Pastel Crochet Granny Squares

Crochet and knitting are the perfect wintry crafts and I've really been getting back into both lately.  I've been rediscovering the humble granny square and am really enjoying making these pretty pastel ones.  Athough I started with the idea of making a throw, I quickly realised I'd better be more realistic about my staying power and make them into a cushion cover instead.  I had loads of pastel yarn left over from making gifts for the babies and children of friends and family so it started as a way of using scraps but I'm running out of pink so will need to buy some more to finish up.  Even when I start a project using leftovers, I end up spending money!

I'm just using a traditional granny pattern but with a little flower motif in the middle and a single crochet border.  I plan on crocheting them all together with white yarn and reckon I'll need 16 for one side of a cushion cover, so I'm nearly halfway there!

Kind of hoping we get snowed in this weekend so I've got the perfect excuse to stay inside in the warm and work up some more of these!

Pepe observing the snowfall

Jenny

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Happy Birthday Kate

Kate Moss turns 39 today, which is vaguely depressing for me as I remember her being featured in my Smash Hits magazine when she was just 18.  I was captivated by her ethereal beauty and the fact that she was engaged to Johnny Depp, who I was besotted with after watching my friend's older sister's copy of Cry Baby repeatedly on VHS all through the summer holidays.

I actually did a project on Kate several years later for my Art GCSE (and got an A* for it, so thanks, Kate) and have always had more than a bit of a style crush on her.  Here are some of my favourite shots of Kate from over the years:

Jenny

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Malteser Cookies Recipe

As my friends and family all know me very well, I always get lots and lots of Maltesers for Christmas and birthdays.  This is obviously brilliant, but even I have a limit as to how many Maltesers I can eat (I don't actually, that's a total lie, but I did fancy a change).  I made a Malteser Refrigerator Cake a few months ago which went down really well and I wondered if I could make Malteser cookies by adding some bashed up Maltesers to a basic cookie mix.

A quick search on Google revealed that others had gone before me and that the general consensus was that Maltesers do very nicely when incorporated into cookie mix and baked in the oven.  I adapted a basic cookie recipe and came up with the recipe below which produced 28 of these beauties:

These are by far the best cookies I've ever baked.  They're not as chocolatey as others, and not quite as sweet.  I think the dry centres of the Maltesers really takes some of the richness away, although I did make them pretty small so maybe that's the real reason I was able to eat three in one sitting.

Here is my recipe for the tastiest, chewiest, maltiest cookies:

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Malteser Cookie Recipe

Makes 20 - 30 depending on size

• 250g buttery-style margarine or softened butter
• 150g demerara sugar
• Half a teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 free-range egg, beaten
• 220g plain flour
• Quarter teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• Pinch of salt
• Crushed Maltesers to taste (I used about 130g)
• 50g milk or plain chocolate chips (optional)

Pre-heat the oven to 200C/Gas Mark 6

1. In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy and well combined.
2. Beat in the vanilla extract and egg until well combined.
3. Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt and mix well until mixture is smooth.
4. Add the crushed Maltesers and chocolate chips (if using) and stir well until evenly distributed throughout mixture.
5. Spoon generous dollops of mixture onto a baking sheet, leaving plenty of space around each one for spread.
6. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the edges are light golden brown. Stand for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

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The cookies are amazing straight from the oven but will keep well for a few days in an airtight container.  Even my boyfriend, who generally doesn't have a sweet tooth, loved these cookies.  They're delicious and I will definitely be baking these again soon.

Enjoy!

Jenny

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Embroi-deer-y and a crafty giveaway!

Welcome to the first ever giveaway on my brand new blog!  The lovely people at Homecrafts recently sent me two papier mache reindeer to decorate as I pleased, along with two more to give away.  I was planning on decorating mine as reindeer and using them as festive ornaments but as they arrived right before Christmas and time was tight, I decided to make them into generic deer instead so they had year-round appeal.

I've been getting a little addicted to embroidering paper and card lately so after much dithering over how best to decorate my two cute deer, I decided embroidery was the way to go.  I painted the little deer with white acrylic paint then cut out its exact shape from sturdy card.  I doodled a little design, stitched away, glued the card to the deer, et voila:

I'm really pleased with the finished result and my little deer is now settled in his new home on my mantelpiece (which was looking very miserable and bare without its Christmassy decor).  The larger deer was going to be decoupaged but I like my embroidered one so much, I might change my mind and make him into a buddy for this one.

Here they are in their unaltered state. The larger reindeer is 25 x 22.5cm and the smaller 20 x 17cm.

Now for the giveaway...

To be in with a chance of winning a set of two reindeer to dress up to your heart's content, all you have to do is the following two things:

1. Follow this blog either via Google Friend Connect or Bloglovin'

2. Leave a comment on this post with your reindeer-decorating ideas and telling me what name you're using to follow my blog.

And that's it!  

*The winner will be chosen at random at 8pm Thursday 10th January.  The prize will be sent by First Class post, so only UK residents are eligible to enter.*

If you'd like to purchase the deer yourself, here they are on the Homecrafts website.  

Good luck :-)

Jenny

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Freehand Bluefinch Embroidery

Woohoo! I knew calling my New Year's Resolutions 'goals' instead of 'resolutions' would pay off.  One of my 'goals' was to finish off the various craft projects I've started over the past couple of years and then abandoned.  I started a little freehand embroidery of a bluefinch (in honour of my shop, Bluefinch Boutique) in one of the very first Creatives Unite sessions way back in early 2012.  It was only a very basic outline embroidery so should have been completed in a few hours but as with so many of my projects, it got tidied up, stuffed in a carrier bag and chucked in the back of a cupboard.  There wasn't much left to do so I completed it in this week's Creatives Unite session and it now sits proudly in my bedroom, hurrah!

Even Fluffy approves...

Jenny

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On Safari

Not in the wilds of Kenya, sadly, but in the far more drizzly and mundane surroundings of Knowsley. That's not to be disparaging - I think Knowsley Safari Park is a great day out.  Africa it may not be, but it's certainly a lot cheaper and more accessible.

My boyfriend and I wanted to take my 4 year old niece for a day out between Christmas and New Year and, as all you parent types will already know, it's hard to find places to entertain little ones when the weather is bad, everything is closed for the winter and indoor attractions are full to bursting point already.

I'd been to Knowsley Safari Park a couple of years previously with my friends, but my boyfriend hadn't been since he was a kid so we thought we'd introduce my niece to one of the north west's staple family days out.

We somehow failed to buy a guidebook at the entrance booth (Where was the pressured selling?? Why didn't they practically force me to buy one like other tourist attractions do??) so although I was confidently able to identify the more obvious animals, such as lions, tigers, giraffes and elephants, I struggled with all the deer-type things.  'What's that?' my niece would ask. 'Ummm, it's reindeer!  Like Rudolph.  Look, he's taken his red nose off because he only wears it at Christmas.'  Then we'd drive into another clearing with a load more deer-type things. 'What's that?'.  'Umm, it's another reindeer...'. (I've since learnt that most of what I thought were reindeer were actually Pere David's Deer).

Anyway, it's a fab day out and I definitely recommend it if you're within driving distance.  I particularly enjoyed this young lion taking a shine to our wing mirror, boyfriend enjoyed this less so:

Highlights = the lions wandering up to your car, the baboons trashing your windscreen wipers, the friendly and knowledgeable staff and the sealion show in the walk-round section at the end, which is brilliant for little kids (and me - I bloody loved it.  Sealions are v clever!)

Vegan Suppers - Curried Bubble and Squeak

Although I'm a vegetarian and only eat organic dairy (where possible), I am really trying to cut down for ethical and health reasons.  I have long been trying to incorporate more vegan-friendly dishes into my diet and last year, I decided to go vegan at least two days a week.  This lasted for a few weeks before I slipped up and subsequently forgot all about it.  The new year seems as good a time as any to start up this habit again so, to the mild disappointment of my carnivore boyfriend who I also cook for, I thought I'd start up my Vegan Tuesdays and Thursdays again!

I have a very limited repertoire of fail-safe dishes which I tend to cook again and again during the week. Some of them happen to be vegan, such as my super-fast stir-fry with crispy chilli tofu, but I need more variety if I'm going to stick to my vegan plans!

My first vegan meal of the year is definitely one of the easiest dishes featured in any of my cook books!  It's from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Veg and there's not really much cooking involved.  It's a variation on that old British leftover classic, Bubble and Squeak.  Always a fan of anything a) easy, b) cheap and c) quick, I thought this looked perfect for a speedy supper.  I changed Hugh's version a little, the main changes being less oil, the addition of a few splashes of water into the pan, more garlic and more onion.

We ate this for dinner on New Year's Day as we were tired, slightly hungover and the food situation in the house consisted mainly of festive chocolates, peanuts and the odd mince-pie.  We did have a few sprouts in the fridge from Christmas Day and they were still fine as they were the ones you buy still on the stalk (...tree? vine? stem??).  I finely sliced these and used them as my 'green veg' for the recipe.  I would never have considered using sprouts if I'd had anything else suitable in but they worked really well!  I do love Brussels Sprouts but thought they might be too strong and overpowering for such a stodgey, basic dish but they were perfect.

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Curried Bubble & Squeak

Serves 2

2 tablespoons sunflower or mild olive oil
1 large onion, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, chopped or crushed
2 heaped teaspoons curry paste
3-400g cold boiled potatoes cut into chunks
150g Brussels Sprouts, finely sliced (cabbage or similar greens can be substituted here, but cook first)
Approx 100ml water
Salt and pepper to season

1. Heat the oil over a low heat in a large frying pan.  Add the onions and cook until soft, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and cook for another minute or so.

2. Add the boiled potatoes, the curry paste and approx. 50ml water. Stir well to combine all the ingredients.

3. Add your sprouts or other green veg, stir well then leave to cook over a low-medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring frequently and adding more splashes of water as required if it looks a bit too dry.  The mixture will stick a little, but this crust forms the tastiest bit so just keep scraping the bottom of the pan with your spatula!  

4. Season with salt and pepper to taste then serve in a bowl on its own or with a toasted pitta bread.

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I must admit, when I was dishing this up, I was dubious and didn't have very high hopes.  I thought it would be passable at best, dry and bland at worst, but it was surprisingly tasty.  

Perfect wintry comfort food and great for using up leftover veg or anything a little past its best.  Hugh suggests you might want to add a poached egg to the dish but, as this would defeat the purpose of Vegan Tuesday, I toasted a pitta bread to have with it.

We ate it out of bowls, snuggled on the sofa, with a bottle of Becks Beer (which I was delighted to learn is vegan) while watching Sherlock on TV as it poured with rain outside.  Happy New Year!

Vegan meal #1 of 2013 = a success!