a useful gift.

We started when Bear was tiny. Every week, I’d strap our 6 month old little boy in the car, make the trip across town and spend half an hour among friends singing and clapping and playing. Then Boy2 arrived, and he attended his first music class at the ripe old age of 2 weeks. Admittedly, he slept most of the time. Butterfly was a tender 6 days old the first time she joined us, nestled in her daddy’s arms as I sat with the boys and sang along.

For Christmas, we wanted to give a small gift to acknowledge the wonderful job our teacher has done over the past 5.5 years. With two small children of her own nearing holidays, I thought the idea of “cookies in a jar” that I’d been seeing all over Pinterest would be perfect.

We used a double recipe of our favourite choc-chip biscuits. I forgot to pack down the layers as we went, so it didn’t look as pretty as it should, and I think this recipe has too much flour to really “work” in this format, but I was happy how our first try worked out. I used a border template and some digital papers to create the label with the baking instructions, ran it through my Xyron and attached it to the jar, which I found at a local homewares store and can double as a small cookie jar.

Our usual Tuesday craziness is on hold today, our groups and activities on holidays already. Which leaves me and Butterfly with a whole day ahead of us. Yesterday I joined a jelly roll sew-a-long and now I have the bones of a lone star quilt set out on my loungeroom floor, so I have a trip to the fabric store on my agenda to buy some homespun for the background. Depending how the heat plays, maybe a trip to the park to feed the ducks. Or maybe we’ll just hide inside under the fan. Fun time. Two days until holidays – can you tell I’m a bit excited?

 

{linking up with Essentially Jess for I Blog on Tuesdays}

indecisive.

I’m not sure if this counts as number ten, or number ten and eleven. With quilt camp coming up (this past weekend), I planned to make a cheesecake to take with us, which, of course, required a test run. I went shopping, collected my ingredients, then stood staring at the chocolate bars and I was hit with indecision. Did I make Mars Bar, or Peppermint Crisp? So of course, I made both! Being a test run, I didn’t want to make two whole cheesecakes just in case they were total failures, so I split the mix in two, and made half mars bar, half peppermint crisp. Leaving the middle of the cheesecake looking something like this:

The perfect solution, don’t you think? There are more cheesecake photos forthcoming, and the Saga Of The Quilt Camp Cheesecakes. For today though, a little girl has been missing her mama, and after a morning of stories and swings and dancing, she is ready to create. “Painting, mama, pink painting pwease”, she’s decided, and so, with more than a hint of summer in the hot dry air, we shall find ourselves a spot in the shade, and paint. With pink. I suspect there will also be a tea party in the new cubby house before the afternoon is too far past. Biscuit baking has also been requested. Lots of magic moments to catch up on and enjoy. I may even do some pink painting myself.

today she is two.

She was in a rush, our little girl. 1 hour and 9 minutes from the first contraction, I scooped her into my arms, and held her tight as I tumbled headlong into deep consuming love for this precious soul we’d been entrusted with. She’s cute, and clever, and talkative. She toilet trained herself at 15 months, she talks in full sentences, she runs rings round her brothers and lets them know who’s boss. She’s a clingy mama’s girls, and yet fiercely independant. “MINE DO IT!!!” she’ll tell me. And today, she marks that bittersweet moment where we say farewell to babyhood. Somehow, I seem to have blinked, and two years have raced by, and my baby is no longer a baby but a “big girl”.

 

 

And as birthdays go, it’s been pretty awesome. We’ve pottered at home, we’ve painted, we’ve played dollies, she’s sneaked a lick of the icing. Two seems to be a bit of alright, if you ask Miss Butterfly. Now all that playing has caught up with her, and she’s out for the count. My morning has trundled along productively as well, so rest time for small people equals rest time for mama. A little book is just about bound, and then I am hat sewing – I have sewing and quilting ideas coming out my ears, but I’m trying to be good and not pile up that lovely new cutting table with layers and layers of unfinished things. That’s the theory anyway. Downhill run to the weekend, time to get busy to make some big plans happens.

8::20 ~ chocolate pretzels

OCCASSION: Date night!

BRIEF & RATIONALE: Discovered this taste sensation in Sydney for Camp K, and it was a party in my mouth.

SOURCE: It’s not exactly rocket science. Melt chocolate, add pretzel.

EASE OF MAKING: 9/10. Messier than expected.

CHILD FRIENDLY? Hot chocolate, plus the buggers want to taste test!

REALITY V COOKBOOK:6/10. Mine were messier than the commercial version.

TASTE: 13/10.

FINAL VERDICT: oh. em. gee. planning a white chocolate version as we speak.

And now he is six.

He loves Lego and aeroplanes. Lego aeroplanes will bring on an involuntary box-kissing response. He is a kind and loving big brother. He is a reader, a think, a learner. He is wise beyond his years. He loves school. Somehow, I have blinked, and my baby is a baby no longer a baby, but a small boy, who no longer belongs to me alone, but now I have to share him with the world and school and friends.

His party was a combined effort with his little brother. One desperately obssesed by dinosaurs, the other in love with red lego aeroplanes. We compromised on the cake. I think we can call it a success. Even if I did have to make the plane tail twice. And Buddy was missing a toenail.

7::20 ~ sour cream coffee cake

OCCASSION: I felt like cake.

BRIEF & RATIONALE: While grocery shopping, I spied organic sour cream from my favourite dairy. And thought why the heck not?

SOURCE: Baking Essentials.

EASE OF MAKING: 6/10.

CHILD FRIENDLY? The recipe uses instant coffee (one teaspoon in the whole cake), so personal preference. Not child friendly in the making – creaming and folding gently does not make for a toddler suitable recipe!

REALITY V COOKBOOK: 4/10 – colour and texture was good, but it sank in the middle for some reason.

TASTE: 9.5/10.

FINAL VERDICT: I love this one, but it’s a bit labour intensive. It has a more caramel taste rather than coffee/sour cream.

 

6::20 ~ melting moments

OCCASSION: we wanted to make something for daddy’s birthday that wasn’t a cake (he didn’t want a cake on the day)

BRIEF & RATIONALE: I’d been to the bakery, and was tempted to buy a melting moment. Then I saw they were $2 each, so I made them myself.

SOURCE: AWW Sweet Old Fashioned Favourites.

EASE OF MAKING: 7/10.

CHILD FRIENDLY? Mainly mix master based, so not really. Though they love when I pull out the piping gun to make the biscuits.

REALITY V COOKBOOK: 8/10 – I used a different shape to the book. And slightly overcooked the first batch.

TASTE: 9/10.

FINAL VERDICT: Winner. And long gone.

5::20 ~ Turkish Delight Slice {including recipe}

OCCASSION: A stroke of genius, really. Just to put it modestly.

BRIEF & RATIONALE: I made Mars Bar Slice. I thought it might go well using Turkish Delight instead.

SOURCE: My own recipe – see under the picture.

EASE OF MAKING: 10/10. Be lazy like me and you’ll only have one bowl and one slice pan to stick in the dishwasher. Winning.

CHILD FRIENDLY? Depends if you are willing to share chocolate, but in theory, yes.

REALITY V COOKBOOK: Not applicable.

TASTE: Off the scales delightful

FINAL VERDICT: Total and utter genius. And yes, I am modest, I know.

INGREDIENTS:

220g block of Turkish Delight

50g butter

3 cups of Rice Bubbles

200g block of milk chocolate

METHOD:

1) Break up the Turkish Delight into small squares and, keeping two individual squares, place into a heatproof bowl, along with  the butter.

2) Place bowl over saucepan of boiling water, and melt the Turkish Delight and butter. The inner Turkish Delight jelly takes quite a while to melt, so don’t freak out, just keep stirring, just keep stirring, just keep stirring, stirring stirring.

3) While stirring and waiting for the mix to melt, take one of the two squares of remaining Turkish Delight. Open mouth, place chocolate inside mouth, close mouth. Chew. Swallow. This step is CRITICAL. What if the chocolate is POISONED? That could get embarrassing at your next take-a-plate function.

4) In a large bowl, mix the melted Turkish Delight and butter with the rice bubbles. The mix is quite thick, and won’t completely cover the Rice Bubbles.

5) Once you’ve mixed as much as you can, break the milk chocolate into small pieces and melt in a heat proof bowl over boiling water.

6) Take the sole remaining square of Turkish Delight. Yeah, you know what to do now. Can’t risk a fluke, now, can we?

7) Once the milk chocolate is melted, add it to the Rice Bubble mix, and stir until evenly coated.

8) Press the mix into a small slice tray line with baking paper and pop in the fridge

9) Make a cuppa and enjoy!

10) Pretend you know nothing about a slice when your friends come around after seeing it on Facebook.

 

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4::20 ~ chocolate crackles

OCCASSION: holidays, baybee!

BRIEF & RATIONALE: the recipe was on the box of rice bubbles when we made mars bar slice, and the small people nagged, er, suggested I make them.

SOURCE: Rice bubble box.

EASE OF MAKING: 9/10

CHILD FRIENDLY? Yes (melted ingredients)

REALITY V COOKBOOK: 6/10 – all my copha mix seems to sink to the bottom, so they weren’t as chocolatey as they should have been.

TASTE: 9/10 – even allowing for lack of coating, I’m not a big fan of the texture of Copha.

FINAL VERDICT: Awesome party food/sometimes holiday food. What child doesn’t like chocolate crackles??

P. A. R. T. Y.

Oh yes we will! There was a very special birthday around here over the weekend, one ending with a ZERO. A very wise woman once said, it seems worse to see it in print, so I won’t name the person or the number, except to say she’s a pretty awesome lady, and I love her to the moon and back. This birthday was, to us, a bit of a fresh start, leaving behind some rough times and shining a light ahead. And somehow, it fell to me to make the cake. I pondered a bit, and then settled on a plan. Pans were bought, and Wilton paste. 5 hours in the kitchen later, I’d burned through a dozen eggs, a litre of milk, and 1.5kg of flour, as the cake stack grew before me. Brilliant. Cake of Awesomeness is rocking. Stage two saw four blocks of chocolate and two cartons of cream converts into a rather large bowl of ganache, which set in the fridge as I attacked the butter once more and joined the layers with buttercream. Ganache applied, and then more buttercream, and colours. I took a deep breath, and started decorating. I had this grand vision of a beautiful flower-covered cake. Instead in looked like a clown on an acid trip drew a sunflower on top. *sigh*. Next on my to-do list – buy a cake nail and attend a cake decorating course.

Oh. And Bear tells me I didn’t do a very good job on the top layer. It doesn’t taste like anything except cake. Thanks baby.