Back to work

I have been fortunate enough to spend the past 6 years at home raising my children. This has given me the time to be creative with them as well as for them. I have relearned how to cook and bake without using dairy products and more recently I have been able to enjoy craft and art activities with them. Now they are both settled in school, I need more to do in the day than making and baking.

So, from 7th January, I shall be back in the full-time work force. Luckily, I shall be working school hours and term times only so I won't need to arrange child care, but I won't have the time to be so creative and the blog is likely to suffer. I am sure I will be updating from time to time, so look out for updates, but for the first couple of months back in work I'm likely to be too shattered to even open the laptop!

Snowflakes and more

Today's Christmas task on our advent calendar was to make paper snowflakes to go on the windows. I have made them in the past and let the girls stick them on, but this year they made their own for the first time, and loved it. We also made some strings of Christmas things - robins, trees, reindeer and angels. Charlotte was amazed at the hearts that were made when we cut certain shapes out of the paper and was soon busy throwing them around the room like confetti.

Chocolate ginger cupcakes

A fair few months ago I went to a friend's baby shower and her sister-in-law had made a selection of delicious cakes. My favourite were her chocolate ginger cupcakes, a name which does not begin to describe the mix of flavours hiding inside. I made a version of them for the cake sale at the school Christmas Market today, here is the recipe.

Ingredients

4oz brown sugar
5oz self raising flour
1/4tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tsp ground ginger
1/2tsp ground cinnamon
1/4tsp ground nutmeg
4oz soya margarine
2 eggs
2tbsp golden syrup
3oz dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

Method

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl, then add the eggs, margarine and syrup.
Whisk with an electric whisk until smooth then add the chocolate and mix together.
Spoon into 12 cupcake cases and bake at 150c for about 20 minutes, until cooked through.

When cool, the original recipe calls for whipped cream on top with chopped Crunchie bars sprinkled on top. I made frosting with philadelphia, butter and icing sugar, then sprinkled the Crunchie on top. To make them dairy-free, I have spooned cooled, melted dairy-free chocolate over the top, then topped with chopped honeycomb pieces.

Lots of Christmas makes

It was the school Christmas Market yesterday, and I paid to have my own stall selling home made decorations and gifts. My mum and I have been working hard making stuff, and that is why I haven't put anything crafty up on here for a bit. Here are some of the things that I have been making:

Malteasers with a foil covered chocolate ball in home-made packaging

Rattan ball with organza and crochet ribbon details.

Rattan balls, sprayed with enamel paint with ribbon details.

Crystal and bead decorations.

Robin Christmas cards using origami papers and black pen.

Hand-made stockings with ribbon and button details.

Enamel sprayed curtain rings with crochet, ribbon, rattan and salt dough additions.

Salt dough, ribbon and confetti decorations.

Red fleece and embroidery decorations.

Salt dough with tissue paper decoupage decorations.

Salt dough and vintage comic decoupage decorations.

Cookie cutters, butchers twine and mini bells decorations.

The complete stall at the Christmas Market.

Family advent calendar

I saw something on pinterest about doing a hand-made advent calendar with things to do each day instead of the ubiquitous chocolate. My children are dairy-free, so they can't have a chocolate advent calendar, and this seemed like a nice idea to do instead.

In Ikea, I bought a set of 24 little paper bags with number stickers from 1 - 24 included. I bought some cheap wooden pegs in the pound shop and some nice christmas ribbon on eBay. Charlotte stuck all the stickers on the pegs, Emma unfolded all the bags and I attached them all to ribbons tied between all the curtain fixtures.

 I found a nice Christmassy font, and printed out a thing to do for each day. Some are dates that are already arranged, but others may get moved around depending on how I feel on the day! The idea is that we all do the activity as a family and it makes sure we don't forget any of the things we love to do in the run up to Christmas.

Mulling spice cake

I had a thought, would it be possible to make a cake that replicates mulled wine? I love mulled wine so today I had a go at making something that, while not quite a mulled wine cake, is still pretty tasty. I based it on the orange and poppyseed cake, mainly because it uses milk, which is the key to getting the flavours into the cake.

Ingredients

120ml sweetened soya milk
170g caster sugar
2 eggs
170g self raising flour
140g soya margarine
Zest of 1 orange
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method

In a small saucepan, add the nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon to the soya milk. Warm for about 1/2 hour without letting it boil, then allow to cool.
Weigh out all the rest of the ingredients, place in a large bowl with the eggs, zests and finally add the strained soya milk.
Use an electric whisk to blend all the ingredients to make a smooth, soft batter.
Pour into a lined loaf tin and bake at 180c for about 50 minutes, until a skewer pushed into the top of the cake comes out clean.
Cool in the tin.

I think I need to do more with this cake, but I'm not sure what at the moment. It should have a syrup, I think, like a lemon drizzle cake. What I will try is to reduce down some mulled wine and sugar to make a syrup, then drizzle that on it.

Christmas is coming

I have been very busy making, but not blogging about it. Naughty? No, just didn't want to start talking about Christmas too soon. I am making loads of stuff to sell at the school Christmas fair in 2 weeks, and over the next few posts I shall be sharing what I have been up to.

My first make, is comic book tree decorations. The shapes were made of a mixture of salt dough and salt ceramic, then covered with ripped up vintage comics, using pva glue to both stick and seal the paper to the shape.


Salt dough ingredients
1 cup salt
2 cup plain flour
1 cup warm water
Mix the salt and flour, then add the water and mix well to make a dough. Kneed for a few minutes to smooth the dough.

Salt ceramic ingredients
1 cup salt
1/2 cup cornflour
2/3 cup of water
Mix all the ingredients then slowly heat while constantly stirring until it thickens and forms a thick paste.

I like the lighter colour dough that salt ceramic gives, but it did seem to crack while drying, so I made a batch of salt dough and a batch of salt ceramic then mixed the two together. The resulting dough was paler than salt dough with the slight sparkly quality of salt ceramic. It was easy to work, and dried nicely in the oven.

I rolled the dough, using flour to stop it sticking to the rolling pin or worktop, then cut out the shapes using cookie cutters. While the cutter was still surrounding the shape, I pushed a chopstick end into the dough to make the hanging hole. This way, you don't affect the shape of the final piece by making the hole in it.

The shapes were then placed on baking trays and dried in the oven for a few hours at about 100c turning them to make sure they dry on both sides. Once they are dry and cool, you can decorate them. Then string them and hang them up.