Moustaches and snowflakes

Here's a random selection of little things I've made recently.

Moustache cookies on sticks for Movember!
(I forgot to take pictures of other people eating them so you'll have to make do with my ugly mug.)
I provided both left and right handed moustache cookies, you will notice.

Snowflakes for the Dev

Tie fighter

Boba

It may not shock you to learn that this one wasn't from a template, I made it myself. Supposed to be batman but his head looks more like a cat

A keyring that ended up looking like the cookie monster.

Fuzzy bag and some food

So, I made a purple fuzzy bag. He is sort of Animal-esque but not totally. He is a step-brother to the Beaker bag.

The inside lining, the reinforced strap and the back of the bag are made of a sort of mauvey pink cotton

He looks sort of sad here, but it is just the way the fluff is going.

In other news, I spent most of my 4 day weekend baking. Did you know you can freeze home made hummus? So I made loads and froze in individual portions for work lunches. Obviously you need crudites with that, but what about when you don't have lots of spare carrots? So I made (about) 80 bread sticks, with a bit of garlic salt sprinkled on top. As you can see, they are not exactly all the same length, but that is fine. They, too, are in the freezer for quick lunches. The roll you see was glazed in balsamic vinegar and was very nice!

So, for the chili festival I made chili infused toffee and chocolate on nachos with candied chili sprinkles. I didn't get a picture of the finished article but I can say it was tasty - like a spicy dime bar, weirdly.  However, I do have this, of the pre chopped sprinkles, and my chili themed fingernails.

I've often though it would be nice to do a tutorial, but nothing I do is particularly hard to work out and it isn't like I work from a template or anything, usually just wing it.  So, just for you, here is the secret to making candied chili sprinkles.

Candied chili sprinkles

• Get your jalapenos/chilis/whatever you use (preferably half red and half green). Have a look around the kitchen to see if you have anything you can use to rough up the surfaces a tiny bit. Something with a sort of pumice stone roughness about it would be perfect. If you can't find anything like that, a gentle bash with the fine side of your grater, or a couple of soft slashes with a knife would work. Note this stage is optional, it is just nice to give the sugar to cling to when we get to that stage. Don't worry if you can't find anything appropriate.
• Cut the chilis into slices of around half a centimetre. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the seeds. 
• Mix 1 part water to 4 parts sugar and heat in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to a boil then carefully add the chili slices. 
• Turn the heat down to a simmer and allow to bubble away for about 4 minutes. The sugar water does little bubbly geysers up inside the chili rounds. It is kind of fun.
• Take off heat and remove chilis, leave for a few minutes to drain while preparing the sugar. 
• Take a cup of sugar and separate it into two bowls (I used ramekins, but I'm classy like that) In one add a couple of drops of green food colouring and in the other, red colouring. 
• Now dip your chilis in one by one and coat in sugar. Shake off any excess. Obviously the red chilis go in the red dye and the green in the green. 
• place them on greaseproof paper on a baking tray. If you have two baking trays, it  might be good to separate the colours, as the dyed sugar does tend to spread a little bit.
• Bake in a medium heat oven for about 10 minutes, though you will want to keep an eye out from 5 minutes. Take your sprinkles out of the oven and leave uncovered for the sugar to dry out. 
• Once dry take scissors and chop them up into iddy biddy bits, and sprinkle on whatever you fancy.

Mississippi Pig Mud Pie

When Cuthbert Ulysses Pig has a birthday there is only one thing you can do.

This is a Mississippi mud pie, with kit kats around the edge to look like a fence and little fondant piggies. Seeing as there has been some doubt on the subject I can confirm that I did in fact make the pigs myself and didn't buy them. Making the pigs was the most fun part!

And when you can't fly, you float...

This guy isn't even bothered about wallowing, he is just checking out those two pig arses sticking up over there.

I suppose I should say that  this (pigs in mud pie) is in no way my original idea, it has been doing the rounds on the internet for a few months now. Nevermind, I'm still pretty proud of how mine turned out.

Bear bread, rabbit rolls and turtle pizza.

It is yucky and snowing so I decided to spend the day making bread. Here's some cute bear rolls, although the amount they rose they look more like hamsters to me.

I made some pizza dough and tried something I've been meaning to do for a while. Turtle pizzas. Bite sized and less messy as all the pizza mixture is kept in his body. There seems something hilarious (to me) about a turtle pizza delivery guy, as they are so slow. Plus there is the whole TMNT thing. His head doubles up as a handle for delicate eating of the pizza.

To see if it would work I used cupcake cases, but if I were to do it again, I think a mould made of tin foil would make the perfect shape and possibly even give the opportunity for wrinkles in the foil to look like shell markings.

He was yummy

The bear/hamsters and a couple of rabbit rolls, which weren't the biggest success.

Rainbow almond 'cookies'.