Pasta now, polymer clay next

Our new pasta machine - kindly chosen by parents as a raffle prize as they knew I was looking for one - has at last had an outing. Making the pasta dough was very easy - 300g of Tesco pasta flour (which proved to be a lovely yellowey, grainy flour), mixed with three eggs.

We then ran a lump of it several times through the adjustable roller



and used the slicey attachment to turn some of it into tagliatelli (good)/spaghetti (less successful).





We also made some raviolli by putting lumps of cheese on some of the flat sheets.



Cooking times involved intermittent tasting to check for the al-dente-ness - seemed to be about seven minutes in our case, though our sheets may have been a bit thick.



But although the results were pretty good, we're only planning on a couple more goes before I get custody of the machine. I'd long been on the look-out for a secondhand pasta machine - not to make pasta, but to try covering little tins in sheets of patterned Fimo modelling clay. I know I won't be very good at it, but on several occasions in recent years I've bought some fantastic things as pressies or for myself from a very talented polymer clay artist called Angela, and would love to have a go. Her Etsy shop is called Polymer Clay Creations and I particularly love things made using the coloured floral pattern that's her shop banner. So now I'm planning on buying some unbaked floral canes from her as the basis for my attempts, as I know there isn't a chance of me making such intricate things myself.