Kate’s Coconut Cacoa Brownies

This is a new recipe I tried after remembering I had a lot of coconut flour left after a disastrous recipe a few months ago!  I thought chocolate and coconut are normally quite a pair, so a coconut flour brownie seemed like the obvious choice.  However, my previous gluten free baking ventures haven’t been too successful, which is why I am so excited to share this one

After a little research on Pinterest, and a little experimentation I have deiced this brownie recipe is quite yummy and not toooo bad for you.  It is also super easy as it is basically equal parts everything.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup cacoa powder
3 large eggs
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla extract
sprinkling of cacoa nibs (but you could use chocolate chips or desecrated coconut as preferred – or anything!)

Method:

• Preheat oven to gas mark 5
• The method for this is to add all the ingredients to a mixing bowl and mix them all together.  That’s it!
• Sprinkle over topping of choice
• Then spoon it all into a glass over proof dish and bake for half an hour
• Once removed from the oven, be sure to let it sit for another 20 mins in the glass dish before trying to cut it or remove it.  Hopefully it will be too gooey!

 

Now I am not trying to promote these as healthy brownies – but they are slightly healthier, and of course gluten free.  This is a base of a recipe, so you could add nuts, biscuit (gluten free) marshmallow toppings, you name it.

To serve:

• Eat them alone
• Serve with ice cream
• With fruit
• Crumbled into a rocky road style eaton mess (my favourite idea yet!)
• Layer with another type of cake

 

Photos of these delicious brownies to come, if I can keep my sister away from them long enough…

Looking at something in a different way, before you throw it away

So I have been thinking.  It is all very well trying to encourage people to unleash their inner creative and make all their old items into bespoke pieces for the home, but I understand it is not that simple.  Therefor, I have compiled a few ideas and examples as to how I would start to imagine something being entirely different.

Chest of Drawers

Looking at something in a different way, before you throw it away

So I have been thinking.  It is all very well trying to encourage people to unleash their inner creative and make all their old items into on trend fashion statements, but I understand it is not that simple.  Therefor, I have compiled a few ideas and examples as to how I would start to imagine something being entirely different.

Old Jeans

Ok lets start with something everyone has in their wardrobe.  Obviously, if your favourite jeans rip, embrace the rip (depending on its location!).  You could also patch it, or darn it if you fancied!  This trend comes back year after year, whether it be a different coloured denim patch, or a floral patch, or sequin patches on jeans seem to have been all the rage recently!  You can attach them from the inside, with the fabric showing through the rip, or the outside to see the full square patch. This good thing about this technique is, you could always change it to fit the trend – without having to buy new jeans every time!

However, some jeans unfortunately, we grow out of, or just don’t fit properly any more.  Thats fine too!  My advice is either to sell them on if they are in good condition, customise and sell them as a unique item (if you’re feeling creative!) or, my favourite option is to make them into something entirely different.
If you have read my earlier post “Waste not, want not”, you will know that I recycled a pair of trousers to cover some branding on a jacket.  I considered using an old pair of jeans for the same purpose.  You could also make:
– a cushion with a patch pocket
– a bar stool or chair cover
– cover a cork board in patches for a cool notice board
– a pencil case with a zip or button front
– you could even use a jeans leg to gift a wine bottle!

These are just a couple of my ideas, but you get the point.  All of these, if needed could be great ways of bringing a fresh look into your home, or providing you with something you might have had to buy!

To be continued…

Disclaimer:  These images are not of my work yet.  I am only starting out and trying to help people by sharing where I get my inspiration from.

Kate’s Paella

Before I start, I want to apologise to Spanish people.  I know this is not a traditional paella, believe me, I wish it was!  But this is my rather english take on it, which I hope doesn’t offend too much!

Now that’s out the way…

I started making paella about a year ago now, and it is my family’s favourite dish for me to cook for them.  It isn’t a traditional seafood paella, mainly because my dad can’t stand prawns! But I hope if you try it, you enjoy it as much as they do.

Ingredients

Waste not, want not

Recently, through talking to my friend Life by Liza, I have become very aware of the environment and how we can help by making small changes to our every day lives.

It occurred to me on a particularly busy day at work, that we live in such a ‘throw away’ world.  Everything is replaceable.  This is such a recent phenomenon and it’s not a good one.  What happened to having your favourite outfit that you would wear time and time again for special occasions? Or those favourite jeans that you patched when you got a hole in, because you would never find a pair that fitted just right?

A person’s clothes provide an insight into their personality, their journey in life.  I like the idea that garments themselves can inherit their wearer’s history and personality.  That patch on a jean knee holds the story of that picnic when you fell off your bike out with your friends in the summer, and the paint splatter on your checked shirt is a reminder of painting you new room.

With that, I want to buy less and give my clothes some history.  Maybe I’ll save some money, but that isn’t what this is about (though it will be nice!).  Eventually if we all did this, demand would be lower for clothes, changing the way we shop, and how brands manufacture.

So… onto my fist challenge… the customise.

During a recent run of work I was given a lovely navy blue puffer jacket, emblazoned with branding for the company.  Obviously this was great for that week, but after that, the jacket became useless.  However, I had different plans.  Surely I could just peel off the branding, I thought!  Wrong.  This was stuck fast, so I have to come up with a rather more creative plan.

Here are the before images of the jacket – (branding censored just incase!)

For this I needed:

1 pair navy corduroy trousers (second hand)
1 reel of navy cotton
1 reel brown cotton
Scissors
Tape measure
1 branded puffer jacket
Gumption!

Off I headed to the charity shop where low and behold, blue corduroy trousers were being sold for £4.50.  Bargain!  I have a constant supply of thread at home so I can’t be sure exactly how much I use but it doesn’t come to much.

 

After fiddling around and laying the trousers every which way on the jacket, I decided to use that gumption and just cut up the outside seam of each leg.  This gave me a lot more fabric to play with, then I started pinning.  The branding was conveniently all above the first puff, which gave me a level line all the way around to follow and aim for.

To my surprise it started to take shape rather quickly and I mustered some of that gumption again and started cutting!  Admittedly I did get a tad scissor happy and patching was needed under the arms, but no-one knows that isn’t a design feature!

Once I had a shape cut and pinned all together I ran up some seams using brown thread to add some detail and laid it back over the jacket. Now came the tricky part – sewing the corduroy cape like thing to the jacket.  Obviously in manufacture, they would sew this all together before adding lining and padding, however I didn’t have this luxury.  With some patience and careful invisible hand sewing I managed to attach the corduroy in time to wear meeting my boyfriends friends for the first time – it was a freezing day!

It turned out, one of these friends worked for the well known brand emblazoned under the corduroy on my jacket and loved that I found a use for it.  It started conversation about what I do for a job, that week in general, and how half the jacket had started its life with me in a charity shop.

My point is, that if I had bought a similar jacket in a shop; yes it would be brand new, and I wouldn’t have had to spend time covering logos; but, it would just be a puffer jacket, like every other puffer jacket.  This branded one would be wasted, as perhaps would the corduroy trousers. More importantly, in spending a bit of time, I recycled two garments and got myself a warm fashionable jacket for about £4.50!

A little about me.

Hi, I’m Kate.  I don’t really know what to say about me!

I am a trained dancer, working all over and trying to find the real me in amongst all the excitement.  I love being creative whether it be with dance, food, clothes, paint, or furniture!  The most exciting part of creating for me, is being inspired by things close to you.  It gives everyone’s creations, whatever they are, personality, and that is what makes us, us.

I decided to write this blog as I have found myself to have more time on my hands, whether it be I am travelling to a new exciting place for a job, or simply fairly unemployed for a week!  I want to try to inspire people to be more creative in every day life, which in turn is a very fun way to help the environment.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I am by no means perfect when it comes to recycling and always thinking of the environment, but I want this to start my learning curve into a more economical way of living.

So, how can you be creative in every day life, and in turn help the planet?

Well, one way is in your food.

I’ll be honest, I have only been cooking everything from scratch for the last year, but I can’t go back.  There is nothing more rewarding than sitting down and eating a meal where you know exactly what every ingredient is.  I used to be (and some would say  I still am) a very fussy eater.  If there was something I didn’t like the look of, or hadn’t had before, I used to say that I didn’t “trust it”.  Since cooking from scratch, I have learned to “trust” so much more food and have opened up so many different doors to recipes I would never have touched.  As I continue this blog I will share some of my favourite recipes with you.  You will see that sometimes, I have a make do dinner, inspired by my granny.  But this is exactly what I mean by getting creative with food.

A second way is clothes.

Again, I will be completely honest in my introduction.  Im the past, I have been dubbed “Shopaholic”, but when it happened most recently I couldn’t brush it off.  I felt ashamed.  Looking at my wardrobe, I don’t need anything, nothing I own is so worn out I can’t wear it, and I’m acquiring things at such a rate that nothing can get worn out! So, I have decided to start getting more creative with my wardrobe.  This may be customising older items to make them more modern and wearable, or repairing my broken old favourites to make them wearable and unique.  Clothes are a way of showing your personality, and I want my clothes to have my personality engrained.  What better way than to tweak them slightly?

The last idea for now is furniture.

This is probably my favourite but most ambitious and steep learning curve.  My dreams of working interior design have really come to the forefront of my mind of the least year as my parents have started planning an extension of their house.  Instantly I knew what it should look like, what furniture they needed and what the colour scheme should be!  When they building gets underway I will follow that with my blog.  However, back to being creative with furniture.  My dream is to never have to buy a new piece of furniture ever again.  As granny would say, they just don’t make it like they used to – and she it right (unless you have squillions of £).  I am going to learn and hopefully teach you how to recycle your furniture so you can think twice before replacing things, hopefully saving you money.  I will blog my successes and im sure failures, but hopefully inspire someone out there to get creative with their homes!