Two Crafty Brownies

Festive Wishes

Hello lovelies!

We are just popping in briefly to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We hope you all have a wonderful, restful break.

We would just like to say again that we appreciate you taking the time to read our blog. We are so grateful for your support!

We are taking a few weeks off from the blog to spend time with our families and to recharge our batteries ready for a new year full of new ideas and projects! We may still pop up occasionally on Instagram, Facebook or perhaps even Twitter so if you visit any of those social media platforms, we may very well bump into you. If not darlings, we'll see you on the other side!

Lots and lots of festive cuddles and kisses, 

Jenny and Lucy xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

 

Best Ever Cookie Recipe

Hello lovelies! Thank you for your lovely comments on my last post. I'm happy to report I am much calmer and happier having ‘Let Perfect Go’ and I haven't yet had to put the ironing in the boot of the car as Anne's sister does, though I am sorely tempted sometimes!

As always, we have been busy as you can see from Lucy’s Busy Report. We are always making, baking and now with the markets, and selling, things seem crazy at points!! Last Saturday and Sunday we were at the gorgeous Sutton House in Hackney, pictured above.

This Saturday, my parents arrive from Malawi, and my eldest boy comes home from university for the holidays, and I cannot wait! I love having cookies, and puddings, and delicious bakes to pull out of my hat over this period, and have found it's really worth getting ahead with this a couple of months before. My freezer is my best friend during this time, and I make sure I have logs of cookie dough, bags of crumble topping and discs of pastry ready to whip out and bake. I even make mince pies and freeze them raw, to bake as necessary.......

I have been searching for years for the perfect cookie recipe. This is for when you want a large, chewy, comforting snack, and I have finally found it!! I love that you can customise this recipe with different flavourings, freeze it in a log and then cut into slices and bake whenever you need to. My recipe is adapted from the Coleman Cookies in my favourite biscuit book, Kate Shirazi’s Cookie Magic. Lu and I use her Basic Butter Biscuits over and over, I use the gingerbread recipe, and I can highly recommend this book.

So, without further ado, I give you (in my humble opinion.....)

The Best Cookie Recipe Ever………

This amount makes around 30 cookies, depending on their size of course.

What you need is:

250g butter

300g sugar

300g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

A pinch of salt

Various flavourings, see below…….

What you do is:

(I think the trick that makes these different from every other cookie I've made is that you melt the butter and sugar instead of creaming it.)

So start by weighing your butter and sugar into a pan, and melt gently over a low heat.

Once cooled a bit, whisk in the 2 eggs.

Stir in the flour, salt and baking powder, and whatever flavourings you are using.

Let the dough cool a bit further.

At this point, you could spoon walnut size lumps onto two baking trays, leaving plenty of room as they spread a lot. What I usually do is pop the pan in the fridge, and once it has cooled for a while, I tip the dough onto a large piece of clingfilm, roll it into two logs, and freeze it. When you are ready to eat warm, fresh, squidgy cookies, take a roll out, wait 5 minutes, cut it into 1 cm slices and bake as below.

Bake at 180C for around 12 minutes, keeping an eye until you have worked out what works for your oven.

Cool on a cooling rack and pour yourself a big cup of something!!

Flavours

Chocolate Chip: stir in 200g chopped milk, white or dark chocolate

White chocolate and Cranberry: 100g white chocolate chips and 100g dried cranberries

Ginger: add 2 tsps stem ginger syrup to the butter/sugar, 2 tsp ground ginger to the flour and mix in 100g chopped stem ginger

Next I'm going to try cherry and almond…...I'll let you know how that goes!! I'm also working on a oaty/peanut butter version.........

I hope you are finding some time to do whatever makes you feel happy at this rather trying time of year, darlings!

much love, Jenny xxx

End of Christmas Term Busy Report!

Hello friends!

This is one of those ‘coming to the end of term madness busyness’ posts. I have been here before - you may remember this post? Most end of terms are pretty hectic but I have learnt to say ‘no’ a lot more, which means that although there is still so much to do in this lead up to Christmas and I occasionally feel overwhelmed, I know it could be worse!

So here is my ‘Busy Report!’

As you know from Jenny’s lovely, heartfelt post last week, we have sold our handmade wares at one market and we are now busy preparing for the second. This very weekend we have a stall on Saturday and Sunday at Sutton House, a beautiful tudor town house in the East of London. I have been making some sweet fabric yoyo and covered button headbands. You know we like fabric yoyos and covered buttons!……

Don't forget if you are in London we have a link to a Sutton House 2 for 1 offer above.

Last weekend it was an absolute pleasure to attend Allison Sadler’s The Cosy Christmas Club Workshop. Unfortunately, the Other Brownie had to work and I missed her terribly but I braved it without my business other half and did have a great time. Allison gave us some ideas about Christmas styling by demonstrating how she styles her Christmas table. She uses both natural and edible objects such as eucalyptus, pine cones, figs and apples; lovely mismatching glassware; unhemmed linen napkins and the soft and cosy glow of light from lots of candles. The overall look is simple yet elegant, rustic yet tasteful, homely yet stylish! I also decorated my own wreath with orange slices, eucalyptus and other bits of foliage I’m afraid I don’t know the name of! Here are some pics……

And although this cake was in the collage above, it deserves to be drooled over separately. This beauty was made by Allison’s daughter, who is obviously a baking genius!..........

Spurred on by the workshop, I decided to get to work on one of many ‘works in progress’. I had been working on another kind of festive wreath using some fab stripey red and white yarn - so Christmassy!. As soon as I saw it I envisioned a wrapped yarn wreath. I made little yarn wreaths last year but I had a larger polystyrene wreath lying around (like you do!) so I used that, added some felt holly and red and silver berries on wire and I am quite pleased with the result. I think I will hang this one inside somewhere and the wreath I made at the workshop on my door. It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas!......

Recently, I have also been doing a spot of home brewing. I was so disappointed when we didn't find any sloes on Hampstead Heath where we had found an abundance last year, that I decided to brew up something different. I used this cranberry vodka recipe and I was slightly taken with the look of sugar on cranberries....

It takes a couple of weeks to brew which is just right for the Christmas hols. I look forward to enjoying this with tonic water and ice, whilst relaxing with my feet very firmly up!

In an effort to save some dosh this Christmas, I have also been making a few little gifts for friends and family. These cute earrings are made from charms. I nicked this idea from Jenny!.........

And these rings are made from buttons. I carefully cut the backing off the button using a junior hacksaw, sanded the back to smooth it and stuck it to the ring using epoxy jewellery glue. I love the result - I think I might make some more……..

Each year, I design our family Christmas cards. I usually wait until an idea hits me, which I hope is before the end of November. Not a good approach I know! Well this year, inspiration came in the form of adhesive hessian - yes honestly, there is such a thing! I saw it here and knew I had to have it. This is what I have done with it…….

And last but by no means least, I have made some gingerbread for a special school event......

What could be more festive than listening to the school choirs sing Christmas songs, whilst sipping on mulled wine and eating gingerbread and mince pies?! With that lovely image in mind, I end the Busy Report! One week and a bit to go until the hols and I'm definitely counting. Have a wonderful weekend and if you are doing Christmassy things, enjoy!

Lots of festive love,

Lucy xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Let 'Perfect' Go.....

Hello lovelies! How are you doing this week? Round here, as usual, things are busy, busy, busy. The last few weeks included a flying visit to Scotland to pick up a very special birthday gift for hubby......his new kilt! It's his very first one, and with all the regalia on, he cuts a very dashing figure. We had a lovely couple of days away with his dad, including a delicious meal at La Potiniere, a fab little restaurant in Gullane, in the Scottish borders. It was wonderful to be out of the city for a bit, walk by the sea and breathe in the country air.

Back in London, I've been drooling over Lucy’s Chocolate Stout Cake. Didn't it look absolutely delicious?

In my house we have a traditional Christmas cake. I love fruit cake. My men are not huge cake eaters, so I just have to please myself, right? And my parents, who come every Christmas love it too, in fact my mum takes whatever is left back to Malawi with her. I love the idea of them sitting on their veranda, with exotic birds flying through the garden, eating my cake! So this post was meant to be all about my Christmas cake, (that's last years cake, below)

However disaster has struck. Having carefully got my old, stained recipe book out to make a shopping list on Monday, I cannot now find it. I have looked high and low, in likely and unlikely places, and it has just vanished. I have had this recipe for years. I can't remember where it came from, but I do know I have modified it. I am not so keen on mixed peel, so I replaced it with stem ginger, and tweaked various other things. So there is no way I will be able to replicate it…….

After much internal debate, more searching, googling other recipes to see if I can find a similar one, I have decided to let it go for now. I'm sure it'll turn up, but for now, I am going to bake a different cake and hope for the best. I used this recipe as it seemed closest to mine, and lets you choose what fruit to put in.

This little episode matches what is happening on a larger scale in my life at the moment. I have been feeling increasingly unsettled and anxious, especially with Christmas approaching. The thing is, darlings, I love Christmas. But every year as it approaches, I find myself getting more and more stressed, rushed and further away from the calm, uncluttered, peaceful holiday that I crave.

To be sure, there has been a lot going on. This is only the second Christmas with the blog, and Lucy and I have had two markets to prepare for as well as opening our shop.

The first market was last Sunday. It was run by Bust Craftacular UK, and we have been as visitors a few times. It is a busy, bustling craft market in a hall in Bethnal Green, and we were thrilled to be accepted. Here are some pictures of setting up, (doesn't Lu look cute?) and our stall.

In the days before we had been madly making new products to sell, like these Christmas decorations and bookmarks. It was crazy and wonderful all at once. We loved being out there, and meeting friends from social media, and other crafters and makers.

But all of these things, the blog, the markets, Christmas have left me feeling increasingly unsettled. I feel like I am trying hard, but it's just not good enough.

By a funny coincidence, this week, when I am finding it all so hard, an artist that I have long admired, Kelly Rae Roberts, had a huge sale of her online courses. She is a mixed media artist, who fell into painting without any prior experience, left her job as a medical social worker to follow her dream. I have been reading her blog, and following her story for years, and have always really admired her for taking that big step. Her courses have always been financially out of my reach, until last tuesday when she offerd 90% off her courses, and I decided to sign up for her mixed media painting course.

This course is about learning to do collage with mantras, and there are various exercises you go through to figure out what mantras you are going to paint. Goodness, it has been hard and emotional work. These exercises have made me realise that I have been struggling for a while. Feeling I am letting people down by not being on top of things. And the crazy thing is that the only person who is pointing the finger is me! I have realised that in my quest for things to be perfect (as decided by me), I am constantly failing to meet the standards I have set for myself. And in that struggle to meet unrealistic goals, I am neglecting my own health and well being.So it's time to stop setting myself up for failure. Time to let go of the idea of the perfect Christmas, the perfect house, the perfect gifts for everyone. I am doing my best, and actually? That is enough. Below are my first two mantras. I have a feeling I'll be saying them to myself a lot over the next few weeks.........

Well, that's all from me today, lovelies. I really hope you are coping better than me in the run up to Christmas. If you have any advice or comments, please do leave them below, I would love to hear from you. In any case, I am quite sure that, like me, you are doing your best too. After all, we all have our own battles to fight, don't we?

Take care darlings, 

Jenny xxxxx