100 AND COUNTING

Cast your minds back to January 2012, like everyone else we had made New Years resolutions :

1 : start a blog
2 : start a business

And now we're back in January, today marks our 100th post! I think we can safely say we've achieved the first resolution. It's wonderful to be able to look back over the year and see what we've shared with everyone - the food we've eaten, the places we've been and perhaps most importantly our journey to achieve resolution #2.

We've created a snapshot of pictures from some of our favourite posts and memories. To all our loyal readers thank you for sticking by us and to those of you who are new here a big hello!


As is traditional for January Clementine & Bloom have once again set 2013 resolutions - this is our year to think big and say yes! So what better way to celebrate than to share with you all our first piece of press, our beautiful Heart Quilt is featured in the February edition of Sewing World Magazine, it went on sale 18th January so now all we need to do is get our hands on a copy...


Of course no celebration would be complete without cake! We chose these delicious chocolate fudge cupcakes baked by the very talented Liberty Kalinah. Really we wanted one of her fantastic novelty cakes but when there's just two of you in the studio it seemed just a bit greedy. Maybe for our 1000th post we should have a party!


TOP DRAWER


A week has passed since we were at Top Drawer and having rested our weary feet (three days of standing up is tough going!) we thought it was about time we filled you all in.


As Spotted exhibitors we had a 1m x 1m plinth requiring us to be imaginative with our display - it's surprising how much space cushions and lampshades take up. Obviously we did the usual practice run through at home but our set up time on the Saturday was a Clementine & Bloom record - a speedy 30 minutes!


As it was our first trade show we were understandably nervous, however we needn't have been; the past year has been a whirlwind of exhibiting and pitching our products to the public so whilst there were a few new pieces of terminology we had to get our heads around such as drop-ship, trade price and minimum orders, we soon settled into the swing of talking about the virtues of Clementine & Bloom and all nerves disappeared.


Not only have we made some invaluable contacts within the industry we've once again met a great bunch of fellow exhibitors. Our lovely neighbour Roddy & Ginger helped make the days fly by, and if there's one thing we would have definitely bought at the show it's a handmade leather ipad case from the wonderful MES leather. We've added a picture of every stand in the Spotted area and a link to their websites - make sure you check them all out.

top row : Jessica Hayes-Gill, One Must Dash, Stormy Knight, Spann&Willis,
bottom row : Stephanie Davies Designs, Claire Gaudion, Amy Allwright

It's good to stand back a few days after an event and assess what we have gained from the experience and once again we can honestly say it has all been positive. What we've learnt about the industry, our products and ourselves is invaluable and we would encourage anyone offered the opportunity to participate in a similar event like this to grab it with both hands.

So now we are rested and reinvigorated and despite the freezing temperatures and snow it's back to work in the studio.

CABINETS OF CURIOSITIES

With just one day to go until we set up for our first trade show our samples are made and safely packaged away, and as the headache of all the new paperwork we've had to produce has subsided we thought we would settle down and share some details, and more importantly photographs, of a day trip we took over the Christmas break.

We didn't venture far afield - it's nice to find good things that are on your doorstep - straight to the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, London. This is one of those places that Mum has spoken of having visited as a young girl and thoroughly loving for its eclectic mix of curiosities. As children we never visited (no idea why?!) but I suppose it must often get overlooked as a small and independent museum in the suburbs, but that's exactly why you should go and visit.

As creatives there's nothing we love more than a museum. Natural hoarders ourselves with a curiosity for anything visual, it sometimes feels like the big sights in London have loosened the emphasis on cabinets full of displays and redirected it towards children and computers - it's wonderful to see an object in 3D but I still want to see the original object too! This is where the Horniman Museum is different, it focuses on displaying the weird and the wonderful with complimentary technology alongside exhibits not instead of!

I took hundreds of photographs when we visited (their natural history section was particularly good!) so I have included a few of my favourites for you all...






ICE, ICE BABY

Happy New Year to all our readers and what better way to start 2013 than with ice cream! I've waited until now to share this post with you because having made the ice cream we chose to save it for Christmas day, which is always a big family affair in our household and meant everyone would get a taste.

Way back on a warm Summer's day a crate of over ripe peaches landed in the kitchen; between the family we managed to scoff a good few of them but the left overs gave me a chance to experiment. My usual source of inspiration is the internet but peach cakes and peach cobblers and peach pies just weren't grabbing my attention, then I came across the most beautiful food blog Tartelette and a stunning recipe for Roasted Peaches and Lavender Ice Cream.

Queue some rejigging of the recipe - skip the lavender, make it a little less calorie heavy, oh and minor detail, I don't own an ice cream machine and hey presto I found myself spending a whole afternoon (no exaggeration this takes 4-6 hours) making Roasted Peach and English Blossom Honey Ice Cream.


If you click the Tartelette link it will take you back to the original recipe but I have included my own version below:

6 peaches
250ml whole milk
250ml light coconut milk
250ml fat free yoghurt
5 tablespoons of honey
A handful of sugar

Preheat the oven to 200C

Cut the peaches in half and remove the stone.


Cover a small plate with sugar and push the flesh into the crystals. Place in a roasting tin sugar side up.


Drizzle the honey over and roast in the oven until golden brown and soft (I turned my peaches a few times just to keep them coated in the honey and juice syrup that was forming in the bottom of the tin)


Call me fussy but once the peaches were sufficiently cooled I removed the skin; there's no real need for this it just depends on your preference for the texture of the ice cream and I wanted mine to be smooth and creamy.


In a large saucepan over a medium heat, gently warm the milk, coconut milk and yoghurt until they are just at the point of boiling. Remove from the heat and leave to cool completely. I would recommend refrigerating to speed this part up!


Once everything is completely cooled add the peaches to the milk base and mash with a potato masher.

This is the point where if you're lucky enough to have an ice cream machine you pop it in and let it do the hard work. Now the true commitment to the cause begins.

I separated my mixture into two large plastic containers, both need to fit easily into your freezer. Place in the freezer for 45 minutes, remove and whisk (definitely with an electric whisk and the most robust fitting you have, it's easy now but anything flimsy will not work at the later stages)

From now on every 30 minutes you have to remove your ice cream from the freezer and whisk, for the simple reason that you are not trying to produce an ice cube but rather a smooth and well blended mixture. How many times you will have to do this depends on how good your freezer is but you will get to a certain point where the mixture no longer looks whisk-able and it is at this point that you can either leave it to freeze or eat it!

If like us you choose to save yours until later you will need to remove the ice cream from the freezer and pop it into the fridge for several hours to soften up.

Bon apetit!