Happy note

Today I finished an order for Tokketok. It was heaps of fun to work on even though I was a bit stressed towards the end as the deadline of sending it is today.
Joke from Tokketok does high quality letterpress designs and sent me a beautiful pack of happy notes together with a lovely metal stamp to use to make porcelain labels for her.
I love happy and I think the world is definately in need of more happy notes! :)
Joke also asked me to make a mould of letter alphabet cookies. Since she needed a few sets of the word 'Tokketok', I decided to make 'em in plaster and varnish 'em with a matte finish.I love the fact too that I got to eat the left over cookies... :)

How to make healty bars?

While you're reading this, either I'm on my way to Amsterdam, building up my craft fair booth, explaining the 99-feelings project, selling our collaborative jewellery, chatting with Marta my booth buddy, browsing the market myself or eating cookies.
I made brownies and healthy bars to keep us going and as I don't want to let you out on all the yummy so here's the recipe.

What you need: 250g applesauce, 100g dried apricots, 100g raisins,
50g cane sugar, 50 sunflower seeds, 25 sesame seeds,
25g pumpkin seeds, 75g oats, 75 selfraising flower,
50g coconut, 2 eggsYou can use ready made applesauce or make some yourself.
I peeled and cut up 2 apples and place them in the microwave.
Then I mash it with a fork and leave it to cool down.
Cut up the apricots and poor some hot water over the raisins to become softer.
Squeeze the raisins firmly so there is no water left when you put 'em in the dough later.

Put the eggs in a bowl and whisk 'em.Chuck all the ingredients in the bowl.

Stir the mixture.

Place a baking sheet in a baking tray.

Put the dough in the tray and bake it for 30 minutes at 180°C.

Take it out of the baking pan.

Slice it up, let 'em cool down and put 'em in a container.

I hardly ever feel guilty when eating these! :)
Nomnom!

Sand cookies

Last week around this time, I was making cookies to take to our little EST meeting the next day. As I made a small mistake, I didn't have time to blog the recipe so here goes...
This is what you need:

• 125g flour
• 80g butter
• 50g powdered sugar
• 10g vanilla sugar
• A pinch of salt
  
• 1 egg yolk (optional)
• Little bit of crystal sugar (optional)
  

Put the flour in a bowl, cut the butter in little pieces and add to the flour. Then add the powdered, vanilla sugar & a pinch of salt. Kneed it to a firm dough. It will need lots of kneeding so that it all sticks together.
Roll it, put it in plastic foil and put in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Then unroll the dough. It needs to be plus minus a centimeter thick.
Press with cookie cutters some shapes out of the dough.
This is optional. It gives the cookies a nice brown, yummy crust but I found that it also deforms the shape of the cookies while baking.
Put the sides of the cookies into the egg yolk and then put it in the sugar.
Put all the cookies on a tray and make sure you leave enough room.
Put in a preheated oven for 15 minutes at 180 °C
Tada! :) Enjoy!