Craft Inspiration

Travelling around America proved to be an excellent of way of picking up inspiration of new crafts to try out once I was back. Everywhere I went there were recipes I wanted to cook, things I wanted to stitch, interiors I wanted to attempt to replicate so I tried to jot a few of these things or photograph them to keep them fresh in my memory. A lot of these are food-related as 95% of the food we ate was so delicious.

1. Bake fresh cinnamon rolls – these seemed to be on offer everywhere- from 7/11 to artisan bakeries. I had never tried one before I came away but once I had I was hooked! It also made me determined to give them a go myself.

2. Make greetings cards from pressed flowers/herbs – I have pressed flowers before and loved the results but never really knew what to do with them. At the Monticello gift shop, however, I came across some really lovely and simple greetings cards decorated with pressed flowers and herbs with the name of each delicately written at the bottom. It seemed such a great way to display and share pressed flowers.

3. Pickle vegetables – Americans seemed to love their pickle vegetables; every sandwich was served with a gigantic pickle spear, huge jars of just about every vegetable were on sale at supermarkets. Naturally this got me envisioning myself pickling veg in huge Mason jars and being able to eat delicious homemade pickles whenever I fancied. I picked up various pickling tips along the way so will be trying them out soon.

4. Make my own silhouettes – this is another Monticello-inspired craft. On display throughout the house were these delicately made and pretty intricate silhouettes of family members and friends of the Jefferson’s. They looked so good on display instead of photographs it made me want to give it a go. ( I also have a craft knife which I bought months ago and am still yet to use so this seems like perfect opportunity.)

5. Bake peach and cinnamon muffins – American supermarkets are pretty at providing fresh produce for you to buy including freshly baked goods. During the final week of the trip I tried the most delicious muffin ever in a flavour I didn’t think would be that good; peach and cinnamon. But I was very wrong! It was amazing. The peaches had been roasted so that they were gooey and sweet, cinnamon gave a lovely warming spice and the whole thing was topped with a strudel type layer. All in all I wanted to try and replicate them at home.

6. Astrology embroidery – while in Chicago we went to Picthfork music festival which also hosted Coterie, a craft fair, as well as the live music. One of the stalls which particularly caught my eye was How Could You? This stall specialised in astrology embroidery; perfect constellations of star signs were embroidered using silver or gold thread onto dark blue material and then framed in an embroidery hoop. I was absolutely taken with this idea and was thinking of making something similar for a friends upcoming birthday.

7. Make Lebanese food – in Seattle we ate the most amazing Lebanese food I’ve ever tried (I would also say the best meal of the whole trip!). I love cooking and eating Lebanese food anyway so my boyfriend and I thought it would be a lovely idea to cook up our version of the food we ate that night for our family. Of course it will never be as good as that meal but it is worth a shot!

Back From America!

I have finally returned from my travels around the United States so there will be A LOT of USA-themed posts on the blog soon (just to warn you!). I will mix them up a bit with other posts so it’s not too much of an overload or boring to read.

Strawberry and White Chocolate Cream Cake

This is actually June’s recipe from my Great British Bake Off calendar but I really didn’t want to miss out on baking this! I decided to whip it up one weekend for a dessert for some family friends my parents had to stay at their house.

Strawberry and White Chocolate Cream Cake

For the sponge

• 150g good-quality white chocolate, broken up
• 200g unsalted butter, diced and softened
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• 150g caster sugar
• finely grated zest of 1/2 orange
• 200g self-raising flour

For the filling and topping

• 400g ripe strabwerries
• finely grated zest and juice of 1/2 orange
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 200ml double or whipping cream well chilled
• 50g good-quality white chocolate, to decorate

2 x 20.5cm sandwich tins, greased and the bases lined with baking paper

Preheat the oven to 180C. Put the chocolate into a heatproof bowl. Set over a pan of steaming hot but not boiling water and melt very gently, stirring frequently. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir until smooth. Add the butter and stir until it has melted.

Put the eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk with an electric mixer until frothy. Add the sugar and orange zest and whisk on high speed until the mixture is very thick and mousse-like, and the whisk leaves a ribbon-like trail when lifted from the bowl. This takes about 4 minutes.

Give the chocolate and butter mixture a stir, then add to the egg mixture and stir briefly – it should be just combined. Sift the flour into the bowl and gently fold in using a large metal spoon.

Divide the mixture between the prepared tins and spread evenly. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the sponges are light golden brown and springy to the touch. Run a round-bladed knife around the inside of the tins to loosen the sponges, then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool.

When ready to assemble the cake, wipe the strawberries with kitchen paper and hull. Save 1/3 for decoration; thinly slice the rest into a bowl. Add the orange zest and juice and sugar and mix gently. Leave for 10-30 minutes to allow the flavours to develop. Meanwhile, whip the cream until thick.

Set one sponge, browned top down, on a serving plate. Spoon the sliced strawberries and juice onto the sponge to cover evenly. Spread half the whipped cream on top. Set the second sponge, browned top up, on the cream. Carefully spread the rest of the cream over the top, then decorate with the reserved strawberries, cut into halves.

Keep the cake chilled, in an airtight container, until ready to serve. Remove from the fridge 30 minutes before serving and decorate the top with curls or gratings of chocolate.

New York Blondies

Another cult recipe from my New York Cult Recipes book! I had never made blondies before, brownies yes but blondies no so I was intrigued by this recipe. Its basically like make brownies but you swap dark chocolate for white. The result was delicious! I will definitely be looking out for more blondie recipes to try out.

Blondies

• 150g unsalted butter
• 80ml sunflower oil
• 300g demerara sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 300g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 70g white chocolate, chopped
• 100g pecans, chopped ( I only used 50g of pecans and 100g of white chocolate)

Preheat the oven to 180C. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat and whisk vigorously for a few minutes with the oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Remove from the heat. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, white chocolate and pecans, then stir in the butter mixture.

Butter and flour a 24cm square cake tin. Pour the batter into the tin. With a wet hand, flatten and smooth the surface. ( Note: I used a smaller tin to produce chunkier blondies and smoothed with the back of a spoon which made the top of the blondies more textured and rough.) Bake for about 30 minutes. The cake should be fairly firm to the touch. Allow to cool, then cut into even-sized squares.

New Project: Antique World Map

My aunty and uncle gave me this gorgeous cross stitch kit for my birthday. I have only just started it as I wanted to get my welcome banner finished and not to be flitting between two huge projects. It looks as though this project, too, is going to be a big one; the pattern is spread over 9 pages! However, as the design and colour scheme is fairly simple it shouldn’t be too difficult. I am just going to take my time with this project and really enjoy it.

Clean and Lean Pancakes

I thought I would share a recipe I have been cooking up for my breakfast and lunch. I have been making an effort to eat healthy and came across this recipe on Instagram. The batter is pretty gross because of the cold cottage cheese but once cooked the pancakes are amazing! I think I prefer them to regular pancakes. They go so well with fresh fruit and golden syrup. I also normally half the recipe if I am making them just for me as they keep you full for so long.

Clean and Lean Pancakes

• 4 eggs
• 100g rolled oats
• 200g low fat cottage cheese
• sprinkle of cinnamon (to taste)

Put all of the ingredients into a food processor and blitz together.

Heat up a non-stick frying pan over a high heat. Once hot spoon in a ladle-ful of the batter and cook until little bubbles begin to appear on top. Flip and cook for 30 seconds on the other side.

Garden Flowers

Today I thought I would share some photographs I took of various  flowers in my parents’ garden. That particular day I took them the garden was looking so vibrant and colourful. My parents are avid gardeners so it is lovely to see their hard work pay off in the form of these gorgeous flowers.

 

Melting Moments

This tasty recipe is May’s offering from my calendar. I think the recipes of the Great British Bake Off calendar are getting more and more difficult as the months go on! Although the end product was delicious the techniques required were hard to master (see my bracketed notes down below).

Melting Moments

• 250g unsalted butter, softened
• 60g icing sugar, sifted
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 250g plain flour
• 60g conflour
• red food colouring

For the filling

• 12ml semi-skimmed milk
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 125g caster sugar
• 125g unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp raspberry jam

2 baking sheets, lined with baking paper; a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle

Using a wooden spoon or electric mixer, beat the butter with the icing sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the vanilla and beat for a few seconds. Sift the flour and cornflour together into the bowl and mix until smooth.

Paint a straight line of red food colouring on the inside of the piping bag, from the tube to the opening of the bag. Spoon the biscuit mixture into the piping bag (this didn’t actually work for me so I skipped the food colouring and just placed a tsp of the mixture onto the baking sheet and pressed down lightly with my fingers).

Pipe into 32 swirls on the baking sheet. each swirl should be about 5cm across and 2.5cm high. Chill in the fridge for 15 minutes to firm (I also skipped this as mine were already very firm).

Preheat the oven to 180C. Bake the biscuits for about 12 mins or until pale golden. Leave for a few minutes on the baking sheet to set slightly before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

To make the filling: heat the milk with the flour in a small pan, whisking constantly until the mixture boils and thickens. Whisk over a very low heat for a minute to cook out the taste of the flour, then pour the mixture into a bowl. Cover closely with clingfim to prevent a skin from forming and leave until completely cold.

Beat together the sugar and butter until very pale and fluffy (about 10 mins). Add the thickened milk mixture and chill until firm enough to pipe.

To assemble, spread a little jam on the bases of half the biscuits. Pipe small swirls of the filling onto the bases of the remaining biscuits and sandwich pairs together.

 

Finished Project: Seventies Florals

After seeing these designs in issue 278 of Cross Stitcher I really wanted to stitch them up and frame them in white embroidery hoops. One of the designs is actually a freebie from the Cross Stitcher website. I think they will look great hung up together for Spring and Summer. These two pieces are actually my favourites that I have ever stitched up as they are so fresh and vibrant.

Seventies Homeware

Today I thought I would share my ever growing collection of (what I am presuming to be) seventies and eighties homeware. Most of it is made by a company called Hornsea which I have found in various charity shops. I love charity shopping and used to go through every item of clothing to find treasures. These days, however, I much prefer to look at the homeware/bric-a-brac section. The two Hornsea mugs are from my Nana; she wasn’t using them so said I could take them. The pyrex bowl and flower print jug are from a car boot sale and, unfortunately, they don’t have any name on them so I’m not sure who made them. I am still searching for a gorgeous seventies dinner service , some serving bowls, maybe a few more mugs and probably other kitchen knick-knacks which catch my eye!

My favourite piece has to be the blue Hornsea pot which I think could be a mustard jar. I should probably do more research into each item as I think it would be cool to know their history.

I hope you enjoyed looking at a few of my vintage finds!