Teachers deserve treats

In Scotland, school finishes for the academic year this week.  The kids get 6 glorious weeks of holidays, as do their hard-working and often under-appreciated teachers.  Whilst many of us Mums spend the preceding weeks trying to organise childcare or activities to stimulate the children and keep them busy, I felt it was high time the teachers were offered some indulgent treats for end-of-year gifts.  So, have you chosen a Becca Bakes treat for your teacher this year???

Last lesson before Christmas

My remit - as the school baking lady/parent volunteer baker - is to choose easy, fun, fast recipes, so that the kids don't lose interest part-way through and so that we have enough time to complete all the tasks in the allocated lesson time.  I had thought that this lesson's recipe (for simple, roll-out sugar cookies) fit that bill, but as John Steinbeck so aptly wrote many years ago, 'the best laid plans of mice and men aft gang awry'  (it's a good few years since I studied this book in high-school English Lit class, so if that quote isn't verbatim, then let's call it a paraphrase).

Here we can see the instruction board that the teacher made - not too many ingredients (top left), tasks (right hand side) or length of recipe (lower left) - right?

This recipe required a hand-mixer, so the teacher kindly brought in her vintage Kenwood number - some of the children had never seen nor used one, so it caused much merriment.

Everyone wanted a turn!

You won't be surprised to learn that the resultant dough was rather sticky, probably from being overworked.  So we just spread out more flour before rolling out the dough and stamping out the fluted circle shapes (I'm telling you the actual shape of cookie, because when you look further down you may not recognise those shapes as circles, bless them (we didn't have a spatula with which to lift up the cookies onto the tray))

Here we see a couple of the children rolling out the last possible bits of dough in order to stamp out just one more cookie!!

And the final tally - 3 trays of roll-out sugar cookies, counted just as the bell was ringing for the end of the period.  The school is gearing up for the St Andrews Day (November 30th) performance and then the Christmas Show so we won't have time for any more lessons this year.  Here's hoping they want me back next term/next year.  Happy Holidays kids!

Teacher Becca

Back to school for our baking group again this morning.  It was a bit less well organised than our first lesson, as I realised on Sunday evening that I hadn't confirmed the recipe we would be making this morning.  I looked through the book I had in mind, to find the Cheese Straws recipe and photocopied it and took it in to the school office for the teacher, Mrs F.  But I was busy yesterday, and hadn't had a chance to call her and see if that recipe was ok.

So I turned up at the school this morning and apologised but luckily the recipe was perfect, and she'd found time to do her images for the lesson.  Phew.

The children came into class, saw the board with all its information and their names against the particular task (removed for the photo) and got straight to work.  Mrs F was dealing with another student just outside the classroom and was proud of their good listening and remembering skills when she saw what they had done.

 The table all set out, some ingredients already weighed out...

 Mixing up the flour, butter and grated cheese with spoon.  Which didn't really work, so time to get messy!

Eww!

These were meant to be straws of cheese, but after being rolled out and cut by a group of excited children, they are just long fingers of cheese mix, ready for the oven.  Hope they taste good!!

Before I left, we agreed on the recipe for the next class and have agreed to exchange email addresses and try to agree the following classes recipe at the current class - that should put less pressure on us teachers  ;)

Hello Kitty comes to party at Becca Towers

Our kids have winter birthdays (well, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere they're in winter), so never really get to play outside during their parties.  It never seems to matter, but I'm aware of the lack of opportunity.  So I fancied giving the girls a party for going back to school.  It's Mini-2's first year of school, and today is the end of her first week of full days at school (they went only half-days for the first few weeks, to ease them in) - what more excuse does one need?

I also happened upon a really, really cute boxed party set of Hello Kitty.  The box had 8 matching paper plates, cups, napkins, party hats, and horns.  So fun, right?  And 3 months plus was a long time to wait to use it.

So I decided to challenge myself a little bit and try out a two-tier cake again (my birthday was the last, and first, one) and to match it to the napkin colours.  A local cakey friend, L, had Hello Kitty cutters that I borrowed (and have since bought my own) and I used them to make the little faces for the sides of the cake, and to make the cookies.  But first the cake...

I tried to match the colours of sugarpaste, and was quite pleased.  I made the pink myself, but bought some green sugarpaste and added in white until I was closer to the shade required.  The top of the cake looked quite bare, and wasn't perfectly flat and tidy.  So I remembered learning this trick for making ribbon when I was at cake school, and thought it would look perfect on top of the cake.  The girls loved it!

The top tier is chocolate cake coated and filled with chocolate ganache - another challenge.  The Aussie's seem to use ganache almost exclusively, in place of buttercream, but I found it quite difficult to manoeuvre and get smooth.  So if you look too closely, you'll see the bumps in the green cake.  The lower tier was vanilla cake with buttercream, at which I have more practice - so looks a bit smoother.

Now, the cookies.  Here they are naked, ready to be baked.

 And deliciously golden, out of the oven.

 And finally, dressed in their matching green and pink outfits :)

Here is the table all laid and ready for the party guests (we have 6 chairs, so the girls were able to choose 2 friends each), set with the matching paper crockery at each place and the co-ordinating snacks (red grapes an fresh green peas)

 And finally a close up of the cake and cookies in situ - welcome to school girls!!!

(an update - the girls never played outside during this party either!! ha ha. they were having too much fun messing about indoors)

Choc chip cookies for the first day of school

One of the ladies in the American cake forum to which I belong on Facebook makes cookies for her kids every first-day-of-school.  She had mentioned it in a post and I thought it sounded wonderful.  The reason she had posted her pic and info was because her son is a senior this year (and daughter in college), so she wasn't planning to make the cookies, thinking he was too old for them.  Then he surprised her on his way out the door, saying I hope you're baking cookies today Mom! 

Sadly I had missed the girls' first day of school, but really wanted to instigate the tradition.  So I figured I could do it for Mini-2's first full day of school - any excuse, right?!  

I chose to use the Carnation recipe, as it was so good last time and you can keep any uncooked dough for up to a week in the fridge.  It needs to be refrigerated for about half an hour or more before cutting, so I wrapped it in foil first time, and cling film this time.

And then got to cut nice, thick slices of cookie - ready to be baked fresh for their arrival (well, for me to go and collect them as us all to walk home)...

 Mmmm, fresh-baked choc and peanut chunk cookies with a tall, cold glass of milk.  Hungry yet?

 (This last photo is another batch, made almost a week later when friends came to visit.  I've included it because this post is being written some time later ;)  )

A new year, another birthday

One of the school mums got in touch after the Christmas Fayre, to order some cupcakes for her daughter's 9th birthday, lucky us!  The brief was pink and purple, with 9's and initials of the guests and the rest was up to me.  This was similar to Dea's 6th birthday last summer, so would be fun, as in this case it was maxi, rather than mini, cupcakes, thus allowing more space for the decorations.

About a week ago, I received an email changing the details slightly as not all the invitees had replied yet.  So the 'named' cakes would just have the birthday girl's name and age on them, and the rest decorated accordingly.  No problem.

I baked them all vanilla, and washed up while they were cooling.  Then on to the icing, making sure that I separated the batch exactly in half to get the correct amount of pink and purple to ice all the cupcakes.  I had made the initials and number yesterday, in order that it should solidify in time, and got all the decorations I had prepped and planned ready on the table.  I felt butterflies, flowers, stars, hearts and glitter would suit the occassion, and really hope Mother and Daughter love their cakes...

P.S.  They loved the cakes!!  The Mum wrote on a Facebook craft group page 'Just collected 9yolds birthday cupcakes from Becca Bakes. They are fantastic! One v happy girl (who is also planning how she will reuse the lovely packaging too). Would recommend :) — with Becca Bakes'  and this is how they were displayed for the party... just lovely.

End-of-year school teacher thankyou gifts

I've been lucky enough to get orders for gifts-for-teachers.  Most are for cupcakes, I've done singles, fours, and sixes.  And one order changed from 10 singles to a whole cake.  There's nothing much to tell you about this, it's kind of self-explanatory.  Except to say that luckily I knew that 2 orders were for the same teachers, so I was able to make them fairly different.

Vanilla sponge, layered with pink icing and raspberry jam and covered in lilac-coloured vanilla buttercream

The brief was pink and butterflies.  Hope these nursery teachers love them

There are a few of these for some lucky teachers, aren't they cute?

And I believe these are going to the same class teachers, so are different colours, swirls and sprinkles.