Abby Attempts: The Great British Bake Off Technical Five

Nom, bakewell tart. I'd been wanting to try making this for a while but had to order some baking beads.. Which never came, so I borrowed from a friend. Brilliant!

My first attempt at a blind bake went pretty well! I put it in a ceramic pie thingy which I think wasn't right, should have gone for the flan case that they mentioned. It went a bit too brown and messy around the edges and I absolutely failed rolling it out so I just plonked bits of dough in there and patted it a bit... but it all cooked all the way through.  AND NO SOGGY BOTTOM :)

It called for a tablespoon of raspberry jam on top of the base but I didn't have any, so I used the last of the strawberry jam that I made for the Viennese whirls, then the almondy frangipane layer on top... It was delicious to try straight from the saucepan, and easy to plonk on top.

Then after it was baked and I'd managed to lop it out of the ceramic dish (just about intact) and onto a plate which had a dip in the middle so didn't work very well, and a bit of fanning Val-style I iced it and then did the pink stripes and tried my hand at feathering. It was a bit of a fail since it was still quite warm and the middle dip was making it run.. And the gel colour wasn't actually pink - it was red - so it looks more like a Halloween pie than a bakewell tart and Ben won't eat it cos it looks gruesome. Greaaaat. I'm a bit out off too, to be honest, but it's really yummy! But also a bit chewy at the edges, not sure why that is, I don't think that's normal for bakewell tarts...

Quote from Oliver, after he told me how much he loved it, loved me and how it was "marvellous": "It doesn't look like Mary Berry's" The boy is right but pass me another slice, it's scrum :)

You can find the recipe here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/bakewell_tart_90600

Abby Attempts: The Great British Bake Off Technical Three

Dampfnudel! I've now found out the reason why I put these off... They're rubbish!! How on earth are you supposed to know when they're done?! They look like they're barely cooked so you obediently follow the timings, plus a couple of minutes extra, and the flippin things are encrusted to the bottom of the pan, gah. I'm pretty sure the dampfnudel itself was cooked, I tried to squish it to see if it was still a lump of dough, but it felt okay (I was surprised, the top looked like a lump of raw dough) so that was a small consolation, now I've got a line of barely edible nudlen (the plural of dampfnudel, perhaps?)

I picked some plums from our plum tree for the sauce and felt pretty pleased with myself, it was tasting delicious. Then I stick buzzed it and it went everywhere, now I've got little bits of plum all over my clothes and the kitchen, hmpff.

Forget the vanilla sauce, I'm sure they called it custard in the bread week episode, so I mixed up a birds instant sachet. Thanks Approved foods, 10p! At least that's one bit that tasted right.

I won't be bothering with them again. You might as well mix in a bit of sugar into a dumpling mix and plonk them on top of a casserole!

Abby Attempts: The Great British Bake Off Technical Four

I needed to do a bit of a switch around with the technicals due to missing ingredients, hence week four has happened before three! So today is lace pancakes, dampfnudel will have to wait.

Today I decided to get the boys in on the action, Zach and Jacob were both with me for these, so the lace and heart shaped brief was quickly tossed aside. As was my sanity as random objects appeared in the batter. A duplo dog was amusing, Zach lobbing in a grubby washing up sponge in not so much... Calmcalmcalm. Failfailfail.

The batter was really smooth... I followed Mary's instructions and mixed in the flour into the eggy milky well GRADUALLY and it looks like that's the key to not getting my usual lumps. You learn something new :)

Using the squeezy bottle (Home Bargains, 39p. Ace find!) was actually really easy, much better than my piping fails. Two out of three of us are nursing small burns,buy what does that matter when you're having fun making shapes like this?! After two fancy hearts it was trains, words, a house, a Mummy with a baby in her tummy (Zachy's request, no, there's no message in there!) and animals all the way.

Highly recommend, lots of fun :)

Find the recipe here http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/lace_pancakes_20045

Abby Attempts: The Great British Bake Off Technical Two: Vienesse Whirls

Technical Two complete - Viennese Whirls this time. It looked pretty doable again, but would have been more doable if

1. I had looked at the recipe before I went shopping for the ingredients. That would have save me buying eggs, cream and caster sugar (no eggs required, and it was buttercream I needed to make, not buy cream.. And icing sugar and jam sugar! I thought I was soooo clever buying caster sugar..)
2. Not dropped said unnecessary eggs and cream meaning they were even more pointless ingredients
3. I had a piping bag that a) didn't have a split in it, b) had a fitting that fit in the bag (would have saved me using sellotape..) and c) didn't have a picture of Winnie the pooh on the side that kept rubbing off on my hand and into the doughy mix

Other than that I'd call it a success! There is a bit of definition in the biscuits, they are - as Paul and Mary call it - "short," light and crumbly, and I made jam for the first time! It tasted delicious, even though it never really set and just dripped all over the place... Maybe using actual jam sugar would have made the difference. Oh, I was happy with the buttercream too. Turns out that if you actually follow a recipe and put in the correct amount of icing sugar/butter it tastes better! :)

Mary's recipe said it should take an hour and make 12-14 whirls.. Think it took two and a half and I made eight! :D

Abby Attempts: The Great British Bake Off Technical One: Jaffa cakes

Anyone see the first episode of the Bake Off this week?? I thought the jaffa cakes looked easy...they weren't! #gbbo #presentationneverwasmystrongpoint

SuperMum

It's official, I am starting to feel like I've got the hang of this Mummy-to-three-pre-schoolers thing. Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally, you might say!) I started coming out the other end of the crazy tunnel about the time when I began studying the scriptures for longer each day- I have doubled the time I was reading before. It is working!! There really is power in God's word and it strengthens me. Along with that, I am falling into a better pattern pf priorities, cutting out the stuff that's a faff or less important. (Not ALL the faff, I hasten to say... I just spent Jacob's last feed flicking through Facebook, but it's important to have a balance, right?!)

Anyway, SOME days, I feel life SuperMum. I'm going to list them so I don't forget- for later life, and all the days when I definitely do NOT feel so Super!

- When my boys are all on my lap and we sing Nursery rhymes

- When I muster up the motivation to go to Bodyattack on a Monday night. It is soooo hard to put my leggings and sports bra on after the boys go to bed (every other night it's my super-cool onesie pajamas) But I LOVE it and come home so full of energy!

- When I make a quiche or pie for tea! I've discovered pastry recently and I feel like such a SuperMum cracking out a homemade quiche

- When Oliver and Zach tell me they love me. This happens a LOT. I am so blessed. I'm pretty sure they got their intense love gene from Ben, they are all so full of love.

- When Ben and I take to the dance floor with a child in tow each and ROCK those ceidhl dances!

- When I help Oliver and get Zach dressed with one hand while feeding Jacob

- When I get the washing up from the night before done before 10 o'clock the next morning

- When Ben comes home and asks the boys what we've been doing today and they actually remember and don't say "nothing!"

- When all three boys are in bed by 7.15pm

- When Zach eats new vegetables, he's doing it!!

- When nobody cries getting into, during or getting out of the bath

- When lovely Scottish ladies tell me that Jacob's "fairly growing" and he gets all his food from me :)

Jacob in a basket

I adore this boy!!

Trying out Geocaching

Last weekend my friend Nikki posted on Facebook what a great time she spent with her family geocaching. It's like a treasure hunt where you use your phone as a gps and find a certain point, often interesting or beautiful. When you find it you sign the log book and put in a little something that you brought with you, swapping it for something you take out of the box.
I'd seen it as an activity option at Center Parcs when we were there at the beginning of January but we weren't sure if our boys are too young to manage the maps and gps.
Today we tried it. We downloaded the free app and had a look- there are LOADS! More than 2 million, in 185 different counties. And they are everywhere! We picked one to find a 10 minute drive from our house, and we passed a few other areas on our way.
We found a castle we had never seen and had a great time, despite a grumpy baby (probably his second time ever being grumpy in his whole life so I couldn't really complain) and freezing rain. When the gps said we were pretty close we had to have a real search to find the cache but we found it! Really quite exciting, and I bet it could become quite addictive. We did another one on our way home!
So we have found a new favourite :) Outdoorsy, educational, fun and FREE to do with family. You can't beat that!!

TRY IT WHERE YOU ARE!

Christmassy Jacob

Here's 14 week old Jacob on my knee this evening. He just smiles and laughs all day long. We love him so much!!!

December is BUSY, and I haven't even done anything Christmassy yet!

Hello!

It has been months and months and I think I'd better stop filling up Facebook with photos, so I'm going back to blogging (I think!)

The past week has been a whirlwind of family, friends, parties, food and LOADS of children!! Oliver turned four, we crammed 12 kids plus three of our own, into our house, we made a foiled-covered rocket (it survived at least four children and three balloons in there at once) Jacob was blessed by Ben at our church, I singlehandedly looked after six children for more than three days (three of my friend's, three of my own- oldest was 7...) And the inlaws, outlaws, a couple of brothers and my Nanna came up all for a flyingvisit for the blessing. It has been wonderful, and now I feel like I need to sleep for a week!

2014 Goals

In am no different this year, I still love goals! This year I have less of them, I want to crack the lot :)

- Get into shape physically

- Get into shape spiritually

- Make a Christmas quilt

- Potty train Oliver!

- Enjoy 1-to-1 time with Zach (will have lots of that with Oliver starting Playgroup next week!!)

I also plan to blog my progress more, but I don't want to make that a goal. Hopefully if I don't it's because I am doing something better?!

May 2014 be wonderful for everyone! :)

Update + Christmas!

It has been a long time! It is mainly down to me not being very techy and having trouble making this blog app work on our tablet :s But everything is going well for us right now and we are feeling rather Christmassy! This year we have two trees, Ben had grown up with a fake tree and I always had a real tree so I am always a bit sad with our fake tree every year (Ben says a real tree is "inefficient!" Ha) but some friends told us where they had seen some Christmas trees for free (nothing inefficient about that!) so we had a little look through and found one I loved! Then our friend even brought it to our door on his car roof, lucky us! So we have a real one in the lounge decorated by me and a fake one in our kitchen/dining room decorated by Ben (still baubles to go on I think). Haha best of both worlds and even better that it was free :)

The boys: Oliver starts Playgroup in January and is now in a toddler bed having just turned three last week with a train party. He is definitely still a train boy, and particularly excited about the Santa Express we will be going on next week (a train ride where Father Christmas is on it too!!) Zachy is saying some words nowadays!! He says up, down, Dada, Mum, cheese, please, ta, hello, yes, no and amen and he makes a lot of animal noises and can chug like a train (of course!) This is a great breakthrough for him some he has always been the point-and-grunt type :) He loves running some giving us all cuddles and he loves to "bundle" Oliver (they say "bund-O!!!") The boys are often tackling each other (and us) to the floor, they just love it. I am looking forward to having lots of one-to-one time with Zach while Oliver is at Playgroup.

I am really looking forward to Christmas this year, and making it extra special to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and not getting totally carried away by presents (although there will be quite a few of those too!!) In between talking to the boys about Father Christmas and making reindeer paintings with their feet we have been talking and reading books about the true meaning of Christmas and we will be doing some acting out with them on Christmas Eve :) I think we will all play Wise men, Shepherds and everyone else all at once! We have also been watching some of these lovely, short Bible videos which are very simple and absolutely beautiful and made by our Church. http://www.lds.org/bible-videos/videos/the-nativity?lang=eng

Happy Christmas!

Boy number two, lover of electrical appliances

A video taken a couple of weeks ago in which Zach demonstrates his love of plugs.

Oliver the Tank Engine

I began writing this post a month ago, time got away from me!

I used to keep a daily journal, then when I became a Mum I wrote a couple of times a week, and now I have fallen off altogether! I am determined to get back on track since I have a hopeless memory (really, I have next to no memories of my childhood) and such lovely things are passing me by and I refuse to forget them and not be grateful for them!

So I have started scribbling the odd funny quote from Oliver, or something I want to remember about Zach and thought that I'd share, since they do totally crack me up :) And there are times and seasons for everything, and that is better than nothing!

Oliver the Tank Engine

Oliver has been obsessed with trains as long as I can remember. Definitely for 6 months, plus some probably. He can link trains to any conversion, and he chugs (moves his arms like pistons as though he is a train) from room to room and outside... anywhere! He doesn't walk, he doesn't run- he chugs. When Ben gets home from work Oliver greets him with,  "Hello Daddy! Let's chug around!" and so they do- around and around the sofas. It is very difficult to get him to stop, the most effective way my Dad found was to yell "red light!" and then "turntable!" and my lovely train/boy obediently stops and turns around.

It is hard work getting him away from his train set at mealtimes ("No! I want to chug away!") but once he is up to the table the train love continues. He suddenly gives a big sigh and says, "let's talk about steam trains!" And off he goes, chatting about funnels and how many wheels James has. We had cheese toasties for lunch today. When his came out of the grill Oliver said, "Ooh! There's STEAM- Woo-ooh!" Then he had a sip of his orange juice, which had just come out of the fridge:"ooh! It's cold! Like Percy! He says, "I want a scarf, I want a scarf!" (A favourite episode..)

He bumped his head the other day, I offered to rub and kiss it better. He bowed his head to me and said, "kiss my funnel"!! Sometimes he chugs in slow motion, really puffing and showing the strain, "ooh, it's rea-lly har-d, up Gor-dons's hi-ll..." and when I tell him he is a good boy he answers, "My not a boy, my a tank engine!" Our new favourite game is to turn on Classic FM and to use it as our chugging soundtrack. Dvorjak symphony number 9 was a big hit this week: "There's a cow on the track!" "The fat controller is going past on his bike!" Any piece will do, slow and beautiful ("It's a nice day for a chug around the Island of Sodor") or fast and frantic ("Hurry, hurry, hurry, sing the coaches")

The boy is hilarious, and every day brings a new train-related adventure.

Sunday photos, July 2013

Sunday, a church day. Always manages to be busier than the rest of the week, but lovely nonetheless. A good day to worship and serve at church, and spend time with my boys!

Summer Sunshine + HOUSE!!

What an AMAZING couple of weeks it has been- sunny, full of friends and family and small days out, all back home in Aberdeen. It was so lovely to be away down south, but when we settle somewhere new to me it always feels like home. I am lucky that I am adaptable like that naturally. But now I am not keen to move on anywhere, which is especially good news since WE ARE BUYING OUR FIRST HOUSE!!! The mortgage lenders are just finishing having everything go through at the moment- only one thing to go- a second valuation- since they didn't like the fact that the first was a standard Scottish one and not one of their chosen surveyors (ooh, picky!) but once that is done in a few days we should be all sealed and dealed! (dealt?! :D)

The house is in a village called Newmachar, which is 5 mins from where we live at the moment. It is lovely, with a good community feel and BUS ROUTES in and out! The best you could hope for and more really! Everything inside has been recently done and to an amazing standard. We actually put an offer on a different house at the beginning of last week, but got ourselves into an epic Scottish-style bidding war that we totally failed at! Then, *miraculously* a new house came on the market literally as we found that our offer on the other house was rejected. We jumped on it-it was just right- we saw it that night and put an offer in the next morning. We found out that our offer was accepted the next day. I can't quite believe that our speedy offer worked, it was only on the market for one afternoon!

To be honest this is an even better house than the first one we liked, and for a snip of the what the other one must have gone for! It is in pristine condition, the garden is more beautiful, it looks better from the outside. Maybe Heavenly Father had this in place for us a long time ago when Oliver got a place at Newmachar playgroup?! I can believe that of him :) Ben can cycle to work on a designated cycle path so I have the car and we will save all that petrol, AND it is the best possible place for keeping my violin pupils!!! Truly amazing.

Happy days, we have been truly blessed this past couple of weeks. We have worked hard to be ready for this but I believe that it is going to pay off very soon :) All fingers and toes are crossed that this last thing with the new home survey will go smoothly.

And now that the sun is out, I have been thinking about The Corrs. They always make me feel summery!