Welcome to Litsy!

36 book covers are hard to fit on a little Litsy square. I read 35 in July and bailed on two: Rosa Candida (I had been working my way through it since February but gave it up for good in July) and 1947: Where Now Begins (that one I will probably return to when I‘m in a different mood). My 5-star reads are obscured by hearts.

I didn't cut a stencil for the daisies, and made them in a mini-muffin pan and used a stainless straw to cut the holes. I also sliced them in half and added more lemon cream - cause you can never have too much lemon cream - right?

Graphic designer Hovland is responsible for the layout, photography & original recipes in her stunning baking book. No specialty equipment is necessary; use aluminum foil to make moulds, for example. Don‘t have pearl sugar? Use crushed sugar cubes. The recipes aren‘t hard to follow, but most have many steps, often rather fiddly and time-consuming. I tried a few (scroll under title to see) & they turned out really well. Love this!

I love the photography and layout in this cookbook. Above left illustrates numbered steps to create the Chocolate Almond Cookie Eggs. The speckles are made by flicking a toothbrush dipped in a mix of vanilla extract & cocoa powder. Gift presentation: in an egg carton. Aren‘t they gorgeous? I want to try this recipe sometime.

Sesame-Ginger Buns with Lemon Icing from the tagged book. I didn‘t make the yellow flower decorations, and I used black sesame seeds, so they look different. (They taste great.) There aren‘t a whole lot of instructions for making these, but I didn‘t have problems because I already know how to make cinnamon buns.

This was the photo I took yesterday when I was making the candied flowers. (Of course I was listening to an audiobook.)

This cookbook inspired me to candy some flowers from my garden to use for decorating cakes: borage, rose petals & cranesbill geraniums.

The first recipe that I tried from this gorgeous cookbook turned out really well: Birch Bark Cookies.