So I left work on Friday with a real urge to make and eat gingerbread men.

It was only after making the dough up and looking at my cutters that I realised I did not have any gingerbread men cutters. Instead I opted for ginger butterflies. Perfect for my Autumnal cups of tea.

This recipe is my all time favourite ginger biscuit recipe and comes from this trusty Ladybird first children's cookbook. Like the gooey chocolate brownies these are one of the first things I remember baking with my mum.

The pictures are a bit unattractive now with everything being orange and brown and look at the below girl's poor hairstyle! However it still has my favourite gingerbread men recipe.

Ingredients
100g plain flour
1/2 level tsp of bicarbonate of soda
25g brown sugar
50g margarine or butter
75g golden syrup - if you like your gingerbread darker you can substitute some of the golden syrup with black treacle
1 level teaspoon of ginger 
50g plain flour for dusting and shaping



Method

1. Preheat oven to 190C
2. Cream margarine and sugar together
3. Add the golden syrup and ginger and mix well
4. Sift in flour and bicarbonate soda and mix well
5. Turn out onto a floured surface and work some of the flour into the dough
6. Cut out your shapes. This makes quite a wet sticky dough so you may need to work a bit more flour in and pick a simple cutter. Make sure you flour the cutter before using
7. Bake for 10-12 mins or until golden
8. Leave to cool on the baking tray

Took a visit to National Trust Winkworth Arboretum, Surrey today to catch the Autumn colours and thought I would share my photos below. 

Dasher the Reindeer

I am so glad to tell you that Hotel Chocolat have given me the chance to review Dasher the Reindeer from their Christmas collection and I also have one of these to give away.

I love Hotel Chocolat. It is always my go to chocolate shop at Christmas for their lovely hot chocolates, truffles and cute characters such as Dasher. I love all the flavour combinations they have and the quality of the chocolate is really good.

I chose Dasher to review as he is only £6.50 and is good quality for the amount of yummy chocolate. He also comes wrapped in this lovely snowy cellophane. 

Well quite simple the picture to the right sums up my review. This was after half an hour of opening the packet! Woops!

The chocolate is lovely and flavoursome and full of depth. Dasher is made of milk chocolate with dark and white chocolate features. The chocolate is really thick in places which I absolutely love. He is a good size at about 20cm tall and would make a lovely gift for a work colleague or friend. 

Giveaway
I am afraid this is only open to people in the UK.
If you want to enter the giveaway there are several ways:

1. Please leave a comment below telling me what you would buy from Hotel Chocolat to give to friends at Christmas
2. Please like the Turquoise Lemons facebook page and leave me a comment below saying you have done so
3. Re Tweet the competition on twitter and leave a comment below saying you have done so.

Competition will close at midnight on Saturday 12th November 2012. On Sunday 13th I will pick a random winner by number from the comments below. I will be in touch to clarify your postal address and Dasher will be sent to you directly from Hotel Chocolat.

This week's Weekly Bake Off was a Mary Berry scrumptious apple and cinnamon cake. I didn't  have any brown sugar so I used granulated sugar, I also skipped the nuts. I think this made it a really lovely fruity but light cake.


It is amazingly tasty. I love the combination of apple and cinnamon and the layer of apple in the middle is lovely.
For me it was topped of by a perfect cup of tea!

I'm not sure I am going to actually submit it as I keep subverting the original recipe which I don't really think is the point of the Weekly Bake Off. 

This snood is made out of two T shirts. I used a Tshirt with text on it on one side and a plain grey on the other. The text might not be your thing but this works really well with one patterned stretch fabric and one plain T shirt. Follow the pictures below to help you along.

1. Take the first t shirt and cut it down the middle
2. Cut along the sides and sleeves 
3. You should now have 4 pieces 
4. Cut the sleeve and neck part off so you have for even rectangles
5. I only used 3 of these pieces for my snood but it depends on the stretchyness or your t shirts and the length you would like.
6. Sew this peices together right sides together to make one long strip
7. Repeat steps 1-6 with the second t shirt
8. Now sew both strips along length ways making sure the right sides are facing in
9. Turn the tube inside out
10. Place one end of the tube inside the other 
11. Fold the edges in and sew your snood together.
12. Done!

Here is another homemade Christmas gift using up some more of the glut of cooking apples.

I used this recipe from BBC Good Food. However I changed it slightly mostly because I did not have enough cranberries. They weren't really very available in the shop when I made my batch and so they cost a lot. I therefore had to reduce the amount of the recipe. However this still made 5 and a half jars so I think this was about the right amount. I also just used more cooking apples in place of eating apples.







Ingredients

600g peeled and chopped cooking apples
300g peeled and chopped eating apples
270g of finely chopped onions
10g fresh grated root ginger
1tsp peppercorns
300g granulated sugar
150g cider vinegar
300g fresh or frozen cranberries 

Method

1. Place all the ingredients, apart from the cranberries, in a large saucepan and gently heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
   
2. Bring to the boil, then reduce and simmer until the apples and onions are tender and there are no watery juices left
3. Add the cranberries and cook for 10 minutes until soft but not burst.
4. Spoon the hot chutney into hot sterilised jars and seal
5. Store in a cool dark place for 6 months. Chill on opening

I was a bit worried that this looked like apple sauce with cranberries to begin with but don't worry within 3 weeks it has a very red colour. A bit like apple sauce with cranberries but the chutney has already darkened in a few days and it tastes fab. I had a little that wouldn't fit in a jar. Great with a cheese toasty!

This has been entered as part of Vanessa's Let's Make Christmas at prepped.co.uk

I'm also planning to take a jar of this along on the 18th November to Fortnum and Mason for the special Let's Make Christmas blogger meet up.

I love the smell of hyacinths and love to see something growing and thriving in the winter months. I have decided to grow some hyacinths in teacups as Christmas presents. 

I picked all these cups up from the charity shop. I have planted the hyacinths with bulb fibre and have left them in a dark place to route. Hopefully some of them will be ready as Christmas gifts. 

Last year I bought a set of jumpers from a cheap high street store and then added needle felt decorations to them.

If you are not sure how to needle felt or where to get supplies from check out my blog post here. The principles are the same as when needle felting an object but instead you matt the fibers into the cardigan or jumper. 

Make sure you have your foam block underneath the area you are felting and design away.  Make sure you turn the cardigan inside out and needle felt from the back as well to secure the design.

If you are not sure what to do just use a stencil and create a monogram design. For example I took a black jumper for my sister and just felted a very small white cat on it using a stencil to get the shape. I will do another needle felted jumper with a stencil soon and post it up.

I also went over mine with a bit of embroidery thread to add some detail.

Today my friend and I went to a cupcake decorating class at Soulcialize. It was a really good chance to learn a bit more about piping frosting and I nearly mastered the rose! Plus  managed to make turquoise cakes!

It was a 2 hour class and we were just let loose with the icing and piping materials with the teacher there to guide us and show us different techniques. Really good fun.

I have included a bit below about which nozzle I used for each style of piping.

This piping swirl was made with a fairly large star shaped nozzle. Don't scrape the nozzle along the cake but let it drop down onto the cake. Go very slowly and in a very controlled way and start from the outside working in to the top. Do this all in one steady pipe rather than stopping and starting and hold the piping straight vertically down onto the cake.

This piping used a crescent shaped nozzle. I made the marble effect by adding teal food colouring to the white icing and not properly mixing it. I piped the icing slightly back and forth to give it its shape and again started from the outside in.

To make the rose you need to use a tear shaped nozzle. This is really tricky and I had to have several attempts at this and it still isn't perfect. Hold the nozzle with the flat end at the bottom and horizontally to the cake. Start in the centre and at the top and make a bud by doing a small overlapping circle. Then start to move outwards make arched crescents around the bud. Keep overlapping these all the way to the edge. This would look good with marbled effect icing as I believe it would really look like petals then.

We also had a little funny adventure on the way home when my friend was holding her train ticket and a gust of wind blew it onto the track. We were in hysterics trying to figure out what to do and in the end decided to take a picture of it on the tracks to evidence our story if the ticket inspector asked us!

These make lovely homemade gifts. I made my drawstring bag a little while ago and decorated it with buttons and stitching. The buttons and stitching look like flowers. Apologies that the stitching didn't come up well on the photo!

I use mine to put tights and underwear in when I am travelling.

If you aren't sure how to make a drawstring bag follow this tutorial by Sew Mama Sew