Friday 24 April 2015

Carrot Cake

Carrot Cake
I've never made carrot cake before, which is crazy because I love carrot cake! So I decided I would make one for my birthday, which is still ages away but I thought I should do some recipe testing before hand. I had envisioned working my way through several recipes giving marks out of ten etc. But I think I'm in love with this one! I cannot stop thinking about it. I want more! It is moist and tasty and the icing is light and fluffy.

The Cake
I followed the recipe from Lorraine Pascale's Baking Made Easy although I didn't want a big cake, so I reduced the quantities by two thirds to just make one of the three layers she has pictured. Which was a perfect amount. These are the quantities I used:
  • 175ml vegetable oil
  • 3 eggs
  • 175g soft dark brown sugar
  • 140g carrots peeled and grated
  • grated zest of one orange
  • 175g self raising flour
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 tsp bicarb of soda
  • 1tsp mixed spice
  • 1/2tsp vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 180°C - I had my fan assisted oven on at 165°. Prepare a 23cm/9in round tin by oiling the insides and lining the bases with baking paper.
Put the oil, sugar, carrots and orange zest in a large bowl and mix with a wooden spoon.
Mix the flour, salt, bicarb of soda and mixed spice together then sift into the bowl.
Add the vanilla and lightly mix everything together until the mixture is uniform but still soft and runny. Pour it into the tin and bake for about 40-45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Leave it to cool for 5 minutes then turn it out onto a wire rack and peel off the paper.

The Icing
I basically followed the recipe for cream cheese buttercream in Karen Sullivan's Step by step cake decorating book. Again I changed the quantities for my own purposes.
  • 65g unsalted butter, softened
  • 1/2tsp vanilla extract
  • 200g icing sugar
  • 90g cream cheese
Cream the butter and vanilla together with an electric whisk. Add half of the icing sugar, beat well, then add the other half and beat it again.
Add the cream cheese, a little at a time, beating vigorously until fluffy.
The spread it over the cake and enjoy!



If you tried the carrot cake, let me know what you think. Leave a comment below.
Also, I'm always looking for new ideas for baking/cooking, if you have any suggestions, leave a comment!

Friday 10 April 2015

Fit Families

Elizabeth's school has been taking part in a pilot project being run by the local council called "Fit Families". There were 6 sessions run at the school covering different aspects of keeping healthy e.g exercise, balanced diets and growing your own food.

The children each got a t-shirt, a folder with weekly homework tasks, and they came home with a Broad Bean Plant at the end of the 6 weeks.

Week 1 - Let's Get Active!
The NHS recommends that all children over 5 years need at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day.
In the session at school we did lots of running, jumping, skipping, hopping activities and we were set homework for the half tern to keep a log of activities that we did. There was a Facebook page set up for us to share photos and we could win prizes for sharing photos and stories of our activities.
Our activities included playing Wii Fit, bike rides, walking around Gressenhall, playing at the park, soft play and an awesome obstacle course that I made in the house.


Week 2 - Let's Get Growing!
We believe there are similarities between a healthy child and a healthy plant! Both require good nutrition, fluids and sunlight to develop healthily and reach their full potential.
In the session in school we had a run around to get the heart beating faster and hot foreheads. Then each child got to plant their own marrow fat pea which they had to look after at school, making sure it got plenty of sunlight and water.

Week 3 - Mix it up!
This session was all about having a balanced diet. We learned about carbohydrates, fruit and vegetables, proteins, milk and dairy and sugar and fats. Although a lot of the information went over the children's heads, they did get the message that too much sugar and fats were not good!
Elizabeth chose not to eat her cereal bar in the packed lunch that day because that was mentioned as being too sugary.
The homework this week was to write a food diary for one day and split it up into carbs, proteins etc. I think Elizabeth's diet is pretty good as it is. She eats a tonne of fruit, which helps make up for the lack of vegetables in her diet. And I have seen her taking fruit over sugary treats when offered. It's easy for me to not give her sugary treats. I have cut back on them since taking part in this project. However, I do let the girls have home baked treats. At least then I know how much sugar is in it!

Week 4 - Sugar and Salt
The NHS states that a child between 4-6 years old should have no more than 3g of salt a day and an adult 6g a day. Too much salt can increase your blood pressure and may lead to heart disease or a stroke.
Many foods contain high levels of hidden sugars and eating these on a regular basis with limited exercise can lead to weight gain and an increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
In the session we were to guess how many teaspoons of sugar there were in certain products. We also looked at the traffic light nutrition labels on food to see what was healthy and what was not. It was quite surprising just how much sugar it is possible to consume in a day without really thinking about it!
The homework was to swap some foods in our diet so that we had less salt and less sugar. I decided to switch to brown bread and to stick with fruit for sweet snacks. Elizabeth and Rebecca are addicted to strawberries now!

Week 5 - Eat a Rainbow!
We learned about having 5 fruit and vegetables a day and how different fruits and vegetables contain different vitamins and minerals. Elizabeth impressed everyone by knowing lots of fruits and vegetables, when others in the class didn't recognise them.
We had a fruit diary again this week where we listed the food eaten in a rainbow chart. Elizabeth ate a lot of reds - peppers, tomatoes, strawberries and red apples. But she did not really have many greens!

Week 6 - Grow Your Own!
In the last session we recapped about eating 5 fruit and vegetables a day and we planted strawberry plants at the school. As mentioned before each child was also given a broad bean plant to take home and look after.

The sessions have finished now, but as a bonus the Fit Families group have challenged us to take Selfies on walks around the local area during the Easter Holidays. We have done one already.

Walk 1 - St Mary's Church and Loch Neaton

It's been a really interesting project to be involved in. It has made me think about what we are eating at home, so it has been successful in that respect. The girls do have a reasonably balanced diet and they don't have too many sugary and fatty treats, those sorts of foods have gradually been sneaking into our shopping more and more, but there is no need for them when the girls are happy to eat fruit.

We've always been quite active with the girls, they cannot go a whole day at home doing nothing. The Wii has been a great addition to their activities for rainy days, and we might not have thought about using it with the girls had it not been for this project. But on dry days we're always out walking, geocaching, cycling, playing at the park or having a day at Gressenhall!

Monday 6 April 2015

Scottish Tablet

Scottish Tablet
This is a sugary treat! It's a harder form of fudge that crumbles in the mouth. I've made it a couple of times for my English friends and it is usually well received! It is incredibly tricky to make and mine often comes out like fudge. But it's still great to eat if it is soft.

Ingredients

  • 4oz salted butter
  • 1kg granulated sugar
  • 1 cup of full cream milk
  • 1 tin of condensed milk
Melt the butter in a heavy based pan. Add all of the rest of the ingredients and slowly bring to the boil, stirring frequently.
When it comes to the boil, turn the heat down and let it simmer for about 45 minutes until the mixture is a caramel brown colour.
Take it off the heat and beat it with an electric hand mixer until the mixture is really thick and coming away from the sides. This should take about 10 minutes. Have a taste of it, if it tastes grainy then it's right.
Pour it into a 20cm/30cm tin. Score it after 5 minutes. Then once it's hard cut it into squares.

I made these for the Easter Coffee Morning at Rebecca's Pre School. I took Rebecca into school especially for the end of term festivities, she doesn't usually go on a Friday. They had an Easter Egg Hunt, face painting, biscuit decorating, crispy cake making, crafts and loads more things going on.

This is all the food she came away with from one session:


Is it just me or is that a little bit too much for one 3 year old?

If you tried the tablet, let me know what you think. Leave a comment below.
Also, I'm always looking for new ideas for baking/cooking, if you have any suggestions, leave a comment!

Sunday 5 April 2015

Easter Bonnet


Grandma got the girls a Go Create Easter Bonnet Decorating Kit for their Easter present. I think the Tesco Go Create range is pretty decent and good value for money. Elizabeth and Rebecca are both at a good age for doing that sort of thing now.

Basically the box had all the supplies and instructions to make the hat they had in their picture. I told the girls they could do their own thing, but they were happy to do as instructed. It probably took about 3 hours in total, there was a lot to it. Elizabeth, rightly suggested that it would have been easier if the foam items were stickers. That would have cut down the time probably by 2 hours! I was really impressed that the girls had the patience to do the whole thing. We did stop for one break and they decided to finish it up just when I had given up and tidied everything away!







The girls were very happy with their finished hats. They wore them out the next day and want to take them to the childminder's and school and nanna and grandad's etc so they can show them off.


Saturday 4 April 2015

Southwold

We had a day out at Southwold yesterday and it actually stayed sunny!


We arrived at lunchtime, so first stop was chips on the Pier. We all had the battered sausage and chips. We aren't really fish eaters, so that's usually the easiest thing to order when getting fish and chips. They were really tasty, the batter was excellent!

Next we went down to the beach. The girls went barefoot and chased the waves for a while. I got soaked taking a photo of them.


We walked along the pier and had a look at the old and weird arcade games, we watched the water clock, we laughed at ourselves in the silly mirrors and we found Nanna and Grandad's plaque.


Then we walked up to the lighthouse, which was closed but that was probably a good thing as you have to be 1.1m to climb it. Elizabeth might have got away with that, but not Rebecca.



We finished up our day with ice creams back at the pier. Elizabeth had bubble gum and chocolate flavoured ice cream and Rebecca had strawberry and chocolate.

A lovely day out with the girls.