Ickey Sticky Gooey Goo

Homemade Gooey Stuff

Little Mr A loves blue. Anything blue, everything has to be blue. So I made him some blue "gooey stuff"

I've made it before and I'll make it again, its awesome stuff but doesn't keep. And it makes a mess. Alot of mess. And double the mess you are thinking of!!

That is why this big black tray is so important. Use a baking tray if you don't have a big black plastic plate!

Skills Used:

• Fine Motor endurance
• Following instructions
• Finger isolation

You will need:

• A big tray for the goo to go (and stay!) on
• Fabulon (laundry starch)
• Cheap craft glue - PVA glue. I bought mine from the $2 shop. I bought a few different bottles including a clear PVA glue (pictured) and one bottle didn't have the chemical reaction that made goo. 
• A container for a measurement unit
• Food dye if wanted
• Plastic spoon to throw away once done - I didn't want to use something that I put in my mouth to stir this mix
• Water

Pour equal parts of water, glue and fabulons together. I got Little Mr A to pour the ingredients into the cup. A little bit of a selfish reason, I didn't want to get messy!

Stir mixture together. You will feel it start to stick together more and turn gooey.

Add your colour and enjoy!!

Bacon and Cheese Rolls

Homemade Bacon and Cheese Rolls

My Little Mr A LOVES bacon and cheese rolls. Back when my Hubby did FIFO (Fly-in Fly-out) and I was working I didn't think much of spending $4 on 4 rolls to have as a snack. Well how times have changed and the word BUDGET is now part of every day vocabulary, I've started to think that these rolls are a tad expensive. So I went on a quest to make my own. 

I went to taste.com (my favourite internet recipe site) and looked it up. I wanted to make more of a roll and not flat breads, so I kept them relatively round.  I portion of bread made 12 rolls. I have since made another batch and made 16 rolls, but they were quite small so I think I will stick to 12 rolls next time. Also take them out of the oven when cheese is just starting to turn brown so the bread is really soft!

Cut up dough. 

Little Mr A was helping me to roll into a nice round shape and put it on the floured tray. He also wanted to do a rectangle shape and a circle.   

Cost $0.50 (about 1/2kg of flour and a bit of yeast, oil and water)

I buy bacon when its cheap and freeze it as it freezes well and it
usually goes in cooking as a cheap way to flavour meals. 

This was 4 slices of short cut bacon, about 200gms and about 1 cut of cheese, about 150gms.

Little Mr A loved helping to sprinkle all the toppings on!

Bacon and cheese Cost: $3.50

Cost Total : $4 for 12 buns. 

That is ONE THIRD of the cost in the shops! Plus you get the upper body work out of kneading the dough and the smell of fresh bread baking in your oven. So simple and easy to make! And its super easy to make while you got kids, as there is alot of waiting time between steps so you don't need to stay in the kitchen for an hour. I baked these between cooking dinner, feeding baby and cleaning the kitchen!

Next I'm going to try to make the bread pizza's, the ones that are even more pricey in the shops! Bakers Delight charge $4 per pizza!

Marshmallow Sherbet Cones

Homemade Marshmallow Cones

The other day we went to the shops, our big outing of the public holiday, as we were all sick. As a special treat we bought sherbet cones. While eating them later at home I remembered making sherbet  and marshmallow as a teenager and thought how hard could it be to combine it all to make these?!

But ahhh....the mess that followed!

What you need:

• 1 packet of ice cream cones. The smallest ones are best
• 1 quantity of sherbet
• 1 quantity of marshmallow
• Spinkles to decorate

Sherbet

1 cup sifted icing sugar
1 teaspoon citric acid
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda

Sift and mix ingredients together

Marshmallow

1 cup glucose syrup (corn syrup)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup water
2 1/2 tablespoons of gelatine
a few drops of food dye if wanted - although sprinkles covers the entire top

In your mixing bowl add 1/2 cup of your water to the gelatine and mix well
Add the sugar, glucose and other 1/2 cup water to a heavy based frypan or saucepan. Mix well to combine.
Heat over a medium flame. DO NOT STIR ONCE IT IS ON THE STOVE.
Cook for 8min or until a drop of the mix forms a soft ball when dropped into a little bowl of water.
Pour into mixing bowl and mix for about 10min or until mix has tripled in size.

Unbeaten marshmallows

Little Mr A patiently waiting for marshmallows to appear

Putting it all together

First put a heaped teaspoon of sherbet into each cone if you are using stand up cones. Otherwise make sure you don't have little kids around to make a mess with the sherbet while you leave it unattended, and spoon the sherbet in as you go.

Spoon into piping bags - use disposable ones as it is messy enough anyway! I added a drop of food colour to the piping bag edge before putting marshmallow in. I won't do it next time as the sprinkles cover the marshmallows.

I had to change Little Baby J's nappy so had to pause marshmallow making for a bit - and the lumpy look of the marshmallows is the result. If you pipe it straight away you should get a nice elegant looking marshmallow top!

Next dip the top in sprinkles, we went for dinosaur sprinkles and multi coloured sprinkles, but I had thought about doing cachous (you know the little silver balls) but thought against it after looking at the mess Little Mr. A was in just with the marshmallow.

While I cleaned up I told Little Mr. A he could "lick" the bowl (you can't lick a bowl of set marshmallow very sucessfully!! heheheh!! :-D ) - while I wasn't looking he tipped the rest of the sprinkles in....

I had some left over marshmallow mix so I piped it into a small bowl of cornflour - it leaves you less sticky than icing sugar. There were more but somehow they disappeared before I could take a photo, Little Mr. A had a blue tongue but promised he didn't eat them!

So there you have it, cheap and yummy sherbet cones. I think a treat once every few months or for special occasions will be ok, not making a habit of making these!

Next time I will try making mini ones, I saw some mini waffle cones in the markets I'll pick some of those up next time as these were HUGE!

Homemade Layered Paratha

Yummy Layered Paratha (Roti Canai)

So a while ago I made my own Beef Rendang, from scratch. Took me about 45min to get everything prepared and in the pot, then about 2hours on the stove.  To save on time I skipped a few steps, like frying the onion and garlic and roasting the herbs and spices. I just rolled the meat in the spices and then chucked it in.

Most of it was eaten, but there was a small bowlful left, which wasn't enough for dinner the next day so I chucked it in a zip lock bag and froze it.

To make it extend a bit further and be enough for a meal for 2 and a half, I made some Roti Paratha's. Indian flat breads with lots of layers. These are super yummy and the method eluded me for years, i just couldn't make them right but through some trial and error I have FINALLY been able to make ones that rival the frozen store bought ones!!

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups plain white four (you can use wholemeal flour BUT you won't get as many layers)

1 cup water

1 teaspoon salt - don't skimp on this or it won't work as well, I'm sure there is a scientific explanation but all I know is that like this, it works!)

about 1/2-3/4cup oil

Mix flour, salt and water together

It will be sticky, add a dusting of flour if you have to
but kneading it will help bring it together

Knead for at least 5min until you get a spongy ball of dough

Chop into 8 pieces. These are fairly large paratha's,
so you could do 10 or more if you wanted.

Pour some vegetable oil on your bench, this stops it sticking.
Roll out to a long rectangle. Using your hands, spread some oil over the dough.
Fold in half to form a square. Fold Agin to form a rectangle.

Fold again to form a little square. Roll out with a rolling pin,
make sure the rolling pin has a thin layer of oil so it doesn't stick.

8 rolled parathas

Fry in pan with a little oil to start with, don't add anymore oil after
the first one as there will be plenty of oil coming out from the paratha.

Once flipped, push down so it bubbles and the layers separate.

TA-DAH!! you have finished making your yummy paratha's, enjoy!!

Multi-Coloured Crayon Activity

DIY Multi-Colour Crayons

My Little Mr. A loves colouring in. He gets all sort of colour in things from his Granny and Nanna, but of course the little crayons snap, get lost and smooshed into the carpet. They are always under my couch, ALWAYS!! I had a smart idea to collect all the dud crayons and melt them together and TA-DAH!!! Multi Coloured Crayons!!! 

Its also a perfect dad-proof activity. Make your own Army Camo Print Crayons - Mr Dad loved this name!

Little Mr. A also has a new obsession with the Trash Packs, the picture behind can be downloaded from their website .

Target Areas and Skills Used:

• Fine Motor Skills
• Finger and Hand strength and endurance
• Colour Matching
• Counting

First, collect all the dud crayons. I also did another packet that we had lying around the house, it was mostly browns and orange, but it worked.

Extra crayons

I got Little Mr. A to take the paper off. Its great for finger strength and fine motor skills in preparation for writing before he starts kindy next year. Im going to try to incorporate AS MANY fine motor activities into his day as possible so he might like writing at school. So much of the time kids don't like writing because their hands fatigue and get sore. This is a great way to trick him into using his fingers! This cheap brand of crayons the paper was a bit tricky to take off, so i used my nail to take a strip of paper off and Little Mr. A was able to take the paper off easier. We used about 40 crayons, half were broken. 

Scratch a strip of paper off to make it easier for kids to un-wrap

We used a silicon mould. There are nice shaped ice moulds that would work nice too, my mum has a long thin silicon ice mould which would be perfect. I find the moulds very flimsy so i put it ontop of a baking tray. I told Little Mr. A that we could have 3 colours in each mould. He also had to snap up the crayons into smaller pieces to put into the moulds.

Choosing which 3 colours will look nice together

 I baked the crayons for about 30min at 75 degrees, the coolest setting in my oven. I didn't want to chance burnt crayon smell in my house! Little Mr. A is starting to learn the time so every 5 min had to check on the crayons, so if you keep the oven shut it should take alot less time.

Crayons looking a little gross, melted but retaining their shape.  I jiggled them around a bit and poked the sticking up ones with a skewer. 

Crayons fresh out of the oven. The underside is the nice side!

Mmmm.....fresh crayons straight out of the oven!

And yes, as Little Mr. A pointed out, we have army print brown and army print green crayons!

"Look mum, army print!"

Little Mr A couldn't wait to try them out

All of our crayons. These would make great ideas for party bags, get the birthday boy (or girl) to do this with dad (come on, this has got to be dad proof right??) while you rush around like a mad man before the party!