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