Life of Pie

That's right. I made A Life of Pi Pie. Or to make it a bit simpler let's just call it A Life of Pie. I was so proud of it I actually did a little dance around my kitchen once I was done. And as there was no one home I made Posy and the cats and even Gary the tortoise admire it for a full 10 minutes before they returned to their busy schedule of sniffing things and pretending not to have been fed. 

If you don't understand the reference or just simply don't understand how I could be this much of a geek I made the pie to celebrate not only the brilliant film that is 'The Life of Pi' but also to celebrate the fact that it's the Bafta's tonight! There is quite literally nothing I like more than an award ceremony and an award ceremony that actually starts at a reasonable hour! Well that's just too much. A few weeks ago I stayed up till 5 in the morning to watch the Golden Globes which was kind of worth it but also kind of totally not worth it at the same time... Anyway as you can see I'm very excited! And when I'm excited I like to bake. Life of Pi was one of my favourite films of the year, I've tried to see all the Oscary films this year and I think in the end Life of Pi and Silver Linings Playbook were my favourites. But it's harder to come up with a Silver Linings Playbook themed dessert, so I just settled with Life of Pie. For anyone that hasn't seen it, this picture might explain. And yes, I know there's no sail, but without a sail my 'boat' just looked like a mouldy pea pod...

I used a recipe I saw on A Beautiful Mess for Buttermilk and Honey Pie. The only reason I went for it was because I actually had some buttermilk in the fridge which basically never happens! So I got all over excited and made this. I used Agave Syrup instead of honey because I'm not a huge fan of the actual taste of honey and it turned out really well! I decided to make mine 'Halfway Homemade' as well and I bought some mini pastry shells from M&S as well as a big one. The recipe made enough filling for a big pie and 6 mini pies so I ended up with kind of a lot of pie! I probably shouldn't say this but buying ready made pastry shells was amazing! The whole thing took about 5 minutes and the result was probably yummier! 

Life of Buttermilk and Honey Pie Recipe.

From A Beautiful Mess. 

Ingredients:

- 3 eggs,

- 150g caster sugar (2/3 cup)

- 1/2 cup of honey or agave syrup. 

- 2 tbsp plain flour.

- 1 cup of buttermilk.

- 1 tsp vanilla extract. 

Step One - Whisk the eggs with the sugar and honey and stir in the other ingredients. 

Step Two - Pour into store bought pie crus (or homemade!) and bake at 174C (350F) for 40 minutes (the mini pie's took 20 minutes) or until the sides are golden brown and the pie is set (it will still have a slight jiggle at the centre). 

Step Three - While your waiting for your pie to cool make a little boat! I made the boat and the rubber ring out of black fondant (available from Waitrose) and then I stuck a cocktail stick into the boat with a sail shaped sticker attached. I drew the line with writing icing. 

If you decide to make your own Life of Pie (remember, it could be any pie!) for tonight please tweet me a picture and also if you come up with any Bafta movie related food puns. My only other idea was Argo Fro-Yo but I'm not sure how to make frozen yogurt... 

Lots of Love Scarly x 

Muffins in an Egg Carton

Hello, first off and before I begin gushing about mini muffins, I just want to say how incredibly shocked and overwhelmed I was at the reaction to my last post. Something I didn't mention in it was that one of the things I have been finding scary recently is communicating with people on line. Sometimes I find the pressure of twitter and my blog just a bit too much and even though I know in reality there isn't any pressure at all, I have been having trouble with both of these things. But the loving, kind and thoughtful tweets and comments I got from people has completely renewed my faith that online people can be just as nice and in fact usually nicer than real life people. Now, back to the muffins. 

Last Sunday I decided to bake some muffins. I'm doing a baking themed project in my design and technology lessons and it requires me to find as many liquid based recipes as possible. That's obviously not the whole project because that would be the single oddest homework in history, but it is included. I found the recipe for the muffins here and it was the first muffins I've made that had a properly liquid batter. This made them very easy to pour and they were also very yummy. Wow, I can't believe I just said 'liquid batter'. That's pretty extreme...

Anyway I decided to make them mini because, well everything's just better when it's mini, and I cut out the walnuts because my little brothers hate nuts. I'd finished the muffins, they were cooling cool-y on the cooling rack and I began wondering what to do with them now. No one was home and I had a dozen mini muffins and nowhere to take them. Storing and presenting baked goods is one of the bains of my life. No jokes. I hate Tupperware and I can just never figure out what to do with everything I bake!

So, there I was, once again faced with the dilemma of storing my muffins, and then it hit me... AN EGG CARTON! I emptied out the eggs and held my breath, but guess what? The muffins fit! And they looked so cute, in fact they almost looked too cute. 

As you can tell I was pretty proud! They didn't stay fresh for that long but they looked so good that it really didn't matter! 

I hope everyone is having a lovely day/week/January even though I know that's not exactly possible! 

Lots of Love Scarly xx

Where Have I Been - Take 2.

Hello (blows dust of blog and tries to bring it back to life), if you read my blog regularly you'll know that I haven't updated it in a few weeks. Primarily, yes, this was to do with Christmas which I am still desperately mourning. I found one of my Christmas jumpers the other day and it nearly brought tears to my eyes (I say nearly, I'm not completely crazy!). We had a really lovely Christmas and there were 30 of us for Christmas lunch which was very loud and fun.

If you've read my blog before, especially this post, you will know that for the last few years I haven't been very well. It was all to do with my back and was very complicated and sad and boring but I was essentially ill for nearly three years. In May I had an operation to try and fix things and the amazing and unbelievable news is that the operation worked and I have been getting better ever since. I've started a new school which I love and I feel like I'm making progress. I always said to myself when I was ill that if I ever got better I would be the happiest person in the world, and while I am more happy than I can express, I didn't realise quite how hard the actual 'getting better' part was going to be. I had been locked away in a little bubble for 3 years and everything still feels very new and scary. Sometimes I'll have a week where I feel like everything's so great and then I'll get completely freaked out by taking the tube or my back will start hurting again and I'll feel like nothings changed. But things have changed! Which is why I feel like my blog needs to change as well.

I have always tried to keep my blog pretty un-personal and while I was sick this made sense. I didn't like 'sick me' and my blog was a sort of way of pretending none of it was happening. But now that I'm getting better I think I want to start sharing that more online. I'm still going to be doing a lot of stuff about knitting, Twit-Knit and baking (no matter how much better I get these are all still very important) but maybe also some more things about what I've been up to, things I'm doing to try and make me less scared of the world as well as some more reviews of books and movies. I might even start doing some videos although this does seem incredibly scary! I don't know if anyone even wants to hear this stuff but I think it might be worth a try.

I hope everyone is having a great January. I think people are still working on their Twit-Knit scarves so I'm going to wait a bit before properly finishing it but it's been very fun and exciting and I can't wait to put together all the pictures!

Have a lovely day and a lovely month and hopefully see you (through the internet) very soon!
Scarlett.

10 Days To Go - The Empty Stocking

If there's two things I love in this world (apart from knitting and dogs and cats and all that other stuff I love), it's Christmas and books! So when my Dad decided to write a Christmas book I was pretty excited! When I found out Rebecca Cobb was going to illustrate it I was just  a little bit more excited and when I found out it was my job to make a cake for the launch party I was pretty much over the moon. 

I may be a tiny bit bias what with it being written by my Dad and the fact that I would pretty much love any book if it had a sparkly Christmas tree on the front, but the book is very good! It's about two twins at Christmas and I'm not going to give away the ending up it does end very happily (can you imagine a kids book with a sad ending!). Anyway the story is very good, the illustrations are amazing and if you are buying a present for a child this Christmas I would most definitely recommend (or you could just pretend you were buying it for a child and buy it for yourself!)

I made the cake a few weeks ago when the book came out and we all carried it down to our lovely local book shop (Lutyens and Rubinstein) and ate the cake while reading the book! I would love to say I hand carved the cake myself but that would be a lie, I had a book shaped cake mould (please don't ask why, I honestly have no idea!) which you can buy here. I made a plain white cake and covered it with jam and white fondant icing. Then I used cake pens (if you don't own these already, please ask for some in your stocking!) to draw the illustrations and writing on the cake. My favourite bit was the pages on the sides I think, and the lopsided tree! You can see more pictures below. 

Here is the link to the book on amazon however if you do get the chance to buy it in a book shop please do! Because book shops are amazing and amazon isn't! 

I hope everyone is having a lovely Christmassy weekend and enjoying the weather. 

Lots of Love Scarly x

12 Days To Go - Baker Ross Christmas Activity Pack!

A few weeks ago the lovely people at Baker Ross (an awesome kids arts and craft supplies shop) got in touch with me and asked if I would like to create a recipe for their Christmas Activity Pack eBook. I, of course, said yes and after much pondering I decided to create an extremely easy but extremely tasty recipe for Celebration Chocolate Rocky Road. In case the title doesn't give it away it's basically rocky road with a whole box of chopped up celebrations thrown in, and it's very yummy!

The eBook is free and contains lots of other fun crafty activities and recipes. If you have kids, if you are a kid or if you still think your a kid I would definitely recommend downloading it!

You can download it by clicking HERE.

And in case you weren't already sold, here's a picture of the rocky road...

Lots of love Scarly!

15 Days To Go - Black Forest Gateau

Hello! I'm back. And I know I've missed a few days of my calendar. But apparently there's this thing called English coursework and it's just a tiny bit more important than knitting... and no where near as fun. But I did bake a black forest gateau, and it was pretty awesome and very easy to make and I think probably very alchoholic due to the mountain of kirche cherries. Unfortunately I didn't even get to try it because I made it for a dinner party of my mum's and when I came down stairs there was not a crumb left! So I'm guessing it was nice... or horrible... and they threw it in the bin. One can't be sure. 

I found the recipe here and it was very good and easy to follow, it was also good because you didn't need an electric mixer to make it! 

It's 15 days till Christmas and I'm more excited than I thought I'd be... and I thought I'd be pretty excited. I'm dressing up as Father Christmas tomorrow for the lower school which I feel may be my future career. 

I hope everyone else is getting Christmassy and remember to send me photos of your Twit-Knit's ! 

Love Scarlett x

21 Days to Go - D.I.Y. Mistletoe Hat

Yesterday I showed you my kind of Christmas headwear and today I want to share with you my brothers idea of a Christmas hat. I like to think I'm the crafty one in the family but when my 15 year old brother came running up to me to ask me to make this for him I couldn't help but be impressed. 

The basic concept of the mistletoe hat is that you sew a piece of mistletoe onto a hat and walk around all day making people kiss you. I know, it's genius, I'm extremely jealous it wasn't my idea. 

To sew the mistletoe onto the hat I used a large yarn needle and a pice of green yarn. Make sure you do at least one loop on the little branchy things that come out of the main one as it won't slip out. The good thing about using yarn is that it's thick so you can just snip it off whenever you're done kissing. 

Happy Christmas!
Love Scarly x