Baking Days

Lately I have been baking a lot, it started because I've had to make some major adjustments in my diet and faced with having nothing sweet and yummy, I took to baking. At first I found it annoying that I would now have to make things if I wanted to eat nice food, but then I discovered some great recipes that actually made baking fun and rewarding.

Now don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed baking in the past and definitely watch 'The Great British Bake Off' every year but now it was a necessity.

Well fast forward several months and now baking has become therapeutic and fun!

So after many baking days and getting quite a thing for it, I had this crazy idea... 'Wouldn't it be fun to do a Julie and Julia!' ie: work my way through a recipe book, one bake at a time.

The idea has kept coming back to me and I thought it would a fun blog post series. So I introduce to you 'Baking Days', where I will be making as many of the dishes from this book Grandma's Best Recipes (new Collection) as my diet allows. Some things won't be possible like anything chocolate or cream filled but I can do most of the book and will adjust the recipes with alternate ingredients where need be.

So first up are ‘Classic Oatmeal Cookies’.

This recipe uses way more ingredients than I was used to, (in terms of grams) make sure you have a big bowl! I substituted Pure Sunflower spread for butter, all the other ingredients the same.

The wet mixture is pretty sloppy but it does go smooth after a while. I found once it was time to combine the wet and dry ingredients that using my hands was a lot easier since there was a lot of mixture and I wanted it to be properly combined. If I had used my kitchen aid it would have been a lot easier and quicker.

I broke the mixture up and rolled it into little balls and put on the baking tray spaced out. Then baked for 17 mins.

I'm really pleased with the results, they are vanillary, buttery, flap-jacky in taste and texture. Lovely just out the oven. Once left to fully cool they still tasted fantastic.

My rating for this bake is: 10/10 for ease of baking and taste.

I hope to do a recipe per week when I can, so I do hope you will follow along with me. This book is one I received as a Christmas pressie and had yet to use, this is entirely my own choice to do and not a sponsored post. {If you wanted to purchase the book, if you click my link above I will get a little percentage, if you wanted to help me out}

Let me know if you have this book and if you've made anything from it, I’d love to hear! To find all ‘Baking Days’ posts, I’m setting up a category so they will be easy to find on the right sidebar.

Blessings

x

P.S I have changed my blog design back to the old one, it just seems to fit 'me' so much better :) x

New Painting Series–Vintage Kitchen

‘Salt & Pepper’

4 x 4” acrylics on chunky wood canvas

£40.00

I am so excited, you may have already heard on Facebook? I’ve been playing around with a new series of paintings, the first of which I showed a sneak peek on Friday of these cute little Salt & Pepper pots.

My friend Sherry loves to collect Pyrex and I love it too, only I haven’t had much luck finding any round here at the Thrift shops, hopefully one day I’ll find some. The beautiful colours and prints on the Pyrex inspired me to create ‘Salt & Pepper’, which I enjoyed painting so much it’s inspired a whole series of paintings on the vintage kitchen theme!

I’m really looking forward to painting more Pyrex, old fashioned kitchen items and of course baking! I love baking and will share with you some of my favourite recipes and pics of yummy things I’ve made.

You can find all my original paintings and prints available to buy at my website: www.thevintageartist.com/galleryindex.htm or purchase directly here directly through Pay Pal:

Buy Now

xxx

Flapjacks – A healthy Recipe!

Fancy baking something tasty, comforting and healthy?

I’ve been wanting to try agave nectar for a while now and so I decided to make some flapjacks, substituting the golden syrup for agave nectar. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but these turned out fabulous and I actually think they taste better!

I used Mary Berry’s recipe, which I borrowed from my Mum they were a hit with my Hubby as well. Very yummy.

And then today I tried another variation! Instead of using butter I subbed for olive oil and apple sauce, oh yum! A sure winner! Chewy and yummy, the apple makes it almost apple crumble like in taste, delicious!

Try them yourself! Let me know if you do x

xxx

Wonderful Weekend

First there was Art Club at ours on Saturday, we made ATC’s which was great fun and great therapy for me.

Then after a great service at Church on Sunday we enjoyed the gorgeous weather and planted these beauties…

 

I love these large bellis (I call them puffs lol) and my mini daffs and pink primroses.

Our front garden is starting to look lovely again at last!

While Hubby planted those beauties for me, I baked some more apple sauce muffins and Ellie happily chomped on her bone.

The weather was so gorgeous Sunday we enjoyed a lovely long walk by the river and then came home for dinner before rushing out to our Churches evening healing service.

Today it was back to work, which I am very happy about! I got right back into painting and created another cutie for you to enjoy which I’ll be listing on ebay tomorrow, so look out for a blog post on that.

This short break has really helped me to see life differently (even more than usual), I’m always pondering but I felt like God has been really teaching me that I can completely rest in Him, have peace and enjoy everything He has given us…I fully intend to!

Live life to the full guys…

Love

xxx

P.S Today I added a cool page of Q&A’s to help you with your paintings. I also updated my About Me page with some fun facts. xx

A Family Fun Baking & Making Weekend

We had a great weekend, Saturday was spent enjoying a relaxing free day, no plans, nothing to rush to, lovely! We walked Ellie to the local yarn shop in the morning and I picked up some gorgeous yarns to work on our ripple blanket for our bedroom and then we headed to the park and Ellie and Hubby had great fun running around for a while.

Then we headed back for some lunch and I helped Hubby make some lovely fresh baguettes which we shared with Mum and Dad. Homemade bread makes a great gift! :D

I got working on the ripple blanket for a while and then started thinking about the beautiful fabric I recently got to make a little curtain for our kitchen cubby. We actually call it Ellie’s cubby, because ever since we’ve had her she’s loved to hide in there.

So that’s what I did, I got all my stuff out and had a go. It was way harder than I thought it would be. All the measuring, marking and cutting went really well and that’s surprising because that is the part I like the least! When it came to sewing the hems, I had real trouble. The fabric kept slipping and so my stitch lines were a little wavy lol Still, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out considering I haven’t sown for ages. What do you think?

Sunday was spent at Church in the Morning and then I dashed off to grab a lift with Mum and Dad down to Dagenham to visit our family for Mother’s Day. Lot’s of gifts, cards and food :D

After a great weekend, I woke up this morning to a beautiful sunny day and decided that some baking and homemaking was in order. I made some more Apple Sauce muffins and have just got this yummy loaf out of the oven. It’s Alicia’s Oat & Honey loaf. It doesn’t look much like hers but I’m hoping it will taste great!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend, let me know what you did…

xxx

Nesting

First came apple sauce muffins yum yum! And then…

My first fresh baguettes! What’s all this about? I hear you ask, well, my Mum gave me her Kenwood Chef recently and I’ve been so excited to try it out! Hubby keeps asking me when we are going to make our own bread, so this morning I decided to have a go. What a nice surprise that will be for him when he gets home tonight :D Providing it tastes as good as it looks lol

Yesterday I was also in the mood for making a start getting our home into shape. We have virtually the whole house to decorate and since last year was all about getting the back garden re-landscaped we didn’t have any time or resources for the rest of the house. Now we still have some landscaping left to do but since we had to stop over winter we’ve been working inside and Hubby has had loads of prep to do for the hall, landing and stairs. So we just have some plastering to do and I think we will then be ready to paint at last yay! We’ve chosen watercolour green, it’s going to look gorgeous with an off white for the wood work. Exciting stuff!

So I’ve been trawling through Flickr for more vintage inspired ideas for the other rooms of the house. I ordered some gorgeous floral fabric to make a little curtain for our cubby in the kitchen and am trying to think what else I can do with our currently very ugly windowsill. All I can do is jazz up what it’s like already with fabric and jars etc until we can makeover the whole room. I’m going to start making visiting our local thift shops a regular pastime to see what I can collect :D Fun! I need to make some sort of curtains or something to make the window pretty too. It’s a large window but very old and has a brown laminated windowsill. Perhaps I ought to take some pics next time to show you?

Anyway, I’d love to see any links to vintage style pictures, patterns, ideas etc you might have to inspire me. I love shabby chic vintage so keep an eye out for me won’t you :)

Back to painting now…

xxx