Spiced Fruit Muffins

I was looking for something to bake, that didn't use much butter and stumbled across this recipe.

Its really tasty, I think quite healthy, and super easy to make.

To make:
1 1/2 cup Flour
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 tbsp Mixed Spice
pinch salt
50g Butter
1/3 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Sultanas
1 cup Stewed Apple
1 Egg

Sift the first four dry ingredients and stir in sugar and sultanas. Warm apple and butter. Stir til melted. Beat egg lightly. Add to dry ingredients with warm fruit and butter. Stir with a few strokes til just blended. Bake in muffin tray for 15min at 200 degrees C.

Teacup Pincushion

I saw these on pinterest and wanted an excuse to make one, I thought they looked really cool. But there's no point me having one, I'm sure William would some how get hold of it and there goes the tea cup.

A morning out with Mum led us to visiting a second hand shop where I found a single tea cup, with no saucer that looked pretty. It was harder than I thought it was going to be to find that. Then I came home, put the boys to bed and set about making it.

The hardest part was getting the cushion the right size, took three goes. I think it looks greats, personally.

And it had now been delivered down to mum, with some pins in it, as a get well present. Perfect for her wee place.

To make your own, follow this link

A New Bath Toy!

William was beginning to not enjoy his bath's so much anymore, which is fair enough when you think that he is now 19 months old and has had the same bath toys since he was around 8 months old!

I've tried a couple of things lately to make bath time a bit more fun, coloured water - just add food colouring, that helped one day; shaving cream paints another day, a bit messy to clean out of the bath so I'm not repeating that one in a hurry and he wasn't that keen on it.

The best thing to make bath time more fun?! Go out to the garden shed, open the bag of sandpit toys, pull out the water wheel, put in bath, show William how to pour water into it.

This was the longest, happiest, bath we've had in a long time! Its a keeper....for a while.

Rainy Days

We've had more than our fair share of wet weather the last couple of weeks, and trying to entertain William (18mths) isn't all that easy, when he'd love to be outside. So today I decided that we'd do something a bit different.

We started with a bit of potato printing:

Of course he tried to eat the potato, and the paint before deciding that they didn't taste so good and followed my lead of how to stamp.

Then, when the rain eased off for a bit, I rugged him up in jacket and gumboots and sent him outside to play with his beloved pegs:

And after his nap, I made him a fort, which he eventually had fun playing in:

The last picture is a bit blurry, but its the hive of activity that is playing with the dog, in the fort.

Unfortunately, we're forecast more rain tomorrow, which means finding more activities to keep William occupied....I think we'll leave the fort up for now.

Homemade Pizza

Its been a very wet day here today, and I needed to keep William entertained, and make dinner at the same time. So decided to make a pizza.

I am loving my new cake mixer, its so great a making dough. No need to get my hands dirty mixing the dough, and William loves to look at it mixing it all up.

Once the mixer was finished, I only had to give the dough a quick knead and then roll it out. And ask my trusty little 'helper' to help me

So, we might need to work on the rolling technique. He might be more suited to flattening things...must keep this in mind.

Then we added bbq sauce, which someone stole from the corner closest to them on his fingers and into his mouth; then add grated cheese, same again from my 'helper'; then salami and ham, and still the bbq sauce and cheese was being stolen....so no more pics sorry.

And into the oven for 25min to cook.

And this is what some of the left over pizza looks like:

 

I forgot to take a photo when I took it out of the oven.

So for the recipe for the base:

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

25g butter

2/3 cup milk

Put dry ingredients in a bowl (or mixer) and rub in butter. Add milk and mix into a dough. Knead a few times and roll out to the size you require. Top with toppings and bake at 180 for 20-25min.

FYI

You'll remember from my last post that I thought I was going to have a bill to get my sewing machine repaired. Turns out after taking it to the shop that I needed a new needle!

So I am sharing with you all that if you machine starts skipping stitches, try changing the needle, it may just be blunt!

Who would have thought?!