Homemade bounty bars

I made these bars after craving something sweet and realising I have a ton of coconut products in my house I thought why not make a healthier version of these bars? Also I live in France and I don't remember seeing any actual Bounty bars in the shops. These bad boys are a paleo treat! eat wisely.

I could have made them so they were totally covered in chocolate but that's messy and I like this coconut to chocolate ratio better.

Here's what you need:

3 cups of shredded/ desiccated coconut, unsweetened
3/4 cup coconut oil (I didn't melt the oil first I just packed it into the cup)
1/2 cup coconut butter
1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp of maple syrup
150g dark chocolate, I used Green & Black's 85%
knob of butter plus a little extra for greasing.

Melt the coconut oil in a pan along with the coconut butter;  once melted stir in the shredded coconut and the 1/4 cup of maple syrup.

Line a Square pan with some cling film, you may need to add a little butter to grease the pan and keep the cling film in place.

Pour in the coconut mixture, flatten and put in the fridge to set for 30 minutes.

Now melt the chocolate in a glass bowl over a pan over boiling water, don't let the glass touch the water! Once melted add the knob of better and the Tbsp of maple syrup and stir through.

Finally take out the coconut slab and pour over your melted chocolate and refrigerate again until it has set.

Slice up your bars and enjoy responsibly!

The life changing loaf of bread

If you know me you will know that I LOVE food! I love cooking it and I love eating it and I was also trying to maintain 2 blogs which is quite hard work, this one and a food blog.  Now I have decided to just have everything here so I will be moving some posts over to this one.

Since giving up wheat in the New Year, I surprisingly haven't missed bread at all, yes I still eat wheat occasionally, I am only human after all! There are times when I fancy a piece of toast with my scrambled eggs and when I do, this is what I eat.

I always keep a loaf of this stashed away in my freezer pre-sliced, that way I can just grab a piece or 2 whenever I want it. Amazing by itself but even better toasted and topped with hummus or paleo friendly jam.

This loaf is adapted from Sarah's recipe from My New Roots, here's my version:

Pre-heat your oven to 175 grad.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup/ 135g seed mix (sunflower, pumpkin etc.)
• 1/2 cup/ 90g flax seeds
• 1/2 cup/ 65g hazelnuts
• 1 1/2 cups/ 145g rolled oats
• 2 Tbsp. chia seeds
• 3 Tbsp. psyllium husk powder
• 1 tsp fine grain salt (I use pink Himalayan)
• 3 Tbsp. melted ghee or coconut oil
• 1 1/2 cups/ 350ml water

Put everything into a bread tin or a flexible silicon bread pan, I use a flexible pan as it is easy to tell when the bread is ready to be baked.  Mix everything up and press down and leave to sit for 2 hours or even overnight.  The bread is ready to be baked when you pull the side of the flexible pan away slightly and the bread holds it's shape.

Bake for 20 minutes and then remove from the pan and place the bread directly on the oven shelf and bake for another 30-40 minutes, it will sound hollow when tapped once done.

Leave to cool then slice up and freeze or eat as you like.

EtsyMetal blog carnival- Tools!

Welcome to our EtsyMetal monthly Blog Carnival!

Blog Carnival is about a group of our members sharing their experience on a common topic.

This months topic is our favourite tools!

This is probably one of my most favourite topics, I love tools! and I love having a nosey around others peoples studios too see what they are using.

So here are some of my tools, some I use every day and others get used less frequently but I still wouldn't want to be without them.

My saw: obviously for me this is an important one, I use it almost every time I make something and this one is a old Knew Concepts one.

Disc cutters: I use this a lot too and I recently had one custom made especially for me, it's amazing and I want to get more!

Dapping/ doming set: I use this mainly for my post earrings.

Ring stretcher/ reducer: another useful tool to have if you make a lot of rings, I mainly use the reducer when I have gone a bit overboard with my hammering.

Torches: I use 2, a big jumbo one and this cute little dremel which is perfect for tiny things like jump rings.

Rolling mill: SO I have had this mini mill for about a 1 and a half years and I never use it; mainly because I obliterate everything I put through it! I need to spend some more time with it as I want to do some pattern rolling at some point in the future.

My bench: Of course my beloved bench is one of my most favourite things, can you call it a tool? probably not, but I love it and there is a whole other post about it here.

So that's a quick look at my tools and what I use on a day to day basis, check other members of the Etsymetal team to see their favourite tools.

2Roses: http://jewelrytutorial.blogspot.com/

 KSkilesJewelry : http://kaskiles.com/2014/08/04/studio-tools/ ‎

 Nanopod: http://www.nanopod.me

 Cynthia Del Giudice: http://cynthiadelgiudice.blogspot.com

Anne Walker: http://creativeinclinations.blogspot.com/

Nodeform: http://nodeform.com/blogs/news

and the winner is....

The widget chose a random winner!

Thanks to all who entered my giveaway, I hope you all keep still reading as I like to give things away quite a lot, so there will be more giveaways coming in the future.

Stay tuned and congrats to Michelle!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

My Frankenbench!

I have been meaning to show off my bench for a while now; my partner made me this out of our old Ikea kitchen island, as you do! (I still need to submit it to the Ikea hacks site of course)

I mentioned it before briefly, here, but as I love it so much I thought I would share some more photos with you.

As you can imagine jewellery benches are pretty damn expensive if you want a decent one, and rightly so, with all of that thick nice wood being used.  I think I was Googling 'frankenbenches' when I came across one made from an Ikea kitchen island; suddenly, light bulb moment "I have ones of those!"

So I promptly stole it from the kitchen and put my partner to work and what a marvelous job he did!

Here it is without the shelves, new and fresh:

Here you can see the catch tray...

There is also a smaller tray on top of that where I keep my findings and some other bits and bobs so they both slide in and out easily.

Here it is as it looks like now from the front...

and the side view...

There you have it, my awesome frankenbench.  The best part is, you can customise it as you go along.  I hope to add some more things to it like a holder for my hammers and something to hold my pliers. I have a lot of room on the sides to add things too and on the legs I will add some hooks etc.

I hope this inspires you to make your own bench if you can't afford a brand new one like me :)

P.S You can still enter my giveaway here! You can win these stacking rings...

Giveaway time!

You may have noticed that my blog has a funky new design, I love it! To celebrate this momentous occasion and to get my blog going again, I am doing a giveaway.

All you need to do is follow my blog on bloglovin and tweet my giveaway, simple!

Here is what you can win, made especially for you in your size :)

My sterling silver stacking ring set worth 50 euros!

You can see more details about the rings in my shop

I will announce the winner next Friday, good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

300!

Last week my Etsy shop reached 300 sales! Quite the achievement for me so I am offering 20% off for a limited time, use coupon code 300SALES at checkout :)

Oxidised stacking ring set

Little bird stacker ring