Being Mrs C

Millionaire Shortbread

When I was working in London there was a coffee shop just down the road from my office that sold the most amazing millionaire shortbread ever and since then I have been addicted to the stuff. Some places make it a bit too sweet and sickly, but I've followed this recipe a few times now and it always seems to turn out really well.

I just have a handwritten version of this recipe from my sister which I have then gone on to tweak, but I believe that it's originally from the Hairy Bikers.

Ingredients

Base          

• 125g butter
• 50g sugar
• 175g plain flour

Caramel & Chocolate Topping

• 410g condensed milk
• 50g butter
• 50g soft dark brown sugar
• 200g chocolate      

Method

I always split this recipe into three stages when making it: base, caramel layer and chocolate topping.

1. Leave the butter at room temperature to soften it. Once soft, mix it with the sugar and flour to form a dough. Press the dough down into a tray bake tin (or similar) and bake at 190 C for 20 minutes. Once out of the oven leave it to cool in the tray.

2. Put the condensed milk in a heavy bottomed pan (this is important!). Add the butter and sugar and bring to the boil. Make sure that you are stirring continuously as otherwise it will stick to the bottom and you will end up with burnt bits in your caramel. Boil gently for 5 minutes whilst continuing to stir. Pour this topping over the shortbread base layer and place it in the fridge to set. I find that it's best to leave it for at least a couple of hours.

3. Once you're happy with how set the caramel layer is melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir it whilst it melts and when you're happy with the consistency pour it over the caramel layer. Leave it to set in the fridge before cutting it into squares.

Enjoy! 

Three hours

I'm sure I can't be the only person who gets to the end of the day and wonders what I've actually acheived that day. When you're at home with little ones it can be quite easy to just concentrate on "surviving" and it can be easy to lose track of what has kept you busy all day. Realistically though, stay at home parents usually acheive loads, but they simply don't have the time to step back and take stock of just what they have done.

This morning Mr C went out to a first aid course so I thought I'd keep track of just what I got up to in that time - admitedly, partly to make myself feel like I could justify the bar of dairy milk that went with my morning cuppa, and the glass of wine that I'm planning to have tonight.

The morning didn't start well with the Ocado man arriving at the door full of apologies about the jar of curry sauce that had exploded all over half my shopping order. Unfortunately that curry sauce was supposed to form part of tonight's dinner plans, so back to the drawing board for today's meal plans. Several other things had been so covered in sauce that they couldn't be rescued either. I swapped a few things around, googled some recipes and my new job became putting together a beef and mushroom stroganoff that could go into the slow cooker for the rest of the day. Small pat on the back for getting things back on track.

Little Miss C has been a bit tough to entertain lately - especially since she missed nursery last week due to a fever and hence I think she's just sick of the sight of me - so it was necessary to make a real effort to do things with her rather than just letting her play whilst I got on with jobs. We started off doing some sewing together. I picked up these great lacing cards in Wilkos for just 50p when they were selling off their old craft range before bringing out a new one earlier in the year. With shoelace type threads LMC had a great time threading them through the cards and she was very proud to be "sewing like Mummy does". Parenting bonus point number one.

By the time we'd done this Master C was ready for a feed - something it seems he's ready for every hour some days! - so that was combined with a quick phone call to my mum and LMC watching a spot of TV. Inspired by I Can Cook we then set about baking a batch of biscuits for Daddy's return. My late Gran's Ginger Biscuit recipe is very simple and quick and it's hard to get it wrong, even with a toddler helping. After all the clearing up that was required before we could start baking and the baking itself it was time for Master C to have yet another feed by the time they went into the oven. After a quick ten minutes of feeding the buzzer signalled time to get the biscuits out of the oven and luckily Master C went down for a nap at the same time. By this point I was awarding myself parenting bonus point number two, putting the kettle on and imagining sitting down with a cuppa and a biscuit and even wondering if I might be able to get five minutes with a magazine.

That wasn't going to be the case though as LMC very loudly reminded me that it was nearly lunchtime. A raid of the freezer found a cooked mince portion so whilst that defrosted in the microwave I peeled some potatoes and put them on to boil. Fifteen minutes later she was sat in her highchair with a portion of mine and mash in front of her - cunningly called shepherd's pie in an attempt to get her to eat it. This is where I started losing parenting points though as after a few enthusiastic first spoonfulls she declared that she didn't want any more and wanted yoghurt and chocolate instead. Meal times have been a bit of a battle of late and today was no different. Cue 30 minutes of screaming about how she didn't like her lunch, didn't want to eat it and how she wanted something else instead. Even promises of a biscuit if she ate some more seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Master C wasn't deaf though and all this screaming about food woke him up and reminded him that a whole 55 minutes had passed since his last feed so it must be time for yet more milk. Mummy the milk producer was in demand again. Sat down with my now cold cuppa I proceeded to feed Master C whilst still trying to calm down LMC and convince her to eat some more of her lunch - all whilst attempting to hide the fact that I was eating the bar of fruit and nut that I'd sneaked out of the fridge! Parenting points into negative numbers by this point I'm sure.

Fit in round the above an explosive nappy change requiring a change of clothes for Master C, one load of laundry through the machine and three lots of washing up and I think I now understand how I didn't have time to be bored this morning. By the time Mr C returned (now fully knowledgeable as to how to save a life) I was shattered and very ready to have five minutes peace and quiet - once I'd cooked our lunch of course.

Forget one glass of wine this evening. Re-reading the above I think I deserve a whole bottle. If I can stay awake!

Toddler cupcakes

After the scathing comments about "mummy bloggers" that appeared courtesy of Ms Jones in yesterday's Daily Fail (I refuse to link to them and give them any SEO credit at all for this) I felt slightly bad about today's post being about cupcakes, but still. I may be one of these parents who stays at home knitting and baking whilst blogging and bringing up my children, but that's completely fine with me. And also with my husband who gets to eat the fruits of my baking activities when he comes home from work.

Little Miss C has really got into baking recently and one of the simplest recipes to follow with her is what my family refers to as "Gran's weight of two eggs" recipe. It really is easy - all you need is two eggs and some margarine, self raising flour and sugar. You find out how much your two eggs weigh and then use an equal weight of all the other ingredients. Cream together the margarine and the sugar to start with and then mix in the eggs and flour. To make them slightly healthier we then added a couple of handfuls of raisins or sultanas (a recipe addition from my sister) before putting them into bun cases and popped them in the oven until ready. 

As the recipe is based around the weight of the eggs it doesn't make an exact number of buns, but I've always managed to get at least 14 out of it. What that does mean is that if you use a normal 12-hole bun tin there's enough mixture to take account of the natural wastage that occurs when you bake with a toddler!

These may not be exotic cupcakes with fancy icing, but they are still incredibly yummy and great for energy boosts whilst breastfeeding a little one.

Taking a step back

This week was supposed to be a nice little "holiday" between Mr C leaving one job and starting a new one. We acknowledged that there were likely to be some little jobs left to finish off in our new loft conversion, but the reality is that we've actually been running round like headless chickens all week trying to make decisions, but things and get everything sorted.

Today we've made quite an effort to make the day a bit calmer and fun. A spot of baking - mainly prompted by the need to use up some bananas that were going very brown in the fruit bowl - a pub lunch and a wander round the gardens of a local National Trust property. Much more like what a holiday should be.

Tomorrow - back to the to do list, but hopefully with recharged batteries!

Buns for new friends...

If a new friend has invited you round for tea then you can't turn up empty handed. Luckily I had a little assistant to help me in the kitchen.

Chocolate Easter nests

The long Easter weekend and we decided that it was the ideal time to introduce Little Miss C to the joys of cooking with chocolate!

The three of us followed the Chocolate Easter egg nest cakes recipe from the BBC food site that seemed to be very much like the one I remember from childhood. Chocolate, melted with butter and golden syrup and then mixed in with cornflakes, before being topped with mini-eggs. It couldn't really be much more simple.

With two of us at home LMC could be picked up to watch as I melted the chocolate on the hob and then she got very involved in helping to mix the chocolate mixture in with the cornflakes. 

After a bit of help to spoon them into bun cases she loved being given the responsibility of placing a couple of mini-eggs on top of each one. A lot of pride and care went into the positioning of those eggs I can tell you.

The concept of licking the spoon amazingly didn't go down quite as well as I expected. She was happy to try a bit, but then seemed more concerned with us washing up the dirty bowl than anything else.

The cakes need to go into the fridge for about an hour to help them set and unfortunately this didn't go down too well. Both Mr C and LMC were quite disappointed that they were supposed to then wait before eating what they'd made. In fact, I'm not sure which of them was most upset about this - a close run thing.

I think these cakes are delicious - exactly how I remember them from childhood. Mr C, a confirmed chocoholic, seems to think they may be a bit too sickly sweet, and LMC likes the idea of eating them, but then decides to force-feed them to me instead - I'm not complaining!

Homemade fairy cakes

After seeing a friend get caught up in an online "debate" about the price of shop bought cupcakes and whether or not they were value for money I felt that there was only one thing that I could take round the next time we met for tea and cakes - good old fashioned homemade fairy cakes! As a child I don't think anyone here in the UK had quite invented cupcakes like we have them now with huge towers of fattening icing or elaborate decorations. Instead fairy cakes, or if the event was very special butterfly buns, often appeared on the plate at tea time along side scones and sandwiches.

These really are so, so simple to make and I even managed a batch this morning whilst Mr C went out for a run.

Ingredients (to make 12 buns)

100g butter or margarine - softened

100g sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

100g self-raising flour

pinch of salt

1 - 2 tablespoons milk

A few drops of vanilla essence

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Cream together the margarine (or butter) and sugar in a bowl until pale and fluffy.

Gradually mix in the eggs and flour alternately and also add the pinch of salt. 

Add the milk and vanilla essence and mix to make a soft mixture.

Spoon into bun-cases and bake for 15-20 minutes until well risen and springy to the touch.

To decorate

I topped my cakes with some simple icing (110g icing sugar and a couple of tablespoons of cold water mixed together until smooth) and some of the lovely Dr Oetker Polka Dots that I saw mentioned on Attic 24's blog last month. I love the bright colours of these and also the fact that they don't go all over the place in the same way that hundreds and thousands do.

These really do make a lovely simple tea-time treat and have no where near as many calories in them as a shop bought cupcake either. Little Miss C loves them so much that when she asked if she could have one after her lunch today and I told her that she had to wait until after her nap she instantly took herself upstairs to bed! If that's not a recommendation from a toddler then I don't know what is.

The holy grail of flapjack?

In this house we've always been looking for the hold grail of flapjacks. Something that's got a bit of crunch to it, but is also deliciously chewy and moist. To date we've failed to find it, but I'm not deterred and whenever I see a new flapjack recipe I'm prepared to try it in the hope that this might be the one.

Hannah over at Muddling Along Mummy recently posted her dairy free flapjack recipe and I thought I ought to try it too. I did make one (slight) tweak to the recipe though. Not being a dairy free household we don't have any dairy free spread in, so instead I just substituted it with margarine. Now I have to say that I'm not sure if I should have just done a one for one substitution here or not, but well that's what I did!

The recipe is very very simple, just four ingredients:

• 8oz dairy free spread
• 8oz soft brown sugar
• 5 tbsp golden syrup 
• 12oz oats

You melt together the spread, sugar and the golden syrup and then once they are all combined, mix in the oats. It's an ideal recipe to do with children thanks to its simplicity.

Once all the ingredients are mixed together then press it into a tin and bake for about 20 minutes at 200 degrees until golden brown. Now this is where things seemed to go a little bit wrong... After 20 minutes our flapjack just looked like an oaty soup still in the tin. Five minutes later it still resembled soup, but it had gone a lovely golden brown colour. We decided to take it out of the oven at this stage in the hope that it would cool down and solidify a bit.

It did firm up a bit, but admittedly not quite as much as we would have expected it to. This flapjack was delicius though - so incredibly chewy that if you had a big piece then it actually made my jaw ache by the end - and also managed to taste so good that you knew that it couldn't possibly be doing you any good!

Sadly it wasn't quite the holy grail of flapjacks though - too chewy for that - but it was close. What I need to do now though is work out just how much margarine I should have used substituted and then it might work next time. Thanks for sharing Hannah!

Chocolate Tiffin

A sure sign that a recipe is a good one is the fact that I have completely failed to take a photograph of the finished article every time I've made it as it never stays around our kitchen for very long!

If you love gooey, chocolate treats then this is definietly the recipe for you. It's incredibly simple and doesn't require the oven at all. I found it handwritten in the back of my old school home economics book and it's noted as having come from a family friend. I remember making it with my mum and sister as a child and making it again now it still tastes just as good as I remember it doing!

Ingredients:

• 4 oz margarine
• 4 oz sugar
• 4 oz sultanas
• 1 desert spoon cocoa
• 1 beaten egg
• 1/2 lb crushed biscuits
• 1 standard size bar of chocolate (Green and Blacks milk chocolate seems to work very well here!)

Method:

Melt together the margarine and sugar. Add the sultanas and then the cocoa.

Remove from the heat and then add in the beaten egg.

Stir in the egg and put the pan back on the heat until the mixture thickens. Do not allow it to boil.

Add the crushed biscuits and mix together. As a child I recall buying bags of crushed biscuits from the supermarket which we used to use. Recently I've made it with rich tea biscuits, but I think that shortbtead ones would work well too.

Spread in a shallow tin (I always use an old swiss roll tin) and allow to cool in the fridge.

Once cool cover with melted chocolate. One bar does not give a very thick topping, but I find that it provides enough coverage. If you want to go for a slightly more luxurious version then go for two bars of chocolate and forget about the diet plans.

Return to the fridge. Once the chocolate topping has set you can cut it into pieces. I recommend keeping it in the fridge as I find that it helps it retain it's structure as at room temperature it can go a bit soggy again.

Enjoy!

Elevenses

In some ways Little Miss C is a very girly girl. She loves playing in her little play kitchen and one of the Christmas gifts that she loved most was a tea set that we bought her. We often have pretend tea parties together and I don't think it's coincidence that two of her first words were "cake" and "tea".

The tea parties aren't all make belive though. Most mornings after a good play session or a quick trip out I do try to make sure that we stop and sit down for a spot of elevenses together. By that stage of the day I need a cup of tea (normally Earl Grey these days) and a slice of cake for both of us makes that last bit of the morning much easier to deal with. We try and make it a bit of an occassion too - sitting at the table together and talking about what we've been up to that morning and our plans for the rest of the day. If we're out and about then we still try and make time for that morning pause and we've found quite a few local cafes where I know LMC likes their cake and we can get a high chair for her.

Years ago when I worked in a very old fashioned bit of the civil service it was almost compulsory to have elevenses! Anyone who didn't step away from their desk when the kettle went on was seriously frowned upon by our boss. The whole team sat down together and chatted over a cup of tea and a tea cake from the work shop. It worked a treat though and really did make the working day so much easier to get to the end of - sadly I've not seen it anywhere else, but I definitely think we should try to make it happen. Those lovely people at Anchor Butter are hoping to change all that with their campaign to bring back elevenses - definietly something that I will support.

When it comes to what to eat with your elevenses cuppa in our house the firm favourite with LMC is my Matilda cake (recipe here from when I last blogged about it). It always gives me a bit of a boost and the mixed fruit in it makes me think that there is at least a little bit of something healthy in there! I've no idea where the recipe originally came from, but I do know that it was in my mum's recipe book so I'm guessing from either a relative or family friend.

Anchor Butter are campaigning to bring back Elevenses and this blog post is part of their promotion. You can join Anchor either on their Facebook page or via Twitter. If you use the Twitter hashtag #AnchorElevenses you might also be in with a chance of winning some great Anchor memorabilia too!