A cordial attempt.

It seemed that for our entire Cornwall holiday last week, we were never more than about 20 paces from a display of elderflower - in the fields, hedgerows, gardens...  You name it, elderflower was there.  I determined to do something about it - make some elderflower cordial.  Not while on holiday (picking elderflower from the roadside can appartently result in fume-tainted cordial, quite apart from anything else!)

So when we returned, I decided to find some elderflower, harvest it and make it into cordial.  A bottle of elderflower cordial costs £3.15 at Tesco...

Finding the elderflower was harder than I thought - yes, it grows along every road in the land, but I wanted non-exhausted elderflower (so to speak).  Little Boy and I went on a long and largely fruitless (flowerless?!) search,but had a fun outing whilst on our hunt.

 We eventually found some by our cricket pitches.  With my completely inexpert eye, it looked about right.

 We took it home, dissolved a kilo of sugar in a bowl of about 1.5 litres of boiling water, cooled it down in a sink of cold water and rinsed the flowers in the sink, adding them to the cooled, sugary water (I trimmed them to minimise stalks).  We also added the zest of two lemons and sliced the lemons into the water.  (I did a second batch which was one lemon and one orange...)

 This was then clingwrapped and put in the fridge overnight.  We then strained it, first through some muslin. 

 Then, because I wasn't convinced the muslin was fine enough, through a tea towel. 

 This can then be diluted (either with fizzy water or with normal) and made into a lovely drink. 

 Hey presto, elderflower cordial.
We'll probably add some preservative if we want to keep it, or bottle it into the freezer... 
It's actually probably a bit too sweet, so I might ease up on the sugar next time :)

How do you make a Swiss roll?

Push him down a mountain.
Ha ha ha ha ha...

Or, alternatively, you get Mary Berry's Baking Bible, turn to the swiss roll bit and go ahead and make one.
This is another part of the whole 'new year's baking resolution'...

Apart from the fact that it was fused to the paper when I took it out the oven (I used greaseproof, rather than baking parchment...), it seemed to go ok.  Oh, the flour wasn't mixed in properly either.
Not an unmitigated disaster, anyway.
And there's not much of it left now.  It was made for elevenses this morning, and three normal sized slices remain (or two generous ones!).
P'raps the Selfridges strawberry and champagne jam helped :)

Weekend art project.

Big Boy has now got his own room.  The hope was that this would mean everyone got more sleep.  On the plus side, Big Boy does seem to be sleeping better.  Little Boy, on the other hand, is still waking up at weird times of night.  But I digress - back to the room.
Some time ago, we painted Charlie and Lola on the wall of his 'old' room (now with Little Boy as its sole occupant).  Charlie and Lola was fairly straightforward - they're basically coloured-in line drawings.
This time, however, Big Boy wanted Winnie the Pooh.  Winnie the Pooh is more painting than drawing, so this worried me a little, but we did it nonetheless.
Here's what we used:
A Winnie the Pooh book.
A scanner
An acetate (remember them?) and a printer
An OHP
Some chalk
A whole bunch of paint tester pots
Some paint brushes

We scanned in the picture he wanted from Winnie the Pooh and printed it onto an acetate.

We projected this onto the wall and draw the outlines with chalk.

We painted the outlines black. 

We coloured in and added some shading.

And finally, a sort of background (vaguely similar to the one in the book)

Ta-dah.

Let them eat cake.

So ... one of my resolutions this year is to bake more.  I was given Mary Berry's Baking Bible for Christmas, so I thought I'd put it to use over the course of the year.  The aim is to bake something every week, though realistically, this might not happen.  I can but try :)
Anyway, week one was a French Apple Tart.  Known to linguists as a tartopom...

And then this weekend gone, I made a Hazelnut Meringue Raspberry cake thing.  I chose this particular one because we were having friends over for tea, one of whom is gluten-free (so to speak...) and this recipe, being a meringue, has no flour.

The Apple Tart looked the nicer of the too, but they both tasted lovely, so two successes can be chalked up. 

Another birthday, another cake.

Little Boy's birthday this time. His first. And given that his first attempted word was 'dog', we went for a dog.
The dog that modelled for us was Nick Butterworth's 'Kipper'.
Pretty simple construction. It took two tins, one square and the other round. The larger square one for the head, the smaller round one for the ears.
Chop the square one into a rectangle and add a bit of the offcut to make the head the right shape (you're aiming for a sort of pear shape)

Then slop some vanilla icing on the bottom and coffee icing on the top (note, I only fed the coffee-iced cake to adults - didn't want to deal with wild children!).

Then carve the ears out of the round cake and plop them on in likely positions.

Ice them with chocolate icing.  (By the way, I cheated on the vanilla and chocolate icing and bought it in a tub.  The coffee icing was leftovers from the freezer)

Then add some facial bits.

Put on the table ready to be briefly admired and speedily devoured.

(Oops, that isn't meant to be upsidedown)
Regret that making includes cleaning up.

Fetch the remnants

(D'oh, another upsidedown one...  Oh well, you get the picture, so to speak)

 All in a day's work really :)

A Snail.

Mini beasts.
An odd theme for fancy dress at Big Boy's school.  But hey...
Anyway, he decided he wanted to be a snail.  So I had to turn him into one.  Lacking the necessary magic wand, we opted for the less permanent cardboard and sellotape approach.

Items needed:
Backpack to attach shell to.
Old filing box (cardboard)
Paint.
Sellotape.  Lots and lots of it.

This, of course, is just a fraction of the full amount of tape needed...
(Oh, you don't have to use Sellotape, I'm sure other brands work just as well, it's just that's what we had...)
Cut out two almost circles (using the straight edges of the box to ensure they're not complete circles) from big bits of the box.
Cut out about a zillion strips of cardboard, which need to be scored so they fold better.
Stick these to one circle...

And then, of course, attach the other.
Cut a long strip of cardboard (I went against the grain, so to speak, so that it curled more easily).
Use vast amounts more tape to attach this to the struts between the two sides.
Find some paint (the same paint from the pirate ship we had at Big Boy's birthday...)
Paint the swirly bit.

Go to breakfast and ask people there how to attach the shell to the backpack.  Take their advice about punching holes in the shell and tying it on.
Leave breakfast (having not eaten yet...) and return to attach shell to backpack.  (You can just about see the string there...)

Put backpack on child.

Send child to school (well, take the backpack off first, otherwise it will get crushed in the car).
Hey presto.
Optional:
(Return from school run and have breakfast and shower, wondering why you didn't make the backpack the night before it was needed, rather than on the morning of mini-beasts day)

*************  Update ************* 

So, this afternoon, I go to collect Big Boy from school.  I'm not expecting the shell still to be in one piece.  It's not designed for endurance.  Well, strictly speaking, it was barely designed at all...  Anyway, out comes Big Boy carrying his book bag and his jacket, and with his shell slung over one shoulder.  I notice that the bottom bit isn't quite as stuck together as it was when I dropped him off this morning, but other than that, it's survived the rigours of a day in Reception.  Big Boy strolls over to me, unceremoniously dumping all his stuff at my feet.  He looks at me, and with a very pleased grin, says, "I didn't wear it all day".  Oh, well, isn't that wonderful.  I think this information is supposed to please me.  It doesn't have the desired effect.  I'm just left thinking that I could much more easily have blown up a brown balloon and taped it to his back.  Imagine the time I'd have saved.  Oh well, on the bright side, any fancy dress party for the next three years, I shall force him to wear his snail shell.

And to add insult to injury, tonight's prayer went thus:
Dear our Jesus (I've tried to point out that 'Lord' is more common than 'our', but he's not taking the advice at the moment, and I figure that 'our' is theologically ok) thank you for the fun I had today playing bees and wasps and ladybirds and butterflies... at this point, I add a hopeful, 'and snails?'.  To which he immediately responds, 'no, I was a wasp.' 
Parenting rocks.

ARRRRRRR

Pirate cake.
Simple enough.  We did a pirate ship a couple of years back, and this was actually a darn sight easier.  Basic victoria sponge (6,6,6,3 if you're wondering about the size) 
Bit of pink royal icing (beaten egg white, 350g icing sugar, tiny bit of red colouring) 
Cover cake with pink icing.
Make red icing (not royal - the chickens didn't lay enough).  Sadly, Dr Oetker's red food colouring, when used in any quantity, makes the icing taste absolutely revolting.
Slap on red icing in one corner (I know, it's a circle - it's an arc then, not a corner)
Then it should look like this.

Make up some black icing (thankfully, the black colouring didn't have the same taste outcome as the red!)
Put it on the cake in likely places (you'll see from the above pic that I poked the cake to get an idea of where the icing was going...)
Eventually, your cake will look like this:

All in a day's work.
I ignored the suggestion about including a parrot...
Big Boy was happy with it, which was the main idea really!