MOROCCO: Orange & Almond Basbousa

In conjunction with our focus on Morocco week, as well as making their Morocco Lapbooks the kids also had fun making this lovely Moroccan cake.

Here is the recipe and method:

Ingredients:

• 115g butter, softened
• 1 orange
• 100g golden caster sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 150g semolina
• 100g ground almonds
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• icing sugar, for dusting
• greek-style yoghurt to serve

Syrup:

• 300ml orange juice
• 150g caster sugar
• 8 cardamom pods, crushed

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4. Grease and base-line a 20cm/8 inch cake tin. Grate the rind from the orange, reserving some for the decoration, and squeeze the juice from one half. Place the butter, orange rind and caster sugar in a bowl and beat together until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs. In a separate bowl, mix together the semolina, ground almonds and baking powder, then fold into the creamed mixture with the orange juice. Spoon the batter into the prepared tin and bake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes, or until well risen and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes.

2. To make the syrup, place the orange juice, sugar and cardamom pods in a saucepan over a low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil and simmer for 4 minutes, or until syrupy.

3. Turn the cake out into a deep serving dish. Using a skewer, make holes over the surface of the warm cake. Strain the syrup into a separate bowl and spoon three quarters of it over the cake, then leave it to stand for 30 minutes. Dust the cake with icing sugar and cut into slices. Serve with the remaining syrup drizzled around, accompanied by yoghurt.

Yusef grating and squeezing the orange

Samira weighing out and creaming the butter

Basma giving it a mix

Amina giving it a mix too

Samira making the orange syrup

Sliced and ready to eat

Bsahtek, insha’Allah!

 

World Food Week

My 3 year old daughter Amina just started pre-school a couple of weeks ago and this week they have been learning all about the foods of the world. The kids have helped in preparing, serving and tasting the different food.

Then they made little art and craft things focusing on different foods.

On Monday, she made Fish and Chips.

She glued down little strips of yellow paper for the chips.

On Tuesday she made chopsticks.

This was made using 2 firm drinking straws, each tightly rolled up in a sheet of paper and then taped together.

On Wednesday she made Tacos.

This was made using a circle of light brown thin card folded in half to make the taco shape. And for the filling she used brown tissue paper for the meat and green tissue paper for the salad.

Today, Thursday, she made what appears to be an Italian salad or pizza, although she couldn’t remember what it was LOL!

Some brown paper glued to the plate and then topped with green and red tissue paper … I’m sure it’s delicious, masha’Allah!

And because she’s had so much fun this past week, this afternoon we decided to make something ready for Show & Tell tomorrow ~ our very favourite, Cous-cous.

Even my 2 year old Basma got involved and made her own. First we used some golden crepe paper to represent the cous-cous, and the girls dotted all over the crepe paper with a red felt pen to represent the tomato based sauce that we put on our cous-cous.

Then we used green felt and green tissue paper to make the slices of courgette, yellow and brown pom-poms to make the potatoes, orange felt to make the carrots and brown felt to make the meat that accompanies the cous-cous.

What a yummy-scrummy week, masha’Allah!

Chocolate Nest Cakes

Spring is well and truly in the air and I thought it would be fun to make some little cakes with a Spring Theme.

It’s a very simply, fun recipe that the kids can get stuck into: Chocolate Nest Cakes.

First I got my 2 year old, Basma, and 3 year old Amina to put the cake cases onto the tray.

My eldest daughter, Samira broke up the milk chocolate into a heat-proof bowl and then I melted it over a pan of boiling water.

 Yusef poured the Choco Snaps (chocolate coated puffed rice cereal) into a large mixing bowl. I poured in the melted chocolate and they all took turns to mix it up and coat the cereal.

Then they each took turns to spoon the mixture into the paper cake cases.

They filled each case and made a small dip in the middle of each mixture for the ‘eggs’. I brought a packet of Cadbury’s Mini Eggs for them to decorate their cakes and make them look like nests.

They patiently took turns to decorate their nests.

Later in the afternoon, after tidying up the garden, we enjoyed the Spring sunshine and ate our cakes.

YUMMY, MASHA’ALLAH!

COMING SOON: Design a Cake

 

A fun and exciting Design and Technology Project for Key Stage 2 on designing cakes.

Algeria Project: Cakes & Biscuits

Using a simple sponge cake recipe we baked these sponge cakes. All the kids pitched in with the mixing and stirring. Then I let my son make the white icing while my daughter made the green icing.

When the cakes were cooled down the kids took turns to spoon on the icing and I added the finishing touch by piping on raspberry jam in the shape of the moon and star.

We ate these whilst celebrating Algeria’s win over Egypt during the FIFA World Cup 2010 qualifications!!

 

We also made some Algerian Flag biscuits, decorating them with the icing and jam as we did with the cakes.

My son and eldest daughter working together to make the biscuit dough.

The kids took turns to shape out the dough into rectangular shapes while the younger kids made Winnie the Pooh shaped cookies LOL!

When they were cooked and cooled down, we iced them and ate them.

Delicious, masha’Allah!