Operation: Spoil Mum For Mothers Day

 

This is a look back at all the treats I made mum for Mothers Day.

 

Of course Liberty was involved, with gusto!! I even tracked down coffee mugs from Kitchenware Direct because they have the most beautiful Strawberry Thief print on it. I know it's a William Morris print, but it's also a Liberty Art Fabric print - and one of our favourites. See below.

 

 

I also wanted to make something new for mum for Mothers Day. She has seen the picture mounts and the cushions that I make. And she loves Betsy print - so I made her a cushion in pink Betsy print. I also made her a Liberty Picture Mount in teal Betsy. I'll show you below.

 

But I wanted to make something different, something she didn't already have. So I searched fabric basket tutorials and came across this sweet little Gathered Basket pattern on A Spoonful Of Sugar Designs. The pattern was fun and easy to follow. I made this sample below for myself first to check the size and simplicity of the pattern. I chose Liberty print Gallymoggers in pink for the outside, and Garden Wonderland for the inside. I chose them because they match the candy stripe ribbon that I've been saving for yeeeeeears!

 

 

So perfect, I just had to make more! So I decided on two large and one small. I picked Betsy prints for the insides and coordinating colours/prints for the outsides.

 

 

Voila!

 

 

 

Then I was hooked! I had to go bigger! So I searched for "buckets" and came across this great Fabric Buckets Tutorial on Apartment Apothecary. Mum and I actually worked on these together. She created this Liberty Strawberry Thief bucket (not sure of the details for the overhang fabric) and I made one out of my treasured Liberty Marina Seaflower print with Liberty Ciara fabric overhang. The tutorial was easy to follow and didn't take long at all. I think it took longer to decide on which Liberty prints to use! LOL

 

 

Here's a shot of the Betsy Liberty Picture Mount I made mum, to frame this beautiful watercolour print I found on Etsy via TeaDesigns1. The quote from movie The Help have always, and will always, be meaningful.

 

 

So a happy Liberty-filled Mothers Day bundle for mum!

 

My Mothers Day gift for mum 2015

 

And an extra-special Mothers Day bundle for me. Enough Liberty to make me want to squeal. But even more magical is that little glass bottle of sand that my baby girl made at school. What a beautiful surprise it was to pick her up at school and see the look of excitement on her face. That was the best gift I received this year.

 

My mothers day bundle 2015

 

Home Cooking With Mum --> Hot Cross Buns Tutorial

Have you ever made your own hot cross buns? Well, neither have I! I'm actually not a huge fan because of the fruit... yes I'm still like a fussy child :oP I don't like fruit in my yhogurt or my muffins, and certainly not in my hot cross buns. But! Mum has been raving about her hot cross bun recipe and Justin loves hot cross buns, so we decided to make them.

Here is how we went!

Utensils List

Bowls
Measuring cups/spoons
Cooking utensils (inc. pastry brush)
Sieve
Glad wrap and tea-towels
Small saucepan
Silicone mat (not required - bench is fine)
Piping bag (not required - any small plastic freezer/snaplock bag would work)

Ingredients List

Ready for action

For the buns:
1 ½ cups milk
7g sachet dried yeast
⅓ cup castor sugar
3 ½ cups plain flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
½ tsp salt
1 ½ cups dried mixed fruit
1 egg (at room temperature and lightly beaten)
50g melted butter

For the cross:
⅓ cup self-raising flour
¼ cup water

For the glaze:
½ cup water
⅓ cup caster sugar
1 tsp powdered gelatine

 

Instructions For The Buns:

1. Cover the dried mixed fruit with water in a bowl to soak for 1 hour (or until they are plumped up).

Plumped up mixed fruit after being soaked for an hour

Mum really wanted to drown them in rum but thought maybe it wouldn't be a good idea...

2. Heat milk to lukewarm, remove from heat, pour in to a large bowl.

I didn't know that it's important not to overheat the milk because hot milk will kill the yeast and those little soldiers have work to do!

3. Add the yeast and 1 tbsp of the sugar (not all the sugar!!).

Milk, yeast and sugar mixture

4. Cover with glad-wrap and place in a warm spot (out of reach of little fingers) for 20 minutes (or until frothy).

Soaking up some rays

5. While that's frothing, get the rest of the ingredients ready - like melting the butter and beating the egg.

6. Sift the flour, spices and salt into a large bowl.

Shake it

7. Once the milk mixture is frothy, add the melted butter and lightly beaten egg.

This is what the milk mixture will look like once the yeast has activated

Now we are ready to combine everything!

8. So add the remaining sugar to the flour mixture. Stir.

9. Next drain the mixed fruit and stir in.

Ready for the milk mixture

10. Finally, stir the milk mixture in gradually until a dough forms.

Mix it all up

11. Turn out and knead until smooth and elastic (approx. 6 mins)

Mum dug out her Tupperware silicone mat to knead the dough on - but you can do it on the bench ;o)

Splat

Keep the surface and your fingers lightly floured to reduce the stickiness of the blob.

Eck glad it's not me doing that :oP

Eck glad it's not me doing that :oP

Keep dusting and kneading the blob.

Needs more kneading

Needs more kneading

12. Place in a large oiled bowl and turn dough around in bowl to coat it in oil.

Ready to get rising

We spray-coated our bowl and just sprayed the dough once it was in the bowl.

13. Cover with plastic and place in a warm spot again for 1 hour (or until doubled in size).

I went and chased Isla around the yard in her new harem pants for a photo

This is the 'risen' result

14. Now that the dough has risen, punch it down (literally) and turn it out onto your floured work surface.

Punch it!

15. Knead for 3 minutes (or until smooth and elastic).

More kneading

Logan was trying to help

Ready for shaping

It was a bit sticky so mum added a bit of flour to her hands in the kneading process.

16. Shape into a 14cm x 24cm rectangle.

17. Cut lengthways into 3 even pieces.

Cut 12 portions

18. Then cut each length into 4.

19. Shape pieces into tall squares or balls.

Shape the buns with your hands

20. Place each bun 1cm apart into a lightly greased lamington pan.

Rise little buns, rise!

21. Cover with a clean tea towel and set aside in a warm place for 20 minutes.

They will rise again and hopefully join up.

Joined up - and looking rather squishy!

Whilst that's happening, make the cross mixture.

Instructions for the Cross:

1. Whisk flour and water together to form a paste.

The cross mixture

2. Scrape into a piping bag (or snaplock bag and cut the tip off) and pipe 3 long strips across the buns and then 4 strips down the buns. Make sense?

Crossing the buns

Ready to pop in the oven

3. Pop tray in a hot oven (200C) for 10 minutes.

4. Then reduce oven to 180C and cook for another 20-25 minutes (or until golden and cooked through).

Smells amazing

5. Stand 5 minutes.

Hot buns fresh out of the oven

Whilst you're waiting, make the glaze.

Instructions for the glaze

1. Place water, sugar, and gelatine in a saucepan over low heat.

2. Stir until sugar and gelatine dissolve. Remove.

3. Brush tops of warm buns with glaze.

Glazing is so simple

I asked mum what the gelatine is for and she said it gives the buns their glossy shine.

Glossy and ready for butter-smothering

4. Let them cool and pop them out to either smother in butter and devour or freeze for Easter weekend!

Happy Easter <3 <3 <3

Tab

#Easter, #Hotcrossbuns, #Easterfood, #Cookingtutorial, #Yum, #Cookingwithmum

 

Tutorial Tuesday --> Make Rainbow Coloured Rice In 3 Easy Steps!

I just knew that Isla would love something like rainbow rice. She is such a busy beaver and loves playing with containers and water and most things she shouldn't. And rice would normally fit into that category - you know the category of "get out of the pantry, there is nothing in there for you!". But I must admit that rice is pretty harmless and although usually very messy like sand (I hate sand) - when coloured like a rainbow, I'm suddenly not as concerned about the mess!

Who doesn't love a rainbow mess?

So I thought I would make a huge batch to play with AND use in pots as table decorations at the kids double birthday bash! I got help from this great blog: Learn With Play At Home. The link is here.

I followed the ratio of 1 tbsp vinegar to 1 cup of rice, and even the advice of doing a mass batch of 4 tbsp vinegar plus 4 cups rice. But there wasn't a suggestion about how much food colouring, so I'm sharing mine.

My magic formula is: 1 tsp colour + 4 tbsp white vinegar + 4 cups white rice = coloured rice!

I was going to make 5 colours, but decided to leave out the red so that the pink really stood out. So my rainbow consisted of pink, green, blue, and yellow. My inspiration was Peppa Pig - Isla's favourite tv character and the theme for the kids birthday party!

So here is my interpretation for a beautiful pot of pink/green/blue/yellow rainbow rice!

Tutorial Tuesday: How To Make Rainbow Coloured Rice In 3 Easy Steps

All you will need

Ingredients List:

• Food colouring (approx. 1 tsp of each colour, and remember - bottled colour gives brighter colours than the combo packs)
• White vinegar (approx. 4 tbsp/80ml x 4 batches = 320ml)
• Long white grain rice (I used approx. 200g per piled-up-cup and my batches were 4 cups per colour. So 200g x 4 cups x 4 colours = .... hmmm let me ask my calculator ;oP ... 3.2kg! You might use less but a big 5kg bag of Homebrand long grain rice is only about $7 I think. And the leftovers would make a great apricot chicken casserole!

Utensils List:

• Baking paper (wet rice can stick to other surfaces like alfoil and definitely to paper towel!)
• Clip seal bags (the bigger the better for the bigger batches and to prevent popping colour everywhere)
• Measuring cups and spoons (you'll need a '1 cup', a teaspoon, and a tablespoon)
• Gloves and apron, protective glasses and a tent (I'm just kidding - but all would be very handy if you're as clumsy as me ;o)

3 Simple Instructions:

1. Combine ingredients in a clip-seal baggie.

I opened and spread a clip seal bag so that it sat open for me to just pour in the ingredients.

For each big batch of colour, I added the magic formula: 1 tsp colour + 4 tbsp vinegar + 4 cups rice.

2. Seal bag well and smoosh.

WARNING: Be Gentle/Careful/Cautious!!!!!

And don't wear anything precious - or better yet, wear an apron!

I thought I was a pro and started super-smooshing and ended up with yellow rice e v e r y w h e r e !

Thankfully it was only yellow rice and I wasn't wearing anything fabulous.

Smooshing in progress

3. Pour rice out evenly on baking paper to air-dry.

Depending on the climate, the rice should only take 3-4 hours to dry but if you have time then leave each batch overnight.

Drying rice

Once dry, I poured my batches in to pots that I was using as table decorations at the party - to be sure that I had enough rice. I made MUCH more than I recommended for this tutorial because I needed about 10 pots for tables... and I wanted to have some for Isla to play with ;) Of course!

My potted colour!

As you can see, Isla was desperate to get to the bowls and mix them up for me.

So I popped her up on the table to help and she LOVED IT!

Pour in and mix!

She mixed them up for me and I threw her Peppa critters in there.

She loved covering them with rice and digging them out again.

Peppa and friends playing hide and seek in the rice!

So that was my big batch of rainbow rice made for the party.

And I let her play with the leftovers :)

It was a lot of fun.

I hope you give this a try and your kids have just as much fun! You could even get them involved in the making depending on their age. I know I was too scared to let Isla near the colour or vinegar (for obvious reasons) but she loved pouring the cup of rice into the bag. The great thing is that the measurements don't have to be specific so the kids can get as much in the bag as they can. And they can even help with the GENTLE smooshing of the bag... maybe you should hold the sealed end and close your eyes and hope for the best!

Good luck!!