Tis the season to be baking...

...or so it would seem round our way!

This year we decided that our Christmas gifts should be edible and crucially made by our own fair hands. This would be a brave call for a group of full time pastry chefs let alone a bunch of plucky amateurs who happen to watch the F word.

So, for those who have received we hope you’ve enjoyed, for those who have not then the recipe and pictures below should more than compensate.

Happy Christmas from the MWorks bakers, enjoy the gift of ginger bread!

the recipe...

Makes 15-20... (very lucky people)

Ingredients:

• 350g plain flour
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g of butter
• 175g soft brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 4 tbsp golden syrup/ or 2 golden syrup and 2 black treacle

Instructions:

• Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees/gas mark 5
• Mix together the flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda
• Rub in the butter until it looks like breadcrumbs
• Add the sugar
• In a separate bowl mix together the egg and golden syrup then add to the dry ingredients
• Mix together until it forms a dough. Tip out onto clean, floured work surface and knead for a minute or two until it is smooth
• Roll out the dough to the depth of a pencil (approx 5mm) and cut out shapes with cookie cutters
• Lay the biscuits on a greased baking tray and bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown
  

MWorks Top Tips...

• Replace 2 tbsp of the golden syrup with black treacle. This will give the gingerbread a nice golden colour without having to overcook it.
• Once you have kneaded your dough, wrap it in cling film and put into the fridge for about an hour. This will make the dough much easier to roll out and stop it sticking to the rolling pin.
• Use a metal cutter if possible. So much easier!
• Use plenty of flour on the surface and on your rolling pin.
• Keep an eye on them when they are in the oven. 12 minutes is really all they need.
• We don't advise making these when you have a hangover!
  

Happy baking!

Team MasterCard - hit the kitchen

Last Friday saw Julie and Anna descend upon my kitchen... now I only have a little flat in sleepy Dulwich, London, but its a wonder that after all our culinary antics I didn't have neighbours at my door queuing for tantalising samples!

It must be said though, given Thursday night was our MWorks Christmas party, we didn't bolt out of the blocks armed with our pots, pans and mixing bowls - in reality the oven only hit peak temperature around 5pm...

My 16 month old daughter was also most bemused by the commotion but has given us little thumbs up after many a taste test.

We hope you enjoy these little packages when they land on your desk, as much as we enjoyed making them!

Wishing you all a very merry, ginger Christmas...

Jules, Anna & Kirsty

xxx

Nigella would be jealous...

What better way to get you in the Christmassy mood than to bake ginger bread santa's?! I loved it! However....for all those who are now inspired by our fab blogs to get their baking hats on...here are a few words of advice to make your experience that little bit easier...

1) Use loads of flour...Flour the surface, flour the rolling pin, flour the cutter, flour the floor, the cupboards, flour the whole house if you have to...you will thank me....

2) Keep the dough cool, stick it in the fridge for a few hours before rolling out...and the thinner, the better...they expand when they're in the oven, so don't put them too close to each other or you'll end up with one rather large gingerbread monster....

3) Keep nasty flatmates away from sabotaging the lovely little fellas, or phallic shaped objects may appear on your little santa's without you realising....

4) Don't under estimate the time it takes to make these....4 hours later and you could be wishing you had started a little earlier than 9pm...

5) Finally, enjoy, love and embrace the santa gingerness to help you get in the Christmas spirit....

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas!

P.s....sorry about the apron...slightly inappropriate...but it's all we had!?!

The 2 days of Christmas (baking)

It took 2 days, 2 hours per day, 2 calls to Head Chef Lee, 2 trips to the shops, 2 cutters, 2 kitchens and 1 Christmas jumper..but I got there in the end.

I had been thinking that the best thing to have come out of the ‘economic downturn’ is the trend for craft and in particular, that of making your own Christmas presents! Finally making stuff is cool…and I can make presents for people without looking like a cheapskate. So I was very excited to be making Christmas cookies for our clients this year. And although I definitely agree with the others on the whole ‘it wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been’ thing, it was loads of fun, totally put me in the Christmas spirit and has added to my (tiny) baking repertoire.

I hope those of you to have received some of our colourful cookies enjoyed them. And RIP to the 10 x Reindeer that sadly perished in my kitchen in the name of experimentation.

xKirsty



..ok, so I may have had a little help!

sometimes you can't bake it on your own

The recipe said they were 'easy to make'. Lee our OCD CD said they were easy to make. The name itself 'gingerbread' suggests ease, ginger + bread. So why is it that my battalion of gingerbread reindeer & stars took every ounce of pastry cheffing nouce that I have? and why did I end up burning my first batch even though I was sat in front of the oven looking in like an expectant father?

Most of my effort actually went into collaring people into helping so my thanks go to Kirsty & Lee for allowing me to disturb their precious Sundays, my sister for her patience & kitchen and finally my trusted side-kick and sous chef Joseph, who began by being mildly distruptive but ended up being a vital aide, confidente and quality controller.

happy homebaking christmas to one and all!

La la la La…Santa Baking… (To be sang to the tune of ‘Santa Baby’)

All I can say is that the main learning I have taken from this experience is that I am VERY heavy handed! I didn’t realise I would have a full on fight with my Santa cookie cutter – there were many Santa’s without heads, legs and even eyes. However, after a few attempts I got the hang of it (with help from my fairer handed little helper) and I went on to bake 23 successful little fellas + got a great sense of achievement afterwards.

It was epic BUT well worth it, a real healthy (bar the ingredients) exercise for the MWorks office with many competing for who had the best looking, best tasting, best dressed gingerbread biscuits.
Hopefully it will be a nice surprise for our special tasters – you will know who you are.

My icing skills left a lot to be desired but I guess that’s why I am in client services and not creative, besides it’s the thought that counts right?

Joy to the world and all gingerbread eaters.

As Santa likes to say…Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas

Just call me DG - 'Domestic Goddess'!

Never underestimate the infinite amount of fun that can be had with cookie dough, cookie cutters, a little bit of patience and a whole load of icing and cookie decorations!!

Roll on Christmas, for now I am ready!!

The proof is in the hoodie: 5 hours of gingerbread mayhem

Having not baked since I was circa 12 years old (and that was under mum’s close supervision and mainly involved licking the icing bowls) I was slightly unnerved by the MWorks Xmas Challenge. However, I rose to that challenge and after 5 hours of trials and tribulations I was the proud creator of 29 gingerbread snowmen (does that work? A ginger snowman..? Albino..? Reverse-albino? I'm slightly confused.com). Three of the gingerbread men were hand-in-hand with other gingerbread men (go figure what you will) as the first round had resulted in a three’s company, four’s a crowd-type situation within each baking tray, and they’d melded together.

Problems encountered were largely of the ‘much too sticky’ nature and were eventually solved with about 4 kg worth of flour wafted strategically all over the kitchen, as well as into the cutter thingy. It also took a good few profanities before I figured out I had to press LIGHTLY with the cutter and then simply lift it off and pull away the trim around the shape, not add 25 acme anvils’ worth of weight onto it until I cut through to China and then attempt to retrieve the sticky dough from inside the cutter.

All in all, I proved against all odds that contrary to my first impressions I am NOT the worst baker in the world, ever!!

Happy Christmas to one and all….
J

A sign of the times

Balham Woolies this morn :0(

Help Santa keep his job!

I love this, I love this!

Green Santa was originally created by Chief Productions who teamed up with MAKE (part of LOVE Creative) to create a site which educates kids on the climate change issue + encourages them to pledge to do things to help, all in a fun + engaging way. It's based on the premise that Christmas is at risk because global warming is melting Santa's runway preventing him from delivering presents to children.

Children can browse the site to see how global warming is affecting not just Santa, but other characters living in Lapland including Jack Frost, the Snowmen + the wooly mammoths! Children can also make a pledge to help such as turning off the TV when they're not watching it or walking to school + they can even write to Santa himself.

More like this I say!

Paying in spiders?!

With recession looming, why not save money by paying in spiders? PLEASE PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING HERE

Google Android vs. Mobile Mac OS X

An extremely thorough + very useful article here comparing the 2 operating systems..

We're watching..

Vodafone Live Guy.

I like this. Vodafone has sent 'Live Guy' on a tour of the UK - stopping in a number of cities to give away a Netbook (with built-in mobile broadband) to the first person to find him in each location.

From today he'll be leaving clues as to his whereabouts within his various online environments including his Twitter feed, Facebook, YouTube + Google Picasa. His updates also feed into his blog housed at the campaign microsite, with highlights shown on the homepage.

The campaign is pushing Vodafone's mobile broadband product. And with mobile internet EVERYWHERE right now I like that it creatively demonstrates the benefits in an exciting + innovative way, interacting with people online as well as in the real world.

I WILL find him when he comes to London on the 28th..

Faris at Interesting on MASH-UPS

I'm fast becoming a HUGE Faris fan. At the risk of simplifying the content of this great presentation, Faris talks about mash-ups (the subject du jour in the MWorks office) + how everything is actually a mash-up, including our very selves. There's certainly loads in here for us to steal + combine with the other stuff we steal to create presentations to show our clients to explain why they should let us combine stolen things on their behalf.

This link takes you to a page which is effectively a mash-up of a video of Faris presenting at Interesting NY, with the presentation itself. Haha.

Thanks Faris.

President Obama: got the www factor

Come Nov 4th the world will toast the appointment of Barack Obama as the new president of the USA. his victory will come not just as a result of his vision for change, youth, vigour, everyman appeal, love of plumbers and bob the builder catchphrase but because of his highly sophisticated and widespread online, mobile and social media campaign. there's a lesson here for dave & gord for sure...but also for anyone who wants to reach, engage and convince an audience online.

Understandably all roads lead to and from the obama website which is returned confidently on any search, swiftly followed by youtube, wikipedia, myspace, flickr and facebook ....so the lad certainly knows his way round SEO & social media although his $600m campaign budget probably helped nudge him up the google rankings he still managed to find time to tell me where the nearest polling station is and start a food fight.

Much to the delight of his fans he also manages his blog and microblog on twitter as well as all his pictures, videos and speeches which are streamed, linked or podcasted all over the world wide park.

Clearly the guy's a net generation dream...added to this is a plethora of apps and gizmos to download or just muck around with...lunchtime highlights include tax calculator, 'my obama' online tool box but best of all is obama mobile which has no less than 20 ringtones (all dreadful) an iphone app and downloadable album....In the face of all this new fangled interwebbing does the mccain campaign featuring my daddy books and commemorative plates really cut the mustard?

The World in 2010

A great film from Faris Yakob on the world in 2010, explaining how with mobile technology evolving so rapidly, the internet will soon infiltrate every aspect of how we communicate in the real and virtual worlds and how soon there will be no difference between online and offline.

It explores how content will become so vast that people will no longer search, but will rely on recommendations from others within their niche groups..suggesting how brands might react to ensure they get noticed.


2010: Entertainment and Communication from Faris Yakob on Vimeo.

The TEEN commandments for brands wanting to 'do digital'

An interesting and insightful post at Ruby Pseudo which quashes many assumptions about how youth use digital

“iPhone killer”

..the laziest headline of 2008?

Once more we have an exciting round of new mobile products that have taken the years of sweat and tears to develop and still the best that journalist can come up with is ‘brand x announces iphone killer’

By my reckoning there are at least 5 current handsets in the frame for the forthcoming murder of the iphone, after the last round of assassination attempts failed…the 3 prime suspects being:

NOKIA 5800


















SAMSUNG OMNIA




















..AND OF COURSE THE GOOGLE PHONE

The reality is that there will be no death, fatal wounding or hospitalisation of the iphone, just an incredible choice for us punters as to how our mobile media devices will look and feel. The only death, hopefully, will be that of a very tired headline.

Tom Thirlwall

Surfing the web makes ya brain live longer!

It's true. Says so here.

Mmm mmm

It's Creative Director Lee's birthday today, so we treated him to some home-made fairy cakes. As you can see they went down very well indeed.

Snow-capped chocolate + raspberry cup cakes:

Ingredients
200g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
200g unsalted butter , softened
4 eggs
200g caster sugar
3 tbsp milk
2 tbsp cocoa powder
zest of 1 medium orange
150g punnet raspberries, lightly crushed

For the icing:
1 egg white
4 tbsp orange juice
175g icing sugar
Fruit jellies, hundreds and thousands or whatever you can find, to decorate

Method
Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper muffin cases. Tip the first 8 ingredients into a large bowl and beat with electric whisk until smooth. Fold the crushed raspberries through the batter.

Divide the batter between the cases (they should be about half full) and bake for 20-25 mins or until golden and just firm.

Remove the cupcakes from the oven and allow to cool a little.

To make the icing, put the egg white and orange juice into a heatproof bowl, sift in the icing sugar, then set over a pan of simmering water. Using an electric hand whisk, whisk the icing for 7 mins until it is glossy and stands in soft peaks. Remove from the heat, then whisk for a further 2 mins until it is slightly cooled.

Spoon the icing onto the cakes, swirling it with a knife, then decorate with anything you can find. Leave to set then EAT!

Recipe cobbled together using two from from BBC Good Food

Mobile Youth talks about the future of mobile advertising

...thanks Mobile Youth

Chuck Levine's Mobile Presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: mobile advertising)

The dramatic rise of branded content

To quote a recent article at Contagious, ‘After years of BMW films being just about the only example of branded content that was ever cited, there’s now a flood of sponsored short-form online TV series coming to a site near you’.

..how exciting! Online drama is something we at MWorks have been looking at particularly closely over the past 9 months...and it’s come a long way. The early stuff had low production values + pretty poor acting, but as online drama proves to be extremely successful at engaging with audiences, brands are becoming more confident and are spending more money. As a result we’re seeing big improvements in these areas. The production values seen in Sony Ericsson + Virgin Mobile-sponsored The Secret Life of Sam King have certainly moved on from those of Kate Modern, for example.

We’re also seeing more and more use of digital innovation within the online drama to increase the digital footprint + reach broader audiences. Sam King offers widgets to amplify and reach audiences outside of Bebo, Sofia’s Diary offers mobile updates to maintain interest offline, and the 2nd series of KateModern built Google maps into the storyline to get users interacting in other online environments.

Now the guys behind LonelyGirl15 + Kate Modern have moved things on by breaking away from Bebo to create their own social network http://www.lg15.com/. The LonelyGirl sequel, LG15: The Resistance will launch here in September, driving traffic in by distributing content to the various networks + channels. Definitely one to look out for.

It feels to us like the next step must be to deliver deeper interaction through viewer involvement. Particularly among the ‘yoof’ audience, interaction + engagement will increase when viewers are given some control over the narrative. Some have had a go already – the BBC online drama ‘To be continued’ currently playing out at Switch! offers viewers the chance to write + direct the next episode..nice. It’ll be interesting to see how popular it is.

Yahoo! is doing it slightly differently by asking viewers to text to vote for what happens next in their (cringeworthy) drama, Will Harry Date Sally? It looks like this one is designed to demonstrate to a slightly older audience how easy it is to use the internet on your mobile. It’d certainly be easier to bear on a smaller screen!

But finally, we’re reaaaally excited about Sony’s new crime drama, Coma which takes things to a whole new level. The fact that it stars Michael Madsen + George Hamilton gives it instant credibility and guarantees great acting (for once!). And the dark, comic book production values blow away everything that came before it. The drama which will feature careful Sony product integration, will play out through Sony’s Crackle channel + will be amplified across YouTube + Hula.