Siobhan Makes Stuff

Wedding Veil!

2009-08-06T23:05:00.012-05:00

I finally got around to making my veil for my upcoming wedding. It's really simple and small, but I am not all that into big long veils, so it's perfect for me!

Since we're doing a 1940's film noir theme, I went with a fascinator with a short birdcage veil. Here's how I did it:

First I cut a long strip of tulle about 9" wide and to be honest, I am not sure how long, probably about 40." I didn't end up needing all of that length, but I figured it would be easier to cut away at it rather than have to cut a whole new longer piece. I then gathered one side of the long part until I had a nice almost-circle, as shown here:

Next I took two strips of red silk dupioni and sewed them together to make a tube, like so:

I turned the raw edges inside of the tube, then tucked one side into the other to make a loop.

I then cut another strip of the silk about the same width of the first two, folded each side of it in so no raw edges showed, and wrapped it around the first loop of silk to make a bow.

Here's a shot of the underside (it ain't pretty, but it works! All I did was tie it in a knot, which turned out to be not only easy, but functional, as the additional fabric under the bow helped give it a teensy bit more oomph.)

I then fastened this bow to the center of my veiling with some hot glue and also hand stitched it in for extra support. Then I added a comb so it will actually stay on my head!

In the end this took about an hour, and that was mostly spent arranging things until they looked "right." Here are a few shots of how it turned out! I am pretty happy with it, and really proud of myself for actually stopping instead of going crazy and adding flowers and feathers and a bunch of other things to it. Sometimes simple is best, and since I am going to be rocking a vintage hair style, I want that to be the main focus.

In search of...

2009-07-09T20:37:00.011-05:00

So I haven't updated in awhile, but that was expected. Fred and I just closed on a house on Monday, and we're getting married mid-September, so I've also been busy trying to plan for that. Moving on from the excuses.

I'm going to rant for a little bit about a long lost recipe that I and a few unsuccessful others have attempted to find.

When I was growing up in California, one of my favorite treats was a cookie sold in the bakeries at Von's Pavillions Grocery Stores. They just called it the Divinity Cookie, and it was a light, melt in your mouth, pastel colored cookie with chocolate chips. To try to explain the texture a little more, it was somewhere between the texture of a meringue cookie and a Pecan Sandie, with little pockets of air. There's nothing else like it in the world, I am convinced of this.

I have scoured the internet looking for the recipe to no avail. However, I did come up with one that looks likely to be tasty here. So tonight I will be making these cookies. I am crossing my fingers that this might actually be the recipe and just doesn't look like it.

Here goes!

So, all the dry ingredients are here. I used cake flour instead of all purpose flour.

Here are all the wet ingredients. I debated on substituting 2 egg whites for the 1 whole egg, but in the interest of experimentation, I will leave that for after the first taste test.

All mixed together. I skipped out on the nuts because the cookies I'm after did not have nuts. I'm sure it's wonderful with them, though.

All lined up and ready for baking! Rather than roll them into balls and press them, I decided to go for a more free-form approach to try and stay true to the cookie I am so desperately in search of.

So, they flattened out a bit in the baking process and now look like this:

And the final moment of truth, the taste test. Sadly, this is not the recipe. That being said, these are pretty delicious. They're ever so slightly chewy, very tender, and not too cloyingly sweet. Also, this recipe was really fast! I could whip these up any time I have an extra half hour on my hands. That's a little dangerous. Fred likes them a whole lot! He kept eying them while I was taking the final photos, and once I looked like I was done, he dove right in. I foresee that these will be added to my ever growing collection of Christmas cookie recipes!

Chocolate Semifreddo

2009-04-12T23:16:00.000-05:00

For Seamster Skillet's birthday, I wanted to make a nice dessert for her. She informed me she really didn't want a cake, though. So I decided to make something decadent and chocolaty that isn't cake. After browsing through my cookbooks, I decided on a chocolate semifreddo. Semifreddo means partially frozen in Italian, so I'm told. To me, this dessert is somewhere between gelato and mousse. In other words, rediculously good!

I started out with eggs:

I then beat the eggs until they were nice and frothy, which took about 5 minutes:

I left the eggs alone for a minute while I worked on the next step, sugar syrup. It's fairly simple as long as you keep an eye on it, you heat sugar and water until it just becomes clear:

At the same time, I also melted down some dark chocolate chips.

Next comes the tricky part. When the sugar syrup is ready, I poured it in a slow stream into the eggs while beating them at high speed. I temper the eggs first so they don't scramble. Once all the sugar syrup is in the eggs, I continued to beat them at high speed for about 15 minutes, until it looked like this:

Once that was done, I folded the melted chocolate in:

In another bowl, I whipped some heavy cream until it formed stiff peaks:

Last but not least, I folded the chocolate-sugar-egg mixture into the whipped cream and poured it into a mold. Then you pop it in the freezer and wait. This stuff is definitely worth the wait! Sorry to say I didn't actually get photos of it after it had been frozen. But trust me, this is great stuff. One thing I should have done, but didn't, was put some plastic wrap in the mold before pouring. I ended up not being able to get it out of the mold all at once, so people had to just spoon it out.

My take on the Best Broccoli of Your Life

2009-03-31T21:24:00.000-05:00

So having made this fabulous recipe a few times already, I got inspired when I saw some lovely orange cauliflower at Whole Foods. I figured it would make a nice substitute for the broccoli in the recipe, and then I just got carried away. Blood oranges were also looking wonderful, so I tossed them in the cart, too.

So, to start with my lovely ingredients: Fresh garlic, shredded pecorino-romano, and an extremely ripe blood orange.

Next up: The cauliflower and sliced garlic, tossed in a healthy amount of olive oil, and sprinkled with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper.

Fresh out of the oven, and sprinkled with LOTS of the pecorino-romano. Yum!

For the finishing touch, I squeezed the blood orange all over the cauliflower. Mmmm.

This was definitely a success. It was tangy, salty, and just a little bit sweet. I ate it all in one sitting!

Hello!

2009-03-27T11:01:00.000-05:00

My name is Siobhan, and I like to make things! Lately my creations have been in the realms of food and clothing, though I plan to venture out into other projects as well. I will do my best to update this site regularly, but I am getting married in September so my posts may be sporadic at best for awhile.

The photo to the left is me! I made the apron several months ago, and I made the pink dress about six years ago. I'm cooking up a mean batch of my famous red Thai curry here. I'll have detailed instructions and photos for my recipe soon!

I never realized how dirty my aprons get while I'm cooking until I saw this photo...I guess it's a good thing I'm wearing one!