Mummy's Kitchen - Chocolate monsters

So this was supposed to be chocolate Octopuses...it went wrong (like many of my bakes lol!) and we just said they were monsters.

 Ingredients needed:
- 125g Soft Margarine
- 125g Caster sugar
- 1 Medium egg
- 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
- 175g Plain flour

To decorate:
- 25g Butter
- 50g Icing sugar
- Smarties!

First we measured everything out, then we got started! Put the caster sugar and margarine together in the bowl and get stirring!

Once creamy you can add the flour (sift it) and the cocoa powder and egg then stir into a dough.

Once doughy you need to make into a ball with your hands, this is messy work!

Rawr sticky monsters!

Place the dough into cling film and wrap up, you will need to place it into the freezer for 30 mins, our needed an hour!

Once hard enough, unwrap, cut in half and pop the other half back into the freezer whilst you work on the first half. Cut the dough into sections about two fingers in width, put flour on you hands and roll into think sausage before flattening carefully. With a blunt knife, cut down to make the legs, using two finger pinch and separate to make the octopus legs ( or do what I did, give up on that annoying thing and make monsters! as the coolness of the dough is wearing off and it's getting sticky!)

The only octopus I made, so annoyingly sticky as it  warmed.

Pop them on a baking tray and into the oven for 10 - 12 mins!

we need a bigger tray! our monsters.

Then make up the icing sugar and butter and use it as a kind of glue for your sweets to decorate.

our monsters!

Kids really enjoyed the decorating process

I couldn't resist adding the rest of the butter icing for mine mmm

Made cheese catapillars and snakes today, will post tomorrow x

Mummy's Kitchen

Ok so I was going to give up on the blog for awhile, I felt it didn't have any purpose and that I was just writing random things and I really didn't want it to be for that!

So whilst I was picking something for us to bake/cook today Chris said it was silly to just stop blogging and maybe blog about my bakes with the kids etc. I do bake a lot and I'm always trying to cook new things and I think blogging about them will spur me on to try baking more and more yummy treats.

So today we made pizzas from scratch. Sounds easy? Nope. I've honestly never made a pizza from scratch and so took up the challenge since Chris says I've not lived til I've cooked one.
Debbie (my mother in law) gave us lots of little kids cook books with some really funky ideas which you'll see a lot of on here as my daughter has picked out so many things she would like to make.

The cook book

 So to make a pizza base you need:
* 225g (8oz) Plain flour
* 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 2 tablespoons oil
* 150 ml milk (this is variable as I found out with the first pizza I made)
* Cheese, grated.
* Tomato puree
* Any toppings you may want. We chose ham, sweetcorn and peppers.

Oven goes on Gas mark 6

Measurements

So we first measured out the ingredients and then added the flour and salt together, after making a hole in the middle of the mix. We measured out the milk and added the oil before pouring it into the mix slowly.

Kids loved helping out

We then (using blunt knives) stirred the mixture into a dough.

 After it formed a ball like dough I removed it and placed on a floury surface to be shaped using a rolling pin.

The kids didn't like the texture of the dough and so I did this part

Then you add the tomato sauce, cheese and any other toppings you so wish.

Ellie only wanted cheese on hers as did Evan

Now this next bit is where I realised I had gone wrong, I followed the instructions carefully (haveing not made a pizza before from scratch) and it ended up awfully and has left me wondering whether it'salways good to follow the damned instructions.

The base had turned soft and useless

The kids didn't mind the pizza in bits and we cooked it anyway, after I had salvaged it. However! I am not one to give up, I had another go, this time I changed the milk quantity to 100ml.

Try, try again

This time the dough was perfect, easy to roll and easy to place on the tray. Hooray! The pizza's went in for 20 minutes, ours a bit longer as I made it a little thicker too.

Finished result was yummy!

Evan was too busy eating and that is his attempt at a thumbs up, one day he will get it!

Our pizza, it was lovely. 

 So overall pretty good! I know it's an easy recipe but I'd never done it and thought it would be fun for the kids to make. Next time we think BBQ sauce will be added to ours and I'll purchase some Mozzarella too! This was a last minute decision to make, I always have flour etc so figured we'd give it a shot.

Ellie has already chosen chocolate Octopuses for our next make so watch this space!