Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Off the radar

I was feeling quite please with myself with regular updates of the blog. Then 10 days of nothing. The reason for that is the children - they're all sick! Coughs, colds and fever. Luckily, nothing more serious (swine flu, anyone!) but it has meant that I've had 1, 2 or 3 children at home with me. So,time for me has been more limited.


Even so, I did manage to start and finish 1 thing for me. It's a litte shrug, Bella from Kim Hargreaves book, Amber. I knitted this in Rowan Big Wool in Merry, a lovely warm red. It took hardly any time and it's very warm. A success!

Friday, November 13, 2009

Baking with little helpers

Everything I do that involves the children, just takes 6 times as long. Take for example, when I decided to bake a joint birthday cake for hubby and Aidan, the children were desperate to help. I let them but the mess that they created took forever to clear up! Actually, I don't mind - they really like baking!


Here's the final product - a very decadent, almost flourless choclate cake.
If you have good cholestrol, please feel free to try out my version:

150g of butter
200g of plain (dark) chocolate, broken into pieces
125g of caster sugar
4 eggs, separated
142ml of double cream
4 tablespoons of plain flour

1. Melt chocolate in a bowl over some simmering water. When the chocolate is almost melted, add in the butter. Stir until all melted, taking care not to overheat. Leave to cool slightly.
2. In a separate bowl,whisk egg yolks with caster sugar until thick and creamy.
3. In another bowl, whisk egg whites until stiff peaks are formed.
4. Stir in the chocolate mixture into the egg yolk mixture. Add the double cream, mixing well. Gently fold in the whisked egg whites.
5. Grease a 10" round loose bottomed cake tin. Pour in the mixture. Bake in a preheated oven (180 deg Celsius) for 25 minutes. Don't worry if it sinks a little as it cools.
6. Finally, enjoy!

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Dotty day

The children's school encourages them to be aware of different charities around and to participate in the fund raising activities. Tomorrow the children are fundraising for a charity for the blind and they are to go to school wearing some dotty accessories (braille) and to make a donation for that privilege. I was going to buy my children some spotty socks but the both of them actually requested that I make them something instead. What's a mum to do except answer the request.

I didn't have time to knit them something but I had time to sew them a few things. First up, a yoyo flower brooch with a dotty Kaffe Fassett fabric. It took all of 10 minutes and it looks so cute that I'm going to be making lots of them.I also made scarves for them. I found more dotty fabrics in my stash (I have a lot of dotty fabric in my stash - I might add!!) and some white polar fleece fabric, cut 2 long strips, sewed them up on the sewing machine, cut the fringe and voila! - spotty scarves.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Halloween

Halloween -one of the children's favourite holiday (after Christmas and birthdays!) As it was half term, I had devised a few Halloween activities to pass the time with the children. One of it was make Halloween cookies, which was a success. The only problem was that we couldn't find any bright orange icing for the pumpkin - so they look a bit pale and washed out.
The next thing we made was a Halloween wreath - from recycled plastic bags, old wire coat hanger and some black card. I think it makes a good Jack-O-Lantern.

Finally, I made some food for a Halloween party - severed fingers (sausages with cheese fingernails, wriggly worms (more sausages!) and deep fried eyeballs (mini scotch eggs). It had great reactions from the kids.