New Blog Site

Long time no speak!

I haven't blogged here for so long now that I thought I would make you all aware that I am now over at http://www.tattybogles.co.uk/ running a small Artisan Business and Blog, please come on over and take a peek!

I am, it is fair to say, quite bad at taking photo's so quite why I have set myself up to join the December Photo Project 2012 this year baffles me but it may give me the push I need to try harder to get it right. You should join in, it's a fab idea and this is my first offering to the project.......

We have been having fun over at Tatty Bogle Makes and Bakes making melted Snowmen biscuits. They are so simple to make and can be decorated just as you wish.

Start with just a simple biscuit recipe, chill in the fridge for 15 minutes. When ready break a piece off and roll into a ball and push down on a flat surface. You are trying to create a circle with broken edges effect. Cook according to your recipe.

Make up a batch of icing sugar glaze. Get out the fondant icing and/or pen icing that kids use. Whichever you prefer, I went for fun with the fondant icing!

When your biccies are cooked and cooled take a spoonfull of icing and 'drop' it over them making sure that it does run off the sides for that melted look.

To make the Snowman's head you can either use slightly melted marshmallows or fondant icing, I went for the marshmallows warmed in the oven but be careful, they can melt quickly and be ruined!

Then get decorating with hats, scarves, gloves....use what you can to get what is right for you and hey presto your little guys are finished!

See, simples! My two boys loved them, the eldest declaring that I could actually work at Choccywoccydoodah's , bless him, not quite but I love the faith he has :)

Happy Saturday everyone, wrap up, it's chilly out there. I'll be back with photo number two tomorrow!!

There has been so much going on since my last blog that I barely know where to start!

Well Saturday last I did my very first Craft Fair selling my homemade jams/marmalades/lemon curd and cookies. It was a fantastic day and a complete success, one of my good friends Violet and Green shared a table with me selling the most gorgeous homemade bobby pins, brooches & cards. You should hop over and take a look!

The gorgeous bunting was made by another of my good friends who is resisting the social network self promotion. She also makes beautiful brooches from crochet (I bought one, nearly wrestled someone to the floor who showed an interest in what I had pegged as MINE! lol )

I am busy crafting for Christmas orders, head over to Tatty Bogle Makes and Bakes to see what I have been up to, today it has been Advent Biscuits for the Tree, they could be that Christmas Eve treat for everyone or leave one out for Father Christmas when he visits :)

We have also had our Annual trip to Hamleys but the surprise this year was my Husband arrange a chauffeur driven car to take us there!! We of course had a fantastic time and the children wanted everything in sight, again. Afterwards we went a walking and managed to stumble upon a Choccywoccydoodah shop, what a pleasure that was. The cakes seen in the flesh are breathtaking....

But by far the most amazing thing is my brand new cooker, take a look at this beauty.....

Unbelievably lucky? Yes, yes I am!!!

There is so much more I could mention but I won't! If you see anything you fancy over at Tatty Bogle Makes and Bakes let me know, I send by post and accept PayPal as my main payment method.

Toodle pip for now.......

Homemade Lemon Curd

For a long time I have avoided making Lemon Curd as I remember for years hearing 'it's really tricky to make' and so I have never tried. Until now.......

In my opinion the wonders of the Internet makes a lot of what we want to learn and create so much easier and having Blog's such as this to share our experiences and successes helps us avoid some of those cooking nightmare's and dispell old myths!!

After reading many a recipe I finally decided to use one from All recipes which was very quick and straight forward. My first attempt at this was a bit of a disaster but then I will decide to have a conversation on the phone whilst trying a new recipe and ended up practically frying the eggs. We live and learn!!

Ingredients:

180 ml of fresh Lemon Juice (About 4 Lemons)
1 tbsp of Lemon Zest
175g Sugar
125g Unsalted Butter, Cubed
3 Eggs

Combine all of the above ingredients in a large pan and cook on a medium to low heat until thick enough to leave indents from a wisk, I took caution so as not to cook the mixture too quickly so roughly it will take 10 mins. Pour into your sterilsed jars and seal! The yeild from this should be approx 300ml of Lemon Curd, 2 small jars.

And that's it, I have made a very lemony tart curd that is delicious and it took less than half an hour!


Give it a go, you'll be surprised! Thanks for popping over for a read :)

Home-made Blueberry Jam!

So, after making my Madarin Marmalade and so far had a thumbs up from eveyone who has tried it, I decided whilst wandering around the supermarket that I would give Jam another go, so I picked up some Blueberries a bag of sugar and some rather nice preservative jars.

 

 

Having spent many hours reading up how to make the perfect jam of every differing flavour I decided to just throw myself into the deep end and try to create a jam using some of the information stored in the old grey matter!

 

 

As most fruits have plenty of their own natural juice you hardly need any additional fluid if any. Some may need only a splash of lemon juice (fresh or bottled) just to reduce the sweetness and some will need water for the reduction or a mixture of both.This really is a matter of personal taste.

 

So my recipe consisted of the following:

 

 

400g/ 14oz Blueberries

225g/ 8 1/2oz Granulated Sugar

40ml/ Apprx 4 1/2 tbsp Water

5ml/ 1 tsp of Lemon Juice

 

 



 

Place the Blueberries into a pan and add the fluid. Gently bring up to a boil, once boiling reduce the heat to a simmer for 10 to 15 minutes being sure to stir several times.

 

Remove from the heat gently press any whole blueberries with the back of your spoon.

 

 

 

 

Return to the heat, add the sugar and stir until dissolved completely then bring the heat back up to boiling. I boiled mine for a further 8 minutes continuing to stir several times so the mixture didn't 'catch' at the bottom of the pan.

 

 Remove from the heat and pour into your prepared jam jars, seal and leave to cool.

 

I have checked mine since cooling and am pleased that is has thickened really well with just a small amount of juice around the side and is of a medium sweetness.....glorious!!

 

 



 

 

Why not try this simple jammy biscuit recipe and change the strawberry jam for this blueberry one. A firm favourite if you have small people at home!!

 

Thanks for reading and good luck!!

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jammin' Halloween!

So, it's Halloween and everyone is busy carving pumpkins, painting faces and decorating their homes ready to celebrate all that scares us in our dreams.......Zombie's, Ghosts my particular one Spider's. Even those toy ones give me the heebie geebie's.


Halloween is cancelled though in my house, the eldest is terrified of the dark and all of the aforementioned nightmare triggering ingredients although he now tells me if everyone is Frankenstien that would be quite alright?! I suppose if you look like Herman Munster, it really would be quite alright!!

 



 

So instead of the usual preparations today would give me I decided to turn my hand to making some Jam. The only fruit to hand was a depleted bowl of clemetines so Marmalade it is!!

I have tried several times to get the consitancy just right but manage to either have a rock hard substance suitable only for breaking paving slabs or one that has more sugar than fruit and tastes, well just awful!!

Not to be detered as practise does make perfect I went to task using the following ingredients and method:

2LB of clementines. Peel and seperate each segment removing as much white membrane as you can (I warn you without the right tools it is about 20 minutes fiddly work!)

Reserve the peel to be used later.

Some recipes call for you to halve each segment  and halve again and put into the pan however I found the method of Little Corner of Mine 's of pulsing the segments in a blender several times does the job just fine.

Cut the reserved peel to the size you like in your marmalade, I prefer it very thin and not too much of it!

I added 2LB of granulated sugar and 1 1/2 tbsp of Lemon Juice.

Put it all into the pan and bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer for about an hour. But keep an eye on it and stir it often or you'll end up with spills just like me!!!

Remove and pour into your prepared and sterilised Jam jar and seal. Your marmalade should thicken nicely once cooled. Mine is cooling and thickening nicely as I type.

And so I wait, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say and marmalade on toast for breakfast sounds just nice!!

Enjoy your Halloween Holidays one and all, wrap up warm and stay safe :)

Tea, Crumpets & Central Heating!

Having been forced to hide away from the cold and windy weather outside and feed my cold with Tea & Crumpets I thought, I would stop by and say Hi!


I've been busy, which is brilliant....I'm still very much in the early stages of creations but am lucky enough to have people willing to take a chance :) I suppose we all have to start somewhere, right?! 


I have had several orders through, some of them repeat orders, which I take to be a good sign and some through word of mouth.....even better, I have made more biscuits and cookies than I ever thought possible and still there are orders for more and I have even managed to stop dropping things which really helps the profit and loss margins!!!!


I actually had baking sheets of these little yummy cookies on nearly every flat surface of my house......wrestling a 2 year old away from them all wasn't easy!!

It's been a non-stop few weeks of practise to make perfect plus lots of ideas charging around my head for little Christmas treats and craft fair fancies.

I'm hoping 2013 will be the start of something quite special all pushed along by a little help and support from my friends. But first and foremost, I really need to learn to take a decent photo!!!



Feel free to follow my link to Pinterest and follow my likes dislikes and be kept updated on what I have been making and new recipes I have tried.


Wrap up warm folks, its a bit chilly out there!