Leprechaun Footprints

 

            Today's Snack: You know how Irish people usually have freckles? Well, let's celebrate St. Patrick's Day by making some tasty Irish Freckle Bread! This loaf takes a couple of hours to make and serves 12. You will need leftover mashed potatoes, or you can microwave one baking potato for 10 minutes, and scoop enough out to produce 1/4 cup. You will also need a spring-form pan.

 

Irish Freckle Bread

 

1 package (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast

8 T. granulated sugar, divided into 1 T. and 7 T.

1 C. warm water (110° to 115°)

1/2 C. butter, melted

2 eggs

1/4 C. warm mashed potatoes (without added milk and butter)

1/2 tsp. salt

3-1/4 to 4 C. all-purpose flour

1 C. raisins (or dried cranberries, currants or chocolate chips)

 

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 T. sugar in warm water. Add the butter, eggs, potatoes, salt, remaining sugar and 2 C. flour. Beat until smooth. Stir in raisins and enough remaining flour to form a soft dough.

 

Turn onto a floured surface (a clean, dry cutting board works well). Knead (pronounced "need") dough until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. To knead dough, dust your hands well with flour, and use the heels of your hands (below your palms) to press down on the lump of dough and push it away from you. Then fold it over on top of itself, give it a quarter-turn, and push down on it and press it away from you again. Put your weight and strength into it and repeat 'til the dough is smooth and satiny. If you press it with your finger, and the indentation stays in place, it's ready.

 

Now place your dough in a greased bowl, turning it over once to grease the top as well as the bottom. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. (While you're letting it rise, you can do the "Leprechaun Footprints" activity, below.)

 

After an hour, punch dough down by literally smashing the air bubbles in it down into one piece of solid dough again. Put it on a clean, lightly floured surface such as a cutting board. Divide it into eight pieces. Shape each into a ball. Place dough balls in a greased 10-inch spring-form pan. Cover and let rise again until it has doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

 

Place the pan on a baking sheet. Bake in a preheated oven at 350° for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. Remove the sides of the pan. Place on a wire rack to cool. You'll love the smell of baking bread . . . almost as much as the taste!

 

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Supplies:

 

Green typing paper or construction paper

with the footprint pattern below photocopied or traced

 

Cardboard or cardstock to make a pattern

 

Scissors

 

Footprint punch (optional, but saves time!)

 

A few bits of foil

 

Yellow gold marker

 

Small handful of chocolate chips

 

 

While you're waiting for your Irish Freckle Bread to rise, here's a fun way to surprise some little ones in your life or your neighborhood around St. Patrick's Day. Do you have a younger sibling, or is there a preschool in your school or a nearby day-care center or day-care home? Make arrangements with the adults in charge. But when the kids aren't there, you can set up the "evidence" for this surprise.

 

Children are fascinated by stories about Irish leprechauns - tiny little green men who will reveal the location of a pot of gold to anyone who can catch them. So let's do a practical joke on some young children to make them believe that they've been visited by some leprechauns this St. Patrick's Day!

 

You will need green typing paper or construction paper and scissors to cut out a lot of green footprints. If you have a footprint stamp, you can punch out footprints a lot faster than cutting them. If you don't have a footprint stamp, you can make a pattern on cardboard or cardstock, using this pattern, and trace it onto green paper and cut out:

 

 

How many will you need? It depends on how elaborate you want your joke to be. You need a place where the leprechauns got in, and a place where they got out. Many times, using an air vent in the wall or ceiling is a good solution.

 

Get on a ladder, and tape footprints to the ceiling, starting at an air vent. Make sure you have the toes going forward, one at a time, just as if a leprechaun was taking one step after another.

 

If there isn't a high air vent in the ceiling or wall, you could pretend that the leprechaun miraculously came through a window, even if it's closed, by taping the footprints going down the wall and across the floor for a few feet.

 

Show footprints coming in, and going out, by one or more entry/exit points.

 

At the place where the footprints lead to after the entry, and away from for the exit, leave a little surprise for the children: a small quantity of chocolate chips (make sure you're leaving at least one for every child) wrapped in foil that you've colored with gold marker. They'll look like tiny gold nuggets!

 

If the air vent or window ideas won't work for your entry and exit locations, just arrange the footprints any other way you think is fun. The idea is to trick the children into thinking they've really been visited. And they will! Imagine their surprise and delight! They'll never know for SURE whether or not it was a trick.

 

Remember, the Wearin' o' the Green is nothing without the Kissin' o' the Blarney Stone!