St. Patty's Day!!!

If you have read any of my Baby Keyes blog contributions before, you know that I am super into the holidays. I enjoy baking holiday-themed treats, and I love to do arts & crafts with my son. With my maiden name being Murphy, I decided to surf the net for some St. Patrick’s Day holiday fun! Side note: my other requirement is that the craft or recipe needs to be “easy.” Many web sites even rate their projects.

Never have I cooked or baked something special for St. Patrick’s Day. As I perused the internet, I quickly realized that I didn’t want to make corned beef and cabbage – all of it would surely go to waste. But next to that recipe, I saw one for a simple Irish Soda Bread. Considering that my 4-year old son’s favorite thing is carbs, I decided to try it.

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons sweet butter, softened
• ½ cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1½ cups buttermilk
• 1 cup currants or substitute raisins

Cooking Instructions

1. Butter a cookie sheet. Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl beat butter and sugar together to combine. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
2. In a medium bowl whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to combine.
3. Beginning and ending with flour mixture, alternately add flour and buttermilk, beating well after each addition. Stir in currants or raisins.
4. On a generously floured hard surface knead the dough about 4 minutes until smooth and not sticky, adding flour as needed.
5. Form into 7½-inch round. Transfer to prepared cookie sheet. Etch an X in the top of the loaf.
6. Bake about 1 hour 10 minutes or until it sounds hollow when tapped on. Move to a rack to cool completely before slicing.

Then, it was on to a simple craft project. I didn’t want to make a Rainbow handprint mobile or an edible pot of gold. But the thought of “tie-dye shamrocks” seemed appealing. It would be easy enough for my 4-year old, and would make a good lesson in color mixing.

What you'll need:

• Coffee filters
• Water
• Bowl
• Blue and yellow food coloring
• Eyedroppers

How to make it:

1. Precut shamrock shapes out of coffee filters.
2. Mix water and yellow food coloring and place this into a container. Do the same with blue. Keep the colors rich and dark.
3. Invite the kids to use eyedroppers to drip colors onto the filter shape. The colors will run together and make beautiful decorations.

Interested in more holiday craft ideas and family-friendly recipes? These ideas were all found on www.kaboose.com.

To read other blogs by Christina Ramon, founder of Mommy Wisdom, please visit http://mommywisdomblog.blogspot.com/

Here is the link if you need that instead.

http://recipes.kaboose.com/irish-soda-bread.html