Christmas ornaments

I stumbled across this recipe on Pinterest and will try to link to it. I was planning on making salt dough ornaments when I went into the kids’ preschool so they could be painted but then I found these and thought they looked prettier and would make a smoother surface for painting.

1/2 cup corn flour
1 cup bicarbonate of soda
3/4 cup water

Mix in saucepan over medium-low heat until mixture binds together (lumpy porridge texture).
Remove from heat and place mixture in bowl and cover with damp cloth.
When cooled put on corn floured surface and knead well.
Roll out and cut shapes from it. Use a straw to create hole to put ribbon in after baking.
Use fingers to make prints or rubber stamps.

Place in preheated oven of 80•Celcius for an hour. Turn after half an hour.

I placed mine in the fridge to hold shapes like when I am baking biscuits but they still curled at the edges. I think the website I found this on said don’t roll out too thinly to stop this happening.

Here are some pictures of some cut out shapes from when I did this craft at pre school.

I tied thin Christmas string and used them as gift tags on their teacher’s presents.
I used craft paint that we have used in the past for painting plaster of Paris figures. The website recommended a clear lacquer to Jo over the top but I don’t have any.

Car cake

It’s daddy’s birthday and the kids decided he needed a car cake. My friend had bought the silicon car mould from Kmart. I had helped her bake it and we had a fun time with overloading the mould so it toppled over and spilt.

To make my life easier I used two cake mixes rather than from scratch like I usually do. I gave the kids a bowl and mix each and they made their cake mixes.

We then filled the mould.

It didn’t quite fill but when I added extra with my friend that’s when it became top heavy and overflowed. I hoped it would rise enough. I probably should have made from scratch and it might have risen a bit more uniformly. Unfortunately it rose more in the middle and it ended up crumbly and the bonnet breaking off. I had also added chic chips which sank and hurt the uniform look. I chose a butter cake as I thought chocolate too grown as I wanted to ice it with a colourful icing.

I wrapped it up and put it in the freezer.
I got it out today and the two pieces were frozen together and I wasn’t able to join the two pieces together with icing.

I grabbed my container of frosting, two tablespoons of nuttalex and some icing sugar. I was being lazy but about 1/3 – 1/2 a cup. We beat it up and added the food colouring which for the first time I was using natural colours which aren’t as intense as artificial so we ended up with a light green cake. We decorated it with left over lollies from gingerbread house making yesterday.

You can’t even see the cracks or where it fell apart. I would have liked to be a bit more careful with the icing but I had impatient kids.

Christmas cards

Emily writing in her Christmas cards.

She copied my writing of their name. Alexander has added to and from on his cards and a few other words but Emily is learning still which side of the card to start from.
The cards we made earlier attempting to do fingerprint lights.

I drew a curly line and the kids used their fingers to create the lights.

We then glued the piece of paper onto a blank card and stamped a very merry Christmas inside.

Alexander is usually reluctant to write and I was happy if he just wrote to and from but he has decided to write more. Not sure if he will do this for every card.

Brownie Christmas trees

Christmas parties are coming and I found myself at 8:30 last night needing to go some baking. I didn’t feel like making cookie dough and cutting shapes so I remembered seeing brownie Christmas trees on Pinterest.

I have an easy brownie recipe which I get many compliments for.

2 tubs of 140g apple purée
1/3 cup cocoa
3/4 cup self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
all dry sifted on top
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Mix until just combined
Usually I add chocolate chips at this point but instead I had a mini tube of green and red m&m’s and poured them in.
Pour into lined tin and bake 25-30 mins in 175• C oven.
Cool in tin (put slice of bread on top to stop it cracking) 10 minutes, turn out to further cool down on wire rack.

So at this point I went to bed, well covered brownies first)

Next morning I cut brownies into 4 rectangles.

Then I cut triangles out of the rectangles. I had a few wonky off cuts at the end.

Open up the packet of mini candy canes (don’t we all have them lying around the house at home?)
Break off the hook part and insert straight part into triangle to make tree trunk.

I had tubes of writing gel and I decorated some and the kids decorated them with zig zags of tinsel and a yellow blob at the top for the star and then a dusting of icing sugar.

And serve!