Annabel Karmel MBE has been a firm favourite in our household since POD was six months old. These days she loves nothing more than helping out in the kitchen. She has her own apron although we often experiment with utensils as they’re designed for adults rather than children. The Casdon Annabel Karmel Mini Cupcake and Baking Sets however are specifically designed for kids aged five and over. These sets are just two of those available from Casdon, there’s a full range available.
The cupcake set includes colourful cups, a baking tray and a silicone spatula. The baking set is also brightly coloured and great for little hands with everything children need for making cookies. There’s a round baking tin, ten cookie cutters, 6 measuring spoons, a silicone spatula, a measuring jug and a mixing bowl with an anti-slip base. This is especially important if you’re making anything with flour or icing sugar although making a mess is of course part of the fun! The baking set also came with two Annabel Karmel recipes – Vanilla Shortbread Biscuits and a Ginger Cookie Recipe. As we’d normally bake cakes, we decided to make the ginger cookies as we could create characters with the cutters and decorate them.
What you’ll need (for 20 cookies)
65g (2oz) butter
50g (2oz) soft butter
3-4 tbsp golden syrup
150g (5oz) plain flour, sieved
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Icing:
150g (5oz) icing sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice or water
Various food colourings
These Ginger Cookies are super easy to make. First beat the butter and sugar with an electric whisk until it’s pale. Add the syrup, flour, ginger and bicarbonate of soda and mix together to form a dough. You then need to wrap the mixture in cling film and pop in the fridge for 30 minutes (you can pre-heat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF or gas mark 4 at that point too). Once ready, roll the dough out on a floured surface until it’s about 3cm thick. Place your cookies on a baking sheet, lined with baking paper, for 8 minutes and leave them to cool on a wire rack.
To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and beat in enough lemon juice or water to make it smooth and thick enough to pipe. We were lacking in plastic icing bags so we improvised and used a spatula. Although POD did take it upon herself to try the icing as she went! We had some colouring we could incorporate too – the first batch of cookies were pink with the second made into characters with googly eyes. POD had the best time making these even if she did keep eating them as she went – they were very good though! The Casdon Annabel Karmel Mini Cupcake and Baking Sets are amazing value, great quality and they’re perfect for POD’s five year old hands.
Disclaimer: We received the Annabel Karmel Cupcake and Baking Set from Casdon for the purposes of this review. Opinions are as always our own.
