Categories
General

CAKE POPS

I made 40 cake pops, they lasted  just 11 hours when shared with work colleagues and friends.  Apparently once you eat one, you just can’t stop.  Here is how it all happened.

It all starts with the very normal baking a cake…

Make a basic chocolate cake recipe.  I made mine by mixing 250g salted butter (at room temperature) with 250g caster sugar.  Slowly add 4 medium eggs, continuing to beat the mixture.  Sift over 250g self-raising flour and 4 tablespoons of cocoa powder.  Mix everything until combined.  Pour into 2 x 8 inch cake tins, bake in a preheated oven at 160ºC for 25 mins.  Test it with a skewer, it cooked the skewer comes out clean.  Leave the cake to cool.

Now things start to get a bit crazy, it’s time to destroy the cake, yes, really…

I know it seems so terribly wrong, but it has to be done.  Put the cake into a food processor and process until you get a crumb consistency.  I do not have a food processor, so I had to go with the slower method of breaking the cake until a big bowl, and then using a fork to break it up into a crumb-like consistency.  Yes, this takes quite a bit more time, but if you do it whilst sitting in front of the TV watching ‘The Big Bang Theory’ then the time passes by quickly.

In a seperate bowl mix together 140g full-fat cream cheese and 280g sifted icing sugar until smooth.  Add this to your cake crumbs.  Stick your hands in and combine together.  You should be left with a moist mixture. 

Time to make some balls…

Weigh out 30grams of the mix and roll into a ball, push in a lollipop stick, and place on a tray.  Do this about 39 more times and you should have used up all your mix.  Put the tray into the fridge for a few hours (if short on time you can put them in the freezer for about 10 minutes).

Now for the fun part, it is time to decorate…

Melt some chocolate or candy melts, I used Cadbury milk chocolate as it is my favourite.  Dip the naked cake pop into the chocolate, ensure it is fully coated, tap the excess chocolate off.  Decorate with sprinkles, glitter, sugar stars/hearts etc, whatever you fancy.  Place into a stand to dry.  You can buy proper cake pop stands online, but they can be a bit pricey.  I used oasis (the stuff that is used for flower arranging) and found it was a very useful substitute.

And the result is…

A very pretty, cute and tasty treat, something that is almost like a chocolate truffle.  Seriously, they were eaten so quickly by my work colleagues and friends that I did not even have time to eat one myself, I found myself making another batch a few days later, and I got to eat my first cake pop, and it was delicious, worth the time and effort for a special occasion/treat.

Categories
Craft Notebooks Stationery

Italian paper sketch pads

I’ve recently completed a job lot of ten A5 sketch pads, all covered in the absolutely beautiful paper I bought in Florence. They look rather nice together, so I thought I’d share:

         

Categories
Craft

Newly Knitted- little glove things

After having knitted a pair of boot cuffs as a Christmas present, it was requested that I also knit a pair of arm warmers, to match. I didn’t actually have much of the same wool left, so I knitted little glove things instead.

Here’s the pattern I use:

  • Cast on 40 stitches
  • Knit one row
  • Then start ribbing pattern; knit 3, purl 1
  • Do the opposite on the next row, i.e. knit 1, purl 3.
  • Keep this up until it’s the desired length, then cast off.

Then all you have to do is sew them up. I sewed about half and inch up from the top, left room for the thumb, then carried on sewing to the bottom. The buttons I added to match in with the boot cuffs:

Categories
Craft Inspiration

Weekly Inspiration- Steampunk & lace

You know sometimes you have what you think is a brilliant idea, so you look on t’internet for a bit of inspiration and find that it’s already out there?

What started it all off was something my mum was telling me about; she’d seen somewhere about making little bowls out of lace doilies (you can find a good tutorial here.) The idea is, basically, that you use an existing glass dish, cover in clingfilm, place your doily on and smother in PVA glue; so when it dries, you’ll have a cute little solid lacey bowl.

Now, I’ve been looking to do some Steampunk-inspired stuff, and have amassed a collection of various bits and pieces of old broken jewellery and watches etc. The only problem is, I’ve been at a loss where to start; I feel I need a single, solid piece to work from, as a base.

As is the way of brainwaves, I don’t know where this came from, but I had a thought: what if I took the whole lace & PVA idea, and made little solid lace shapes as a basis for my Steampunk experiments? Surely lace and cogs go? Of course they do! Check out these marvellous creations from those talented people selling on etsy:  

Pretty little bow from tarnisheddanglies.

Amazingly gorgeous wrist cuffs from raven666.

Or how about this adorable brooch from LadyCharis?

I currently have some lace all glued up at home… can’t wait to try some ideas out!

Categories
General

It was the cover that caught my eye…

Everyone knows that you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. This is often quite literally true; however, beautiful covers do entice. I often find myself, having spied a pretty book on the train being read by someone else, making a concerted effort to find that book, and indeed that particular beautifully bound edition.

The first cover I’m featuring is one that I indeed spied on an early morning train journey; I could not take my eyes off the cover or fail to be intrigued by the title.

My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk, Faber & Faber edition, has a well laid out cover featuring an exquisite illustration:

This book is definitely worth a read in my opinion. I found it quite hard to keep on going while I was reading it; but whenever I wasn’t reading it, I found I was constantly thinking about it.

Categories
Lunchtime Lusting

Lunchtime Lusting- Holly Cupcakes

Holly Cupcakes has to be one of the cutest cake supply sites I’ve come across. Not only can you buy all the usuals from here, such as cupcake cases, baking equipment and that all important edible glitter, Holly Cupcakes also offers a brilliant range of edible cake decorations.

Surely I need some Fairy Princess ones? This one needs to be on my cupcakes!

Everything just looks so very pretty- and cupcakes were made to be pretty. Well, that and to taste good, of course. There are also these delightful cupcake decorating kits, of which my favourite is the pirate one. Or the dinosaur. No- pirate. You get a recipe, cases, glitter and edible deocrations, all in a lovely box.

Yarrgh!


Categories
General

Festive baking- reindeer cupcakes

It’s a bit late now, I know; but I didn’t get round to making these until after Christmas and I simply couldn’t wait until next year to do them. 

My mother-in-law gave me these adorable edible decorations from Holly Cupcakes, a website that shall be thoroughly investigated very soon.

The cupcake recipe I used was a very basic one. I got some tips from the Queen of Cupcake Corner, who said recipes with milk usually turned out nice and light. Here it is (makes 12):

  • 150g butter
  • 150g caster sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 150g self raising flour
  • 2-3 tbsp milk

First, cream the butter and the sugar. Make sure the butter is nice and soft before you begin. I usually do this by hand, but as I was at my parents I used their food processor- so much quicker!

Next, beat in the eggs. I was told you need to do this for a long time, which is much easier with a food processor- it got the mixture really really smooth.

Then fold in the flour carefully, making sure you don’t over mix it. Add a little milk to make it dropping consistency, then fill your cases. As I wanted poofy tops for my reindeer, I filled some up more than others. Bake at 180 degrees C for about 20 mins. They turned out pretty good!

To ice them, I made a batch of butter icing; 6oz of icing suger, 3oz of butter. I know, I used grammes before, but I’m not fussy, I just use whatever recipe I like the look of! I replaced just under 1oz of icing sugar with 1oz of cocoa powder, to make a vaguely reindeer coloured icing. Not having anything else, I just smoothed this on with a knife.

After that it was just a case of decorating! I used some red icing to do the noses, but you could use lots of things: chocolate peanuts or raisins, cherries, cranberries…

Categories
Craft Origami

Need a little gift box? Make one!

Having had a look in a few shops for little gift boxes to put my handmade chocolates in, I found myself disenchanted with the ones on offer. So of course I decided to make my own!

There are quite a few simple boxes that can be made out of paper/thin card; I opted for this box of triangles. I chose one without a lid, so the chocolates can be on display, looking fancy.

This one really is very simple and also very effective- just a bit different from your average cuboid!

You’ll need three squares of paper/thin card, all the same size. I know this is obvious, but do think about the size of box you need! I used 3″x3″ squares. It turned out too small; I forgot I had 8 chocolates to fit in. 6″x6″ was perfect.

Firstly, fold your first piece of paper in half from corner to corner, creasing firmly with a bone folder/thumb nail/scissor handles/similar.

Next up, fold the two corners in to the centre point. Crease firmly and unfold.

Lastly, fold up the middle point, crease firmly, unfold. You should be left with a triangle with three fold marks, like this:

Repeat with the other two squares, so you have three the same. Then slot them all together…

…and then join them up. At this stage, it should become obvious how it all fits together and the bottom forms.

Ta da!

The perfect way to present my chocolates.

Merry Christmas!

Categories
Craft

The art of gift wrapping

A nicely wrapped present is a happy present. I like to make a thing of present wrapping, get everything ready, stick a festive film on and do it all in one go.

Here are my hints and tips.

Firstly, get everything you’ll need all in one place and within reach. Then you don’t have to keep getting up to fetch things. On my list are scissors, tape (with lots of pre-cut bits stuck around), ribbon, tags, old cards to make tags from, and of course wrapping paper.

Next, a very important point- make sure you’ve taken any price labels off!

Now to wrapping. Try not to use gift tags that are a similar pattern or colour to your paper; they’ll just get lost. You can cut pictures or shapes out of old cards to make fancy tags- just be careful when sticking them on. For instance, in the picture below, you can’t lift the star tag up to read the label. Error. The bauble is fine.

 

When it comes to ribbon, I like to keep it simple but (hopefully) effective. Start with the ribbon on the side where you want the bow to be, twist it round at the back, then bring it round across the other way to tie:

 

One last tip: be wary of fancy brown paper wrap. I got this from Paperchase last year (I love you for everything but this, Paperchase!) and it is mighty pretty but tape just does not stick to it. In the end I have to plaster it on then disguise with a huge bow. Which I actually really love.

Happy present wrapping!

Categories
Lunchtime Lusting

Lunchtime Lusting- Muji Christmas shop

You know I love paper. Another thing I love is Lego.

Now, I don’t quite know what this is- I haven’t actually read up on that part yet. But I want.

http://www.muji.eu/pages/online.asp?V=1&Sec=21&Sub=94&PID=5488

‘Lego Bricks And Paper’ is all I needed to read on the Muji website for me to be intrigued. Basically, I think you get a special puncher thing and punch holes in the paper, then Lego brick it up…

 

Cool, huh? You can pick up a Christmas one for £19. I love.

I pretty much love everything in Muji; it’s all so simple. The toys are plain, delightful wooden affairs. Among my favourites are the horses merry-go-round and these slightly disturbing animal puzzles, which teach children the food chain… by showing different animals inside each other, according to what eats what.

                                                     

Whatever, they’re simple, colourful, fun and have a lovely homemade feel!

No room for a Christmas tree? Reluctant to opt for an artificial one? How about this wooden one from Muji?Completely festive, completely reusable- and you can hang the decorations where you like, meaning you can still feel like you’re decorating and personalising your tree. Winner.