Archive for October 2012

October meeting - It's a History (Talk)

Friday 26 October 2012 § 0

Our October meeting was It's a History (Talk) with Nicola, curator for Leeds Museums and Galleries.

Nicola came along to inform us about some important women of the city and their role in the suffragette movement.

We heard all about Leonora Cohen, who was known for smashing the case of the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London and survived a hunger strike in Armley Jail. In fact, she was never officially released from prison and this was only discovered many years later when she went back to Armley Jail as a magistrate!

There were many interesting tales about Leonora and other activists, and some of the letters and news reports from the time were rather amusing. 




October workshop - Chocolate making

Monday 15 October 2012 § 0

Unsurprisingly our chocolate making workshop Livin La Vida Cocoa was fully booked and so we had 34 lovely ladies join us to make and enjoy some lovely chocolate.

First of all we got to taste the chocolate we were using which was gorgeously creamy milk chocolate and came in chocolate button form.  Laura from York Cocoa House showed us how to make a ganache (chocolate + butter + double cream heated to boiling point, poured over and mixed together) along with a possible folklore tale of how ganache got the name (boiling cream + clumsy French man + chocolate = swearing/exclaming "ganache!").

We piped out the ganache into what can only be described as "dollops" and then they went to be cooled in the fridge.  

We then tempered some more chocolate buttons for making chocolate lollies and dipping our ganache to make truffles.  What do you think we used to melt and temper the chocolate?  I can bet that you weren't thinking hair dryer!  Surprisingly this worked really well and we used melted chocolate to make lollies which we decorated with orange, lemon and strawberry flavoured chocolate buttons and sprinkles - yummy!

After making a lot of mess "shaping" the ganache and then dipping in chocolate we then put our creations into  plastic presentation bags (sampling quite a few along the way thank you very much!).
 









September Workshop - Charleston is My Darling

Saturday 6 October 2012 § 0

Our Secretary Lucy gives us the lowdown on the September workshop …

I have two very left feet and am born with the clumsy gene, so I was much happier being the spectator of arguably our most active workshop to date.  The lovely (and very energetic!) Al from www.lindyfridays.com taught us the basic steps for a solo Charleston, so no partners were needed and no toes had to be stepped on!  

Al first of all demonstrated a very scarily fast dance and impressed us all, but helpfully broke the very complex-looking dance into easy to remember chunks of movement including such moves as "the mess around" and "the itchy".

By the end of the workshop everyone could perform two solid minutes of Charleston with instantly recognisable moves - impressive!

Who needs partners when we can dance this well solo!













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