All I Want for Christmas Is Yooooou!

So its actually Christmas Eve and Its come so fast I dont beleive it!
Ive had a nice week back home, spent lots of time with chris and just been relaxing. Ive done some baking too! First me and chris made a sweet potato pie! It was incredibly scrummy but maybe we put a bit too much sugar in it was a bit too sweet.
Next I took on the macaron! I must say the results were much better than I thought! The batter was a bit too runny tho and so the macarons were a bit flat, and also the oven was too low so they didnt cook correctly and were way too chewy. I am however going to try again tonight, and hopefully I can rectify these little errors :-)
I made plain shells and was going to fill them with white chocolate ganache, but as i didnt expect them to work i didnt make the filling and just filled them with strawberry jam, which was nice.

As a present for Chris' family I made a gingerbread house! I had already made the plans for it a week or so ago and just had to make the gingerbread, cut it out and stick it together! I was really happy with how it turned out. To begin with the gingerbread just fell apart after i rolled and cut it, but after rolling it thicker and cutting out the detail when its on a peice of grease proof ready to go in the oven helped alot. I also made some pepermint buttercream christmas trees!

Wll thats all I can be botherd to write, So Merry Christmas and I will update soon with the second Macaronage!

Things taste better when they're blue and orange.....

I'm really into making my own bread. Its really easy after a few times and very satisfying! It is a rather long process, takes about 4hrs from start to the finished baked loaf. Saying that it doesn't take much effort and very few ingredients. This time however I decided to mix things up a bit! After having seen rainbow cakes and how easy it is to make them I figured I could make my own coloured bread! Although I only had blue, yellow and red food colouring, i thought a blue and orange loaf would look great!

I made it just like normal, but i split the flour into two and added the food colouring with the liquid, let them rise separately first and then "combined"them for the second proving.
This have it looked after the second proving and before I baked it. I showed Chris these pics and he said it wont taste very nice, He said it looked too "doughy". I kindly reminded him it was raw. He understood after that!
This is the finished article! My flatmate said the blue kinda looks like mould. I have to agree at an extent, but I think I achieved what I set out to do quite nicely!

Next stop, RAINBOW BREAD!

Baking Day and a Chocolate Cola Cake

Today is Wednesday and each week my flatmate and I take it in turns to bake something!
After my disaster last week I wanted to go for something more simple. I also wanted to use my new James Martin book. My boyfriend thinks I fancy him, I just admire him as a chef, but I like to play it up occasionally :-p
Its a really good book, its just called "James Martin, Deserts". Its written well and has lots of nice pictures. It gives little intros to the recipes which I like because when you don't know a recipe by name you have no idea what it is, and although you can get an idea what its like from the method and ingredients, if you don't know what its meant to be like then your not going to make it are you! It also has basic methods in which I find useful, and hopefully soon Ill be devising my own recipes (I already have a few ideas in the pipeline) then they should come in handy.
I decided on a "Chocolate Cola Cake". I have made a cake with cola before and I know that it doesn't change the taste and is more of a gimic, but I wanted a simple tasty chocolate cake, and this sure was simple!
It was probably one of the easiest cakes I've made, and it was very yummy! Lovely and moist and the topping was chocolatey and sweet. I think for some people it might be too sweet, but i did double the quantity of the topping. However I did make a bit of a mess with the icing sugar (oops!). Anyway I really recommend this recipe if you want something simple and tasty, maybe to do with children.
"Chocolate Cola Cake"

serves 8

250g Butter
250g self-raising flour
300g Golden caster sugar (I used white)
3 Heaped Tbsp cocoa powder
Generous pinch of bicarbonate of soda
200 ml Cola
75ml Milk
2 Eggs, beaten
1 Tsp vanilla extract

For the topping:
60g Butter, softened
200g Icing sugar
2-3 Tbsp cocoa powder
2 Tbsp cola

pre-heat the oven to 180C. Grease a loose- bottomed cake tin

Sift the flour, bicarb, cocoa and sugar into a bowl. Melt the butter with the cola in a pan then add to the dry ingredients along with the milk, egg and vanilla. Mix gently but thoroughly, then pour into the cake tin.

Cook for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes while you make the topping.

To make the topping beat the butter with the icing sugar and cocoa powder together in a bowl then add the cola to combine. Spread over the cake and allow to cool.



See, how easy is that?! Give it a go :-)


So in other news I've not been up to all that much. Uni is coming to an end YAY! Im still not feeling christmasy, yet. Ive also not heard back from Kraft concerning my placement, so im getting quite worried about that!
I had a mini panic attack in the middle of the night and woke up not being able to breath, i think its all the worry about my placement.

Anyway, i shall report again soon, bye bye :-)

Crimbo!

5 Minutes after writing my intro post I thought it would be a good idea to get straight into it!
Its the 2nd of December today.....but I'm not feeling the Christmas spirit yet! I have even resorted to listening to Miriah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You", usually gets me in the mood. Maybe its still to early, lets hope I feel something this year.

Saying that I do love this time of year, all the lights and coming to the end of uni for a break. I cant wait to get back home to spend time with Chris and do some festive baking! (told you im going to talk about baking!). Ive been reading a lot about "le Macaron" and really want to try my hand at making them. Apparently there pretty difficult, but they look so beautifully! Im too dubious to make them in my oven here, after I managed to turn an "Angel Food Cake" into "Egg Jelly". Yes it was a pleasant as it sounds. So when I get home I'm going to try my hand at the old Macaron and see what happens! But rest assured of one thing, I will let you know how it goes =]

I'm in a very good mood today as Chris is coming to see me tomorrow YAY! Unfortunately is only guna be a short visit, but it should get me through till I go home for Christmas.


Well thats all for tonight, and I will leave you with this....

Le Macaron!

New Blog!

Hello there everyone!

So recently I found this website with LOADS of recipes on, most of which link to food blogs. I really enjoyed reading them so I thought I'd make my own blog =]

Im going to apologise now for any terrible spelling but I am dyslexic so I have an excuse!

Down to business now. I'm not going to claim that this will be an exciting blog and I'm just going to write about anything on my mind, but I guess I'll mostly be talking about FOOD! Especially baking as I love it so! Also I may have to tell you all about my swatch collection. Yeh i sound sad but I do have a life, sorta.

So look out for posts in the future! And in the words of a Furby - Aa-ha-ooooa-oooa!

I'm going to dedicate this first post to my boyfriend Chris :-) what a fantastic fellow he is and im sure I will be talking about him on here! All good tho im sure.