Cake Decorating

C and I have enrolled in cake decorating classes. Last night was our first class, and it was great fun. People were there to learn, and to have fun whilst do so.

A neighbour is coming round for tea at 5-ish today. We have decided to make some biscuits and to use our new royal icing skills to decorate them.

The recipe I'm using for the biscuits is:

• 50g butter (soft)

• 75g caster sugar

• 1 medium eggs

• 1 tsp of vanilla extract

• 250g gluten-free plain flour

• 1 tsp gluten-free baking powder

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 180C.

2.  Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla.

3.  Add the flour and baking powder.

4.  When the mixture has come together, chill for 10 minutes.

5.  Gently kneed the dough, then roll out to 1cm thick.

6.  Use cutters, and place biscuits on baking sheet.

7.  Bake for about 12 minutes until golden brown.

As usual, my attempts at following a recipe weren't spot on. The royal icing I made earlier used 2 and a bit egg whites. I combined the 3 egg yolks and the left over egg white and substituted them for 2 whole eggs. The rest of the ingredients were doubled. The mixture was split into two, and two heaped dessert spoons of Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate were added to one of the batches.

The chocolate dough was a bit dry, and the vanilla one a bit too soft. I cut out the vanilla biscuits, and then combined the leftovers into the chocolate dough. This gave a much better texture to the chocolate dough.

Mini-holiday mutterings

The start of September is always busy for me at work, and then there's a little breather immediately afterwards.  Yesterday and today are days of in lieu of hours already worked.  Then there's the weekend to contend with, and my usual Monday off.  :o)  Five days in a row with nothing I must do.  It is glorious.  Actually, the weather was glorious yesterday, and it's rather fantastic today.

My wrist is a great deal better than it was back in July, and I'm able to do short stretched of crafting again.  I'm trying to be sensible and not do too much at any one time, and it seems to be paying off.

A while back I started heading off to bed about and hour before I planned on going to sleep.  I would get ready for bed, and then sit and craft whilst listening to an audio book.  This is a fantastic way to ready the body for sleep, a nice, soft gentle way to relax.  

When I started doing this my sleep improved dramatically.  Not being able to craft (due to the damaged tendons in my wrist) had an impact on my sleep.  Whilst I am not up to my previously length of time spent crafting, just entering the routine again has brought benefits to my sleep.

As well as crafting - a Granny Square blanket from sock yarn, I went into town to help C select new frames for glasses.  There was a special offer, and one pair is pure Harry Potter!  We also headed out to "Boards and Brews", a board game cafe.