Welsh Cakes: The activity plan

	For reference, Guides are aged 10 – 14 Break the girls up into Patrols/ groups of 6-8
WELSH CAKES
Equipment: Scone cutter/ or a clean cup or mug Fat to grease your pan (butter on a piece of kitchen towel) Said pan: skillet, heavy based frying pan rolling pin Mixing bowl Pallette knife/ fish slice Clean hands
Ingredients: 8oz plain flour 4oz butter (Basics/ Economy butter is perfect) 3-4oz caster sugar 4-5oz dried fruit (optional) 1 egg 1/2 tsp sweet mixed/ cake spice This makes about 24 Welsh cakes, so ideal for a Patrol of 6-8 girls	If doing this with Guides it is an ideal Patrol cooking activity for the summer months. Unlike pasta the fire doesn’t need to be kept burning for too long, so for new girls to making a cooking fire this is a great introduction to outdoor cooking.
Instructions: Set your fire – usual way, get at least one metal fire bucket of water by you, turf your spot/ use a fireplace, collect your wood, start with punk, build up with small sticks/ twigs and get bigger as it establishes. Make sure this is somewhere safe and that you have a leader with you to supervise. Wash your hands Put the butter and flour in the mixing bowl and rub the butter into the flour until your mixture resembles breadcrumbs (like you’re making a crumble) Add the sugar and fruit Add the egg and mix relatively gently with your hands until it comes together as a ball of dough Flour the worktop/ a table Roll out until about 1cm thick and cut out as many circles as you can (with the cup, mug or scone cutter) before re-rolling the trimmings and repeating until you have used up all your dough Grease your pan with some spare butter on a piece of kitchen towel Put the welsh cakes on the pan and every minute or two turn them over until the texture changes from scone like to a soft biscuit - try to avoid them burning, but they need to be quite dark in colour Serve as soon as they're cool enough to touch with squash for threesies, or with a cup of tea or coffee for your leaders! These will keep in an airtight container for a few days – that said, I’ve never known them too!	Safety notes: Please make sure that the girls are well supervised Fire buckets of water, for burns and to put out the fire Pot holders – thick fabric pieces to hold a pan with If you oil the bottom of the pan before using it over the fire, it’ll clean more easily This way is best for Brownies/ younger Guides You can do this indoors with Brownies or Guides as a St David’s Day activity, or when you’ve planned outdor cooking, but the elements are against you! A sturdy pan is best, but I did mine yesterday with a plain old non stick frying pan and it worked fine. Keep your heat on the halfway point or slightly lower. Usual kitchen safety rules/ washing up apply.
Extra ideas ·         Why not set a challenge/ treasure hunt to be completed successfully to win a bagged, weighed portion of the ingredients if you’re doing this as part of a weekend away? ·         Baden Powell girls could lead/ organise this as a cooking competition for one of their challenges – they could set the challenges for the other girls to get their ingredients – and ask leaders to supervise the fires/ cooking ·         If you’re doing this as part of St David’s Day celebrations, why not try finding out why these are called Welsh Cakes?

4th Friern Barnet Guides do Random Bakes of Kindness Part 4

Barbara is a new Guide with us, one who throws herself into everything we do with gusto and enthusiasm, so her keenness for this Challenge wasn't unsurprising. She quite literally bounded into view, her hand waving in the air as I asked "So, who wants to do their Random Bake of kindness next week?"

Barbara chose Gingerbread easter bunnies - sometimes it's best not to question the thought process of your average 10 year old. And it's actually very seasonally appropriate taste-wise, if you ignore the Easter part of the equation. I think I might use this recipe again if we do Christmas bakes as part of our weekend away in December. I think these would make brilliant tree decorations, iced with white water icing and silver balls, and gingham ribbon through the top of star shapes. Plan!

Ingredients

250ml honey
250g soft brown sugar
150g softenend butter
100g ground almonds
400g plain flour
1 tsp cinammon
1/4tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp ground mixed spice
4 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp lemon zest, grated
1 egg
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
2tbsp water

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/ Gas mark 4

Heat the honey, sugar and butter in a pan on a low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved (we had adult supervision for this bit, obviously) Remove the pan from the heat and pour it into a bowl to cool
Add the ground almonds, flour, spices, lemon zest and egg to this bowl and mix well
Stir in the bicarb and knead with your hands until the dough is shiny and stops sticking to the bowl
Roll out the dough on a floured worktop to a thickness of about half a centimetre
Cut out your shapes, rerolling until you've finished the dough
Place on baking trays lined with parchment and and bake for 14-18 minutes
Remove from the oven carefully and cool on a wire rack

Decorate with water icing.

We found these spread more than we would have liked so if the girls decide they want to do a weekend of Christmas prep then I might do a trial run in the coming weeks mixing it up with my gingerbread recipe that I've used for Christmas Gingerbread Guides previously.

4th Friern Barnet Guides do... Random Bakes of Kindness (part 2)

 

So here we are again... part 2 of our ongoing series of Random Bakes of Kindess. Inspired by Vanessa Kimbell's idea earlier this year, Fourth Friern Barnet Guides will be baking, and blogging a bake each week for someone who has touched their life in some way; be it big, or small.

Today's bake was chosen and made by Maria (see below) and she gave it to Jade one of our other Guides. No words were exchanged at the giving, but these two are inseparable, lovely girls. Look at the pride here!

Maria chose to make Mocha vanilla latte cookies that she cut out into star shapes - what you can't see here is that she made small stars, and big stars too, some were vanilla, others coffee

1 sachet instant latte

1.5 tsp hot water

225g softened butter (again, Stork)



140g caster sugar

1 egg yolk lightly beaten

250g plain flour

1tsp vanilla extract

3tbsp cocoa powder

Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees/ Gas mark 5

Make the instant latte powder into a paste with hot water in a little bowl

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg yolk.

Divide the mixture in half, beat the latte into one half, and add half the flour and salt into the mixture and stir until combined

Shape the dough into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge (allegedly for 30-60 minutes, but we popped it in the freezer for half an hour - we only meet for 2 hours and need to clear up too!)

Beat the vanilla extract into the other half of the mixture, then add the rest of the flour and the cocoa powder and salt

Stir until combined and again shape the dough into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and chill.

Unwrap both flavours of dough, roll out and cut out cookies.

Bake in a preheated oven for 10-15 minutes.

*Guides pictured have full photo permissions

And my alter ego is...

Snowy Owl...

Last time Mark and I were at Borough Market we picked up these Owl, biscuits. Buttery shortbread with chocolate button eyes and a half almond for a beak they were tasty and impeccably made to resemble myself on Thursday evenings.

If you like me are an Owl on the side, I would replicate them with any shortbread recipe, cut out in rounds and prick for the shapes. Shortbread is so quick and easy to make, my Brownies did it on our Scottish themed pack holiday, and you could easily do this in a meeting. This is my shortbread recipe, that I use regularly.

Super-easy Shortbread (suitable for Brownies)

Ingredients

4oz butter
2oz caster sugar
6oz plain flour

Method

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C/ about Gas mark 5
Beat the butter and sugar together until smooth and fluffy (Brownies love doing this with electric beaters, but if you're on Pack holidays it's great fun to get them to do it in small groups with wooden spoons and race to see who can get there's to smooth and fluffy first!)
Stir in the flour spoon by spoon until you have a smooth paste.
Turn out onto your worktop/ table (make sure it's clean) and roll out until the past is 1cm thick
Cut out rounds/ triangles/ fingers (whatever you want really) and put on baking trays. If you're doing this in sixes, you can write the six name in pencil on the baking parchment/ greaseproof and it doesn't come off when cooking.
Now chill in the fridge for 20 minutes or so - it's this that makes shortbread really melt in the mouth-ish
Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until pale golden in colour. Cool on a wire rack, and have with squash for threesies.

If you're going to decorate the shortbread to owls, then do so before cooking.

Just a quick post and run really as I'm working away this week. But

Over the Rainbow: a round up of food and drink on Skye

Mark and I had a lovely holiday recently - a week on Skye, where we ate, drank, walked and generally pottered in the sunshine (I know, I was shocked too).

I thought I'd do a bit of a round up as we ate so well, we had chosen to self cater so breakfasts, packed lunches and a couple of suppers were down to me (bacon and eggs, sandwiches or salad, courgetti spaghetti and chilli since you ask). Outside of that we picked where to eat purely on the basis of somehwere that looked nice, or that caught our eyes as we passed.

Our first stop for morning coffee was at the Glencoe visitor centre, this is a very family friendly venue, offerring 'Explorer backpacks' with quizzes, binoculars and magnifying glasses to entertain their smaller visitors. To say I was disappointed that 5 foot 4 doesn't count as a smaller visitor is an understatement. Us big people made do with tea and coffee. My first hint I was going to love Scotland? Proper milk, none of this UHT stuff that everywhere seems obsessed with that makes tea taste foul. The visitor centre is tucked away, and we made the most of the weather, sitting outside and watching the birds flit, and fleetly fly around our heads. Treats here included a new discovery for me - one which was going to be repeated a few times during our trip. Homemade versions of shop biscuits! I know! So pick something you like, but (like me) don't eat because of the transfats, general rubbish within, then imagine it made out of shortbread, filled with homemade jam and a list of 4 ingredients. Butter, sugar, flour, jam. That's it. God they were good. Here I had a Vienese Whirl.

Goodness, now I'm wracking my brains... our second stop was for an afternoon tea (are you seeing a pattern here?) Not on the same day I might add. We stopped at the Blue Shed Cafe on our way back from Ergol. Slightly sunburned, and squeeish with delight having seen a multitude of seals as well as enjoyed a lovely walk and clamber around the loch, we were definitely in need of refreshment. The blue shed, is just that - a blue shed. Inside, an eclectic mix of tables and chairs, artwork, postcards, and homemade cakes were to be found. Two pots of tea, an enormous slice of Victoria sandwich (you know when you can tell it's homemade. Yep, that good) and some rocky road. Also blatantly homemade, no vegetable oily mouths here. Again, proper milk, tea in a pot and tasty coffee.

Other places we stopped for snacks and coffee were Jan's Cakes in Dunvegan. This tiny shop come tea room (that also sold chocolates, of which I sadly did not partake) was amazing. The confections were truly breathtaking and truth be told a little overwhelming. There is no denying the artistry that had gone into the making of them. I'm afraid to say that it being elevenses, we opted for a simpler accompaniment to our tea, lavender and heather honey shortbread. These seemingly simple biscuits were a revelation, honey, instead of sugar used to sweeten was a beautiful floral flavour, in the short crumbly biscuit, with a more, earthy undertone from the lavender. It illustrates my ignorance that I had expected these to be the other way around. I had a really personal interest in this as I made lavender sugar a while back for my sister's birthday present to go with her copy of Vanessa Kimbell's Prepped (I don't think she reads this blog so hopefully the surprise isn't spoiled).

We were staying close to Armdale and in our eternal quest to find an otter we went on the otterly delightful (see what I did there!) woodland trail that takes you up through the woods and to the hide by the seashore. Sadly once again we saw no otters, but did manage to get another delightful cup of tea and some cake at The Shed - possibly the tiniest cafe I have ever eaten in. Oh and from the gift shop nearby, an owl suncatcher for me! It's a guiding thing - you become a Snowy Owl and all of a sudden owls are amazing, plus I could hear them at night from our bedroom. Once again, good tea, and coffee, but the highlight has to be the slice of peanut butter and chocolate cake I had. Best described as a light sponge, topped with a peanut butter and chocolate fudge. The combination of sweet and salty is one I am pretty much gaga for at the moment, and it seriously worked here. Much like my peanut butter and jam bars I made for the Cherry working day and Guide camp in May actually. I am thinking of recreating this with a digestive biscuit cheesecake type base, but am still looking for a decent fudge recipe. Recomendations welcome.

 One of our happy accidents was to go to Columba 1400 - I had read about it, and being the misplaced youth worker I am at heart was keen to go. I had however completely forgotten about this until we were passing, when I demanded we "Stop! In the name of goodness..." Mark totally doesn't get my Wicked references, but they do make me happy. Once again, tea, coffee and homemade shortbread were the order of the day and owing to a chaotic attempt at ordering as part of a tourist group (that we weren't a part of) we were so thoughtfully given an amazing slice of an apple and cinammon cake that I have to say, albeit sadly - was better than mine. Organisations like Columba 1400 do amazing work within communities and I think their cafe and enterprise are an amazing example of what youth integration and engagement can do when there is access to external support.

Well that's my rundown on places to go for tea, coffee and cake on Skye, still to come in parts two and three of Over the Rainbow... are Red Skye (the only place we went back to) and ice cream at Minchella's in South Shields.