September plans…

by Iris // September 5, 2014 // No Comments

Is it a natioonal or international disease: syndrome of the September 1st? One half of your year plans you begin on New Year’s Eve, the other is left for the 1st of September. I wonder if this ends somewhere. I mean I thought it will end when I graduate from school, then – when I graduate from uni, now I think it might end when my kids graduate from school. But have some doubts.

In September I feel myself a pupil. Excitement and worries if everything is ready, done and prepared… September is a new round of life, new round in work, family, plans and self-educating. Maybe that’s a result of holidays rebooting or stepping aside and looking on your life from some distance. Or maybe that’s just because my birthday is in summer and I just literary become older and wiser. No matter what the reason is when the wheel is spinning and you run in it.

Millions of plans are waiting for me. Huge projects and small one-day events. The cycle of life :)).

So, what we have:

– Begining with September I start taking a course at Marina Giller’s Let’s Blog! School. Hope for inspiration, new ideas and new friends.

– In September we (me and my husband) are launching our home bakery, the site and all it’s media. Now I prepare texts, pics and gather the reviews. And check-check-check out if everything is done properly. I even scheduled our opening day. 21 of September. A very important day in my life. It’s a birth day of some loved and significant people in my life.

– It’s also going to be my friend’s wedding. It doesn’t look like a big plan, I know. But it is a trip to another British city, we haven’t been to. It is an experience of a wedding feast in another culture. And I don’t speak of dresses, shoes and haircuts for girls and suits, shoes and haircuts for boys…

– My blog and Instagram are going to explode with new baked goodies as I am going to be the nearest friend of baking now. On the course in Brentside High School I’ll learn how to decorate cakes and other sweet treats.

– On the 13th of September Russian Mums in UK organize a MommyMarket in Marylebone. We are taking there our little felted friends, cupcakes and a workshop for kids.

– The most exciting event of this month is going to be a Tasting Party, a “Grand opening” of my Cupcakes and Blooms. This firework will burst my September. Guests will try cupcakes we created together with July and August. Kids will paint their own nearly-real bakery shop where they will sell absolutely-real cupcakes they made on their own. And then guests will tick the boxes on some very special cards and we’ll chose the King of Cupcakes (my son created this name %))). And even more… but it’s a surprise, and I’m not going to spoil it.

Basil infused tart with seasonal berries

by Iris // August 17, 2014 // No Comments

It’s been a while since my last post here, as we’d been on holidays in Cornwall. It is certainly worth of writing a long and joyful post about it, and I promise you, I’ll do it as soon as. But right now I want to tell a story. A sad story.

The first day we occupied our cottage in Mevagissey, I was checking if Wi-Fi is working and found a recipe of some splendid basil & berries tart. The next thing in the house to check was of course oven. It was so frustrating to find that the oven was sooooo old and slow that I had to spend half a day in front of it to cook eggs & bacon for us. There couldn’t be a thought about baking a tart in it, no.

So, two weeks I was dreaming of cooking that tart and crying bloody tears… The first thing I did when we returned home – was heating the oven. Well, I’d say it was worth dreaming of. The smooth slightly sweet, moderately chocolate crust with fresh basil infused mascarpone filling and honey-sweet august berries – that’s the perfect harmony of flavours and textures.

It’s delicious. it looks good, it’s simple. And the other good news is that with a good oven nearby it takes only about 35 minutes to make it.

So, let’s start.

You’ll need:

for the pastry

125 g plain flour

30 g icing sugar

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1 egg yolk

60 g butter (cold, cut in cubes)

for the filling

300 g mascarpone cheese

zest of one lemon

juice of 1/2 lemon

4 tbsp sugar

1 1/2 tbsp water

generous handful chopped fresh basil

about 500 g berries

How to:

In a bowl mix well flour, icing sugar and cocoa powder. Add yolk and butter. Knead quickly until no butter clumps are seen. Roll the pastry to suit your form. The amount is ideal for 21 cm round form, 4 small 12 cm round forms or 33×9 cm rectangular tart form. Fill in the pastry, cover with baking paper and put some baking weights (or alternatively – uncooked rice or dry beans). Bake for 20 minutes at 180° C (350°F), then take the paper and weights away and bake for 5 more minutes to make a nice crust.

Meanwhile mix sugar and water in small sauce pan over low heat. Once the sugar fully dissolved add chopped basil and bring to boil. Set aside to cool down. When cool pour through a sieve. Whisk together mascarpone cheese, lemon juice and zest and syrop till light and fluffy.

Fill in the mascarpone mixture into completely cool crust. Top with lots of berries, add some tiny basil leaves and dust with icing sugar to decorate.

Enjoy!

Walk route Spitafields Market – Shoreditch – Columbia Road

by Iris // August 7, 2014 // No Comments

London is a city in which you can’t stop feeling yourself like a tourist, when going some other borough rather then neighbourhood. Maybe that’s because all the boroughs are so different. And there is always a temptation to see them all at once, just like a tourist who wants to see a million of sights in a short trip time. So when I have a whole free day to explore London I try to pack it with as many interesting places as possible.

This time I went to Shoreditch, but it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t also plan to look at Spitafields Market (once a month they hold a handmade festival, it would be a shame to miss it) and Columbia Road as well.

So my route started at Liverpool street Tube Station and I headed to Spitafields Market. Usually it is a big Flea market with lots of stalls and all-kinds-of-things. Cutlery and dinnerware, books and artwork, jewellery, furniture and what not can be found there. Once I even got my personal treasure at one of the stalls – a black feather collar. But once a month half of the space (approximately) transforms into a bright and craftful area, a Handmade Festival is on!

Truly terrific ceramics.

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Sweet and spicy butternut squash cupcakes

by Iris // July 16, 2014 // 1 Comment

Do you have a favourite veggie? I love butternut squash with all my heart and tummy. But my family has a contra opinion. They meet every dish with pumpkin with sad faces. “Oh, butternut squash soup, noooo” or “Pumpkin pancakes? Mummy can I skip breakfast today?” They even refuse to eat the amazing orange & butternut squash confiture, the recipe of which my friend brought from some French village. So I had to find a way I can use several jars of that delicious pumpkin jam I made after Halloween…

So I decided on cupcakes. And that was a victory, as none of my eaters could recognise the secret ingredient they hated. It was a victory twice, ’cause that is the exact recipe that won on a Bake Off Competition organized in Ealing by Katie Bryson the author of http://www.feedingboys.co.uk .

It will take some time, as there are two steps in this recipe, and the first is to cook pumpkin confiture. I belive you can’t just replace it with pumpkin puree.

You’ll need:

1-1,2 kg of butternut squash (peeled and seeded)

finely grated zest of two oranges

fresh juice of four oranges

300 g demerara sugar

1 cinnamon stick

2-3 anise stars

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How to rescue cut hydrangea when it’s dull

by Iris // July 14, 2014 // No Comments

Flowers are beautiful. No matter what you do with them, whether you can arrange them tidy and neat or they’ll just go wild and bushy – they are beautiful. Sometimes it’s better to know about colour and composition, but my personal belief is: you can’t really spoil their beauty. Probably the only way to do it is to take away as much natural from flowers as possible. When a bit to much of artificial decoration is used like glitter on petals or paper around each flower or beads it’s difficult to see the grace of flower itself. So the only guideline I follow arranging flowers is – keep it simple and let the power of natural charm shine.

It took me 4 or 5 hours to get ready for the next day market. In a quiet short time I handed more than 200 stems of different flowers all colours and sorts.

That was the first time ever I purchased wholesale flowers and it was a surprise for me to get them in big long boxes like ordinary parcels – and with no water inside. Probably it’s a common method, but as a newbie I expected a dozen of buckets or plastic vases or something that sort… Roses and fresias were good. Though I got some bunches in wrong colour – they were in a good condition. But Hydrangea who literary is named after water because it’s watering demand (latin “hydra” is for “water”) was suffering. I didn’t know what to do. I considered the option of calling to the seller and make a return and refund for that dull and tired flowers. But curiosity won and I wanted to try reanimate them. So I looked through my flower book and some sites in the internet and found some common methods.

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Banana and cinnamon muffins

by Iris // July 8, 2014 // No Comments

I continue to explore breakfast topic and I should say I am fascinated with ones I can prepare the day before. It’s priceless to have some free time in the morning when everybody has a pile of stuff to be done, everybody is a hurry and – everybody seeks for Mommy’s help. So I’d rather help my kids get ready for their day than to spend time in front of oven.

These banana & cinnamon muffins are from the book of Donna Hay. They are light enough for the morning, yet very nutritious, full of flavour and energizing.

To make 12 big or 24 small muffins you’ll need:

300 g whole-wheat flour

3 tsp baking powder

110 g light brown sugar

2 tbsp honey

1 egg

310 ml milk (whole ore skimmed -as you like it)

80 g olive oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 small bananas, mashed

1,5 tsp ground cinnamon

65 g oat bran (oats is fine as well)

In a big bowl combine flour, baking powder, bran, cinnamon and sugar. In a smaller bowl mix egg, honey, milk, oil and vanilla extract, blend untill smooth. Then add to dry ingredients. Mix untill just combined? then fold in bananas. Spoon to the muffin tray lined with paper cases. Bake for 25 minutes on 180° C. The number and size of muffins will depend on the capacity of muffin tins. I like to do smaller ones (classic cupcake size), because of my 2 years old daughter. She can never eat the whole muffin. I make it half-muffin size, so she won’t leave half of it for the bin.

These are truly perfect for morning coffee. Make it in the evening and leave overnight and they’ll be even more tasty than right from the oven.

Enjoy your morning!

Bloglovin

by Iris // July 7, 2014 // 1 Comment

Well, I just wanted to say, that I’m trying make things better, like make reading this blog easier, and now you can follow it on Bloglovin.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

First Fair experience

by Iris // July 6, 2014 // No Comments

It was a very busy week, and I feel like I was doing so many things at the same moment that right now it’s difficult to concentrate. I was preparing for my first sales experience in London. It took a lot of time and thought, ’cause I couldn’t just fill the stall with felted scarves – it’s the wrong season and I don’t have enough of them. So I had to choose some other products to make and sell. And to design some cards, price tags, leaflets. And prepare stall decorations. And so on.

Yesterday it was the pick of my mad week, I had two Fairs in one day, at my kid’s school from noon to 4 pm and then from 6 to 9.30 pm. It was crazy to drag those bags from one place to another without a car, especially the vases. Never carry 13 vases in 1 bag, never! Next time I’ll consider buying some small plastic buckets for flowers.

All together we spent 9 h 30 minutes at the fairs including setting up and packing down, all time my heroic husband and my kids were with me, supporting and encouraging me. Here I share some photos from both events.

The first was Summer Fair at Fielding Primary School, there were lots of people and lots of various activities for kids and adults. Yet, it didn’t go really well. The first reason was weather it was really windy and there were several showers during the day, so I couldn’t unpack and demonstrate my scarves. I spent a lot of time and two table cloths arranging bouquets so they wouldn’t be blown over. I couldn’t risk it with the scarves, no. What I got from there, it’s not my audience. There are people who came to spend a little money on kids candy and father’s beer and though many kids were looking at the small felted friends they couldn’t afford it, as most of pocket money was spent on candy in first 5 minutes after coming to Fair.

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Cottage cheese mousse with berries

by Iris // June 20, 2014 // No Comments

I always feel like my breakfast is a little bit too boring. Well, I don’t mean that we (me and family) cook and eat the same breakfast everyday, there is a certain variety… but. It’s similar to joggling some very few balls: eggs&beans, pancakes, cornflakes, porridge. And the variety looks like last time it was scrambled eggs, this time it’ll be omelette, last time it used to be pancakes with banana, today will make it berries. Sometimes small changes make a big difference, but it doesn’t work with breakfasts. You still feel like they are all the same and boring.

Sometimes I get really tired of that and begin seeking for new recipes that will suit family breakfast, considering that everyone needs to be fed, satisfied and the recipe needs to be quick.

I share my finding with you. It’s not a quick one, as it takes 4 hours to set up in fridge, but it’s easy one to make late evening. And the next morning you just take it out and serve the table – 20 minutes of your morning is saved for the sake of sleep or a run.
Cottage cheese is particularly popular in Russia, where it’s mostly used plain or to make some nice bakery like cheesy pancakes called “syrniki” or cheesy cake we call “zapekanka”. This one is really different from traditional use of cottage cheese in Russia. It’s more like a cheesecake without biscuit layer.

We’ll need: Continue reading →

Felted shawl “Wind catchers”

by Iris // June 11, 2014 // No Comments

Sea and wind are a very special theme for me. Just like trees and birds. These are motifs I choose most frequently in clothes, home furnishing and accessories, I use them for doodling, drawing and felting too. I would certainly bring them together into my life as soon as I had a chance. If I could point any place on our planet where to live, I’d seek for one where sea meets forest. I’d build my house the way it could face seashore on the frontyard and the trees on the backyard, so I could choose between looking at waves and listening to splash tangled with gulls squawk and viewing green shadows, foxes and birds sneaking around.

I just wanted to say that “Wind catchers” is a very special piece of work for me. It is about freedom, about sea salt in every breath, about inspiration. It’s like in childhood, when you could run along the shore, barefoot, holding something above your head, a sock or a plastic bag probably, and no thouts troubled the mind, you were all in the moment, feeling it, enjoying it…

It’s a pitty you can’t catch that air that moment in your sock or plastic bag and take it from childhood to your maturity… Well, two many thoughts about one piece of felt, right? No more words, just some pics.

It may be not that evident but the shawl is fish-shaped, with a big open mouth, small tail and a layered silk caudal fin.

Both girls and boys hair are made of tangled silk threads. I came up with this idea when once my cat stole a spool and played around the house, so when I came home I saw mishmash of threads. It was no chance to untangle it so I gathered all curls and ringlets and thought it would be nice to use those green threads to draw a tree crown. So soon I made a scarf “Flying in reality”. You can see it here if you want.

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