Lebkuchen

Oops sorry, that was a premature goodbye - allow me one more post! Just made some lebkuchen, using this recipe. Great prezzies for random family friends that I'll be seeing over the next couple of days.

So long!

The gift of lemons

Hello everyone. I have been mad sewing allsorts (mainly pyjamas, a couple of men's shirts & boxer shorts) but haven't time to post photos yet ... however, here's a pressie that is really easy & ever so tasty - homemade lemon curd.

You need to be prepared by having a couple of empty jars, but everything else is really straight forward, generally from your store cupboard plus the key ingredient of big fresh lemons.

I used this microwave recipe here, & whilst it probably still took 10 mins or so cooking time, there was no sticking - it was super easy. There's more on my blog here.

I still need to decorate the jars & make individual labels & there is a warning - it's so good you'll want to make two batches so that you can keep some yourself (I did - as shown above!)

Raspberry jam for teachers

Our school is of the 'takes a village to raise a child' philosophy and it being such a small school (under 50 kids) they all have a part in the education and welfare of my girls.

So when I make a christmas gift I can't just make it for the teacher herself, it has to be for all 9 of them.   From itinerant hearing support, to the office lady to the teachers and principal.  They're all lovely people.

So this year. 

JAM.

2 kilos of frozen raspberries / 2 kilos sugar / squeeze of lemon

Of course I just had to try it out !

Delicious.

And the cost of it all up was $30 for 12.5 jars of jam, including the jars which I bought new from a $2 shop, for $1 each.  Even cheaper if I would have had a nice collection of jars, but they were such a motley bunch that I couldnt go there for gifts !

lore
x

Biscotti

Last weekend my friend Anna hosted Craft Club, where we baked hazelnut and chocolate orange biscotti. They were surprisingly easy to make and taste scrummy! We ordered some bags to wrap them in off ebay, bought some brown paper luggage tags from WH Smiths, used Anna's vintage typewriter to write the labels (with no delete button, there was much cursing and blinding involved), and tied them up with pretty ribbon. Perfect for those random relatives you need to get Christmas prezzies for but don't really know very well (eg. my sister-in-law's step-gran)!

Love from Tilly x

Yuletide offerings

Greetings fellow crafty ones and thank you Tilly for starting this excellent blog up!  Im Molly from Molly and Mango and crafting it up this year for yule will be going via the home baked goodies route!



 A couple of years ago, I sent round Rich Fruit Cakes wrapped in festively red muslin cloth, which were immensely successful (although I had trouble convincing a few people I had really made them!) so when the Molly-Porn arrived last month (aka the Lakeland Catalogue), I was inspired by their several pages of homemade christmas cookies and chocolates to do festive cookies for family and friends. I especially like the idea of these jewel trinket biscuits:

They featured a lot of great shaped cutter sets and silicone cases but when I went to one of their stores to buy, none of what I wanted was in stock yet, boohoo Lakeland. (That said I picked up 30 poinsetta cellophane gift bags for £2.50)  So a good friend tipped me off about TK Maxx and I found not only did they have a massive range of christmas cookie cutters but they were a fraction of the price of Lakeland. Last week I found a version of Lakeland's star tree cookers in Tiger (the latest Scandinavian high street import) for just £1.

And the luck didn't stop there... I love the traditional Gingerbread house and this time of year, kits are everywhere, but I wanted to build them from scratch so I dismissed those.  Then I found two great kits at TK Maxx containing just cutters which seemed like a great way to speed up the process and so this year's treats for the specials will be Gingerbread Houses after all (and filled with cookies!).  I'm about to start testing out recipes, so if anyone has any recommendations, I would love to hear them.

And if you want to make your own Gingerbread House, check out this amazing blog, Sweetopia, to get your creativity flowing.  I came across this site while looking for inspiration for icing my cookies, and when the royal icing tutorial featured owl cookies foremost, I knew I'd found the place!  Who could resist these details:

      details

More on the gingerbread houses here.

Looking forward to sharing pics with you and seeing what you have all been making!  All the happiness of the season to you and yours.