On Saturday, whilst Daddy played soccer, Sophie took over the kitchen to make fairy cakes and iced biscuits. Alice and I were given our orders to film the proceedings. Charlotte was happy to stay clear, except for a brief interlude from researching animals on the Internet to make some jelly (the black rings round her eyes aren’t anything to be concerned about – merely left over face paint from an impromptu Harry Potter dramatization earlier in the day!).

Sophie is fast becoming ‘Head Chef’ and when she starts chanting, ‘A good chef is a tidy chef,’ the chef’s hat is all hers! Here is her first video blog bake (Vlog)…

And here she is demonstrating her multi-tasking skills (what a love x); decorating fairy cakes whilst waiting for her iced biscuit dough to firm in the fridge:

Finally, here’s Alice taking mental notes, whilst eyeing up the 100’s & 1000’s…

Sophie has entered the Persil Kiwi Kids Have a Go in the Kitchen – click here to VOTE FOR SOPHIE! THANK YOU X

Check out the ‘What’s Cooking?’ tab on the menu bar above for more recipe ideas or click here!

On Wednesday we made fairy cakes, which Sophie and I decorated. They made a colourful addition to the lunch boxes for the rest of the week! Recipe here!

It was a scrumptious time. You’ve got to try the fairy cakes. We scoffed the fairy cakes from our lunch boxes at morning tea. Yah! They were our favorite things in our lunch boxes.

To make about 18 cookies, you will need:

160g plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
100g butter
50g caster sugar
2 tablespoons milk
white writing icing
a 6.5cm round cutter
baking tray lined with baking paper
a toothpick

Heat oven to 180°C, 350°F, gas mark 4.

1. Sift the flour and cocoa into a large bowl. Add the butter and rub it in with your fingers.

2. When the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs, stir in the sugar. Then, sprinkle the milk over the mixture and stir it with a fork.

3. Stir the mixture until everything starts to stick together. Then, squeeze it with your hands to make a ball of dough.

4. Wrap the dough in plastic foodwrap and put it in a fridge for 20 minutes (great clock reading practice!). While it is in there, heat your oven.

5. Roll out the dough on a floured surface until it is 5mm thick (we got the ruler out here!).

6. Cut out lots of circles (letting your younger sister have a go too) and bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes.

7. Leave the cookies on the baking tray for about 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

8. To decorate draw a spiral of white writing icing on each cookie, starting in the middle and working out towards the edge.

9. Using a toothpick, drag the icing from the middle to make a web.

The end result was yummy and they were definitely fun to make.

Recipe Credit:
Fairy Cooking (Usborne Activities) by Rebecca Gilpin

These are a real favourite of mine as my Grandma used to make them, as well as a whole tea tray of other delights for afternoon tea.

Be warned: They are mouth watering and best eaten on a not too empty stomach (as you’ll want more and more…). Next time I shall pour myself a proper cup of tea in a china cup too!

To make 8 cakes, you will need:

1 medium egg
50g self-raising flour
quarter of a teaspoon of baking powder
50g caster sugar
50g soft margarine
small paper cake cases
a baking tray with shallow pans

For the butter icing:

40g butter, softened
a few drops vanilla essence
75g icing sugar, sifted
about 4 teaspoons raspberry jam
extra icing sugar, for dusting

1. Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl. Add the caster sugar, egg and margarine.

2. Stir all the ingredients together until you’ve made a smooth creamy mixture, as demonstrated by Sophie

3. Put the paper cake cases into the pans in the baking tray. Half fill each paper case with the mixture.

4. Bake the cakes at 190°C, 375°F, gas mark 5 for 16-18 minutes. Once cooked put them on a wire rack to cool.

5. To make the icing, put the butter into a bowl and add the vanilla. Stir them together until the mixture is creamy.

6. Add some of the icing sugar to the butter and stir it in. Repeat this until you have mixed in all the icing sugar.

7. Use a sharp knife to carefully cut a circle from the top of each cake. Then, cut each circle in half, across the middle.

8. Spread some of the icing on top of each cake. Then, spoon half a teaspoon of jam in a line across the icing.

9. Gently push two of the half slices into the icing, so that they look like butterfly wings. Then, sift a little icing sugar over the top. Te da!

10. Wash up before eating up! Sophie asked me to photograph her super clean spoon

11. The best bit…. oooooo the anticipation and the devouring…

Recipe Credit:
Fairy Cooking (Usborne Activities) by Rebecca Gilpin

So, little Miss Sophie, despite not being ‘A1′ was up chattering till 9pm last night and was awake before the birds at 5am this morning! She’s happy, bubbly and bouncing off the walls. The snuffly cold/virus seems to have disappeared before it even got started. A run on the beach this morning and a few flying jumps didn’t bring about a midday nap – far from it… baking, painting, there’s no stopping her!

On Tuesday the virus had a more subdued affect and led to Sophie falling asleep on a mattress in the lounge at 4.30pm. She had Frances, Charlotte and I in stitches as she was giggling in her sleep! Such a happy camper, even in her dreams!

This morning, after a few stories at home, I was in need of a good coffee so we headed to our local surf cafe in Lyall Bay where I could fuel up, whilst Alice slept.

Afterwards Sophie had an energy burning time on the beach and did her best to fly like a seagull…

It’s 6pm now and she’s been on the go for 13 hour’s on 8 hour’s sleep. I am exhausted and thankfully Frances is here to help out and is reading Sophie a story. Charlotte has been amazing and helped to make dinner – pizza. She got a surprise when she ate her pizza – her second tooth came out!

Tomorrow Sophie WILL be going to Kindi! I need a break! And I have the horrible job of taking Alice for her first round of immunisations (only 4 week’s late). Right, going to take little Miss Sophie up the sleepy ladder and hopefully off to slumbers very, very soon.

We are beyond excited!

Thank goodness that the weather looks fine for their flight into Wellington tomorrow – it would have been rather horrid to have flown in on Saturday. Our summer really is utter plop this year (and as the media headlines report, it isn’t set to improve), but myself and the girls are in the fortunate position of being able to grab the good days when they come. We really feel for Dan (along with other Monday to Friday workers) when the sun shines mid-week and then is diabolical come the weekend.

We’ve used the weather poor days to really blitz areas of the house that needed a sort-out and feel ultra organised for bubs arrival in a few week’s time. The girls have really loved having time to play together at home and I haven’t had the usual summer ritual of shaking out copious sand from the boot of the car every day and whizzing the wet gear through the wash.

This is what Sophie thinks of a wet summer Saturday….

She spent the afternoon making chocolate fudge brownies with her Daddy and playing board games, whilst Charli and I went out to the supermarket to stock the cupboards. We also came home with a four-rack toaster – a seriously overdue upgrade. Now I just need a bigger freezer… the current shoe-box sized one just isn’t cutting it with the increasing appetites of my growing brood!

I don’t know how much blogging is going to happen whilst my folks are here, but they’ll be periodic updates. They fly into Welly at 10am tomorrow morning and I shall be thinking of them as I try to sleep tonight. We’ve been tracking their flight using ‘Flight Aware’ and right now they are a little over eight hour’s away from landing in Auckland!

We have (I have) spent most of the day making a ginger-bread house…

The girls started off helping and then I was left to it, as the ginger-bread came out a little crumbly and needed some modification… then I discovered there wasn’t enough for the front and back of the house so had to make more ginger bread (found an easier recipe second time round). By lunch time I’d done it. All the parts of the house were baked and all that was left was the construction. The girls enjoyed decorating some little ginger-bread cookies, whilst I went quiet about the house and thought I’d wait for Daddy-O to come home.

After the children went to bed we armed ourselves with cocktail sticks and constructed the house. It only took us about half an hour to slaver it in icing and lollies (and consume a good few). We can’t wait to see the girls faces in the morning

Aside from baking copious volumes of ginger bread, the girls have enjoyed dipping in and out the pool, blowing bubbles, playing together beautifully (yah – sisterly harmony is returning, after a bumpy first day of the school hols).

We’ve been reading our favourite Christmas stories from around the world…

Each year I get a new book to add to our collection, which takes pride of place by the tree throughout December. We have a wonderful mixture of fun, meaningful, fantasy and factual books. They all have their place and I love that the girls have an understanding of different cultures around the world and what Christmas may (or may not) mean to them.

We stopped by the beach…

After picking up Dan from work and stopping by Kaffee Eis for scrumptious gelato we drove round to Scorching Bay for a quick game of boules.

And of course, left out food for Father Christmas and his reindeer…

Wishing you all a very happy, peaceful and memorable Christmas. Thanks for dropping by and sharing in our little slice of craziness x

After John and Billy left we got out the Sing Star and decided that Steph and Francis should stop over the night (the drink was flowing – much to my envy!).

On Monday morning breakfast was quickly followed by the baking of tiny fairy cakes (a sugar rush was indeed required for some, along with a large pot of tea!). Here’s some pics of the baking in action (recipe follows):

Recipe (thanks to Usbourne Activities, Fairy Cooking by Rebecca Gilpin):

For the fairy cakes:
1 medium egg
50g self-raising flour
40g soft margarine
40g caster sugar
small paper cases

For the icing:
50g icing sugar
about 1 tablespoon of warm water
pink food colouring
small sweets for decorating

1. Break the egg into a mug. Then, sift the flour into a bowl and add the egg, margarine and caster sugar.
2. Stir everything together well, until the mixture is smooth and creamy.
3. Using a teaspoon, spoon the cake mixture into the paper cases until each case is just under half full.
4. Bake the cakes for about 12 minutes, then carefully take them out of the oven. Lift them onto a wire rack to cool.
5. For the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Add the water and mix it in with a metal spoon until the icing is smooth.
6. If you like, spoon the mixture into separate bowls and add a couple of drops of different food colouring to each. Mix it in well.
7. Using a teaspoon, put a little icing onto the top of each cake. Then, use the back of the spoon to spread out the icing.
8. Decorate the cakes, then leave the icing to set.

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
2 tsp cream of tartar
2 cups water
4 tbsp vegetable oil
Vanilla essence (smells lovely)
Food colouring