Yummy!

Software tester by day, in her off hours Jo-Anne is a creative baking ninja! (talk about multi-talented: she also has a black belt in kickboxing and Shotokan karate and a brown belt in Yoshukai karate) She recently opened her own catering business, Yummy Yume (yummy – English for delicious, and yume, pronounced “you may” – Japanese for dream).

Jo-Anne is one of my co-workers, and when she experiments with new recipes or techniques, like the two-tone waves of blue and silver frosting on the cupcake shown below, she sometimes brings them to the office for us to sample.

How would you describe what you do?
I take seemingly boring ingredients, add some creative magic and transform them into dreamy confections.

How long have you been interested in baking and cooking?
Since I was 7 and I realized that you didn’t have to follow the exact package directions on KD and Mr. Noodles.

Toasted marshmallow on Belgian chocolate with malt icing

Was there anything in particular that got you interested in the first place?
Wok with Yan Can – I used to watch that show all the time.

What has been the most challenging part of starting your own catering business?
Finding enough counter space – I am limited by my own kitchen right now, so I will have to do renos or find another kitchen.

These lemon cupcakes topped with guitar cookies were a hit at Mike's birthday party last year!

What is your favourite utensil or tool to work with?
I just got a bamix for Christmas – this is awesome! I can make homogenized sauces and velvety soups in seconds. I also love my double sided silicon spatula – it’s great on my non-stick pans.

What are your favourite flavours?
I love the spicy, earthy medicinal flavours of cinnamon and cardamom. Something about those flavours is very comforting. I also love the tangy taste and smells of citrus.

Peanut butter bacon cupcake with maple buttercream

What inspires you?
I am inspired by the foods and flavours of other cultures. When I travel, I only eat food from that culture.

What’s one of your creations that you are particularly proud of?
That’s a tough one. I’d say it’s a toss up between the Black Swan cupcake (a cupcake complete with a pair of black swan’s wings) and the Thomas the Train goes to Candy Land cake (a cake I made for my nephew with limited equipment).

Cupcake inspired by the film "Black Swan" for an Oscars-viewing party last year

What is something you haven’t tried yet, but would like to?
I would really like to try making French macaroons and different flavoured cream puffs.

When are you going to bring more cupcakes to the office?
You know you are my QA department!

All non-watermarked mouth-watering photos courtesy of Jo-Anne Redublo

My mug shot

Here’s a picture I made tonight on my iPad. I used the Sketchbook Pro app and Photoshop. I love Sketchbook Pro! I’m really only just discovering all that it can do.

I touched up the final image a bit in Photoshop, but the majority of it was done with Sketchbook Pro. The lined paper background is from here. This was actually my second attempt; the first time I neglected to save, the app crashed, and I lost my drawing… my own fault, there’d been an update waiting to be installed for (ahem) quite a while and I hadn’t got around to it. I updated the app, but before I started again I played around a bit first. I figured out a better way to use the colour picker and practised blending with the airbrush tool, so the beauty of my mistake was that my picture turned out better the second time, and I learned a few things in the process. Gotta love it when that happens!

ooOOooOOooOOoo

Things are brewing on Pennello Lane…. in a few days I will introducing you to another creative woman, and I hope to be able to feature a few more within the next couple of weeks. They work with very different materials but are all creative talents who love what they do, which is always inspiring. Stay tuned!

Embellished jute bags

I want to show you a cute project made by my niece, Robin Jones.  This girl has talent, she’s always making things and comes up with some great ideas. For this project, she took some inexpensive jute bags and added her own embellishments to personalize them. The woven grid of the bags works perfectly for counted cross stitch.

She did up several different bags as Christmas gifts. This one is mine, I love it!

I like the pretty, traditional image on the rustic background… it’s in my favourite colour, too!

Here’s a sweet little owl on another bag.

If cross-stitch isn’t your thing, you can apply other embellishments that you make or buy. Robin crocheted some pansies…

…and sewed them to a large tote. A lovely gift for her grandma.

Adding stitching or embellishments to a jute bag…  a clever and inexpensive way to make a personalized gift!

Christmas silhouettes

This next holiday project was inspired by something I saw on the Nate Berkus show, in which a couple of DIYers each received a crate full of crafting supplies and had two days to completely decorate a room. When I saw the reindeer painting one of them made I really liked the simplicity of the red and white design, and I had to make one myself.

Here’s mine:

You can watch a video of the show here. (Can you imagine how much fun it would be to get one of those crates full of goodies?!) The reindeer painting is about 3/4 of the way through.

I referred to some photos of reindeer, then got out my sketchbook and drew one the size I wanted. (If you don’t want to draw your own, you can find an image you like and enlarge it on a photocopier.)

I painted a 12″ x 24″ stretched canvas with red acrylic paint. Instead of leaving it simply red and white, I decided to rub a little black gesso around the edges for a little added interest and texture. Then I transferred my drawing onto the canvas and painted the reindeer white. As a finishing touch I painted the edges of the canvas with metallic silver paint.

I had another canvas the same size, so I made a partridge too.

Together they add a pop of red and a hint of Christmas!

Retro Stocking

In our home, we are big fans of mid-century modern design. When it comes to Christmas, though, most of the decorations that are available are fairly traditional. I’ve kept an eye out the last couple of years for stockings that would fit our style, but have never found any, so this year I decided to make some.

Referring to these glasses (our prized set made up of eBay and second hand shop finds) for inspiration:

I cut two stocking-shaped pieces of grey felt, then some retro shapes from red and white felt, and sewed them on.

As a finishing touch I embroidered some atomic star shapes before sewing the front and back stocking pieces together.

Another one in red, with white and gray shapes, and we have a pretty cool pair of midcentury stockings!

This post is linked to Today’s Creative,  Made by You Monday and the DIY Show-off

Hanging paper ornaments

Next in my series of inexpensive Christmas decorations… these paper ornaments.

I loved the shape of these when I came across a photo of them the other day… they have a midcentury feel to them, don’t you think? There are many images and tutorials online for these… here’s one at Design Sponge.

I had some red and turquoise paper, but wanted to add some shine. I couldn’t find any silver paper like the image I had in my head, but I did find a large bow at Michael’s made of flexible plastic, with one side completely covered in silver glitter. I took it apart, cut it into strips, and it worked perfectly…. aside from the fact that there was glitter everywhere! (as a good friend of mine always says, “glitter is NOT our friend!”) I don’t usually use glitter, but every now and then you just need a little sparkle.

I cut strips of paper 1″ wide, then cut the centre strip to the height I wanted the ornament to be. Cut the next two strips in a different colour, approximately 2″ longer than the first, and the last two (outside) strips about 2″ longer than those. I didn’t measure, though. Line up the ends and staple together, then line up the other ends – letting the outer strips curve into shape – and staple.

A cluster of them hung above our dining table was a festive addition for our Christmas party last weekend. You really can’t get much simpler or cheaper, but they are actually rather effective. Some of our guests remembered making these when they were kids and found them quite nostalgic!

Magazine Trees

Christmas is coming! Are you creating any homemade decorations this year? I am, mostly from paper or things I already had around the house. First up: some cute Christmas trees made from magazines. The instructions are on Martha Stewart’s web site.

Instead of recycling those old magazines, upcycle a few into Christmas trees! These are so easy, kids could make them… but I like their simplicity. I made one from a magazine and two from an old paperback book.

The instructions in Martha’s video say to do the first fold on every page, then the second fold on every page, etc. Instead, I did all three folds on each page, as I went. This way, when you get to the third fold where you’re tucking the corner under, you can make a crease by pressing it against the pages below, which makes it easier to get a clean fold and it’s much less fussy.

Also, the instructions say to use spray adhesive for attaching glitter to the trees. If you don’t have spray adhesive, a glue stick will work too. Just hold the folded edges together, and lightly run a gluestick along them. Then open out the tree again, place it on a plate or sheet of newspaper and sprinkle with glitter.

I found a package of silver stars from IKEA in a kitchen drawer (meant for decorating the stem of a wineglass) so I attached one to the top of each tree. Such a simple craft, but you know…. they look quite pretty lined up on our bookcase, with soft Christmas lights catching the silver sparkle.

Inspired by Tiffany’s

When chatting with one of my favourite barristas, Jessica, one day we discovered a mutual affection for the colour Tiffany Blue. This led to sharing photos of my Tiffany Blue living room wall, and her Tiffany/Audrey Hepburn pillows, made by her mom, Susan. Hold on a sec…. “your mom made those?” I sensed a blog entry in the making…

Audrey pillow, complete with pearl necklace, and Tiffany box pillow

Jess sent me some more photos of her pretty apartment. The beautiful Tiffany Blue colour which, in my home, is used in a midcentury-modern vibe, is featured here in a vintage theme combined with white, cream and touches of black. Pillows, upholstered chairs and other handmade touches add personality.

a trio of lovely chairs

I think this is a lovely example of how a rental apartment can become something other than ordinary, and display your personal style.    

It looks like it must have been a fun project…. I wish I’d had a place as cute as this for my first apartment!

The Spices of North Africa

Recently, I was the lucky recipient of a gift certificate for a cooking class at The London Chef, a new cooking school downtown. Having walked past and peeked through their windows several times, as well as going in for a browse of their pantry of items for sale, I was really looking forward to the experience.

The class I chose was ”Spices of North Africa.”  Upon arrival, Chef Dan Hayes offered us all a glass of wine (which was refilled a couple of times during the evening). Then he started to make the highlight dish of the evening, Morroccan Lamb Tagine. While doing so he included a lot of tips, and a demonstration of knife sharpening in which the proximity of the flying blade and his fingers was dangerously impressive. I’ve also never seen someone chop an onion (or anything else) so quickly and perfectly outside of The Food Network… it was a treat to observe such skills in action.

Many of the spices used in the dish were passed around for us to see and smell. Obvious care has been given to choosing the best available ingredients, as even salt and pepper are not “just” salt and pepper, but sea salt from Cowichan Bay and fresh pepper that’s toasted and ground every morning. One of my favourite parts of the evening was when we smelled ground cumin, then watched as cumin seeds were toasted and ground so we could smell the difference…. I’m still thinking about that aroma, it’s my new favourite spice.

In no time at all there was a Lamb Tagine in the oven, and we split into six pairs and headed to our stations to start the hands-on part of the evening.

First we charred an eggplant on the stove, then popped it in the oven.

While it was baking we made hummus, and although it seemed to be made of just typical ingredients, it was possibly the best I’ve ever tasted.

Then toasted flatbread triangles, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt and paprika.  Out came the eggplant, which was scooped, mashed, seasoned and turned into baba ghanoush.  After plating our first creations we all went to sit down and enjoy them.

Back to our stations – time to make chicken kebabs. With careful attention paid to hygeine (in each pair their was a designated chicken-toucher and a non-chicken-toucher) we tossed the meat with mint, thyme, lime juice, chili flakes and paprika. Onto skewers and into the pan they went, and soon we were tucking into heavenly, juicy morsels.

The final dish was couscous, prepared with sultanas, almonds, ginger, chili and cilantro. Oranges were squeezed over it, and it was served with the now-finished tagine. I must have been overcome by the amazing aromas, because I completely forgot to take a picture of the tagine, the highlight of the evening! Back at the dining table, we spooned couscous into bowls and ladelled the tagine over top…. delicious.

The whole experience was informative, professionally-presented, and a lot of fun.  Although the tagine was demonstrated, rather than hands-on, it wasn’t intimidating at all… I realized, I can do that! I’m already planning a North African-themed dinner party. Thanks again to Chef Dan Hayes and everyone at The London Chef! I can’t wait to go back. Hmm…. what will I learn to make next?

Dessert: an oatmeal-raisin cookie, which I enjoyed with tea after I got home

Baby Boy Blue Brown Blanket

Here’s something I recently finished and put in the mail…. a little blanket for Mike’s new nephew, born on New Year’s Eve.

The pattern is the Running Stitch Blanket by Debbie Bliss. I used Berroco Vintage yarn, which is a washable wool/acrylic blend… practical for baby, but super soft. And I love the light blue and chocolate brown together!

I knitted each side, added the constrasting stripes, then joined them together with a crocheted edge. I should clarify that I do NOT crochet, so the edging is far from perfect, but the double thickness and soft yarn made a lovely squooshy-soft blanket for the new wee boy. Hope he likes it!