cinnamon buns inspired by san francisco

 Ever since visiting Molly Stones in Sausalito i have been on the quest for a perfect "molly stones cinnamon bun" to make here.
I have had many attempts, some too doughy, some too bready, some not sweet enough, some too sweet.
Anyway with an amalgamation of a load of recipes and a lot of experimenting , i think i am there (18 were snaffled in a flash so i think they were ok!!)

also the blue stripey fabric in the pic is a sneak peak from my new collection! it is called provence stripe and will launch later in the year.

so my made up recipe is as follows (after the picture)
just a few things first though!
1. it wasn't until i tried baking them in a silicone muffin tin that i got the required squelch factor of the molly stones version ( though they were still delicious when i did them in a round cake tin)
2. i used a bread maker on raisin dough setting to make my dough, as i am impatient and had a million other things to do!
3. i usually make them unto the second rise and then leave them in a cold oven overnight to rise and then bake them when i wake up.

recipe

500g strong white flour

1 sachet of easy blend yeast

1 heap teasp salt

3  heap tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 large free range egg

1 heap tablespoon butter

125ml milk

2 heap tablespoons yoghurt (i used greek because thats what i had, i think you could use any natural - apart from a 0% fat)

1 heap tablespoon marmalade

150g rasins or sultanas

************

1heap tablespoon cinnamon mixed with 3-4 tablespoons soft brown sugar

2 tablespoons softened butter (do not use marg)

************

tip all the ingredients into the bread maker in the order that your machine likes them and set to dough setting on mine this takes 2hrs 40mins.

if making by hand mix the dry ingredients in a roomy bowl, then mix the wet ingredients in a jug, then get messy! pour the wet in to the dry and mix it with your hands till you have a lovely smooth elastic dough. knead it and knead it some more, till the dough feels smooth and silky, then leave in an oiled bowl to rise, tom from hobbs suggests covering your bowl with a shower cap, the ones you get free in hotels! - this is a fab tip. leave to rise till doubled in size, about 1-2 hours depending on how warm it is, i use the airing cupboard or a warming oven.

after its proving tip the dough on to a lightly floured surface and roll out in to an oblong - tricky because it is springy and won't stay where you want it. but do your best to get it long and about 20cm wide. 

spread the dough as best you can with the softened butter - you may need a bit more, i didn't measure i just liberally covered the dough, sprinkle lavishly with the cinnamon sugar.

roll up along the length (difficult to explain but if you have the long side facing you roll in to a long sausage).

slice into spirals about 2cm thick, and pop each spiral in to a silicone muffin tin hole (if you are using a metal one you will probably need to grease it to stop any sticking, or put then in a cake tin with sides about 1cm spaced to allow for their next rise.

leave to rise (i do this overnight) till doubled in size then bake in a hot oven - don't let them catch.

i drizzled mine with icing made with icing sugar, orange juice and cinnamon.

scoff yourself silly!!!

feeling green

i don't know whether it is the first shoots of spring or what but i keep being drawn to greens this week.
I just hauled a big pile of samples from my basket after a visit to a client , and thought what a beautiful little random pile of green they were.

 the little stripe in the middle you might not recognise, but it is a sneak peek from my new collection.
i have also had a move around of our paintings, i have always loved this little green still life which mr h bought for me in new york 10years ago, and now it is happily sitting next to my duck (needs a frame) by the uber talented daisy murdoch - one day i will have one of her sublime portraits (before she gets too famous!)

i have been pinning slots of green on pinterest too

and if these beauties from elaine pamphillon don't make you feel springlike i don't know what will!!

shades of grey

i think i have mentioned before my fondness for grey in interiors.
it is such a restful shade, and fits with my ethos of less is more (it is a pity i am incapable of living by this maxim!!!)



above helen turkington interiors via achica.



all images are from my colour grey board on pinterest
which is about as addictive as blogging!

















the great thing about using grey in interiors is, that you can use it as a wonderful blank canvas background and then add a zip of colour to take the room in any direction you like.



here with yellow.



and here in a contemporary interior with a classic toile in vivid pink.





and here in a contemporary nursery with turquoise and mimosa.



what colours are you loving at the moment?

the Graphics Fairy

I've found a new blog that I absolutely love. I discovered it when creating 'thank you' cards for baby's birthday, she had to cover the designs with sequins, but you could do so much better!

I'm into the designs of Thornback and Peel and the Archivist Press at the moment and I wanted a lithograph type image of a vintage tea cup (in keeping with the tea party theme). At first I couldn't find one, then I came across The Graphics Fairy which is full of fantastic images, in fact she has 2,500 free clip art images! Now I'm addicted and can't stop thinking of reasons for using them, she also produces good images for transfers so you could have hours of fun updating some old clothes.

Now I'm off to see what graphics she has to offer for valentines!

baby shower gift

Well this is a first for me. Tomorrow morning I have been invited to a baby shower. I'm not entirely sure what to expect but decided that it is certainly not something to turn up empty handed at!

I have a superstitious streak that wont allow me to take anything for the baby until it is born (anyway I'm still working on that gift) but as the snow fell on Saturday I decided to use what I could find lying around the house to create a gift for a mother-to-be.

Some scraps of fabric, lavender and lavender oil and a box of salt....and I produced some lavender bath salts for a relaxing soak and a small lavender pillow to help aid sleep. A good night's sleep may be wishful thinking, but hopefully a good bath will be just the thing.

One thing I discovered I didn't have lying around the house is the appropriate foot for my sewing machine - some of our stuff is still in storage from the build, including most of my sewing kit. Obviously the last time I used my machine before the building I was doing embroidery. As a result I had to hand stitch the lavender pillow, using tiny, tiny stitches to stop any lavender flowers escaping, so what should have been a 5 minute project took me ages!

handmade from scrap bags

Jo and I have been lucky enough to take part in the fabulous vintage handmade textile fairs, and by far  our best selling wares are our scrap bags. We have several customers who make a beeline for our vintage sewing baskets filled with scrap bag packs. I thought it was high time we showed you how easy it is to make something from what is essentially a bag of  bits and bobs and small scraps of fabric.

so here goes in step by step photo instructions a kindle cover! (can be easily adapted for an iPad or phone!

 one of our small scrap bags.

 measure kindle and cut 2 x outside pieces and 2 x inside pieces, approx 3cm longer and wider than the kindle.

 bondaweb the reverse side of some scraps

bond a design on to one of the front pieces. i chose a leaf motif and an old linen button

 stitch some decorative lines on - will also stop the fabric peeling off over time.

do something creative with the other side!

 so here you have front , back and 2 inside pieces.

 sew the front to the front inside across the top edge, and repeat for the reverse side

 press flat.

 sew around the edges starting from the bottom of the inside. leave a gap to turn through.

 turn right side out through the hole, press and machine the hole shut.

 tuck the inside into the outside and press flat.

pop your kindle in!! not quite 5 mins, but about 10-15!

tea for a princess

I had forgotten how exhausting children's birthday parties can be! With Christmas and New Year out of the way our Baby turned 4 and the invites I had sent out before the holidays had promised a tea party fit for a princess - or 10 princesses and 2 kings to be precise.

I wanted the traditional afternoon tea party, baby wanted princesses and I thought the two were easy to marry. On arrival everyone was given an undecorated cupcake and an unmade cake box with the instruction to get decorating - they were to take the cakes home later as an alternative to squidged up chocolate cake wrapped in a napkin. I had ordered all I needed for the cupcake decorating from Nom Nom in Nailsworth. OK, I know in theory I should have been able to do this myself but it I would have burnt my own, plus I wouldn't have got beautiful presentation boxes and the necessary icing kit without hassle I knew I didn't need. Any way, I was busy making tea party stickers using rubber stamps (Sarah has stamps for every occasion - such a useful friend!).

Not only that, but with the cup cake baking out of the way it gave me time to concentrate on what I was really interested in. Creating a pretty tea party. I had a whale of a time making tiny sandwiches, miniature cup cakes and even (rather extravagantly but very successfully) quails eggs!

Out came the china tea cups and saucers - it seems mad to allow a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds loose on my china and pressed glass collection. However, they all seemed to know exactly how to behave: placed teacups back on saucers and stretched out pinkies as if afternoon tea was an everyday experience.

So while I may not be making much progress on the knitting am at least part way to becoming a

party animal!

birthdays

we have a big boy birthday coming up, and i had to post a picture of these which i found whilst wasting way too much time on pinterest! They made me laugh out loud, they also made me sad that we don't seem to have Sesame Street on Tv anymore, how are a whole generation going to grow up without counting with the Count, or without knowing Burt  and Ernie or Big Bird? anyway for all of you sesame st nostalgia lovers how about cookie monster cupcakes for tea!!!!

funghi to be with

I know the Christmas cracker jokes should have been binned by now, but I couldn't think of another title for this post - Apologies!

You can't have failed to notice how this year the place is awash with funghi. I think the mild autumn has provided perfect conditions for mushrooms and the common is covered. One of our neighbours grew up in France and knows her lawyers wigs from her shaggy ink caps and informed me that, back in November, they had picked and eaten mushrooms for supper every night for 2 weeks. I've no idea what is or isn't an edible mushroom and while I love the idea of foraging and hedgerow cooking I'm not prepared to risk picking my own mushrooms. However all this funghi reminded me that as a child we used to collect mushrooms and make spore prints.


In my memory this has to be done early on a misty morning. So early one beautiful, misty Sunday morning my little girl, the dog and I set of onto the common with an array of plastic bags (to put mushrooms in and to cover our hands with as our little girl is a thumb sucker). Said daughter is rather curious about the Natural World and relished the opportunity to jump around searching for different species to add to her collection, preferably before the dog crushed them to smithereens. We returned home and carefully lay the mushrooms out on paper and left for a couple of days for the spores to fall out. Unfortunately I think little fingers may have fiddled and our patterns didn't come out quite as clearly as they could have done, but our little girl was pleased with the results and they were duly taken into school for show-and-tell!

I've since discovered that it isn't necessary to get up early on a misty morning to carry out this activity, however for me that aspect of the adventure adds to the magic!

Happy New Year

Well it's the time for making resolutions and I've made quite a few this year. Along with the standard do more exercise, be more social, drink less I've got to get back into writing on the blog. But another resolution is to try my hand, and be successful at, knitting. While we had the builders in there were times when I was sitting around doing nothing, so my mother suggested that I take up knitting: you can take it anywhere, pick it up easily and be creative. So back in October I decided that I was going to knit my friend a lovely chunky, grey, woollen, scarf as her Christmas pressie.

I know that my attempts at crochet were futile but I did do a bit of knitting as a child, albeit wonky scarves, and I figured it would be like riding a bike and I'd pick it up again easily. While the actual stitches seem to come back alright so did my ability to make things wonky. I became the laughing stock of my weekly 'make-and-do' group as each week I returned with empty needles and scraggily wool from failed attempts. As it grew closer to Christmas it became very clear that my friend was not going to be receiving a chunky, grey, woollen scarf this year and off I went and bought her a huge bar of chocolate and a good book!

Anyway, not to be deterred, I now have a year in which to learn to knit and make this unwonky scarf. So, while I may not run any marathons and I may not become a party animal, next Christmas my friend WILL receive a chunky, grey, woollen scarf.

Happy New Year.

window dressing

 I was delighted when stockist Clare Laughland interiors in Farnham asked to use the big star fabric for their Christmas window display. (If you are looking for soft furnishings in that part of the country Clare and her team are fantastic,) It is particularly lovely to see it used in a wintery context.... a far cry from the baking hot day on the beach in Beer when Justine and I did the shoot!!