Makes!

The new Makes section of Folksy has launched, and we are very excited to be one of the first 'makes' on the site.

Find out how we engraved and printed our little Edgefield print here... And have a look at the other splendid 'makes' from other Folksy sellers too!

Today we have made a rather large batch of teacakes using one of Dan Lepard's recipes, and we'll be spending the rest of the day toasting them on the fire and reading the papers!

Teacakes:
600g strong white flour
125ml warm water
5 tsp or 2 x 7g sachets of quick yeast
150ml milk
75g caster sugar
50g white chocolate or dripping
300g mixed dried fruit
25g golden syrup
3 eggs
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger

1. Mix the yeast with the water and a tablespoon of the flour. Set aside.

2. Heat the milk until it is almost boiling, then take it off the heat and add the sugar, syrup, white chocolate/dripping and the fruit.

3. Beat the eggs and add to the yeast mixture.

4. Sift the flour and spices into a large bowl and then add the milk and yeast mixes. Beat together until it is all thoroughly mixed.

5. Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for an hour or until the dough has doubled in size. You can knead it if you fancy but we've found it makes no difference to the final buns.

6. Divide the mixture into 14 teacakes. Shape them by stretching the dough and tucking it in underneath itself so you get a neat round ball of dough.

7. Place the teacakes on baking trays covered with baking parchment.

8. Leave in a warm place for 1hr 30 mins. Preheat the oven to 200C.

9. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden on top but still slightly soft.

10. Eat far too many of them, split, toasted and slathered in butter. Yum.

A smaller block

Spent the weekend finishing off a tiny engraving on an offcut of unidentified end-grain wood, possibly maple, part of the mixed bag we bought a few weeks ago. It felt strange to be engraving on wood at first, after weeks of plastic and resingrave, but it was nice not to have to worry about the surface chipping or lifting away!


The engraving was based on a sketch of fields around Edgefield, near Holt in north Norfolk, from a long walk we had last summer on the Holt-Mannington trail. The simple patterns of hedges and plough furrows suited the small area of the block (about 5 x 3 cm). Printing was a bit hit and miss at first and we tried lots of different methods: laying the block on the paper (with padding underneath) and pressing down with weights, laying the paper on the block and burnishing by hand, and a combination of the two, although this generally meant the block would shift and blur the print as we flipped them. We spent large parts of Sunday night looking longingly at presses on the internet!


While I was engraving on Saturday afternoon Sarah took it upon herself to create a neater way for me to store my tools, which since I've bought them have lived variously in a roll of bubble wrap, in an old Stilton and Port tin, and scattered across the dining table. Now they have their very own little roll, courtesy of some old curtain fabric from Freecycle, and Sarah's 1950s sewing machine (a hefty lump of splendid engineering).