My Crafty Little Moments: Happiness and Decisions

The week started with more baking in anticipation of people calling around for tea and cakes, so I made some Chocolate and Almond biscuits, homemade biscuits are just so much better than shop bought and at least you know what is going into them, although sometimes this isn't such a good thing as you know exactly how much sugar you are eating!! :-

2oz dark chocolate cut into chunks
4oz butter
1 good dessertspoon of golden syrup
1 1/2 oz whole unblanched almonds
3oz demerara sugar
4oz self raising flour
pinch of salt
4oz porridge oats

Preheat the oven to 170c.
Chop into 1/4" (5mm) pieces the chocolate and the almonds, I use the unblanched almonds as I think they are much sweeter, put them to one side, then in a saucepan melt gently melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup.
Sift the flour and salt into a big mixing bowl, add the porridge oats and just over half of the chocolate and almonds, when all the ingredients in your saucepan have melted pour into the bowl and give a good mixing until thoroughly combined.
You will need two good sized baking sheets and onto them you take large walnut sized balls of the mixture and press on to your baking sheet to become flattened rounds measuring about 2" rounds, make sure you give enough space between then to spread.
The remaining nuts and chocolate your press onto the top and then pop the baking sheets into the pre heated oven for 15 minutes, take out of the oven and leave to cool on the baking sheets, if you try to remove them at this stage they will just break up into a little crumbly mess. When cool use a pallet knife to remove.

These little beauties didn't last long in the biscuit tin and I have to confess it was me that ate the majority, and I wonder why I have put on half a stone since Christmas???!!!

Next was a very quick apple scone which is great with cream or custard as a pudding as well as just a simple slice of cake :-

1 medium cooking apple chopped
pinch of salt
8oz self raising flour
2oz sugar
1tsp baking powder
2oz butter
1/4 pint milk

Pre heat oven to 200c.

Sieve the flour and baking powder into a bowl, add the sugar and rub in the butter until it looks like a crumbly mixture, drop in the apple and mix then add the milk and then get your hands in and knead until you get a dough, then I just put it straight onto a baking sheet to form a kind of rough circle about 1/4" thick, brush with milk, sprinkle with sugar and mark into 8 then into the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Finally my usual Victoria cream sponge

Friday night we went to a lovely newly opened Bistro with friends and I decided to wear my lovely Dorothy shoes :)

What a lovely evening we had, its so good sometimes to go out and leave the children behind so we can play at being a couple and and not just a mum and dad. The evening ended with me being asked to knit or crochet a dishcloth for our friend who is an MP so along with also knitting dishcloths for my barrister friend this we thought would also look good on my C.V.
When my husband is asked what I do for a living he always says she is a Magistrate and knits dishcloths
for barristers!!!!!

Saturday morning was lovely so I did my ritual roam around the collectors market and this week came away with a lovely little leather collar stud case which had a lovely selection of old studs in it, this will look lovely in my display cupboard and even better if I can beg my dads old leather collar box which has my grandfathers initials on.

When I was wandering around I was stopped by a lady who asked my where I had bought my brooch I could feel myself flushing as I told her that I had made it myself, I couldn't believe that someone would be kind enough to comment on it

I then went into my favourite shop Bibelot to buy some of there lovely buttons, they must think I am very fussy as I had all of there jars out sorting though and picking out just the little ones

The lovely girls in the shop also commented on my brooch and asked if I had ever thought of making things to sell, as they sell locally produced items in their shop, so theres an idea I have been giving a lot of thought to.

With the weather going from this