Every girl loves rainbows, and cookies

The girls get two weeks off school at Christmas-time, and because it's the Holiday season it kind of doesn't feel like they're really off school in the same way as other holiday periods.  I suppose it's because it's not as easy to arrange playdates the way we normally would - as other children are busy with their own families, cousins, grandparents and so on.  Nonetheless I managed to get hold of one friend, M, who enjoys baking too - and we decided upon using up some Smarties to make Rainbow Cookies.

They were very pleased to each get a chance to do some ingredient adding, some dough mixing and some cookie shaping.  As you can see, Mini-2 needed a helping hand to reach the counter-top comfortably.

Mini-1 is really rather tall, so needed no additional help to roll out the cookies and place them on the prepared baking tray.

Equally tall is her classmate M, who also enjoyed deciding just quite how much mix was to go in each precise dollop of dough...

Once baked, we noticed that the colour seemed to have baked right out!  I asked for advice on my Facebook page, and it was suggested that Smarties have mostly  natural colourings, so they lose them faster. I was recommended to try M&M's next time, as they wouldn't fade out in baking...  Of course, the girls didn't mind at all.  They were thrilled to be able to eat their delicious creations immediately, and take some home for the rest of M's family.  Well done girls!

Cookies and cream bark, and peppermint bark. Christmas treat time

We love to make bark - it's so easy and fun, and there are so many variations and possibilities.  And it always taste so good!  We started, way back when, with classic peppermint bark, and wanted to make a fresh batch for this Christmas.  I did it with milk chocolate, because I had another idea for add-ins for the white chocolate...

We started by crushing the candy canes as best we could with a rolling pin.

And when we'd been in Australia back in October, I'd seen some Christmas coloured M&M's and just had to buy them.  I had felt they would come in handy for something around about December-time, and this seemed the perfect use for them.  

Add in some candy snowflakes, pop it in the fridge for a few hours and crush it up a bit, and Christmas 2014 peppermint bark was born!

Then it was time to try out that new idea I had - strawberry Oreo bark...  We had seen some Strawberry candy canes and bought them specifically for Mini-2, as she isn't keen on mint at all.  Once they were crushed, we added in some crushed mini Oreo's to the mix.

 I added some holly and Christmas tree sprinkles and popped this tray in the fridge too.

Cracked up and popped in a tin lined with baking paper and this new version of bark was ready for dessert too.  Merry Christmas one and all 

Our twin birthday girls

Both Mini-1 and Mini-2 have twins.  I may have mentioned that before.  Or not.  But I feel that I have, hmmm... Anyway, these other children aren't technically our twins, you understand, but rather children born to different mothers on the same day in the same ward of the same hospital with whom we are good friends.

So anyway, to cut what could be an unnecessarily long story short, we were going to see Mini-1's twin on their actual birthday (which always falls within the Christmas school holidays, boo hiss) for a playdate at our place - woo hoo!!!  

And so to the cake, of course.  Again, Mini-1 was particular in her desires and still declared green to be her favourite colour (that'll be 3 years now, gosh), whereas her twin said pink and white.  I had bought a number 8 shaped cake maker and fully intended to use that somehow.  Well, it was going to be 2 and a half years until I'd next get the chance, wasn't it?!

It looked good on the pack, right?

 But it was quite tricky to assemble.  The batter was tinted pink, as per the twin's request.

Oooh, it worked!!  But it proved quite tricky to take off the backing sheet, so I didn't dare try to slice and fill it with jam.  I figured that the kids would eat it regardless, and not be too bothered about the lack of a middle layer/filling.

We bought 5 bags of Smarties in order to have enough to make the stripes I wanted across the top of the cake.  You would think that nearly 3/4 of a kilogram of coloured choc sweeties would be plenty, right?  Wrong.  After the girls separated out all the colours, there were hardly any orange ones and it didn't look like there were going to be enough to do the lines really close together - as I had planned.  I had no intention of going out and buying more Smarties (because I knew we'd need to eat all the leftovers, and I really, really prefer M&M's) so had to re-think the spacing between the lines.

Et voila, we see the final result!  As it happened, I could probably have placed the lines a little closer together (and perhaps, if you're being a touch unkind, a little straighter, but who's checking with a ruler?) because there were a fair few leftovers.  But not really that many in the right colours.

The girls were tremendously impressed, as 8 year olds faced with cake and candy are wont to be.  

Here we see them blowing out the candles together.

 Then posing separately for the cutting - happy birthday gorgeous girls!!!