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One of my favourite memories from childhood is going blackberry picking along the lanes near where we lived. The scrapes we got from the brambles were worth it once we’d collect a bucket full of berries for mum to turn into a crumble. I remember always finding the ripest, juiciest, plumpest berry just a little too high to reach.

And one of the best things I think about being a parent is sharing your memories with your children and getting to do all the fun things again with them. This week we’ve made the most of a few sunny evenings and been blackberry picking on the lane nearby. B and L had a little wicker basket to fill – although most of theirs were eaten before we got home.

(If you haven’t got any wild blackberries near you, how about visiting a pick your own farm?)

And what to do with your blackberries?

The girls wanted to make juice so they squashed and sieved some berries and mixed it with apple juice. It tasted great (and gave you a wonderfully purple moustache when you drank it!)

I love to make a blackberry and apple crumble with a topping made from 3oz butter rubbed into 6oz flour, with a 1oz of butter and 3 tablespoons of oats sprinked in – maybe some cinnamon too.

English Mum has a recipe for blackberry jam I’m going to try.

The Pioneer Woman’s recipe for blackberry ice cream would be great to go in the homemade cornettos we made yesterday.

Do you have any blackberries growing near you? Or any recipe ideas to share?

This post is happily shared with The Gallery at Sticky Fingers which this week is all about ‘A Memory’

and with SevenClownCircus Wordful Wednesday

and with Life as a Mom’s Frugal Friday

One of our favourite summer treats is homemade ice cream cornettos. Great fun to make and ever so yummy.

To make some you will need: wafer ice cream cones, soft scoop vanilla ice cream, raspberries, icing sugar, chocolate, fudge

Keep the ice cream in the freezer until you need to use it – you don’t want to melt it and re-freeze it.

(The quantities given below made 10 small cones, with some tasting and nibbling as we went along)

Chop up 100g chocolate and 100g fudge into small chunks.

Melt 200g  chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water.

Whizz 100g of raspberries and a dessert spoon of icing sugar to make a raspberry sauce.

Wrap each cornet in a strip of greaseproof paper, held in place with sticky tape.

Paint the inside of each cornet with melted chocolate using a pastry brush. Make sure you get a nice pool of chocolate in the bottom  so you get a chocolatey treat at the end of your cornet.

Wait until the the chocolate has set  inside the cornet (about 5-10 mins)

Fill with layers of ice cream, raspberry sauce, fudge and chocolate. Work quickly so the ice cream doesn’t melt. Fill over the rim of the cornet, inside the greaseproof paper for that authentic cornetto style.

Pop back in the freezer for a little while so the sauce can set, then remove the greaseproof paper and…

Enjoy!

You can’t beat home made cornettos for a great summer treat.

Happily shared with We Are That Family and

For a quick tea after school, an easy meal at the weekend, or to mix-and-match a bit to suit kids with assorted fussiness, you can’t go far wrong with:

Quesadillas : Cheese Tortillas

Quick photo grabbed before the kids started eating!

You will need:

A pack of tortilla wraps (8 wraps makes enough for a family of 4, or for 6 kids)

A mound of grated cheese

A selection of flavours: we like finely chopped onion, peppers, sweetcorn, coriander

You need to:

Place a tortilla wrap in a frying pan (no oil needed).

Pop some cheese on top.

Let the kids choose which extras they want to customise their quesadilla and pop them on top of the cheese.

Add another tortilla wrap on top to make a sandwich.

Dry fry for a couple of minutes, then flip with a spatula and dry fry the other side for a couple of minutes.

Slice like a pizza & it’s ready to eat.

We like to serve them with soured cream and guacamole.

This is a nice recipe to use if you fancy trying some new ‘international’ food with your kids and links in very well with the book Come and Eat with Us (Discovery Flaps) which was created with Oxfam and shows families in different countries shopping for food, cooking and eating. It introduces the idea of there being many similarities and differences around the world and gives lots to talk about.

So imagine you are your child’s teacher. You’ve spent the last school year taking care of 25 lively, noisy, energetic infants. You’ve listened to all their news, wiped noses, fastened coats, resolved squabbles,  as well as rather a lot of teaching too. Wouldn’t you like to walk into the staff room at playtime on the last day of term to find this…

We couldn’t decide what to make for L’s pre-school teachers as a thank you present. We knew we wanted something homemade that L could help make. These cakes fit the bill perfectly. We used our never fail cake recipe with a butter icing topping. L helped with the weighing, sieving, mixing, egg cracking, cake case counting and spoon licking. The little flags add a cute flourish on top. We wrote ‘with love from’ on one end of a strip of paper and L drew a picture on the other, but you could go with whatever design you like and even print images from a photo. Each strip was folded round a cocktail stick and held in place with a little glue. Super easy, super cute.

It may be a cliche but, in our house at least, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach – which makes these Chocolate Chip Cookies the perfect gift for Fathers’ Day. The recipe is easy, and very yummy, so with just a little help your children should be able to bake some ready to give this Sunday.

You will need:

4oz butter (at room temperature)

4oz sugar

8oz self raising flour

1 dessert spoon golden syrup

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

2 dessert spoons of milk

2 handfuls of chocolate chips (white, milk  or dark chocolate)

To make them:

1. Beat the butter and sugar together.

2. Add the syrup.

3. Warm the milk (10 secs-ish in microwave) and add the bicarbonate of soda.

4. Add in the flour and chocolate chips and stir to make the dough.

5. Make balls of dough and press them onto a greased baking tray.

Allow plenty of room to spread

6. Bake for about 25 minutes* in an oven at gas mark 3-4 / 160-180C.

* This will depend on how big your cookies are. We think less (baking time) is more, as we like chewy rather than crunchy cookies.

Wrap them in cellophane and add a hand written note, and have a happy Fathers’ Day.

Happily shared with …

A delicious and easy receipe when you’re barbequeing, and just right for children, is:

Barbeque Bananas

Take one banana per person and slice down the centre. Fill the slit with chocolate chips.

Wrap each banana in a tinfoil parcel and place on the barbeque after the main courses has been cooked. The remaining heat from the coals will bake the bananas and melt the chocolate.

Unwrap* your banana parcels, add a scoop of icecream and enjoy.

*This is going to be hot of course, so leave it to a grownup who’s wearing oven gloves.

Why not use a disposable barbeque and head off for a picnic in the great outdoors?

For hot and cranky kids these homemade ice lollies are just the thing to cool down, and to make sure they’re getting enough fluids in hot weather. It’s great to have a batch ready for when they get home from school and they’re feeling frazzled.

You can use fruit to make your own juices, or use cartons of bought fruit juice.  If you’re using shop bought juice it’s worth checking the ingredients label if you want to avoid added sugar. We went with apple and mango juices, but the choice is yours.

To make multi-coloured layer lollies: Part fill your lolly containers with a fruit juice. Pop in the freezer until frozen.

Top up with a different juice…

Then put your lolly sticks on top. Pop them back in the freezer until they’re all frozen and you have them ready and waiting for the next lot of sunshine.

Happily shared with Works For Me Wednesday

For an afterschool tea, expecially when you have several children to feed, I find you can’t go wrong with this recipe for ciabatta pizza. For large families or childminders providing afterschool care it can be difficult to find something everyone will eat. With this recipe you can easily vary the toppings on each ciabatta base so everyone is happy – and even let the kids make their own pizza, choosing the toppings they like best.

Start by switching your grill on and slicing your ciabatta loaf in half lengthways to make your base. Pop the ciabatta under the grill to lightly toast, so you don’t end up with a soggy pizza. Then you just need to add 3 layers on top:

Layer one is some kind of sauce: tomato puree, chopped tomatoes (from a tin is fine) or pesto

Layer two is some flavour: sliced ham or bacon, peppers, onions, olives, sweetcorn, oregano,  whatever you have in the fridge

Layer three is some  cheese: mozarella or cheddar works well

Pop under the grill until the cheese melts and is everything is nicely toasted.

Then let the kids tuck in and enjoy.

This tea loaf recipe is easy to make, tastes delicious and with a fairly low butter and sugar content, combined with dried fruits, it’s a healthy pudding choice to give to your kids. It freezes well, so you can slice it, wrap the individual slices and then take them out of the freezer when you need them to add to lunch boxes.

Here’s the recipe:

Healthy Tea Loaf Recipe

Ingredients:
300g dried raisins, cherries and/or mixed peel
225ml hot tea (we use Earl Grey)
50g butter
100g brown sugar
1 egg
225g self-raising flour
sugar to sprinkle on the top (optional)

1. Soak the fruit overnight in the hot tea.
2. Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin.
3. Beat the butter and sugar together, then beat in the egg.
4. Sift in the flour and mix in.
5. Add the fruit and any remaining tea.
6. Spoon into the loaf tin and level off the surface.
7. If you have a sweeter tooth you can sprinkle 1-3 teaspoons of sugar on top of the loaf at this point.
8. Bake for 1 hour at 180C / 160C fan / Gas 4.
9. Check it’s cooked through by sticking a skewer in the centre – if it comes out clean, the loaf is ready.
10. Leave to cool completely in the tin. Then slice and enjoy.

Like some more recipes?

How about:

Banana Yoghurt Cake

Raisin Oat Cookies

Classic Gingerbread

The Best Birthday Cake Ever

Car Sandwiches and Traffic Light Jelly

A simple bread dough is a perfect medium for children to explore with. It’s easy to make using ingredients you can keep in your storecupboard and I find children always take great pleasure in using ‘real grown-up’ materials. There are lots of ways you can use a bread dough to let your children play with counting, measuring, pouring, cutting. Today we’ve been teaching the alphabet with bread. We’ve a recipe and a song to share with you.

Weigh 500g of strong bread flour and a teaspoon of salt out into a big bowl. Little thought it felt very tickly.

Practise your scissor skills to add a 7g sachet of fast-action dried yeast.

Pour in 300ml of warm water and a tablespoon of olive oil using good hand-eye co-ordination. Little liked mixing the colours to combine all the ingredients into a ball of dough.

Develop strength in your fingers by kneading the dough for 5 minutes on a floured surface. (Getting fingers ready to one day hold a pencil and write well.)

Try out a different texture as you spread a little oil on a baking sheet.

Introduce some letters by making your own dough alphabet. (If you want to use the recipe to make a proper loaf you can shape it and then leave it to prove for 45 minutes before baking.)

Put your letters on the baking sheet and bake in an oven pre-heated to Gas 7/ 220C for about 10 minutes, depending on the size of your letters. (Bake for 25 minutes if you’re making a whole loaf.)

If you can spot the letters in your name you can eat them!

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