Showing posts with label homemade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homemade. Show all posts

Friday, 23 December 2011

Snowflake marshmallows

As you may have gathered by now I love Christmas, especially the time spent with family and friends. I have group of friends who I've been close to since I was at school and every year since we were 12 we've gone out for Christmas dinner. People have come and gone over the years, but tradition has remained. We don't all buy presents for each other, we do a secret Santa instead, but every year I make a little something. This year I decided I wanted to have a go at marshmallows as I've never made them before and I'd bought some snowflake cookie cutters which I thought would make good snowflakes marshmallows!

The hardest part was finding the ingredients. Liquid glucose can allegedly be bought from 'all good chemists' but even in London it took me about 5 chemists to track it down. One tried to fob me off with something that cost £11+ (it should be more like £1) and another with Lucozade (because that's just the same). And although leaf gelatine is now more popular they didn't have any in my sainsbury's so I had to go to waitrose. You also need a sugar thermometer and electric stand mixer or whisk.

You start by soaking 9 leaves of gelatine in 140ml of water.

Whilst it's soaking you boil the 450g sugar, 200ml water and 1 tbsp of liquid glucose in a heavy based pan until it reaches 127C keep an eye on it and any children around as it is very hot and can also go beyond the temperature very quickly and potentially burn.

Whilst the sugar is turning into a lovely syrup put 2 large egg whites in your stand mixer and whisk until they form soft peaks (as always make sure you get no yolk in the egg whites and the bowl is scrupulously clean otherwise they won't whisk up).

When the sugar reaches 127C carefully slide in the gelatine and water. It will bubble and potentially spit. 127C is very hot and syrup sticks so careful is the important word here!

Now turn the mixer down to a low speed and slowly and carefully pour the syrup onto the egg whites trying to hit the 'sweet spot', so that the syrup is landing in the little dip just in front of the whisk. When all of the syrup is a 1tbsp of vanilla extract (you could also add food colouring at this stage but I've never seen coloured snowflakes so I left it white) and turn up the speed slightly. At this point the mixture will be quite runny but if you whisk for 5-10 mins as the bowl cools the mixture will thicken and become lovely and fluffy and glossy.

Once you think it looks amazing pour it into a tin which has been greased with a slick of flavourless oil and then drenched in cornflour and icing sugar and try and get the top fairly flat. The recipe said to use a tin 30cm x 20cm but for snowflakes this left the marshmallows too thick so I used another smaller tin as well, probably about 20cm x 15cm and this was perfect.

Leave to set for at least an hour.





I found it too sticky to turn out of the tin so I actually cut the snowflakes directl out of the tin with my cutter. I found I had to be almost rough with the mixture and use my fingers to prise it from the tin. Once they are out dust them in a mixture of corn flour and icing sugar to stop them sticking. You can also dust all of the off cuts and keep them for you!

Next time I am wondering about using the magic liner or even cling film (greased and drenched still). I got there in the end though and popped them into lakeland's clear gift bags, tied with a little present ribbon and a gift tag/Christmas decoration dangling.

I also made a couple of extra bags for stockings.

Recipe taken from James Martin on the BBC website. He put a layer of raspberries in the middle which sounds very yummy.




#letsmakechristmas

Monday, 19 December 2011

Heart Christmas Decorations

I've been making Christmas decorations with my mum. Red and white hearts to be precise, very scandi Christmas! Now I know that they are very clearly not food related but try are in keeping with the #letsmakechristmas theme and they really are quite easy to make. My mum is far better at sewing than I am but even my poor needle skills can cope with these! You can also you the same method for year round hearts to dangle off drawer handles, door knobs, pins etc. You can also stuff them with a little lavender or a few drops of fragrance to make hearts to put in chest of drawers between your clothes.

You will need:
Sheets of felt in Christmassy colours (we used red and white)
Other matching fabric if desired (we used white and red gingham)
Matching ribbon (we used red)
Small buttons (we used white)
Embroidery thread in matching/contrasting colour (we used red)
Bond-a-web
Padding
Some thin card (any colour)
A pencil or pen
Pins
Needle
Scissors
An iron

Start by drawing a template of a large heart and a small heart on the card. You can do it by eye, use a cookie cutter or print a picture of a heart off the computer. I prefer the rounder hearts for this than the longer pointy ones. You could also do stars or stocking shapes or anything you fancied really but I like the hearts.

Fold your felt in half and pin the large heart template to the felt. Cut around the template through the two layers of felt so that you are cutting the front and back of your heart at the same time. This will ensure that the hearts are the same size. If you do this stage with material it is a good idea to iron some bond-a-web onto the back of the material before cutting out the heart to make it a little stiffer. As felt is quite thick there is no need to do this step for felt.






Unpin the template from your hearts and put to one side.

Take the small heart template and draw around it onto the smooth side of the bond-a-web. Roughly cut the heart out leaving a bit of a border around be edge. Place the cut out heart on a piece of contrasting felt or material. Take an iron and iron the bond-a-web to the material for about 5 seconds. Check the material is stuff to the bond-a-web. If it isn't iron for a few more seconds until it is. Now cut around the small heart you drew so that you end up with a small material heart with bond-a-web stuck to it. Peel off the white layer of paper from the bond-a-web. It can be quite tricky to find an edge but be patient and you will.






Now take your two large hearts and place the small heart in the middle of one of them. Iron it on for about 5 secs or until it sticks.

Now pin the two hearts together with the one with the small heart on at the front. Take your needle and thread your embroidery thread onto it. Either a matching or contrasting colour is best.

Starting at the top in the middle carefully sew a basic running stitch around the heart about 5mm away from the edge. Take your time with this and try and make all of the stitches the same size as they will be on show. If they look too different or scruffy simply unpick one and try it again.






Leave a gap of a couple of cm at the top of the heart.





Take small pieces of padding and gently push them into the heart through the gap you have left. Push them into all of the edges of the heart but don't over stuff it. Once you are happy sew up the gap.

Finish the heart by pushing the needle through the whole heart from the back to the front in the top centre. Thread on a length of ribbon folded into a hook and a button. Sew the button and ribbon onto the heart (pushing the needle all of the way through the heart each time). Try to keep the holes of the button lined up horizontally so it is neat. Finish sewing the button on by ending up with the needle at the back of the heart and tie off your thread.






You can either use these as decorations for your tree or tie them to a long length of ribbon or rope to make a garland. Enjoy!

Here are the finished results:

I'm sorry about the photo being the wrong way around but it is the right way on my laptop and no matter what I do it seems to turn around again when I upload it here












Sunday, 28 August 2011

The best dinner ever?

I saw on Twitter that @mistertruffle had some English summer truffles in stock and as I had never cooked with truffles I thought it was worth a try.

The truffles come vac packed to keep them fresh and the delicious smell just hits you when you open the packed.




I wanted the truffle to be the star of the show so I decided to make a simple truffle pasta dish.

I started by making pasta. For anyone who hasn't made pasta it's a simple as a pile of flour, a pinch of salt and an egg cracked into a well and quite a lot of elbow grease! Once you've cracked the egg in just use a fork to gradually incorporate the flour until you get a good dough


Then knead until smooth and elastic and roll very very thin (translucent if possible) make sure you flour it really well to prevent any sticking


Fold in half, slice into thin strip and you're done. Jus point in plenty of salted boiled water for a few mins.



I then rubbed the bottom of my pan with a piece of cut garlic and gently heated slices of truffle in some good olive oil.


Added the cooked pasta, plenty of grated parmesan and a little of the cooking water. Served up and topped with some more truffle and parmesan. We both agreed it was absolutely delicious.