A Cookie Recipe!

My friends at Knit for Unity: Across the Globe  and Maryhill Integration Network know I’m more than a little bit partial to home baking.  These cookies went down so well that several knitters asked for the recipe. I’m strugging to upload it to our Facebook page, so here it is…

Ingredients

 1 ½ cups caster sugar

1 cup butter or margarine (Stork is very good)

1 egg

1 teaspoon liquid vanilla flavouring

½ teaspoon liquid almond flavouring (optional)

2 ½ cups plain white flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

 

Method

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Line two baking sheets with non-stick baking paper.

Mix the sugar and butter / margarine until pale and fluffy, then add the egg, vanilla and almond flavouring and mix again until everything is well combined.

Sift the flour, salt, baking powder and cream of tartar, and then stir the dry ingredients into the egg mixture to make cookie dough.

Using your hands, take a piece of dough about the size of a walnut and roll it gently between your palms to make a round ball. Put it on the cookie sheet. Repeat until you have 12 balls, then fill the second sheet in the same way.  You may need to bake the cookies in two batches.  Do not place the balls too close together as the cookies will spread as they cook!

Bake at 175 degrees C for 8 – 10 minutes, 8 minutes for a softer cookie, 10 minutes for a harder version. Take the cookies out of the over and carefully slide them onto a cooling rack. The cookies will be very soft, but will harden as they cool.

Eat as soon as they’re cool enough to handle! The cookies will keep for a week in an airtight box, assuming the Cookie Monsters in your household don’t get there first.

Same technique, different century!

I’ve loved crochet since childhood.  I inherited my great-grandmother’s crochet hooks, threads and instruction manuals when I was still at primary school and spent many rainy weekends working out how to do it.  Part of crochet’s appeal is the way you can make just about anything – you work stitch by stitch rather than row by row, so you can go round in circles, change direction, make a solid fabric or something very light and lacey.

The upper image shows some skull motifs I’m making for Hallowe’en in fine crochet cotton.  It’s difficult to find very fine, strong crochet cotton in the UK but a recent trip to Edinburgh yielded lovely DMC Puppets thread in black and crimson (available at Jenners). I’m using a 0.6mm hook (available at TheYarnCake) and am looking for a daylight simulation lamp to ease my eyestrain!

The lower pictures shows a crocheted tablecloth towards the back, which was made in the early 20th century by my great-grandmother using fine thread.  The thickness is very similar to the DMC Puppets but the overall effect is very different!  I’m full of admiration for Great-Grandma’s work, the regularity of her stitches and the amount of time she must have spent making something very beautiful for her home. 

The circular tablecloth at the front is an example of Madeira work, made on the island of Madeira in the mid-20th century.  My mother remembers calling in to Madeira on the way to South Africa by ship in the 1950s and seeing pieces like this being made.  To my eye the flower and foliage swirls are evocative of the earlier Art Nouveau movement and look forward to Mary Quant and 60s flower power too.

For more images of Madeira work have a look at my Pinterest board.