Bonus Post: Lucky Ladybird Recipe

So, after my post about the English festival, my friend @hobosinpolos asked for a recipe.

They're cute and fun, and I have all the step-by-step photos ready to go, so I thought "why not?"

First up, ingredients:

To make 2 ladybirds, you need

• 1 strawberry
• 1 black grape
• 2 crackers (I like using the Ritz kind for a bit of salt to balance out the sweet)
• a spread of your choice (I used choc spread and PB)

Basically, this thing has a lot of scope to be either really healthy or really unhealthy.

Healthy options could be using a cookie cutter to make circles of wholegrain bread, toasted instead of crackers, or to be fair a slice of anything round that fits into your healthy living ingredients, or really anything flat. A lettuce leaf would be very cute, right? For spreads, people seem to like pure peanut butter or other kinds of nut butter, but you could use a low fat cream cheese spread, cottage cheese, honey, anything that's kind of sticky and won't taste too weird with the fruit, or too runny to destroy the base.

If you want to go in the opposite direction as a tiny treat, you could put them on cupcakes, oreos, any kind of biscuit I guess. Put several of them walking around a bagel or a croissant, like I said they just have to be on something flat. You could swap the spreads for a thick jam or spread, or I suppose you could even use stiff whipping cream?! Waiter, there's a bug in my scone!

Variations aside (you can make savoury ones with a tomato and black olive, with cream cheese or hummus), I'll show you how to make one, although I suppose the photos are pretty self-explanatory.

Put your spread on the cracker. Simple enough. I wouldn't recommend using a sharp knife like this. Muggins here forgot to bring a butter knife.

Another protip: I wouldn't advise making these on a large boulder in a park, no matter how good the lighting for photos will be. If anything, make sure you have an assistant to chase away hungry dogs.

Opportunity for disclaimer: if, by some random happenstance you find this and want to share it in a new post, please check with me or at least let me know where you've put it. The photos are mine and Nick's, so no thievery. Swiper, no swiping!

Cut the strawberry in half lengthways, and then again. (You should have 4 pieces.)

Put 1 pair on the cracker with a slight angle so the fat ends touch and there's a gap at the thin ends.

Ta-da! One little set of ladybird wings.

Chop the grape in half across the width of it to make 2 cute little dome heads, and plop them on.

There you go! Really not too difficult, and very tasty. I don't really know how long they last, if I'm honest. These in a room full of children, they last about 20 seconds. I suppose your time is with the fruit, so as long as you refrigerate them I'd say depending on the freshness of your fruit and whatever base you're using, you could at least make them a few hours in advance, if not the night before. It's not too hard to make a couple of testers though (not eating them, however, could be quite difficult).

If you're feeling particularly extravagant, I suppose you could make some chocolate icing in a piping bag and add little spots if you think the strawberry seeds don't quite cut it. I considered jabbing sesame seeds all over but it's too much effort for me, let alone kids that just want to eat the darn thing ;)