Boots from an old jumper

I posted on facebook not long ago that I had upcycled an old jumper into some boots.  Wow this generated a lot of interest, and so many people asking me for details in person as to how I did this.  If I had known in advance people would be so keen I would have done a photo tutorial!  So here's the best I can do. (Another disadvantage of doing this after the event is that I've been wearing them round for a couple of weeks and they are dirty.  Sorry about that.)

Firstly, I didn't really make the boots.  I bought some super-cheap Primani ones. Then I simply chopped off the sleeves of an old mens jumper (not an old man's jumper) and glued them on.  It's not rocket science, and it's hardly even economically valid, as you can buy boots that look a bit like this for next to nothing.  But hey, I like to do this sort of thing.

So...cut the sleeves off and decide which will be the right side.  Then turn them wrong-side-out.

Take the boots and run a line of hot glue round the very bottom of the boot and pull the sleeve over and stick it down.  Fold it over and stitch round if you have a) the time b) something to stitch to.  By luck rather than judgement the boots I bought had a sort of piping round the sole so I stitched to that.

You'll then probably need to just put a bit of glue around the inside ankle (the bit where the leg joins the foot of the boot) just to gather the fabric in nicely so it stays nicely on the foot bit.

Then fold the top of the sleeve down (you might need to just snip the cuff if it's too tight) and sew or glue some buttons on.  Glue round the top if you like. I found that wearing the boots while doing the ankle gluing and folding down bit was easiest.

Incidentally, a hot glue gun is something every person should have in the house.  Useful for so many things.

Dinosaur cake

Last time I made a novelty cake I got a lot of questions about how I did it, so here are the hows for the latest non-anatomically correct triceratops cake.

I use Madeira cake as it is nice and easy to chop up into whatever shape you want. You can basically carve it if you need to, and this is even easier if you freeze it first. Also I tend to make a chocolate marbled Madeira cake to make it a bit more interesting. I haven't got this quite right yet...the Pingu cake was not marbled enough (tried to marble it in the tins and it was too thick) and this one was a bit over-marbled (mixed it in the bowl a bit too much). Still, practise makes perfect.

So first of all, I constructed the cake, here's a photo of how...I baked three normal sandwich tin-sized cakes and had plenty left over to make a nice chocolate treacle tart later. The body is two half cakes sandwiched together and everything else is just carved out of the leftovers.

This is the first time I have used butter icing to ice the cake. Let's face it, it's the best tasting icing there is, but it is a pain in the bum to get a nice finish. With Peppa Pig I iced with butter icing and then put that disgusting royal icing stuff on top. With Pingu the butter icing was topped with marshmallows. In this instance I had in my head to do a nice purple, but found the colour almost impossible to achieve. Maybe it is the food colours I have? I'm pretty new to this novelty cake stuff, has anyone got any recommendations? I went with blue white chocolate icing instead.

Then my beautiful assistant was let loose with the chocolate to complete the look. It did require rather a heavy supervision to make sure some chocolate ended up on the cake as rather a lot seemed to head tummywards immediately. Still my only directions were for the three horns and the rest is her work.

Then I just added white chocolate buttons for the toes and eyes, and piped on a little mouth.

Here he is in all his glory. Couldn't get a nice shot really, but you get the idea.

Experiments in Recrystallisation 2 - Success?

I may have achieved success! So here's the method for making delicious delightful tablet that will help weight loss as part of a calorie-controlled diet.

1) Prepare!

100 g butter, 1 kg granulated sugar, 1 cup milk, 1 tin condensed milk

butter the tin well

get a plate, a glass of cold water, and a teaspoon.

2) Begin!

Put all the ingredients into a LARGE pan (do not use a non-stick pan). The mixture will more than double in volume when it starts boiling, so make sure it is big enough, for goodness sake. The idea is that the milk just damps down the sugar, so don't put too much in. I found just under 1 cup of milk to be enough to dissolve the sugar, but not too much to boil off.

Heat the mixture on a medium heat until everything is dissolved. Take a little of the mixture out and put it on the plate to keep track of the starting colour. Stir regularly. If you get bits of brown coming off the bottom reduce the heat and keep stirring, if you get black good luck cleaning the burned sugar off the pan.

Once it boils you can stop stirring all the time, but do it every so often. It won't stick to the pan unless the pan is too hot. Periodically check the colour and smell of the mix. At some point it will suddenly stop smelling of hot butter (yuk!) and start smelling of tablet (yum!). This is the point to stop! To check take a small teaspoon of mix and plunge it into cold water. If you can push your finger into it and it retains its shape then it is ready. It takes about 15-18 minutes to get to this stage.

Take it off the heat and stir like crazy. As soon as you feel crystallisation (slight thickening on the bottom of the pan), STOP and pour it into the tin.

This is where it went weird. I think I boiled it too long and the solution was far too saturated. As I poured it into the tin it boiled over! Anyway I squished it down again and the result is perfect!

Lovely shatter.