Biscuits with Isaac

I'm always surprised at how much we underestimate little children's ability to engage in complex activities. I have now found that with Isaac, who is still only two years old, when we make biscuits all I have to do is turn the oven on, get the ingredients and measure them out, he does all the rest!

Luxury rice krispies cakes

I know that this is a staple child cookery recipe, but it always seemed so dull... every child under the sun had made some, and these things always taste a bit sweet and sickly... But we ran out of flour this morning and Reuben was determined to make some sort of cupcake. So we looked through the pantry and I came across a bag of very yummy and expensive fair trade Barry Callebaut chocolate, so I thought: why not? And they were very good indeed!

This is how we made them:
We used
225g good quality plain chocolate
50g butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
100g rice krispies

We melted the chocolate, butter and syrup (could use a saucepan or the microwave), then added the rice krispies and mixed it all together. We put 12 deep paper cases (the muffin ones) in a baking tray (the ones with shallow pans), filled them with the mixture and put the tray in the fridge for an hour. We kept them in the fridge until we were ready to eat them. Yummy!!!

Shortbread Angels

Ok it's clearly too early for Xmas but we came across THIS GUY:

 

... and we just had to use him!!!!

 

Our favourite shortbread recipe is a slight twist to the original, we use:

(to make about 10 to 14 biscuits depending on the cutter)

150g plain flour

25g semolina or ground rice

100g butter

1 small orange (use juice  and grated rind)

50g caster sugar

 

Baked for 12/15 minutes at 170 degrees centigrade or gas mark 4

The Usborne Children's Book of Baking

I cannot stress how great this book is, we have baked from it cover to cover and back again, Reuben loves it and makes biscuits or cupcakes most days with these recipes.

Cooking is very important to us, for the boys it's a lot of fun and of course they like to eat the end result, especially cakes and biscuits! From the learning point of view it's a great activity as the boys need to use numbers, have the ability to measure ingredients, read a recipe (still with my help) and understand how materials can change (freezing, heating) as well as being creative in decorating their creations.
Here are some of them:

Abstract flower shortbread biscuits

A "Reuben" fairy cake

Fairy cakes with buttercream topping

Washing up afterwards