* Friday Treat Time! *

As the beautiful season of autumn is nearly over I thought I would cheer us up with some fun autumn-y activity sheets, featuring squirrels, Hobbes the Cat and Bert & Berta!

This is a fun project I started a while back - and its definitely a work in progress, learning lots along the way! The activities are from a black and white 'seasonal' magazine aimed at 2-5 year olds, including photo stories, making a coat for a sausage dog, autumn recipes and more! I guess I need to start a winter one now!

Just click on one of the images below to download the three activities.

Happy Friday!

x*x*

* Friday Treat Time: Fairtrade Chocolate & Blackberry Cupcakes *

So, here's a Hummingbird cupcake recipe for you with a little autumn, ethical twist - just add some wild blackberries and Fairtrade cocoa powder!

Bert and Berta gathered some blackberries for me last Saturday, and I made these cakes for them (and other friends)!

Chocolate Cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Book with added blackberry twist!

Ingredients:

• 100g plain flour
• 20g Fairtrade cocoa powder
• 140g Fairtrade caster sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• 40g unsalted butter
• 120ml milk
• 1 egg
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Hand picked blackberries (8-10)

Frosting:

• 200g icing sugar, sifted
• 100g unsalted butter
• 40g Fairtrade cocoa powder
• 40ml milk
• Handpicked blackberries (12)
  

Pre-heat oven to 170/gas 3.

Put flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter in a bowl and mix together until you have a sandy consistency.

Roughly cut your hand full of blackberries in half and add to the mixture, stirring so the blackberries break up into very small pieces.

Whisk the egg, milk, vanilla in a jug, then slowly pour into the bowl with the flour etc, stirring all the time. Mix until the cake mixture is smooth to get rid of any lumps.

Spoon the mixture into cake cases until two-thirds full and bake in the pre-heated oven for 20-25 minutes.

When ready, leave cupcakes to cool on a wire cooling rack and make the chocolate frosting.

Beat the icing sugar, butter and cocoa powder together in a electric mixer (or just mix with a wooden spoon like me!) until the mixture is well mixed together.

Add the milk a couple of tablespoons at a time, whilst mixing. Once all the milk has been added, continue mixing/beating until the frosting is light and fluffy.

Add the frosting to your cooled cupcakes, with a blackberry on top of each one to finish.


Yummy autumn goodness!

x*x*

*Bert&Berta: A story for Autumn*

To celebrate autumn (and make up for serious blog neglect) I have an autumn feast of goodies lined up - the first being a little story with Bert&Berta:

(To evoke the sounds of autumn whilst looking and reading the story, please click on the leaves for a special Autumn Spotify Playlist I've pulled together).

So, what did Bert and Berta do today?

(A story told via scrabble tablets and poor grammar as they can't actually speak)

So what else is to come for autumn-ness fun? Well, a new(ish) recipe from me: Chocolate & Blackberry Cupcakes, Hobbes-in-a-Basket and Autumn Counting, to name but a few...

Stay sunny but crisp (its the new autumn vibe)!

x*x*