Magic Belles Magic Music Review

I am a huge fan of the Magic Belles. I have had the pleasure of working with them on a baking project in the past and my girls are members of their Flutterby club, so when I was asked to review their new CD, Magic Music, how could I refuse.

This lovely CD consists of 7 songs :

1. Magic Symphony

2. Dreams Come True

3. The Rainbow Song

4. Bake It, Shake It

5. The Pom-Pom Dance

6. How Does Your Garden Grow?

7. Twinkle Twinkle

What to do with strawberries??

A couple of weeks back I picked up a couple of punnets of strawberries for one whole pound, got to love a bargain!! The only problem, was that they needed to be used up quite quickly as they were going out of date.

The first punnet was easy, the girls had the strawberries cut up and put with vanilla ice cream, simple yet delicious and perfect because it was another hot day.

However I was stumped on what to do with the second punnet. That's where the trusty internet came in handy, so off to google I went.

I found the almost perfect recipe on one of my favourite sites, the Magic Belles, now their recipe was for raspberry and white chocolate muffins, so I just had to adapt it slightly because a) I had strawberries and not raspberries and b) I didn't have muffin cases, I only had normal cake cases.

Ingredients

300g plain flour
2tsp baking powder
150g caster sugar
50g butter
215ml milk
1tsp vanilla extract
100g strawberries
75g white chocolate buttons
20 cake cases

How to make

* Preheat your oven to gas mark 6/ 200 degrees

* Sift the flour, baking powder and sugar into a large bowl and mix

* Melt the butter in the microwave

* Whisk the egg, milk, vanilla extract in a bowl and then add the melted butter and mix

* Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir them together making sure the mixture stays lumpy rather than smooth

* Fold in the strawberries and white chocolate buttons

* Spoon he mixture into the cases

* Bake them in the oven for roughly 20-25 minutes until golden brown

The only thing left to do is eat them, nom nom nom.

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Baking Fun With Magic Belles

Let me introduce you to the Magic Belles. Six tiny fairies who live in a special place called Bellevue. Meet Cupcake Belle, Rainbow Belle, Flower Belle, Butterfly Belle, Love Belle and Star Belle. In this magical place they fly around sprinkling magic dust, creating lots of super fun for your little girls.

On the site you will find plenty of activities from music, games, colouring and stories but if that wasn't enough, you can even join their special Flutterbud Fan Club and receive lots of lovely goodies through the post!!

I was extremely lucky to be picked along with a few other bloggers to receive an extra special treat from the one and only Cupcake Belle. We got not one but two parcels in the post, these contained the instructions and the utensils to make some scrummy cupcake cookies, an apron and hat, icing to go on top of the cookies, a stand to put the finished product on, as well as the money to go and buy all the other much needed ingredients.

So whilst my eldest two were at school, Gracie, Layla and I toddled off to buy all of the ingredients, we needed :

* 125g unsalted butter

* 125g castor sugar

* 250g plain flour

* 1 egg

* 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

We decided that Saturday would be the day to make the cookies as this is when we all had the time to do things as a family together. First things first, preparation. Now there was only one apron and hat, so my girls each took a turn in wearing it, each looking equally cute, I'm not biased, honest. We placed baking sheets onto the trays and put together the stand to put the cookies on once they were baked.

Here is how to make the cookies :

* mix the sugar and butter together

* add the egg and vanilla extract and mix 

* sieve in half the flour, mix and then sieve in the remaining half and mix

* cover in clingfilm and put in the fridge for an hour (longest hour ever!!)

The girls each took it in turns to mix the ingredients together, the floor got a good covering of flour in the process.

Once the dough was taken out of the fridge, we had to roll it out and cut out the cookies. I admit the recipe said to use the largest cookie cutter however my girls had other ideas and we ended up doing a few of each size. The cookies were placed on the trays and put in the oven to bake for around 15 minutes, until they were a nice golden brown colour. These were then placed on a wire rack to cool for a little while.

Then the fun really started because we had to decorate the cookies with the icing. Mummy helped knead the icing to soften it up. The girls then rolled it out and used their cookie cutters again to make the perfect shapes to put on the cookies. The icing was stuck on by brushing on a little water, this acted like glue. They had the most fun rolling up the little balls of icing to act as the cherries on top of the cakes.

You can see what they created above. I was so impressed. Yes mummy had to help a little but because it was a simple recipe, they did the majority of the work themselves. It allowed them to learn to work together but to also do things independently. Mummy was even happier that they volunteered to help her wash up after as well.

Let's not forget the best part......... eating them!!! The cookies lasted all of three days because they were just too scrummy to leave alone. 

We would like to thank Cupcake Belle and everyone else at Magic Belle for allowing us to participate in this task. You can find more news from the Magic Belles on their Facebook and Twitter pages.

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Disclaimer : We were provided with all the tools and ingredients to make these scrummy cookies however all thoughts and opinions are mine and my daughters.