Oh, What a week

A very stressful week. Inspections from the senior management and from Ofsted. Like most people, I put much more pressure on myself than anyone else will do. But it went o.k.
With one of the lessons I made blue and yellow salt dough and had the pupils create a model of a biscuit following my five specification points. Just to show them the variety of ideas that can come out of it.
1. the model needs to appeal to small children
2. It can be no bigger than 6cm x 6cm and 3cm high
3. The middle layer needs to be visible from above
4. It needs to be easily cut out with a cutter or template, but not a simple circle
5. It needs to have an attractive pattern pressed into the material
I then asked the pupils to use their model to write a detailed product specification using their model and transforming it into a real biscuit. A really successful lesson, unobserved of course. Nevermind.

During this lesson we looked a team production, using an easy gingerbread recipe. That went really well too. Each team had to combine their ingredients and produce identical biscuits according to their plans. They also had to photograph it at the key control points to show their checks. I'll give the recipe at the end of this post, I highly recommend it.

I was so busy this last week, that two lunch times in a row I was unable to eat my lunch. Now, that is totally unheard of, I always make time. But I couldn't even think about it. I think I really suffered for it on Saturday. Caught up with me. But the baby seems fine and very active. Today we are off to check out the local food market that has a Christmas theme this weekend. I will hopefully find something thick and rich and treaclely. mmmm. Later I will make a roast and some mince pies for gifts at work. Roll on Christmas!

Gingerbread recipe, from Somerfield's website.
350g good plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp of ground ginger (it tastes fine without the ginger)
100g of butter
175g caster sugar
60 ml of golden syrup
1 large beaten egg

sieve flour, bicarb and ginger together
rub in cubed butter
stir in sugar
add in syrup and egg
stir together and knead until it makes a dough
it stays fairly short but rolls out nicely.
roll it out to 5mm thick and cut
bake for 10 to 12 minutes at 190*C gas mark 5
cool and decorate.

I like this recipe because it doesn't require any sugar boiling as lots of tradtional gingerbread recipes do.