Toddler Kitchen – Dunfillan (Blackberry) Pudding for Burns Night

On Burns Night (25th January) we eat (veggie) haggis, neeps (turnips) and tatties (potatoes).  This is last years post which features ideas and some links to resources to help celebrate.


I had thought we would make some shortbread for dessert, but I had a look through “Teach your bairns to cook” by Liz Ashworth and spied a yummy sounding pudding.

Ingredients
110g flour
50g butter (we use olive oil spread)
50g caster sugar
2 eggs beaten
2 tablespoons milk (I didn’t add this)
grated rind of 1 lemon (we didn’t have this)
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
Filling
450g brambles (blackberries).  Traditionally this pudding is seemingly made with brambles or blaeberries *wild blueberries” but can be made with any fruit.  We used raspberries and blueberries.   Frozen berries would work well.
110g sugar (I reduced this amount)

Method
Heat the fruit and filling sugar in a pan until the fruit is soft and sugar dissolved (amount 5 minutes).
Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.
Into another bowl cream butter and sugar together.  Beat in one egg and one tablespoon of flour mixture.  Add lemon rind, milk and rest of flour.  Fold in gently (we didn’t do this, bit difficult to do things gently with a toddler!)
Spoon fruit into a pie dish then top with sponge mixture. 
Look gazingly at it.  Luath loves berries and the smell of the raspberries was making it very tempting for her.

Bake for about 20 minutes at 180 C.
Pudding is best eaten hot.  We ate it with some ice cream – delicious.
   
(Luath is 24 months)

Tot School – St Andrew’s Night/Scottish

A shoer record of what we did this week. St Andrew’s (patron saint of Scotland) Night is celebrated on 30th November.  Being Scottish and living in Scotland you could say that pretty much everyday has something Scottish about it, but it is nice to have a Scottish themed week.

We read some of our favourite books that are written in Scots.

We ate (veggie)Haggis, Neeps and Tatties.

We sang Scottish songs, listened to music and danced.

We cuddled Pooh and Mickey Mouse in their Scottish costumes.

We looked at a Scottish map and pointed out places that are important to use

(Luath is 22 months)

Burns Night

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it,

But we hae meat and we can eat,

And sae the Lord be thankit

I am sure we had our haggis, neeps and tatties last year, but we were still very much in new parents bubble, so Burns night may have past us by.  We enjoyed our celebration this year. Daddy kinda said some of the address to the Haggis (I had already divided it up) and mummy  said the Selkirk Grace before our meal of veggie haggis, neeps and tatties.  We eat veggie haggis all year round as it is lovely.  I would cook neeps more but they are so tough to cut up!

During the day -
We read some Scottish board books.

Recited some Scottish poetry

To a mouse by Robert Burns, poem and translation here

Some poems I enjoyed and learnt by heart as a child

The Sair finger

The Puddock

The boy on the train

Listen to some songs by The Corries, info here

Played with our "Scottish" soft toys

 I have come across a few printables/ideas for Burns night,  I was going to try to keep them related to Burns but the theme runs into general Scottish theme anyway.  Technically Burns would not have worn tartan (he was a lowlander and also tartan, bagpipes etc were banned during his lifetime)  but they make it a bit more fun for kids. Noting these as a resource for myself.

Ideas to do
some my own and others from various chat forums, too many people to link to directly-
 GamesMini highland games - toss the caber (could do it with a pencil, kitchen roll, big tube from carpet roll), hammer throw (ping pong ball taped to a drinking straw, or pillow tied to string, standing long jump 
Catch the haggis (beanbags)
 "haggis" and spoon races
dressing up
wear something Scottish
make a traditional Scottish outfit from things around the house
have a go at wrapping a great kilt from a piece of material, directions here
Scottish dancing
lots of videos online
Listening to Scottish music
traditional - folk,dance
current
childrens -  quite a few ones here (some I don't know and some ones I do, like Ye canny shove yer grannie off a bus")
cooking
oatcakes,
shortbread
craft
designing their own tartan and making Scottish flag bunting.
make your own tartan by rolling cars through paint and onto paper
tartan picture idea -crepe paper on wet paper in strips....take the crepe off, it stains the paper behind.
furry haggis fridge magnets
make a Scottish flag
make a Nessie bookmark
talk about
story of the Haggis (2 long legs, 2 short legs, can only run one way round the hill)
Scottish inventions
write a poem to their favourite food

Links
The bbc has a good page on the traditional running order for a Burns night,
LTS (education Scotland) has some Burns night resources
scotlandorg has an interactive Burns site
domestic goddesque did a art craft with her girls, splattering a haggis picture
Activity village has some information on Burns night, printables including some colouring pages, a Burns worksheet, a how to draw Robert Burns and also links to other Scottish pages including a StAndrew's day page of Scottish craft activities
Netmums have some Burns supper information, with links to colouring pages, crafts and recipes
DLKT has some Scottish pages with a little bit on Burns night
i-child has some activities
eParenitng has a word search and anagram puzzle
printablepaperproducts have a eBook to buy, you can see and print one of the printables from it for some paper napkin rings
scholastic has some non subscription downloads including a funny poem about catching a haggis
mintreasures has some links to making Scottish things for dollhouses, including three for making a miniature haggis
for older children/adults cbbc has a teacher page on Burns night and the Scots language he uses
dundee lesuire and culture site has a paper haggis doll to colour with clothes to dress her in and some napkin rings to colour