Energy Balls

The past few weeks have been completely dominated by preparing for and then having a new kitchen fitted. First there was the task of emptying all the kitchen cupboards, lugging all the loose furniture upstairs to the spare room and taking everything off the walls - curtains, pictures, the clock and the calendar, the latter two meaning I've been a bit lost; then there was setting up a makeshift cooking station in the laundry room; and that was before the contractors arrived to create more dust that I could really cope with. I'm sure you can picture the scene: you glance down at your leg in the middle of an important work meeting and notice that there is an unmissable smudge of white dust all the way down your right leg!

All this has required boundless energy so I've been keeping a good stock of 'energy balls' in the fridge to keep me and everyone else going. Fortunately they don't require any cooking and can be rustled up in a fairly small space. When I say, don't need any cooking, I guess I should qualify this. The recipe does ask for 2 tablespoons of melted coconut oil, but fear not. Coconut oil has a very low melting point so placing your oil on a radiator, boiler top, sunny windowsill, even in the hands of a very warm-blooded person should do the trick, particularly for such a small quantity.

The original recipe is from the Sainsbury's Magazine and made with dates and cashews but I've also been experimenting with other combinations and shapes.

The first of these was to substitute the dates with dried apricots and the cashews and cashew butter with almonds and almond butter.  The results were just as delicious.

Apricot and Almond Energy Balls

I've now just made up 1.5 times original recipe and pressed it all into a rectangular tin, rather than shape the mixture into balls. It's a lot less messy than making the balls but a top tip, should you choose to make the balls, is to ensure you have wet hands.

Once set, I cut the slab into cubes, which I'm hoping will be easier to pack into a lunchbox (less prone to rolling around!)

Cashew and Date Cubes

Once this batch has been consumed I've already decided on the next flavour - hazelnut and dark chocolate, inspired by a visit to friends the other weekend. I'll stick with the dates but use hazelnut butter and chopped and toasted hazelnuts rather than the suggested cashews but will also sprinkle in some dark chocolate chips. I'm also considering something with lemon zest in but will mull that idea over a bit more.

Right, time for a cup of tea and a cube of energy I think!

Fleeced!

Apparently it takes a professional shearer approximately 2 minutes to shear a sheep but how long does it take to put a fleece on a sheep? I guess the sheep would say it takes a full year of dedicated grass eating but, if my experience over the past two weeks is anything to go by, I'd say about 10 hours.

OK, so it wasn't an actual sheep that I was re-fleecing but a small crocheted one. However, you hopefully get the idea that it was quite a laborious process.

I'm talking, of course, about my latest crochet project that I had first attempted back in October. On that occasion, after 6 hours of starting, unpicking, re-starting and yet again unpicking I had nothing to show for my efforts except a splitting headache and a crick in my neck. Fortunately, my second attempt two weeks ago was much more successful, mainly thanks to some moral support and advice at the last Craft Club gathering. By the end of the afternoon I had a body and head to show for my efforts and by the end of the following day I had 4 legs, a pair of ears and a tail.

That just left me to stuff the pieces, sew them together and then add the fleece. This final bit was a tiny line in the instruction booklet so surely I'd have this little sheep done and dusted and ready for his new owner?  Let's just say, after the first hour of attaching 8-chain loops to the body of my sheep I realised I was in this for the long-haul and BBC Radio 4's Drama of the Week podcasts were summoned alongside copious mugs of tea.

Anyway, the little chap - courtesy of Edward's Menagerie by Kerry Lord - is now complete. Now we just need the new baby to arrive!

Oh, and now I've got the crocheting bug once again, I just have decide which animal to make next...!

Chilli Jam

So much for me spending this weekend finishing the crochet project that I began last weekend. Let's just say I became somewhat distracted by a bowl of chillies.

We are lucky enough at work to have a fruit and veg stall, half of which is set aside selling bowlfuls of things for £1. Whenever I pass by I always look to see if there's anything interesting on offer and this week a £1 bowl of hot, red chillies took my fancy. I paired it with a similar bowl of sweet red peppers, picked up a kilo of jam sugar on my way home and then dug out a bottle of cider vinegar. After completing my regular Saturday chores, time has rather slipped by this afternoon as I combined the aforementioned ingredients under the instruction of Nigella Lawson.

I've not picked up my crochet hook yet but I do have 5 very pretty jars of Chilli Jam waiting on the side to cool.

Meanwhile, the spare chilli and peppers have been diced and thrown into a vegetable chilli that is now in the oven, so at least there will be dinner.

Fortunately, the crochet project, which is for a baby with a due date of tomorrow, did make some progress in the week so all is not entirely lost. However, I am secretly hoping the aforementioned baby will be a little late in making his/her first appearance to give me a bit more time. I'll just have to make sure I don't get distracted by anything else!

Cakey-biscuits?

It has been a busy few weeks involving a lot of travel for both work and pleasure, all great, but it was nice to finally find myself at home this weekend. And what a weekend! It finally feels as if Spring has sprung and it was Craft Club, so there was no excuse not to get creative.

My Craft Club contribution was due to be cake although what I ended up making was a bit of a cross between biscuit and cake. The recipe was an adaptation from a Hemsley and Hemsley recipe, adapted out of necessity because of the paucity of stock held by my local supermarket. In spite of that, the results went down well with our mid-afternoon cup of tea so I thought I'd share my version of the recipe with you.

Melt 75g of butter with half a teaspoon of Bicarbonate of Soda and a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste. Place 175g ready-to-eat, pitted prunes in a food processor and pulse until well chopped. Pour in the melted butter mixture and combine, then add 250g ground almonds and mix until everything is well combined.

Take heaped tablespoons of the mixture and form into balls, squashing each to a fat disk about 5-6cm in diameter. Place on a large baking tray lined with baking parchment. You should get about 14 'cakey-biscuits' from your mixture.

Pop them in the fridge to chill for about 15 minutes whilst you pre-heat the oven to 160C or gas mark 3. Cook for 15-18 minutes and allow to cool on the tray.

Meanwhile, melt 30g dark chocolate to drizzle on the top. I found the easiest and least messy way to do this was to place the chocolate pieces into a disposable piping bag - the sort that you snip the end off when you are ready to pipe. Don't snip the end off yet but place it in a mug, twisting the open end of the bag and tucking it through the mug handle. Pour over not-quite-boiling water and leave for the chocolate to melt.

Once your bakes are cool, remove the piping bag from the mug (the chocolate should now be melted), dry the outside of the bag, snip off the tip of the bag and slowly drizzle the chocolate over your bakes.

Once the chocolate has set, make yourself a nice cuppa, sit back and tuck in!

Whilst in the relaxing environment of Craft Club I made a second attempt at a crochet project that had previously defeated me. It's going well so I hope to be able to 'show and tell' next weekend!

Are You Thready?

I spent yesterday mocking up a sofa frame from bits of MDF and garden canes in an effort to find out if a replacement sofa I had taken a fancy to would fit through the front door, up the stairs and around a rather awkward angle into the lounge.

It didn't!

So, to stop myself obsessing over possible sofa alternatives and staring out at the continuing wind and rain, I decided to turn my mind to the more frivolous task of decorating fabric patches.

This is a project that a fellow crafter had alerted me to. It's a competition being run by White Stuff called Are You Thready? It simply asks you to decorate an A5 sized fabric patch in any way you wish. You can either pick up a fabric patch from your local White Stuff store or just measure out your own piece of fabric (14.8cm wide by 21cm high).

For every patch you hand in to your local store or post to head office before 10 March, they will donate £5 to your store's local charity. Each patch is then incorporated into a cushion cover or quilt which is also sent to the local charity. If that isn't incentive enough, each store picks a winning patch, the winner receiving a £50 White Stuff voucher; and each of these patches gets sent to head office for an overall winner to be chosen and that person wins a craft holiday to Italy.

Now, I don't remotely expect to win any of the above but if an afternoon of playing around with fabric can turn into a charitable donation, I'd say everyone is a winner.

I popped down to my local White Stuff store in the hope of picking up a fabric patch but they were completely out. Apparently they had gone in just three days of the competition being launched. Instead I was given a template, but after travelling home amongst my shopping and it then being attacked by the cat, it was looking a little worse for wear by the time I was ready to begin!

Undeterred, the first challenge was to find some fabric to decorate. Not that there is any challenge in finding bits of fabric in this house. No, the challenge was choosing which one (or ones) to use. In the end I pulled out a selection and began playing around with felt, ribbon, buttons and beads.

Again the cat helped out, sending my carefully selected and arranged button embellishments to the four corners of the room, skittering under drawers and book shelves, never to be seen again (or at least not without a lot more furniture moving than I was prepared to undertake).

A thoroughly enjoyable few hours ensued and here are the before and after results.

Now it's just left for me to label them up and drop them down to the shop. In the very least, it will result in an additional £15 being donated to the Cots for Tots Appeal. Not a bad outcome for an enjoyable few hours of sewing and far better than trawling furniture websites for sofas!

Love the Planet

Last week I came across a campaign by the Climate Coalition which is, along with Stop Climate Chaos Cymru and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, the UK's largest group of people dedicated to action on climate change. The bottom line is they want 100% clean energy within a generation.

To show support for this campaign they are asking people to turn their hearts green this Valentine's Day. You can do this in all sorts of ways but one is to make a green heart. So, that's just what I did at yesterday's craft club gathering.

It took me all week to decide what I wanted to save most and stick on the banner across my heart. In the end I came up with 'for the love of trees'. They are such miracle workers in terms of absorbing carbon, absorbing water to help prevent flooding, anchoring soil to prevent it being washed away in the rain (leaving behind a barren desert), providing habitat for about 50% of the planet's species... to name but a few.

Anyway, here's my heart.

Find out more here and have a very happy Valentine's Day!

Nostalgic Baking

Last week a friend posted a blog about some flapjack she had made using honey rather than the usual treacle. It got me thinking longingly about things I used to bake as a child, flapjack being one of them. I duly turned to my shelf of recipe books and came across the very first one I owned, given to me by my Mum on my 5th birthday. I know that because she wrote a lovely inscription inside.

My first cook book

If you were a fan of Winnie the Pooh as a child, you may recall that he was a lover of honey, getting himself into quite a few tight spots as a result of his obsession with the sweet stuff. I was therefore surprised to see that he (or rather, author Katie Stewart) used treacle not honey in his/her recipe for flapjacks. For reference, my friend says honey works as a brilliant substitute!

Anyway, flicking through the book whilst enjoying a cup of tea, I got quite nostalgic for the cakes and bakes I was reminded of. A particular favourite was Honey Spice Cake and, with the wind and rain showing no signs of let up outside and finding I had all the ingredients to give the recipe a go I set to, albeit with some gluten-free tweaks.

A well-used page!

Having not eaten a cake made with wheat flour for nearly 16 years and probably not eaten this particular cake for many more years than that, I didn't have much to compare it with but was very pleasantly surprised by the results.

For the sake of my own waistline and risking turning into Pooh or even a great big Piglet, I'd better quickly invite some friends round for tea!