Winter Solstice - A Painting & A Poem
Inspired by the shortest day of the year. And now the light starts to tiptoe back in.
Sunday Song - This Is The Point
My sister brought this beautiful song by Alex Cornish to my attention as we drove back from Cornwall. I love the simple nostalgia of the lyric, “I was in the crowd with you.” It inspired me to paint as soon as I got home.
Jødekager - Danish Christmas Cookies
Inspired by my recent trips to Copenhagen I made jødekager this weekend. I tried these with hot chocolate while on a canal tour of the city surrounded by fairylights. I read up about their origins online and it seems they were originally made in Jewish bakeries around the city and it became a tradition to make them with children at Christmas.
They are so simple to make and look so pretty. I used the below recipe from Nordic Food & Living.
Ingredients
150g butter
250g plain flour
100g sugar
1 egg
For the topping
50g almonds, chopped
3 tbsp sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
Method
Cut the butter into cubes and rub into the flour in a large mixing bowl until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and stir. Then add one of the eggs and mix with your hands to form a soft dough. It’s quite messy but satisfying when the dough comes together. Pop the dough in the fridge for about 30 minutes while you pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees.
Cover a board or work surface with flour and roll out the dough so that it is about 3 - 4 mm thick. Use cookie cutters to cut out approx. 40 - 50 small cookies. I made circles and stars to be a little extra Christmassy.
Whisk the second egg and brush a little on each cookie. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together in a small bowl and sprinkle a fair amount on each one. Then sprinkle the chopped almonds on too. I put almonds on about half of my biscuits so that there were some for everyone’s taste.
Bake in batches for about 7 - 8 minutes. Keep an eye on them so they don’t burn. Remove from the oven and use a spatula to move them onto a rack to cool.
Enjoy! Or pop a few into pretty paper bags and share them with friends and family.
A Piece About The Guts & Gore of Creativity by Chris Addison
“There are two ways into a theatre...”
Chris Addison shared this blog post on Twitter this week and I’m glad it jumped out of the scrolling sea. Chris talks about how all creatives compare themselves to others but how it’s nonsensical to compare your messy, gritty, frustrating, enlightening experience to the finished product of any one else. The piece made me empathise with others and importantly empathise with myself. Creating is hard. It taps into your purest self and your keenest vulnerabilities. A brilliant read.