Archive | March 2012

in Art Projects, Baking, Canning Labels & Decoration, Holidays, Lime Mint Syrup, March Break, March Break & St. Patrick's Day Crafts, MARCH breAK! 2012, St. Patrick's Day, St. Patrick's Day Crafts, Sweets
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MARCH breAK! 2012: Sweetening St. Patty’s Day Brunch: Lime Mint Syrup

We made this simple syrup for Bea to pour over her pancakes this morning. She’s a lime fanatic! The mint flavour is extremely mild. Omit the mint altogether, and you have a lovely lime syrup! This syrup will also mix with your brunch beverages. St. Patty’s Day Mojitos, anyone?

Lime Mint Syrup
Adapted from a recipe in Topp & Howard, The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving
Makes .25 pint

Ingredients
3 limes
.5 c white wine
.5 c sugar
1/3 c torn fresh mint leaves

Method
Zest all three limes with a microplane.
Juice the limes, setting 1.5 tbs juice aside in a bowl.
Heat wine, sugar, mint and zest in a sauce pan.
Bring the ingredients to a boil, uncovered, over medium high heat.
Cover the pan, reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer for 8-10 minutes.
Remove the pan from the stove top and let the syrup cool completely.
Strain the syrup through fine mesh into a glass jar.
Strain the lime juice into the jar through the same sieve and compost the remnants.
Incorporate the juice into the syrup with a small wooden spoon or rubber spatula.
The lime mint syrup will actually look like a small pot of gold!
Store any left-overs in a well-sealed container.

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March 16, 2012

MARCH breAK! 2012: Frogwiches! Gingerbread Sandwich Cookies with Vanilla or Citrus Cream

Gallagher’s Favourite ”Frogwiches”:

Gingerbread Sandwich Cookies with Vanilla or Citrus Cream

Today’s the Last Day of our Illustrate-Your-Own-Book project for MARCH breAK!, and it’s time, once again, to make a treat drawn from our book, A Study in Emerald. In Chapter Six of our seven chapter tale, snake-detective Gallagher feasts on “Frog Sandwich Cookies” as he triumphs over his recent arrest of a suspect in the “Wolfe Tone Mystery.” Today, we’ll be reading the last chapter and acting out the whole story with our freshly made Sock Puppets, our Necktie Bean-Bag Snakes, and our Snake Stick Puppets. So, of course, we needed to make these Frogwiches to give our puppet theatre production an authentic feel!

This recipe produces a very thin, crispy sandwich cookie. By using the butter/shortening blend for the cream filling, you achieve something like an Oreo filling. In fact, the whole cookie tastes like a Spicy Ginger Oreo! The butter-only option will be more like a buttercream icing, but it won’t store as long in a tin. We like both the vanilla and the citrus (especially the lime!) options for this cookie!

Ginger Sandwich Cookies with Vanilla or Citrus Cream

Ingredients

Cookies
2 c flour
2 tsp ginger
2 tsp cinnamon (we like “Ceylon” in this recipe)
.25 tsp ground cloves
1.5 tsp baking soda
.5 tsp salt
3/4 cup + 1 tbs butter
.5 c brown sugar
.5 c granulated sugar
.25 c molasses
1 egg
1 tbs vanilla
.25 c icing sugar for dusting

Sandwich Cream
__4 tbs butter AND
4 tbs shortening (vegan, non-hydrogenated)__
OR
__6 tbs butter__
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1-2 tbs milk or cream if required

1 tbs vanilla
green food colouring (optional)
OR
2 tbs lime, lemon or orange juice
2 tsp zest (optional)
green, yellow or orange food colouring (optional)

Method

Cookies
With a whisk, combine flour, spices, soda, and salt in a medium bowl.
Beat the butter and sugars in a mixer until fluffy.
Slowly incorporate the molasses into the fluff.
Add the egg and the vanilla until just combined.
Add the bowl of dry ingredients slowly.
When the dough appears combined, use a spatula to form it into a ball.
Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1-2 hours.
Dough may also be rolled into a long wax or parchment paper log and refrigerated for at least 4-6 hours.

Heat the oven to 350 F.
Roll the dough into 1 inch balls with your hands

Flatten onto a parchment lined pan. (Leave a lot of space! Don’t exceed a dozen per pan! These cookies spread!)
Or, slice the log of dough into 1/8 in slices and place on parchment with liberal spacing.
Bake for just about 10 minutes.
IMMEDIATELY after removing cookies from pan, use (frog) cookie cutter to make a print in the cookie without completely slicing through.

Cool cookies on racks and make the icing.

Icing
Mix butter and shortening until soft.
Add icing sugar.
Add optional vanilla or citrus.
Add optional food colouring.
If icing hasn’t formed, add milk or cream 1 tsp at a time to mixer.

Assembly
Place some icing sugar in a tea strainer or in a spoon.
For HALF of the cookies: Place the cookie cutter back on the top of the indentation you made wtih the it previously.
Tap the sides of the tea strainer or gently shake your spoon to spread the icing sugar over top of the cookie.

Use a butter knife or an icing spreader to spread a dollop of icing on the bottom/flat portion of the other HALF of the cookies.

Place the sugar-dusted cookies on top of the iced ones to create the sandwiches.

Ribbit! Ribbit!
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March 16, 2012

MARCH breAK! 2012: Snake Sock Puppets

Today, we finished reading and illustrating our book, A Study in Emerald. To celebrate, we munched on Frogwiches (homemade gingerbread sandwich cookies), and we made sock puppets of all the major characters in our story. When the kids were done, we got out the old doorway puppet theatre I made way back before Bea was born, and they put on a puppet production of the story! I’ve posted a Gallery of pictures just below, and a DIY/How-to for the puppets at the bottom of the page.

Snake Sock Puppet Gallery

Sir Lochrann Holmes and Seann McUaitson

Detectives Gallagher and Na’Sraide

Siobhan/Cailloan and Haggerty

The Pythons: Strangerson and Drebber

Wiggins, the snake-urchin and Mrs. Houghston, the landlady

Mrs. Limerick and her son, David

Irene Adder

The Nest
(Seann Clancy was not availble for a photo today.)

Our Puppet Theatre from 2003 is still in use!

The puppets in action!
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DIY Snake Sock Puppets

Supplies

Socks
Googly Eyes
Ribbon
Hot Glue and Gun
A large, old wooden or metal spoon

Method
Choose a pairs of googly eyes, and a few inches of ribbon into a forked tongue for each puppet.

Wiggle the sock down over a large old spoon.

Glue eyes just below the seam at the foot of the sock.

Flip spoon around so that you can’t see the eyes/seam of the sock.
Glue about 1 inch of the ribbon down, pattern side down down the centre towards the tip.

Let cool for a moment before removing the puppet from spoon.

Play!

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March 16, 2012

MARCH breAK! 2012: A Study in Emerald, Day 5, Story and Illustrations

We just finished reading and illustrating A Study in Emerald! Today, the kids used chalk pastels dipped in water, oil pastels, and woodless coloured pencils to complete their cover pages for the book, as well as their illustrations for the seventh and final chapter. Afterwards, they indulged in Gallagher’s Favourite Frogwiches (ginger sandwich cookies) and they made Snake Sock Puppets, putting on a condensed puppet production of the entire book! I’ve provided something of a summary of our final chapter, below. A gallery of the kids’ illustrations follows.

Summary: A Study in Emerald, Chapter Seven, A Light in the Darkness
Na’Sraide shares the details of Strangerson’s murder. Since he hasn’t returned to the serpent police station yet, he has some of the evidence from the crime-scene with him. Insepcting a bakery box of Amphibian Farls, which, unlike Mrs. Houghston’s lovely frog breads, appear to be full of small bones and soaked in what appears to be some kind of syrup, Holmes exclaims that he has solved the case. He then feeds the farls to McUaitson’s pet doormouse, Edgar Allen, in order to test his theories, exulting in the dramatic conclusio to the old mouse’s life (no worries, he’s packing an antidote!). Gobsmacked, Gallagher and Na’Sraide appeal to Holmes to reveal the name of the culprit. Rather than naming the murderer, however, Holmes, with the help of the street-urchin Wiggins, lures the culprit right up into the coiling-room of 221B Barrow street. But who dunnit, in the end? And who was the murderer’s wily, female-snake of an accomplice? And just why were they bent on seeking “Revenge”? You didn’t think we were going to let the snake out of the bag, did you? …. Ah now, you’ll just have to wait for us to edit and publish our story… We WILL tell you, however, that while the case comes to a full resoultion, A Study in Emerald concludes with the suggestion of a fresh new adventure for McUaitson and Holmes. Later that morning, the mysterious Eireen Adder steals her way into the coiling-room at 221B, begging for assistance… It seems she thinks she’s being followed.

Cover Art & Illustrations

Tobes:

Book Cover, A New Portrait of Sir Lochrann Holmes