I’ve been meaning to make this for ages, this is another gem from my Italian classics cookbook that Simon got me a while ago.

Should have done it sooner – they are freaking’ amazing. I might have made them slightly too large but I’d only eat more if they were smaller.

I also used some of my delicious vanilla sugar (made from the empty vanilla pods as suggested by Nigella, I do everything she says you know) which I’ve been saving for just such an occasion and as far as I’m concerned that really made the difference (yeh so I’ve got nothing to compare it to, give a shit, I trust Nigella!)

Anyway I quite like the idea of making these every weekend to have with coffee, that’s probably unrealistic but I will certainly try these chocolate ones next time.

I’m aware this isn’t a great photo, it was very difficult to photograph without putting it on a child, and a) I don’t have a child and b) the child for whom it was made was not born yet, annoying.

Anyway this was made for a beautiful baby boy called Harrison, he’s the son of my jitsu sensei so it had to be very boyish indeed, and it’s hard to find good baby-boy items to knit. But I think this is ideal and I really like the contrast edging and the button band construction.

This is the first time I’ve made a pieced item of this kind and I WILL NOT BE DOING IT AGAIN. It was a fucking nightmare, it took me about a week to do all the knitting and then at least another week to sew it all together, if someone ever re-writes this pattern to be knitted in the round I would definitely make it for another boy as it did turn out really cute!

I used King Cole Baby Comfort DK which is really cosy and soft, plus it’s washable at 40, which I’m pretty sure is important when you have a small child.

I made it for a size 12 months but my gauge must have been off as it is a 6 month size in my opinion, not a big deal, it will fit at some point

Anyway, look at the cute baby bear ears!

My sister is a teacher and it’s her birthday this week so perfect timing for teacher gifts, loads of kitsch items you thought you had lost to the school yard, enjoy.

Gold star necklace
Clipboards
School clock
Rocking chair
Personalised stamp
Apple cupcakes
Leather satchel
Vintage pencil pin

PS I’m aware I haven’t done any ‘proper’ blogging for a while but I’ve got two corkers coming up I promise, just got sew on buttons and block, sigh…

I’ve been spending a LOT of time on Pinterest recently and I thought I’d put it to good use by sharing the pretty things with you. I was browsing recently and on discovering the oilcloth below was reminded of our brilliant mexican party last year which got me in the mood for this:

MEXICAN FRIDAY!

Find them on Pinterest:

Beautiful Embroidery
Bling Piñata
Hand-Painted Tiles
Mexican Oilcloth
Penguin in a Sombrero Egg Cup
Seven Layer Chilli Dip Shot

Disclaimer:
It’s annoying but Lightbox (the image plug-in I use on here) won’t allow me to create a gallery with links to the original pins. Hence the list beneath the gallery, I know it looks shit but I can’t do anything about it. Sorry.

I also made these for Alex’s hen high tea but I feel they deserve their own post as they are so god-damned delicious. If you don’t know what a blondie is, (and it turned out no-one at the hen party DID) they are white chocolate brownies (geddit?), a genius idea.

As with all baking it’s the quality of the ingredients that makes these and so I obviously used Green & Blacks white chocolate, drooooool, best quality vanilla extract and some delicious whole pecans.

I used this recipe from The Times ‘inspired by and adapted from’ Gale Gand, the pastry chef of Tru restaurant in Chicago. She suggests serving them as 2.5cm cubes with coffee, and really, I think these were perfect for afternoon tea, delicious, light and sophisticated.

It was nice to have an oven that worked and meant I probably ever-so-slightly overcooked them, they could have been a bit squishier. However, they had my whole family coveting the tin and I had to let them try some the night before the hen party or there would have been blood, even my mother who professes to hate white chocolate was seen snaffling one whilst making the tea .

You may remember that I made profiteroles for New Year’s Eve dinner, and to be honest it was so simple I wondered what all the fuss was about.

So for my lovely friend Alex’s hen party I decided to make chocolate éclairs – yum. We had a full on high tea so it was the ideal situation to show off.

I made the crème patissière the day before, all lovely and yellow and vanilla-y, and decided I would get up early on the day to make the pastry so the éclairs would be nice and fresh.

I used this recipe by Raymond Blanc as he’s supposed to be the king of all things pastry, the creme patissière was delicious but the éclairs were a total disaster, the paste looked good but they came out the oven completely flat and were unusable. At this point I had my usual tantrum and decided to make the scones to calm myself down.

After that I went back to trusty Delia for the choux pastry, you know where you are with Delia.

The second batch of pastry was the wrong consistency so I binned that without even cooking it but the third batch was perfect, they rose and came out of the oven a perfect golden brown (well, nearly – the oven doesn’t cook evenly!). The shape wasn’t bad either given that I had to use a sandwich bag to pipe them.

Unfortunately not having the correct piping equipment meant I had to make a slit in the side to fill them but you couldn’t tell and I made the glaze from a Rachel Allen recipe as it looked easier (and I had run out of time remaking the sodding pastry!).

Anyway in the end they were bloody amazing and everyone loved them – especially our beautiful hen, and that’s the main thing!

Obviously I had a shit load of egg whites left so I also made some meringues, we had some small, dainty ones for the afternoon tea and then my mother made the leftovers into this monster of a dessert for a dinner party.

It has a meringue base, then crème patissière, then fruit, cream, more fruit, mini meringues cemented with more crème patissière topped with a chocolate strawberry. Crazy I tell you.

I have been training in Ju Jitsu for sometime now, it’s a bit of a contradiction that we are a club who enjoy baking and craft, not just the girls either. Some examples:

• Home made masks for our masked ball – including a robot triceratops one!
• Cakes, burgers and Gingerbread jitsuka for a club BBQ
• A piñata made from scratch
• Many excellent fancy dress costumes, always cobbled together at the last minute.

In addition to this we seem to be growing in yarn craft aficionados and this week had our first crochet club.

Christina wanted to learn to make amigarumi and is very new to crochet so we decided to go for something easy and I chose this cute little penguin from Lion Brand Yarn, it’s a free pattern and have simple, clear instructions so it’s ideal.

The lesson went fairly well, Christina is a very calm crafter whilst Emily and I are prone to fits of tantrum, which meant Emily’s penguin at one point was dashed to the ground mid stitch and left there in disgrace for 15 minutes after which she discovered it actually DID have the right number of stitches… We had chocolate and fish and chips and tea and listened to Radio 2, it was very civilised. As everyone has now mastered the basics I think we’ll have a go at these next time.

This is a birthday present for my mum.

My mum always makes me the best presents and I always try to make her at least one thing too. She is however, much better at it than me, but I guess she’s had a lot of practice. She used to make us clothes (I distinctly remember an amazing polka dot puffball skirt), the most fantastic birthday cakes (I once has a fairy princess castle made from meringues) and a different colour play-doh every day when we were little and we had (and still have) the most amazing dressing up box, so we were always creative.  Now she has her own shop on Folksy, you should check it out.

Here she is, isn’t she brilliant?

I saw this basket thing (referred to in the patterns a hostess gift box’) ages ago and knew I would make it for my her as she has a couple of similar items which she uses for nice bread in our house in France. I didn’t have any nice bread to photograph it with so I used some nice wool instead, although if it really were for wool it would be pretty pointless in my opinion.

Anyway this is really simple to make, you can find the pattern on Sew, Mama, Sew. It took me about an hour in total and has lots of potential for variation I think, I might try some with ribbon ties instead of sewing up the sides and I like the idea of using different fabrics for the inner and outer layers. However, it’s not that obvious how to scale it up and really I wanted this to be wider and flatter but it’s still good.

I filled the tub/basket/box thing with other gifts; some bias binding makers and this mental book called ‘Knit One, Kill Two’, a knitting murder mystery I heard a woman talking about at a knitting show last year, It’s part one of a series and comes with a recipe and a knitting pattern, hilarious! I’m sure it will be awful, but that is the point.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUMMY!