Felting

My mum has been doing some more felting and we have put them up on our Etsy shop

Recent purchases

I haven't posted for such a long time - sorry!

A bikini from BHS, I don't normally shop there but I really love this bikini especially the colour! And it was super cheap plus free delivery (as it was over £10).

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)