half baked

It isn’t one of this year’s challenges but I did say I would keep going with the baking. I’ve been keeping myself quite busy on this as I wanted to start making more of my own bread and I also wanted to make my own musli bars (I spend far too much on these) - you can see what I’ve been making below.

For the bread I’ve just been making basic bread mixes – white buns and wholemeal buns – these are just white or brown bread flour with a bit of yeast, salt, oil and honey. The white buns went very well but I had some problems activating the yeast on the wholemeal ones – I knew thing hadn’t gone so well when the bread didn’t rise whilst proving but decided to bake them anyway just to see what the result was – as you can see in the photo it resulted in some very small buns with the density of iron!

For the muesli bars I went with two different recipes, one from weight watchers and one from Nigella Lawson. They both mainly consist of seeds, nuts, dried fruit and porridge oats. The main difference between the two was where the weight watchers recipe uses butter and honey to bind the ingredients together the Nigella one uses condensed milk. Both sets of bars taste very nice (even if I do say so myself) – but the Nigella recipe tastes nicer to me. The other plus on this is that the ingredients cost less than 7 pounds for 32 bars – quite a lot cheaper than the ones I’ve been buying at sainsbury’s.

I’ll keep going with the bread and post further progress here in the weeks/months to come

 

 

raw white rolls.......

 

 

 

a little odd shaped - but risen well

 

 

 

brown bread cannon balls

 

 

 

missing muesli bars

 

 

 

the Nigella version

 

 

 

the weight watchers version (with one piece missing for quality control purposes)

 

a crafty blog post

We’re into February and am conscious that I don’t want to get to the end of this year without completing the (now extended) 12 labours. I’ve been making a start on the learn a craft challenge – it was agreed at New Year that as part of this making a friendship bracelet for each of the friends present should be part of completing this.

I was aware of friendship bracelets when I was a kid (and I may even have made one before though my memory is pretty hazy) but I’d be lying if I really understood what they are all about so I’ve done a little reading on the subject. To summarise what I’ve found out……….

·         The origin of friendship bracelets is believed to be from the indigenous populations of central and southern America though there are also examples from Qin dynasty china.

·         They became popular in the US from the 1970s when they were worn at demonstrations, their popularity then spread around the world.

·         There are lots of designs though the basic form is two threads in a series of double knots.

·         If you are given one, once you have put it on you are not allowed to take it off until it wears out (then you’re supposed to make a wish or something – I hope the judging panel realise what this means! You have to wear the brightly coloured teenage girly bands that I make for you until they drop off!! I promise to find the most hardwearing thread I can!!

 

These are some of the designs that can be done - I might have

 to work up to this level of complexity

Ann sent me a link to a webpage on how to make basic bracelets soon after NYE and Laura took me shopping for the bits and pieces I needed (on Oxford Street – on January 2^nd – it was a bit busy to say the least). It took me a few weeks to start giving it a go but you can see my first goes in the photos below – one of the bracelets I’ve made so far is more of a friendship bookmark but I’m not too disappointed with my efforts so far.

 

assembly - bit tricky not just making a gigantic knot

 

 

One friendship bracelet and one friendship bookmark - 6 more to go!