Oooh....ahhh!

I know I promised a cake update but look at the lovely yarn I bought at the knitting show this weekend! Mostly the show was appalling, so crowded and so much crap...(who knew they made acrylic yarn in 5 lb balls?) and I have never been body checked by so many old ladies on their way to a cross stitch demo but there were treasures to be found. Treasures indeed!

The top yarn is Shimmer 5, 'Velvet Olive' by Colinette. Ooh and Ah. I wanted to wrap myself up in all the long flowing hanks at their display. So gorgeous. I think I am going to make a scarf out of this one because it's so shiny and so touchable. Pattern, tbc.

The bottom yarn is Koigu, for socks of course, from the lovely Socktopus stand. So gorgeous but unbelievably expensive!! Really shocking actualy. I hope it's as nice as everyone says.... I think monkey socks for these babies as the colourways should really show off the pattern.

I started this scarf over the weekend but I think I am going to abandon ship and start on the shiny Colinette for a cable scarf instead. I am not that thrilled with it. It's Rowan Cocoon but I don't really like how it feels knitted up. Maybe for a cool stripy hat instead? I only bought two balls, but still... waste not, want not.

Also, I was finally invited to join Ravelry! I am really excited about it and have been slowly putting up pics and patterns. I think it's going be very fun to geek out over everyone's photos and amazing talent in one cool place. Yay!

Hope you had a nice weekend!

Arianna

Knitting

Ok, see that wasn't so bad.

At least I broke the seal, ripped off the plaster and got back on the horse by posting in a insomniatic fit the other night. It's all good.

I have been staring at the link to this blog on my desktop with fear and trepidation for ages. I know it's something I really want to do, but really haven't been able to give it the time it deserves. Also, after reading all the amazing blogs out there and see how well everyone is able to communicate. Like I said, Loser. But I am working on it. It's a like a blogging rehab program ....

I will start out this update with what I have been knitting over the past few months. As creatively stunted as I felt earlier in the year, I have made up for it a million times over. I have a knitting up a storm and have a wish list of projects I want to do that is a mile long, let's hope my wallet will stretch as far! I have developed a serious addiction to luxury yarn. I have actually been spending more on yarn than on handbags and cocktails!! You can see the gravity of the situation. I figure if you spend hours, days, weeks handmaking something you might as well go for the best yarn you can afford! Also, there seem to be so many amazing patterns out there, and I intend to do them all! But let's back track and show you what I have been doing lately..

I will work backward. So, my friend Becky gave birth to a lovely little boy and here's the cabled (of course, I really can't help myself) blanket I made in a lovely deep Sky blue from Debbie Bliss, Cashmerino on 6mm needles.

It's lovely and soft, and long enough to wrap around the little 'un or put in the pram. It was a huge success and the new mommy and daddy loved it. Again, this is a blanket of my own design and I would be happy to share the pattern.

The next thing I knit was from the new Rowan New Shapes book, which is really great if you are thinking of getting it. So many stylish and easy, chunky knits for this season. That and the new Rowan Magazine 42 and I am overwhelmed with ideas...

I knit this pattern, named 'Sage', but instead of using Big Wool as directed I used up some wool I impulsively purchased at Loop earlier in the year. I had one of those reactions to Blue Sky Alpaca yarns that really makes grateful I learned to knit. It was so saturated in colour (a gorgeous anthracite grey) and so soft, I literally couldn't put it down. So I bought all 5 skeins. Even though I didn't have a pattern in mind. Yeah, I do that. Most of the time it works out... ha ha When I saw this pattern I knew it was the perfect one for my seriously soft and luxurious alpaca yarn. Luckily the gauge was the same knit on 15mm needles, but in my frenzy of finding just right pattern (finally!) I didn't clock that a ball of the fuzzy alpaca gorgeousness only yielded half as many yards as the Big Wool. Huh. Nice one. Well... a quick search around and I bought 4 more skeins. It's really, really a good thing that I love this shrug/wrap so much as it didn't end up being the cheap 5 ball project I was hoping for.

I have been obsessing about knitting some socks for ages. I love how crazy and excited sock knitters get (and you know who you are) when talking about socks so I thought I would give it a whirl. I can't say I was an instant convert, but it was really fun and they knit up surprisingly quick. I usually shy away from anything requiring me to use needles less than 5mm because I have the shortest attention span in the world. I stuck it out and voilà, I made a pair of socks for my honey!! Despite the hairy turning of the heel and sorting out the whole grafting thing, it was much easier than I thought. I will be trying it again, and this time using that monkey socks pattern that seems to get everyone so excited. This time it was just the standard pattern that came with the socks, but I used two circular needles (3.5mm) instead using Regia Silk Colour yarn in the blue colourway you see below. I can't even tell you how cool self-striping yarn is. It's like magic!

Here's the finished product and the happy recipient modeling them...

Tonight I am going to start on a new scarf as the weather is turning crisp and cool again. I picked up two balls of the new Rowan Cocoon this weekend. So soft and nice, mohair and merino. Yay! I am thinking of a striped scarf, in two shade of grey...one more like shale the other with black overtones, in an intricate cable pattern. I love cables so much it's obscene. I really had to restrain myself from putting cables into that shrug above. I can't help tweaking patterns, but this was the first time in ages that I actually knit something without tinkering around with it. Like I said... very short attention span.

Hope you had a great weekend!

A.

Loser!

I really haven't forgotten about my little blog here. I just ran out of things I wanted to talk about for a spell while life sort of unfolded. I haven't even had time to make it over to the new Whole Foods yet!

However, I have been cooking/knitting up a storm for the past 6 months. I did a few wedding cakes this summer, knit a few gifts, knit a few non-gifts and generally have been eating my way through most of central London. If anyone is still reading, I will post all about it all in the next day or so.

A.

Current WIP

After knitting yet another birthday gift (this time only a small black slip-through scarf in RYC Rowan Cashsoft but the photos just didn't come out), I am finally getting on with the project for me! I have been desperate to start this for AGES, but after a knitting gift frenzy I finally was able to sit down and start it....


As mentioned below, 'it' is a gorgeous cable wrap jacket from the Rowan book Scottish Inspirations. I have chosen a different wool than the pattern recommends (because I can't ever just follow a pattern), which is the lovely slate blue RYC Soft Tweed. It has lovely flecks of dark blue, yellow and pink on close inspection but from far away it looks like a dreamy blueish grey. It has a really nice texture and since I picked it up for £2 a ball it's a bargain to boot. It's a good thing too as I am going to need 16 balls of it!



After some serious maths, I have scaled the pattern down to my gauge and to accomodate for the much thicker new wool. It was a bit confusing at first, but now it's right on target and I sat on the sofa last night knitting like a demon possessed to try and make a dent in it. I really want to wear it when we go on holiday on the 24th so it's going to take a few evenings of this determination to make sure it happens. Luckily it's pretty much knit as one huge rectangle with slits to sew the sleeves in, so no faffing around with shaping and sewing up at the end. My dream project!!

Arianna

One Gift Down...

I finished a gift! Hurrah! This baby took me about a week to knit, and is sooo lovely to touch that I am thinking of making one for myself. I used two colours (one colour on each side) of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky and decided to just make a pattern up because I couldn't find the Ann Budd Aran one I liked so much and no other pattern I looked at had lots of cables. It really worked though because it turned out great and my friend absolutely loved it!! I am happy to share the pattern if you are interested.

Happy Knitting, xx Arianna

Comfort Knitting

The weather is downright nasty here in London and all I want to do right now is snuggle up on the sofa with a lovely blanket, a cup of tea and the serene click-click-click of my knitting needles. I have finally been brought back to the knitting place in my soul that loves winter and making lovely things out of soft and soothing wool.

Before my holiday in December I was having a creative block... I was about to embark on a lovely two week holiday and had not a single good knitting idea. Not one!! Too much stress can really kill my creative inspiration. Instead of knitting something for the sake of knitting I decided that during the holiday I would work on learning a new skill instead of a project... so I learned all about cabling finally and of course, now I want to do little else!

I was totally inspired by a photo I saw in last month's Living Etc. magazine and decided that making knitted cup cosies would not only make fantastic handmade gifts, but would seriously help me with my overflowing odd-ball yarn issue.

I really love them and i think they turned out fantastic! I bought the buttons from Liberty for a really special touch and the three recipients of these mugs went crazy for them!

I realise after looking on the internet that this isn't a new idea... but it was just what I needed to feel creative again!!

After giving these out and feeling properly knit obsessed again, I ventured out to the sales and picked up some fantastic yarn on sale and have a great list of projects now!

1. More Cup Cozies, and lots of them. So many January and February birthdays to knit for!

2. Socks. Sock knitters are evangelical about the fun in knitting your own socks so I am going to give it a go. I am not that keen on using such small needles, but I am going to at least try! I bought some fantastic self-fair isle-ing wool... I feel cozy just thinking of them!

3. A fantastic cable coat from the Rowan book Scottish Inspirations... it's like a blanket with sleeves. On a cold January day, nothing sounds better. It has the added bonus of lots of cables. I can't wait! I will be knitting it with a lovely grey-blue Rowan wool (Soft Tweed), again.... I am dreaming of comfort knitting at the moment.

I have also been baking as well..... Mr. H has become obsessed with making the perfect Ginger Snaps and we have tried 3 recipes so far but the perfect biscuit is a work in progress. I am sure we will try again this weekend and I will let you know what we come up with!

xx, Arianna

Les éclairs

The éclair lesson went really well! Here is a photo of the lovely Mrs. S putting the finishing touches on our éclairs.

We had a great time making them, and of course and even better time eating them! We first made choux pastry which Mrs. S found easier than she remembered.

For the recipes, I have a few comments. Recipes for pate a choux are always varied with two main differences between them that can radically change how your choux comes out.

The first recipe difference is where the main liquid is all milk. This is great as milk gives pastry very nice flavour and makes it brown really nicely. However, the protein the milk makes the batter heavier and it makes the air you beat in even more important for the puffing that goes on in the oven. Some recipes suggest using only water, other recommend using a split of half of each. Using only water will give a crisp blond coloured choux, but it won't taste as nice.

The second recipe difference is which flour to use. Again, some recipes call for plain or all-purpose flour and others use bread flour. The main difference being that the stronger the flour the more protein or gluten will form when you are beating the hell out of it in the mixer. Developing the gluten is important because it's the structure of the pastry and those expanding air bubbles need something to support them. However, too much can result in doughy, chewy pastry.

We decided that given all these differences, we would need more than one session to become true choux experts...(as if we needed an excuse!) We decided to try the recipe from the Culinary Institute of America Baking and Pastry book which uses all milk and bread flour. Go for the hardest one first I say! The first step of making the paste went really well. It combined easily and stuck to the pan sasatisfactorily. After cooking, it went straight into the Kitchen Aid for a bit of mixing to cool it down before adding the eggs. We added the eggs a bit at a time and did it only until the mixture came up as a soft, shiny, ribbony paste that I knew looked perfect. You really have to eye ball it because the right amount of eggs for choux pastry isn't always what is listed in the recipe.

Scraping it out of the bowl and into a large piping bag fitted with a large round tip, Mrs. S piped it onto the sheet pan lined with parchment in nice and tidy 4 inch lengths. (tip: use a ruler and a black marker to make the lines to guide you while piping, then flip over the parchment and it will be safe to use!)

This is where the drama begins and why I have upped my campaign to replace my crap oven, the éclairs didn't puff up enough. The did about a half-puff and honestly, they smelled really lovely and went a deep golden brown but they didn't do their thing nearly enough. (I really do blame my oven, as it's crap at keeping temperature during long baking times. And it's electric, which I genuinely hate for several reasons. Strangely, gas ovens aren't that popular here and I need to do some serious homework to find a good one to replace the stylish but unreliable one they installed in my flat when it was built.)

Because my oven didn't give them the reliable heat needed to expand the air bubbles for proper puffing up, the heavier-bread flour-whole milk recipe might have been too much. Next time we are going to try a half and half of bread and AP flour as well as half and half water and milk.

However, we decided to persevere even though we weren't thrilled with the pastry outcome. We made the most glorious pastry cream from the same book. It was flavourful, light and silky, but still rich and custardy enough. Just gorgeous!! We flavoured half with coffee extract from France called Trablit, which is what professionals use, or we could have made really strong sweetened espresso in a pinch. The other half we flavoured with 75gr of melted dark chocolate. We had a hard time not eating it straight from the bowl!!

We piped the cream into the pastry shells with a small pointed tip, after first poking in larger hole with a (clean) screwdriver. Then proceed to make the glaze. I also bought from France some white glazing fondant which is what all pastry shops use. I scooped it out of the tub into a bowl over a hot water bath and warmed it gently until it was of glazing consistency. We did the same method of flavouring as with the pastry cream and again, they turned out perfectly.

We had so much fun making these and Mr. S and Mr. H were well impressed! We resolved to try again because to me, half the fun is in the making of things like this and I really would have been much happier if they puffed up all the way. I don't profess to be an expert choux maker, as cake is really my thing but I would like to be more proficient at it. When first you don't succeed, try try again!

here is a photo of the finished result. Sorry the photo is a bit dark and you can't see how shiny they were....

If you would like recipes for any of the above, I will be happy to share. Just post a comment and I will email them to you.

When we try again in a few weeks time, I will post a summary of it again with recipes if more successful.

x Arianna

Le Weekend

Friday afternoon.... The weather is getting very cold and I have a serious belly ache from all the sour gummy bears I have eaten today at work. I think I am missing celebrating Halloween because bad for you, e-numbered filled candy has never tasted so good.

The clocks go back this weekend and I although I am really happy to have the extra hour in bed (I feel so sleep deprived this week!) I am not really looking forward to the near constant darkness it will bring. I am very lucky that I don't suffer any horrible SAD but the tendancy to curl up with the duvet, sleep longer, hug the cat for warmth, make hot chocolate, rent DVD's, drink red wine, bake cupcakes all whilst wearing flannel pajamas and cashmere socks sets in firmly. I am meant to stop by the pool for a quick swim tonight on my way home, but I can feel a chill in my bones at the very thought!

However, on the domestic front I have big plans for the weekend! My lovely friend and ex-neighbour Mrs. S is coming round to my flat for a baking lesson tomorrow. She lived in Paris for many years and is one of the only other people I know who goes into immediate, rapturous excitement at the mere mention of the really good pastry shops in Paris.

She's an éclair fan and has tried to make them herself since moving back to jolly-old England but like most people, finds pâte à choux very hard to get right. I am going to do my best to teach her to do it properly, as so much of the success is in visually knowing when to stop adding eggs and that is something that the cookery books can't really tell you for sure. Pastry is very precise and scientific I hear you say, and it is very true. But don't get me into a discussion about how humidty effects how much liquid flour can absorb on your chosen baking day or we will be here for hours! Pâte à choux is very sensitive to this so it's difficult reputation is well deserved.

Admittedly I haven't had to make éclairs very often and it has been awhile, but hey... it's all for fun and we are certainly going to enjoy eating them however they turn out. I have ordered all the right ingredients from France (which arrived on Monday) so add a little Edith Piaf background music and we will be in French pastry heaven!

My plan for tomorrow is this:

Whip up some lovely, lovely Earl Grey Madelienes and little sandwiches to keep us sustained through our lesson.

Make éclairs in both Chocolate and Coffee flavour.

Have Mr. H and Mr. S over for a taste test and some nice tea.

I will post a full report on the lesson including: (hopefully) helpful hints, photos and recipes to be posted after!

Bonne weekend mes amies!

x Arianna

Still Raining...

Also this weekend, my dear friend Mrs. R and I went to visit another lovely girl (Mrs. G) who had a baby a few months ago for some lovely chat and of course, tea and biscuits. Miss G is sooooo cute and really amazing. My friends have such good gene pools, I hope I will be as lucky! Playing with other people's babies is such fun and of course encourages all sorts of broodiness, but it was nice to leave and go off to do one of the things I do best: eat cake and drink champagne!

Mrs. R and I went off to Ottolenghi in Islington for a bit of food, namely their very lovely cakes and some champagne. We had to wait to be seated because of the awful weather, but it was so worth it. After a nice salad and some champagne, we had these two cakes pictured here....

The one on the left is a gorgeous Plum cake (although they call it a tart, strangely). The top is perfectly golden brown, slightly caramelised in places with the fruit cut and laid in perfectly symmetry. Visually, perfect. The texture of the vanilla cake was dense with a large crumb that supported the heavy sweet-tart fruit making each forkful rapturous. I fell in love with plum cake in the cake shops of Vienna and I whenever I see it, I have to order it! For a bit of something different, we ordered the Ginger Tea Cake pictured on the right. Baked in a silicone mini-bundt mould, it was intensely moist as well as being very fluffy and nice. Baking cakes like this in a silicone mould is great because you don't have a crunchy outer shell that comes from excessive flouring of the pan, so the whole cake is divinely spongey, soft and edible. The flavour was very nice, great spices although I prefer a bit more of a gingery kick. The cake was finished off with a not too sticky or sweet caramel glaze. So good, especially as we were enjoying the cakes the rain was chucking it down so hard that all the fellow cake eaters turned and gasped. Sheets and sheets of rain. A nice day to be inside with good cake! I bought a second ginger cake home to Mr. H and he grunted with approval whilst sticking most of it in his mouth in one go. Guess he liked it then. There is an excellent recipe in my new Whole Grain Baking by King Arthur Flour book for Gingerbread (or ginger cake as they call it here) that I really want to try this week. Crystallized ginger pieces....yummmm.

x Arianna

The Glory of Cupcakes

One of the best pleasures in life is the first bite into the perfect cupcake. The anticipation of peeling off the wrapper, the care you take in not dropping it or getting the icing everywhere then the contrast of creamy icing with fluffy, light cake thats packed with flavour hitting your tastebuds is a joy to rival no other.

My cooking is always focused on turning out such amazing joy, as one of the most fulfilling things in my life is to provide people I care about with something amazing to eat. I buy the best ingredients, no expense spared and take the most care I possibly can when making something to eat, baked or otherwise.

So as you can imagine, dear readers, the huge disappointment that comes with failed recipes. This past weekend I made a batch of cupcakes for a neighbour's birthday and decided to try a new recipe. The recipe is for Vanilla Cupcakes from the famous Billy's Bakery in NYC. The recipe had all the great makings of lovely cake... the right ingredients, more importantly the proper ratio of ingredients and of course, the pedigree of the Bakery itself. Friends have told me that is a great bakery and the cakes are fantastic ( it opened just after I left for Londontown). I was prepared to be happily swept away by pure cake loveliness.... However, the method of combining the ingredients seemed, well...unorthodox to say the least. The recipe called for the butter to be rubbed together with the flour and sugar before adding the liquid ingredients. Not usual cake making, but I went with it....

The batter had a gorgeous aroma of butter, vanilla and sugar that told me the flavour would be spot on, but the thickness of the batter did concern me as it seemed impossible that the cake would have enough leavener to make the magic happen. Despite a whopping addition of baking powder for extra boost as indicated by the recipe, there was no beating of sugar and butter together to produce the crucial air bubbles that give that lovely lovely fluffyness. Also, adding the sugar on top of the flour really seemed to weigh down the light and airy sifted flour I put in the bowl. But hey, just doing what I am told.

So the result....

They rose a decent amount and the oven temp was perfect ( a serious feat for my oven) so there was no cracking or excess browning. The smell was really intoxicating. I used Nielsen Massey Vanilla extract and boy could you tell. The whole house was filled with sweet vanilla fug and literally, I couldn't wait until they cooled down enough to eat.

The flavour is really, really good. However, the texture was heavy and the cakes had a large loose crumb so the mouth feel was completely wrong. Toothsome, if that makes sense? Instead of lightly dissolving in your mouth, you really had to chew the cake which is wrong, wrong, wrong! I felt like I was eating corn bread, which is not at all the texture of the most sublime cupcake in the world ( I had high hopes clearly). Even though I thought they were technical rejects of the worst variety, I still couldn't help eating several of them without icing because I just wanted more and more of the flavour.

So, I am going to give the recipe one more go as I was so bowled over by the taste. However, I am going to change the order of adding the ingredients to the traditional - tried and true, creaming method, adding the liquid in stages and sifting my flour three times. I was going to post the original recipe but instead, once I do a 're-cake', I will happily tell you all about it and post up my tweaked version.

If anyone out there has any experience with combining ingredients in the manner described above with great success, I would love to hear about it!

x Arianna