Car Shaped Biscuits

So to go with the traffic light jelly, I made these yummy car shaped biscuits. As I cheated & bought a Lightning McQueen cake from asda, I felt something home made was required! I bought the cookie cutter from e-bay a while ago, it came from china so was really cheap but did take a while to arrive. I was originally hoping to use the cutter for sandwiches at the party, like the ones I made for the boys letter C lunch, however it would have been to waste full as I could only get 1 car from each slice of bread.

Having never made biscuits from scratch before, I made a couple of test batches to make sure they would turn out ok. Firstly I used this sugar cookie recipe, even though I let it chill in the fridge the mix didn't firm up. I either made a mistake when measuring or my American measuring cups that I found on e-bay ain't very accurate. The mix was so soft it as impossible to transfer a cut shape, so in the end I just used my fingers to make round biscuits. These actually tasted amazing, the boys couldn't get enough of them, so I will defiantly make them again.

Then I tried this no egg sugar cookie recipe. As its a UK blog I was more confidant about getting the measurements right. I was a bit worried at first as the mix was very firm & crumbly however after some kneading it formed a ball It was so firm after the recommended 30mins chilling time, I had to let it get back to room temp before I could roll it out. With plenty of flour (from my new flour shaker, its the little things!) the car shapes were easy to cut & transfer to a baking sheet. These biscuits also tasted amazing & the boys loved them even more due to the shape. They were very pleased to find them in their pre-school lunch box.

So this was the recipe I baked a couple of days before the party. I decorated them the next day half dipping them in melted chocolate & using chocolate buttons & smarties to make the wheels. I saved the greaseproof paper from baking them to put them on whilst the chocolate was setting (a few minutes in the fridge). I needed quite a bit of chocolate so that it was deep enough to dip the biscuits in. I had enough left over to make 8 chocolate cheerio cakes!

x Jo x

Sweet Treats

As we had some chocolate Santa's, left over from Christmas, we decided to do some kid friendly cooking. At my slimming world group Christmas party someone brought along chocolate covered grapes on cocktail sticks, they were delicious! As they boys have never been keen on grapes, i thought it would be a fun activity to encourage them to try some. 

They broke up there Santa's in to a bowl & I then melted it in the microwave. Be careful not to burn the chocolate, I find a plastic bowl works better than a ceramic one. Once melted we stuck a cocktail stick in each grape & then dipped it in to the chocolate. I gave the boys a piece of cucumber each to put the cocktail sticks in while the chocolate was hardening. Once they had finished we put them in the fridge to harden. Both Joseph (4) & Daniel (2.5) enjoyed eating the chocolate grapes at snack time. Daniel has since been enjoying grapes (without chocolate) however Joseph says that he only likes the chocolate ones! As Joseph isn't really a big fruit eater I might try giving him several fruits to try with a chocolate dip. I also found this recipe on Pintrest which looks good.

We still had 2 chocolate Santa's left! With these we decided to make the classic rice krispie cakes with a twist. To our melted chocolate we added a mix of rice krispies, cheerios, sultanas, & dried cranberries. We then spooned the mix in to cake cases. The boys love making these cakes as they can decorate them straight away, we used sprinkles, silver balls, red sugar sprinkles & cherries. Daddy very much enjoyed helping the boys eat up these cakes!

x Jo x