • 5 rashers of bacon, cut into small pieces and cooked
  • 1tsp dried mixed herbs
  • 3 eggs
  • 100ml milk
  • 90g grated cheddar (50 for inside muffins and 40 for sprinkling)
  • 100g brie, chopped into small pieces
  • 3tbsp cranberry sauce
  • Seasoning

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°c fan and put the muffin cases in a muffin tray.
  2. Mix the flour, baking powder, herbs and seasoning in a large bowl.
  3. Make a well in the centre of the flour bowl and add the eggs and milk and cranberry sauce.
  4. Mix to form a smooth batter.
  5. Add the bacon, brie and 50g of the cheddar and mix well.
  6. Divide the mixture between the cases and sprinkle the remaining cheddar on the top.
  7. Place in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the muffins feel firm to the touch and are golden. These can be enjoyed both warm and cold.

Every time we make these, they are gobbled up quickly. I think that because it is a muffin and looks like a cake, the children feel that they are getting a treat when in fact it isn’t a sugar loaded snack! I would love to hear from you if you make these.

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Roasted Minature Potatoes

Are you a fan of a Sunday roast? In our house it is a family tradition. It is the meal for which daddy is usually responsible; it is best not to leave the vegetarian in charge of roasting the meat – she may instead decide to serve a nut roast. This would cause a riot. Simon is relatively happy eating veggie once or so during the week, but would never choose to eat a vegetarian Sunday Dinner! There would probably be mutiny in the ranks if I served a vegetarian Sunday Dinner…

Pretty much my favourite part of a roast dinner is the roast potatoes. I seem to easily put away considerably more roast potatoes than seems logical or sensible even. They are just so comforting and warm. As you have probably already guessed from my previous posts we wholeheartedly encourage our children to help out in the kitchen and when I found some Minature Potatoes during my weekly shop, they set me thinking about mid-week roast potatoes . I walked around the supermarket with a grin fixed upon my face thinking about having roast potatoes on an non-Sunday. Smaller potatoes means less roasting time which is perfect for mid-week and with them being small they have the added bonus of appealing to the children.

The boys shared the job of shaking the potatoes from side to side to coat them all in the oil mixture.

The hands on time for this recipe is minimal. The youngest of little kitchen helpers could definitely manage this recipe under supervision. I gave my two boys the instructions and they proceeded and successfully executed it by themselves (once I had decanted the oil into a smaller vessel to pour it – I did not want to have to clean an oil spillage). You could make this recipe with new potatoes or any type of small potatoes. If you are unable to find small potatoes, you could even cut down larger potatoes. Please do remember that the larger the potato, the longer the roasting time. Yes I am stating the obvious, but just in case as these things do sometimes slip my mind…

When the boys made this, they only made enough for their dinner as us grown-ups tend to eat later.  This recipe can easily be increased to make enough for a family roast. Don’t judge us, but we always make more roast potatoes than it seems our family could eat, but by the end of Sunday they have generally all disappeared. I am not at liberty to divulge who tends to gobble them up between meals, only that they are never wasted!

Ingredients

  • 150g miniature potatoes
  • 3tbsp olive oil
  • 1tbsp lemon juice
  • 1/4 tsp garlic salt
  • A couple sprigs of fresh rosemary/2tsp dried rosemary
  • Pepper to season

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°c and get an oven proof dish.
  2. Pour the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic salt and rosemary into a bowl and mix around. If you are using fresh rosemary, you will need to remove the rosemary leaves from the stalks and consider tearing large leaves in half.
  3. Add the potatoes to the bowl and gently shake it from side to side (not up and down unless covered!) to ensure that all of the potatoes are coated in the oil mixture.
  4. Add pepper to season the potatoes and mix again.
  5. Pour the oil-coated potatoes into the oven proof dish and place in the oven for 35-45 minutes until they are tender. Ours took just under 40 minutes. They may well require turning to prevent them from getting too coloured on the top.
  6. Sprinkle some salt on top before serving if you desire.

These were hit the spot and provided my midweek roast potato fix. They would also work really well if you have time restrictions on making your roast, or you are just somewhat impatient. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did. Our resident potato-hater managed one whole one and some of the insides of another – so maybe we are making potato progress!

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Honeycomb Blondies

I recently discovered how easy it is to make honeycomb, or cinder toffee if you prefer to call it that.  Seb and I were rather mesmerized by how it bubbled and fizzed and had great fun smashing it!

After our foray into making cinder toffee, I decided to find something to do with the leftover honeycomb. I decided that it would work nicely in some blondies. Ophelia had a lot of fun mixing and putting the toffee into the mixture. I was impressed at how restrained she was as none of the toffee ended up in her mouth! These are really easy to make with little chefs as they contain melted butter which makes it really easy to mix entirely by hand. We did have rather a lot of flour on the surface during the process, but the result was a truly scrummy baked good. It was so tasty that Seb was heartbroken when daddy ate the last couple of pieces without saving him any. Simon was forbidden from taking the second batch into work after that reaction. This means I have to exercise some super human restraint and ignore them while he is at work. So if I do happen to be in your vicinity with baked goods, please do save me from myself and remove the baked goods from my possession – my waistline will thank you!

Ophelia in charge of the egg.

We also used this recipe to help Ophelia practise her egg cracking skills. The first one she watched me crack and then she had a go on her own. This time we had no egg shell in the mixture and a happy little girl with a round of applause from her mother and grandmother.

You don’t have to have homemade honeycomb for this recipe, you could use some chopped up Crunchie bars and that would also have the added benefit of adding chocolate to the recipe too. Now I have that idea in my head, I may have to go and make another batch of them with Crunchie bars. If you do want to have a go making your own honeycomb, I have left a recipe at the end of this post.

Ingredients

  • 240g plain flour
  • 300g golden caster sugar
  • 225g melted butter
  • 1tsp vanilla
  • 1/2tsp salt
  • 1/2tsp baking powder
  • 160g cinder toffee or Crunchie bars

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°c or 150°c fan and line a brownie pan.
  2. Mix the melted butter and sugar until fully combined.
  3. Add in the eggs and vanilla and beat.
  4. Put the flour, baking powder and salt and mix together.
  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until smooth.
  6. Add the honeycomb and mix.
  7. Put the mixture in the lined brownie pan and cook for 30-35 minutes.
  8. Once cooled sprinkle with sifted icing sugar and cut into squares.

These blondies will not win any prizes in a beauty contest, but the honeycomb caramelised beautifully and rises to the top giving a sort of irregular patchwork effect. They have become a new family favourite particularly with Simon and Seb.

If you want to make your own honeycomb, you will need:

400g caster sugar
100ml runny honey
2tbsp liquid glucose
1.5tsp bicarbonate of soda

Put the sugar, honey and glucose in a heavy-based pan and heat to 160°c. Oil a square cake pan with oil . Once the sugar mixture has reached 160°c remove from the heat and quickly add the bicarbonate of soda and whisk. Adult, pour into cake pan and once set smash. We used one of the kids wooden hammers for this.

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Breakfast Kebabs

Working as a team!

And breathe. It is the weekend, the reward for the long working week (well only really if you work Monday-Friday). For our kids, Saturday morning is for playing in PJs with each other and me just letting them get on with it while I catch up with my blog, eat breakfast in peace and theoretically get some down time while they have fun and before we have to start thinking about homework and the day’s activities.

Baking in PJS again! Forgot the apron though…

Saturday morning is also the morning of experimenting in the kitchen in daddy’s absence. This morning was no exception. I haven’t had the chance to get in the kitchen with the kids much this week.  But this morning, I managed to kickstart the day with breakfast kebabs. These involved chocolate cinnamon eggy bread, pears and blueberries. I don’t think I have ever seen Seb eat his breakfast so quickly!

It really is an easy breakfast which the kids enjoyed making. They could be cooked in a frying pan over the stove or grill them like we did.  Ours were grilled on greased tin foil so we didn’t loose any blueberries! I would recommend using tinned pear or ripe pear as ours was still a bit firm so it was a bit of a challenge to thread onto the skewer. The boys did patiently achieve it, but I did have to do that bit for Ophelia.

Ingredients

To make 3 kebabs

  • Three slices of bread
  • 1 ripe pear or half a tin of pears
  • A handful of blueberries (defrosted if frozen)
  • 2 medium eggs
  • 1tsp icing sugar
  • 1tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1/8tsp ground cinnamon
  • Honey to brush pear and blueberries with (this will give them a caramel flavour – it is optional though)
  • Three skewers, soaked in water for 5-10 mins

Method

  1. Cut the crusts off the bread and slice into 4 smaller squares.
  2. Cut each of the 4 squares into 2 triangles (a diagonal cut).
  3. Crack the eggs in a small bowl and whisk.
  4. Add the icing sugar, cocoa powder and cinnamon and mix well.
  5. Chop the pear into chunks. These need to be quite big.
  6. Dunk the small triangles of bread in the eggy mixture one at a time and thread onto the soaked skewers and alternate between the bread triangles and pieces of fruit.
  7. Brush the fruit with honey if you want. We didn’t as and they grilled fine.
  8. Either cook in a well greased frying pan for a couple of minutes each side, asking your grown up to turn for you or grill for a couple of minutes each side.
  9. The kebabs are ready when the eggy bread has set. Keep a close eye on them as they can easily burn.
  10. Enjoy warm.

I hope you all have a good weekend and I shall be back next week with more of the recipes that turned my kitchen into chaos with the kids!

 

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Pig Meringues

Ready for the oven

Atticus loves the electric whisk. He always tells me when he uses it that he doesn’t need help with it. I guess this is true as he has been using it for half of his four years. However, we do often end up with whisked egg or cake batter all over the surfaces or up the walls. Despite the sheer volume of clearing up that cooking with the kids creates, we will definitely have some colourful and memorable stories to keep us in our old age! Also, at least I know where the mess is. There is no secret mess in this house, the vast majority of it is confined to the kitchen! Yes the kids have untidy bedrooms, but that is mainly toys and books on the floor and generally isn’t too gruesome to clear up. May I add here, I am not looking forward to teenagers who eat snacks all over the house and generally leave a trail of crumbs in their wake…

Escaping pigs!

I classify meringues in the comfort food category. A relatively guilt-free pudding in my head. Atticus seems to have inherited my enthusiasm for making meringues and when I mentioned to him that I had a plan to make a batch of Pink Pig Meringues and put Marks & Spencer’s Vegetarian Percy Pigs on them and Vegetarian Phizzy Pig Tails on them he was immediately ready to make them. I thought they might appeal to my kids’ love of fun and character bakes and unsurprisingly I was right!

Ingredients

Makes 8 large meringues (approx. 8cm diameter) of 16 small meringues (approx. 4cm diameter)

  • 4 large egg whites
  • 115g caster sugar
  • 115g icing sugar
  • 1/2tsp rosewater
  • Drop or 2 of pink food dye (we use Wilton Gels)
  • 50g of white chocolate, melted
  • Percy Pigs (we used Vegetarian ones)
  • Phizzy Tails (we used Vegetarian ones)

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 100°c fan.  Draw around a cup or another template for each meringue on a piece of parchment. We used one of the kids’ cups. We also tend to spray the parchment with frylight to prevent sticking. Make sure they are well spaced out. Some of ours were too close to each other!
  2. In a clean and dry bowl, whisk the egg whites with an electric hand whisk on medium until stiff peaks form.
  3. Increase the speed of the whisk and alternate between adding 1 tbsp of caster and icing sugar until they are fully added.
  4. Add the rosewater and food colouring and mix gently to distribute evenly.
  5.  Put dollops of the mixture on the parchment in each circle.
  6. Place in the oven for 90 minutes for large meringues and just over 60 for smaller ones. We tend to make meringues at the end of the day and I switch the oven off and completely ignore them until the morning. This means I don’t risk opening the oven too early and ruining all our hard work.
  7. Once the meringues are fully cooled, melt the chocolate. I did this in short bursts at a low heat in the microwave.
  8. Spread a bit of melted chocolate on the back of a Percy Pig Sweet and stick it on to the front of the pink meringue. I suggest trying to stick to flatter parts of the meringue if at all possible!
  9. Spread a bit of melted chocolate on the back of a Phizzy Pig Tail Sweet and stick it on the back of the pig.
  10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 until all the meringues have heads and tails.
  11. Leave the chocolate to set and then enjoy the pigs!

Their smiling faces looking up at me, just makes me want to smile!

The kids and I loved these fancy meringues. Ophelia was delighted that we had made a pink treat (she can be such a girly girl at times!) and they all loved the fact that they had sweets on them! Simon happily worked his way through the rest of the Phizzy Tails Sweets in my absence. I am not sure if I have forgiven him for that yet! I don’t buy vegetarian sweets often!

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Sausage and Bean Bowl Pie

Do you ever find yourself looking for new dinner ideas which contain the essence of other favourites? Our kids, in particular the younger two, love baked beans. Beans on toast is a standard Monday night dinner after swimming as after trying to watch two boys swim and then help them get changed again afterwards while ensuring a two year old doesn’t disappear is a really stressful feat. Thank heavens she goes to play with her dear friends the crèche ladies for most of the lesson! (Big thank you crèche ladies.) On the occasions that she has been poolside with me, I have had to drag her away from the edge of the water to prevent her from joining her brothers’ lessons fully clothed!

Another popular dinner choice is sausages. I think they would feature a lot more frequently if I let the kids choose the weekly menu! If you asked most children what their favourite meal is, I do think that sausages (meat or veggie) would probably prove one of the more popular choices. My children are happy eating either meat or vegetarian sausages and this dish could in fact be made veggie friendly.

This was one of the dishes that I made with all three children at once. I would be lying if I said it all went swimmingly without a single hitch. The truth is that each child spilt the melted butter bowl once and I ended up with the contents all over the counter and the floor. I can say I was definitely getting frustrated with the three of them by the end of the process. I didn’t always remain as patient and as calm as I should have, but we soldiered on. Then when it came out of the oven, I saw their impressed faces and it was all worth it. Cliché yes, but 100% true. From experience, I would recommend using a wide-bottomed sturdy bowl for the melted butter rather than a plastic one to prevent accidental spillage.

This dish contains many process that kids enjoy such us chopping cooked sausages, painting filo pastry and the dish with melted butter, mixing, spooning/transporting and scrunching. It is perfect for little chefs. Mine did need a little help moving the fragile pastry, but the rest they did managed completely by themselves.

Seb has decided that this dish should in be called Sausage and Bean Bowl Pie. This is because we shaped the filo pastry in the bottom of the pie dish so it sort of became a ‘bowl’ to the sausages and beans once the sides were gently scrunched. I totally see his logic and I love the fact that he is using his reasoning, and as it is such a fab name how could I not use it?!

Ingredients

  • 8 cooked sausages
  • 1 tin of beans
  • 120g cheese
  • 10 leaves of filo pastry (most of a whole packet)
  • 60g melted butter or margarine

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 200°c and paint the bottom of a 20cm pie dish with melted butter.
  2. Chop the sausages into ‘coins’ with a table knife.
  3. Put the beans into a mixing bowl and add the chopped sausages.
  4. Add 90g of the cheese to the bean bowl and mix well.
  5. Unroll the filo pastry and paint the top sheet with butter.
  6. Pick up the top sheet and the one below it and place butter side up in the pie dish. The kids did need help transporting the filo sheets as they are fragile.
  7. Repeat step 6 until all 10 leaves of filo pastry have been used. Make sure you place the filo pastry sheets at different angles in the pie dish.
  8. Spoon the bean, sausage and cheese mixture into the pie dish and gently flatten with the back of the spoon.
  9. Gently scrunch the sides of the filo pastry to make a ‘bowl’ (you should have a small circle of exposed bean mixture in the centre of the pie) and brush the scrunched pastry with the remaining butter.
  10. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the exposed beans.
  11. Put in the oven to cook for 20 minutes or until the pastry is crispy and golden brown.

The first slice was a bit of a challenge to get out intact, but subsequent slices came out more easily. According to Seb this is; ‘loads better than beans on toast!’ He managed to eat two slices as well as the rest of the food on his plate! I think there may well be more requests for it in the near furture. Do let me know if you try this out.

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Welsh Rarebit Flapjacks

Oats, oats glorious oats nothing quite like it for feeding the goats making yummy flapjacks. I am sure I have mentioned how much I enjoy flapjacks in the past. Oats make me feel healthy and good about all the baking we do. This time around I decided it was time to make a savoury flapjack recipe. I was toying with the idea of a hidden vegetable flapjack, then I remembered that with the kids helping me make them they would see the so called hidden vegetables (well courgette which they all seem to despise) and therefore knowing my luck, refuse to try them. My back up was to make a recipe where cheese has a starring role. The kids will gobble up pretty much any snack item which contains cheese. They really must have very strong bones as they all drink quite a lot of milk too. Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to jump to cheese in pretty much every savoury recipe, but that is another story altogether!

I have discovered that these flapjacks are ridiculously addictive. I dare you to only manage one. I cut ours into little fingers so that I wouldn’t eat quarter of the batch in one sitting. Incidentally this also makes them finger food-sized for the smallest of foodies.

Ingredients

  • 300g oats
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • 200g Greek style natural yoghurt
  • 200g grated cheese
  • 1 tsp mustard powder
  • 3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • Pepper to season

To make these gluten free, use gluten free oats, baking powder and ensure that you check the ingredients list of your Worcestershire Sauce. Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce is gluten free. 

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°c fan and grease and line at 20cm square tin.
  2. Add the oats, baking powder, Greek style natural yoghurt, grated cheese, mustard powder, salt and pepper to a large bowl.
  3. Crack the eggs in a little jug or cup and add the Worcestershire sauce.
  4. Pour the egg mixture into the large bowl with the dry ingredients.
  5. Mix thoroughly until fully combined.
  6. Put into the lined tin and flatten with the back of a metal spoon.
  7. Place in the oven for 20 minutes until firm and golden.
  8. Allow to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes before removing and placing on a wire rack.
  9. Slice when cool.

I hope you enjoy this cheesy recipe. I think this has become a new favourite savoury snack for Seb!

 

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Gluten Free Cornbread

In case you hadn’t already noticed, I enjoy messing around in the kitchen creating recipes.  Furthermore, I love it when the children can get involved in making their after school snacks or meals and contribute to the activity. This makes me feel less like a general dogsbody and more like a proactive parent on a mission to teach the kiddos how to fend for themselves.

We have several gluten-free friends and as cornmeal is naturally gluten free and I always have a stock of gluten-free flour in the pantry, it made sense in my head to make this recipe completely gluten free. I like to have a bank of gluten-free recipes for bring and share meals and for when gluten-free friends visit so I am not always relying on the same ones. Everyone deserves a bit of variety right?! It is true that gluten-free flour does tend to yield a drier bake, but that said this cornbread does have a lovely taste and texture; the mustard powder and sweetcorn add a bit of depth to the flavour

Look at that mucky paw!

I made this with Ophelia and due to all the buttermilk, oil and eggs, photographing the process was the last thing on my mind. My aim was to  avoid the need to completely clean the kitchen or to give her a bath just before her swimming lesson. It also meant that my phone was mainly on the other side of the counter to avoid the potential onslaught of ingredients from an overenthusiastic toddler! At the end of the activity, I did have to clean the counter where we were working thoroughly, mop a splodge off the floor and frogmarch my daughter to the sink so she wouldn’t put the mixture on the walls too… But my phone was clean! There is a first time for everything!

Ingredients

  • 200g fine cornmeal/polenta
  • 150g Doves Farm gluten free plain flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp mustard powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 280ml buttermilk (one tub)
  • 20ml wholemilk
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 100g sweetcorn (defrosted if frozen)
  • 50g Mexicana cheese, grated

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 200°c fan and grease and line a 20cm square tin. (You could cook these in muffin cases if you prefer, to make little buns)
  2. Put all the dry ingredients except the corn and the cheese in a large bowl and mix.
  3. Put the buttermilk, milk and oil into a jug and mix.
  4. Crack the two eggs into the buttermilk jug and mix again until the eggs are fully incorporated.
  5. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the buttermilk/egg mixture and mix until fully combined.
  6. Add the sweetcorn and cheese and mix so they are evenly spread out.
  7. Put the mixture in the tin and gently flatten with the back of the spoon.
  8. Cook for 20-25 minutes or until golden and firm to the touch.
  9. Remove from the oven and cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
  10. Slice and enjoy warm or cold.

We had some very happy reviews of this cornbread from not only my children, but also my gluten-free recipe testers. Please do drop me a line or leave a comment if you do manage to make this recipe as I love hearing from you.

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Jazzies Biscuits

Following the success of our Fairy Bread and Butter Pudding, my sprinkle fix hadn’t been abated. To try and satisfy it, we decided to make giant white Jazzies biscuits. Just in case you are imagining an epic giant biscuit coated in sprinkles, I fear I may well disappoint you when I say these can only be classified as giant when compared to the actual size of a Jazzie! I should also mention, I have been calling these sweets Jazzies for years and I only just realised that the packet says Jazzles! I am going to continue to call them Jazzies as in my head it is more fun and I am struggling to get my head around a new name for this childhood favourite of mine.

I seem to have retained the childlike opinion that sprinkles make everything more exciting as these are essentially chocolate buttons coated in sprinkles and they never fail to brighten up my day or bring me out of a grump. I remember taking these to a friend who was ill when I was in secondary school to cheer her up. They certainly didn’t make her immediately better, but they definitely seemed to serve their purpose.

My kids love these retro sweets. Grandma bought them some as a treat and they make a very welcome addition to natural Greek style yoghurt for pudding. The kids take great delight in ‘hiding’ the couple of Jazzies they are given and then acting all surprised when a Jazzie turns up in their mouths. It is a rather amusing interlude before what always seems a long drawn out bedtime routine.

Anyway, back to the recipe. It does call for a lot of sprinkles, but I promise you it is worth it. We unfortunately ran out of the hundred and thousands which cover Jazzies pretty quickly so had to resort to using any other sprinkles I had in the pantry. Ophelia took great delight in telling everyone who she saw when she was eating one of these biscuits that we ran out of ‘dots’! This did then require an explanation as surprisingly enough no-one really had a clue what she meant!

She also had lots of fun with the biscuit dough. I am pretty sure she thinks we make a lot of playdough which when she is done with it goes into the oven so she can then eat it when it has cooled! I am not going to correct her just yet, as I find the mentions of playdough rather amusing; we are most definitely learning through play.

Ingredients

For the biscuits

This is a basic biscuit recipe. The below quantity makes 25-30 round biscuits cut out with a 58mm cutter depending on how thick your biscuits are.

  • 100g unsalted butter
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 1 medium free range egg
  • 275g plain flour
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

For the Jazzie topping

  • 200g white chocolate, melted
  • 3 tubes of hundreds and thousands

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°c fan and line 2 baking sheets with silicone baking mats or greaseproof paper.
  2. Cream the butter and sugar together (by hand or with an electric mixer) until fully combined.
  3. Gently beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
  4. Add the flour and mix with a spoon.
  5. Bring the dough together with your hands.
  6. Place the dough wrapped in clingfilm to chill for around an hour.
  7. Roll the dough out on a floured surface until it is 1cm thick all over. Don’t forget to flour the rolling pin too.
  8. Cut out the rounds and bake for 8-10 minutes until pale or golden brown.
  9. Remove from the oven and allow to harden for 5 minutes before placing on a wire rack to cool.
  10. Once cooled, melt the white chocolate in a double boiler. I did this bit for the kids.
  11. Put a small amount of sprinkles on a side plate.
  12. Dip the one of the flat sides of the biscuits into

    Seb dipping the chocolate coated biscuit straight in the hundreds and thousands.

    the white chocolate and then place it chocolate side down onto the plate with sprinkles.

  13. Cool on a wire rack with a tea towel or old magazine underneath in case they drip – some may as my kids had to be encouraged not to dunk the whole biscuit in the white chocolate!

I must say the sprinkle dipping didn’t always work out perfectly; we had some that went for a second round in the chocolate so that more sprinkles would stick on. My recommendation is to only put a few sprinkles on the plate at a time and replenish frequently or you may well end up with bits of chocolate in your sprinkles.

We hope that you enjoy these biscuits masquerading as giant sweets. Please do get in touch if you make them.