Hand Painted Personalised Coasters

Last year we decided to get personal and creative with Christmas presents...

...a few years ago we had tiled our kitchen and had a lot of leftover tiles. We backed the tiles with felt and finished them off with own hand-painted designs, making a great personalised coaster Christmas present!

I was quite proud of how they turned out, I just hoped our friends and family loved receiving them as presents :)

Summer Fruit Crumble

Sorry just realised this is an awful photo!

Ingredients:

Topping:
100g flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

50g butter

3 tbsp demarara sugar

Fruit filling:

100g frozen summer fruits mix

1tsp corn flour

2tsp sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

1. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 5 or 190C.
2. Place the frozen fruits into the bottom of an ovenproof bowl.
3. Sprinkle over the fruit the cornflour, sugar and vanilla essence.
4. In another bowl, place all the ingredients for the topping and using your fingers, rub all ingredients together.
5. Sprinkle the topping over the fruit.
6. Bake in the oven for approximately 30-40 minutes or until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling away underneath.

Shortbread Biscuits

Shortbread Biscuits

Ingredients:

175g plain flour

50g ground almonds

50g caster sugar

150g butter

Method:

1. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 3 or 170C.
2. Mix together in a bowl the flour, ground almonds and sugar.
3. Rub in the butter to the dry ingredients and form into a dough. Knead lightly until the dough is smooth.
4. On a floured surface, roll out the shortbread to about 5mm thick and using a cutter, cut into whatever shapes you want to make.
5. Place them on a baking tray, spaced apart from the others.
6. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.
7. Place onto a wire cooling rack.

NB How about serving these with some fresh whipped cream and strawberries or raspberries.

Flapjack & Chocolate Nibbles

Ingredients:

110g margarine

150g soft brown sugar

1 tbsp golden syrup

110g self raising flour

300g oats

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 egg

100g chocolate

Method:

1. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4 or 180C.
2. Over a gentle heat melt the margarine, sugar and syrup in a small pan.
3. Add to melted mix to the dry ingredients and add the egg, then mix well until it forms a sticky mixture (it can take a while of mixing for it to gain the correct consistency).
4. In your hand pick up a small ball of the mix and form into a ball.
5. Place on a baking tray and bake for 15-20 mins until golden brown.
6. Cool on a wire cooling rack.
7. Melt the chocolate in a small bowl over a pan of boiling water.
8. Stir the chocolate until it has all melted.
9. Using a spoon, spoon the melted chocolate over one half of the nibbles.
10. Place on a piece of greaseproof paper to cool and set.

Strawberry Harvest

Ok, so it's been a little quiet on the blog front - for which there are many, many reasons...

...but I'm back.

Do you remember I planted some strawberries & also some lavender...?

Well, my lavender was stolen just as it was coming beautifully into bloom   :(

But, my strawberries have done very well...

...although the squirrels and slugs also seem to enjoy eating them too!

Melt In Your Mouth Cinnamon Cookies

Ingredients:

250g butter

150g caster sugar

2 egg yolks

200g plain flour

1tsp cinnamon

Method:

1. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 6 or 200C.
2. Place the butter and 50g sugar in a bowl and beat together until light and fluffy.
3. Add the egg yolk and mix thoroughly.
4. Mix in the flour to form a dough.
5. In another bowl mix the rest of the sugar and cinnamon together.
6. Roll a teaspoon of the dough in the cinnamon sugar until coated.
7. Place the ball on the baking tray and press a fork into top until about 1cm thick.
8. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.
9. Cool on a wire rack.

Another X-Stitch Masterpiece

My brother, Ed, got married late last year but chose to have a church blessing combined with their daughter's christening this summer....so I created this.

When I discovered about their celebrations planned for this summer, I set to and designed this cross-stitch for them, my brother is training to be an airline pilot and loves being in the mountains, so it was a really personal design.

There names and date of marriage was embroidered onto the aeroplane's banner and their daughter's name and date of birth below the baby bundle, where they are blanked out in this photo.

In the future if they have other children, I will also embroider their names and dates of birth onto it as well.

I was really pleased with the way it turned out and hope they treasure it as a memoir of their marriage and children.