Snickerdoodles!

I've already shown you guys the best cookie I ate on my holiday last year.

(Oatmeal and raisin from the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum)

But I bet you were wondering what my second best cookie of that holiday was.

Well, as you may have guessed by the title of this post; it was a snickerdoodle cookie.

Not only that, it was a snickerdoodle cookie served on the flight home!

That was the first, and prior to this baking session, the only time I'd had a snickerdoodle cookie.

I don't know why it took me so long to try baking them myself.

I googled around for a recipe and lots of them had 'cream of tartar' listed in the ingredients.

I was thinking, 'what is this cream of tartar and why do people want me to put it in my cookies??'

Turns out it's kind of like baking powder or bicarbonate of soda.

So with the cream of tartar purchased and a recipe acquired (this one from Nigella, even though I was a bit put off that cinnamon was listed as 'optional'. It's one of the key ingredients!), I started baking.

A key step to baking snickerdoodles is rolling a ball of batter into a mix of cinnamon and sugar.

Mmmmm cinnamon sugar.

The cookies from the first batch didn't seem to be completely cooked on the bottom and they got a bit stuck on the tray, so I put them back in the oven for a bit longer. This didn't seem to do much, and my Mum wasn't home to ask, 'are these done yet??'. I was cooking solo.

I thought maybe it had something to do with the cinnamon sugar getting on the bottom of the cookies, so for the next batch I made sure not to get the cinnamon sugar on the bottom of the cookie balls.

This seemed to make things worse.

That, or turning to oven up a gas mark to see if that helped.

But whether the cookies ended up whole or in pieces they still tasted delicious, which is what really matters.

Though I'm still left wondering; why are they called snickerdoodles??

This Week I...

...finished up some more bow necklaces and added them to my Etsy shop.

Check them out here.

I worked two more days at an infants school delivering workshops for the arts centre.

This time is was making hails stones, rain drops and snowflakes with the reception and nursery classes.

And I continued working on this fun project.

All will be revealed soon!

What did you guys get up to this week?

White Rose Painting

To maintain my painting skills I produced this little paintings the other day.

It's from a photo that I've had on my computer for 3 years.

I think it was of a rose that I took away from a Letchworth Arts Centre event.

I like these little canvases - 7x11" - because the paintings don't take to long to complete. Depending on the level of detail of course.

I've got a few other paintings this size for sale on my Etsy shop. Check them out.

Ribbon and Gold Ball Bracelet

Coral and Gold Ball Bracelet Stack from New Look 

When I was shopping with my friends the other day I noticed these bracelets in New Look, the bottom one in particular.

One of my friends asked me if I look around at this stuff and think, 'I could make that'.

Well yes, I do.

I remembered these gold balls on wire that I've kept for ages.

They came off some Christmas crackers and I've held on to them thinking they might be useful.

The gold balls on the original bracelet are beads but since these gold balls are already attached to wire I used that to wrap them around a plastic hoop.

Then I wrapped ribbon around the hoop in between the balls.

I also tried using thinner ribbon around a thin bangle

They sort of look like they should be little bells that jingle, but I'm sure that would get annoying.

The best thing about this quick project is that it allowed me to use some of the things I've had for ages but never done anything with.

This Week I...

...had two days work at a local infant school delivering workshops for the Letchworth Arts Centre.

The children were making aliens to stick on the string balloon planets that I made during my internship.

On Friday I had to pop to London because part of my braces had broken so I had to go to the dentist to have it fixed. It took all of 5 minutes.

So to make the train trip worth it I also checked out the Hunterian Museum.

It is awesome and gross. And awesome. And gross.

It's rows and rows of dead stuff in jars!

It's really fascinating but it's no secret that I'm a medical light-weight (I once fainted in a first aid lesson. There weren't even any pictures, the teacher was just telling a gross story) so the key was not too look at anything for too long.

There was a skull fused to another skull, a foot from someone who had elephantiasis, a skull that had had a tooth growing in the nasal cavity, the skeleton of a 7 ft 7" giant! It was awesome.

And gross.

On Friday night my friends and I had a long awaited sleepover.

It turns out that sleepovers are still as fun as they were when we were teenagers.

And then the next day, since none of us were working, we hit the shops, including Primark where we tried on these glasses.

Standard.

How was your week?