These were super easy to make and so perfect for the kids to help with. Doodles loved cutting out the shapes - we used hearts this time but they could be any shape. This is another recipe from Annabel Karmel's Feeding Your Baby & Toddler book - this was my bible when Spiderboy was learning to eat and I still use it! You might want to prepare the dough & chill it first if you have an impatient toddler who can't wait to get going :)
Ingredients 175g butter (at room temp) 75g icing sugar 225g self-raising flour 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp grated orange zest 60g plain chocolate chips Method Sieve the flour & icing sugar into a bowl. Add the remaining ingredients except for the choc chips and beat together well (or throw everything into a food processor and let that do the work!) When the dough has come together, stir in the choc chips and knead the dough thoroughly before rolling into a ball. Wrap in cling film and put into the fridge to chill for an hour or so. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut out your shapes. Place on a baking tray (using greaseproof paper if you have it) and bake at 180 degrees for around 10 minutes.
A few weekends ago, Sunday morning saw the rain pouring down and it looked as though we would be housebound all day. Fine by me but I knew we would need something to keep the littles amused so I made some autumn play dough. I used the same recipe from before but added some cinnamon and nutmeg to make it smell wonderfully autumnal plus some red and yellow paint for colouring. (It actually turned out a little more pinky than I planned but they didn't seem to notice!) Motorbike Man man a dash into the garden between showers and collected a variety of leaves, herbs and nuts from the garden, and we were set. We created trees of varying detail, from a few simple pasta pieces to a full display of leaves and nuts in the play dough.
We thought of autumn related things and made some of those - conkers, fireworks, pumpkins using the dough and some accessories. They learnt to identify the tree by its leaves - I was impressed that Spiderboy could name quite a few of them!
We passed a good hour or so having fun with all the autumn colours and the kitchen had a lovely smell afterwards!
I had intended to make this with pumpkin as they were plentiful 1 day before Halloween but 2 days later there were none to be found in my local shops so I substituted with sweet potato instead. It was still pretty good...so good in fact that I didn't want to stop and take a photo before eating it! Ingredients 1kg of sweet potato, peeled & chopped 2 small onions, chopped 1 litre vegetable stock 2tbsp honey 200ml double cream (or creme fraiche if you are counting calories) 1tbsp paprika Method Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large pan and add the onions. Sweat them for 5 mins until they soften. Add the sweet potato & paprika, and cook for a further 10 mins, stirring to ensure it doesn't burn. Add the stock to the pan (mine was cold as I made it the day before), bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 15 - 20 mins until the sweet potato is soft. Stir in the honey and puree the soup with a blender (my hand held stick one was fine for this). Stir in the cream or creme fraiche and heat through before serving with a sprinkling of paprika on the surface. NB: This made a huge batch so I froze half.
