Halloween night

 

Halloween is here and daddy is not and we are missing his input on pumpkin carving and jumping out on us behind doors and doing his scary sounds round the house.

Baker Ross Halloween

This week we are teaming up with Baker Ross to explore all things that go bump in the night, not only that Baker Ross have got 50% off selected Halloween goodies to help your spooky parties go with a scream.

Our first treat was a set of dark and mysterious skeletons supplied with some scratching sticks and ribbons.

Sophie and I got busy scratching away having fun making lots of patterns and shapes on these dark characters until we showed off lots of lovely rainbow patterned skeletons.

Yogurt pot pumpkin lights

We were munching our way through some pots of Activia yogurt  and i noticed what a great shape pot it was just perfect for making pumpkins, so the craft cupboard doors were opened and Sophie and i got to work.

Friars Square Craft market

Saturday saw the first of the Craft fairs kick off and what a great start for a great cause, one of my crafty buddies did a pop up craft fair for CLIC Sargent and raised over £700 for the charity how wonderful.

Lakeland Fairy projects

We are having so much fun today creating Dolly Peg Fairies and Princesses from Lakeland

Sophie's first concert

For Daddy as he is working away at the moment and he missed Sophie's first concert for the Harvest festival  where she learnt with her class 5 songs in only 2 and a bit weeks.  Jump 5 mins in for the singing part

Banoffee Cupcake soaps

My latest creation drying on the racks waiting to be ready i am feeling happy as i have a few orders in from a gift shop as well a potential celebrity chef who i am seeing next week and i have made these especially for her.

Fourth Clandestine cake club

 Today saw the Fourth gathering of the Clandestine cake club with a theme around bountiful harvest and we had 8 wonderful cakes to taste.

Making mozzerella

Sophie and I are busy in the kitchen making mozzarella  if you remember our last cheese making exercise was really easy and very tasty home made goats cheese.

Having the chance to make some of our favorite cheese was most welcome and teaming up with Lakeland we got a fab kit.  Most importantly the kit was a recipe book, a thermometer, rennet, cheese moulds and some cheese cloth too, Although the moulds and cloth are not for mozzarella.

We started out by measuring out the milk and heating this to 32c using the thermometer to gauge the temperature we added lemon juice and rennet and the warm milk curdled in front of our eyes much to the amusement of Sophie who has renamed this to lemon cheese.

After 30 mins waiting for the rennet and milk to do its job the mixture had turned into curds and whey where this was then cut into 2cm cubes and drained out into a sieve and leave for 15 mins and then turn, adding some salt to give the cheese some flavour.  it is very important not to stir or mix the curds up to much.

 Then its time to form the mozzarella its a good idea to have a jug of cold water to hand.  We divided the curds into portions, ours didn't come out cubed curds just curds and then cooked them in the microwave for 30 secs, we saw all the protein break down and more liquid come out which we tipped away, we then had to microwave again for another 20 secs to be able to knead the cheese into balls

As we formed the cheese into balls we squeezed out a little more liquid and we kneaded and squished the cheese and it became drier then we dropped it into the jug of water where it set we then chilled this in the fridge before eating

This was a really simple fun task with surprisingly little effort involved in making something very tasty to eat.  The cheese tasted very cheesy which surprised us but what else could it taste of and we also melted some on a pitta bread pizza to see how it tasted cooked and it was thumbs up all round.