Tag: year round

Australian Sausage Rolls

Belle was challenged this week by Grandma to bake something that was not dessert, so she flipped through her kid cookbook of global cuisine again and found a recipe for sausage rolls. Puff pastry and sausage? Yum. Mama did a little digging, though, because it looked like it had probably been simplified a bit from traditional preparation. And yes, it had. Apparently, Australian mums use sausage rolls as a way to sneak vegetables into their children’s meals and I am all about that, ladies. Grating carrots is a good gross motor activity anyway.

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Banana-Oat Pancakes (Gluten-free, Dairy-free)

Growing up, summer Sunday mornings meant my Grandpa was making dozens of pancakes from Bisquick and old milk for his grandchildren. He’d take special requests for blueberry pancakes, or for pancakes shaped like letters, or for simply more – there are pancake eating records next to various water sport records in the family record book. But as much as we love Bisquick, sometimes we crave something marginally healthier or that we can eat with friends who have dietary restrictions. And thus, sometimes we make banana-oat pancakes.

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Gingerbread House

You know when gingerbread houses are fun to build? Any month that doesn’t end in -cember. December has this next-level pressure to create perfect memories on a strict timeline between parties and demonstrate pin-worthy piping skills and hahaha that just isn’t going to happen with a toddler. BUT, making a spring gingerbread house allows for coconut grass, pink icing, epic collapses, cries of “get me a flying buttress!” and a thrilled toddler who doesn’t know that people usually only do this in winter.

We built this over the course of several days, which allowed us to target different things at different times. We highly recommend that approach, because it’s hard to keep a gingerbread house stable and a kid focused on a target at the same time.

Dough skills:

  • the usual gross motor and speech targets (see Shortbread)
  • Early math: visualizing three-dimensional objects and how to construct them, measuring, estimates, patterns

We’ve been watching more UmiZoomi, and the character Geo builds things out of shapes. Before we built the house, we laid some groundwork by drawing houses together – a triangle on top of a square is a house! (Or sometimes a trapezoid on top of a rectangle, if you’re looking at the roof instead of the gable.)

Drawing out the plan
A felt marker or pencil would have worked better than a pen on parchment.

We grabbed a marker and drew it again on the parchment before cutting the dough. If Belle were a year or two older, I would definitely have her draw out a pattern and/or measure the square walls to make sure they fit; as it was, I eyeballed it and asked Belle if they were about the same.

Shortbread windows
Bake extra pieces to eat and accidentally break. (Use a knife to score.)

I cut out two doughs – gingerbread and shortbread – to allow Belle to sort by color and create tile patterns. She wanted to eat them and make patterns with bead-like candies instead. Okay. The shortbread was still handy for windows and doors, which weren’t going to happen by piping.

Shaking Coconut grass
Not sure the high-velocity shake spread the food coloring any faster, but it may have provided Buddy with 30 seconds of entertainment.

Coconut grass skills:

  • Fine motor: squishing

Buddy did most of the squishing necessary to get a few drops of food coloring spread over some coconut in a ziplock bag.

Squishing coconut
Gratuitous baby rolls, ineffectively poking the coconut.

Decorating skills:

  • Imaginative/social storytelling: what do the people in the house need? What are they doing?
  • Fine motor: tweezers, strength, gentle but firm pressure
  • Cognition: planning, restraint

Tweezing decorations
This looks like what I wanted to happen, but is deceptive. It is a failed attempt to pick up the ball, but a successful attempt at holding the tweezers properly, guiding them near the ball, and understanding the goal.

We set Belle up with a variety of textures and colors and cookie tiles to decorate with, plus tweezers. The tweezers help practice fine motor control and develop hand strength, and were new to her. I demonstrated how I could pick up a red hot out of a 4 oz jam jar using the tweezers, and she demonstrated how she could pick it up using her fingers, then hold it in place with the tweezers, then take it out and eat it. Not quite what I had in mind, but we’re building a new skill, and with practice, she’ll start testing what else she can pick up with the tweezers.

Coconut grass
Sensory playground!

Belle had a firm idea that the decorations needed to sit in the icing, an idea born from her Christmas gingerbread house kit. This knocked down the house a few times – thanks, Papa, for the rebuilding efforts – but actually provided some great proprioceptive feedback on how hard was too hard.

Pushing decorations into icing
FYI: If the icing hasn’t set, pushing down (gently) is less likely to make everything collapse than pushing in.

We spent a lot of time asking Belle “what else should we build for the people?” We ended up with two garden beds (like the ones in our backyard) and a sandbox for the kids, with silver sprinkles to represent the sand toys. Plus paths, lots of paths. Paths of dried strawberry, paths of cookies, paths of icing…because the people needed to walk to their gardens and around the yard.

Squeezing icing
Lots of fine motor strength and accuracy going on here as Belle creates globs of icing. Landscaping, perhaps?

The day after construction, we started again with more storytelling, and a prompt of “Good morning, gingerbread house people! Did you have any dreams? What are you doing today?” (They’re going to a party at Grandma’s house.)

Then we kept eating their house. Ruthless giants, we are.
Overhead view of gingerbread farm

Equipment:

  • Mixing bowl
  • Mixer (with beater and whisk attachments)
  • Parchment
  • Plastic wrap
  • Rolling pin
  • Knife
  • 2-3 cookie sheets per batch of dough
  • Piping bags or ziplock bags
  • Large piece of cardboard (we used a diaper box) and foil to cover it
  • Small jars or ramekins to contain decorations
  • Tweezers

Shortbread recipe here: Shortbread

Coconut grass directions:

  1. Put desired amount of coconut in a ziplock bag.
  2. Add food coloring (green, with a little yellow to lighten it up). A few drops should suffice, but add more if not coating the coconut.
  3. Close bag and squish til coated.

Royal icing recipe of your choice – we used less than 2 cups worth and colored it with food coloring.

Gingerbread house
Gingerbread Recipe (25 min prep, 2 hr-3 day chill, 45 min cut, 15-18 min bake, 45 min cool; yield: about 3 square feet of 1/4″ thick dough):
This recipe comes from Sally’s Baking Addiction. It’s delicious and sturdy, with minimal rise and spread. Butter holds its shape better than margarine; I would not substitute. It will cream much better at room temperature but if it’s the first ingredient you take out and you take your time getting everything else out, it’s not going to break the recipe. 1/4 tsp each of nutmeg and cloves can substitute for the 1/2 tsp allspice.

  • 6 tbsp (3/4 stick) butter, room temperature
  • 3/4 c brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 c molasses
  • 2 tbsp water
  • 3 c flour
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp ginger
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp allspice
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  1. Cream 6 tbsp butter and 3/4 c brown sugar in a large mixing bowl.
  2. Add 1 egg, 1/2 c molasses, and 2 tbsp water to the bowl and beat until combined.
  3. Add dry ingredients and mix: 3 c flour, 1/4 tsp baking soda, 2 tsp ginger, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp allspice, 1/4 tsp salt. Dough will be thick and heavy.
  4. Divide into two discs, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least two hours (up to 3 days).
  5. Remove discs from refrigerator at least 10 minutes before rolling out and preheat oven to 350°F. Unwrap and place between two sheets of parchment to roll out to about 1/4″ thick – the dough is very tacky and will stick to the rolling pin.
  6. Cut pieces according to template (not included) or own design and place on cookie sheets lined with parchment. Reroll scraps. Make sure small pieces are on a separate sheet from large pieces, as they will bake faster.
  7. Bake smaller pieces for 12-13 min and larger pieces for 18-20 min. Let cool completely on the sheets, about 45 min.
  8. Prepare to assemble!

Assembly (up to 2 hours):

  • Base to build on – we used cardboard and foil
  • Gingerbread, cooled
  • Shortbread, cooled (if used)
  • Royal icing, aka the glue
  • Assorted objects to help stand things up while icing sets
  • Assorted candies/sprinkles/decorations
  • Dried fruit/coconut/crushed graham cracker – get a variety of colors and textures
  1. Assemble the house and try not to move it or touch it.
  2. Follow your child’s lead on decorating the house and the yard.
  3. Stop when they lose interest and start again the next day if you care to.

This recipe is part of our coronavirus/Covid-19 quarantine bake-along. See the previous recipe here: Goldfish. See the next recipe here tomorrow.

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Goldfish

If there’s one snack we cannot get enough of in this house, it’s goldfish. J/k, it’s ice cream, but goldfish come in a close second.

Therefore, we’re pretty excited about this savory cheddar cracker dough that comes together in a food processor, rolls out repeatedly without an issue, and holds its shape in the oven.

Rolling out cracker dough
We frequently roll dough out on cutting boards because the cutting board can rotate in ways little shoulders can’t.

Belle (on the cusp of 3) has a really strong interest in letters right now, and we’re working them into virtually every type of play we do: song, puzzles, shadow puppets (we draw “big line down, little curve on the top, little curve on the bottom” for B), reading aloud, play dough (using stamps), drawing, magnets, and of course, baking. Because our play dough stamps give us letters no more than an inch tall, they are perfect tiny cookie cutters for this dough.

Stamping cracker dough
Belle: “Letter Z! Letter Z! I love letter Z!”

I set her up with half the dough rolled out, a rolling pin to roll out a bit more, and a limited set of stamps (like the letters in her name). Then she can stamp to her heart’s content, we can talk about the letters, she can erase by rerolling, I can swap out the available stamps to make sure we have a whole set of scrabble tiles (emphasizing the letters we’ll likely need to spell names together), and together we can pull the stamped crackers out to put on a cookie sheet.

Buddy rolling the rolling pin.
Buddy gets in on the rolling action.

Meanwhile, I don’t love when Buddy (age 1) eats Play Doh the product, but don’t mind him putting this dough in his mouth. They’re both non-toxic; it’s hardly an emergency if he does eat the product, but I prefer he eat different raw flour. Totally logical, I know. Anyway, while Belle rolls and stamps away, Buddy is squishing the pile of scraps. Yay fine motor strength! And they mostly aren’t stealing from each other. Yay sharing!

Letter crackers
This is me ensuring we have enough variety to spell things.

Later, when actually snacking on this, we get to reinforce the letters – spelling things on our plate, doing letter searches (“find an E!”), matching/sorting, and identifying what we have. Although Belle isn’t doing sight words yet, we could easily use these crackers to build on sight word flash cards, or we could separate vowels and consonants, or we could work on phonics and digraphs.

OR, because why not, use the number stamps and do early math.

OR, shapes and do early geometry.

OR, just eat.

Letter crackers

Skills worked on:

  • Early literacy or numeracy
  • Fine motor: stamping, getting cracker dough out of stamps, squishing
  • Gross motor: rolling dough
  • Social-emotional: sharing

Equipment:

  • Food processor (holding at least 4 cups)
  • Spatula
  • Measuring cups
  • Measuring spoons
  • Mini cookie cutters or stamps, or a sharp knife and fork for a Cheez-it look
  • Rolling pin
  • 2-3 cookie sheets


Recipe (5 min prep, 20+ min cut, 15 min bake; yield: about 140 1″x1/2″ crackers):

This recipe was passed along by a friend, who swears by the kick from the chili and paprika. We are out of paprika, but our quarantine pantry thought chili and garlic was good, dry mustard and garlic was good, and cayenne pepper would work well for a kick. The dough doesn’t rise much or spread, so roll it thin (about 1/8″). Whole wheat flour should work too!

  • 8 oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese
  • 1/2 stick (4 tbsp) butter, cubed
  • 1 c flour
  • A scant tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp chili powder (or to taste)
  • 1 tsp paprika (or to taste)
  • 2 tbsp water
  1. In a food processor, add 8 oz shredded cheese, 4 tbsp cubed butter, 1 c flour, a scant tsp salt, 1 tbsp garlic powder, 1 tsp chili powder, and 1 tsp paprika.
  2. Pulse together until uniform, then add 2 tbsp of water and pulse again. Dough will stick together.
  3. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  4. Roll out and cut. Reroll scraps indefinitely.
  5. Place crackers on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake 15 min at 350°F.
  6. Store in an airtight container up to 1 week.

This recipe is part of our coronavirus/Covid-19 quarantine bake-along. See the previous recipe here: Pumpkin Bread. See the next recipe here: Gingerbread House.

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