Design Inspiration. Planet Stencil Library.

Yes, Cake Can Be Inspiring

These days, if I venture into Newcastle city centre I visit Fenwick's amazing Food Hall which was completely redone a year ago (if you have not been, I can recommend that you do).  Honestly, I could move in. 

(photo source unknown)

It is full of food and drink that you won't find anywhere else.  I was about to buy some Christmas mince pies for my husband when I was almost knocked flat by the sight of a stack of panettoni from G Cova & C  of Brera, Milan. It was the packaging. 

The same style and print used in 1930 (the same recipe too).  I was seduced and decided that my husband really wanted a panettoni for the Christmas season (even though he has never had one before).  The ones wrapped in paper were divine but then I spied the ones in boxes.  Needless to say, one is now sitting on top of the microwave in my kitchen.  The more I saw it, the more I started to think about the graphics and colours of the packaging and how amazing they would look on the walls of my tiny kitchen.  It is the combination of cornish blue, orange and cream that is setting decorative plans in motion.  And then the art deco graphics, the angular and linear shapes (which you can really see in the cafe photo).  A similar vibe can be created with stencils of course and we have similar designs in both our Art Deco and Modern Design ranges.

(photo from postcards from milan, photographer unknown)

So I decided to write this post just to say that inspiration can really come from anywhere.  In the course of finding some photos, I found the site of the G Cova & C. that makes these panettoni (and more).  And then I really thought I had died and gone to heaven.  All the products are wrapped in the most amazing art deco papers in beautiful colours. 

Fuschia, red and off white.

Chocolate brown, taupe, grey, burgundy.

Orange, red and gold.

Mint Green and chocolate brown.

I want them all!  Just to look at.  And then I could decorate and stencil an entire house using the colour combinations and art deco graphics for inspiration.  Yummy in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, my box with its panettoni sits on top of the microwave oozing inspiration (slightly in the dark in this photo).

I don't know where it will take me yet and the kitchen is not an immediate project so it might be a while before there are any results to show you, but you'll see it here first.

Rachel

(all photos G Cova & C unless stated, except the last which is mine).

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Hotel Metropole, Brussels

photo: Hotel Metropole

This past weekend, Mr Egglestone and I flew to Brussels to stay with friends for a few days.  It was Mr E's first visit, but I used to live and went to high school there many years ago and have popped back regularly since.  I have always thought Brussels a very underrated capital city overshadowed by places like Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin and Rome.  But I cannot enthuse about it enough and Mr E thoroughly loved his time there and cannot wait to go back.  I could wax lyrical about all sorts of places in Brussels, but today I shall write about the Hotel Metropole on the Place de Brouckère.  The hotel was opened in 1894 and as soon as you walk into the foyer, you are in no doubt that this is a grand old hotel from the Belle Epoque. 

photo: Hotel Metropole

Our flight from Newcastle left at 6:30am meaning that with the time difference you were in Brussels by 9am.  The 3am start was worth it to have a full day to start the trip.  We headed straight into central Brussels and wandered around for several hours.  At about 2pm we decided to go for lunch and I suggested the cafe at the Hotel Metropole.

"Cafe" is perhaps a bit of an understatement. 

It is as beautiful and elaborate as the rest of the hotel.  Decorative painters take note of the marble walls, stencilled columns and gilded ceiling. 

We had an excellent omelette avec frites (bien entendu) and Mr E sampled his first Belgian beer (in Belgium).  Belgium is famous for its beers and quite rightly so.  Drink beer there and it will never taste the same again anywhere else.  Despite sampling many varieties over the weekend, Mr E decided that Chimay was his favourite (so far)

whereas I was rather fond of the Zinnebir, and not because of the art deco label.

It was a beautiful setting to take a break after all the walking (it was a warm and sunny day).  It wasn't deliberate, but it was also a trip down memory lane.  Back in 1985 my friend Jill and I organised our schools autumn formal "homecoming" dance and chose the Hotel Metropole as our venue.  Not much changes.  There was a convention taking place in the basement room where our dance had been held and I went to the very same washroom I had stood in almost 30 years ago reapplying blue eyeliner and frosted lipstick whilst checking on the permed hairdo and making sure my taffeta skirt was still pouffed out (it was 1985 afterall - sadly I couldn't find a photo to share of that fashion ensemble). If you are ever in the european capital, it is well worth popping in for a drink or meal or even a stay at the Metropole.  Brussels is famous for it's art nouveau architecture so the whole city is a visual and inspirational feast if you are interested in the decorative arts and architecture (the shopping, restaurants, bars, beer and chocolate aren't bad either).  À toute à l'heure!

Rachel

All other photos: Stephen Egglestone

conversations with a chocolate square

What talent would you like to be famous for?

The team at The Stencil Library were given a gift of Green and Blacks organic chocolate Conversations.   The individual squares chocolate are wrapped inside printed questions.  The questions are engineered to spark conversation as you and your loved ones munch their way through the chocolate contents....  They have to be loved ones before I would even contemplate sharing chocolate.

What a brilliant idea I thought. I am rubbish at starting conversations so I can learn from this.

I unwrapped a square then read the question aloud to myself, answered it and ate the chocolate.  Ask me another? It was such a delicious chat that I had to hear more from me  ...which meant unwrapping more questions, asking and answering the questions myself then eating more chocolate.  What an excellent game, much more fun than sharing the goodies and I got to talk about me with no interruptions.  Hurrah!

I have put the Conversations wrappers in my purse.  Instead of lurking around the buffet at the next party I shall retrieve the questions, sashay up to an intriguing looking person and start a conversation using them.

"If you could live anywhere in the world where would that be?

What is your earliest memory?

If you could have something named after you what would it be?

What was the last film that you saw in a cinema and did you enjoy it?

If you could swap places with one person for a day who would it be?"

Actually, I will probably just pass them the questions on the paper wrappers. In case I can't chat, my mouth is bound to be full of chocolate.  Anyone got any (printable) answers to those questions? We could start a conversation.

Helen.

 

Tart with a heart

No, I don't think that describes me but it does describe this stencilled dessert.

I had been painting a seaside mural all day and had only half and hour to be washed, changed and on my way to share a meal with friends and family.  I was to bring a dessert.

Ingredients... shop bought flan (hide the box) clean stencil brush, cappuccino stencil, food colourant and edible gold powder.  Prep time three minutes.

Remove tart from box, place stencil onto flan.  Stencil the flan by lightly stippling it with food colouring use a soft, stencil brush.  With the stencil still in place sprinkle on some cake decoration powder.

Remove stencil, remove flan from foil dish and put it on a pretty plate and garnish. Fresh berries gilded with the edible powder is a good decoration, I used blueberries.  The tart with a heart was a lemon flan from Tesco, the stencil was from The Stencil Library, the powder and colourant came from the supermarket.

Helen. 

 

 

Le Train Bleu

When the Icelandic volcano struck in April 2010 I was in Paris and could not get home.  Did I worry? No, not a lot.  The airline Easy Jet looked after this refugee very well and it gave me a chance to do things in the city that I cold not usually afford time to do.   The Paris tourist office offered booklets featuring walks around each quarter of the city. I was advised by the booklet where to find street art, murals, sculpture and interesting architecture.  One walk took me to the Gare de Lyon; one of the many railway stations in Paris. Next week I will show you the station's murals, but now we will visit the famous restaurant at the Gare de Lyon. Le Train Bleu  is no ordinary railway station restaurant and has murals of it's own to delight the visitor.

I am sure that I recall something about this place I thought as I drifted under the neon, through the revolving door and into another century.

Then I remembered that my good friend Fiona celebrated a BIG birthday at Le Train Bleu.(It was a year ago today, happy birthday Fiona!)  Fiona is married to a chef and they both enjoyed their meal here.   I wanted to text her for her foodie recommendations. However, there was only two vegetarian choices, both sounded fab and Fiona would have ordered neither of them. So instead I asked my attendent which of the two he would chose...

"The pasta" he whispered.  "The portion is bigger". 

The team of attendants were lovely to me, they tolerated my attempts to speak French with humour and on hearing that I was a stranded decorative painter that writes a blog they said "photograph everything, enjoy it all"  So I did.  I hope that you do too.

Helen.

 

 

 

 

More from Pet Lamb

Muffin....

...Nuffin

another shout out for the fabulous cupcakes from the Petlamb Patisserie.

Follow the link to find out where they will be selling their wares next.

 

cupcakes with a message

Recently, Rachel made red velvet cup cakes and accidentally missed a vital ingredient then baked another set and the frosting would not set.    As they were to be sold to raise funds for a local charity she then set about re-baking and I salvaged the rejects for this stencil project.  Rachel was very calm about the cake wreck, her baking is normally faultless. I would have been indulging in a major tantrum...but then I would have bought cakes and added decorative embellishment...probably using a stencil

I used an alphabet stencil that I got from the special offer section of the stencil library.com site.  That is where the mistakes get sold.  This alphabet had been made in odd size which was just perfect for the top of a cupcake.

Firstly I cut the alphabet stencil into manageable sized pieces, leaving as much room as possible around the individual letters.  I balanced the stencil on top of the gooey icing.  When icing has set correctly this is much less of a challenge.

I sprinkled chocolate powder through the stencil.

All sorts of messages could have been created,,,I toyed with stencilling congratulations, happy anniversary, happy birthday, welcome home then decided to go with eat me, they are cakes after all. I also have a cappuccino stencil that says 'drink me"

Not all were a great success but then I just ate the evidence. Who's to know?

Helen

My my, miss lemon pie

Make a supermarket lemon pie a little more special by stencilling a gold heart onto it.

A heart shaped stencil from our Cappuccino Collection was placed on top of the pie and edible gold dust was stippled with a soft stencil brush.  Remove stencil, admire handiwork, eat pie... as simple as that.

Lemon pie from Tesco, stencil and brush from The Stencil Library, gold powder from Squires Kitchen.

Helen

Sweeten your morning

Last week we hosted a Christmas themed tour around our stencilled home. 

After the tour, I gave a demonstration showing many festive applications of stencilling.  Whilst extolling the virtues of our cappuccino stencils for applying decoration to foamy drinks, cards, gift wrap, cakes and other common usages, I was struck with sudden inspiration.  "One could stencil porridge", I exclaimed.  "Wouldn't that look lovely to serve bowls of piping hot porridge with snowflakes of muscavado sugar slowly melting on their surface?".  A short discussion ensued amongst our visitors as to whether sugar or edible gold dust might be preferable.  During our chat  I noticed a guest shaking with uncontrollable mirth.  She almost had tears rolling down her face. "Stencilling porridge?", she said.  "I could just imagine what my husband would say if I tried to stencil his porridge!".  I could too and I bet it was rude, but I couldn't really blame her for wondering  what  planet I came from.
Sometimes I wonder if I go a little too far.  The funny thing is that my husband finds stencilled food stuff to be a normal occurance in our home.  I bet she's still laughing at me.  I am.

By the way, my camera batteries packed up so I was unable to show the finished result but it looked and tasted fab.  Another tip for festive porridge which I got from a cook book many years ago was to serve it with double cream, a few raspberries and a nip of scotch whiskey floating on top.  Just the thing for a cold winter's morning.

Helen

An Autumn tea party

In one of last weeks post I told you that my mother had a big birthday at the end of September. Friends and family pitched in to make it special.
Invitations were stencilled and delivered.

Rooms were decorated

balloons were inflated

and hung along the front of the house

cakes were baked, sandwiches were filled, champagne was poured

calendulas floated in cake stands

and in bowls in the garden

a garden parasol was stencilled with Japanese Birds and Blossom

and tents were assembled

photographs were taken

and the birthday girl had a lovely day.

Thank you to all who celebrated with us.

And Happy Birthday to all of you having a birthday today and Happy Thursday to those who are not.

Life's not all lavender and roses, sometimes there is elderflower

You must forgive me.  I wrote this post in July but for one reason or another it was delayed in posting.

July 08: What a hectic couple of weeks we have had!  Our stencilled home has been very busy.  Rachel has escorted sixty school children on various trips around our house.  We have hosted 'friends' of a major local art gallery, a weekend stencil course for a charming London decorator and a private house tour for a lovely New Zealand family.  House tours are now over until September 3rd, so we can kick off our shoes and leave them to rot where they land.  To celebrate we held a tea party.  I raided the garden and for the next seven nights made food from flowers.

The formal garden was harvested for lavender.  The florets must be in full bud, not open.

   Choose English Lavender as not all nationalities are edible.  A dark variety such as Hidcote is full of flavour and colour.  I made lavender scones,

  lavender ice cream, lavender meringues

and lavender ironing water, but we didn't eat that!  Then it was the turn of the roses.  I whipped double cream with rose water and shredded petals.  This was spread on top of the lavender scones and was accompanied by rose petal jelly.I did not have time to make rose petal jelly, so I had to buy some, but I will make my own before the roses fade.  The biggest task was the elderflower sorbet.  I have been wanting to make this for fourteen years, but I have always exhibited at a large London Home show during the optimum elder picking week.  The flowers have bloomed and faded whilst I've been away.  The home show is now deceased so I seized my chance.  

The petals must be open, but not too open.  It took hours to find perfectly ripe blooms and I had to take time out to watch the river

and to admire how the tub matched my stencilled jeans that matched my Crocs. 

With half a tub full of flowers and darkness looming I wandered happily home.    At 3:30 that morning whilst I sat in my kitchen still plucking flowers from stalks, I was beginning to review the sanity of the sorbet project.  The recipe said something like "this will be a long and tedious task, best shared amongst friends whilst you converse and watch hawks in the sky".  Hmmm.... I think the author was Californian.

As there was an absence of friends and hawks, I sat in my fluffy pyjamas listening to the ever wonderful Bob Harris radio show and watched my thumb turn black from something in the flowers.  The recipe also said "the green stalks contain a cyanide like substance so be careful to remove it".  I was very careful, eventually it was five and a half hours worth of careful.  Because this is a design blog rather than a cooking one, I will post my step by step photo recipes on Planet Helen blog and I'll let you know when. I tried three recipes for lavender scones and one was a disaster (surely a misprint occurred).   The others looked as good as they tasted.  The meringues were just fabulous: melty and chewy.  They were to form part of a lavender Eton Mess. 

Blueberries were mixed with fruit from the garden then folded into whipped cream with lavender sugar and broken lavender meringue.

Some of my guests brought baked offerings.  I am not a good cook so these are always enthusiastically and gratefully recieved.  Jeanne made the best chocolate brownies any of us had ever tasted, so she can come again.  Joy baked a lovely cherry clafoutis, still warm when it arrived.  Di had a hangover so nipped into the local farmers emporium for chocolate and cream based goodies.... And they were sooo good.

 There was lots of fruit so we could pretend the feast was healthy.

I have been on a diet for the past year and had finally reached my target weight last Tuesday.  Somehow I think I'll be back on the beansprouts and lettuce for another month.   I shall leave you with a picture of calorie free stencilled lavender from our Garden Room Collection. 

If you have any recipes or comments on flower feasts, do share them with us. Helen.