I’m sure you’ve noticed that it’s been a little quiet around here. My excuse is… Well, I don’t have one, to be honest. I just got out of the habit is all. I suppose the positive side to this is that I’ve got lots to catch up on, right?

To start the ball rolling, here’s a recipe that I make at least once a week at the moment. Perfect for tea parties, picnics, smuggling into the cinema… The list is endless.

Makes 8 sizeable beauties, or about a million smaller ones

16oz self-raising flour
4oz butter
250ml milk
Either:
4oz sugar (for plain scones)
2oz sugar and 2oz fruit (for fruit scones)
4oz grated sharp cheese (for cheese scones)

Heat your oven to 200 degrees centigrade/gas mark 6.

Mix together the butter (and sugar, if you’re using it) and flour. Add the milk a little at a time, and stop when it reaches a workable dough. Add the fruit or three quarters of the cheese, depending on which flavour you’re going for. Mix throroughly.

Roll out the dough to about an inch thick and cut into rounds. Arrange on a floured baking tray, and brush the tops with a little milk. Add the rest of the cheese, or a little granulated sugar to finish.

Pop in the oven for about 15 minutes, or until they are just a little beyond golden brown on the top. Leave to cool on a wire rack, and serve with enormous quantities of butter.

Photo: Mad Tea Party, Disneyland Park, by Mastery of Maps

There’s only a relatively small choice of titles at the moment, but it’s a good little selection including a fair few of my favourites (Alice, Dracula, Dorian Gray – I think my degree is now sufficiently distant that I can finally re-read them without instinctively panicking about deadlines).

I really like this idea, and I’m quite tempted to pick one up and do a bit of Victorian-inspired mixed media stuff – maybe a bit of freestyle drawing/embroidery. With fake jewels. And googly eyes.

OK, not the googly eyes. They can go back to the bottom of my craft box. But one day I’ll find a use for them.

Image: Alice in Wonderland by Filippo Cravedi

I present to you the only houmous recipe I’ve actually liked (and believe me, I’ve tried them all). It’s not a fancy-schmancy one with loads of complicated flavours or chewy bits added, but that’s the appeal for me – I love the simple, fresh taste and smooth-but-grainy consistency you get with this one.

1 400g tin of chickpeas
2 tbsp light tahini
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
loads of salt and pepper

Drain half of the water from the tin of chickpeas (if you’re not sure how much you’ve drained, err towards keeping less water – you can always add more later, but if it’s too watery there’s not much you can do).

Put the chickpeas and remaining water in the blender. Add the tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and seasoning.

Blend. If it’s too gritty, add a little water and blend some more – bear in mind that it should be a bit grainy, though.

Et voila – delicious houmous. A whole tub of it, in fact, for very little money.

Photo: Chickpeas, by Mink

As the name suggests, the authors work their way through vintage cookbooks, seeing how the recipes measure up to modern tastes and (hopefully) rediscovering lost retro cuisine gems on the way.

There’s a cheery mix of genuine enthusiasm and gentle mockery for the tastes of the past, along with some great photographs of the books – excellent fodder for fans of unintentionally hilarious food photography.

Speaking of unintentionally hilarious food photography (as I often do), here’s a link to one of my favourite sites for when I’m feeling down – let’s call it an early Christmas present from me: Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974. Bon appetit!

Today’s post is a fantastic idea – a print-out-and-keep gift guide for anyone wondering what to buy their sewing-obsessed friend, relative or loved one. The suggestions are all great, practical things that any sewer would love to receive, and the guide is clear and helpful – perfect for the non-sewer who may be a bit intimidated by the whole thing. I’ve already circulated the ubiquitous Amazon list to my relatives this year, but I’ll definitely be bookmarking this post for next time around.

It’d be nice to find similar lists for other crafts, too – heck, maybe we could even get round to it (just in time for next year)! I’d be happy to come up with a wishlist for jewellery making types (glue, weird pliers you don’t know you need yet, that sort of thing), and I’m sure Kirsty has some great tips for muggles looking to buy for knitters…

This recipe is based on a couple of others that I tried out – particularly this one at Cupcake Blog, which is where I got the idea in the first place – but I think I’ve added enough tweaks to legitimately claim this one as my own. The main difference is that I prefer to leave the honey out of the cupcakes – I find that a simple vanilla flavour works well with the salty-sweet-honey-peanut extravaganza, and I like the texture better that way. I also simplify things somewhat by going with self-raising flour and salted peanuts, and have done my usual trick of making far more frosting than anyone else recommends (partly because I like to really overload these babies, and partly because I eat so much of it while I’m making it).

Makes 12

For the cupcakes:
150g butter
150g castor sugar
180g self-raising flour
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 generous handful of salted peanuts

For the frosting:
2 tbsp thick honey
200g cream cheese
100g butter
400g icing sugar
Preheat the oven to 180C.

Line a 12 cup muffin pan with cupcake cups.

Roughly chop the peanuts, and put about a tablespoon’s worth to one side.

Cream the butter and sugar. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs. Now combine the eggs, flour and vanilla extract with the butter and sugar.

Half-fill the cups with the mixture, then add a layer of salted peanuts to each. Now top them up with the rest of the mixture.

Pop the cupcakes in the oven and bake for 12-15 mins (or however long it takes your oven) until they’re a pale golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. When they’re done, place them on a wire rack to cool.

Using an electric mixer, combine the honey, cream cheese, icing sugar and butter.

Spoon or pipe an even amount of the frosting on to each cupcake, and then top with a sprinkling of the leftover peanuts.

Photo: Honey! by wpbarr

I thought I’d get into the spirit of our new motto and let you know about one of the other creative things I spend a lot of time on. It’s been about ten years since I formed my first terrible teenage garage band (featuring our very own Joelle and Vanessa!), and while I’ve spent months, even years at a time concentrating on other things, making music is always something I come back to.

What I really enjoy about making music is the sense of progress you get from it, and the way you can suddenly find your niche. Following the childhood trauma of being advised to mime in school choir, I spent years avoiding the idea of singing under any circumstances – and then all of a sudden I realised that you don’t need to sing like Mariah Carey to do adequate backing vocals, and you honestly can’t shut me up now. I’ve switched instruments a few times, too: guitar (bad) to drums (worse) to bass (surprisingly good, considering).

I’m currently playing bass and singing as many backing vocals as possible in a kitschy lo-fi cabaret pop outfit called Cherry Filth and the Deathlegs (shameless plug: check out our MySpace for listings and free downloads!), and I can honestly say that this is the most fun, creative hobby I’ve ever had. Since we started, we’ve all got to indulge our love of making things in all sorts of ways – not only do we make the music, but we also create ridiculous costumes and props for our gigs, come up with choreography, design websites, flyers and CD covers…

If any of you are planning on making new year’s resolutions about doing anything educational, creative or just plain different from watching telly, I’d seriously recommend that you consider buying or borrowing a cheap instrument (anything’ll do) and getting a couple of friends together to turn all your old in-jokes into catchy songs. If nothing else, it’s a great excuse to wear hotpants at any time of the year and sing about poo on the radio. Or maybe that’s just me.

If I’m preaching to the converted, I’d love to hear about it! Please comment if you’re a reader who makes music, and feel free to share links to your stuff. I hope to be writing a bit more on this subject over the coming months as I start to experiment with some new musical ideas, so I’d love to know what you guys are up to and into.

After a couple of weeks of faffing around with PHP hard work behind the scenes, I’m delighted to reveal our swish new look. We’ve now got cute little author avatars, an easier-than-ever menu and a cute new post layout that packs as much cornery goodness as possible into every screen. The new banner’s important, too – check out our new motto, which sums up everything we’re excited about sharing with you.

Of course, we at Four Good Corners are as much about brains as beauty, so you won’t be the least bit surprised to hear that we’ve got some clever new features as well. Check out our quick picks over to the right there – it’s a frequently-updated list of all the things we’ve found on the web that we’d love to share with you – or try out the sexy new comment preview box.

Finally, the really exciting bit – we’ve got new bloggers on the way! We’ll be introducing them shortly, so watch this space.

So, I’m thinking a lot about gift packaging. Two reasons, really:

1) Somehow, it’s December already. Seriously.

2) I’m taking a fresh look at the packaging I use for my jewellery over at misskerryturner.com. Since I started running a business I’ve been through a number of changes of image, but I think I’ve finally found one that I’m totally happy with. Call it serendipity or fate, but I happen to have run out of my old pink bracelet boxes at just the right time.

With that in mind, I’ve been hitting up Flickr for inspiration. I’m into quite traditional stuff at the moment (brown paper, ribbons, that sort of thing), so I started looking there. The image on the left is a great example of a modern take on this sort of traditional style – inexpensive and using recycled/recyclable materials, but so chic and stylish. I especially love the button centrepiece.

Of course, me being me, I quickly found myself getting into much fancier waters. If this is your sort of thing, I suggest you check out this group: Nice Package. Although there are a few spammy entries in the pool (shame on you, crappy internet sellers!), I’m honestly amazed at the time, care and ingenuity on display – I can only imagine how thoughtful the gifts inside must be…

Of course, I doubt I’ll get around to lovingly wrapping everyone’s gifts in quirky old sheet music, hand-tying each with vintage satin ribbon and finishing them off with a personalised bauble, but I’ve certainly got some good ideas, both for myself and my business… Anyone else feeling inspired this year?

Photo: simple, by lilfishstudios

Vanessa may be all about the pumpkin pie right now, but for me there’s only one sweet pie worth writing about. Without further ado, I present to you my ultimate nights-are-drawing-in recipe: sweet, nutty, syrup-y pecan pie.

For the pastry:
8 oz plain flour
4 oz butter
1 oz caster sugar
1 egg yolk
1 pinch salt
not much cold water

For the filling:
4oz butter
4oz golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
8oz dark brown sugar
3 eggs
10oz pecan nuts, halved

NB: This recipe was intended for one large-ish pie, but I used it to make two small (7″) ones instead. It works either way, it seems, but bear in mind that it’ll cook differently.

1. Pastry time! Sift together the flour and salt, rub it together with the butter, add the sugar, add the egg yolk and then stick in a wee bit of cold water to get it to the right consistency. Then stick it in the fridge for half an hour or so.

2. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. Filling time! Slowly melt the butter, syrup, sugar and vanilla essence together in a saucepan. When it’s all gloopy, put it in the fridge for ten minutes or so.

3. While the gloop is cooling, roll out your pastry and put it in the tin(s). Beat your eggs and arrange your pecan halves in the pastry case(s). Now the gloop ought to be cool.

3. Add the beaten eggs to the cooled gloop and give it a good stir.

4. Pour the gloop over the pecan halves.

5. Put pie(s) in oven. The recipe I used improvised freely around said to cook it for 40-50 mins, but I think that’s only for large pies. That, or my oven runs WAY hot. My two small pies were done in about 20 mins. The trick is to keep an eye on the pastry – when it looks done, it is done. Don’t worry about the filling – it’ll set a little as it cools.

6. Eat pie.

Photo: Elliott Pecan Halves, by Old Shoe Woman