Famous French Sablés de Noël Recipe

Family big success : I have not the time to cook a batch that I have to prepare the next one, as those cookies are eaten in no time!! 

Therefore I thought of writing for you the recipe of my own family very easy French Stars sablés de Noêl.

Regarding the glazed hazelnut and almond biscuits I followed Christelle's recipe in her French blog Cookismo : Click

SABLÉS de NOÊL RECIPE

• Flour                    190 g
• Butter (soft)         125 g
• Sugar                   125 g
• Eggs                     3 egg yolks (keep the whites for the hazelnut cookies)
• Salt                       1 pinch
• Ginger powder     1 tablespoon 
• Baking powder     1 teaspoon
• Half a lemon juice  

Mix well the soft butter with the sugar,

Add the egg yolks and the lemon,

Add the flour, baking powder and salt,

Knead until the dough comes together in a ball,

Leave it to rest for a while (or not if you are like me in a hurry),

Spread the batter of 5mm thickness on your floured countertop.

Use a cookie cutter to make about 26 stars,

Bake in preheated oven at 160 C (320 F) turning heat for 15 mn.

Two Antique Quilts

Summer in France

Hi everyone! Back to Greece... and to my blog after a long summer in France. I am still busy there restoring my 19th century summer house bought five years ago. I love doing this job and especially  decorating, with the drawback that it keeps me temporarily away from quilting. 

I have sent most of my quilts, the antique ones and those done by me, from Greece to France, with the aim of a future exhibition, but not only : my house is going to be filled with quilts on beds, on couches, hanged on walls...

The above picture shows two antique quilts displayed on the sofa in the living room, bought by one of my sons on ebay in 2014. You can see several pictures of those quilts, with details HERE and HERE.

Liberty Four Patch Quilt in France

Last spring, moving to my summer house in France I could only carry with me two quilts :

my Antique Scrappy Stars quilt and my Liberty Four Patch quilt

I love the way they look in there antique home.

No quilting last summer, just a little knitting, and I must say I did not start quilting yet although too many ideas and new projects... but I will try to be reasonable and finish some UFOs : This is my autumn goal !

New Home for an Antique Quilt

My Scrappy Stars antique quilt travelled with me to France. I thought it would be of the best decorative effect in my old French house. I have displayed it in the garden on an antique bench to take pictures.

I came back to Greece a few days ago after a long time in France (two months and a half!). I thought I would escape from the excessive Greek summer heat, but I had an exceptionally hot summer in France, and coming back here I find an exceptional heat for September... not lucky! It is definitely not a temperature to start quilting...

Stars in the Snow

View from my lounge window

View from the dinning-room

Front entrance

Front entrance

We are having a new wave of snow and the temperatures are very low. The roads around here are frozen, and my car under a coat of snow. Worse of all we had a break of electricity during all the morning yesterday, which meant no heating! Fortunately we have a fireplace. My son did a nice fire so that we could stay in front of it not to be frozen! At lunch time we began considering cooking in the fireplace when the electricity came back!

Today it's time to tidy up : all the Christmas ornaments in boxes and the quilts in closets until next year. But before washing and putting my Christmas Stars quilt in its closet, I felt like taking some more pictures of it in the snow.

Antique Doll Star Quilt

Another antique doll quilt from THIS BATCH.

As I am a "basket collector" I store most of my stuff in baskets, and here are my little antique doll quilts in this lovely Greek basket.

Cherries are my favorite fruits! I eat a lot of them during the season, and also I make marmelades, syrups and cakes. Today I will make a sour cherry cake, and write the traditional french recipe in my next post.

Nothing nicer than those small stitches!

Enjoy your Sunday!

Christine

Antique Scrappy Star Quilt

When I saw this quilt on auction, I thought this one is for me! I could not resist to such colors! Especially to the yellow of the sashings and the violet of the blocks. The person who did this quilt must have had an idea about complementary colors! I as well love the scrappy stars. This is an end 19th century quilt in a very good state, nicely hand quilted. I did some trials in the lounge to find the appropriate place to display it and finally decided that it will be fine on the dinning-room table. It enlightens the room! One of the things I love is to decorate the house with quilts and flowers. Here is a bunch of ranunculus freshly brought from the market. Such lovely and joyful colors!

Have a joyful day!

Christine

Monday's group

This week we met at Eleni's house in Psychikon, a north suburb of Athens.

Eleni is working on the prepation of a craft sale. She is very creative, I love her work.

As every year at this time the craft sales started, and it is always a real pleasure for me to

admire the wonderful skills, and to make my Christmas shopping there.

Severine, Michele and Ginette.

Agnes and Severine.

Eleni's "crazy placemats" are great, she is mixing beautiful fabrics and her quilting

is very interesting!

Placemats

 I love this quilt, the stars are shining on a dull background.

Star quilt

Shopping bag

 Good idea for lampshades.

Lamp

Spools tablecloth

We had a great time, thank you Eleni!

Quilting group

We are a group of nine friends and we meet every monday to sew together.

We all of us are passionate by everything connected with patchwork and quilting.

This year, for the time being, we don't have a common project. Each one is bringing her

personal work.

Monday's group

Last year, Ginette won this quilt that we did in common,

and she is hand quilting it.

Blue stars

Miniature Stars

A small quilt, machine pieced and hand quilted.

Size : 26 cm / 26 cm

Doll's quilt

Eight Point Stars

This is my first patchwork, done about 20 years ago, hand pieced and hand quilted.

Size : 1m 35cm / 1m 35cm.

Grey blue stars