I was browsing through the photos on Alisa Burke’s site earlier (on this post) and her picture of the 3 shells reminded me of reading many months ago about a process to create a natural colour palette that can be used in any art or craft.  I grabbed a picture of the new shoots in the polytunnel to demonstrate this idea.

Open the picture in your photo editing package of choice…ours happens to be GIMP; we’re massive fans of Open Source, particularly Ubuntu which makes it so easy to install whatever type of package you need and were considering given some faceless conglomerate a few hundred pounds for the privilege of owning.  Check it out…although I digress.

Open the photo and use the colour grab tool to sample the different parts of the picture.  Create some layers and drop the sampled colour onto each layer.  From this point you can build a natural palette on which to base your sewing, knitting, painting, interior design…anything!

The first colour came from the leaf that you might be able to spot to the left of the photo.  I tried so hard to sample the brown of the soil, but it turns out it’s not brown, it’s blue-grey.  The greens are from the shoots.

Because these colours occur naturally together they are pleasing to the eye…nature will never let us down in that respect.

The idea is further demonstrated on the Colour Lovers website, where they grab colours from various images to show trends.

I have often looked at yoghurt making devices in the shop and wondered if there is a way to make my own that doesn’t require me to have yet another kitchen appliance that undoubtedly would be used once and never again.  The good news is I’ve found the simplest way to make yoghurt with just a pan and a thermos flask.

Hold on to your hats folks…there’s only a few steps that even a child (supervised by an adult) could accomplish.

Ingredients:

• 1 pint of UHT milk (bonus as much cheaper than the fresh stuff)
• 2 tablespoons of live yoghurt…not yoghurt starter or mega expensive yoghurt, just plain old pro-biotic or live yoghurt

Method

1. Wash your hands – this is crucial as yoghurt relies on the creation of good bacteria and you don’t want to introduce bad bacteria into the mix…you’ll be very poorly!
2. Boil the kettle and fill the Thermos flask with the boiling water, set aside
3. Heat milk gently until body temperature (if you’ve a food thermometer that’s 37 degrees Celsius.  If not, judge by sticking your finger in)
4. Spoon 2 tablespoons of yoghurt into a jug and add a little of the heated milk
5. Mix until smooth
6. Add the rest of the heated milk, while stirring
7. Empty water from flask
8. Pour yoghurt/milk mix into your flask, put the lid on and leave for 6-8 hours
9. Put in fridge, eat and enjoy!

See, no yoghurt making machines, fancy starters or anything else that costs a fortune.  When you have a couple of tablespoons left use it for your next batch.  You’ll never need to buy yoghurt again!

I made this cake at the request of my wee boy who wanted it for his seventh birthday, no doubt he wanted it due to the large quantities of chocolate involved and the extremely pretty picture in the recipe book which was all swirls and twirls of chocolate … not a finish I was able to achieve, although not for lack of trying!

We decorated the cake in the only way kids generally know how, with a range of sprinkles and a mismatch of candles, as things stand I’ve been referring to this, and I apologise for the crudity, but it’s ‘the cow-pat cake’!?  Not that it tastes like one you understand … not that I know what one tastes like!  Definitely one for the chocoholics out there though.

What you’ll need:

• 6 egg whites
• 220g caster sugar
• 140g slivered almonds
• 95g dried fruit
• 200g dark chocolate, grated
• 300g ricotta cheese
• 180g single cream
• 80ml Tia Maria
• 200g white chocolate melts
• 200g milk chocolate melts
• 200g dark chocolate melts

What you need to do:

1. Preheat your oven to 150C.
2. Grease a 24cm spring-form tin lining the base
3. Beat the egg whites in a medium bowl – if you are intending on eating the cake yourself you should probably do it by hand to burn off some of the calories you’re going to be consuming later – until soft peaks form
4. Gradually add the sugar beating it in every time you add some.
5. Fold in the nuts, fruit and half the grated chocolate.
6. Deposit mix in the greased tin.
7. Bake in the oven for around 1 1/4 hours until it’s firm, cool meringue in the oven leaving the door ajar
8. Meanwhile, beat the cheese and the cream in a medium bowl until there are no lumps, stir in liqueur and remaining chocolate, place to one side, in the fridge is good.
9. Melt the chocolate melts (in 200g gram batches) adding each batch to the cream mixture.
10. Mix the topping together well, as it cools it will begin to thicken.
11. Liberally spread the topping over the meringue centre.
12. Decorate as you wish, or not at all, and serve.

Back in April I entered a competition on the Craft Scotland website to win a copy of Papermaking and Bookbinding: Coastal Inspirations by Joanne B Kaar and was delighted to learn a few weeks ago that I was one of the lucky winners.  I was even more delighted when I received my book last week to find that making paper isn’t the painful experience I remember it to be from my childhood attempts, where the paper ends up all pulpy and useless.  The book also contains all sorts of suggestions for jazzing up your handmade papers and what to do with all that paper you’ve made.  I particularly like the embossing from driftwood idea.

This Instructable describes the very method I used.

On a complete whim today (so wholly unprepared with any sort of shop bought materials) I made my first batch of paper, which is now handing merrily in the bathroom drying slowly – as directed in the book.

Tomorrow I get the iron out to flatten them out and decide what their fate might be.  I can’t decide between labels for my handmade photo notebooks or whether I should print onto them and frame them as works of art.  I kind of like that idea though…such ugly, unnecessary junk turned into art.

Just in case you think we’re really clatty, that grout is in fact pink and not dirty!  We inherited a baby blue and pink bathroom (complete with pink grout and, for some very odd reason, an orange shower tray) when we bought our current house and it’s not up there on the list of priorities to change, in spite of it’s very scary appearance.

Those that know me will realise that I enjoy my politics, what they may not realise is that every time there is a major election (Westminster or Holyrood) I enjoy sitting up through the night watching the results coming in and waiting to see if any of the most irritating politicians will be losing their seat.  This time around I am hoping against hopes that the rather inept and infuriatingly patronising Scottish Secretary, Jim Murphy will lose his seat – how happy that would make me.

Anyway, this political marathon is not for the faint-hearted and supplies are required to ensure that one makes it through the night, on this front I envisage copious quantities of tea and high energy drinks as well as maybe a few beers too.  One cannot survive on such things alone though, we also require high energy food, so what better than this cappuccino cake?!

On this occassion I wasn’t overly concerned with how the cake looked and I was quite happy for the topping to simply slop over the edges before it set … yum!  If you want to recreate this to aid you through the night then you’ll need to follow this rather simple recipe.

Ingredients

The Sponge

• 1tsp cocoa powder – I like Green and Black’s because I’m a snob, but other varieties are available!
• 2 rounded tbsp coffee granules – Anything but nescafe or shop own brand, again because I’m a snob!
• 225g / 8oz butter
• 225g / 8oz caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 225g / 8oz self raising flour – I used plain with a tsp of bicarb of soda which gave spectacular results!
• 1tsp baking powder

The Topping

• 100g / 4oz milk chocolate
• 50g butter
• 3tbsp milk
• 175g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting

What to do

1. Whack your oven on at about 180 degrees C, 160 if it’s a Fan oven.
2. Butter and line the base of a  tin or dish that measures around 28cm x 11cm.
3. Mix your cocoa and coffee granules into a couple of tablespoons of water to make a smooth paste.
4. Mix the rest of your sponge ingredients together as best you can and add the cocoa-coffee mixture before blitzing in a mixer of whatever description is available to you.
5. Tip your mix into your prepared dish and level out, cover your mix with a layer of grease proof paper and bake for c.30 mins – remove the greaseproof paper at this point and return to oven if necessary.  The sponge is ready if you can insert a skewer or knife and have it come out clean.
6. Leave to cool in tin/dish for ten minutes before turning out onto wire rack where it should be left to cool completely.
7. Trim off any unsightly edges and eat with freshly made custard, actually no, get a tin.
8. Over a v.low heat melt your chocolate and butter and milk.  Do not allow to boil, do not allow to burn … pay attention!
9. Sieve the icing sugar and beat into your chocolate mixture, allow this to cool a bit (it should begin to thicken) before liberally slopping over the top of your sponge.  You might want to put the sponge on a plate or something first.
10. Dust with icing sugar.
11. Consume with great glee whilst watching election night coverage.

I’m not really allowed politics on here, but I think I may have got away with it :~0

As promised, here’s a quick how to for making your own wooden crochet hook.  These are easy to make but you will probably need to practice before the shape is akin to a mass manufactured crochet hook.  I know I need to practice more on the shape.  The thing is, these work regardless of how misshapen they are and you can have a whole set of different sizes with very little outlay.

You’ll need:

- A piece of dowel approx 18cm long.
My dowel was 6mm diameter but you can use whichever size you want.
- A hacksaw
- Sandpaper
- Craft knife
- Ruler (optional, measurements are approximate)
- Pencil (optional, only if you want to measure accurately)
- Pencil Sharpener (optional, you could use your craft knife)

Instructions:

1. With the hacksaw cut your piece of dowel to around 18cm long.

2. With the pencil sharpener, sharpen one end to look like this:

Rotate two to three times in the sharpener to get this shape but it really doesn’t matter since you’re just rounding the end that sits in your hand.

3. At the other end, measure about 2cm from the end and mark a line (or you can eyeball it).  Start carving with your craft knife rotating as you go to make a point like this:

4. Cut off the sharp end with a saw or craft knife if, like me, you can’t be bothered to go back out to the cold garage!  It should now look like this:

5. Sand both ends now to remove rough bits.

6. Continuing to work on the sharper end, make a mark with your craft knife around 1.5cm from the end.  Cut down slightly at a 45 degree angle.  A few millimeters away from that cut mark and cut down at a lesser angle to make a triangular cut out as shown below:

7. Keep working away at this cut out, alternating between cutting a 45 degree angle and a lesser angle.  It helps to hold the hook flat on a board and skim off layers towards the point, then cut down at the 45 degree angle to remove the ends of the slithers.  The picture below shows this work in progress.

Be careful to cut downwards and not across because the grain will split if you cut straight across or a too small an angle.  You’ll be sanding the rough bits later so don’t worry if it looks a bit ragged at this stage.

8. Once you’re happy with the size and shape of your cutout (it really doesn’t have to be perfect but you need to be able to catch a bit of wool with it…obviously!) sand the whole hook, paying particular attention to the base of the cutout part to ensure your wool doesn’t snag.

Here’s mine after it had been sanded.  Notice the angle of the cutout, cutting across the grain rather than into it.  And the other side:

That’s really all there is to it.  It just takes practice to get the shape right.

As a bonus, you could make your own knitting needles.  I cut all of my dowel into 18cm lengths before I realised but all you would need to to is sharpen one end until sharp and stick a large bead or button to the other and then sand really well … shh, don’t tell the knitting needle manufacturers!

I made a paperweight! decorated a stone and called it a paperweight!

It’s just a painted stone with varnish to protect the paint.  I’ve learned a couple of things in the process – black felt tip isn’t black, it’s blue and clear varnish isn’t clear, it’s brown.

Anyway, it works as a paperweight, which wouldn’t be hard really because the unpainted stone would have worked just as well!

Recently in the MadeStuff house there has been a tidying up effort.  Many of our supplies have been stored in the one room that we really need to renovate so Alasdair has been busy boxing up supplies and moving them to another room while I’ve been busy making new things out of old supplies!

Last year we had a load of photos printed for sale at craft fairs and spent many hours mounting them.  There’s only so much mounting that you can stand so naturally there were some left over.  Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been making notebooks with the leftovers and I want to share with you how to make them.

The first thing you need to do is find a nice size of photo (ours are 6×8) and remove any white space from the top and bottom.

Then you need some paper that is cut to be bigger than your photo height and width, quite a bit bigger or you’ll struggle to cut the pages square.  You need several sheets of paper (I had 7 to give my book 28 pages).

Fold the photo in half widthways and mark 1cm intervals right down the middle of the fold (on the unprinted side).  Try and leave the same amount of space at each end.

Fold your paper in half and place each sheet of paper on top of the other, with the photo on top (wrong side up).

Take a large book such as the phone book, or I used the Screwfix catalogue and open it towards the middle.  Place your pile of paper and photo so the the fold of the pile sits in the spine of the book.

Take a dressmakers pin, or drawing pin, or any sort of pin (you might have the proper tool, I don’t) and stick it through the pile of paper at the marked 1cm intervals.  Make sure each hole goes all the way through.

Once all of the holes have been made take the photo from the top of the pile and put it on the bottom, photo side out.

Take a long length of strong thread and start sewing a running stitch through the holes to sew the pages together.  When you get to the last hole, sew all the way back to the top again.  Secure with square stitches and cut the end off.  You could also attach beads to the ends for a decorative bookmark.

Close the book over and use a paper cutting knife to trim the edges square all the way through.  If you’ve got access to a guillotine then I suggest you use that to save your hands the pain of cutting through pages and pages of paper.

Put the closed notebook under something heavy to encourage it to stay closed.

That’s it…seemed easier to do than to write down so I hope that’s easy enough to follow.

I added some nice cellophane and button packaging which you could do if you want to give one of your hand bound books as a gift.

This is more of a showing off post because I’ve just realised that for a lot of people there actually might not be enough time before the big day to execute this plan…store it in your mind for next year though.

So, it’s close to Christmas and you’ve been really good.  You’ve got all of your shopping done and you’ve pre cooked everything that can be…well done, you’re doing a lot better than me.  I know you’re sitting at home wondering what on earth to do with all your spare time between now and then.  Why not make your own Santa plate?

It’s really easy once you know how and thankfully Cathe at Just Something I Made came to the rescue with the best tutorial and pre-measured text for turning a dreary old plate into a wonderful Emma Bridgewater-esque plate for the kids to leave Santa and the Reindeer’s goodies on.  While you’re on Cathe’s site, check out some of the other great crafts she has turned her hand to…I’m seriously in awe of her creativity.

All you need is a porcelain pen, plate, 24 hours and a cooker.  See, this is why it’s more of a showing off post because there just isn’t the time unless you happen to have a black porcelain pen lying around or you want to risk not leaving the plate for the recommended time before cooking it.

Anyhow, because really I was just giving it a go when I started out I used the most cracked and chipped plate we had…apologies in advance for the dire state of the plate you are about to behold…but isn’t it so cool and I have actually started to dream about other possibilities.

Such was my lack of faith in anything that involves a fan oven I took this picture before I cooked the plate but I’m pleased to report that using the rule of heating the oven to ten degrees less than suggested avoided disaster and this plate has since been cooked, washed and dried and indeed scratched with a fingernail (to check it) and it’s still the same as it was pre-cooking.

Finally, it’s time to decorate the cake!  It’s only been two months but now is the moment we’ve been waiting for, it’s time to finish it in advance of the main event … the eating!

First thing you need to do is turn your cake onto an appropriately sized cake base or plate, I use one of the thicker bases rather than the flimsy cardboard jobs you can buy.

Adding the marzipan

Some people don’t like marzipan, and some freaks even remove it from the cake before eating it.  This is sacrilege of the highest order and you must not be tempted to skip this step!  The sweet almond flavours are an essential part of the cake and serve to combine with the rich fruity and rummy goodness of the actual cake to set the taste buds into overdrive!

Personally I’m not making my own marzipan or icing this year, although I have done in the past, it’s not entirely essential.  If you do want to make your own marzipan (and it really is worth it) then you can find the recipe in Part 2, here.  No, this year I’m using the supermarket stuff for speed and simplicity (although I’ll give you the Royal Icing recipe below if you want to try your hand at it).

You’ll need:

c. 600g marzipan
Apricot Jam
Icing Sugar

1. Thinly spread the jam over the top and sides of your cake, this is the ‘glue’ that’s going to bind your marzipan to the cake.
2. Dust your surface, rolling pin, and marzipan with icing sugar to stop the marzipan sticking to everything.
3. Roll your marzipan to the desired depth, I normally aim for c. 2mm in thickness, although it’s not a huge issue.
4. Using a sharp knife and the base of the cake tin in which you baked the cake cut a circle out of the marzipan  and place it on top cake.
5. Roll out your remaining marzipan into manageable sized rectangles the height of your cake and apply the around the sides, pinching the edges together so that your entire cake is covered.
6. Using any left over marzipan roll some thin sausage shapes to pack out the inevitable gaps around the bottom, remember it doesn’t need to be pretty we’re just looking to get a good shape so that when we cover it with the icing it does look good!
7. Dust your hands with some icing sugar and run them over the marzipan to smooth any lumps and bumps as best you can.

Adding the icing

For me Christmas Cake means royal icing, indeed, the royal icing we had when I was little was fairly inedible due to it’s concrete consistency … honestly, you could have used it for home building!  Fortunately icing has never been my strong point so I tend to opt for the shop bought stuff which is a lot softer.

If you’re making your own icing you might like to try the recipe below for which you’ll need:

• 3 egg whites
• c. 750g / 1.5lb / 5 cups of icing sugar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 – 1.5 tsp glycerine (optional)

1. Whisk the egg whites until they’ve gone nice and frothy but not so much that  they go stiff (remember it’s not meringue we’re making!).
2. Gradually beat in half of the icing sugar.
3. Add the lemon and glycerine and gradually beat in the remaining icing sugar until it stands in peaks.
4. Cover your bowl with a damp cloth and leave it for a couple of hours before using.

As I’ve said I tend to use shop bought icing, although avoid the pre-rolled stuff like the plague, honestly it’s more trouble than it’s worth.  We’re essentially looking to do the same with the icing as we did with the marzipan except in a single piece.

1. Think calm thought, remember, there’s no point ruining your day by stressing about a cake.  If you have any minor decorating cock-ups I’ll give you a clue at the end on how to hide them.
2. Thinly spread some more apricot jam on top of the marzipan, again this is your ‘glue’, you could also use a thin solution of sugary water if you prefer.
3. Roll out your icing so that it’s large enough to cover the top and sides of the cake when draped over it.
4. Carefully centre your icing on top of the cake and smooth the top.
5. Starting at a single point begin smoothing the icing down the sides of the cake slowly and carefully working your way around the cake avoiding any creases.
6. A point will come when a crease is inevitable, make a vertical cut at the peak of the crease folding one part under and trimming off the excess.  Smooth the edges together.  Do this for the remainder of the sides of your cake.
7. Dust your hands with icing sugar and smooth the icing down aiming to get rid of any obvious lumps and bumps.
8. Add any decorations you may wish to have on your cake.  If any need stuck on make up some thin icing using water and icing sugar.

As you can see, I’ve kept things simple with a light dusting of icing sugar, a couple of wee decorations and a cake ribbon around the sides.

The ribbon hides any rough edges where the creases got the better of you and the icing sugar hides the fact that the evil pre-rolled icing I was landed with came apart in the middle!  Personally I’m not overly concerned about how the cake looks, so long as it’s vaguely Christmas cake like.  For me it’s all about the flavour and from that point-of-view this really is The best Christmas cake in the world .. ever! as proven by the self-confessed Christmas cake haters who even enjoy a bit of it’s fruity, rummy, Christmasy goodness!

I hope you and yours enjoy the cake you’ve made as much as me and mine will enjoy this one … Merry Christmas!

Parts 1, 2, and 3 can be found here, here, and here.