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!

Effort and reward to beat the blues

I do hate this time of year. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way but I'm not exactly sure what it is that gets me down. Could it be cycling to and from work in the dark and/or wet and/or cold? Or is it that all my pre-Christmas projects and activities are over and I haven't yet found the enthusiasm to get going with a non-Christmas project, (and it would be wrong to start making Christmas decorations in January - wouldn't it?). I've cleared out the cupboards and sent piles of stuff to the charity shop and recycling centre. I've even planned the spring planting scheme for the garden but can't put any of it into action for at least another 2-3 months.

Let's face it, I'm bored but have too much energy to spend too much time watching films or reading books. So, this weekend having already been to the cinema, finished one book, begun another, done the laundry and cleaned the house I turned my attention to things that I've been meaning to do but haven't.

The first thing was to finish making the set of placemats and coasters that I'd started making back in November. They were taking me ages and I'd shelved the project when I realised I needed a more festive alternative for Christmas. So, yesterday afternoon the needle felting kit was unearthed and I set about making the final 2 placemats and 3 coasters that would ensure I had a set of 8 of each.

I tweaked my technique, using four needles together in a holder rather than the more precise but oh-so-slightly tedious single needle. The result is a slightly thicker end product but I decided they would probably flatten with use and, since people tend to focus on their own placemat rather than the one being used by the person sat next to them, who would really notice? And that's assuming my guests even study them in the first place!

However, I felt just a teeny bit better once I'd completed the set and could properly admire my handiwork. After all, a rainbow is guaranteed to brighten up even the dreariest of days!

The completed set

The second project was one I'd been intending to make since October but had, so far, failed to find a good enough excuse. I normally don't bake unless I am expecting visitors, going somewhere or have volunteered to make the cake for Craft Club. However, I decided that a dull weekend in January could be the only excuse I needed to bake some biscuits. Besides, these weren't just any biscuits. These were from a recipe I'd brought back from Italy last October and had been eager, if a little nervous, to try out.

Whilst in Italy I'd seen this style of biscuits in my friends' local deli and they looked delicious. However, they were made with wheat flour so I was unable to try them. However, the foodie magazine from my friends' local supermarket featured a recipe for a gluten-free version which I'd photographed in order to bring home.

The main problem with the recipe is that it's in Italian and I don't speak Italian. However, with the help of Google Translate and previous experience of biscuit-making I felt I had enough of an idea of what to do to give it a go. I found all the ingredients in either the larger branch of my regular supermarket or my very good local health food shop and so was ready to begin.

Let's say, it wasn't quite plain sailing but I think I got there in the end. Here's my version of the recipe for Chestnut Flour and Cherry Jam Biscuits.

Into a large mixing bowl place 130g chestnut flour (sieved), 50g buckwheat flour (sieved), 50g ground hazelnuts, 40g caster sugar, 5g baking powder and mix well. Then, using a food processor or electric hand whisk, gradually add 4 tablespoons vegetable oil until you have the texture of fine breadcrumbs. Still using your mixer, gradually add enough milk until the mixture had formed a dough. The recipe states this to be 100ml but I found this to be far too much. You can use soya milk or almond milk rather than regular milk in order to make the biscuits vegan and if you can't find ground hazelnuts, just grind up 50g blanched hazelnuts in a mini food processor until they are as finely chopped as they can be.

Wrap the dough in cling film and place in the fridge whilst you pre-heat your oven to 170C or gas 3. Use this time to find some suitable cookie cutters.  You need one about 6-7cm diameter and another about 4cm diameter.

After about 15-20 minutes, remove the dough from the fridge and roll it out between two sheets of cling film (standard practice for dough made without wheat since it's really sticky, even if you haven't added too much milk!). It needs to be about 4mm thick.

As you can see from the photo above, the biscuits are sandwiched together with jam so you need to make sure you don't end up with too many bases and not enough tops. I therefore constructed each biscuit as I went. Using the larger cookie cutter, cut out a biscuit and place it on a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper. Place a teaspoon of cherry jam in the centre and then cut out a second biscuit shape but before sticking it on top of the jam use the smaller cutter to cut a hole out of the centre. I found the perfect consistency of dough enabled it to stay in the cookie cutter to be transferred to the tray. This also enabled the second layer to be lined up on top of the first with relative ease. Keep going until you have used up all your dough, dipping the cookie cutters in buckwheat flour at regular intervals to stop everything getting too sticky.

Bake in the pre-heated oven for 15 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Dust with icing sugar before serving.

The verdict? A dense and nutty biscuit with a hit of jammy sweetness and a real challenge to make (foreign language, sticky dough, fiddly lining up of tops and bases...need I go on?). However, I now feel that I deserve to curl up with a cup of tea and my new book. Oh and with a chestnut and cherry biscuit, of course!