Sunday, February 01, 2009

better than playdough



Meet Elsie our new dolly. She's shy.  A simple pattern given to me by the super fab textiles teacher at school and The Girl designed it from there. She did most of it herself.

Better than playdough is gingerbread dough. and a box of letter biscuit cutters.  Mamma's Boy gets a lump of dough and it just keeps rolling up without crumbling. After I've cut out the rest of the cookies, I cook up his letters. He learns his letters, he feels like he is cooking and helping me, and we get cookies!  I have even made a batch and divided it into 3 portions and have frozen it. So he can play while I'm cooking supper. 

This recipe makes a lot of cookies.
I got this recipe from the Somerfield website years ago.

350 g plain flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp bicarb of soda
100g butter
175 g of caster sugar
60 ml (4 tblsp) of golden syrup
1 egg

sift flour, ginger and bicarb together
rub in cubed butter until a fine crumb
stir in caster sugar
add syrup and beaten egg

combine well and bring to a ball.
wrap in film and fridge for an hour or so.
Or freeze it.

divide dough up into manageable portions
lightly flour surface and dough and roll out and cut shapes

onto a baking tray
190*c oven 
about 10 minutes depending on size of biscuit.

And a little word about pinto beans. Tins of pinto beans have completely disappeared from my local Sainsburys. Haven't got a clue why. But I've had to resort to dried. I had an idea and it worked. I soaked the beans over night, then I put them in the slow cooker on high for 6 hours. It worked without filling the house with that horrible cooking bean smell and without creating a rainforest-like atmosphere in kitchen. 









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