School kids and sprinkles

My friend Jo is a primary school teacher and yesterday her students were celebrating 100 days of being at school! I think it's super cute to be celebrating this milestone, the kids must be so proud of themselves and feel like real big school kids now.. Anyway, as part of the celebration she asked me to do some baking, which was a real honour for me (yay, my food is edible!).

It had to be nut-free (and yet Jo still asked ME to make them...hmmm) and I figured little kids are best with plain flavours so we chose mini vanilla cupcakes, and then shortbread bikkies that the kids could ice and decorate themselves. I can't really show you the kids faces, but judging from Jo's pictures I reckon these cookies were the more popular item..DIY and loaded with lollies..how could they not love that?

The cookies themselves were my first attempt at shortbread, and I wasn't prepared for how much they would spread during the baking. So, what once was round, became kind of squares as they all vied for space on the tray. They are definitely quite 'home-made' looking (to put it nicely) .. but it looks as though -at least some of them.. were still decorate-able (?).

As for the cupcakes, the recipe is generally fail-proof, then I iced them three different colours (Rory selected the rather sickly shade of green). This was probably my best ever batch of butter cream icing...not too runny and no signs of curdling which I sometimes see after adding the milk. And, I purchased a disposable piping bag set from the supermarket which worked really well! My writing icing was a bit hard, and I'm still learning there,so the 100 Days writing looks pretty crappy, I'll admit, but I'm thinking this was another fairly successful project..

Jo has kindly sent me some photos to share with you..you can also see the kids' 100 handprints that they made in celebration..all in all very cute!

Before...

and after...I love the colours in this photo!

Okay and that is that. Time for a new project to keep me occupied in the kitchen...and not just baking for my own tummy!

Hope you are all having a good week (and not doing stupid things like locking yourself out of all your property!)... and may I also take this moment to say THANK YOU to all our lovely blog readers and supporters, those of you who have commented, on here or in person, it is really nice to know that our family and friends are reading and enjoying what we are doing here...thanks guys!

xx Harriet