Meanwhile…
In between the bouts of navel-gazing which I do so, er, well, the small girl and I have also been baking. At the moment, the small girl’s favourite activities are mostly house-related – she cooks, bakes, cleans, and does the washing-up. If I had known that one could expect a reasonable return, in housework terms, on the investment in small people before the age of three, I’d've had a brace of them years ago. Anyway, obviously this cooking-baking-cleaning is to be encouraged, not least because it means we do lots of things together that I really enjoy doing (though the cleaning… not so much), and on Sunday we managed to make our first batch of genuinely joint-effort cheese biscuits. Viz.:
First we create the bedlam. Note presence of Nutkin, inveterate chef extraordinaire.
Then we spend at least half an hour washing it all up, many, many times.*
Then we sit back and marvel at what we’ve made. Not least as our child-friendly biscuit cutter set includes a star, a moon, a flower, a heart, and A PIG. The mind boggles.
Then we flog our wares to an unsuspecting Quercus.
The recipe we used was from Hugh Fernley Whittingstall‘s The River Cottage Family Cookbook, and was very successful, though we added A LOT more flour than the recipe indicated before the dough was vaguely workable. The best bit, mind you, was getting to use the most excellent rolling pin set that LQS bought us the small girl, from the Early Learning Centre. They are all sorts of fabulous, and far nicer colours than on the ELC site. My favourite is the one with spots, which leaves a sort of crater-like set of circles and spots on the dough, making the moon-shaped biscuits we cut out very entertaining.
The original recipe has these as cheese straws, but we liked shapes better. It ended up as something like this:
Cheesy Biscuits
Ingredients
150g grated cheese (we used strong cheddar, and ignored the ‘finely’ indication on the grating instructions)
100g butter (we used a soya replacement)
About 150 – 200g plain flour (the recipe thinks 100g, but that was just a sticky unrollable mess for us, perhaps because of the soya margarine)
A goodly sprinkle of chilli powder
The yolk of an egg (and very nearly the white, and the shell, in our case)
Then…
Bung it all in a reasonably large bowl and mangle it about the place until it forms itself into a nice ball of cheesey loveliness. Cover the entire universe in flour, then roll out the dough to, well, anywhere between half an inch thick and about three milimetres (why yes, I do think in feet and centimetres – how did you know?) before bashing the ol’ cutters through it as if there’s no tomorrow. Pop them on some trays, and stick in the oven at about 200°c for about ten minutes or so; HFW reckons twenty degrees higher, but our version looked like burning on the edges at that temperature, so we took the coward’s way out, rather than keeping our eagle eyes on them, and just turned the heat down. They lasted all of twenty-four hours, and I’m only surprised they were around that long, frankly, given our cheese-hoovering natures, as a family.
We also gave a vegan recipe a run for the first time over the weekend. I say ‘for the first time’, which is not to say that we’ve never eaten vegan food before, but that this is the first time I’ve used a recipe which was avowedly such, and the conclusion I drew was that, rather like my experiences with Cranks recipes, it was brilliant not least because the vegan bit was incidental to its general stuffaliciousness. It was this macaroni cheese, and yes, most of the reviewers are right about it. I’m not writing the recipe out in full only because we didn’t really change anything, other than to approach measurements of ingredients with a blithe spirit which scorns the use of such mortal concepts as scales; I probably used twice the quantity of vegetables for the sauce, and I added a stockcube to the water in which they cooked. Definitely going into the repertoire, though, that one.
And before I forget, please to be noting of the tileage which is encroaching on the background of the picture. in which the small girl is washing up, above. I started tiling this weekend, having had the tiles sitting in our bedroom (as you do) since, oh, the dark ages; so far, I’ve managed three rows, about halfway along the big wall behind the counters, but I have lots of sticky bits still to go, including tiling around the sink and – I shudder to think of it – the tap. But they’re ridiculously gorgeous colours, them there tiles, and I’m pretty pleased with the way they’ll look eventually. Plus, I can disguise any ineptitude in my tiling with the phrase ‘handmade’ and ‘artisan’, given that the tiles vary in size by as much as half a centimetre, and haven’t got a straight edge between them. Ahem.
They pick up so much just watching us doing the household jobs. I find it always takes longer when they are helping, but I like to keep the thought in my head that eventually I’ll save lots of time when they take over the job. I taught my three year old to vacuum his room yesterday, but it turns out he knew all along and is more thorough than me. Who knew? I’m not sure I can rely on him doing it on a regular basis, so I’m not redundant yet.
Nice tiles.
oh my — i am deeply in love with those tiles….
i wonder, if when the small girl is finished with your dishes, you might send her over so she can help me with mine? i vaguely remember when my kidlets were keen on helping with housework –evidently i didn’t nurture that inclination well enough. then again, they do enjoy mopping – perhaps it’s the sloshing about of water on the floor that they find appealing…
Tileage duly noted!! Beautiful jewel-y tiles – yum!
If the bisquits went down that well, I may attempt to make them myself. Sadly, not having a Small Person, I have to do them myself. The only consolation is that the dogs are good at cleaning up floor spillages of cheese/biscuits/anything.
the 4yrold granddaughter adores ‘helping’–providing it’s not her stuff she’s to pick up! the 2yrold grandson is still afraid of the vacuum, & isn’t all that thrilled with mixers, either. yum! cheese bisuits! we also are a family of chese-ies
Cheryl: and there was me hoping that these seeds of helpfulness, once sewn, would turn out to be perennials!
Mel: hello! Nice to see you here again. Yes – they are indeed proving rather lovely, and more-so the more I get on the wall.
OverWyreGrower: do have a go – they are rather lovely, but they don’t hang around long. And as for the dogs getting biscuits – well, I am shocked!
petoskystone: the small girl went through a phase of not being at all keen on either the mixer or the hoover, but she seems, fortunately, to be -at least temporarily – over that. Long may it last; it was actually getting to be quite tricky to find a time to sort the floors… and in our house, they look terribly well-lived-in at the best of times!
Oh I LOVE tiling – such a return on effort, don’t you think? And your tiles are absolutely, positively perfect for you and your lovely house. Also – the marvelous thing about tiling, the magical moment? Is definitely putting on the grout – it’s so good to see all those dark lines and things turn into a finished, real wall all grown up and everything.
Oh, biscuits, how I love thee! And tilings….also love tiling strangely enough. Does it remind you of icing a cake, or is that just me?
I’m have a feeling I need to make cheesy biscuits now – although mine clearly won’t be as wonderful as yours ‘cos my cookie cutters aren’t half so glam.
Re: vegan food – I can wholeheartedly recommend ‘The Heretic’s Guide to Vegan Cookery’ by Andy Murray (no, not that one) which has the most fabulous recipes and is extremely funny to boot. Andy is the best chef I have ever come across, he currently works at the Earthspirit Centre near Glastonbury and prior to that ‘Rainbows End’ cafe in Glastonbury – I have eaten the best vegan/vegetarian food I have ever experienced at both places. ISBN 978-0-9560868-0-8.
And I love the tiles!! Good luck with the tap…
Megan: definitely, on the return on effort – the only bit I find scary is ensuring that they’re not slowly climbing upwards to one side or something similarly perplexing, but once I’m on a roll, I find tiling (and indeed grouting) almost therapeutic.
Amanda: nope, not just you – it’s the quality of the grout, I think, partly, and yes, it’s one of my preferred DIY tasks.
Moonroot: that sounds like a good book to get hold of; I’m pretty sure that I’ve encountered his cooking without knowing who its author was, if that makes sense, so I’ll be adding this to my birthday list!
so lovely EW! It’s so much fun when genuine joint baking efforts can happen. That girl of yours looks adorable doing the dishes…heeeehee : ) That River Cottage Family Cookbook is a good ‘un. You’ve reminded me to pull mine off the shelf again.
Vegan baking can be pretty fabulous hey? I just snaffled a rather large slice of vegan lime and chocolate cheesecake this afternoon and it was a bit tooo good. Can’t take credit for that one though…
And I have to say I’m hugely fancying your tile-work! The colours are stunning. I’ll have me that beautiful bench too : )