A Finish and a start!

Hope all my dear blogger friends had a Merry Christmas!! We are finally in the last week of the year

Baking

V and I wanted to bake Christmas cookies this year

Linzer cookies and 'snow' cookies as we called it. We did not add food color to the icing, and with the silver balls topping, don't they look like snow :)

Stitchy Update

Put in the last stitches in Coffee last weekend. I am very happy with how it has turned out. I will be taking this and a few others that I finished earlier this year to the framer later this week

Started on a new project, which is going to be a gift. So, I am not going to talk much about this or post any further update pictures, till it reaches its new home :)

So, that's from me today dear friends. Enjoy the rest of your holidays. Till next time.. Be Happy.. Keep Stitching.. Au Revoir

Cookie Time

V tried her hand at cookies alone (when I was at work) at my mom's place and ended up burning them. Thankfully mom smelt something burning and woke up in time to find the cookies burning. Ever since then V has been wanting to bake cookies with me only watching while she did everything from scratch

So here was her first one - Cranberry and white chocolate chip cookies

It turned out totally yummy. Everything went very smooth, no burning down the place!! The recipe source is here. We used flax seed powder in place of eggs

Rugelach

We had a tub of cream cheese which we wanted to use up. Found a very simple recipe to make Rugelach in one of the baking forums in FaceBook

Recipe:
150gm each of cold Cream cheese and plain flour, 100 gm cold butter.

Mix the three and rub till they resemble coarse bread crumbs. wrap in a cling wrap and refrigerate for half an hour to an hour. Roll out like rotis, spread any jam/nutella and cut it out into long traingles, roll up each triangle and bake for 20-30 minutes.

NOTE - refrigerate after rolling up and stuffing before baking. This will help retain the shape

We made a mistake - the cream cheese was in room temperature. Hence the dough was very soft and we were not able to roll it out and cut into triangles. So we made a round disc and filled with marmalade/nutella/peanut butter

The saltiness from the cream cheese totally compliments the sweetness. Also the pastry was nice and soft. Very simple and quick snack

Both the cookies turned out great and no burning down the place!! So, I am guessing that V did not get the setting right in the oven at mom's place

That's about the adventures today friends. Till next time.. Take care.. Be happy.. Keep crafting..Au Revoir!!

Tusal and more

Firstly, thank you dear friends for all your encouraging words. Each time I slow down, all I have to do is login to our blog world and take a look everybody's progress. Lo and behold.. I am all charged up to continue and not to give up

Ok now for my Tusal of the month

All ORTs are from seashells

Over the weekend I tried 2 new recipes. The first one is a dessert - a faux cheese cake.

V wanted something for dessert. I had craving for cheesecake, but no patience to whip up a proper cheesecake. So, I combined whipped cream with cream cheese, used ginger cookies as the base and strawberry oreo for topping

The second is choco-peppermint cookies

I replaced the egg with flaxseed powder. Also, I varied the baking time for each lot - baked one slightly longer for crispy cookies, one lot shorter for chewy center and in the last lot added some caramel in the center.

I don't have any picture to show you on seashells this time. So, that's all from me today dear friends.

Till my next update.. Take care.. Be happy.. Keep stitching.. Au Revoir

A finish, some baking, some progress and Tusal

Has been quite a while since I posted last. So, there's been quite a bit of activity happening at my end.

First the Tusal for the month

All Orts here are from December of course. 



Here's the August cottage in all its glory.

Am really proud of the Indian flag, has turned out really well too. Not bad at a first attempt at changing a pattern to suit my need

Do you remember I posted a recipe for Choco-nana crinkle cookies a few weeks back. I tweaked the recipe to make lemon-choco chip cookies.

It was a suuuper hit. The change I made was skipped the cocoa and used flour, lemon juice instead of vanilla extract. For some extra spice, added half tsp of nutmeg powder

Another new trial was a potato bread

It tasted real yumm. Only it was not fluffy :( Am planning to bake this again for sure.

Guess what arrived by mail. My order from 123.

How could I just order spinach?? It's not fair right, hehe

Finally, some progress in December

After  I took this picture, I've made a lot of progress and now just have the border at the bottom left

So, that's allll the updates from me today :)
Till next time.. Take care.. Be happy.. Keep stitching.. Au Revoir

Lots of baking and Tusal

Whooo am reallly on a baking spree now. Last week I tried 2 new recipes - a cookie and a pudding.

The cookie is part of a challenge hosted by the Homebaker's guild - a group of bakers on FB. The challenge is called the choco-nana crinkle cookie challenge

It's an absolute yumm recipe and a must-try. The recipe is from here

The pudding was something that I've been wanting to try for a very long time. So finally I put this together, literally on Friday night for dessert.

This is what I did:
Line the baking dish with bread slices, pour cooked custard covering the bread layer completely, top with raisins and nuts of your choice and bake in a preheated oven for 15-20 minutes. I sprinkled some cinnamon and also added a few strands of saffron to the custard. Server warm. The hubby and V totally loved it.

Now for the Tusal

There's not much progress since my last Tusal. I have just managed to put in a few stitches on December cottage.

Here's where I stand with it now

I am taking it really slow for a few reasons - this is the last of the cottages and am cherishing it and also, am waiting for the arrival of Spinach 

And here's my July in all its glory

 That's all from me for today dear friends. Till next time with more baking and stitching.. Take care.. Be happy.. Keep stitching.. Au Revoir

Sooo much to share

I have been very busy meeting my target of making beaded jewellery for my cousin. Let me show you everything!!

 Each set is so dear to me

I love Reese's peanut butter cup, the texture, everything about it. About a few days back, to my horror, I realized that V and her friend had finished even my share of it!! AArrrgggh, how annoying.So, I decided to try and make something similar.

Of course, nothing can beat the original, but I'd say (if I may say so myself) this really did come very close. Recipe from joyofbaking.com

Also tried my hand at making some cookies - Nutella cookies

I used some of the left over chocolate from the peanut butter cup to top a few of the cookies. Recipe is from here

Last night V and I were all set to bake coconut-almond cookies. The dough was (is) ready and had even arranged them on the cookie tray ready to be baked. Switched on the oven to pre-heat. after a minute or so, it just went off!!! Eh, what, how could you do this to me!!! I was almost in tears. But what could I do, except pack the dough in a ziploc and pop it in the freezer. I really hope the technicians come during the week and get it back in shape for the weekend baking. Oh I so miss my oven.

And guess what, amidst all this I did manage to finish June

I have now crossed half a year. All set to start July now. I am yet to order Sep/Oct  and Nov. I have to also start thinking of actually finishing these, to atleast put them up the coming year. My thoughts are navigating between a calendar and a memory board.

Wow, that was quite a long post by my standards. Thanks for dropping by.

Till next time.. Take care.. Be happy.. Keep stitching.. Au Revoir

Baking.. Progress and more stash!!

Yay, I have another follower. A very warm welcome. Thank you all sooo much for stopping by and leaving behind your comments.

Yes, I have more stash!!! But this time I can say am "authorized" to get stash thanks to the Cottage Sal. I had ordered for Feb and March cottages through 123stitch and received the parcel last Friday. When I went home from work, V was up waiting for me. She said I had a "surprise" and handed me this parcel. And, am sure you can imagine the hug I gave her :D

I decided to bake some "Christmas" cookies over the weekend. I got the recipe from the December edition of GoodhouseKeeping.

V "decorated" these with a set of edible markers that we got as a gift.

Some "sugar" versions.

A few other variations - choco chip, jam and nutella. Thanks to V I have now fallen all over in love again with Nutella. Aren't they yuuummmm?!


And I can now finally finish Jan cottage as I got the WDW and the Crescent floss required to complete it along with my parcel. Here's where I stand now

I am simply loving every stitch of this SAL. At my stitching pace, hope to finish Jan this week and start off Feb.

Thank you again for stopping by and all your kind words.
Till my next update.. Take care.. Be happy.. Keep stitching.. Au Revoir :)

More Stash!!!

Hello dear friends, hope you have all been very busy with.. well life and loads of stitching :) I definitely have been busy, but very little stitching. For some reason have been very tired of late. So kind of low on the crafty mojo. Anyway, am just taking it as things come, a day at a time.

I did do some baking. I looove cinnamon rolls. I just can't have enough of them (whenever I do get them). So, I did some browsing on various recipes and with my friend's help, found this recipe on Epicurious. Here's the outcome

I know, it does not look very "rolly", and it was not the dripping roll. It was much harder than it should be. But well, it did taste of cinnamon :)

I had some of the cinnamon "filling" left over from the rolls. I did not feel like venturing again into the rolls yet. So, decided to use them up in cookies.

They came out real yummm. I added some raisins to make it slightly chewy.

Now for my stitchy update. As I said, I did not do much stitching. This is all I could do in aaallll these days.

Am loving working on this. Just love the combination of the fabric and the thread. Am using 18 ct Aida and black anchor thread.

And now, for the best part.. S.T.A.S.H!!! Yes, I bought more stuff from ebay!!!

I always loved blue and white stuff and fell in love with the pattern right away. Got both along with the shipping for about 19USD :d

I have a vision of dedicating a wall in our apartment to cross stitch. Planning to call it the cross stitch wall or maybe crafty wall. Also, going to start stitching seasonal stuff and change displays around the house according to season. This is just a vision. The rate at which I stitch, I might take a life time doing all this. LOL!!

That's all the news from me for today. 
Till my next update..Take care.. Be happy.. Keep stitching.. Au Revoir