Dark and white chocolate puddings

Ruth was excited when I suggested we make these puddings this afternoon. Mind you - so was the rest of the family. Excited about eating them that is.  Especially with all that chocolate. :-)

It was fun watching how the dark yellow duck eggs got lighter and thicker as they were beaten up with the sugar.

After putting a little bit of the mixture into the cupcake the girls then added a white chocolate truffle. We used what we had left from the ones they made on Friday. We should have planned better and made smaller ones without any outside coating. But it was great that we had some.

Successful but not a recipe I will use again. Although we may hide truffles in normal chocolate cupcakes as an experiment one day.

Chocolate Truffles

The girls made Chocolate Truffles for our afternoon guests today. At first they both wanted to do the white chocolate and then Ruth said "ok - you do the white chocolate because you are white and I will do the brown chocolate because I am brown".
Such a sweet girl. :-)
Melt 100g (4 oz) plain or milk chocolate (or white)
with 3 tbsp double cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
and 15g (1/2 oz) butter

Once it's all melted and mixed together let the mixture cool. Then put it in the freezer. Stir every 5 minutes or so until the mixture is thick and fudgy.

Roll a teaspoon of the fudge mixture into a ball in your hands (quickly so it doesn't melt). Then roll it in cocoa, coconut, 100s & 1000s or choc chips.

The 100s&1000s and choc chips were our favourites. 

Banana Butterfly Cakes

Good job mashing those bananas.
Arms and fingers all getting stronger.

She is really enjoying using the scales.

She even learnt how to crack eggs
today and did such a good job.

Always fun putting the batter in.

Unfortunately it was a bit too hot today and the icing did not
work very well. It was made with Cream cheese, Butter,
Caramel and icing sugar. I think we may just use caramel if
we do them again. They looked really pretty though.

Pear Meringue Tarts

It was the first time I have bought
pre-made pastry. Ruth did a good
job of cutting out the shapes.

Carefully putting them on
the tray.



We used pear instead of apple as we have
bottled pears that we made. Ruth mashed
them with a fork and then filled the tarts.



Bake at 200 for 15 minutes. Then add meringue made
from egg white and sugar (1 egg to 40g caster sugar).

Cook for a further 3-5 minutes. I would never have
thought to make apple or pear meringue but it
was really lovely and I am sure will be made again.

To do list

Ruth wanted to have the same type of "to do list" as Rachel had - so I got hers done last week. Rachel's are on the top and Ruth's on the bottom (where she can reach them).

Her "Art" this week. A picture
for Dad. She also ended up with
lots of stickers on herself. :-)

It was lovely to see how this week she took over the job of doing the chooks from Rachel (the red lables). She takes them any scraps, fetches the eggs and checks that they have enough food. She is such a big girl already.

Other items on her list are "Tell" when she tells me about the story that Rachel has read to her, "Music" for violin practice, "Computer" - a friend lent us a couple of new games so she is enjoying those and learning a lot. And then she has some items that are not for everyday. I have made enough for every day but for starters we are going to have it our goal to get to them at least once a week. "Baking", "Art", "Read" - at this stage it's just work on the alphabet, "Math" - at this stage just work on recognising the numbers or doing some counting or adding, "Sew" - she loves sewing and I want to try and get her something to do every week and "Clean" - it's nice for her to have a record of packing up or cleaning that she has done.

Strawberry Cheesecake

Most of the ingredients in this book are given in weight. I normally use cups a lot more (I even change recipes after seeing how many cups a certain weight of an item is as it's so much quicker). The advantage however of using weight is that Ruth could make a discovery all on her own. She showed me that the scale went down as she put more of the item in. How wonderful to discover "weight" on her own.
170g (6 oz) biscuit crumbs
85g (3 oz) butter
Melt the butter and mix into the biscuit crumbs.
I asked Ruth what happened to the butter if we kept it in the fridge. She said it went hard. She knows that's why we keep it in the cupboard - as it's easier to use when it's softer. So once we had put our mixture into the baking pan I asked Ruth how we can get the butter to go hard again. The fridge. How clever. :-)

Hull and chop 150g (5 1/2 oz) strawberries into small pieces.
Cut some extra ones up for decoration.
Put chopped strawberries into a pot.
Add 30g (1oz) sugar and
2 tbsp water.
Simmer until the strawberries are soft.
It was great to see how more liquid formed as the sugar melted and the strawberries cooked.
Remove from the head.
Add 135g (4 1/2 oz) packet strawberry jelly
Stir until smooth. Leave to cool.

We spoke about what happens to jelly when we add water (it's liquid) and then put it in the fridge (it sets). So instead of using water with the jelly powder we will be using
200g (7oz) cream cheese and
200ml cream.
It's far easier to see the level of normal runny cream compared to the thick cream we used yesterday. Little science lessons all over the place here.

Beat the cream. Making sure it does not turn to butter. We spoke about the times Ruth has seen cream turned into butter. It was good for her to watch it whipping up and see how it changed.
Whip the cream cheese.
Pour the jelly mixture onto the cheese.
Whisk to mix.
Spoon the whipped cream onto the jelly and cream cheese and fold in.
When Rachel tasted the finished product she said "it's so light". I reminded them about how we folded the cream in - trying to keep as much of that air in the mixture.

Place the mixture onto the biscuits. Smooth the tops and refrigerate for 2 hours until set.

It was really good for Ruth to see that with some things she does need help. The bowl was really heavy and so we could do this part together. She so loves to do things on her own - but is learning that at some points it's ok to do things together and accept help.

Remove from tin, serve and enjoy.

Strawberry Layers

Hull a punnet of strawberries.

Put a few aside for decoration. Slice the rest.
Ruth has learnt really quickly how to use
the knife safely.

Use a potato masher to mash up the
strawberries and 4 tbsp strawberry jam.

Measuring out 200ml double cream. Whisk the cream with
6 tbsp plain yoghurt.

Layer the strawberry and cream mixtures and decorate.

Chocolate covered banana

Learning about double boiling and using steam to heat.
Our chocolate was also not a good quality and was
very thick so we added some cream and she saw
how it got much softer so that it could pour.

Ruth was so excited when her correspondence school bag arrived today. It did not take her long to ask me if we could make something from the book. Thankfully we had ingredients to get chocolate covered bananas done this afternoon.

She did a good job cutting the banana up.

Time to decorate. The chocolate was not ideal, but we managed.

Very happy with her creation.

Meeting her teacher

Ruth had a great time at the Correspondence School get-together today. It was lovely to meet her new teacher and to do so many fun things.

Painting is always fun (and messy).

The girls helped make the play dough when we arrived
and had so much fun through the day with it.

Closing the circuit and getting the bulb to light up.



There were so many dress up clothes. Always so much fun.





Ruth used the lovely bells (on the shelf behind
them) to play "Mary had a little lamb" for
her teacher.



Playing a quiet game after all the tiring
games with the parachute.



Lots of fun in the sandpit. They made lovely castles.