The Make Lounge

Gloriously Gruesome Cupcakes: Louise Hill at Selfridges

Cake sculptor extraordinaire and one of our fantastic Cupcake Decorating instructors, Louise Hill of Love to Cake will be selling her awesome cupcake creations in Selfridges this Halloween from 28th - 29th October!

They are so gruesome they will be sold using her alter ego company name The Butcher of Caker Street.

Choose from six devilishly delicious cupcakes in the range - buy them either as singles at £3.50 each or in boxes of four at £12.50.

Stock is limited so get yours early!

Does anyone have a sweet tooth? ;)

BOOK GIVEAWAY: Chloe Coker's 'Super-Cute Cookies'

(Super-Cute Cookies by Chloe Coker)

We have five copies of Super Cute Cookies: 35 Easy to Make and Decorate Cookie Projects (CICO Books, £14.99) to give away to our newsletter subscribers!

***Update: CONGRATULATIONS to our winners; Nicola, Michelle, Emma, Karen & Lesli.***

Chloe Coker is one of our favourite instructors at The Make Lounge and teaches a variety of our culinary craft classes, including our Jam and Chutney, Christmas Biscuit Decorating, and forthcoming Edible Gift workshops.

With a passion for kitsch cookies and crafting, Chloe has baked ever since she could climb a chair as a little girl to reach the kitchen worktop. She recently left her career as a lawyer to train as a chef and set up Chloe Coker Cakes & Catering, specialising in beautiful bespoke cakes and cookies for special occasions.

We recently caught up with Chloe for a quick chat and glimpse into her world of baking, crafting and allotments!.

Q. What's exciting you most in the current baking scene?

I really enjoyed the recent Great British Bake Off series and the accompanying book is fantastic, full of clear step-by-step recipes. I particularly like their Blueberry Bakewell Tarts! The book includes a perfect combination of encouraging recipes for bakers of all levels, recipes from the contestants and also a selection of more technical bakes.

Q. Which books do you always return to?

I trained at Leiths and their Cookery Bible in invaluable, as is their Techniques Bible. I also really enjoy the River Cottage Handbooks and have tried many of their jam and bread recipes.

Q. Which blogs or web sites will you happily while away a few hours reading?

The Cake Journal is a favourite of mine, from America it currently has some great suggestions for Halloween. I'm also really interested in seasonal cooking so I follow a lot of allotment sites. I've also recently discovered Capital Growth that runs urban food-training at the allotment garden in Regents Park and plan on developing my own allotment space in my back garden.

Q. What would be your dream commission or project?

I would love to run a seasonal cookery school showing people how to cook food from the garden to kitchen. I am currently setting up a new branch of my business called City Cook, which will specialise in savoury teaching and catering with fellow Leiths chef and instructor at The Make Lounge, Jane Montgomery. It's great to have a partner to grow the business with and to support and encourage each other, its been a lot of fun! The new website is due to be launched very soon. Check out my baking site for more more details!

Q. Any top tips for us?

When baking cakes, consider what you want to achieve: if it's a light cake then concentrate on retaining as much air in your mixture as possible. Take time to beat air into your butter and be careful folding in the flour. When making biscuits, which you want to be crisp, remember not to handle the mixture too much and to keep the dough cool.

There are numerous technical aspects involved in baking, but once you know them, anyone can be a great baker. I would highly recommend attending a workshop or class to learn the technical aspects or invest in a good technical book.

Thanks, Chloe! Next month we'll be chatting with lighting and textile designer Helen Rawlinson, who teaches Screen Printed Textiles, Bespoke Lampshades, and Machine Embroidery & Applique workshops at The Make Lounge. If you have a question you'd like us to ask Helen, leave a comment and we'll pick a selection for her interview.

Instructor Spotlight: Emma Mitchell in PoppyTalk

[Nature Table Series by Silver Pebble]

You may have noticed our fantastic Silver Charm Bracelet and Pendant workshop featuring Emma Mitchell of Silver Pebble Jewellery. In the 3.5 hour workshop, Emma teaches you all the skills you need to create a beautiful collection of pure silver charms for a necklace and bracelet.

In addition to her teaching talents, Emma is featured in the PoppyTalk Handmade Mix Tape until 7 October. This online market is curated by PoppyTalk to showcase handmade goods of emerging design talent from around the world - go have a peek!

The collection features some beautiful pieces but we particularly love Emma's Nature Table Collection!

Have a look, what do you think?

Quilty Pleasures

As stitch addicts up and down the country will already know, the much anticipated major new quilting exhibition Quilts: 1700-2010 opens at the V&A in London this Saturday. 

We're particularly intrigued to see the rest of this George III quilt from 1803 whose feisty flame-haired maker curiously pops up like “Where's Wally” in several of its vignettes depicting scenes of historical importance!

Amongst the quilty pleasures on offer at the V&A are exciting new works by contemporary stitchers Sue Stockwell and Caren Garfen, as well as, thanks to collaboration with Liberty Art Fabrics, a delicious selection of 18 limited edition fabrics - each inspired by the vintage quilts on display - to buy by the metre and fat quarter in the exhibition shop

If you're inspired but need direction, fear not! We'll be adding more dates for our extremely popular quilting workshops at The Make Lounge very soon. Do sign up for our monthly e-newsletter here if you'd like to hear about upcoming workshops for this, and other classes.

I'm in the (very) early stages of making my own quilt and I'm super excited!

What do you think of the colours and patterns I've chosen?

Meet people, make stuff at Twestival

If you’re on Twitter you already know about the power of social media.

On Thursday, 12 February, nearly 175 cities will harness that power, by hosting meetups of Twitter communities around the globe to raise money in support of charity:water. Charity:water is a non-profit organisation that brings clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

When Twestival London approached The Make Lounge about participating, we said yes immediately.

In California, where I spent much of my childhood, water shortages were common. If you watered your lawn, you broke the law. Though residents resented the inconveniences (many actually went so far as to spray their brown, withered lawns with green paint), the ‘hardships’ were trivial compared to those faced by our global neighbours.

If you're coming to Twestival London this Thursday, stop by The Make Lounge’s friendly ‘creation station’ to create and take away a stylish Twestival bird item using, felt, vintage buttons and scrap fabric. (If you're not, visit the Twestival web site to find out how you can help.)

Would you use open studio time at The Make Lounge?

We're looking into several new offerings at The Make Lounge, among them the possibility of offering open studio time. We've had several requests from people who'd like to come and make use of our machines and tools to work on their own projects.

We'd love to hear your thoughts! Would you use such a service? Especially if we offered tea, coffee and wine? What night of the week would be best? Or would you prefer a Sunday afternoon? What kinds of projects would you bring/what machines or tools would you need most? Would you purchase supplies if they were available?

Please post in the comments or get in touch here.

Reuse, remake, rejoice!

Even if you reuse your plastic shopping bags, chances are you still have far too many of them lingering in your kitchen cupboards or under your sink. So what to do with them? On Sunday, July 6 at 1 p.m., The Make Lounge will demonstrate how to transform them into stylish, water-resistant tote bags or wallets at The Good Food Festival in Islington Green. The Festival runs Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to dusk and showcases delicious, sustainable food from Unpackaged, Food Lab and many more.

We'll distribute free tutorials at the Festival (and we'll post it here as a PDF) so you can make a tote bag or wallet at home. Or we'll help you make one at The Make Lounge on Saturday, July 19 at 10:30 a.m. Details here. (UPDATE: That class is sold out but check our web site for other dates). Just bring your bags (the thicker ones work best) and we'll help you iron and fuse them, then stitch them up. Sorted!