Knitted Phone Cover

This was a labour of love. Was my first attempt at using a cable in a pattern (the twisted sections). It took a few attempts to get it right but I kept trying and eventually managed it. Nice and cosy for my phone!



 The pattern is available online for free and was found via the Ravelry website. I adapted the pattern slightly to make it wider for my phone and added a flap to keep the phone secure. I chose wool that had a round profile and was fairly thick so that the cable stood out clearly. I also added in some extra padding material. Should keep my phone scratch free, fingers crossed!

Ready Teddy Go!

 


This was a really fun project, if not a bit difficult at times. I find knitting very calming, until you have to do shaping. At the half way mark I was a little unsure but he seems to have turned out fine! Hope my niece is impressed with her christmas present!

 

The knitting patterns is available for free here: http://www.allaboutyou.com/craft/pattern-finder/knitting-patterns/designer-knitting-patterns/teddy-bear-knitting-pattern-47497

And was found via Ravelry, I very useful website full of great knitting patterns.

Chocolate satsuma cakes

December brings lots of lovely juicy citrus fruits into the shops. For a winters evening in watching tv with friends, these went down a treat!

I mixed 100g butter with 200g caster sugar and then added the grated rind of 4 satsumas. I then added 2 eggs, mixing a bit inbetween. I combined 200g plain flour, half teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and half teaspoon of baking powder (gives the cakes some air!) in one bowl, and the juice of four satsumas in a jug. I poured in a third of the flour, mixed, then a third of the juice, mixed... etc till all the mixture was used. I melted 100g orange chocolate in the microwave and stired this into the final mixture. It is much nicer to get proper 70% cocoa chocolate. Once spooned into the cases they were baked for about 20mins at 180 degrees.

For the icing I melted another 100g orange chocolate in a bowl in the microwave (I tend to zap it for 10sec, stir, then zap for another 10secs, because it can burn really easily. I poured the chocolate into a bowl with 200g butter and 250g icing sugar. I mixed this with an electric whisk until smooth. It is important to thoroughly test the mixture at this stage before icing, take a break with a cup of tea if needed. 

I went all out this time and actually piped the icing on to make it look neat. Some choc orange segments and satsuma segments finished the cakes off. Tasty!

Rainbow cakes

It was a dark day in late Novemeber and so I figured a bit of rainbow in our lives would make it better. 

Rainbow cakes are fun, sugary and full of e-numbers. 

Start with the usual cake mix, divide into as many colours as you want and then tint the mixtures with food colouring. 

 



Spoon the colours one at a time into the cake cases and slowly build up till all cakes have all colours. Bake. Eat, with lots of butter icing and hundreds and thousands sprinkled on.

Totoro Cake

Totoro, for those of you who don't know, is a character from a a japanese film. Very cute, very cakeable.

As it is summer I wanted to make a light fresh fruity cake. Matt (of Games Day blog!) mixed up the sponge layers, three tiers gave plenty of scope for filling. The filling was raspberry jam followed by a layer of mascapone and fromage frais with some caster sugar and vanilla essense. This was topped with fresh raspberries. Used low fat fromage frais to give the filling a lighter texture, and calorie count.

The cake was covered in white chocolate butter icing with some coloured grey. The Totoro features were royal icing eyes, nose and mouth and mikado whiskers coloured black. Two spoons made the ears.

Center Parcs Birthday Cake

  

For a birthday trip to center parcs I just had to make a themed birthday cake! Three tiered chocolate sponge cake with chocolate icing and cherry filling. The trees are cookies with green candy melt icing piped on. The signs are wafer with again candy melt icing and chocolate icing. The top was sprinkled with choc chips. It was very tasty!

Caramel Book Club Cupcakes

Getting some sugar paper gave me a great idea- books, on book club cupcakes, and make them caramel!

I have tried making caramel before and found it hard to get the right consistency so I opted for getting some tinned caramel to put in the mix. The only stuff supermarkets seem to sell is the nestle stuff, it tastes good.

The variations on my usual cupcake recipe were to add light and dark brown sugar and the caramel in place of the milk. The cakes came out a bit crisper than normal but that was fine. The icing was caramel heated on the hob with icing sugar mixed in. I had to get in on the cakes very quick because it goes stiff on cooling.




Experimented a bit with the books, but settled on mint chocolate wafers cut up with sheets of royal icing in between, a fruit winder bookmark and sugar paper front cover. The writing on the book covers is in edible black ink- you can get pens from large craft stores.

Next book club books are Twilight and (Vs) Dracula. Already getting ideas on that theme!

Knitted Royal Wedding

Thanks to a birthday present I now have the power to knit the royal wedding. All the patterns and ideas are from this book: Fiona Goble, Knit your own Royal Wedding which you can get from amazon

Most of the knitting projects I have done so far have been simple scarfs and hats so this is quite a challenge as it involves a lot of adding/decreasing/shaping.  Hopefully if I learn how to do the complex stuff with this project I can make lots of knitted animals and characters :-)

I thought i'd start with something small- the corgis!

Strawberry and Cream Cupcakes

It’s summer, it’s Wimbledon so it has to be time to make strawberry and cream cupcakes.

I based the recipe around the standard cake mix that I usually make but added fruits in syrup rather than the usual milk, so:

110g (just under half a standard block) unsalted butter

225g caster sugar

2 large eggs

150g self-raising flour

125g plain flour

300g tin of raspberries in syrup

You can get strawberries in a tin but for some reason the supermarket didn’t have any in so I used raspberries instead. Using tinned means you get a nice fruity syrup which mixes very well and colours the mixture so you get pinkish cakes. I whizzed up the raspberries with a hand blender first. 

Cream butter (which should be at room temperature) and sugar. Add the two eggs one at a time. Add a third of the flours, third of the syrup... etc until all added.

I was a bit worried about them not rising due to the syrup so added a teaspoon of baking powder as well. Think it could have done with two or three actually!

Cooked in the oven for around 30 minutes at 100 °C

I then decorated the top with whipped cream and strawberries and they were done!

Angry Birds Cake

The ever-popular mobile phone game was the perfect inspiration for a cake.

I started by baking the cakes. One large tray of Victoria sponge cake (approx. 20cm x 30cm) and around 18 cupcakes. I baked the cupcakes in silicon cases as this made it easier to remove the cases- paper cases are a bit of a fiddle

To make the birds and pigs I stuck two cupcakes together with the tops facing each other using icing/ frosting. I then used the same icing to cover the whole of the two cakes to make a sphere.


I found the easiest icing to work with for this is Betty Crocker Rich and Cream Frosting (http://www.bettycrocker.com/products/frosting/products). It is just the right consistency and is the same stuff you can use to dip them (see below). You can buy it from all large supermarket chains in the UK.


Once I had iced all the cake pairs together I put them in the freezer. They only need to be semi-frozen to stop them falling apart when you dip them so l left them for about 15 minutes.


Meanwhile, I made all the features like the eyes and beaks out of royal icing in various colours. You can buy multi-packs of the colours from most large supermarkets.. The pig’s snouts are marshmallows. The small details like the middle of the eyes were drawn of using a black edible ink pen. You can get these from more specialist stores.


I melted a few large spoonfuls of the icing in a bowl in the microwave. It was runny but not separated. Best to zap it for 10 seconds, check, stir, do it for 10 seconds more etc. I then added the food colouring of the bird and dipped the semi-frozen cakes in the icing to coat them. Using this melted icing method means you get a nice smooth coat rather than the whipped effect of using the icing cold. The owls can just be dipped in the chocolate version of the icing.


The small blue birds and pigs were rolls of royal icing. I thought after it would have been nice to but a glace cherry in the middle as no-one really enjoys solid icing!


I then assembled the cake with the help of a couple of friends. The grass is the same type of icing as used on the birds. The pigs “hid-out” is various chocolate bars and biscuits. A few mint choc sticks provided support. We stuck the structure together using chocolate icing.


A lot of fun, a lot a sugar, some tasty angry birds!

Let's make a start

The start of a new blog, a diary of my crafty capers.
“Crafty” -includes any crafty activity I enjoy, including baking, painting, card making and knitting.
“Capers” -frivolous escapades! The best kind of escapades!
I hope you enjoy reading about the projects and I welcome any feedback.