I say, Old Chap ......

Today I've come over all nostalgic and British - my upper lip is stiff and the vicar is coming to tea. I'm featuring Ouissi (I have name envy) from the magnificant BritishCreamTea ..... She makes food out of felt. Love it! The second best thing to the actual pieces are the descriptions of each treat in her Etsy shop - So, pay attention! You are about to have a lesson in British childhood goodies - the backbone of the British Empire.... ........ Read on!

"The Fab ice lolly was based around Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds TV series. Lady Penelope's Rolls Royce number plate was FAB 1. Priced at 6d it consisted of strawberry fruit ice and vanilla ice cream with top dipped in chocolate and coated with 'hundreds and thousands' sugar confectionery. It is rumoured that the hundreds of thousands are added to the lollies by an operative dipping them in a pot, rather than the modern option of machinery. This is said to be done to retain the authenticity of the product, hence the hundreds of thousands sometimes come past the chocolate mark on the lollies".
Fab Icelolly - $18.00 from BritishCreamTea on Etsy

"The party ring was introduced in 1983. It is a circular biscuit with a central finger-sized hole, covered in hard coloured icing with "wiggly" lines in a different colour. The five colour combinations are:
* Orange icing with white lines
* Pink icing with white lines
* Pink icing with yellow lines
* Purple icing with yellow lines
* Yellow icing with pink lines
We loved the bright colours, the hard crisp icing shell and the holes! We used to wear them as rings and eat them off our fingers as well as holding "ring races". These involved each child taking five rings and placing one on each finger of a hand. They would then proceed to eat them as fast as possible, with the inevitable danger of biting a finger a bit too hard. I used to also try to eat along the lines along the base...but then I was, indeed, a strange child...
In the late 1990s Fox's decided to remove the purple and yellow biscuit because the dyes used had been linked to certain health problems. But due to public (and particularly university society...we were all by that stage grown up but with long memories) outcry, they reinstated them using safe dyes and the party finger family was once again complete!"
Purple Party Ring (the best one!) $9.00 from BritishCreamTea on Etsy

"The greatest ice cream treat of our childhood...the original, classic Cornetto.
The idea of selling frozen ice-cream cones had long been a dream of ice-cream makers, but it was not until 1959 that Spica, an Italian ice-cream manufacturer based in Naples (later bought by Walls, a British ice cream company) conquered the problem of the ice-cream making the cone go soggy. Spica invented a process, whereby the inside of the waffle cone was insulated from the ice-cream by a layer of oil, sugar and chocolate.
Smooth vanilla ice cream in a chocolate lined and tipped, square quilted biscuit cornet topped with chocolate and chopped nuts...mmmm...
This cornet was 45p when I was little which made it a VERY special treat and therefore very memorable! That and the television advert with the gondola and the opera..."
Cornetto Classico $40 from BritishCreamTea on Etsy.

And - you've guessed it! Click here to see THAT advert from 1983!

The Jammie Dodger was Ouissi's first one - made whilst she was pregnant and not feeling so great. I had to know more. So, obviously, I just asked her....
Why, why, why did you make a Jammie Dodger out of felt as opposed to all the other things in the world you might have chosen to do?
"I have always been able to sew. My Aunt makes gorgeous bespoke wedding dresses by hand & is trained in corsetry and insisted we all learnt at least the basics. I have also loved embroidery for a long time...so I am good with a needle! I found felt foods here on etsy and elsewhere on the web a while back and fell in love with them but they all seemed to be USA or Chinese or Japanese food...no one was really doing British food in the same way so I thought I would try making some. For some reason Jammie Dodgers always come into my head when I thought about doing something. I think it is the fact that it is iconic and striking in its design.
Then one day I bought some felt and just tried...cut the stuff without a pattern and sewed it together just to see what it would look like... and it sort of started there!!
I still make the patterns afterwards, never before. I just have an image in my head and I cut the felt and sew...".

A Bakewell tart, Jammie Dodge and BOURBONS!!!

I would like to say that during the writing of this post I HAD to get up and have two Jammie Dodgers - hohum.
Now I need tea - yes, a nice up of tea .......... so, whilst I put the kettle on you must all go and look (and read) through BritishCreamTea's shop, buy something and post it to me. Thank you in advance. Over and out.