Red Velvet Fudge

This is a really lovely, not too sweet, fudge. The beetroot powder gives it th red velvet colour and adds some depth to the taste. You might want to half it, or replace it with red food dye (a paste not a liquid) if you don't like beetroot! I have swirled the top with a spoon and sprinkled some edible sparkle onto it becuase a) we had it in the cupboard, b) everything is better with glitter on it. Next time I am going to try with a little pinch of salt and perhaps a little less beetroot powder but this is scrummy as it is!

Ingredients:

450g sugar
50g golden syrup (or other syrup)
175ml double/whipping cream
75 ml full fat milk
80g butter

2 tbsp cocoa powder (I used raw cacao powder)
1tbsp beetroot powder

1) Line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper or get a silicone loaf tin at the ready
2) Put everything into a heavy bottomed pan
3) Melt the butter on a low heat while stirring to dissolve the sugar
4) bring to the boil on a medium heat, stirring occasionally
5) Once it's boiling nicely take a pastry brush dipped in water and wipe around the inside of the pan to make sure there are no escaped sugar crystals
6) Continue boiling until the temperature reaches a soft boil stage (115 degrees celcius on a candy thermometer or when you drop a teaspoon into a cup of cold water and it comes out as a pliable ball)
7) Turn off the heat and place in a cold water bath in the sink to prevent it from cooking
8) leave it for 10 mins or so until it has cooled down
9) Tip the mixture into a bowl and beat with electric beaters until it starts to stiffen (when you lift the beaters up you will see a trail of mixture for a few seconds at least before it sinks back into the fudge)
10) Spoon into the loaf tin, leave to cool, slice and enjoy!

Face, Hand and Body Cream

When I was pregnant with my second child I became somewhat obsesssed with creating the perfect face cream for myself. I tried lots of different experiments and, only when I had the perfect combination of ingredients did I feel I was ready to have the baby (some people get all their curtains washed, I meddled with oils in the kitchen!). Anyway, I have relatively dry skin and this is the only moisturiser I use. It is really simple to make with a few basic ingredients that can be bought online or in your local supermarket. It is also cheaper than store bought stuff, and the bonus is you know exactly what you are putting on your skin.

Ingredients:
3 tbsp liquid oil. I mix this up, but keep them light (caster oil, for instance, makes a very sticky cream). I usually use 1 tbsp olive oil, one tbsp of avocado oil and one tbsp of jojoba oil. However to make it lighter and more cheaply, 3 tbsp of olive oil male a lovely cream that is full of vitamin E. I sometimes swap the olive oil out for sweet almond oil if I have it on hand.
1 tbsp organic beeswax
2 tbsp water You can use tap water here, or I sometimes use perrier water if I have it on hand. Or you can use rosewater.
1/8th tsp bicarb of soda
1/4 tsp lecithin (can be bought online easily - it's an emulsifier, and you will find it in the list of ingredients on the back of your favourite chocolate). I use an amount the size of a pea!
Few drops vitamin E (optional, but it does help to preseve the cream so useful especially if you are in a very hot climate)
Few drops of gentle essential oil. I used to use geranium until I developed an allergy. Now I just use lavender oil. If you are making it for hands/body and NOT the face you can add in some citrus and maybe tea tree but I would not recomment using those on your face. These are again optional but help to preseve it and give it extra skin conditioning properties.

1) Add the oil, beeswax, bicarb of soda and lecithin and melt on a double boiler until there are no chunks of beeswax. Use a metal bowl if you have one to speed up the colling down later. If not a perspex bowl is fine.
2) Add the water and stir (it will immediately cool some of the oil but a quick stir and the mix will be homogenous again).
3) Take off the heat and with a spoon or mini whisk beat it until it thickens up and goes opaque.
4) Add the vitamin E and essential oils, stir, and spoon into a 50ml jar (you can use one saved and thoroughly cleaned from a store bought moisturiser).
5) You can use straight away but I usually leave it to fully cool down. This usually lasts me a good couple of months as you only need a tiny amount. I have never bothered to refrigerate and have never had it go bad, but if you are in a hot climate (I wish - I'm in the U.K!) you might want to keep it cool.

I also used this, with lavender, on my babies bottoms in lieu of nappy cream, and I also use it on cuts and scratches as the vitamin E and lavender are great for healing in a non-stingy way!

Orange and Tea Tree Solid Shampoo Bar

I used to make all my shampoos and soaps but have been a bit slack over the last few years (mainly due to having small children). But, I figured I had some oils that needed using up so why not get myself back into it. My first port of call was a conditioning shampoo bar. The castor oil brings conditioning proerties whilst the cocoa butter and olive oil help to give it a lovely lather. You can swap out the smaller quantities of oil but the coconut oil, olive oil, caster oil and cocoa butter are pretty much essential to having a lovely shampoo bar. Just adjust the receipe on an online soap calculator if you want to swap anything out. I have chosen orange and tea tree to give the bars freshness but you could swap out those oils or fragrances for anything you fancy.

You should always wear gloves and eye protection when working with lye (until it is mixed in with the oils it is very nasty - the stuff that goes down drains to unblock them) however when mixed with oils it is neutralised, especially, as in this recipe, when there is additional oil to give extra conditioning and skin softening properties.

Also, most importantly, mix the Lye into the water, NOT the other way around, and use a stick blender for a faster trace (trace is when you can lift up the blender and as the soap mixture falls off of it it takes some seconds to disperse itself back into the pot). Be careful not to splash yourself with soap mixture as you will end up with red patches (I know this from experience)

Silicone loaf tins/moulds made great soap moulds, or you can make them inexpensively out of wood. As this is my first time making this I have gone for a little over a kilo in total weight, which will make enough bars to keep us going for a while and leave us with some left over to give to friends. Handmade soaps make pretty gifts whether wrapped in greaseproof or brown paper, or tied up in an organza bag.

Ingredients:
285g water
99g sodium hydroxide
150g coconut oil
200g pomace olive oil
150g caster oil
50g sweet almond oil
50g cocoa butter
50g avocado oil
50g beeswax
50g wheatgerm oil

5 teaspoons fragranc/essential oils

1) measure out your oils and put on a very low heat to melt.
2) meanwhile, measure out your water and, in a seperate container, the lye (sodium hydroxide).
3) Mix the sodium hydroxide into the water (preferably outside or by an open window - the fumes are nasty!) and give it a quick stir then walk away. Hold your breath while you are mixing these, if you breath the fumes in they are nasty (again, I've done this).
3) When the oil has melted leave it to cool down
4) When the oils and lye are around the same temperature (room temperature or, if you have a thermometer, anything up to 38 degrees C) pour the lye mixture into the oils, again being careful not to splash. The mixture starts off looking like this:

5) With your stick blender mix the two together until the soap mixture reaches trace (you can do this with a hand mixer or even a wooden spoon but it takes AGES that way!). Once trace has been reached it will look like this:

6) Pour into your mould, cover with a try/board and then a towell to insulate it. I've used one 1kg mould and had enough left over for three 5x5 cm moulds. 

7) After 24 hours cut into bars and leave them for a good 4 weeks until you use them (they become more mild over this time).
8) Enjoy!

Handmade Vegan Chocolates

These are really easy to make and actually pretty healthy! They stay nice and firm at room temperature and would make a great gift for any vegan (or, for that matter non-vegan) friends. This recipe fills about two ice cube trays worth of moulds, but obviously the number you get will depend on the sixe of your moulds.

Ingredients:
50g organic cocoa butter
50g virgin coconut oil
2-3 tbsp raw cacao powder (or cocoa powder)
2 tbps icing sugar (adjust this to your own taste)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
a few drops of orange essential oil (optional)

Simply add the cocoa butter to the coconut oil in a small bowl over a double boiler (I use a small milk pan). When it is melted stir in your other ingredients until it is smooth and there are no lumps, then spoon into moulds. Pop the moulds in the freezer for half an hour or so and voila! Handmade chocolates. They are very rich so you can't eat too many (which in my case is a bonus!).

Candy Melts Fudge

I don't tend to buy candy melts because they are quite high in palm oil which I generally try to avoid. However I was given some to experiement with so thought I would have a go at making some  fiudge. It came out really well. The instructions for consended milk can be used to make any other receipe you need sweetend condensed for.

1 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 x 340g bag candy melts

1) line a small sqaure dish or set aside a silicone loaf tin.

2) Put the milk and the sugar in a pan and boil for about 25 mins on a steady low heat whilst stirring reguarly. It should reduce to about half.

3) When the milk has condensed then turn off the heat and add the bag of candy melts to the pan. Leave for the condensed milk to melt the chocolate, stir gently (over-storring will seperate the fats out from the fudge).

4) Chill for half hour or so in the freezer or a good hour in the fridge, cut into squares and enjoy!

Honey, Orange and Ginger Fudge Recipe

It's really crappy weather here in the UK...so I made some zesty fudge to cheer myself up. I used grated orange rind and fresh grated ginger, but they do have an effect on the texture so powdered ginger and orange essential oil/extract will work well too.

Ingredients:

50g honey
450g sugar
175ml double cream
75ml milk
80g butter

1) Line a loaf tin or small baking pan with greaseproof paper. Add all the ingredients to the pan. If you are using freshly grated orange peel and ginger add them now - otherwise add the powedered ginger and leave the orange extract until after cooking has finished.

2) Bring to the boil slowly whilst stirring constantly. Once it begins to boil then wipe down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in water to make sure there are no stray sugar crystals as these will re-crystalise the fudge and ruin its smooth consistency.

3) keep slowly boiling/stirring until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage. You can measure this on a thermometer (you can buy cheap digital ones online) or drop some mixture into cold water. If the mixture forms a globule that you can take out and mould then it is done; if it simply dissolves you need more cooking time.

4) Once the fudge has reached the soft ball stage submerge the pot in an inch or two of cold water in the sink - this will help it to cool more quickly. Then walk away and leave it for a good 10 mins to cool.

5) After 10 mins or so, pour into a bowl and, with an electric mixer (or wooden spoon - although this takes ages!) mix it until it begins to stiffen and lose some of its gloss. If you are adding orange essence do it before you begin to mix.

6) Pour into pan, level off and leave to set.

7) Cut into pieces and enjoy!

Cocoa Butter Solid Massage Bars

I've made these as gifts on several occassions and they always prove popular. They are made from cocoa butter and a liquid oil - I used avocado oil here but you could use olive oil, wheatgerm oil, sweet almond oil or any others that you might use in massage. I used them a lot in pregnancy on my every bulging tummy!

The bars are solid at room temperature but when in contact with skin become oil. I added a few drops of geranium and orange essentiial oils as I thought the scents would go well with the chocolatey smell, but you don't have to add essential oils, or, if you get a deodorized cocoa butter you can add a wider variety of scents. I have used 5cm square silicone moulds and the ingredients fully filled two of them with a little left over to start a third (I'll top it up at a later time!).

These are so easy to make although they take quite some time to become solid again so no good if you need them in a super hurry! Simply melt the cocoa butter in a double boiler and once melted add appx 1/3 of the weight (I used 100g cocoa butter and 30g avocado oil), stir, add any essential oils in and pour into moulds. In the past I have used yogurt pots as moulds which are fine except they are harder to get out than the silicone moulds so you nornally have to cut them up. Gently pop them in the freezer for a good few hours to harden, then remove from the moulds. Wrap in greaseproof paper with a ribbon if you are giving them as a gift :)

How to make Tofu

For someone that had very little patience (so I'm told by my husband anyhow) I do seem to pick activities that require a lot of standing still and concentrating. Tofu making is one of those activities - you can't do it when in a rush - you need a good hour and lots and lots of stirring time while the beans boil. I find it quite meditative.

You will need two very big saucepans/stock pots (mine is about 10 litres); a colinder, some muslin/cheesecloth; a wooden spoon or, preferably, a silicone spatula. You will also need a stick blender or food processor, soya beans (obviously) and nigari. I get my nigari in flakes on eBay and then crush them into a finer powder before storing in a jar. This makes it easier to measure it out accurately. I also use a tofu press, again found cheaply on eBay. However the colinder I used to use works  fine too - you just don't get that nice block of tofu.

Here's how I make it:
1) soak 3 cups of beans in water for 8 hours (this makes about 500g of tofu but can be scaled up or down - this is the most I can fit in my saucepan!). Make sure they are well covered by water.

2) after 8 hours, add three litres (about 6 pints) of water and blend the hell out of them with the stick blender. You can do it in a food procesor (like most of the videos online) but I've found this works much easier.

3) put a colinder into another large pot and line with cheesecloth.

4) bring blended beans to the boil. This takes ages and will feel like an eternity. Stir constantly, and it will froth up right away but you'll know when it boils as it suddenly fills the volume of the pot. Whilst it's boiling use the spatula to break the surface tension of the bubbles to stop it frothing over. This photo is before it boiled:

This photo is after it began to boil:

5) once it's boiling, keep it on a low heat and steady boil for about 12 mins, stirring constantly still.

6) after 12 minutes take off the heat and drain through the lined colinder into the other saucepan. That is your milk, which is what we use to make tofu. The fibre from the beans (called okara) is what is left in the muslin and can be used for a whole range of foods so don't throw it away. It can take a while to drain it as it probably won't all fit in the colinder at first, you will need to drain, pour, drain, pour etc.

7) add 2 teaspoons of nigari to half a cup or so of water and very gently stir it in until the whey begins to separate from the curds. Stop stirring, cover and leave for 15 mins or so. It will look like this:

If it doesn't separate like this within a minute or so stop stirring and gently heat it again until it curdles - sometimes it takes so long to drain the okara it can go to cold to have the reaction.

8) in the meantime, line the colinder, or a tofu press, with cheesecloth. After 15 mins pour the curds into the colinder/press and drain off the whey. This might take a while as again you will have to pour, drain, pour, drain etc. This is my mould halfway through:

9) once all the curds are in the mould fold the cheesecloth over itself and either put the lid on the mould or put a plate onto the colinder. Press gently and then add a weight on top - I use a heavy pan with some water in.

10) after an hour or so you can use the tofu, pop it in the fridge (in a tub with water) or freeze for later use. Now you just need to find ways to use up the okara (I'll post some recipes for this soon!).

Coconut Fudge Recipe

I love fudge - the creamy goodness reminds me of holidaying in Devon as a child. I also love learning how to make things myself, so about eight years ago I bought a digital sugar thermometer and decided to try and work out how to make it. There were lots of failures but I worked out a recipe that I was happy with, however I then got distracted with PhD, motherhood and work and didn't make any for a number of years until I went back to it only to have another string of failures which left me despondent.

This year, just before xmas, I stumbled across a recipe for peanut butter fudge (I will put a link to it below) which convinced me to pull my recipe out and have another go. A key factor in this was that the recipe says to submerge the pan in a sink partially filled with cold water to cool it more quickly, and it also called for an electric hand mixer instead of `beating with a wooden spoon'. I don't know why these things had never occurred to me - they seem obvious now - but the reasons for my many failures had been because I hadn't had the patience to a) wait for the fudge to cool before beating it and, b) most importantly,  beat the fudge for as long as it needed.

Once I had had a few successful attempts at my basic recipe (which I will post at a later date) I decided to experiment a little with different fats, and the result of this is my coconut fudge. I have used pink food colouring but you could leave it as is for a lovely white coconut colour, and you could also add some desiccated coconut to the top of it for extra flavour and for decoration.  You don't need to add any artificial flavours as the coconut taste really comes through from the coconut oil.

Ingredients:

450g sugar

50g light corn syrup (or golden syrup if you don't mind the colour being less white)

100g coconut oil

175ml double cream

75ml whole fat milk

Method:

1) Fill your sink with a few inches of cold water and line a loaf tin or small 8" square tin with greaseproof paper (or use a silicone mould).

2) Add all the ingredients to a pan (preferably a heavy bottomed one if you have one but a normal pan is fine so long as you stir lots) on a low heat and stir as the oil melts and the sugar is dissolved.

3) When it starts to boil keep the heat low and wipe down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in water to make sure there are no stray sugar crystals. This is really important because - as I learnt the hard way - a stray sugar crystal will, given the chance, re-crystalise the batch so you lose the lovely creamy texture. I keep a glass of water with a pastry brush and my thermometer next to me as I work when making fudge. Keep boiling and stirring until the fudge reached a soft ball stage. This is, temperature wise, between 113C-116C (235F-240F). If you don't have a thermometer you can drop a little mixture into a glass of cold water. If it dissolves quickly it isn't ready, but if it forms stands/balls that when taken from the glass can be moulded and keep their shape then it is ready. I heat to 115C then, once it hits this temperature, pop the pan in the sink (being careful not to get water in the pan) and leave it for a few mins to cool down.

4) After it has been left for a good 5-10 mins, use a spatula to scoop the fudge mixture into a bowl and then, with a hand mixer, beat until it begins to thicken. This is the hardest part to get right and I often under or over beat slightly. The main thing is to beat until you can feel the mixture is thicker (and therefore harder to beat) and that when you lift the mixer out of the pan (turn it off first!) the trace of the drops from the mixer takes a good few seconds to sink back in. Once it has thickened scrape it into the loaf tin and leave to set in the fridge.

5) Once it has set for a few hours (or overnight) cut into squares. Keep in a sealed container (or gift bags) in the fridge.

Light corn syrup can, in the UK (where I am) be bought on Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000BMNOAA?keywords=light%20corn%20syrup&qid=1451904342&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

and a cheap digital thermometer can be obtained from eBay http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181820424418

The Peanut Butter fudge recipe that inspired me to get going again was this one:

http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/peanut-butter-fudge/