Making biscuits

Ready to begin 

This afternoon we made the Easter daisy biscuits from Tom's 'Little Book of Easter Activites'. As you might expect, this book is chock full of Easter themed activities and is providing plenty of ways to keep busy over the Easter holidays. The Podlings are always up for a spot of baking and they had a lot of fun making these little biscuits. They did a great job zesting the lemon, which I allowed them to do themselves after a little talk on how to use the grater safely.

Lily seems to enjoy the biscuit dough more than the actual biscuits. I had quite a job getting her to actually cut biscuit shapes out of the dough instead of just eating it!

We needed to chill the dough for half an hour before we could cut out the biscuits, so while we were waiting I set up little craft activity to stop the Podlings from getting impatient. I had a couple of Easter foam picture kits that we didn't get around to using last year which were quick and simple enough to do in the time available. By the time they had finished their pictures, the dough was ready to be rolled.

 Making Easter pictures

Tom thoroughly enjoyed making these biscuits. I've rarely seen him keep his attention on a kitchen related activity for this length of time. He particularly enjoyed directing me when it came to icing the biscuits. The writing icing I have is quite hard for the children to manipulate and Tom wanted his biscuits to look just like the ones in his book. He would hand me the colours he wanted, point to the biscuit he wanted me to copy and watch intently as I iced it for him.

Tom deciding which biscuit cutter to use next.

Tom and Lily were still icing their biscuits when the time came to get Emma up from her nap. I carried Emma into the kitchen where she watched Tom and Lily for a couple of minutes. She then climbed up onto the chair I put out for her, picked up a tube of icing and tried to have a go herself. She couldn't get any icing out of the tube, but she certainly had the right idea!

"Anything they can do..."

We had a lovely time together this afternoon and the Podlings are now busy deciding which Easter activity to do next. Did I mention how much I enjoy the school holidays!
.