The Arts and Crafts Cupboard

The Story of the Citrus and Chilli Cosmic Cake and My Very First Cake Competition

2012-03-07T22:48:00.002Z

Ok, first off, sorry for the humongous gap in time between now and my last post. Turns out making money to pay all the bills people keep sending us takes up a lot of one's life. Anyways.

So myself and le Boof are members of the university's gaming society, FragSoc. They host three LANs (if you don't know what a LAN is, please read this) a term, which is great fun. Sixty to ninety people sat in a massive room for an entire weekend playing games, eating junk food and consuming an unhealthy amount of caffeine. When I first joined I had heard rumours of baking competitions and the weekend just gone they finally held one. YUS. First ever baking competition, dead excited.

So planning began. A long, late-night discussion with BBF (best baking friend - find her here amongst other places) followed, on what could best fulfil the four criteria the cakes were to be judged on: taste, appearance, ingenuity and "appropriate use of caffeine". I wanted something interesting, something that no one else would think of. Chilli cake was a route I was intrigued by, and chocolate and chilli was the obvious recipe to go for, but it had already been done in previous competitions. Of course the next step is lemon and chilli (??) I have no idea where that came from but it stuck. As far as getting caffeine into the cake was concerned a lot of previous entries had, in my eyes, cheated, and just ground up pro plus tablets and popped them in the cake batter. I did not wish to cheat. So the idea of incorporating energy drink into the cake somehow was added to the list of insanity.

Eventually I came to my final decision. I would make a citrus chilli cake with an orange energy drink and chilli drizzle and the same energy drink in an orange buttercream icing. And it would be magnificent.

After half a day of playing around with a lemon drizzle cake recipe and and quite a lot of crushed chilli flakes, I found a good balance, and to my intense relief, it actually tasted really nice! Next was the drizzle. I boiled down some of the energy drink (Relentless Inferno for those who know what it is &/or are interested), and again chucked in a load of crushed chilli. That... well, that was best not consumed on its own to be frank. But on the cake, it definitely added (more) kick!

Fairly innocuous lemon drizzle mix

Slightly less innocuous chilli flakes

Batches ready for varying amounts of chilli

Chilli batter and the control mix (sans chilli)

Then came the day before the LAN party, and the competition. Three batches (and not small batches either) of cake mix, two cans of energy drink, a lot of naked lemons and oranges, a hell of a lot of chilli flakes, and a fair bit of arts and crafts later I had my cake finished.

Two of the three cakes used

The Relentless and chilli drizzle being reduced

It was. Magnificent.

The Final Cake!

The space invader design was le Boof's idea. It's used in the gaming society's logo and of course is iconic within computer gaming, so was a no brainer once it'd been suggested. The night before I made the cake I made a bespoke cardboard base for it and drew out the logo in 1 1/2 inch squares, then covered it in a couple of layers of cling film. Once the cakes were made I cut them up into the same size squares and put them together in the space invader pattern, like giant edible pixels! To top if off I went crazy with the space dust edible glitter, although you can't really see it in the pictures. *sad face*

Just for funsies I also popped the left over Relentless and chilli drizzle in an empty (and clean) vanilla essence bottle and brought that along, then left it casually by the side of the cake. During the judging this got passed round the more laddish of the LAN attendees who were shotting it from the tiny lid and then shaking their heads and gasping!

I came third in the competition in the end, it was incredibly nerve racking! It was judged by the chair of the society, a guy who had come along to represent the society's new sponsor and another member of the society (society society). I was beaten by an admitted really impressive Nyan cat cake which was beautifully decorated and was a seven layer rainbow cake inside. I doff my hat to them, it tasted good and looked incredible, but despite that they only came second. I can't say I would have awarded first prize to the cake it did go to, but I'm not grumbling. Here's what I won! Yay! Prizes for baking!

*Fanfare*

So there we go. It was great fun doing it, although I can't now even think about eating lemon drizzle cake, I'm sick of the sight of it. I enjoyed my first dabble into experimenting with baking. I think I'd do the basic cake again, not all the energy drink business, that was mainly to get in some caffeine. I'll pop the recipe at the end of the post, it's definitely worth trying out if you like a little bit of spice in your food (prob not for the faint hearted though).

This also means I am now no longer just one of the girls at the LAN (max 4-6 girls to min 50 odd boys usually), I am the girl that made the crazy but surprisingly tasty citrus and chilli cake. (oh, and the girl that's good at TF2 - my team totally won the tournament.)

---------------------------------

Citrus and Chilli Cake

320g Caster sugar
3 eggs
Zest of 2 lemons and 1 orange
350g plain flour
1tsp salt
250ml milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
250g butter
4 1/2 tsp crushed chilli

+Pre heat oven to 180°c
+Cream butter and sugar together
+Stir in eggs
+Add zest, vanilla extract and crushed chilli
+Sieve in flour, baking powder and salt
+Stir milk in, a bit at a time until you've got a nice batter mix
+Pour batter into cake tin
+Bake for roughly 30mins, dependent on what shaped tin you're baking in
(Original recipe this is based on was for a lemon drizzle loaf, that said to bake for 1hr 15min, although I put mine in a brownie tin, which took considerably less baking time)

Croissant Bread and Butter Pudding

2012-02-12T21:03:00.003Z

Have far too many "left over" croissants? Need to find a way to make them a little more unhealthy/delicious?

I have the answer you are looking for: Croissant bread and butter pudding.

Ok, so there are definitely many perks to working in the food shop I work in now. Sad little left over pastries. "Oh noes! We'll never make it the weekend, take us home and eat us quickly!"

One particular Saturday evening I was lucky enough to come home with these babies

The ones that survived the initial onslaught of the bearded food hoover (and, being honest, me) ended up in this recipe. This also works fine with stale croissants, if they ever last that long.

Croissant Bread and Butter Pudding

2 eggs
200ml milk
75g caster sugar
3 croissants, cut into cm slices
50g raisins
tsp vanilla essecnce

1. Beat the eggs, milk and caster sugar together.
2. Arrange the sliced croissants, slightly over lapping each other to cover the base of oven proof dish.
3. Sprinkle the raisins over your layer of croissant, then pour in the egg mixture.
4. Let this soak for 30 minutes.
5. Bake for 25-30minutes at 180°c, until golden and crunchy on the top, gooey on the bottom.

(Armadillo? No. *ahem*)

This is so quick and easy to make, and tastes SO GOOD. Yes, good enough to warrant random use of capital letters. I didn't think of it at the time, but this would definitely benefit with a sprinkle of ground spice of some description, maybe a little cinnamon or even mixed spice. I popped a couple of portions of it in the freezer too, which came out fine after a reheating.

Project Round Up II

2012-02-05T23:02:00.000Z

Despite the obvious inconveniences that go with anywhere in England being covered in a thick layer of snow, I am, and probably always will be, very excited by it. I missed it coming down yesterday as I was stuck in work all afternoon, so after dinner le Boof and I went out for a walk around the city (big unflattering (but practical!) jacket on and big old camera in tow). It was wonderful walking round our new home city, seeing our first snowfall here and how it changes the landmarks we're slowly getting used to. York's a beautiful city without the snow, but there were some breathtaking views on our short walk.

It feels all the more appropriate to be sitting in most evenings and knitting myself a jumper when the weather's so uninviting outside. My current project is a pullover for myself, made with the selection of wool my Ma bought me for Christmas. The pattern is Caitlin Pullover by Pam Allen, which I found on Ravelry (srsly, if you knit/crochet and aren't on Ravelry already, why??) It's the first colour work project I've properly got into (I did start one with 4 ply wool on circular needles, but haven't so far got past the ribbing at the hem...). I've got the front and back done, and the picture above is of half a sleeve. Just the yoke, which repeats the colour work pattern from the sleeves, and the other sleeve to go. Crossing my fingers it's a good fit!

I got back from work one day last week and had an urge to get something crossed off my crafty to-do list. After much deliberation I chose to make a vase of crocheted flowers for our dining table. Off I went into the city (the novelty of being able to just wander into a city from where we live is going to take a very long time to wear off (I'm a bit of country bumpkin if that's not already been made apparent)). First I went around the charity shops looking for a vase, and found this beauty:

Only 99p too! Love charity shopping. The only problem was persuading le Boof that just because it may have had a previous life as a beer receptacle, doesn't mean he should automatically have a right to steal it from me. It is my lovely vase now. Nothing can be done about that. Also, it's now full of these, making it somewhat more difficult to store beer in:

I will make a few more eventually, but three was my limit for that one evening! The pattern for the flowers comes from this book, with I-cord made with a knitting dolly, stuffed with a pipe cleaner for the stems.

I've mentioned it before, I know, but it's one of my favourite knitting pattern books. The closer it gets to spring the more I can see myself using it, making the flat look lovely for the nice weather.

As far as edible things go, I am continuing my quest to find a good, relatively quick and easy loaf to make on a regular basis. I've made all of our bread pretty much since we moved up here to York, something I'd never done previously, and I'm slowly getting to grips with how different things affect a loaf.

On the cake front, this week's cake was lemon and almond muffins.

Trust me, they are far more interesting to eat than to look at!
I found the recipe here, after doing a search for more cake recipes to use up some buttermilk I've had in the fridge for too long now. (Don't worry, still within it's best before.) I tweaked it a little bit to suit what I had available:

Lemon Buttermilk Muffins
250g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbinate of soda
1/4 tsp salt
250g caster sugar
55g unsalted butter
1/2 lemon's worth of zest and juice
1 egg
1/2 tsp almond extract
235ml buttermilk
Sliced almonds to garnish

0. Preheat your oven to 180°c

1. Mix the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
2. Add in the egg, mix well.
3. Stir in the lemon zest and juice and the almond extract.
4. Sieve the flour, bicarb, baking soda and salt into the bowl, mix well.
5. Pop in your buttermilk, mix again (there's only so many ways you can say stir in).
6. Spoon your mixture into muffin cases, then bake for 20-25 minutes, or until springy when prodded.
7. Leave to cool on a cooling rack, then devour.

Very good snacking muffins these, not too sweet, so good any time of the day. Especially with a nice cup of tea when it's dead chilly out.

P.S. Le Boof and I went to see one of my favourite bands last Friday. I love love love them. Check this out. The Black Keys - I Got Mine

Lurgie-Fighting Cupcakes!

2012-01-26T21:04:00.001Z

Despite having had the lurgie for the last couple of days, and making it the excuse I gave to myself for not updating sooner, I seem to have gotten quiet a lot of things done/made. I wonder whether it might have been my unconscious mind walking me into the kitchen to bake without me realising it.

First off I bought some more seeds, and have planted my first crop *fanfare*

Ok, so it's only sprouting seeds, but still. Next up will be my strawberries.

I've been eyeing up mini greenhouses recently. As we don't really have a lot of space to be used up by seedlings in the flat (sadface) I think it might be a good idea for the balcony. It would mean I could start planting things earlier without worrying about the mean Yorkshire temperatures stopping them from germinating. Having gone through all my seed packets and making a chart to compare when things can be sown, there won't be any more proper planting until March. Next I need to make a space plan and work out what can fit in where on the balcony and what containers I will need (as many hanging baskets as possible!).

As we all know, Vitamin C is one of the best things to take when you're suffering with a cold. I decided it would probably a far more efficient way of getting vitamins into my body by putting all the vitamin C into...

....cupcakes of course!

These babies are carrot cake with orange zest and raisins in. Take that, cold! (I do feel better now so they must have worked).

Usually, the main problem that arises when I have a desire to make carrot cake is that le Boof does not like nuts. Especially in his cake. To him, each little tasty nugget of walnut (or pecan omnom) would be a tiny little nugget of betrayal. Which is a shame because I love nuts in my carrot cake, I like the contrast between super spongey cake and crunchy nuts. However, with the recipe I found for these cupcakes (masquerading as muffins, although only in size. Let's be honest, no one can be satisfied with a cupcake sized portion of cake.) walnuts are replaced with raisins! Fantastic! I love them, le Boof loves them, he said the raisins worked really well in them. No more colds for us. We'll be packed full of vitamin C any time I've baked a batch of these!

The recipe I used to make them is here, but I used a proper carrot cake icing: 180g cream cheese, 50g icing sugar and 90g butter instead of the ~~dribble~~ drizzle they suggest in the cake recipe.

I've been meaning to make a needle case for all my knitting needles for a while, my DPNs in particular. My first attempt ended awfully. I honestly couldn't tell you why I thought it might be a good idea to try and make something with nice neat straight lines with two different types of stretchy material, but that got put away in the oddbits material bag quick swiftly (after fiddling with the things for about an hour). Whilst in the oddbits bag I found a nice sturdy piece of material and I knocked one up in a matter of minutes.There's no particular reason for the snail, just that it's been hanging around in the bottom of my sewing box for years now, and I finally decided to give it a home.

I was planning to make some kind of rough tutorial for this, but I got so excited about making it, and it actually working, that I completely forgot to take pictures of each step. I'm planning on making another for my normal needles so hopefully I'll remember then and get a tute up.

And finally; slowly but surely the bunting is spreading round the house. The bathroom was the latest target.

New Curtains and Homemade Quiche

2012-01-21T02:07:00.001Z

I think today has to have been one of the more productive days I've had recently. Inspired by the fact that we've been given the green light to put up picture hooks in the flat (a big deal for me, sad as it sounds, as it means I can now start making the flat feel more homely (empty walls are sad walls)), down came the butt-ugly bathroom curtain that has been terrorising me since we moved in. The picture below doesn't do it justice. It's an unpleasant fabric to start with, and it's all browned and hand badly and a-symmetrically. I don't know why I hadn't done it sooner, it took £2.20 and maybe an hour tops to do. Admittedly it doesn't go with the décor, but I can live with that.

Before = Blech

After = Phew!

Yep, that's a towel. Well, two towels. All it took was a bit of this stuff (curtain hanging tape maybe? I'm not sure what it's called)

It took two ticks to sew this to the top of the towel. Then I just used the hooks that were keeping the uber-ugly "curtain" (it really only roughly resembled a curtain) "up" (barely) to hang it. I did have to sew another towel to the bottom to get it to be the right height, and the second curtain wasn't actually the same width as the first towel, but it was definitely worth it! Not only is this far easier on the eye, but it should hopefully help insulate the bathroom a little, it is by far the coldest room in the flat.

Once I had defeated that task, I moved onto dinner. I decided yesterday I wanted to make a quiche. So I did. As seems to be the case more often than not recently, I tend to look through several recipes for the same thing, take a few pointers from each, and then ignore most of what I've just read and make it up as I go along.

This is the results of today's baking adventures.

A completely made-from-scratch quiche. And it's dead easy. And you don't need silly things like double cream that I never have in the fridge unless it is for a specific recipe.

Here's how I made it.

Bacon, Leek and Mushroom Quiche
for a 20cm flan tin (3 respectable sized portions)

For the pastry:
2oz butter
4oz plain flour

For the filling:
                                                    2 large eggs
                                                      1 rasher middle bacon (or 2 of streaky)
                                                    1/3 leek
                                                          3 medium mushrooms
                                                          150ml milk

1. Make the pastry by rubbing the butter and flour together (so much easier with a pastry blender). Then when it's roughly breadcrumby, start adding small amounts of cold water until you can squish it all together into a soft dough. It doesn't want to be sticky, just soft.

2. Roll out the dough fairly thin, then carefully lay it over your flan tin (with removable base preferably) and press it gently in. Cut off the excess pastry round the edge of the tin then prick the base with a fork.

3. Cover and pop in the fridge for 30 minutes.

4. Set your oven to 200°c and put in a baking tray to preheat.

5. Line the chilled pastry with greaseproof paper then fill with either ceramic pastry beans or just plain old rice (I was surprised how well using rice worked, I had always put off making blind baked pastry cases due to my lack of baking beans). Then pop it onto the baking tray in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.

6. Meanwhile, chop up your mushrooms, leek and bacon and fry them until cooked.

7. Whisk together the eggs and milk and season. I put in a teaspoon of mustard powder, some salt, pepper and mixed dried herbs.

8. Take out the pastry and remove the rice and paper. Cook for 5 minutes.

9. Brush the pastry with the eggy mix and bake for another 2 minutes. This will just form a bit of a layer to stop the pastry going really soggy when you put the eggy mix in next.

10. Take out the pastry again, leaving the baking tray in the oven. Turn the temperature down to 190°c.

11. Spread the bacon, leek and mushroom evenly across the pastry then pour over the eggy mix.

12. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Leave for about 5ish minutes then NOM.

Goes well with: Sweet potato chips. Chop up half a sweet potato per person into chip sized chunks. Put them on a baking tray and slather with olive oil. Cover in pepper, garlic salt and dried mixed herbs. Mix it all up so the potato chunks are evenly(ish) covered then put in the oven at about 200°c for 20-30 minutes. (Give them a prod at 20 mins, if they're soft through they're done)

What I have learnt: Don't think it's clever to put as much of the eggy mix in the pastry case as physically possible. It will go everywhere and make your flan tin stick to the baking tray and then make you drop your lovely quiche on your camera.

This came out far better than I could have hoped for. On taking the pastry out ready for the filling to go in I thought it was looking quite soggy, but it crisped up nicely. Le Boof thought I had bought it from a fancy quiche shop or something and then even after I corrected him it took some persuading to made him believe I had made the pastry case too. This pastry recipe is the one I use for all my savoury pastry needs and it never disappoints. I took out a book from the library a while ago about cooking during WWII rationing, a book full of wonderful, sensible and hearty meals, and this was the recipe they suggested for making pastry. I'm not a big fan of clichés, but if it ain't broke...

Ooh, and finally, I know I've waffled on a fair bit already, but I have for a while been on a mission to find a good chocolate cake recipe that goes well with a chocolate buttercream icing (a lot of recipes I've tried have been too sweet). I made some this week, and they're my favourite so far. It's a recipe for a chocolate cake, but I just put the mix into muffin cases. Also, I discovered that although it makes it far faaaarrr too stiff to pipe, freezing chocolate buttercream icing makes it taste even better. If that's possible.

Song what I have been reminded I really like: The Count & Sinden featuring Mystery Jets - After Dark

Project Round Up

2012-01-19T23:20:00.000Z

For the Christmas just gone (it seems to close still to say last year) I set myself the task of making everyone's presents. Mainly for financial reasons but also because it's something I've always wanted to do. Before I have ended up maybe making a couple of things and then running out of time. This year I was finally successful, so for an entire blissful week before Christmas I spent all my free time either knitting or baking.

Even when I've not made everyone's Christmas presents, there's always plenty of things to get done and to focus on leading up to the big day, so when it gets to the week after I feel direction-less and uninspired.

I don't know what happened this year.

It's like I've been taken over by some kind of arts and crafts (baking and gardening too) spirit and completely forgot that not only did Christmas come and go in a flash, but I survived coming back up to our flat in the cold North after spending a wonderful week surrounded by family and friends.

So far I have made my first (wall hanging) quilt, made the first few of many decorations for our flat to make it look pretty and less dilapidated inside (peeling wallpaper and weird greasy marks on the walls need covering up!). Not only that but I've also secured myself a part time job up here, which is fantastic, and I've got a fairly good idea of what my planting plan will be for the balcony in the spring.

Some colourful crocheted bunting. I think there'll be more of this.

A nice wonky wall hanging quilt to keepthe door buzzer
phone company

Bringing the outside in. I might continue this
theme through into the kitchen.

I bought my first batch of seeds for the spring last week, there's a few more things I want to get seeds for but I'm mainly there with them I think (there's only so much space on the balcony!). Due to the space restrictions, i.e. only having the balcony as my space to grow things in, I'm going to try some ideas like putting plants in the bottom of hanging baskets as well as the top. So I could have my strawberries or tomatoes growing from the bottom of the basket and maybe peas or flowers growing out of the top. I'm going to invest in some stacking plant pots like these, maybe for herbs or smaller plants too. Basically cramming as much into our little balcony as possible. Oh, with space for a small garden table and two chairs too. I'll let you know how that goes.

This is the most beautiful blog: Posie Gets Cosy

Mission Fishy Fishy

2012-01-15T19:57:00.001Z

Today is the day. I will be cooking a fish dish, from scratch, for le Boof and myself.

I'd like to think I have mastered the fish finger (out of the packet). But I've never cooked a meal containing fish. This is probably due to the fact that it usually takes me a year to eat anything with fish in, due to a slight anxiety about finding a bone in a mouthful of food. However, I think it might well be time I got to grips with this fear, as I approach the quarter of a decade mark (*sob*). Also I think le Boof and I have settled into the habit of eating too much red meat. Chicken is an option, although just breasts are too expensive to have frequently, and I've not explored the route of getting an entire chicken and getting hundreds of meals out of it, so things like diced pork and beef mince seem to be what our meals consist of most often.

I did some research when we were first settling in up here on where there were fishmongers in the city, and I'm sad to say it seems like there's only the one. Le boof and I checked it out yesterday, it's part of the daily market that the city has (which is another lovely thing about living here). They had only a small selection of fish, but I think they may have been closing down for the weekend by the time we got there. I had read up on what I thought I would go for, using this very useful webpage. I'm very keen on the idea of not going for the main three fish that seem to dominate the market, and to instead use this guide to pick out something less common. After some deliberation we went for a couple of fillets of Pouting. Which apparently is a fairly bland tasting fish! Yay. Oh well. I shall see it as a challenge.

For pudding we have jelly! Orange for me and blackcurrant for le Boof.

-----------------------------------------

OK, so dinner has now been cooked and consumed. It was one of the quickest main meals I've made in a while. We used this recipe for crusty topped pouting. I was on fish duty while le Boof made a wholegrain mustard, crème fraiche and white wine sauce. For our veg we fried up half a large leek in butter until soft, boiled up some taters and cheated with the peas by microwaving them.

I was very pleased with the outcome of the meal. You grill the fish, which only takes about 4 minutes on either side. This is great for me, I can't eat anything that's too greasy, so no traditional fish and chips! The fish would have been quite bland on it's own but the recipe says to season both sides of the fish and the breadcrumb topping has plenty of herbs in. The sauce complimented it nicely and the leeks went well too.

Mission = success!

Next mission: pick a different fish and explore different methods of cooking it.

P.S. Jelly was just about ready by the time we got to puddings, although needed a bit of help coming out of the moulds!

My beautiful jelly

Le Boof's jelly...

P.P.S. It turned out to be cheaper to get a full bottle of white wine for the sauce than a tiny little one, this is a very good idea as neither of us really drink white wine.

The Mystery of the Rhubarb Triangle

2012-01-15T00:08:00.001Z

Being a huge fan of anything rhubarby (real rhubarb though mind, none of these rhubarb flavoured sweeties, blech!) I was most thrilled to find our local greengrocers stocking it already, and even more thrilled to learn that we are now living in The Rhubarb Triangle.

With plans of making these rhubarb crumble muffins, I bought myself a modest three sticks (sticks? Stems? (Ah, "petiole" apparently. Thank you Wikipedia.)) of rhubarb on grocery day this week and went happily about my way. Only today, realising I needed some buttermilk for the recipe, did I pop back into the greengrocers (they do buttermilk in the greengrocers! Fantastic!) to find they had a large bunch of rhubarb for 50p because it was nearly starting to go floppy. W00t! Rhubarb galore for me! After the lady behind the counter had triple checked with me that it was buttermilk I wanted and hadn't picked it up thinking it was milk, I headed home and made myself some of the muffins.

And very nice they were too! Even if I say so myself.

Le Boof's already nearly eaten his share. He's not a fan of overly sweet cakes, this recipe is perfect for him. The rhubarb gives the muffins a lovely fruity tartness, that the sugar in the recipe tempers but doesn't overwhelm, and the crumble topping comes out nice and crunchy. Fresh out of the oven they'd be wonderful with some vanilla ice cream as a dessert. They were lovely and squishy with the rhubarb bits all nice and juicy without making the cake soggy.

Having made the muffins I still had about 700g of diced rhubarb left. Oh, what a shame.

I had a look at a few rhubarb crumble recipes, but I couldn't find just one that had everything I felt I required from a crumble recipe at this particular time. So here's my mish mash of recipes.

Rhubarb and Ginger Crumble

For the fruity bit:
700g rhubarb, diced
25g caster sugar
As much fresh ginger as you can handle, grated
2 tbsp golden syrup

For the crumble:
175g plain flour
55g oats
140g butter
85g caster sugar

Preheat your oven to 170°c

1. Mix all the fruity bit ingredients together, then set aside. The chunk of ginger I used was about the size of both of my thumbs next to each other. I don't know why thumbs are so often used to measure fresh ginger, but it seems safest to stick with it.

2. Put all the crumble ingredients together in a bowl, roughly chop up the butter with a knife then get your hands in, rubbing the butter into the dry ingredients until you've got something resembling breadcrumbs. It doesn't have to be too fine.

3. Take a pie dish and pour in the rhubarby mix. It will be quite juicy by now.

4. Tip in half the crumble mix on top of the rhubarb and pat down, then put the rest of the mix on top loosely. Sprinkle with a teaspoon of granulated sugar, some cinnamon and some ground ginger.

5. Cook for 40-45 minutes.

6. Omnomnomnom. (Maybe leave to cool for a couple of minutes, with all that hot syrupy goodness beneath the calm crumbly topping it'll be a bit more like a lava crumble, straight out of the oven.)

This is actually going in the freezer. I've portioned it up ready for when I have a pudding hankering. However, as the chef I did have to give it a taste, but otherwise, in the freezer it goes! (EDIT: some has been lost to the great bearded food hoover I live with)

I've tried making crumbles with fresh ginger in before, but always just chopped it up really small. This did the trick, but it was more tiny little land mines of heat than an overall heat. Grating it sorted that though. This crumble is incredibly warming, you can taste the ginger but it's a little more subtle, and it compliments the tart rhubarb wonderfully.

Shall definitely make again. Possibly until both the freezer and my tummy are full.

I've now got to find some more interesting rhubarb recipes. I plan on heading over to the green grocers just before closing time on a Saturday for the foreseeable future to take full advantage of any more large quantities of cheap rhubarb!

If you've not heard it before, check out: Dear Reader - Replace Why With Funny

Don't Panic!

2012-01-12T18:04:00.000Z

OK, so my brief lapse in posting was mainly due to the fact that I thought I was a goner.

I thought I had broken my internets.

Scary times. However, with le Boof on the case we eventually discovered it was a USB hub I had recently plugged into my PC that was a bit dodgy that had mucked about with things. All is now back to normal, panic is over and I can get back to sharing all the crafty things I have been doing to avoid doing real work. *ahem*

This morning (afternoon) le Boof decided he wanted pancakes for breakfast (lunch). After whipping up a batch of batter I thought I'd get a little creative and try some pancake art (far better and more creative versions can be found here). This is how to go about it.

Make up a batch of pancake batter (my recipe of choice is below). Pop about a fifth/quarter if it into an icing bottle

Pop in a little of your food colouring of choice. I went for red. With your finger over the end of the nozzle, give it a good shake to get the colour mixed in evenly.

Get a frying pan nice and hot. I tend to put some oil in the pan while it's getting up to heat then (very carefully!) wipe most of it away with some kitchen towel. Then pipe your message or picture onto the pan. It took me a couple of tries to get used to how fast the batter would come out of the bottle. This was fine though as it provided me with nibbles while I was making the actual pancakes. Don't forget to pipe any words backwards (this constituted most of my nibbles)

Leave your piped decorations until they look just about cooked through then pour over a ladle full or so (or however much you normally put in per pancake) of your plain pancake batter.

My recipe of choice for making pancakes is

125g of plain flour, 1 egg and 300ml milk

All popped in a bowl and whisked up until there's no lumps, then left for 5 minutes to settle.

This makes 8 large but quite thin pancakes. Which, when filled with things like cheese and chutney or lemon curd and sugar, is plenty for two people for breakfast (lunch), but you can always scale up for more people or larger appetites.

I remember when I was searching for a recipe for pancakes a while a go I couldn't find one without butter in it, which I've never heard of before. This one is the one my Ma's always used and therefore, to me, is how pancakes should be made.

Le Boof was over the moon at his personalised pancake. I might do them again for Valentine's day.

Currently playing: Bastion

(Beautiful RPG game with a commentary that follows what you're doing, a very clever take on a common gaming genre. Aurally and visually pleasing with a great soundtrack.)

Must watch: The Bell Song live by OKGo

(A fantastic rendition of one of my favourite songs from their first album. OKGo are one of those bands who are forever making things fun and lovely.)

New Job, Cheeky Mince Pies and Crochet Triangles

2012-01-07T19:46:00.000Z

After a good three long months of being in York I have finally secured a form of employment up here! Admittedly it's only a part time job, but it feels really nice to have finally been given a chance to show that I am capable of doing things. It's been very frustrating going to interviews or trial shifts where I don't actually do anything and then being turned down due to a lack of experience, when they've not given me an opportunity to show that it actually doesn't matter that I've not been doing certain jobs for very long. </rant>

Anyway.... So now on top of my seamstressing, I work in a lovely food shop, one with a delightful deli and all those interesting foods you can never seem to find anywhere else and all sorts of organic and local produce. The only problem with it is is the cheese counter. I want it all! All of the cheese. In my tummy. And the shop is only round the corner from the flat on our wonderful local high street, with it's two greengrocers, proper butcher, fish and chips shop and proper hardware shop. So right now I'm fairly chuffed at that, and the extra income's a plus too, of course!

Shhh don't tell anyone but I may have made a naughty batch of mince pies last night. I know it's not Christmas any more but I did have some homemade mincemeat left over *and* left over mince pie pastry (admittedly safe in the freezer, but no-one needs to know that.) So yeah, here's the very last of Christmas, hidden away in a sweetie box with our last bit of my Ma's Christmas cake.

It's now my secret Christmas stash. As much as I love my Ma's Christmas cake, I'm finding it hard to eat the last piece, as there's such a wonderful festive smell when you open the box. I'm sure I'll have a weak day and nom it all soon. But until then, I'll just poke my nose in the box and inhale deeply.

And finally, on a slightly more sane note, the crocheted triangle bunting's coming along nicely. I've been obsessively playing a game called Eufloria and making them in the evenings recently. Not quite enough to fill the house with lovely colours yet, but I've got plenty of time.

TTFN Christmas

2012-01-05T20:16:00.004Z

*Sadface*

The flat's now back to it's empty self. The bunting's coming along slowly, hopefully it'll be up for Spring. I'm also planning on sampling a few more patterns from this wonderful book

So the flat should be bright and beautiful again in no time. (fingers crossed)

It's now been three months since le Boof and I moved up to York. He's attending uni up here and after six and a half years of being together, it made sense for me to tag along and for us to start the next stage of our relationship living together in our own little flat!
My part to play is earning the money at the moment, however, as far as full time jobs are concerned, the outlook is still fairly bleak. The radio news reports keep telling me that unemployment is at an all time high and fewer companies are hiring full time staff due to the economic situation (blah blah blah, cheers radio news). Fortunately for me though, the people I worked for before the big move have kept me on their books part time, and send me up boxes of jackets to put new zips in. Which brings me, far more importantly, to the wonderful new bit of furniture I got my hands on last month.

I received it from a very nice lady on our local Freecycle (if you've not discovered it yet, check out your local group, it's fantastic and ours has a wonderful community spirit to it). It's specifically a sewing table, with two small drawers on one side and the other side has a bit cut away so you can get right up close to your machine. Dead good. It's definitely made me far more focussed and productive, having a specific working area. (when I can drag myself away from the internet....) Having spent a while on craft blogs today, I'm wondering whether I should do this to it eventually? It is a very nice bit of furniture as it is, but it's also fairly set in it's own decade, so could do with a bit of personalisation and sprucing I think. Something to mull over whilst getting to work! (Tomorrow.)

Current projects on the go:

Getting everything set up to do a run of screen printed T-shirts for the university's knitting society that I'm a member of
Spring bunting

What's for dinner?:
Shepherd's Pie Potatoes

And finally:
Lissie - When I'm Alone

P.S. I've now added a links page, which you will find in the tabs at the top of this page. Plenty there to get your crafty teeth into!

Chutney and Balcony Gardening

2012-01-03T17:59:00.008Z

Finished my spiced apple chutney last night, I’m sure it’ll taste fine once it’s had it’s 3 or so months to mature (if it makes it that long this time), however -

Lessons learnt:

Do not be lazy and scrimp on the main pectin-containing ingredient, you will end up with weird mush
Do not underestimate how hot jam jars get straight out of the oven
Never trust a Kilner jar’s locking-mechanism-wirey-bit (snappy!)

For those feeling brave (actually, it’s a dead easy recipe I just seem to be able to make these things more complicated for myself!), I found the recipe here - Spiced Apple Chutney Recipe.

To sterilise my jars, both of the jam and Kilner variety, I give them a jolly good wash in hot soapy water, then remove the lids for jam jars, the rubbery seal bits for Kilner-style jars. Pop them on a baking tray and into the oven at 120°c for 5 minutes. Once they’re out, plop your jam/chutney/curd/whatever in the jars, preferably while it’s all still hot, then seal them straight away. As the contents of the jar cools it should give a better seal.

In other news, I’ve started collecting plastic milk containers to act as plant pots. As we now have a balcony, our own little bit of outside space, I’m planning on filling it full of wonderful fruit and veg plants over spring and summer. Milk containers offer a nice inexpensive option to start my plants off in, also this is a possibility -

A very interesting and clever set up I saw at the South of England show last year, with some of the bottles providing water for the rest of the pots through a bit of material and capillary action! Although that might be a few steps up from what I was thinking if to start me off.

I’ve decided on the following crops, all of which can be grown in containers and are therefore ideal for a tiny balcony veg garden:
Pak choi, small salad carrot, spinach, tomatoes, strawberries, various herbs and hopefully runner beans, providing I can locate a nice big pot and a cane wigwam.

Bunting, Tortillas and Chutney

2012-01-02T11:51:00.005Z

Not so much of a New Year’s resolution as something I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while now, but I’m planning to get this blog going again. I’ve got lots of things I was up to over Christmas - all outgoing gifts were entirely hand made, I’ll pop up pics and recipes/tutorials eventually.

For now this was what I was up to today:

First off, there’s a batch of spiced apple chutney on the hob as we speak, the far more attractive before shot is what you see above. It’s a big pot of vinegar-y smelling brown goop at the moment, however, I know from experience it will taste very nice when finished!

We had home made tortillas for lunch, which were incredibly easy to make, I don’t know why I had it stuck in my head that they might take a long time or not be worth the hassle. I used this recipe - Flour Tortilla Wraps. I didn’t really fancy 60 wraps at the time, so I divided all quantities by four. That made more than enough for le Boof and myself for lunch (there’s still five of them in the fridge, waiting for when Boof gets the nibbles).

Faced with the threat of having a naked flat again when the Christmas decorations have to come down later in the week (sadface), I’ve decided I shall crochet some jolly spring bunting. I’ll update with pics in a later post, as there are only two currently. The pattern I’m using for them is here, I’ve been changing colours for every new round. If you’ve never tried crochet, it’s definitely worth giving a go. Apparently it’s easier than knitting, although I’ve been knitting for much longer than I’ve crocheted for, so it’s hard for me to tell!

So there we are, that was nice and painless. I just have to remember to take lots and lots of pictures of everything I do. Le Boof will be pleased!

Cheeky extras:

Currently playing - Eufloria
Currently listening - Gotye - Somebody I Used To Know ft. Kimbra