Read Online The Nanny Piggins Guide to Conquering Christmas by R. A. Spratt - Free Book Online
Authors: R. A. Spratt
Tags: Children's Fiction
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climbing up on the roof and nailing chicken wire over the top of your chimney, simply nail the chicken wire over the bottom of the chimney, across the open fireplace. This will save you having to climb up on the roof, in possibly inclement weather, and it will actually work far better because chicken wire at the bottom will trap Santa inside your chimney so he has no way of escaping until the police arrive. In fact, if you leave a packet of biscuits in the fireplace (preferably chocolate-coated), Santa will be so busy gobbling them up he may not even realise that he is trapped. As you can guess from his physique, he really does like chocolate biscuits.
So there you have it. Please don’t climb up on your roof just to trap Santa. He is not worth it, and you might fall off the roof. If you block the chimney, you will only encourage Santa to smash his way in through a window and it is devilishly hard to get a glazier to come out and repair a window on Christmas Day.
There are many, many ways to make a chocolate cake and I urge you to try them all, repeatedly, several times a day if possible. But sometimes, when you are in the grip of a particularly urgent need for cake – perhaps because your blood sugar has dropped to an unhealthy low after being forced to run away from a truancy officer, police swat team or irate neighbour – it is best to keep things simple. Here is the recipe I use when I need chocolate cake and I’m too delirious with hunger to do anything more complicated.
INGREDIENTS
180 grams caster sugar
180 grams butter (soften in the microwave first)
180 grams self-raising flour
a pinch of salt
3 eggs
2 tablespoons of cocoa (or drinking chocolate if you’ve already eaten all your cocoa)
2 friends (one strong and one fast moving)
METHOD
1. Preheat your oven to 180°ºC.
2. Grease a cake tin and line with baking paper. (NB. You don’t have to bother doing this if you are happy to rip the cake out of the tin a handful at a time and lick the sides clean with your tongue.)
3. Put the sugar and butter in a bowl and mix together.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time.
5. Stir in the self-raising flour, salt and cocoa.
6. Now, you must RESIST THE URGE TO EAT THE BATTER (at least not all of it). You might need a large strong friend to physically hold you back at this stage. Preferably while screaming ‘No, don’t do it, Nanny Piggins! Let the batter become a cake!’
7. Get another friend to tip the batter into the cake tin.
8. Pop the cake in the oven and bake it. Depending on what sort of oven you’ve got and what sort of tin you’ve used, it should take between 25 and 40 minutes to cook. You can tell when it’s done by poking the cake with a knitting needle. (Be sure to take any knitting off the needle before you use it, or the old lady you stole it from will get cross with you.) If it’s uncooked, the needle will have batter on it. If it’s cooked it should come out cleanly.
9. Eat it.
I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do.
Rest assured, the game Sardines does not actually involve the eating of sardines. Fish is bad at the best of times because it is almost never served with chocolate, but sardines are fish with extra badness because they are squashed into a tiny tin full of oil and salt, which only serves to make the fish taste extra fishy.
The only thing the game Sardines borrows from the fish sardines is the squashing.
Basically, Sardines is exactly the same as Hide and Seek except when you find someone you don’t loudly say, ‘Ha ha, I found you. What a terrible hiding place. What on earth made you think of hiding there?!’
No, in Sardines when you find the person hiding you squeeze in and hide next to them.
So if you are playing with ten people, by the end of the game there will be nine people all squashed into one hiding space while the one last sad person haplessly wanders the halls looking for you.
I
So there you have it. Please don’t climb up on your roof just to trap Santa. He is not worth it, and you might fall off the roof. If you block the chimney, you will only encourage Santa to smash his way in through a window and it is devilishly hard to get a glazier to come out and repair a window on Christmas Day.
There are many, many ways to make a chocolate cake and I urge you to try them all, repeatedly, several times a day if possible. But sometimes, when you are in the grip of a particularly urgent need for cake – perhaps because your blood sugar has dropped to an unhealthy low after being forced to run away from a truancy officer, police swat team or irate neighbour – it is best to keep things simple. Here is the recipe I use when I need chocolate cake and I’m too delirious with hunger to do anything more complicated.
INGREDIENTS
180 grams caster sugar
180 grams butter (soften in the microwave first)
180 grams self-raising flour
a pinch of salt
3 eggs
2 tablespoons of cocoa (or drinking chocolate if you’ve already eaten all your cocoa)
2 friends (one strong and one fast moving)
METHOD
1. Preheat your oven to 180°ºC.
2. Grease a cake tin and line with baking paper. (NB. You don’t have to bother doing this if you are happy to rip the cake out of the tin a handful at a time and lick the sides clean with your tongue.)
3. Put the sugar and butter in a bowl and mix together.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time.
5. Stir in the self-raising flour, salt and cocoa.
6. Now, you must RESIST THE URGE TO EAT THE BATTER (at least not all of it). You might need a large strong friend to physically hold you back at this stage. Preferably while screaming ‘No, don’t do it, Nanny Piggins! Let the batter become a cake!’
7. Get another friend to tip the batter into the cake tin.
8. Pop the cake in the oven and bake it. Depending on what sort of oven you’ve got and what sort of tin you’ve used, it should take between 25 and 40 minutes to cook. You can tell when it’s done by poking the cake with a knitting needle. (Be sure to take any knitting off the needle before you use it, or the old lady you stole it from will get cross with you.) If it’s uncooked, the needle will have batter on it. If it’s cooked it should come out cleanly.
9. Eat it.
I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do.
Rest assured, the game Sardines does not actually involve the eating of sardines. Fish is bad at the best of times because it is almost never served with chocolate, but sardines are fish with extra badness because they are squashed into a tiny tin full of oil and salt, which only serves to make the fish taste extra fishy.
The only thing the game Sardines borrows from the fish sardines is the squashing.
Basically, Sardines is exactly the same as Hide and Seek except when you find someone you don’t loudly say, ‘Ha ha, I found you. What a terrible hiding place. What on earth made you think of hiding there?!’
No, in Sardines when you find the person hiding you squeeze in and hide next to them.
So if you are playing with ten people, by the end of the game there will be nine people all squashed into one hiding space while the one last sad person haplessly wanders the halls looking for you.
I
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