baking Archives - Handmade by Carolyn

Christmas prep

24/12/2024 12:08 pm \ 2 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello, Christmas makes!! To be honest though my output is quite modest this year, I haven’t gone overboard with the making of Christmas gifts unlike previous years. Just a few little things…

I’d mostly made this black felt bunny a few years ago, using the Luna Lapin pattern book. He was kinda my first test of the pattern before making a camel brown bunny for Arthur, blogged here, but I didn’t do too bad a job if I say so myself. So this year I decided to complete him as a present for Gilbert.

I made his outfit using various bits and pieces as usual; the shirt and buttons were an old shirt of Tim’s… and I used the same buttons for his eyes, the chinos are a nice piece of cotton twill that I plan to use for a pair for myself sometime… hopefully I didn’t cut too large a chunk for that to happen! and his little waistcoat was from a small scrap of fabric that I discovered in a bag of leftovers given to me by my mother-in-law.

I also made Arthur’s bunny a new outfit. I didn’t have his here to model it so Gilbert’s bunny has been roped in for the job. It’s a summer outfit; comprising a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts.

I had to include this picture of the shirt-making burrito! the instructions don’t have this but I figured why not make it as neat as possible. I used sew-in press studs for the shirt in lieu of buttons; they’re just easier and you don’t have to worry about ruining your tiny little shirt with a bad buttonhole. The fabric is leftover from my first Myosotis dress. The board shorts are white linen and blue linen that I dyed myself using a natural indigo dye bath. Actually, the leftovers from my recently made Mestre shirt.

Every year my family always exchanges some sort of homemade food treat too… my effort this year is gingerbread star biscuits to be dunked into tea or coffee. I made a little more that 160ish gingerbread stars and pondered how to decorate them, finally deciding upon an easy option of polka dots. Yes, I’m super into polka dots at the moment for some reason. Oh, and did I say “easy”? haha. For some reason this very simple concept took an entire afternoon and I’ve still got a numb spot on my finger from the pressure of operating the icing contraption thingie. I’m low key disappointed that so much work resulted in actually quite ordinary results, hmff. They are sadly not at all spectacular, but are definitely very yummy and I hope everyone likes them!

In other making news, not related to Christmas pressies; remember this dress? I made it using our own Karijini pattern and a doona cover. yes I still love it in principal, but had tired a little of its soft inoffensive colourway and last month subjected it to the unforgiving depths of the dye pot. It now looks a bit more eye-catching, ahem. I actually love it, and it feels like a new dress in my wardrobe, which is nice.

Posted in: crafty stuff, sewing \ Tagged: baking, Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co, Christmas, dress, dyeing, Karijini dress, making luna lapin, toys

(almost) zero waste jacket…

05/12/2021 3:19 pm \ 12 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello!

I’ve made a new thing… an “almost” zero waste jacket. I’m pretty proud of this fact! Ok, to be totally honest; I didn’t set out to make an almost zero waste jacket; I actually just set out to make a mere jacket. This whole exercise turned into a case of sheer dog-at-a-bone stubbornness and a masochistic refusal to be beaten by my own plans…

Storytime; so, I had this lovely stuff and I wanted to make a jacket … It’s kinda hard to tell but there’s a little less than 1.5m of 106cm width fabric, folded lengthwise in the pic here.

I took out my first chosen paper pattern and laid it down onto the fabric; absolutely no way was it going to fit. I got out another paper pattern from my stash, same story. Damn! I then searched through my entire collection of Burda magazines for a smallish, or at least cropped jacket; selected and traced out a pattern. Laid it out on the fabric, hmmm, that didn’t fit either. Searched for and selected yet another, even tinier, cropped jacket, and traced this out too. Nope. I felt like my fabric was gaslighting me! because it certainly “looked” like I could get a jacket out of it, but absolutely nothing was even close to fitting!

Ordinarily I might have given up and just gone for a skirt or something, in this case I was absolutely determined to make that jacket … why the stubborn insistence on a jacket, you might ask? well, only that I had previously selected the fabric for my #use12 capsule wardrobe for this year, and this was earmarked to be a jacket. I can’t have a capsule wardrobe without a jacket! and of course I’ve already used all the other fabrics for other things, so this HAD TO WORK.

And it did, obviously, and I may be feeling just a wee bit smug about it! I did a quick mud map of my design… in case anyone is interested. F = fold, S = selvedge

You can see the back and two fronts to take up the entire width of the fabric, even so the width wasn’t enough to be comfortable over my hips, especially with the pockets I sorely wanted, so that is what the triangular “side gussets” are for. These are stitched into the side seams. I stitched all my seams at 6mm – also for minimum waste reasons! then overlocked all raw edges and faux-flatfelled the seams down.

The jacket length was determined by the length of a nice, heavy, open ended zip that I already had in my stash; its colour blended in nicely with my fabric which is partly why I chose it over buttons. Also for the minimal streamlined look! I don’t have any perfectly matching buttons, and I’m still on the buy-almost-nothing stint that I’ve been on most of the year.

The “front placket” sits underneath the zip inside the jacket, the “back neckline facing” was stitched together down the straight edge, and attached to the back lining. I didn’t even have enough fabric to cut the under collar, so this is cut from brown cotton corduroy, leftover from these jeans.

No, it’s not ideal to have that different colour there, but I don’t think it’s too visible. You can also see the corner of a patch pockets stitched to the lining there… there’s one on each side, just for extra, just in case. You can never have too many pockets!

“Pocket welts” is self-explanatory, and “pocket facings” are stitched to the pocket bags at the opening so that this is the fabric you see when the pocket peeps open. The inner pockets themselves are cut from the lining fabric.

The fabric.. oh btw, I bought it in Japan, in Stripe & Check in Tokyo during our last trip there… and posted about here. It’s a beautiful, quick thick brushed cotton, almost like flannelette but more solid and “coat-like” in its weight and feel. The colour!! Isn’t it gorgeous?! I’ve already mentally dubbed it my pickle jacket, for some reason… 🙂

The lining is from a pale green polyacetate that was already in my stash. I cut it a tiny bit bigger than the pattern all the way around, and then widened the seams towards the edges so that they would fit at the sleeve hems and bottom hem, though there is a small tuck in the lining at each side seam of the hem. The lining is machine stitched to the neckline and zip tape, and hand stitched to the sleeve and bottom hems. The hems themselves were also invisibly hand-stitched to the jacket. The only thing I had to buy for this was some matching thread!

obligatory boastful pic of scraps…

I’ve got something to say about the collar and zip opening… so, when I had my Mundaring raincoat tested by all my lovely testers; one of them commented that the front opening was “off-centre”. What that meant: was that while the zip is actually bang on centre front, it has a weather placket over the zip, and the opening edge of the placket is obviously not centre front, but a little off to the side. It was planned that way, but her comments certainly gave me some pause, as though maybe it was perceived as “wrong”?? Well, it’s not, of course because coats have their openings situated in many different ways… however, I’m mentioning it because with this coat I decided to make it so that the edge of the jacket opening was situated at the centre front. It’s neither right or wrong either way, of course; and while the opening edge of this jacket is satisfactorily right boom in the middle, the zip is, by necessity, off centre underneath. The collar comes up to the opening edge of the “uppermost” front, while falling short of the “underneath” front, if that makes sense. It’s no big deal, of course, just thought I’d mention it.

This is the 11th thing in my #use12 from my stash, wardrobe capsule. Only one thing to go! although, to be honest I’ve since added another piece to the collection actually, which I am making next before the real “final thing”, hehe. So the project is now a use 13 really… All will become clear soon! I’ve even started photographing my final mix-and-match of my capsule wardrobe for a final post on the project. I’m so excited for it!

Oh, sincere apologies to Sanni, but I did some more baking this week from the cooking tree… I made these oreo macarons, using this recipe. SO YUMMY!! I don’t know how I’m going to stay away from them until the family gets some!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: baking, jacket, own design, the cooking tree, use 12

gingham!! carrot cake!!

29/11/2021 6:35 am \ 2 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello! I made a fun new frock…

I received 2m of this gorgeous blue gingham from Minerva; it’s very light and floaty and so I decided to make a little sun frock. I spent several hours laying different patterns down on the fabric to see which one would result in minimal leftovers; something that has become really common for me now when I’m deciding on a project for a piece of fabric . The Deer and Doe Myosotis pattern “just” squeezed on with absolutely no leftovers at all! and even then I had to cut the sleeve cuffs out on the cross instead of with grain. Which is no hardship at all, of course… Can you even tell? The gingham squares are so regular and even … it’s hard to see if you don’t really check it out very carefully!

I’ve used the Myosotis pattern once before, for this favourite little sun frock, and this time I did a substantial small bust adjustment to the pattern. Basically I rotated out the front waist darts completely and reduced the bust dart by about half, and the result is a really good fit for me! I left the back waist darts unchanged, because I do have a small sway back and so this shaping suited me well.

it appears that the shoulder is altered in the right hand photo, but it hasn’t; it’s just that the paper is floating up a bit at that point

I used three small white buttons for my stash for closure, and all the raw edges inside the dress are overlocked with ivory thread to finish.

I submitted a long blog post to Minerva on the dress, here, which you can read if you like..

In baking news, and yes! I do seem to be doing a bit of baking lately! I made a carrot cake for Dad’s birthday… to be clear, this was not THE birthday cake, which Mum made, but more of a consumable treat for Dad as a birthday present, since he’d stipulated absolutely NO birthday presents, please.

I did a bit of sleuthing to find out his favourite eatable treat, and lo! it is carrot cake (surprise!) So I made one! I figured at least this is a present that will be consumed and then it’s gone, and doesn’t need storing or dusting or anything.

I used this recipe from the cooking tree, yes she is my favourite thing to watch at the moment! and it was absolutely delicious. We all liked that there was a much higher proportion of icing to cake than usual.

I really enjoyed decorating the cake!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: baking, daily outfit, deer and doe patterns, dress, Myosotis

I made a really nice coat

22/11/2021 5:36 pm \ 3 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made a new coat, and I really love it! I’ve been seeing some oversized, over-long coats here and there, not in the flesh I mean since where I live we really do lag behind just a leetle bit fashion-wise, particularly when it comes to something as Perth-inappropriate as a coat. No, I mean I’ve seen them mostly in Vogue magazine or Pinterest, and had a fancy for one myself… when I saw this pattern by FibreMood I decided it was time to go for it and make one!

I used this beautiful tobacco silk/wool fabric with a recurring, tiny gold spot; so tiny it sadly doesn’t show up in my full-length pictures… but look how pretty and delicate it is 🙂

Hehe, I’ve had this gorgeous stuff in my stash since late 2010/early 2011, when I bought it in Tokyo… this was the first time I’d met Yoshimi and Novita in Japan, and they took Cassie and me out fabric shopping. It was such fun! and this lovely piece of fabric was one of my spoils of that trip. I posted about it here… and as you can see, I finally made the choice as to which side I should use… obviously the wrong side finally held sway. It was hard though, I was honestly still dithering right up until the very first cut!

wrong side is at the top, right side is below…

This is all the fabric I bought on that trip… and I’ve used all but one piece now; the deep green wool at the top of the picture. I really should use that up now!

below; I still carry that bag regularly, and wear that red scarf…though I gave that white coat to my daughter-in-law Kelly a few years ago when we last took the family to Japan 🙂

Woops got a bit distracted down memory lane there! anyway, so the pattern I used for my new coat is the new FibreMood Carmen pattern, and it’s a really nice one… it’s big and roomy, has very deep side seam pockets, a chic notched collar and closes with a minimal tie. No buttonholes, yay!

The coat is designed to be fully lined with a bagged lining, that turns out through a gap in the sleeve seam. Now, patterns rarely specify this, but in my opinion they should; my one recommendation for doing this is to make sure that you can fit your fist through the hole. Your job will be so much easier!

My lining fabric is also from deep stash, it’s a metallic gold/bronze taffeta that I bought years ago on special from Fabulous Fabrics. You can probably see in my lining photo that it has water stains all down the centre, which is why it was on super special, and also why it took me a long time to use it, probably. It’s ok, at least I’ve used it now! and I actually love it. I really think the metallic-ness of it beautifully highlights the gold flecks on the shell fabric.

I added a hanging loop between the collar and the back neck facing; because I’ve always found this to be a really handy thing.

Not sewing related of course, but chocolate related, and who can resist a bit of chocolate-related content, hmmm? No need to answer that, I know it’s purely rhetorical… anyway, I made this chocolate brownie cheesecake recently, using this recipe by the Cooking Tree, and this is to remind myself how utterly divine it was; and that I MUST MAKE IT AGAIN!!!!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: baking, carmen coat, coat, daily outfit, fibre mood, the cooking tree

a bumblebee cake

17/10/2021 8:52 pm \ 5 Comments \ Carolyn

I know I don’t do baking posts here very often, but I actually make a lot of cakes! and if I get to decorate them in a exuberantly fun way like this one then I will be tempted to write a post about it here…

My niece Jacinta was having her 21st, with a yellow-themed birthday party… and what with one thing and another making it very busy for my brother’s family I ended up offering to make the cake. Time was pretty short and the pressure was on! and I’m so glad I could spare the time myself, as well that I had already prepared my own yellow outfit well in advance!

I made two batches of cake, flavoured one with the grated rind of two lemons for a lemon flavour, the other one with vanilla essence… baked each in halves to make 4 flat cakes, and layered them alternately. I made lots of batches of plain icing to glue them together and give the cake a crumb crust, and coloured the outer layers with yellow food colouring… finally it’s decorated with real flowers and mini chocolate bumblebee cake decorations. I wound gold jewellery wire around my finger to make spirals, speared the bumblebees on and secured them with a tiny blob of icing.

I was so happy with how it turned out! Also, we had such a wonderful time at the party and it was so lovely to spend time with all the family!

Posted in: crafty stuff \ Tagged: baking, cake

mini Lamington petit fours, and baby birds

24/12/2017 6:13 pm \ 42 Comments \ Carolyn

scaling Mt Lamington…

Before the onslaught of sewn Christmas gifts, and, I’m sorry, but there’s a LOT to share… here is a rare appearance of some baked Christmas gifts! We kind of have a no-gift policy within our extended families for Christmas nowadays, but I still always like to still give just a little something. There have been years in the past when I used to make little Christmas ornaments and tree decorations but lately I’ve stuck to edible treats. I dunno, but food seems less of an intrusive gift? if that makes sense? it can be kept for personal consumption if the recipient so desires, or else passed around at the ubiquitous seasonal parties at a pinch… and, unlike ornaments which can sorta impose upon people an expectation that they’re hauled out for display every year; they’re consumed, i.e. they GO! No random stuff to add to the household clutter, yay!

A few weeks ago, our friends R and J became Australian citizens after a looooooooooooooooong and extreeeeeeeeeemely drawn-out process, and celebrated with an “Australian” party; we all were to take a plate and I took a plate of petit fours, specifically that all-Australian classic: Lamingtons. But not the big honkous ones, oh no, little elegant bite-sized ones. They disappeared from the dessert table in quite a satisfactorily quick manner, so I decided to make them again for this years’ Christmas gift.

By the way, want to know what I wore?? I wore this ensemble!! haha, well if I’m going to wear it anywhere, it should be to an Australian party! Some people at the party were even very kindly interested to know the whole story!

Your classic Lamington is usually quite big, like 5-6cm (2+”) square, but I prefer them made in this bite-sized form a LOT more. They look sweet and more appetising, and just more fun … well anything in miniature is more fun, no?

My recipe… adapted from various sources. This makes a generous, party-sized batch; for gifts I made several batches to get enough.

Lamingtons

Sponge cake; if you’re short on time you can buy a ready-made sponge cake which makes this a super quick and easy treat! however it’s not that hard to make your own. If you do make your own, it’s best to make it a few days earlier and leave it to harden up and get just a little bit stale. Stale cake? yes sounds horrible, but trust me, the Lamingtons really are the better for it.

5 eggs
3/4c castor sugar
1 c SR flour
90g melted butter

Beat the eggs until thick and creamy and pale; while still beating add the sugar very gradually, and continue beating continuously until dissolved. Fold in butter, then sifted flour. Spread into a 25x30cm Swiss roll pan lined with baking paper, make sure the mixture is only, like 2-2.5cm deep, at most! and bake at 200C for about 10 minutes, or until a light golden brown. Turn out immediately and allow to cool completely. Once cool put in an airtight container and let it sit in the fridge for a few days until a little hardened and slightly stale before assembling the petit fours.

A few days later: take out the sponge and cut it into neat and even squares BEFORE you prepare your icing. Mine are about 2.5cm (1″) square in size, but obviously you can go whatever size you wish… square, however, is traditional!

Also before preparing the icing, have the desiccated coconut ready in a shallow bowl for the coating step. Only then, continue!

Icing:

3 1/2 c icing sugar
1/4 c cocoa powder
1 Tblsp melted butter
1/2 c boiling water

Large quantity of desiccated coconut for coating… around 300g should be plenty

mix all ingredients except coconut! together thoroughly. To save time and an extra pan; (remember the first rule of baking; minimise washing up at all costs!!) I just put the unmelted butter on top of the dry ingredients, and just slowly pour the boiling water on top of it; it quickly melts the butter into the mixture, saving you the extra step of having to melt it first.

To assemble the lamingtons; dump sponge cake squares into the chocolate icing and fully coat them, take out and let excess icing drip off for a second then quickly roll them in desiccated coconut. Messy, but just do it fast! It’s far better to do this step while the icing is still pretty warm, as it stiffens up pretty quickly as it cools… you can add tiny bits of boiling water to make it runny again but it’s not as good.

Set the freshly finished Lamingtons onto a wire rack and into the fridge to set completely. They can be frozen, and in fact are DECLICIOUS eaten frozen during the summer. Personally, I prefer them frozen… in any case it’s best to at least keep them in the fridge.

Real talk; this rather prosaic and un-pretty packaging below is how my family actually receives them…. when it comes to serving them up to guests I like to arrange them either in a militarily, strict grid on a square plate… OR even looking all dishevelledly pretty in a jumbled mini-mountain of lamington-boulders, like in the picture at top; but to give them away I buy these airtight, snap-lock boxes from the supermarket to pack ’em in. Not super glamorous but they are super practical… so people can pop the boxes straight into the freezer, and keep the containers afterwards to store other food in them, if they wish.

Also I just wanted to show here our gift tags for this year… made using the leftover bits of card from when I made my iceberg advent calendar recently. There was this little pile of randomly shaped card leftover and I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out with a need for Christmas gift tags just around the corner! I once again wielded my trusty old star stamp … oh, and can I just say, if I could say something to my younger, newly adult self, it would be GOOD ON YOU! for buying a small selection of stamps and high quality ink pads during that early, brief card-making phase, because for decades now I have continued to use these every year to make Christmas gift tags for practically nothing since they’ve paid for themselves a gazillion times over now.

waste not want not!

Merry Christmas, all!!!

Oh! and a random note about life here lately… I just have to share this… we’ve had a little family growing up in our garden over the past few weeks! a couple of willy wagtails built a beautiful and perfect little nest up in the upper boughs of one of our potted ficus by the pool… we watched with great interest as the two birds took turns sitting on the nest, until one day…

and then the next day…

and the next:

last Sunday:

Monday;

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

on Thursday arvo, one of them popped out of the nest!! it sat on the bough for a few hours but later on hopped back into the nest for the night. Every night a parent would sit on them all night…

on Friday, the parents started teaching them how to fly!

obviously I kept Clara inside all of this day and the next… I didn’t want them stressed out about her presence. It was too cute watching the babies in their wobbly attempts to fly, flopping onto our outdoor table and weaving a little drunkenly through the patio.

Two ended up in the lemon tree where they spent the night, the third one, which seemed a little less developed than the others, stayed in the nest another night. The parents were still catching insects for all three of them, and caring for them constantly…

Saturday:

all three end up in the lemon tree where they stay huddled up together most of the time. The parents are still spending all their time catching insects for them and looking out for them, encouraging them to fly.

Sunday: empty nest syndrome…. 🙁

they’re still spending most of their time huddled together, although they’re moving about from tree to tree, and while they seem to be catching a few insects here and there the parents are still feeding them a bit.

Well. That’s where we stand. It’s totally amazing how fast they’ve grown up! there were a few days there where I felt they were changing almost by the hour! I can’t even express what a gorgeous pleasure it’s been to witness this little family growing up and such a privilege that the parent birds trusted us just enough to build their nest here in our garden. I just hope the nest will be used again next year!

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Posted in: crafty stuff \ Tagged: baking, Christmas, recipe

Christmas mignardises

20/12/2015 2:39 pm \ 16 Comments \ Carolyn

So, every year I make something small to give to close friends and family for Christmas, sometimes a Christmas ornament, sometimes a sweet treat to eat. This year, I decided on eatables; mini Christmas-pudding mignardises. Cute, non?

The idea and the details are probably not new but I did adapt from several sources, so I thought I’d compile here my method for making them…

First up, the Christmas cake…

My standard fruit cake recipe, given to me by my old friend V yonks ago, I’ve been using it ever since. It’s a nice boiled fruitcake, very moist, so a good choice for making the cake-balls. I doubled up the ingredients to make two fruit cakes, and this plus one quantity of rum buttercream icing should make approximately 140 bite-sized balls, if you don’t eat any in the meantime 😉

Pineapple boiled fruit cake: (these quantities are for one cake, double this quantity is required for the remainder of the method)

Tip the following ingredients into a saucepan:

450g can crushed pineapple, drained but reserving a little of its juice just in case
125g butter
375g mixed fruit
1 cup sugar
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp bicarb f soda
pinch salt (optional)

Boil, stirring, for 10 min, if it starts to stick stir in just a splash of reserved juice. Allow to cool, then add:

1 cup self-raising four
1 cup plain flour
2 eggs

Mix in well. Again, if it seems too thick, add a dash of reserved juice.
21cm square cake tin, 160C for about 40 min or until cooked, leave for 5min in tin, remove to cool completely

As mentioned, this quantity makes just one cake, for this method double up to make two. Once the cakes are cooled completely it’s time to make the balls…

Now; you’re forming the cake into balls using buttercream icing as the binding agent… I found my basic recipe on taste.com but to impart a festive Christmas-sy flavoured air to them I substituted a large dollop of rum in lieu of some of the milk. If you don’t want the alcohol just use all milk and no rum, or just a dash of rum essence, for the flavour. I found this quantity to be enough for the two cakes, so halve this quantity if you’ve only made one cake.

Rum buttercream icing:

125g butter
500g icing sugar
4 tblsp rum + 2 tblsp milk

Cream butter until smooth. Stir in about 1 cup of sifted icing sugar. Add rum + milk and mix. Stir in the remainder of the sifted icing sugar, beating well until smooth.

It starts to dry out straightaway, so use immediately!

I rolled the balls, half a cake at a time,because it’s kinda messy work and this was all I can handle, but whatever works for the individual of course. Anyway, break off a sizeable piece of cake that you can handle and crumble into a large pan. The pieces should be fairly small and crumb-y, but obviously there are going to be some chunky fruity bits, don’t worry too much about a very superfine consistency. To half a cake worth of cake crumbs, add a quarter of the rum buttercream icing and knead and mix it in thoroughly with your hands, then take about a tablespoon at a time, or bite-sized pieces, roll the mixture into balls. No doubt about it, this is messy work, best not pick a day you’ve just had a manicure; although I will say that the butter etc all over your hands impart beautifully soft skin afterwards! When rolled, push them into the bench ever so gently so they have a little flat base, so they can stand upright without toppling over.

Decorating:
I found this quantity of cake to require:

650g white chocolate
400g glace cherries

Melt chocolate in three of four batches for ease of handling, and either dip the balls or drizzle over the cakes, so as to look like custard or brandy sauce as it’s poured over Christmas pudding. Push half a glace cherry on the top or use other glace fruit, if preferred.

Done! Keep them in the fridge until required. They can go individually in mini-patty pans to give away, or not, because I think they look pretty cute all by themselves!