Boy Monkey's Pie Biscuit

It is absolutely glorious here in the North West and we are spending most of our time outdoors. 

A couple of days ago though we went to the local library to get a pile of holiday reads for all of us and a couple of gardening and cookery books to keep us busy on a rainy day. Luckily there do not seem to be any rainy days this half term but as it is the holidays the monkeys still like to do some baking. 

First of all we made a delicious breakfast treat : "Cinnamon Crunch Muesli" from Bill Granger's Feed Me Now! Cookbook. 

Next up was boy monkey's choice from his favourite "Shrek" cookbook. Most of the recipes that we tried from this tome were yummy but this time he chose the ginger biscuits and it didn't work so well. Years ago I got a recipe card for ginger biscuits from the "Gruffalo Club" for girl monkey and we have used this one ever since as they are so scrumptious. Whilst preparing the dough according to Shrek I wasn't convinced it was going to work, very dry and crumbly. I tried adding some milk (this may not have been the right thing to do) and put the lot in the fridge. There appeared to be plenty butter in it and seemed OK when I got it out of the fridge but as soon as they tried to roll and cut it, it all fell apart. Naturally they were very disappointed but boy monkey then came up with the idea of making a big pie biscuit with it. 

Girl monkey then decided she wanted to add some fruit which we mixed with some custard powder. We then put the creation in the oven for 15 minutes and hey presto we had a lovely fruit pie. It was truly delicious and I was very proud of the little ones for coming up with this idea. 

I can certainly recommend this for any dough gone wrong but please do eat it on the same day. We put some in the fridge overnight but I could break my teeth on it the following day. 

On British Mummy Bloggers I read about the Recycle Week starting 22 June which is being promoted through Recycle Now. As you all know I love recycling, upcycling, swapping and everything else that makes my life and everyone else's greener and I love to share a little tip. I am not a fan of dry cleaning, I don't like the chemicals and the rubbish plastic hangers they now use in most places but occasionally it has to be done. Also Mr Betsy tends to bring his shirts to be ironed so we do get a fair amount of hangers and accompanying plastic covers. Our local dry cleaners kindly take the hangers back and I have come up with what I think is a good way of recycling the covers : tie a know at the top where the small hole for the hanger is and use it as a bin liner. Now I can hear you all thinking that I should not use a bin liner at all but just a sheet of kitchen towel at the bottom of the bin and scrub it all out every day..... However in my world that isn't always possible and rather than buying bin liners (which I have NEVER done) I'd rather use what I have got in the cupboard. Any other tips for re-using the covers will be gladly received!