My first excuse for the lack of posting was that at the end of September I moved house.
There was a lot of stuff to unpack. After everything was put in its place I did nearly a month's worth of night shifts, so zero sewing was done. I did however bake a lot, but did not take any photos of what I baked. Mostly because it was nothing impressive. My attempt at brandy snaps, were in fact a complete and utter disaster.
I've just had 10 days off work and did very little in that time apart from eat, get drunk and sleep. Once the ten days were up I felt quite guilty about spending my time in such a lazy and hungover state, so I have baked a couple of things and yesterday I got the sewing machine out. Here are my brownies (I didn't think to take a photo until The Boyfriend and The Housemate had eaten some)
I got the recipe for these from Dr Vicky at work before she moved to New Zealand. I don't think my version are as good as hers, but they are still bloody tasty. To make chocolate gooey loveliness, first...
- Melt 200g of dark chocolate with 185g of unsalted butter. Leave to cool to room temperature.
- Sift 85g of plain flour with 40g of cocoa powder into a medium bowl.
- In a large bowl whisk 3 large eggs with 275g of caster sugar until it's like an eggy mousse. It needs to be really light, fluffy and doubled in size. I'd invest in an electric whisk for this.
- Gently add the melty/buttery chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. Use a spatula and fold in very carefully until it's all brown.
- Sift the flour/cocoa powder into the chocolate/egg mixture. Carefully fold in until it's all combined.
- Add 50g of white chocolate that has been roughly chopped and 50g of milk chocolate that has also been roughly chopped. Gently mix in.
- Pour this into a greased/lined rectangular tray and bake in an oven preheated to 180 Celsius for 25-30 mins.
- Leave to cool completely before removing from tin.
After these were finished, I got my sewing machine out. It's a temperamental bugger in that halfway through sewing a line the thread will come out of the needle, or thread from the bobbin will get tangled in the cog things. I don't know all the technical words. I am though an expert at taking the cog things apart and putting them together again. Anyway, after a lot of faffing, this is what I managed to produce. Block number two of the patchwork quilt.
It looks neater than the blue patch because the squares were pre bought from eBay ages ago. I did have a little cock-up in my pattern as you can see in the middle, and I did run out of some squares in the pinks toward the end, so the far left looks a little odd. On the whole though, I like it. The next block will be yellow/purples and i'm going to use fabric from two tops that I really like but can't wear any more. Thrifty.
