Category: food and Drink

food and Drink

sticky fingers…

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)28 Comments

…is what I have right now from having spent the afternoon making chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream for Amy’s school spring fair tomorrow.

Luckily there were 3 that wouldn’t fit into the cake boxes; one for Amy, one for H and one for Toby and me to share. He’ll lick the buttercream off and I’ll be left with the cakey bit, which suits me fine right now as I’ve already licked the spatula and the bowl and the thought of more buttercream is a little sickly right now!

Well, I better go and do the washing up – I seem to have made rather a lot of it! Wishing you a fun weekend wherever you are.

food and Drink · general stuff

sweeties!

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)39 Comments

Firstly I want to say a humongous thank you for all of the kind and compassionate comments I’ve had recently. When I’m feeling a bit low I’ll read through them all again as I know they’ll always lift my spirits and I do feel very privileged to have such generosity and warm-heartedness sent in my direction. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Our half term break was over relatively quickly – probably because we made the conscious decision to keep very busy. The plan was to exhaust Toby by day in an attempt to get him to sleep through the night but boy is he stubborn and he still hasn’t slept a full night this year. We’re tweaking dosages on the melatonin and continuing to try out everything we can think of including amended bedtime routines and weighted blankets.

Anyway, in the course of half term keeping busy I did a lot of driving and during a particularly bad traffic jam on the M25 Amy and I decided that our car was not really properly equipped for long journeys – there were no sweeties in the car, not even a three year old, dust covered toffee lurking at the back of the glove compartment! Obviously this needed remedying quickly and we headed off to our local Mr Simms Olde Sweetie Shoppe – what an emporium of delights!

I got all nostalgic over chocolate limes and aniseed twists as we always had a sweetie tin in the car on childhood holidays. We finally settled on acid drops, fruit rock, butter mintoes, sherbert fruits and butterscotch and we found the perfect sweetie tin (part of a set) so we’re now properly equipped for our next road trip.

Have a sweet weekend won’t you x

crafts & knitting · food and Drink · general stuff

teacher’s pressies

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)24 Comments

This year I was really stumped about what to do for the teacher’s presents. It doesn’t help that between the two children there are 11 teachers, helpers and therapists to send presents to. Anyway, I’d done well with decorations for the bags having crocheted some sweet little snowflakes (very easy and quick) from a free pattern on Attic 24 but I was still feeling uninspired about what to actually put inside the bags. Thankfully you can always rely on bloggers to provide the perfect inspiration and thanks to a post on Soulemama which led me to Orangette our bags are now full of peppermint bark…

… our tummies too – it took a lot of trimming to get the block square ready for cutting!

I used 6 bars of Green and Blacks white vanilla chocolate and 3 bars of dark 70% cocoa (each 100gms), a teaspoon of peppermint essence, 9 tablespoons of double cream and 4 smashed up peppermint candy canes.

I followed the recipe although I did cheat and melt the chocolate in the microwave (on low setting). I spread the first layer of melted chocolate on a sheet of washable, reuseable teflon (I use this for all my cookie baking) and it just peeled off easy as anything at the end.

Chopping the block was hard and I got lots of uneven shapes. I may have made my layers too thick and the chocolate was splintering a bit but I think that adds to the charm of a homemade gift and the really mis-shapen ones just had to be eaten!

I’ll be scouring the shops and stocking up on peppermint candy canes so I’m ready to make more of this next year. It’s very easy and great for children to help with and is a hundred times easier and nicer to make than the candied chestnuts I slaved over last year. It is also absolutely delicious!

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PS: Thanks for all of the kind comments about my mittens on the last post. All three pairs are based on exactly the same pattern (a very generous free pattern at that) Endpaper mitts by Eunny Jang (which I can now recite in my sleep having made eight pairs based on it). I’ve written up my modifications over on ravelry so you can see what yarns I used and which different stitches.