Bank Holiday "Baking"

I'm not sure you can call melting a leftover Easter egg, butter and golden syrup together, then mixing rice krispies in "baking", but that's what we did today...

Rice krispy cakes made even better with sprinkles!

As bank holiday baking projects go, this was a good one. I sometimes do proper baking with Izzy, but she gets frustrated by not being able to do everything herself. Whereas with these, she was able to do everything and Toby was even able to help too. And there was only one bowl for me to wash up afterwards - win!

After we'd eaten some of the chocolate krispy cakes, we headed into town for a bit of shopping followed by lunch at Costa. I had a really tasty mushroom and cheese toastie, and an only-ok strawberry lemonade...

And then we went home to do Miss Isabellie's exercise routine! Haha, it was so cute - she'd got it all written out in her notebook and stood at the front of the room telling Liam & I the instructions!!

The teacher herself...!

Dinner was something I've been meaning to cook all weekend - one of our favourites, butternut squash risotto...

Toby won the award for the weirdest eater. He ate all his butternut squash first, to the extent that we all thought that was the only thing he was going to eat so we also gave him some of ours, then when all the butternut squash was gone from all of our plates, he finally started eating his rice! Ha, same as I said about Izzy yesterday, he does know how to get the things that he wants, in Toby's case without even speaking!!

Once the children had gone to bed, it was time for my evening treat - strawberries with chocolate Philadelphia...

I felt kind of silly buying the individual pots of chocolate Philadelphia. 4 little 30g pots cost the same as 1 big 160g tub, so in terms of cost/100g it would've made sense to buy the big tub. But the one and only time I bought chocolate Philadelphia before, I ate the entire big tub in less than 2 hours with constant trips to and from the fridge with a spoon! So far I've only eaten one little pot since I bought them on Saturday so, even though I should be able to exercise some self-control, it probably does end up being more economical to buy it ready portion-sized!

Favourite easy baking projects? Muffins are another quick thing I like to make - they are usually a quicker method than making cupcakes anyway, and then of course the lack of icing speeds things up. These rice krispy cakes were even quicker though so definitely one we will be doing more often. Liam loves them (and the lack of washing up!) more as well, so more brownie points for me!!

Do you try to buy portion sized things, or can you buy big bags and make them last?? I buy big bags of some things - dried fruit for example - and they do last ok, but I tend to have the occasional handful whilst I'm cooking dinner etc. Chocolate or other sweet snacks usually needs to be portioned, although if I'm honest sometimes I can be good and make things last regardless, and other times it doesn't matter if it's portioned or not - if I'm in a "snacky mood" I'm going to eat all the portions that are available!