Extreme Sugar High

It's cold, it's dark, it's windy and wet. Time for some comfort baking! Here's my super-calorific sticky toffee pudding recipe for you, mmm....

Sticky Toffee Pudding (serves 9-12, small portions are sufficient!)

225g chopped dates

300ml hot black tea

110g butter

170g caster sugar

3 eggs

225g self raising flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp coffee granules

Preheat the oven to 180oC, grease and base line a 20cm square cake tin.

Soak the dates in the tea for 15 minutes or so. Meanwhile cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy then gradually beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour and then all the other ingredients. Turn into the tin and bake for 1h15 or so (until a skewer comes out clean).

Toffee Sauce

110g butter

175g dark brown soft sugar

110g granulated sugar

275g golden syrup

225ml double cream

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Melt together the butter and sugars with the golden syrup, bring slowly to the boil then simmer for about 5 minutes to fully dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat, carefully add the cream and vanilla, then return to the heat for a couple more minutes.

Serve sponge and sauce together warm, with a good dollop of cream or ice cream if it's not quite unhealthy enough for you!

Daffodils

As promised, here's the pattern for my daffodils. I'm going to give a bunch to my Mum for Mothers' Day. It's not the most elegantly written pattern but hopefully it makes sense. I'd be really interested to hear of any additions or modifications that could improve it if anyone feels like trying to knit them!

For the darker flowers I did the petals using two strands of yellow, and the trumpet with one yellow and one red strand. The lighter ones have one strand of yellow and one of white on the petals, and two strands of yellow for the trumpet.

The amount of felting required will depend on the yarn used and the type of washing machine, but my flowers went through two 40 degree cycles.

Materials:

Lopi roving - yellow (plus bits of red and white if you wish) for the petals, green for the stems. 100g yellow should be plenty to knit a whole bunch of flowers, maybe 8 or 9. Knit with two strand held together for the petals, trumpet and stem.

2-3mm diameter modelling wire to thread through the flower stems once felted.

8mm double pointed needles, and 8mm crochet hook.

Directions:

Petals

CO 12 st, leaving enough of a tail to thread through the stitches later.

row 1: Knit.

row 2: K1, M1, K1. TURN WORK.

row 3: K1, M1, K1, M1, K1. TURN WORK

row 4: K1, M1, K3, M1, K1 (7st). TURN WORK

Work backwards and forwards on these seven stitches to complete the first petal:

rows 5-10: Knit.

row 11: K2tog tbl, K3, K2tog

row 12: K

row 13: K2togtbl, K1, K2tog

row 14: K

row 15: sl1, K2tog, PSSO.

Break yarn and thread tail through remaining stitch. Rejoin yarn to next live stitch and repeat rows 2-15 for the remaining 5 petals. Join the first petal to the last to form a ring, then use the loose ends to sew a few stitches between adjacent petals at their bases (so that they will be less separate around the centre of the flower once felted). Thread the cast on tail through all stitches at the cast on edge and pull tight until the opening is 0.5-1cm in diameter.

Trumpet

Pick up 12st around the centre of the ring of petals, and spread them between 3 double pointed needles. Join to knit in the round and knit 7 rounds garter stitch (knit one round, purl one round etc).

Next row: Knit into the front and back of each stitch - 24st. Bind off all stitches.

Stamens
With a single strand of lopi, crochet a chain of 3 st, break yarn and thread through the final stitch to bind off. Repeat twice more. Tie the three short crochet chains together.

Stem

With the green yarn, cast on 5st and knit an i-cord approx 40cm in length. Bind off stitches. Attach stamens to the top of the stem, and poke them through the back of the flower head through the gap in the centre so that they are inside the trumpet. Sew the stem to the back of the flower.

Finishing
Thread a length of non-feltable string through the centre of the stem, leaving a few inches hanging out at each end (this helps to leave an opening through the centre of the stem that the wire can be threaded through). Place the flowers in the washing machine together with an old pair of jeans and felt. Pull the petals and trumpets into shape whilst still damp. Once the flowers are dry, remove the string from inside the stem and push a length of wire through in its place. Bend the sharp edges of the wire in, and sew closed at both ends of the stem to prevent it from slipping out.

The real daffs on Magdalen Green have only just started to poke up through the ground but if a few weeks there will be a scene like this to enjoy...

Spain, Shawls and Spring

Right, it's catch up time. The blog has been suffering a little not because of the lack of subject matter but quite the opposite. So much knitting that there's not much time left for recording it! Anyway, here goes...

I recently took a trip to Spain with my Dad to visit my Grandad who lives in the countryside more or less half way between Alicante and Valencia. We had a very nice week relaxing in the sunshine and enjoying heaps of fresh fruit and veg from the area, particularly the oranges which were literally falling off the trees onto the floor in abundance. Here you can see me enjoying the view on top of the cathedral bell tower in Valencia (the enormous 11 ton bell struck midday while we were up there!). We also explored the little village of Guadalest perched on top of a rocky peak, and climed to the top of the Penon de Ifach - a steep rocky lump sticking out into the sea in Calpe.

All the almond trees around Jalon are in blossom at this time of year, which makes the hillside look very pretty. The trees reached up to the balcony so we spent a few sunny mornings sitting out and watching honey bees moving around from branch to branch. Satch the cat enjoys climbing up to hunt for birds!

I have been trying to concentrate on finishing off some WIPs, so half my suitcase was filled with knitting for the holiday. I finished off a couple of things, including my lovely purple shawl. Here it is before and after blocking - what a transformation! The pattern is a free one called 'Gail' and I used Artesano 4 ply alpaca to knit it. I did a couple of extra pattern repeats and used abut 3.5 balls. Very pleased with it, and definitely inspired to knit more lace.

At the moment I'm working on coming up with a pattern for felted daffodils. I'd like to make a bunch in time for mothers day. Pattern to follow at some point. I had a hunt through my stash cupboard and discovered quite a good amount of lopi. No lopi crisis here! I'm pleased to say that the lopi supply chain is now flowing freely again and it's back in stock at Twist Fibre Craft Studio. Hurrah!

New year teatime

Happy new year! First post of the year is still slightly festive in a way, because it's cranberry-related. I always seem to have cranberries lurking around the place after Christmas because they come in quite big bags and last forever. Once you're fed up of cranberry sauce on verything try this for a teatime treat. I reckon it would be equally tasty with mincemeat too, perhaps with a bit of grated apple mixed in. I have some left over mincemeat so I'll give it a go and report back soon...

Crunchy cranberry tart

For the cranberry sauce:

350g fresh cranberries

125g caster sugar

zest and juice of an orange

For the pastry:

250g butter, softened

50g caster sugar

2tbsp sunflower oil

1tsp vanilla extract

1 egg, beaten

250g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

pinch salt

2tsp cinnamon

Place the cranberry sauce ingredients in a small pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes until all the cranberries have burst, stirring frequently. Transfer to a bowl and allow to cool completely. Alternatively, you could use up some ready-made cranberry sauce from a jar.

For the pastry, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the oil and vanilla extract, then gradually beat in the egg. Sift the flour, baking bowder, salt and cinnamon into a separate bowl then gradually stir it into the butter mixture. Bring the dough together with your hands and knead lightly into a ball. Wrap in clingfilm and chill until very firm (at least 2 hours, or put it in the freezer for a while if you're short on time).

Grease and line a 25cm tart tin. Grate 2/3 of the chilled dough into the tin, and spread it evenly without packing it down. Spread the cold cranberry sauce on top leaving a 1.5cm gap around the edges. Grate the rest of the dough on top, sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake at 150oC for 75-90 minutes until pale but firm. Cool in the tin then dust with icing sugar and cut into slices. Make yourself a cup of tea and put your feet up, enjoy!

Knitted Christmas Fare

Hold on to your hats, I'm doing a new post! I don't have any decent excuses for the 2 month silence - a combination of being very busy (first month) and then operating at a couple of gears slower than normal (second month). Sorry guys. Anyway, I'm back, and have got quite a lot of stuff saved up to share with you. I am now no longer involved in the lab which is great, and even better is that I have a part time job at Twist Fibre Craft Studio - hurrah! I'm really enjoying my job, especially when I get to make samples from the shop. It's very tempting to spend all my wages there and more, I think I'll end up working to pay off my debt to them rather than to earn money!

Bearing in mind the time of year, here are some pics of the knitted Christmas baubles that I made for the shop windows. Pattern is available if you contact us via the shop website here!

Also, here's a pic of the festive jumper I've been knitting for William that I alluded to in a previous post. I also made a matching hat and cowl, although the colourwork is not so good on the hat. It was a kind of practice run so that I knew what to do with the jumper. The jumper is passed on the knitty pattern called norgi, but since I wasn't using wool I chickened out of doing the steeks. Instead I moved the colourwork to the bottom of the jumper knitted in the round, then split at the armholes to knit the front and back top separately. I had to jig the arrangement of the trees and reindeer around a bit to make them fit in with the number of stitches I had.

Lots of festive wishes and Happy New Year to everyone :)

Look what I won!

Hey guess what? I won this...

...for this (see previous post also)....

Hurrah! Big thanks to Laura and Peter at Twist Fibre Craft Studio for a fun day and a great exhibition, and congratulations also to Andrea and Diane who cleaned up the top prizes with their fantastic creations. Well done all round!

Silly season for knitters

Today I went with Diane and Andrea to Newburgh where Twist Fibre Craft Studio were hosting a very spectacular Rowan exhibition to celebrate the 30th birthday of the company, and national knitting week. Pretty impressive stuff, very inspirational... I was 'inspired' to add to my stash by buying some felted tweed, some alpaca and some kimono angora (the last two were in the sale box, hurrah), and also the Rowan 41 book which had quite a few nice things from the exhibition in it.

We spent most of the day there, and got stuck in to make a some hats for the Innocent Smoothie big knit 2008. Every year they hold a campaign to sell smoothies with hats, thereby raising money towards providing hot meals, blankets and advice to older people on how to keep their houses warm in winter.

I kicked off by making a snowboarding smoothie hats with jester horns and earflaps, and then went on to make a pineapple. Andrea brought along a fabulous creation named 'brain explosion' and also knitted a cactus in a pot, whilst Diane did a cheeky chicken with brilliant dangly legs. Apologies for the rubbish pics, Diane will defo have much better ones so check that out, but here they are...

And while we are on the subject of silly knitting, what do you reckon to my hideously bright legs-are-on-fire legwarmers?? I took these along to work on when we had a knitting group excursion to Di Gilpin in St Andrews, and I think my fellow knitters thought I'd lost the plot. They were very polite about my shocking acrylic creation, but eyebrows were raised! I don't have the full details yet so will save the story for another time, but it looks like they did their job and got me through selection for a very fun trip that will be coming up in November. Watch this space :)

Malt loaf?

I had a big sort-out of my kitchen cupboards at the weekend, and was rather shocked at the mountain of dry food I have managed to stock pile. I've made a new resolution to use up store cupboard items rather keep buying stuff and putting it away never to be seen again.

A happy side effect of all this sensible behaviour is that I've been baking quite a lot. I used up my coconut in some coconut and lime muffins the other day, and then I was able to transform some rather soft branflakes into malt loaf. It's a recipe that my mum used to make a lot, and we always called it malt loaf. I have since decided that it doesn't actually contain any malt, although it does have that characteristic chewy texture and I bet the addition of a bit of malt extract would work well.

It's a great recipe for store cupboard stash busting, and takes about 5 minutes to put together. It's dairy free (unless you use milky tea) and fat free, so apart from the sugar it's almost healthy!I used a 500ml yoghurt pot as my measure, and had enough for 2 loaves.

Mrs C's 'Malt Loaf'

1 cup bran flakes

1 cup dried fruit/nuts

1 cup tea

1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar (cut down from 1 cup in the original)

1 cup self raising flour

Mix everything together except the flour and leave to soak for a few hours or overnight. Stir in the flour, turn into a greased and lined loaf tin then bake at 190oC for 1h or slightly longer, until a skewer comes out clean.

That's essentially it, but here are a few extra thoughts...

It would work with other bran-based cereals such as all bran, or a mixture of whatever you've got in the cupboard. I think my mum has even used cornflakes too. The finished loaf varies quite a lot by adding different fruit and nut mixtures, and I would suggest altering the sugar content accordingly - a fruity loaf won't need as much sugar as one with more nuts. Normal tea (with anything from 0 to 50% milk) adds a nice flavour, but using fruit tea instead is a nice way to complement the dried fruit you have chosen to add to the mix. You can also vary the flour - white or wholemeal would both work, or a mixture of the two. I was able to finish up a packet of white then top it up with wholemeal for the loaf in the pic.

So I'll put the kettle on shall I?

Slouchy beret

I used to not like this time of year at all - things dying off everywhere, worsening weather, darkness drawing in etc etc - but now I am quite the opposite. I'm loving all the autumnal produce (have been eating squash more or less non stop recently), and I have a sense of excitement and anticipation at the arrival of true knitting weather.

Out come the hand knits: shawls, jumpers, hats and scarfs abound. Hurrah! And of course there's all the Christmas knitting to get started on. I had a minor diversion over the last couple of days though, and decided to do a quick hat. I have only ever made beanie style hats before but have often admired berets and slouchy hats on ravelry. Jared at Brooklyn Tweed recently published his take on the style (ravelers go here), and I was inspiret to give it a try.

I used some yarn that I got in a stash from the charity shop, it's acrylic but super soft and a bit fuzzy, I really like it. No pattern mods required, I followed it to the letter. Not difficult but not boring, and finished in 2 sittings. I'm happy with the end result and will be knitting more slouchy hats soon!

Pattern: Porom, by Jared Flood

Yarn: Patons Chantal (discontinued) used less than 1.5 balls

Space invaders and reindeer

A few months back, I decided to have a go at two-colour knitting after watching some tutorials on the web. It's a bit tricky to get the tension right when one colour is carried behind the work, because the carried colour tends to pull too tightly on the knitted stitches. Anyway, I took the chart for the fabulous space invaders socks on knitty called bmp, and turned it into a tank top for William.

A lot of sewing of ends later, the final result was ok for a first attempt, but I think I'm going to partly blame the cheap acrylic yarn for some of the uneven tension.

The Christmas knitting frenzy has begun over the last week, and although I'm going to wait for the full reveal, here's a peak at my most recent two-colour project which is looking much neater...

Borough Market

After a very interesting and fun week of work experience at Notting Grill last month, I decided to set my alarm early on Saturday morning and head down to Borough Market for some shopping and breakfast.

I had a very lovely morning wandering around smelling and tasting as much stuff as possible, and struggled to carry home all the stuff that I bought. The range of fruit and veg on display was stunning, and there were plenty of not so healthy things to enjoy too...

As the crowds started to arrive I fulfilled another food ambition and went upstairs to Roast... for my third breakfast of the day! I munched through tomatoes on toast and a big pot of tea whilst looking down on the shoppers in the market, and would certainly go back there again for a full meal.

London knitting, Cambridge dining

It's been a bit quiet on the blogging front because for the last three weeks I've been in London on work experience placements. More on that later, but first it's time to catch up on knitting news. I was delighted to discover that my good friend Tom's swanky pad was 2 minutes walk from iknit London. Hurrah! I went along to knitting group when I was able to, and also added to my stash with some very very soft malabrigo laceweight, and a new yarn from Lang called West which might be turned into a Christmas pressie depending on how the colour variations work out when it's knitted up...




In terms of actual knitting I've been working on a Stefanie Japel pattern called Orangina, a lace patterned sleeveless top knitted in the round. Here it is stretched over Tom's ironing board to get an idea of the pattern. I took the lace pattern but reduced the number of repeats to make it the right width across my shoulders.


I also made a shrug which I wanted to wear at the end of my trip for a reunion dinner at Fitzwilliam College to celebrate 10 years since matriculating (I feel so old!). I used Paton's Smoothie and a knitty pattern 'I do'. It is knitted in the round from sleeve to centre back, then the two halves grafted together. The first half was no problem but I got a bit confused flipping the increases over for the second half and had to knit it again. I finished it on time however, and was quite happy with the final product. I modified the lace pattern to make all the knit stitches on one side rather than alternating chunks of knit and purl. There are no decent photos of me wearing it yet, but you can get an idea at least.

I had a lovely end to my trip by travelling over to Cambridge to stay with Ange and Rich for the reunion celebrations. A classic case of baby logic - cakey jammy face and hands, plus freshly changed lady in a clean dres = time for a hug! Dinner in college is always a great occasion, even if the food leaves a lot to be desired. Just goes to show that sometimes a good meal is about so much more than what's on the plate, especially when we had the chance to fill up on Ange's teacakes when we got home ;)

PS I have to say a big thankyou to Smariek for giving me a blog award - my first one! She's the creator of the famous utopia hat and loads of other lovely knitting designs... a genius :)

Teatime

I am a big fan of afternoon tea. I think it needs to be reinstated as a regular ritual - a good chance to pause for half an hour during the day, top up on tea and snacks and catch up with a few friends. Oh and knock out a couple more rows of knitting while you're there too of course!

Here's what I've been baking this week...

And today I'm hoping to go blackberry picking over the river in Fife, they are finally starting to get ripe even up here in Scotland.

Bread for cheats

It's been a little while since I've done a foody post, mostly because I've been baking rather boring (though tasty) things like scones and muffins recently. One new discovery is worth a mention however: no knead bread. I had read about it some time ago but was very suspicious and not really interested to have a go. Loads of people in the ravelry bread and yarn group have been raving about it though so curiosity got the better of me and I jumped on the band wagon.

The idea is that you can mix up a big batch of dough and keep it in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, ready to pull off a lump and bake on demand fresh every time. There is a book describing the technique and a whole series of variations upon the theme, and the authors have a blog on the subject here.

I tried their basic recipe for master dough, but found it quite salty so second time round I reduced the yeast and salt content. My master mix now contains 6.5 cups bread flour, 3 cups water, 1 rounded dsp dried yeast and 1 dsp salt. All that is needed is to mix these ingredients together to form quite a wet paste and that's it. You can see my tub of dough in the picture after an overnight rest in the fridge - it's quite bubbly and stretchy already. Because the dough is very wet and sticky it's quite difficult to handle, and this is the bit that requires some practice, but no kneading is required, just shape some dough into a round, prove for one hour and then bake. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the loaf, and it really only took a couple of minutes.

This morning I used some of the dough to make mini cinnamon whirls as suggested on the blog - I rolled out a piece of dough into a rectangle, sprinkled it with cinnamon and brown sugar then rolled it up into a long tube. I used kitchen scissors to cut the tube into whirls and baked them in a cupcake tray. umm, they've all gone already! I'd better make some more for the people coming over tomorrow.

And just to show you I haven't stopped knitting after all the ravelympics exciement, here's a preview of my latest project. Details to follow in a later post, but most of blogland seems to be knitting this one so maybe someone recognises the pattern? Yes I admit that I have been wearing it with one sleeve while I'm knitting the other one, it's cold in Dundee!

Ravelympic finish line

Today I finished my second project for the ravelympics, this time competing for team GB in the scarf stroke. As I dealt with the hundreds of ends that this kind of project creates, I was cheering on the real team GB as they got a good haul of gold medals in the sailing and cycling.

My scarf is made up from two types of 5 pointed crochet flower, with the two long strips of flowers joined together down the middle. The yarn is Gedifra chandra and I used a 12mm hook.

This weekend I also finished a felting project that I've been planning to do for ages. The pattern is here, and I followed it without making any modifications for a change. You can never have too many bags!

Here's a pic of the lopi roving at Twist Fibre Craft Studio, just about to be split up into 100g cakes...