The Spice Satchel: December 2011

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Stitch yourself a very merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everybody!

I love making gifts for people! This year, I didn't make as many as years past, and some are not done (or started :/) yet. I DID make a stocking for Bennett, to go with the ones I made for the rest of the Fisks :)

Paul and I drew the O'Connor family as the sibling draw for my family. I made them hats- owls for Mia and Gabriel, and stripes for Mike and Koleen. Koleen's stripes are swooped in a sprial, a very pretty pattern. I also made them peppermint ornaments for their tree. They go with the tree skirt I made last year!

Then I made Mia a new blanket, because the one one I made her before has holes all over it! This one I made out of stash yarn, which means left overs! It is very "Mia" if you ask me, and I added interest by making 3 sections with different fun stitches. Inara of course laid on it, because, well, that's what she does!

Paul's friends from college, Matt and Jess, who were married in 2003, are having a baby, so I also made them a blanket. We don't know if it is a boy or a girl, so I used MSU colors.

1 scarf, 8 scarf: Merry Christmas!

This Christmas I made a lot of gifts, but this is the first time I made gifts for someone else to give! Mary, who you may remember from the "how long does it take to make 2 skirts?" series asked me to make scarves for her friends! So exciting! I love making scarves, they don't take too long, and each one can be as different or similar as you'd like. Fancy stitch practice at its prime. I hope she and her friends love them!

I also sent her 9 headbands I made a long time ago. I was hoping to sell them (back then) but never really got the opportunity. Giving them as gifts is way better than letting them sit around. I do wear these headbands to work sometimes, very cute!

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

dragon cupcakes


copyright: Cori 2011

Paul has been talking about dragon cupcakes since Mia's Birthday party in November. Koleen and I made her sushi cupcakes. Very cute ones.

I looked a lot online for dragon cupcakes, and they were basically all frosting dragons, or whole cakes turned into dragons, or cupcakes squished together like a sheet cake with a picture of a dragon on it. So frosting dragons it is. Amy and I decorated cupcakes with dragons breathing fire. They are very amateur, but it was our first time, and I still think they are cute. The frosting is just Duncan Hines from the can colored with food coloring and dragons piped on. :) Some of the dragons look like hippos, or the little ogre from the Smurfs. At least they were made with love. I'm hoping over the next (lots of) years, our frosting piping skills will improve. :) And at least Amy turned the white icing into great colors! And we found some great red cupcake papers :)

kahlua

Mmm, coffee with kahlua. mmm, kahlua and cream. Mmm, kahlua. Making kahlua is actually easy, it just takes some time. There are a ton of recipes on the internet. Most of them use instant coffee, and after you make it, it needs about a month to sit, settle, and get ready. It makes great holiday gifts.

The recipe I've used the last several years goes like this:

3 cups water
3 cups sugar
10 teaspoons instant coffee
3 cups vodka
3 teaspoons vanilla extract

Simmer water, sugar & coffee for 1 hour in a large pot. It will thicken, and the sugar and coffee will dissolve. Let cool (if it's cold outside I usually stick it outside to cool faster).
Add vanilla & vodka. Bottle in sanitized bottles, let sit for a month, shaking every so often to mix.

Of course, I used Via for the instant coffee. it did a great job! (One pack per teaspoon)

Monday, December 19, 2011

not just any chocolate cake

Amy is 22! I made her a cake. A huge cake. A Triple Layer Chocolate Fudge Cake. It was my first layer cake from scratch! I was so excited to make it for her. :)
I bought a new cake pan, because I only had two, and it had to have 3 layers! I also wanted Paul to be able to enjoy it with everyone else (of course!) so I searched for cake recipes that sounded fudgey and delicious, and were dairy free. I found this one on simply recipes.
I also used cake flour instead of all-purpose flour- 1 cup + 2 Tbls for each cup of regular flour called for in the recipe, and Ghirardelli cocoa powder- really super soft, I've never felt cocoa so soft.
I put on my apron, and got started. The good thing is, you put the layers in the freezer until you are ready to frost them, so I could bake them before Amy even got here- surprise! I love surprises :)

Then the frosting search. dairyfree.org gave me a chocolate frosting recipe that I already had, in a cookbook from Paul's sister, Sara. This frosting has honey in it, which I had never considered before. Excellent idea! Very creamy and smooth frosting!

I also kind of wanted a filling frosting that would make the cake more worthy of the "fudge" in the title. When there wasn't enough frosting for all three layers anyway, I had another frosting in waiting. It is made with granulated sugar and chocolate chips instead of powdered sugar and cocoa powder.


copyright: Cori 2011

Luckily, I wanted to put something chocolate on the frosting to decorate it, so I had chocolate chips. I found mini chocolate chips-perfect! Then, it was time to frost! We threw the chocolate chips at the side of the cake to decorate the edge, "Just chuck it!"
Huge, frosting filled, and yummy!