Recipe: Peanut chocolate

I'm somewhat buzy right now, but I thought I'd share a simple recipe for some chocolate sweets. Inspired by the fact that me and my sis agreed on making Christmas sweets this weekend. No pics of the finished chocolates I'm afraid. We love using white chocolate for this, but all types work well. You can even make two batches using different chocolate and mix them.


Peanut chocolate

100 g peanut butter (we prefer crunchy)
100 g chocolate (milk, dark, light, white -- which ever you prefer)
1 dl roasted and salted peanuts

1. Begin by rinsing the peanuts in water rubbing them with a paper towel to remove some of the salt. You don't want to remove all of it as it balanses the flavour, but it can be too salty if you use the nuts straight from the package. Rubbing will not remove as much salt as rinsing. Make sure you dry the nuts if rinsed.

2. Melt the peanut butter and chocolate in a bowl in you microwave or a water bath on the stove. Stir every now and then so the two ingredients blend.

3. Add the peanuts and stir.

4. Using a couple of spoon, drop the peanut chocolate into small cupcake cups and store cold.

Variation: You could also pour it into a baking pan lined with bakery paper or greaseproof paper and put in the fridge to cool down. When hardened, you can cut the chocolate into squares with a knife. Store in a box with greaseproof paper between each layer. I prefer using cups as the sweets, especially if using white chocolate, are soft and melt easily. With a cup your hands don't get sticky.

Liquorice

Like so many I love liquorice and one type of sweets I liked as a kid was a type of liquorice sold in little flat diamonds or squares. Recently I bought tila beads and as my budget only allowed for one colour I did have problems choosing. In the end I went for a versatile colour that -- more importantly -- wasn't too expensive. Matte black.

It's just that the colour, finish and shape keep making me think of liquorice now that I have them in front of me. Must... buy... liquorice...

And, eeh, sometimes I feel like I have to tell myself that the beads aren't edible. Eventhough they look so much like sweets. They're really yummy beads. I better make something of these soon before I accidentally mistake the bag for my liquorice stash.

My entries for this year's Malaco sweets contest

Malaco just presented this year's Din Påse contest where those of us with a sweet tooth can compose our own mixed bags of sweets. If you live in Scandinavia at least. This year the finalists are chosen by a jury, but everyone can still have their say about which bags they like, just click the 'gilla' button under each entry. (Gilla = like.)

Malaco always have some exotic and unusual flavour to choose from in their Din Påse contests and this year was no different. I was excited to find such flavours as jasmine along with "superfruits" as goji, cupuacu and acai. For my first entry -- I love making these things so I always compose several -- I got inspiration from the jasmine and I began thinking of the Middle East, mint tea, sweet peaches and jasmine incense. To that I added another more "everday tea flavour", liquorice. Instead of plain liquorice I like to choose from their mixed flavours, in this case liquorice- blood orange and liquorice-cupuacu. I want to taste cupuacu, that's why I went for that one eventhough it's a bit off theme.

The name is a merge of the words exotic and tea, the "theme" of my composition. The yellow colour I choose, well mostly because I wanted a warm colour and yellow looks bright next to red. It was so difficult to choose, but I keep going for green and purple so this time I wanted something different. To see -- and "like" -- this entry, click this link.


Then, of cause I had to make more... Next up was Solkatter. A play on words that doesn't work in English. Sol means sun and katt means cat, put together it means a reflection of light. Perhaps it got its name from the fact that cats enjoy playing with these reflections on floors and walls? Anyway, all yellow cat-shaped bits with the flavours cupuacu, mint, watermelon and pineapple-lemon. Plus black cats -- all light cast a shadow, right? -- in liquorice-pomegranate. This bag can be found here.

Ah, and then I had to make a third one... Of cause. Not very creative, but with autumn more or less already here (early autumn this year, I feel) I had to make a cozy autumnal mix too. Couldn't come up with a good name so it became Höstglädje, Autumn joy (oh, dear). But I've used Höstdrömmar and Höstlängtan one time too often... Anyway, for this one I was inspired by the sights and tastes of autumn with apple, pear, rosehip, blackberry and chestnut. Have never tasted chestnut, but can't imagine autumn without seeing our big horse chestnut trees with their giant leaves and spikey cupules hiding shiny brown nuts. This third, and probably last, entry of mine can be found here.

If you're Swedish and like sweets, you really must give this a chance -- it's pretty fun making these bags. And you can win not just sweets (2 kg for all weekly finalists), but a tour of the Malaco factory in Denmark with three friends.


(EDITED TO ADD: I've made yet another bag, min-min, featuring jasmine and mint with touches of capuacu, blood orange-liquorice and pomegranate-liquorice. The name comes from the two first ingredients, but min also means my or mine in Swedish.)

Lucky Fridays? Island Flower necklace

So, last Friday I got an e-mail saying I'd won a candy giveaway. 1 kg (6 bags) of Gott & Blandat Sötsur, which I got yesterday. Today I opened my mail in the afternoon to find an e-card fron Rings & Things saying my Island Flowers necklace above was on of Polly's Picks in their Your Designs Rock Contest. That is, not an official prize winner, but I still get a (much appreciated) $50 gift certificate.

Polly's Picks are defined as "designs our editor especially likes despite the fact that they did not win a formal prize. These designs are often simple, practical and/or whimsical examples of how to use Rings & Things components well." This is the second time one of my entries have received this honour. In 2007, the first year I made something for this contest, my Oak Island jewellery set was picked.

This is a slightly different piece of jewellery compared to what I usually make. Flowers is nothing unusual, but the size and chosen material is. Also, to work with the larger focal piece, the necklace is somewhat longer than the princess lenght I mostly seem to prefer. Instead of taking inspiration from nature in my surroundings, this was a necklace that had me thinking of tropical islands with white shells in the sand by the beaches and brown coconuts in palm trees.

I made the flowers from shiny cowrie/cowry shells with the backs cut off, which made them easy to weave together using 20 G vintage bronze wire (coloured copper). I got the inspiration partially from those shell motifs with embroidery floss and an occasional bead that you can buy for embellishing clothing and bags, but instead of gluing the shells to a backing material, I chose wirework. Three flowers are wrapped together to make a larger focal piece (approx. 13cm measured from side to side). The focal piece is suspended using dark brown cotton cord that has been folded in half and slightly twisted to hold the two cords together (held in place by 'messy-style' wire wraps). To it has been added two pairs of 'leaves,' also wrapped with the same wire.

The necklace started out consisting of just one flower, but I felt I wanted to make something larger. (Not just because it was for an American contest.) So it became three flowers. The leaves might be a bit redundant, but I wanted to make something with a bit more embellishments than the usual 'Scandinavian minimalism' I so often lean towards in my designs.

The difficult part of this necklace was finding a matching clasp. I figured it best to make my own using the 20 G wire. But why make an ordinary hook-and-eye closure?, I thought, seeing a pair of small cowrie shells with large openings. So I attached the hook to one shell and used the other shell instead of an eye loop.

Your can find my necklace here in the R&T gallery where you also find all the winners and other Polly's Picks.