We have a string of wooden letters that spell out ‘Christmas’ on a bit of decorated string so I have tried to make a ‘Christmas’ in salt dough and push a skewer through the letters to make thread holes.

I’ve searched several sites on the Internet and it seems the dough is 2 to 1 flour and salt, made into a dough with water and a splash of lemon juice.

I had the end of a packet of plain flour so I used 180 grams of flour. 90 grams of salt, a spoon of lemon and then added spoons of water bringing the dough together with my hands, adding more water until I had a pliable dough that’s not sticky but molds easily into a ball. Kneed the dough until the texture changes to being a bit more elastic (a few minutes only) and then pop in a bag or airtight box in the fridge for 20 minutes or more.

I rolled the dough  to about a centimeter or half an inch thick, then used a sharp knife to cut out letters from templates and put them on a baking tray covered in foil. These then got skewered a couple of centimeters from the tops using a metal kebab skewer.

They sat in the bottom oven for about an hour before I turned them and put them back. If you have a cold kitchen cook them at a low heat about 50 degrees C or leave them in an airing cupboard overnight.

Today I checked on my leaf gift tags. They are being nicely pressed in a book by the sadly missed garden presenter, Geoff Hamilton. The book is from his ‘Cottage Gardens’ TV series, flicking through the pages I remembered using his ideas to transform a rectangle of grass into a pretty cottage garden some years ago, fond memories of all the work and delight I found in making a garden my own.

The leaf tags are experimental versions to which I added a few words to get some idea of the finished product but I’m concerned they are looking a bit bland, maybe they would look a bit more festive sprayed in gold or silver, perhaps even gilded a bit with a gold wax crayon. 

In addition to the leaf drying I’ve started drying a sliced up orange for Christmas decorations. These take a bit of time to dry out so I’ve popped the pieces onto a foil covered cake tin base which is on top of the wood-burner. I’ve done these before and they look great in a bowl with a few pine cones or on garlands with Cinnamon sticks and fir tree cuttings.

Half a kilo of either crab apples or quince fruit has come into my possession so I’m going to have a go at quince/crabapple cheese. The fruits were yellow like some crabapples and incredibly fragrant like quince but much smaller than I remember quince. Who will know? I’m pretty sure they are not poisonous though.

To make the Jelly I am using Fiona’s recipe on the Cottage Smallholder at http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/?p=102. The fruit has been gently cooking on the stove all afternoon and I’ve ladled it into the muslin cloth to strain for the night. My faithful muslin cloth has now strained many types of fruit and washes up well every time. I would not dare suggest replacing it.