Mincemeat Lattice Tart

I made this using a jar of Waitrose mincemeat and some fresh (sour!) cranberries. The tart does not use much sugar so it isn't very sweet, and goes well with brandy sauce or ice-cream. The pastry uses cream cheese which I had not come across before, and is folded like puff pastry, resulting is a light flaky pastry.
This is from "The Great British Bake Off" by Linda Collister, and I have found out that I cannot post the recipe for privacy reasons. I guess I'll have to start making my own recipes!

Merry Christmas

I had a really nice Christmas, here are some of my presents:

Uggs

Joseph Joseph "nest"

Joseph Joseph baking set

Joseph Joseph chopping board

Kindle

I also got the Primrose Bakery cookbook, and I can't wait to bake something from there asap!
For lunch we had wholewheat blinis (recipe here), then Quorn Roast (as I am vegetarian) with roast potatoes, parsnips, brussel sprouts and peas. And cranberry sauce, bread sauce, onion gravy and Quorn bacon! Then Christmas pudding afterwards! It was yum.

Vanillekipferl

These were supposed to be hazelnut and vanilla flavoured crescent biscuits, but I used ground almonds instead of hazelnuts and couldn't do crescent shapes! I made half the quantity and found it hard to use half an egg, so the dough was quite sticky and the biscuits were a little underdone.

• 350g plain flour, sifted
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 250g butter, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg, beaten
• 100g caster sugar
• 50g ground hazelnuts/almonds
• pinch of salt (I didn't use)
• 100g icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder, butter, vanilla extract, egg, caster sugar, nuts and salt in a large bowl or food mixer (I creamed the butter and sugar and nuts, then added egg and vanilla, then flour).
3. Flatten into a round 2cm thick, cover with cling film and chill for 30 minutes.
4. Roll the dough into walnut sized balls and flatten slightly.
5. Place on a baking tray (you don't have to space them very much).
6. Bake for 10-15 minutes until pale golden and feel slightly firm (don't worry if they are soft, they will harden on cooling). Allow to stand.
7. Sift the icing sugar into a wide shallow bowl and toss the biscuits in the sugar.

(From "Bake" by Rachel Allen)

6 days to go!

Today I bought some ribbon from a local craft shop and made a jewellery holder for hook earrings:

It was quite fiddly and frustrating and I got UHU glue everywhere...
It is made of a photo frame which I painted white with ribbon glued to the back, then a black sheet of card.

For my stud earrings I painted a corkboard then i just make holes with drawing pins and push in the studs.

 The photos aren't very flattering but they do look nice in my otherwise quite plain room.

Also my mum knitted me a fairisle style jumper and I love it!

Finally, I recently bought 5 Indian rings off eBay for £5, and got 7 delivered - score!

Sugar Skull

I needed a new tote bag so I bought a plain canvas one for £3.00 from a craft shop.
Then I had the hard task of deciding what to put on it. I initially wanted to do a cross stitch Banksy so I put on soluble canvas and started stitching, but it was too fiddly and frustrating as I had to stitch from inside the bag. And also there was a leak in the conservatory and it rained on my soluble canvas, making it dissolve!
So I decided to use my 'fabric pastels' which I got from Japan. I always like sugar skulls/day of the dead so I decided to alter a photo of one on the internet and draw it onto my bag. I'm quite pleased with the result!

Christmas Shortbread

Another recipe from Great British Bake-Off (series 1)

Cute little vanilla shortbread biscuits, which were fun to ice!

I made half of this recipe:

• 200g softened unsalted butter
• 200g white caster sugar
• 1 large free range egg
• 400g plain flour
• 2 vanilla pods

1. Cream butter, sugar & vanilla seeds until creamy then beat in the egg.
2. Add flour and mix on low speed until dough forms.
3. Roll into two balls, wrap in cling film and chill for at least one hour.
4. Roll out and cut into chosen shapes. 

 

1. Chill again and preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2. Line baking tray with baking parchment.
3. Bake for approx 10 mins – until golden brown at the edges.
4. Cool on a wire rack.  

 

• icing sugar
• lemon juice

1. Make up icing to the right consistency then transfer to a piping bag.
2. Ice!

Felting

My new hobby is felting! It involves pricking mohair wool with a barbed needle until it mattes, then you can shape it and prick it more. The photos below are of a dog made by my mum not me, but hopefully I'll be this good soon. It sold on eBay for £4.99.

These is a Pomeranian dog made by me, currently on sale at Etsy! (/people/r0sycakes)

Pizza

Home-made pizza is really fun to make and not a huge amount of effort.

Mum's Birthday

For my mum's birthday we got her a mobile phone and I made this phone case using a design from Cath Kidston's "Stitch" book. It took a couple of days to make but she seemed to like it a lot!

The fabric is from a fat quarter of Cath Kidston fabrics and it was lined with a strawberry print fabric.
I also got her this card from Scribbler: