Gingerbread time!

Today I went over to my neighbour Wendy's place to make Gingerbread cookies with her and her daughter!

My mother created her own recipe for gingerbread when I was little. It is based on my grandmothers recipe, but has changed a lot since then. For one thing it doesn't go "add enough flour" or "kneed it until it feels right." But it also has a larger variety of spices (it's a secret recipe but I will tell you there are 9 spices in it!)

I make a couple of recipes every year. Since I was making it with Wendy, I used spelt flour to make it wheat free. I was surprised at the way that changed the amount of flour that I needed! When using AP flour, I usually need about 8-9 Cups, but with spelt I felt like I just kept dumping it in! I think we ended up using about 17cups of flour!!! One recipe did make a lot more cookies than usual but if I had know about the increased volume of flour, I probably would have doubled the spices! Well, good to know for next time!

We did use Royal icing (which Wendy is allergic to, due to the cornstarch) But it's really the only way to get things to stick together and it dries fast and well, and makes for beautiful lines and decorations!

The recipe isn't a secret so I'll pass it on:

Royal Icing

2 Egg Whites
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla/Water
1 Tablespoon Cream of Tartar
3-3 1/4 Cups Icing Sugar

Sift Icing sugar, mix in cream of tartar. Separate egg whites (you can use the yolks to make egg wash for your cookies) and mix in vanilla. Beat egg whites and sugar on high until smooth and bright white (about 3-5 min). Make sure to cover the icing because it dries really quickly!

Can be kept covered in the fridge for about 3 days.

Anyway we decorated them afterwards with the kids. I made the girls both a special kid's icing bags using a plastic zipper bag and an elastic. You squeeze all the icing to one corner of the bag and then zip closed and tie it close to the icing with a tie tag or elastic band. Then clip a small hole in the tip of the bag. This way the child can learn how fun it is to decorate without the aggravation of icing flying up out of the top of the bag :)

Wendy and used regular icing bags and round tips.

We had a great time!

It's On.

I'm getting all ready for Christmas so I'm making a list:

1 Sister

2 Brothers

1 Sister in Law

1 Brother in Law

2 Parents

1 Girlfriend

Several Friends

At least 4 kids possibly 5 by then...between the ages of 0 - 6

It always gets soo expensive so last year I made myself a promise that I would make at least half of my gifts. So I've been madly sewing and knitting and cross-stitching.

Here's one of the first finished products, a cross-stitch for my brother's girlfriend.

I got this from the Craft blog http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2008/11/donkey_kong_cross_stitch.html

It didn't have a pattern attached so I made my own:

And here's the finished product:

I'll post more as I finish stuff.

I'm starting to work on a scarf for the long cold Canadian winter. Even though I've been knitting now for about three years I still haven't created a scarf for myself, if you can belive it. I find also that I never take pictures of the things that i make for others either. Well I'll start now :)

I'm using some great hand dyed cotton yarn that my Girlfriend gave me last winter. It's so pretty and I think it will look great with my coat!

Happy Birthday Greta!

This past weekend was my little nieghbour Greta's third birthday! Her Mom and I made her a cake. Due to Dietary restrictions we had to make it with spelt flour and couldn't use regular icing sugar, who would ever know that there was cornstarch in it!? (I learn something new everyday!)



We tried a brand new recipie we had never made before (mistake #1). It was a spelt cake from the new version of The Joy of Cooking. I've always found TJOC to be a pretty comprehensive book with good, tried and tested recipies. But this cake turned out a little wierd, it didn't rise and it was almost wet when fully baked. The good news is that it tasted really good!



Wendy ground the icing sugar herself from regular granulated sugar in her coffee grinder. It tasted a bit like coffee, I think it actually improved the taste. It turned out pretty good actually, though I still prefer regular icing sugar, but now I know how to make it corn-free.



I also used a bit of regular butter cream to do the details, Wendy said she could just pick that off!



Anyway here it is:

Hello!

Hi there internet. As I look out upon your vast chasm of information, it both scares me and invites me in. I feel like I need to be a part of it. Even if there's no one reading I feel like I want to cast my little net into your sea full of fish. So here goes internet, lets be friends!