Fridays Poem...?

I'm thinking of trying something new...
I want to be able to put something into this blog every week, so I've been trying to come up with an idea that ensures I do :)
I've seen 'Things I Love Thursday' and such, but what if I love things on a Sunday...?
So, after some pondering, I thought maybe it would be nice for us to indulge ourselves in some poetry, sophisticated, I know. And after that I'll pop off to watch some You've Been Framed...

Here's a nice little one, hope you enjoy it...

"Trying to Sleep Late on a Saturday Morning in November"

In the living room walter Cronkite
prepares us for the moon shot.
We are approaching
the third and final phase, this
is the last exercise.
I settle down,
far down into the covers.

My son is wearing his space helmet.
I see him move down the long airless corridor,
his iron boots dragging.

My own feet grow cold.
I dream of yellow jackets and near
frostbite, two hazards
facing the whitefish fishermen
On Satus Creek.

But there is something moving
there in the frozen reeds
something on its side that is
slowly filling with water.
I turn onto my back.
All of me is lifting at once,
as if it were impossible to drown.

--Raymond Carver

Well, I hope this works out.
See you next week with another random poem.
Cheers xx

Happy Halloween (From Yesterday)

Thought i might share some 'scary' pictures with you all :)

My Spooky chocolate & orange cupcakes for some lucky trick or treaters.

I liked the ghost, whoda thought that an old sheet and a torch could look so cool.

I think we might have been the only people on our road that put up Halloween decorations, we may have also put them up a day early, cause, yah know, that's how we roll...

Oh my precious pumpkins, spent at least a couple of hours carving these up, wasn't too bad though, got to keep all the seeds and roast em up, yummy.

Hope you all had a suitably horrific Halloween, now we shall have to survive the next month being reminded that its nearly Christmas, *sigh*, best start getting ready :P
Toodles xx

Aint Nothing Better Than Chocolate Cake

Hurrah, half-term starts now, good times.
However work tomorrow means no lie-in, bad times.
No worries though, it means i get a chance to bake some yummy cupcakes...



Ingredients:

100g Plain Flour
20g Cocoa Powder
140g Caster Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter @ room temp
120ml milk
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

How to..

1) Cream together the cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, sugar, flour and butter with an electric mixer or hand-held whisk until its a sandy consistency and well combined.

2) Whisk the egg, milk and vanilla in a jug, then pour about half of the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until it starts to come together, then add the rest of the milk. Be carefull not to overmix or it wont rise as well.

3) Line a cupcake tray with paper cases and spoon the mixture until the cases are sorund two-thirds full and bake for 20-25 mins on gas 3/170 c/ 325 f. Make sure they're bake by doing the skewer test and leave to cool on a wire rack.

4) Once cool, frost and decorate. I used this recipe for a chocolate frosting, but you could use a vanilla or cream cheese one. 300g icing sugar, 100g unsalted butter, 40g cocoa powder & 40ml milk. Beat the butter, sugar and cocoa powder together, slowly add the milk until you get the right consistancy, be generous with the frosting :)



Enjoy, hopefully i'll update a more often now its half-term, desperately seeking some tinned pumpkin puree for a pie, any ideas?
Recipe taken from the bible aka The Hummingbird Bakery.
Cheers xx

Pretty Shiny Goodness

I believe i am Queen of procrastination, today, i should have been doing college work, yah know, essays and research and shizz, buut nooo, instead i got up at 11, shuffled around the house, watched Juno, then spent about two hours "window shopping" online for clothes. It's terrible, it really is...
As part of my procrastinating, i got the camera, and took pictures of mothers jewelry, much to her displeasure. Thing is, whilst she complains on my baking 'ability' i complain about her jewelry making ability. Such is life, enough with the rambling, i show you pictures of pretty stuff she's made, and some cool beads i wanna steal....


This one is all mine, and i love it ^^, the beads were a random find and the chain was hanging around, so, mother put both together and its a favorite.





So, not mine, but it's pretty cool, 5 strands of memory wire all tied together, tis very lovely.



Now, i would just be happy to have a few bead bracelets made outta the smaller beads, but i really want the white one with the flowers on it :P



See, s'not all about me :P, ha, well, back to erm, work then...
Cheers xx

What a good day!

Despite it being dull, misty and stupidly cold, today has been a good day, not including my 'wait for 50 minutes for the teacher to show up to our English lesson' buut the less said about that the better...
Today is good for two reasons, one I finally got a job *wahoooo* at a little cafe in a little market in Clifton (yeah s'the posh bit, but its a job!) and two, I gots one of the most amaaazing cupcake books ever, like EVER!
S'called "A Zombie Ate My Cupcake!" and i was dorky enough to take pictures of the insides...







Pretty badass dontcha think, it's by Lily Vanilli and i'll be trying out a few of these over the next month, sadly it might just be once a week, cause I gots a Saturday job :) I's well proud.
Nighty night xx

Sunday Bakes

Today i bake again, mainly for a friends birthday, and to be fair, it's not got so much of a wow factor, but, chocolate chip cookies can't be argued with. So i give you images and recipe for these little circles of yummyness :)

You will need:
225g unsalted butter @ room temp
350g light brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
400g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 1/2 teaspoons of bircab of soda
225g dark chocolate, roughly copped
line 4 baking trays with baking paper

1) Preheat the oven to 170c/325f/gas mark 3

2) Cream the butter and sugar together, it's easiest to do this with an electric mixer.

3) Add in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well. The beat in the vanilla extract.

4) Add in the dry ingredients (flour, salt, bicarb) and stir in the chocolate so it's evenly dispersed.

5) Put six amounts of the dough onto each baking tray, the will spread out quiet a bit btw, i still haven't quite got the hand of it yet...

6) Bake for ten minutes, or until the edges start to go brown and then leave to cool on a wire rack.

That's all for today, until next week, when i shall attempt to make and transport a coffee cake for another friend, it could be easier to buy them something reeally, but wheres the fun in that...
Cheers xx

*flaps* Gaah...

Oh this was a nice surprise after doing English essays :)
I goes to my email filter through the regular crap and find an email from the lovely people at H&M and i'm kindly reminded that they've created an online shop!
Such joy and happy squeals from me, yes, i'm that sad, but it made me happy!

Check it out : http://shop.hm.com/gb/start

Sorry this is short, back at college, so it's all busy busy busy ^^
Laters xx

A Day Painting Leather

After a long quest to find myself some winter-type boots, i was rewarded with a perfect pair, just the right style, size and for a brilliant bargain, reduced from £65 to £15, exactly, £15!
They were white... White, white shoes are just wrong, especially big DM-style boots.

I bought them, and spent a while wondering what to do, then it hit me, I'll dye them, just find some black dye, and well, dyes them. And after two weeks, i found the perfect dye, much joy!
And so i spent about three hours preping and painting my weird white boots into a slightly more stylish black pair, and i come baring pictures of my super fun day.

Enjoy while i blast the kitchen with air freshener...






Cheers xx

At the movies on a rainy day...

So, if you hadn't noticed, it rained a bit, so much so that i was considering building an arc in my garden...
Bad weather aside, off we went to the cinema, to experience the joys of watching a film on a really big screen for seven quid or so and £6.30 for popcorn and a drink, have they been to a normal shop before?? Anyway, enough complaining about overpriced popcorn, i thought it would be nice to give a little review of the film, Scott Pilgrim vs The World! (which was awesome btw)


Tis, trust me, its based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley, with the screen play written by Micheal Bacall and Edgar Wright(also director), who gave us such greats as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, so i was expecting good things.
And i wasn't dissapointed, funny, clever and a strange mix of street fighter/real life, my crush on Michael Cera really isn't going anywhere and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays Ramona Flowers, was adorable. The plot is pretty basic, for Scott to date Ramona, he has to defeat her seven evil ex's, much hilarity ensues. Also Kieran Culkin, who plays Wallace Wells was brilliant. I laughed so much i think i might have gotten some of my drink in the person in the poor person's hair in front of me. I also think i may have to buy the soundtrack cause it was rather badass, yeah i said badass.

Seriously though, go, see it, it truly is "An Epic of Epic Epicness", aaand you can create you own avatar on the website! Yes, i did, yes, i'm a dork...

Cheers

See our friends, see the sights...

Soo, went to London a couple of days ago and thought i should post some pictures from the amazing tate modern, sadly the Exposed exhibit cost some of that money stuff and my friends wanted to shop...
Yeah, shop, in the same shops we have in Bristol, no i don't get it. Anyways, pictures for your enjoyment.


One of the fountains in Trafalgar Square, a mixture of rain and chlorine :) good times

Trying to be all arty with my shot of the tate, as you can see, this is why I'm taking English Lit...

The wallpaper in the Andy Warhol room was amazing, i really think it would work in my bedroom, what mother, it would ¬.¬




Yeah, it would've been helpful to get the artists names, but, it more fun this way, right... :)
Enjoy

Recipe..

So, i got bored, and i've decided that sunday boredum allows me to post the recipe for the rainbow cake :)

It's basically a vicotria sponge, but split into six parts...

Ingredients:
337g butter or margerine @ room temp
337g caster sugar
4 large eggs/ 6 medium eggs
337g self raising flour
4 tsp vanilla extract
milk, to loosen

Now, i used three 9inch cake trays, and just sort of rotated them. The trays we're those silicone ones (i would really suggest getting them, it makes the clean up a lot easier) but if you dont have any, just remember to grease the tray.

Method:
1) Pre-heat oven to 180c/350f/gas mark 4
2) Cream together the butter and the sugar in a bowl until it's pale and fluffy
3) Beat in the eggs, a little at a time, and then add the vanilla
4) Fold in the flour, adding a little milk if needed, the batter shouldn't be too runny
5) This is where you'll need to be careful, you need to weigh out roughly 207g for each layer of the cake, to make sure that the cake is relatively flat. Because my oven is rubbish i decided to bake the cakes one at a time, but, you can do it any way you want, just remember to measure each layer before baking
6) When you've measured out one layer, you need to add you dye, its better to use a colour jell or paste, so that the colour is really strong, i used various colours from Squires Kitchen, which can be found via google. Add the colouring to the cake in the tin using a cocktail stick and mix until you have a strong colour
7)Put the cake into the oven and bake for 10-15 mins, don't worry if it doesn't rise that much, the layers aren't ment to be too big
8) Do the same with all the cakes, leaving all of them to cool compleatly.

And now to the frosting...

Ingredients
750g icing sugar
240g unsalted butter
50ml of milk
a few drops of vanilla extract, add extra of you want

Method
1) Cream butter a sugar together, easiest to do this in an electric mixer
2) Add the vanilla, and the milk, a little at a time, so you can get the right consistancy. The more you mix, the lighter the mixture gets.
3) And now to frost, i found an old cake tray, the kind you get from shop bought cakes, and used that, as i dont have a table thing, but again, whatevers easiest for you. The frosting is relatively easy, just make sure you put an even amount of frosting between each layer, and fost the 'outside' of the cake evenly as well.
4) Decorate using sprinkles, edible glitter, sugar letters ect.

Hope this is useful for people, as i said, its just the working out that can make it a bit complicated, but when you get into the swing of it, it can be fun. Gawd, how nerdy am i for finding baking fun...

Cheers x

p.s. if you need to convert the unit i found this website that could help http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/cooking
Also, sorry for that un-exiting lack of pictures, im typing on my laptop and the pictures are on the computer...

Summer School & Cupcakes

So i've just spent three glorious days at a Bristol University Summer School, and despite my original reservations, i thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Spending three days in student diggs, exploring the libraries and meeting some of the nicest people i've ever met was a genuinely brilliant experience, despite getting myself lost in the library and hauling my suitcase up a rather large amount of stairs, (my room was on the top floor...) It was fun, and i may sound like a major nerd, but i had so much fun learning new things, plus i got a free book out of it, yeah, its in Italian, but the covers so pretty.



Anyways, when i got back, i felt the need to bake some cupcakes, as a kind of welcome home present to myself, and the fact that i hadn't baked cupcakes for far too long a time. I made two batches, basic but lovely Vanilla Cupcakes and the very yummy Choco-Hazelnut Cupcakes.



I used recepies from the Hummingbird Bakery Cook Book, which is my bible, but if anybody wants be to post the recepies, just ask :)

Tars

Cake!

So, last weekend, it was me friends 17th birthday (yay for her :P)...

Aand, as a gift i created her a rather special cake, inspired by this magnificent cake http://whisk-kid.blogspot.com/2009/08/say-it-with-cake.html

It's not quiet the same, and its a little messy, and my cameras not that good, and i cant get the better pictures off my phone, so, this will have to do.
I'll try to post the better pictures at another point, when technology behaves for me : /

Enjoy, we did

Hello All

So while being stuck inside, trying to find a recipe for frosting for my friends rainbow cake and avoiding English homework, i thought, howsabout a blog...
After all, i had been thinking about blogging for a while, and today seemed as good as ever a time to start one!
I'll probably bee posting pretty often, as we leave college next week (YAY!!) and i'll be busy busy and wanting to sure my adventures with the world :P
Hope you enjoy.

Amie xx

P.S: If any of you have iToones on you computer, i suggest downloading this weeks SOW, it's Janelle Monáe, it's called Tightrope and it's brilliant :)