Beautiful artwork with practical applications

For about 8 months I have been looking for a new mixing bowl for my cake and sweet making. I have a beautiful bowl that i have had for 20 years, that is nearing the end of its life. I cook and bake so much using the favourite bowl that a new bowl has to be beautiful and functional. Most of the bowls I see are beautiful and non functional, or beautiful and too small.

The mixing bowl for my baking and creations of all varieties of magical intent cooking that comes from dedicated kitchen witchery deserves a bowl that matches the vibrational resonance of the magic that is created within the bowl and results from the cooking.

The bowl I had, I always called my gren bowl - when in fact it was actually a cream colour with shell pattern and green piping around the edge, but it was a decent size, china and beautiful and always merged with my free flowing cookery creativeness.

When I visit Norwich on those rare quarterly occasions for supplies this is the bar/eaterie I frequent - Franks Bar 

The food is interesting, different, stunning and always inspiring. The crockery upon which it is served is beautiful and resonates as a alliance of beautiful food with beautiful serving plates. They have a deal with Iitala, a Finnish company, to use all their tableware in their business - http://www.franksbar.co.uk/iittala/

Stunning and different tableware - a joyous experience to drink a latte from a mug such as the one's above. So now you may see what I mean by inspiratational cooking impliments. Much like we all have a favourite spatula, or a silicon spatula for making caramel - I wish for a bowl that inspires my creations in the kitchen.

I received a present from a lovely lady of some Melamine heart shaped red/orange mixing bowls - which are beautiful to use, but too small.

This is a beautiful bowl to use for mixing up chocolate chestnut bars

I came across this site when googling for beautiful bowls - http://www.catspawpots.com/gallery.htm - and it's in Americam so I am unlikely to be browsing this collection in 2011.

This morning I went to Hoxne Artisan market and met a guy who does stoneware. I described what kind of bowl I wanted, beautiful and functional and he was intrigued with the idea of a beautiful artwork that also had a practical purpose for magical cooking and I have commissioned a bowl from him.

beautiful functional magical

The most recent creation was a recipe from the Ottolenghi cookbook - Khalid's Chocolate Chestnut bars - which includes white chocolate chips, or in my case white chocoalte chunks, and figs (which I pre-soaked in rum) on a shortbread base made from white spelt. The recipe is for crushed biscuits, or gram crackers would work I imagine. I used the spelt shortbread so my Wheat intolerant friends could partake. As a first try they turned out reasonable well, but next time I will soak the figs longer, overnight  perhaps, use the freshly dried figs, which are large and sweeter, I may use crushed biscuits, and perhaps use a less dark chocolate, because they were very dark and rich and not very sweet.