Tag Archives: fun food

Crispy Rice Christmas Trees

Posted on December 21, 2017 by TheGingerbreadMum

Today I’m sharing a last minute, super easy Christmas treat that kids will have lots of fun helping you make.

After our school Christmas Fair, the chair of the PTA handed over an almost full 1kg bag of mini marshmallows, saying she was sure I could use them for the last school bake sale of the year. I asked Instagram for ideas (popcorn snow balls, rocky road, chocolate brownies, marshmallow nougat…) but to save time, I settled for the rice krispie and marshmallow classic.

crispy-rice-marshmallow-christmas-trees

A lesson learned from making crispy rice treats in bulk: don’t double the mixture!!! It was hard (and very sticky work). Instead of saving me time, it slowed me down. So, my advice if you want to make these in bigger quantities would be to make one batch at a time. That way you avoid the marshmallow and butter mixture quickly cooling down and setting before you’ve completely mixed it through the crispy rice.

CRISPY RICE CHRISTMAS TREES

Prep Time: 15 mins (plus decorating)
Cook Time: 0 mins
Makes 8 large treats

35 grams butter
250 g mini marshmallows
150 grams crispy rice cereal (e.g. rice krispies)
sprinkles or edible glitter
4 candy canes

Grease a round cake tin (mine is 23 cm in diameter) with butter or cooking spray.

In a large, heavy-based saucepan, melt the butter over a low heat.

Add the marshmallows and stir constantly until they’re completely melted and combined.

Take off the heat and immediately add the cereal, mixing until all the cereal is completely coated.

Press the mixture into the greased tin. Use the back of a spoon or a spatula that’s been warmed in a mug of hot water to make it easier as the mixture is very sticky. Flatten the top and scatter over the sprinkles or edible glitter.

Let the mixture cool completely before cutting into eight equal slices (as if it were a cake).

Cut the curved tops off the candy canes (you don’t need these) and cut each straight piece into two. Gently push each piece into the bottom of each crispy rice wedge.

Merry Christmas!

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Fun (and easy) Christmas Food

Posted on December 15, 2017 by TheGingerbreadMum

There aren’t very many sleeps left until Christmas! Is it just me who feels like November and December have whizzed by this year?

If you’re in need of some inspiration for some fun (and easy) festive food for your excited little ones or even the Christmas-loving big people in your family, hopefully these will help. You can also check out my Pinterest board (Christmas food) for loads more suggestions.

snowman-sandwich-balls-fun-food-tutorial-from-Eats-Amazing-UK

Grace from Eats Amazing created these Snowmen Sandwich Balls that are healthy as well as cute.

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Another cute and healthy Christmas snack is from akinoichigo. I love how simple this is, starting out with just a cheese triangle on a cracker.

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But even simpler is this super healthy candy cane from Make Do and Friend.

cheese-wreath

A very easy centre piece for a Christmas buffet is this cheese wreath from Kraft.

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Di from PaintSewGlueChew has come up with an adorable way to top your hot chocolate that I’ll definitely be trying over the holidays.

Which one is your favourite?

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Mini savoury bread puddings

Posted on June 4, 2014 by TheGingerbreadMum

When we were doing our Kingsmill Great White Challenge, I didn’t just want to eat bread in sandwiches or as toast. After a quick search online for ideas, I decided to try making savoury bread puddings.

Not only are these puddings a brilliant way to use up older bread, but they’re also great to use up any crusts or end pieces that your family doesn’t like eating. I have a few bags in my freezer of crusts leftover from school lunches which I would normally make into sugar-free French toast, but now I think they’ll be made into savoury bread puddings!

Please excuse my approximate amounts in the recipe. This is a very forgiving recipe, so even just 2 sausages would work. The only important thing is making sure there is enough liquid to moisten all of your bread chunks.

I made my savoury puddings in a large muffin pan, but you could easily pour all the mixture into a loaf tin and eat it in slices instead.

To get your munchkins involved in the cooking, forget about cutting up the bread and get them tearing it up instead. And I’m sure they’ll love mixing all the ingredients together too.

MINI SAVOURY BREAD PUDDINGS

Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 30-40 mins
Makes 6 mini puddings

1/2 onion, finely diced
3 or 4 uncooked sausages
1 cup milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 tbsp fresh herbs such as parsley, thyme or chives, chopped
salt and pepper
approx. 4 slices of bread, roughly chopped into cubes about 3cm square
oil of your choice (I used rapeseed oil)
extra cheddar cheese for sprinkling on top

Preheat oven to 180C.

Remove the casings from the sausages by cutting down the length of the sausages and peeling off the casings.

Heat a small amount of oil in a medium-sized frying pan over a medium heat. Add the onion and sausage, and cook for about 5 minutes until both are cooked, stirring to break up the sausage meat. Take off the heat and allow to cool a little.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, mix the milk, egg, 1/4 cup of grated cheese, chopped herbs, and a good pinch of salt and pepper. Add the sausage mixture and then stir through the bread (if the mixture is quite wet and runny, add a little more bread; if there isn’t enough liquid to soak through the bread, add a little more milk).

Allow the bread to soak up the liquid while you lightly grease a large muffin pan.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan, sprinkle over a little extra cheddar cheese and cook for 30-40 minutes until golden brown on top and cooked through.

If you want to make your mini puddings into turtles, use half a cherry tomato for the head and pieces of soft cheese triangles for its legs and little tail. His mouth is a small piece of soft cheese and his eyes are cress leaves. I also garnished the plate with cress (grown by Nicholas!).

Variations:

Bake the mixture into a loaf tin and eat in slices
Add some grated apple while you’re cooking the onion and sausage
Use bacon or uncooked ham instead of the sausage
Add some chopped fresh spinach to the finished mixture

What do you do with your leftover bread?

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Posted in family, lunch, recipe, snack, toddler and tagged fun food, Kingsmill Great White, leftover bread, savoury bread pudding. Bookmark the permalink.

The Kingsmill Great White Challenge

Posted on June 2, 2014 by TheGingerbreadMum

I do love a challenge, especially one that involves food, so when Kingsmill invited us to take part in their Great White Challenge I jumped at the chance.

For three days we had to replace our normal loaf of bread with Kingsmill Great White and use it as creatively and healthily as we could. Our creations also had to have the ‘wow’ factor, kind of like The X Factor but with sandwiches instead of singers!

I don’t usually buy white bread, especially not for Nicholas, although I do secretly love a slice of white toasted and slathered in butter. Thankfully Kingsmill Great White contains as much fibre as wholemeal bread with 7.0g fibre per 100g (interestingly Kingsmill Tasty Wholemeal contains 6.2g fibre per 100g).

Nicholas, unlike his Italian papà, loves toast and sandwiches, and happily eats them every day. However, he’s recently gone from happily eating his crusts to refusing to eat them.

But back to the challenge. As soon as I heard the bread’s name there was only one possibility for me – we were going on an undersea adventure in search of great white sharks!

Mask and snorkel? Check!

Shark pjs? Check!

We actually had a false start to the challenge as it was postponed a week at the last moment, but I didn’t want our efforts to go to waste. We had turtle toast with peanut butter and a teeny bit of nutella for breakfast to celebrate World Turtle Day. Then Nicholas very excitedly told me when I picked him up from pre-school that he’d eaten TWO sharks at lunch (and there were only crumbs left as evidence). Two great whites already spotted!

On to the official challenge. On Friday we had ‘under the sea’ sugar-free French toast for breakfast, jellyfish and fish sandwiches for lunch and some shark fin carrot soup for dinner. I made the jellyfish tentacles from the leftover crusts and (shock, horror) they were the very first things Nicholas ate! Number of great whites spotted – 1

On Saturday morning a fishy in a hole gave us lots of energy, then later our Playmobil friend went a little crazy when she spotted not one but two great whites lurking in our salad sandwiches. Number of great whites spotted – 2

We started our final day of the challenge with crab toast (again with peanut butter and a little bit of nutella) inspired by one of Nicholas’ books (and the crab legs, made from crusts, were the first to be eaten!). I then used some of the bread chopped up to make healthy mini savoury bread puddings for lunch and I made Nicholas’ into another turtle (this is also a great way to use up any crusts or end pieces nobody eats). And finally, in the evening, we had summer pudding (another fab way to use up older bread). Unfortunately my octopus turned out more like a spider, but he still was very much appreciated! Number of great whites spotted – 0

Total number of great whites spotted – 5!

We had lots of fun making and eating our creations, and I loved see Nicholas enthusiastically eating his crusts 😉

You can see lots of other wonderfully original and healthy creations by other bloggers by searching #KingsmillGreatWhite on Twitter or Instagram. Kingsmill also have a fantastic free Lunch Book with recipes all created by kids (Hayley’s Funky Turtle is definitely my favourite).

Some of the other bloggers who did the challenge and their fabulous creations:
Boo Roo and Tigger Too
Mummy Mishaps
Mummy Mum Mum
Mummy’s Space

Disclosure: we were compensated by Kingsmill for participating in their challenge. My opinions are honest and my own.

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