I just wanna bake cakes!

Well February is marching on and I'm still waiting for paperwork form the council before I can get the keys to my tearoom. I needed a building warrant to put in an accessible toilet and some planning permission to change the tearoom from shop to tearoom. It all takes sooooo long! Months!!
I won't bore you with any more of the boring bureaucracy and instead just show you things that continue to inspire the feel of the tearoom and the things I'd like to make.

P

I'm going to make the lemon cake tomorrow. The cupcakes look awesome but perhaps beyond my capabilities at the moment!

Happy Valentines Day

I made my partner's Valentine card today by hand using some brown card and embroidery thread. I found the pattern at Stitchpoint.

It was so easy and fun to do. I completed mine in about 40 minutes. Using the pattern printout (or your own design), attach the pattern to the cardboard of paper you're going to use for the card with blu-tac or tape, but make sure it can be easily removed without marks.

Punch through the pattern and the card with a needle or a pin. I put a cushion underneath my layers to make it easier to punch. When you have all of your punched dots, you can start sewing. 

 Use a cross stitch, running or back stitch or any stitch you wish to join the dots.

 Voila!

 And finally...

Show your love to your furry ones!

Nice Details and Paint Jobs

Most of these image have come from a great new site Pinterest. Lots of lovely goodies for inspiration.

Anyone for Valentines?

It is that time again. Valentines, a day of celebration for everyone in love. A day to show that special someone that you care. I don't think presents are the key here rather than FOOD!!! I love cooking and baking and love even more when I cook for my partner who also loves my cooking and baking. I'm not sure what our plans are yet for Valentines but it might include things like these.

For those of you not celebrating Valentines, these recipes are for you too. Stuff your face full of cake and get sloshed on pink cocktails! Why not?!

Spray paint... no thanks...

I bought some spray paint in lovely pastel colours last night so that I could start preparing my furniture before moving into my tearoom hopefully later this month.

 So I practiced on an Ikea unit I'd bought for my bathroom which was very much the wrong colour.

Before

After

The finish was OK and I'm happy enough with it but this one unit used and entire tin of spray paint! Not very economic at £7 per tin and it was a bit messy. There was a dust in just about every room in my flat after I'd finished spraying. However it was quite easy to do and was fairly quick but I think I might resort back to tin of paint and a trusty brush. Has anyone any tips on using spray paint or ever used it with a finish that they liked?

Display Stand Potential?

Almost Bunnies on Flickr

I really like the alternative use of this wooden plant stand as a bedside table. Could it be a nice way to display handmade items in my tearoom and craft gallery? Maybe they could be used on the floor or in the shop window for an interesting window display?
Looking on the web for something similar, I've found these. As with most of the furniture going into my tearoom, they may need a coat of pastel coloured paint.

Reeces Pieces Cookie Recipe

My brother Richard loves Reeces Pieces and he loves cookies. So for his birthday, I baked him some cookies combining the two.
They were super tasty, chewy with a bit of crunch. I normally don't really care much for cookies but this recipe has changed my mind.

Ingredients
85g light brown sugar
115g margarine
170g self raising flour
2tbsp milk
2tbsp golden syrup
2 packets Reeses Pieces
a few drops vanilla extract

Preparation method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180C
2. Cream together the margarine and sugar in a mixing bowl
3. Add the milk, golden syrup, vanilla extract, self raising flour and Reeces Pieces to the mixture and mix well to make a thick batter a bit like a cake mix.
4. Place spoonfuls onto a greased and floured baking tray/cookie pan making sure there is enough space in between so the mix can spread.
5. Bake in the oven for about 8-10 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.  
6. Store in a airtight container (if they last that long) to keep them chewy and crunchy

Pastel China

I've been looking at colour schemes for the tearoom and its certain that it'll be mostly pastel colours. I adore this china. I have some china at home from the potters you see here but I am envious of this collection!!!

Original image on Flickr

Beautiful Blog

I came across this blog and it has the mose beautiful images of food I have ever seen! Her pictures of her cakes, desserts, even plain old tomatoes look amazing. I'm finding inspiration here for the feel for my tearoom.

Some things I'm looking at

Loving anything with ruffles

Always love flowers. The simple vases are lovely

More ruffles!

And more!

This is a bit modern for me, still like it though

Balls of ruffle!

Colour Schemes

I'm feeling a bit impatient now. Today was the deadline for the Council to have looked at my building warrant and either pass it, or make recommendations. Hopefully next week I'll know if I can take the keys for the shop and start getting it ready.

As I've mentioned, I probably have all the china that I need and pretty much all of the furniture, but I need to do a bit of work on the furniture before its fit for the tearoom.

I think I'll try spray paint for the chair and table painting and see how that goes. I think it might be quicker that using a tinned paint and brush. These are the kinds of colours I'm thinking about.

I've got my mum on board to help sand and spray paint the furniture I have, maybe starting next week if the blustery weather clears to let us work outdoors.

I've baked a bit too this week. I've sent Stuart my partner off with some samples for his family to try. If the samples do get to them I will be surprised. He really liked my pecan and chocolate cookies. I did too I suppose and scoffed about three of them yesterday...