Sea Salt Caramel Brownies... Swoon.

Brownies are a pretty staple bake for me. Gooey, surgery and completely sinful, I really shouldn't make them as often as I should. However there is something so therapeutic about melting the butter and chocolate together, adding the copious amounts of sugar and beating in the eggs to create a thick, shiny black lacquer. Pure calories on a spoon.

Recently, I have been trying to experiment with the flavours and textures of brownies - thinking of new combinations to increase the overall intensity of the experience. The latest of these expetimentations occurred today, and the result was: Salted Caramel Brownies.

I am already a massive fan of salted caramel. To me, the combination of crunchy salt crystals and teeth melting sweet caramel is pretty much perfection. I had tried to make salted brownies before using rocksalt, but the two elements remained too separate and didn't really make sense. So it seemed to make more sense to combine the salt into a preexisting sauce with enough weight to hold it's own shape and individual flavours in amongst the brownie mixture. The recipie I used was that of Nigella Lawson's Salted Caramel Sauce. It was easy enough to make and produced a thick syrup which help nicely in the brownie mix.

I was really happy with the end result. The sauce formed in lovely pockets across the top of the surface. It seemed to change the texture of the brownies quite significantly. Normally the end result is a very dense, wet crumb. But this time the end brownie was much more cake like. I have to say, I was very impressed with myself. Now we just have to get through them without being sick... Somehow, I don't think that will be an issue for Luca...

There's a Spring in My Step!

So it may be hard to think about Spring when there is approximately 6" of snow covering anything remotely green. But regardless, the first little green shoots have begun to sprig up on the grass outside of my house causing me to cast my thoughts towards fresh, dewy mornings, delicate spring flowers and little fluffy bunnies! With fresh starts in mind, I have decided to combine my two blogs into one, to create a space to share everything baked, sewn, crafted and created. Alongside this, I plan to share some of my other passions and things that have grabbed my attention! 

Kitteh Bakes:

Recently I took another step in my pursuit for my own bakery and decided to return to college to study more intensively and in greater detail about certain areas of baking. I have decided I would like to focus on breads and pastry and will therefor be signing up to study French Patisserie and Continental Baking from September. It's a way of me honing my skills and getting down to some of the finer details and elements of science key to really understanding professional baking.

For Christmas, my Boyfriend Luca bought me two new books, Dough by Richard Bertinet and The Art of French Baking by Ginette Mathiot. It was flicking through these books and trying out a few recipes that really make me think about bread as a specialist topic. Too often today we settle for sliced bread from the supermarket, which contains a myriad of preservatives, artificial ingredients and basically rubbish! It's so simple to make great tasting, fresh bread and I really want to encourage everyone to try it! Hopefully by sharing some of my successes in the future, I can get more people to just give it a try.

 Kitteh Makes:

And so we move onto the subject of crafting! Just before Christmas, I set up a Big Cartel store to try and gain some interest in my sewing. Whilst the response in terms of actual purchase wasn't overwhelming, it certainly gained a lot of response. Now that Christmas has passed, I am looking to create some new products in the hope of gaining people's interest. 

The first product I want to promote is this very fluffy, and very cute, Rabbit phone case. I was inspired by all the silicone phone cases you see with huge rabbit ears. So so cute! I wanted to combine this concept with cute floral fabrics and soft pastel colours, here is the finished prototype.

 I bought this particular fabric from the Leeds market a while ago, and apart form a slightly failed skirt I have done very little with it. Yet I love the dusty purples and green used, with just a slight hint of yellow on the flowers. It only make sense to team in with a dusty pink wool, for both the pom pom tail and the oversized stitching around the top band. The inside is lined with a faux suede which not only looks cute, but also provides a non slip texture, meaning your phone won't slip out. I had to take off my shell in order to use this, so it may need a little tweak. I would also love to make this accessible to iPhone 5 users. However, overall I am really happy with the end product.

To view my store, follow the bottom link.

kittehkraft.bigcartel.com