Crochet and fruit tarts

24th January

Puffy spike stitch easily mastered and the blanket is growing

We are now half way through our crochet course and I continue to be the proud mother hen of all the ladies.  I am alone most evenings once the children have gone to bed (increasingly later as they work their way through teenage years) and so I sit and crochet or craft or occasionally read, less so these days as crocheting seems to have taken over, but that needs to be addressed I think.  Happily for me the last two weeks I have been joined for an extra evening of crochet company and I cannot tell you how much I enjoy that.

Here you can see the progress that the crochet ladies have been making, remember half of them had never held a crochet hook 14 days ago...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

This rainbow blanket is being made ready for university life

 

Having missed lesson 2, this lady had only been
crocheting for 8 days, she had never held a crochet hook before

Progressing onto the granny stripe

Cosy stripe, puffy spike stitch
and granny stripe, all mastered

What is crochet without cake?

These 3 blankets all crocheted by
the same lady are progressing well

 

This is how you will find me most week day nights...

I unexpectedly had company one night this week.  Having been taught by my Scandinavian mother that you should always offer guests something to eat, I raided my stores to see what I could rustle up with short notice and not wanting to go out and buy something.  I had some blueberries in the freezer, lemons in the fruit bowl and a pre rolled pastry pack in the fridge that actually needed using up... my mind began to whirl and decided on tarts.

Awaiting my unexpected crochet company

Made these lemon and blueberry tarts in a flash for my crochet company

The tarts were in fact so easy to make, tasty to eat, that I made more for this weeks crochet class, this time using the frozen raspberries I had from the garden.
 



Crochet and fruit tarts, a good combo

Fruit tarts   

You will need

shortcrust pastry either made or bought
tub of soft cream cheese
lemon zest and juice - only for the blueberry tarts
vanilla essence - only for the raspberry tarts
3 eggs
1 tbsp. sugar
handful of berries, I used blueberries and raspberries
12 hole bun tin

1  Cream together the cheese, eggs, sugar and lemon zest and juice or vanilla essence. 

2  Add sugar only for the blueberry tarts.
3  Grease the bun tin.
4  Roll out pastry to about 5 mm height and use round pastry cutter.  Place pastry discs into the bun tin.
5  Add in fruit of choice, for the raspberry tarts, I needed only 3 raspberries per tart and for the blueberries I only needed 5 or 6.
6  Pour in the egg mixture, being careful to not over fill.
7  Place in preheated oven of 180 degrees Celsius for about 12-15 minutes until the filling is set and the pastry is golden in colour.

These are delicious hot and quick to warm through at a later date but are equally as tasty eaten cold.  They can also be frozen for up to 4 weeks.

They really are quick to make, especially if you use bought pastry, not that I do that often?!?!?

 

♥  Hope you are having a grand week end  ♥