Ill children, ginger biscuits and a moonsand recipe.

I know Madam is ill when she wants cuddles and just lies on me for hours without muttering an insult or asking a why. Now, i'm not saying that I want her to be ill, but once the sweaty fever stage is over and the cuddle stage kicks in, there is a pleasure to be had in sitting on the sofa watching the Wizard Of Oz again (Glinda is a man, I swear, look at her hands).Now madam is 3 (nearly 4, that's very important) and confident enough to take over Greece, it's all "No Mummy, I can do it!" and "Leave me alone, I want to do it!", which is of course, to be lauded and expacted. But a little sad too.

So, once the Calpol has kicked in and things have calmed down enough that i'm no longer worried and she's no longer delirious, we can enjoy a pajama day on the sofa, watching Dorothy be far too big for that frock, really, and the Munchkins smoke enormous cigars. I'm sure they'd not get away with that now. We're too tired for anything else, since the wee hours were spent mopping brows and administering Calpol. Once son has been shifted, grudgingly, to school, wishing he were ill, we can flop out and collapse.  And later on, when she's actually allowed me to prise the lumps from her nose and wipe her face ( a bit), we can bake biscuists (ginger for the cold, naturally), and try out a recipe for homemade knock off moonsand.

First, the worlds easiest ginger biscuit recipe. This recipe makes a LOT of biscuits, about 40 by my sizing, but this is the right amount for this house, wherein they don;t survive long. They are fatter versions of shop biscuits, cracked and crunchy. If you like yours chewy in the middle, swap the golden syrup for black treacle and cook for less time. This recipe is also ultimately child friendly, there's a fair bit for them to do. they can crack and whisk eggs and do the stirring and ball rolling.

You will need (in the dry bowl, sifted)
350g Self-Raising Flour
1 teaspoon bicarb
1 tablespoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. 
You will need, in the wet bowl, melted,
115g butter
85g golden syrup
200g sugar

Melt the wet ingredients. Add a beaten egg. Add to the dry bowl, mix until you get a very stiff plaibale dough. Roll into walnut sized balls.
Bake at Gas mark 3 for 15-20 minutes. Allow to cool, eat by the handful, saying they are good for a cold.

And now onto mess making toys.Moonsand, as all parents who have thus far managed to avoid playdough know, is even more epxnsive than playdough and probably much more annoying to clean up. However, all messy toys are good toys, and what better to cheer up an ailing child than giving them things they can be messy with on purpose. This recipe is simple enough, and cheap enough to give the makers of Moonsand cause for concern. The texture is exactly the same, silky "sand" that sticks together and makes nifty castles. Madam spent a happy hour burying her Polly Pockets alive.

Take 8 parts flour to one part baby oil. Mix. That's it! The only bugbear is that you can't add food colouring as it is water, not oil based, and will turn the flour into glop. So a nice scented oil, like baby oil is the way to go, or a bright yellow oil, like rapeseed, will give you a pastel yellow shade. How easy is that?

We bunked off and made gingerbread

It was snowing this morning. So much snowing, in fact, that the 45 minute walk to playgroup and back again appealed about as much as kissing Michael Gove. Still, I tried. We dressed in 4 billion layers each, and walked with arms and legs swaddled in thermals to the buggy, which a) daughter refused to get in and b) wouldn't go in the snow anyway. Both children are born for the sunnier climes of South America or Spain, not rural Fenland, much to Yorkshire husbands disgust. By the time we had struggled down the road, buggy veering from left to right as I failed to discover the wheel lock, with my best impression of bad mother voice shrieking "Come ON! It's just a bit of snow!" whilst son wailed despondantly "It's getting in my EYES! My EEEEYYYYES!", I realised that this was not going to happen. For one, I couldn't really shout "Come ON!" for an hour in a blizzard, and secondly, daughter had flung herself from the buggy into the snow and was weeping. We turned back and happily plunged into the house again.

By 10.30 we had eaten all the crumpets and were shouting at each other. So we made gingerbread. This is simply the best gingerbread ever, it is exceptionally more-ish and, if you don't mind your kids getting dental caries for the sake of an hours peace, the kids will eat all of it if you let them. It's another wet/dry recipe, my absolute favourite type as they are virtually idiot and chidl proof. You will need:

Dry stuff: 225g plain flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 tsp bicarb, 1 and 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Sift.

Wet stuff: 55g butter, 115g soft brown sugar, 115g black treacle. Melt all together and leave to cool a bit. + (1 tbsp milk if needed for dough).

Mix it all together, until it turns into a dough. If it's too sticky and tough, add a bit of milk. Roll out to 5mm thickness and cut out shapes. I usually get about 25-30 assorted snails, squirrels and stars from this. Bake at gas mark 5 for 10-15 minutes, but a lot depends on the shape of the biscuit. Eat. All of them.

Whilst they were eating, I finally decided to crack on with using the sewing machine, which has been sitting and intimidating me. Having forced MIL to wind me lots of bobbins (I simply cannot do that yet), I grasped the nettle and a big stack of the cheap vintage pillowcases I keep buying because they are 10p, and decided to make some skirts for daughter, who thankfully doesn't care what she looks like yet, being 2. she will be in pillowcase outfits until she comes weeping to me and shows me photos of all her friends in Reebok or whatever, and even then i'll still moan.

So I chopped the top and end off of one fetching pillowcase featuring cars and bikes (she WILL not be girly, not if it's up to me. No pink here!) until it was a good skirt length. Then I turned it wrong side out, and straight stitched a pocket for elastic. At the bottom, I took a leftover bit of binding and sewed it around the hem, turned it right side out, and then sewed it around again. Wonky stitching covered. For skirt 2 I chose a green pillowcase, did the same thing, but this time without the binding edge and some ribbon instead, once i'd gotten the hang of sewing straighter.

Both skirts are very wonky and very amateur, but they took an hour of gingerbread eating and broke my machine virginity, so i'll always love them.