I've been at it again .... busy making tree decorations for Fox Project to sell at the Christmas Market.
These are pretty easy to make and the ingredients are 'dirt' cheap ..... I'll let you know what I used because it's a good activity to do with kids.
You'll need: Some plain flour, some salt, some vegetable oil and if you want to make them smell nice some mixed spices!
I'm using my 'bespoke' foxy biscuit cutter that I had especially made, but there are loads of different shapes on the market and they usually only cost about 99p.
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| Some of my biscuit cutters! |
It doesn't matter how much you use, just make sure you get the ingredients in the right measures. So get yourself a cup and measure out as follows:
Half a cup of salt
One whole cup of flour
Half a cup of water
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| I'm using my favourite bunny cup ........... |
Next ..... sieve the flour in to a big mixing bowl to get the lumps out, add the salt and a big dollop of mixed spice.
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| Granny's big old mixing bowl is just the ticket for this sort of job! |
Then ..... add the water and a drizzle of vegetable oil and stir it around.
Next you have to get your paws in and gather it in to a ball shape.
Knead the dough for 10 minutes to make sure all the ingredients are stuck together. It's hard work but the vegetable oil makes your paws nice and soft!
Once you've done that, you can go and have a nice cup of tea and leave the dough to 'rest' in the bowl for 20 minutes.
Me and Teddy decided to have a quick game of 'Dr Who' instead.
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| I'm dressed up as a Dalek ...... 'gawd' knows what Teddy was thinking! |
Next job is to roll out the dough, so you will need to cover a pastry board with flour and get a rolling pin.
Roll out the dough to the thickness of a £1 coin.
Then start cutting your shapes.
Have a tray ready covered with baking paper to put your cut out shapes on. If you don't use baking paper the shapes will stick to your tray.
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| ...... love cutting! |
I used a cocktail stick to decorate my foxy shapes with some dots, then used dried cloves for the eyes and noses!
Make sure you put a hole in the top of the shape so that you can hang a ribbon through it.
Now ......... a lot of recipes on the internet say that you can either cook your shapes on a very low heat for 4 hours, or leave them to 'air dry' for 2 days. I left mine to 'air dry' because it's greener than using the gas oven. I found that my decorations took 4 days to dry. I turned them over every day to make sure both sides dried equally.
Then I painted them with food colouring to make them look like Ginger Bread and joined my dots up with some white poster paint.
If you buy some food colouring please choose the ones that don't contain beetles, because it's not very nice squashing beetles just to get food colouring!
Then I left them on the warm radiator for a couple of hours, just to have a final dry out.
I finished my decorations by painting with poster varnish to make them shiny and sprinkled them with fairy dust to make them sparkle.
Then I threaded through some lovely green and red ribbons.
You don't have to varnish your decorations, but if you do please do it in a well ventilated area, as some varnishes are a bit 'whiffy'. It's probably best for adults to do the varnishing part of the job!
Teddy gave me a hand to display the finished decorations.
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| Yeah ...... pass it up here Teds mate! |
I'm hoping the decorations will sell well at the Christmas market!
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| Mange is an environmental parasite that is terribly painful, and can kill foxes. But, it is treatable. This is Scatty when she was first rescued by Fox Project. |
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| This is Scatty five months later, back on her home territory. It took three weeks and two injections to cure Scatty. It's not that hard, it just takes patience, love and a bit of cash! |
If you liked this recipe, please consider donating a few pennies to my favourite charity,
THE FOX PROJECT Southern Wildlife Ambulance Network
(Registered Charity No.1044928).
With love ...... Charlie Fox xx
