McTavish Takes the Biscuit
Page 4
McTavish crept up behind Pa Peachey with his tail between his legs.
“Here is the hero – I mean, the villain – of the day,” Ollie said. “If it weren’t for the fact that you missed your ball and it whacked me in the head, McTavish, Pa Peachey’s masterpiece would still be in one piece.”
“Life is full of senseless tragedy,” Pa Peachey said, shaking his head. “But after all, McTavish is only a dog. What else can we expect from him but foolish bungling?”
Only a dog? thought McTavish. Foolish bungling?
McTavish did not expect to receive credit for all the clever plans he made for the Peachey family, but it did sometimes hurt his feelings when they went so unnoticed.
But just then Ollie swept McTavish up in his arms.
“McTavish,” Ollie whispered in his ear, “I don’t know if you missed that ball by mistake or on purpose, but either way you are the hero of the day and we all know it.” He glanced at Pa Peachey. “Almost all of us, that is.”
Betty and Ava came and hugged him too.
“You are the best dog in the entire world,” Betty whispered.
“And the smartest,” Ava said.
“I have no idea what we would do without McTavish,” Ma Peachey added, patting him fondly on the head.
You’d be lost, McTavish thought.
But he was far too polite to say it out loud.
Make your own gingerbread biscuits!
With just a few ingredients and a little bit of time, you can make delicious gingerbread biscuits. And don’t worry, they’re much easier than Pa Peachey’s doomed Palace of Versailles!
INGREDIENTS
350g plain flour
5 teaspoons ground ginger
1½ teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon bicarbonate
100g butter, chopped into small cubes
175g light brown sugar
4 tablespoons honey
1 medium egg
A few drops of milk of soda
An adult’s help!
METHOD
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
2. Place the flour, ginger, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda in the mixing bowl and mix well.
3. Add the butter and use your fingertips to rub it into the mixture until it looks like breadcrumbs.
4. Add the sugar, honey and egg to the bowl, then mix everything together until a ball of dough is formed. You can use your hands to press the dough together, but make sure you sprinkle some flour on your hands first to stop the dough sticking to your fingers!
5. If the dough is still too dry and crumbly to stick together, try adding a few small drops of milk until it sticks.
6. Sprinkle some flour on the rolling pin and over the worktop, then roll out the dough until it’s about 5mm thick.
7. Use the cookie cutter to cut shapes out of the dough, then place them on the baking tray.
8. Place the baking tray in the oven and bake for 12 minutes, until the biscuits look golden brown. Remember to be careful – the oven is hot!
9. When you take the baking tray out of the oven, the biscuits will still be soft, but don’t worry – after they’ve cooled down, they go hard and crunchy on the outside.
Meg Rosoff grew up in Boston, America, and moved to London in 1989. Her first novel, How I Live Now, has sold over one million copies in 36 countries. Meg has written seven other novels and her books have won or been shortlisted for 23 international book prizes. In 2016, Meg won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award – the world’s largest children’s literature award – the chair of which said of Meg’s work, “Each novel is a little masterpiece.” Meg lives in London with her family – and their dogs.
“No one writes the way Rosoff does … I love her fizzy honesty, her pluck, her way of untangling emotion through words” Daily Telegraph
“Rosoff’s writing is luminously beautiful” Financial Times
“A voice so stridently pure and direct and funny that you simply can’t question it” Guardian
Meg Rosoff says, “I recently met a dog in my local park with a big head, short legs, wearing a tartan coat and with more attitude than any human I’d ever met. His name was McTavish and he clearly needed a book written about him. The real McTavish hasn’t met the excellent people at Barrington Stoke yet, but I feel certain he’d love them.”
Copyright
First published in 2019 in Great Britain by
Barrington Stoke Ltd
18 Walker Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7LP
This ebook edition first published in 2021
www.barringtonstoke.co.uk
Text © 2019 Meg Rosoff
Original illustrational style and cover art © Grace Easton 2019 Interior illustrations by copy artist David Shephard, based on and in the style of Grace Easton
The moral right of Meg Rosoff to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in any part in any form without the written permission of the publisher
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library upon request
eISBN: 978–1–80090–097–4