Comic Relief cookies: Activity plan

We've got a new guide starting on Tuesday, and I always like to make sure that there's something interesting happening when we know we have a new girl joining us. Especially if she's not been a Brownie. If you're not used to Guiding coming face-to-face with 20 noisy and slightly hyperactive girls that you've not met before can feel a bit overwhelming, so it's good to know I've got something in hand. 

Of course it's Comic Relief next week, so my thoughts have naturally hopped to red nose based baking (come back tomorrow for fairy cakes) In order to get all the Guides done with a batch whatever we made had to be a quick bake  - these take 15 minutes in the oven tops. As always they're cheap to make - 1 batch should make enough for 2 patrols of 6-8 girls, so you should only need 2 sets of ingredients. If you've got more than 24 girls I'd do another lot. 

	For reference, Guides are aged 10 – 14 Break the girls up into Patrols/ groups of 6-8
Red nose cookies
Equipment: Round cookie cutter/ or a clean cup or mug Baking trays Greaseproof paper rolling pin Mixing bowl Electric beaters or strong arms Clean hands
Ingredients: 750g plain flour 250g butter (Basics/ Economy butter is perfect – but make sure it’s well softened) 250g caster sugar 1 egg 1/2 tsp vanilla essence/extract This makes about 30 cookies (depending on your cutter size) so should split between 2 patrols of 6-8 girls. I've done costings for 2 batches, working on the basis of 4 patrols.	If doing this with Guides it is an ideal Patrol cooking activity – they could do challenges to earn or win the ingredients. Or you could challenge them to do the most creative Comic relief themed icing
Instructions: Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C Wash your hands Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy Beat the egg and add in Add the vanilla and beat again Add the flour in thirds beating well to combine Tip the dough onto a floured worktop/ a table Roll out until about 1cm thick and cut out as many circles as you can (with the cup, mug or scone cutter) before re-rolling the trimmings and repeating until you have used up all your dough Line your baking sheets with greaseproof Put the cookies on the tray and put them in the preheated oven for 13 minutes. If they’re not golden, then give them a couple more minutes.	Safety notes: Make sure that the girls are supervised in the kitchen.  And that they don’t leave you the washing up! For Brownies/ younger Guides – or if you have shorter meetings: You could make these in advance, and get the girls to ice and decorate them. You could even get rich tea biscuits and get the girls to decorate those if you don't have much in the way of space, time or kitchen equipment. Usual kitchen safety rules/ washing up apply.
Decorating ideas ·         Why not make glace icing, and use red food colouring to dye it red? ·         Or find the girls a selection of icing and coloured sweets and see what they come up with? Notes: You could always sell these as a fundraiser, I reckon you could sell them for 50p each – unless you’ve got some potential candidates for The Apprentice, in which case the sky’s the limit!  Costings - I've checked out on mysupermarket.co.uk and Asda is the cheapest, coming in at £6.02 for 2 batches which works out at 25p per head in a unit of 24 girls