I have committed to achieve some goals in a Ravelry spinning group challenge this month. The challenge is organised so that each spinner sets her or his goals, and allocates points totalling 100.  We aim to get at least 70 points done each month.  This is for each of us to get more spinning done, and to spin down our stashes a bit.

My goals are to

1. finish spinning the last quarter of the singles needed for my cabled sock yarn (20 points)
2. ply and then cable ply that yarn (40 points)
3. finish the yarn on my Windwheel that has been languishing for far too long (20 points)
4. spin 10 minutes a day minimum of alpaca fleece on my little spindle. Those 12 fleeces aren’t going to spin themselves. (20 points).

I have finished the singles for the cabled yarn (20 points), and have finished the singles on the Windwheel yarn, and have yet to ply them.  I might even do that tonight, you never know.  The plying and cable plying will take a while longer, I will have to set myself up in front of a couple of good movies I think.  The alpaca is on a hiatus at the moment, since I can only seem to make decent yarn on my wee turkish spindle, and crap yarn on my wheels and other spindles.  I don't know how big the cop has to be on the turkish, so I might stop spinning on it now, take the yarn off, and start another cop.  Wish me luck, I'm not so good at handling singles once they come off spindles.

Go me!

Needing a quick dessert tonight, I found this awesome recipe for honeycomb icecream. I had never made honeycomb before, and it was as quick, easy and delicious as I had heard it was. I will definitely be making honeycomb again some time soon.

This is a nice quick ice cream recipe because it uses whipped cream and sweetened condensed milk, both as is, instead of having to cook a custard and then cool it before churning.  I'm going to make sure I always have a tin of sweetened condensed milk in the cupboard, because you never know when I might have a need for quick ice cream.  Better to be prepared for an icecream related emergency than to find yourself in the middle of one, I will from now on always say.

Monkey 1 has a friend staying the night, and this Monkey On Loan loves to experiment with cooking and eating. He was in raptures over the honeycomb and proclaimed the icecream to be the best he has ever tasted. Success!

Honeycomb Icecream

85g sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
400mL cream
1 can sweetened condensed milk (I understand that the Coles home brand is not made by Nestlé)

Grease or line baking tray with baking paper.  Put the sugar and syrup in heavy based saucepan and heat gently until the sugar melts. Boil for 1-2 minutes until it starts to caramelise.  Don't let the mixture burn.

Stir in the bicarb soda, then immediately pour the mixture onto the prepared baking tray but do not spread.  Mine kind of splodged onto the tray in a cow pat formation instead of poured, maybe a touch too much bicarb?  Leave for about 10 minutes until cold.

Whip the cream until it holds its shape, then whisk in the condensed milk. 

Pour the custardy goodness into your icecream maker, or freeze it uncovered for 1-2 hours or until it begins to set around the edges, then pop it into a bowl and stir with a fork until smooth.

Put the honeycomb into a plastic bag, wrap in a teatowel and bash the bejizzus out of it with a rolling pin.  Very satisfying.

Mix the honeycomb chunks, crumbs and dust into the icecream, and then return to the freezer for a few hours.

Nom it up.

Ours was needed for dessert before it was properly frozen, so it had a bit of a soft serve texture to it, but nobody seemed to mind.

I'm on FIAH.

Sunday evening and thoughts turn to the week ahead and my weird need to feel like a Good Mummy and bake delicious lunch box treats for the Monkeys.

The September edition of the mag "Recipes +" has a basic biscuit recipe that you can then flavour up any which way. The deal is that you make a giant wodge of dough, divide it into five smaller wodges, flavour these wodges, roll them into sausages, chill them, cut them into slices, and bake.

Basic biscuit recipe
385g butter
2 eggs
4 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder.

Once again my fantabby KitchenAid mixer made me very happy, and made this job super easy and fun.

Cream butter. Add eggs. Sift flour and baking powder together. Add flour to butter/egg. Mix it up baby.

Clockwise from top left - custard, vanilla, chocolate, cheesy and choc chip.

Custard - add 1/4 cup of icing sugar and a couple if big spoons of custard powder, and a teaspoon of milk.

Vanilla - add 1/4 cup of icing sugar, slosh of vanilla essence, spoon of plain flour.

Chocolate - add goodly bit of cocoa, and some brown sugar.

Cheesy - add lashings of grated cheddar and Parmesan, and a wee sprinkling of cayenne pepper.

Choc chip - icing sugar, choc chips. Easy.

Roll out each flavour into a large sausage, roll it up safely in baking or wax paper, put it in the fridge. The mag says to make each sausage about 25cm long, but if you want dainty little petit four size bikkies, then a skinnier sausage is what you want.

Chill sausages in the fridge for 30 mins +. Or freeze so that you have a convenient supply ready in case friends drop by and you need to whip up a batch instantly. Yeah right.

Slice into 1cm ish thick slices. I put slivers of fresh strawberries on top of the vanilla slices. Bake them at 160 ish deg for 10-12 mins ish.

Omnomnom. Oh yes indeedy. The Love Of My Life proclaimed them "delicious". My work here is done.

If the cheesy ones turn out to be even half as good as the cheesy biscuits that they sell at the shop at the local markets, I am DOOMED. I have no control over myself when they are in the house. Watch this space.

I'm putting this here so I can find this wonderful video again when I need it, and also so that you can watch it and bliss out on the rhythm and simplicity of yarn and twist.

When I have cleared off the projects on my wheels at the moment, I am going to learn how to do this.  And then bliss out.