Starred

I don't know about you but I love the 'starred' feature on my Google Reader. I am always starring things that inspire me or make me giggle. So I thought I should share some of my favourite posts of the past week with you all instead of just keeping them to myself!

Amazing baby animal photos by Sharon Montrose, found via Unruly Things

I love books (of course, being an English graduate and Library student), but I also like pretty things, so pretty things made from books are pretty good in my opinion. I love these book installations by Jan Reymonds, found via Black Eiffel (I highly recommend this blog, I star so many things from it)

I also starred these great book photos from Diane of Darling Darling. Perhaps I find books too aesthetically pleasing?


This really just amazed me and left me with my mouth wide open. After a 20 minute helicopter ride, artist Stephen Wiltshire managed to draw the Manhatten skyline exactly perfect and to scale. Utterly amazing. Found via A Cup Of Jo.

Mocha Brownie cupcakes. Yum. I love chocolate and I love coffee so of course I love Mocha. These are on my neverending 'to bake' list, that expands pretty much every week. I sometimes wish I could just bake and try new recipes everyday! Recipe available at Annie's eats.

Rebecca, aka The Clothes Horse, always impresses and inspires me with her remix posts. She takes one item of clothing and shows how she would wear it in a myriad of ways. They're always so inventive. I particularly loved this one because the Betsy Johnson dress is so beautiful.

Oh and Happy Friday! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. My plans for the weekend are celebrating my friend's birthday tonight in Manchester and then finishing off my assignments for uni, a mixture of good and bad!

Wearing on Wednesdays

So, I've decided to come up with a new 'feature' for my blog, where I will post an outfit every Wednesday of what I have worn the previous Wednesday. Lately I just haven't been bothered much about what I wear - partly because I've been so busy and partly because I've been so poor I haven't bought any exciting new clothes really. But one day a week I will try to wear something nice and share it with you all.

I haven't worn this dress much at all, I don't know why. But it's really lovely. I like the buttons down the middle and the frilly details and of course, the colour! I wore this with rather thick tights and ended up regretting it as we had an 'indian summer' last week (does it annoy anyone else how the weathermen call it an Indian summer if it goes just a few degrees above average for more than 1 day?!). It was hardly 'summer' weather, but it was hardly thick wooly tights weather either. What are you all wearing this Wednesday?

Happy halloween!

Happy halloween everyone! I made these cupcakes for my sister to take into work for her little halloween party (they are quite big fans of my cupcakes now haha). I used my Wilton icing colour gels kit, which I love. It was the first time I'd tried the purple colour out. I've only got the blue, black and ivory to try next (although to be honest I do not know why I would ever need to dye icing ivory?). Aren't these toppers really cute too?! I love the pumpkins, although they look a little bit too friendly to be real halloween jack o lanterns. I'm going to carve a pumpkin tonight with Scott, maybe they will be a bit scarier. What is everyone else doing for halloween? Anyone dressing up as anything fun?

Red

Red is my absolute favourite colour ever. Red telephone boxes, red lipstick, red balloons, red strawberries, red road signs, red tights. If it comes in red, I'll have it. Red things I am currently lusting after include:

Red bow brooch from Cath Kidston

Red Magimix food processor from John Lewis

Red studded shoes from Topshop

Good things so far this week:

• Today is Apple Day. I'm going to enjoy it by having a baked apple with some brown sugar and cinnamon after tea. An apple a day keeps the doctor away!
• Making pumpkin soup. I like mine with lots of ginger and creme fraiche. 
• Another cupcake order.
• Waking up to a mug of freshly brewed loose leaf green tea, thank you Scott. 
• Still reading Anna Karenina and really enjoying it. Trying really hard not to read any spoilers! 
• Listening to the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack on spotify, it is really good. I especially love 'All is Love'. I am listening to it to make up for the fact that the film isn't out until December here.
• Enjoying the lovely coloured leaves on the trees before they are all blown away and go soggy on the paths and slip me up. 

How is your week so far?

Lots of cupcakes

Warning: This post is going to be full of lots of cupcakes. Not for those on diets!



I have a lot of cupcakes to share with you all. Firstly, I want to discuss The Primrose Bakery cookbook. When I saw this book in Waterstones, I was so excited. A cupcake book I hadn't heard of! Using metric measurements! With lots of different yummy flavours! Of course I had to buy it. The photos in it are wonderful and there are so many different varieties, much more than in my old faithful Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. Early grey cupcakes? Caramel cupcakes? I got it home and was itching to try it. I dove right in and decided to make the caramel cupakes, they sounded so amazing.

Sadly, they tasted less than amazing. The icing was impossibly hard to work with - it was either too runny, or would set suddenly and be rock hard. The cake itself was dry and a bit tasteless if I'm honest. I didn't want to write the book off totally just by having one duff recipe, so I decided to go back to basics and try their vanilla cupcake recipe.

These were lots better than the caramel cupcakes. The cakes rose to a lovely peak, the icing was fluffy and delicious and easy to pipe. The cake was just okay though. When I compared the recipe and quantities to the hummingbird recipe, I was quite surprised that it used 2 eggs compared to just one in the hummingbird, and SO much sugar! In all of my baking experiences I've discovered that too much sugar can result in a hard crust and denser texture and I was not wrong with this recipe. The sugar crystalised slightly on top, which was okay once it was covered by a lovely swirl of the icing, but the texture of the cake was dry and dense. I like my cupcakes to be soft and delicate and like a sponge, rather than dense and crumby like a loaf cake. I suppose it's all personal preference, as one of my friends actually said she preferred these ones. But then again, she doesn't like cake much and just likes them to be a vehicle for frosting! The majority of people testing these decided they were too dense to be a good cupcake.

So I decided to return to my trusty Hummingbird Bakery cook book that has served me so well since I got it. I think I will try to combine the ideas and flavours from the Primrose Bakery with the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery.

Really, though, you can't beat good old vanilla and chocolate cupcakes. I was asked to bake 2 dozen cupcakes for a colleagues' son's 18th birthday party, my very first paying customer! I was so excited and nervous (what if I had one of my disasters that I am often prone to?! Especially with the icing?!) but everything turned out perfect. My recipe for perfect vanilla cupcakes can be found here.

It is also national baking week starting from tomorrow! So I am hoping that I can bake quite a bit this week (I have lots of pumpkins and apples to use up from a recent visit to the farm shop). Are you going to be baking anything yummy this week?

Pumpkin picking!

Over the weekend I went pumpkin picking! Well, not literally picking them out of the field but picking one to buy. Scott and his brother wanted really big ones to carve jack o lanterns, but I just wanted a really cute one. I bought a little one and some mini squashes too. We might go back next weekend when they open the pumpkin fields to the public and you can actually pick your own.

shoes - primark, dress - miss selfridge, cardigan - marks and spencer

Hello! I hope you're all having a lovely weekend. I finally got around to seeing 500 days of summer on Wednesday. I had really wanted to see it like everyone else and I must be the last person in the entire blogosphere to see it, but it was worth the wait. I've been listening to the soundtrack on spotify, I was especially surprised to see Carla Bruni on it! But it's a really beautiful song, I highly recommend it. Even if I can't understand what she's saying...

This weekend I plan on cosying up with Pepe and finishing off some uni work on the Dewey Decimel system.

Autumn

1. 2. 3.

Autumn to me is:

• Apple picking
• Early nights with cups of tea
• Making soups to keep me warm
• Carving pumpkins for halloween
• Walking the dogs and laughing at them playing in the fallen leaves
• Rain, rain, rain.
  
• Digging out the winter clothes, tights, scarves, duffle coats, and gloves.
  
• The first cold of the winter, with a week spent sniffing and coughing.
  

What is autumn to you?

peanut butter cookies

Who doesn't love peanut butter? Whenever I do encounter people who say that they don't like peanut butter, I always approach them with care, because only weirdos don't like peanut butter, right? Crunchy or smooth is a whole other debate, but peanut butter is universal in it's adoration I do believe. I like smooth peanut butter for eating straight from the jar, or to spread on toast. However, for in baking, crunchy is far superior. These cookies are crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside, with little chunks of dark chocolate and crunches of peanut buttery goodness. Hmmm. It's a hummingbird bakery recipe that I've been wanting to try for a while now. It was pretty good, but next time I would try to halve the recipe as this made 24 HUGE cookies, which is too much for me to eat before they go stale, no matter how hard I try! I actually froze half of them so I can have cookies whenever I want now, as they take seconds to defrost in the microwave.

Ingredients

225g unsalted butter (I actually used salted because I like the saltiness with peanut butter and chocolate)
200g caster sugar
200g light soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
240g cruncy peanut butter
340g plain flour
2 1/2 teaspoons bicarb.
1/2 teaspoon salt
75g dark chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 170c/325f/gas 3. Grease and line a few baking trays with greaseproof paper.

2. Mix the butter and 2 types of sugar with an electric whisk until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, making sure all the ingredients are well incorporated. Turn the mixer down to low, and add the peanut butter and vanilla extract.

3. Then add the dry ingredients, flour, bicarb and salt, and mix until the dough is smooth. Stir in the chocolate until it's evenly mixed.

4. Arrange on a baking tray in small balls (about 5-7cm big), with big spaces between them, as these cookies spread out to be HUGE! Bake for 10 minutes, or just until they start to turn golden at the edges and cracked in the middle. If they feel soft in the middle, still take them out, as they continue cooking after being taken out of the oven and this makes them perfect and chewy after they've cooled.

5. Enjoy with a glass of milk!

busy busy

These are two outfits from the past week in Uni. I have decided to return to Uni and study for my masters in Information and Library Management! Well, it has been in the pipeline for a while, along with many other job interviews too, but it seems like this is the best route for me to get into library work. So, I now spend 2 whole days in uni being taught about the wonders of cataloguing, classification and other library geekiness. As the girl who likes to organise her CDs in alphabetical order and organise her photos by year, month and date, it is becomng really interesting for me. I am already itching to change my photo organisation system by using tags and keywords so I can find things easier!

Also, last weekend, my sister got married! I was a bridesmaid and it was a lovely day. My dress was green and lovely, I think green quite complements my olive skin. I also had my hair curly which was very different for me! You can see a photo of me and Scott here.

Hopefully now that I am getting into a routine I can start posting and commenting more regularly, but the past few weeks have been a bit mad for me!

Step by step cupcakes

On Sunday I had the urge to bake some cupcakes so I though it would be the perfect opportunity to make some using my orange cocoa from Paris.

I had been trying to save it for a special occassion, but a little goes a long way. The aroma when I opened it was AMAZING! I really want to try making hot chocolate with it once the weather gets cooler. I used the classic hummingbird bakery recipe for their chocolate cupcakes, but simple replaced the cocoa powder with the orange cocoa powder.



Here are all the ingredients you need. 100g plain flour, 20g cocoa powder, 140g caster sugar, 40g butter, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, a pinch of salt, 120ml milk, 1 egg and a few drops of vanilla extract. (oh and preheat the oven to gas mark 3!)

First you put all the dry ingredients and the butter into your mixer and mix well until it resembles sand.





Then, whisk together the milk, egg and vanilla and add to the mix. Mix well until smooth (but be careful not to overmix!)



Spoon into a muffin tin lined with 12 cupcake cases.



Bake in the oven for about 22 minutes.



Ta-da! Then make the icing. I used the magnolia bakery's recipe this time, which can be found here . I also mixed in a little red and a little yellow food colouring to make it a lovely orange colour. With the orange and brown cases, they looked kind of like halloween cupcakes!





The cake was lovely, with just a subtle hint of orange with the chocolate. The icing slightly over powered the flavour of the cake though, so I think that next time I would make add a bit of orange zest or orange juice to the icing to complement the sponge cake.

Recently in the kitchen...

I haven't posted much of my culinary adventures here recently, and it isn't because I have given up on baking. If anything, my love for food and cooking is ever growing and I am always finding new recipes I want to try. I also got a subscription to Olive magazine for my birthday, which is the gift that keeps on giving, month after month! I love when it arrives through my postbox and I drool over all the recipes and plan what seasonal things I want to try that month.

This was the blackberry bakewell tart that I made last week. Or, really, Scott made and I merely supervised. I didn't even get to try any of it because I had a stomach bug, but I was assured it was delicious and the time in that it took to disappear also assured me it was delicious. Traditional bakewell tart uses raspberry jam, but after the glut of blackberries we had picked and made jam with, I decided to use blackberry jam. It is seasonal and cheap! I also studded the tart with fresh blackberries for added fruitiness. It gave it quite a rustic look once all the frangipane had rose over it.

This was the cover recipe of this months Olive, so we decided to make it for Scott's brother's birthday. I wanted a traditional layered birthday cake, but Scott wanted to try this, so we went with it. It was super easy and quite impressive! You simply mix together whipped cream and melted chocolate and leave it to set. Ta-da! Very, very rich though and is best served in a small slice with some cream.

I also experimented with making my own pizza base, using yeast for the first time. It was surprisingly easy, although yeast always strikes fear in me for some reason. Will it work? Will it rise too much? The anticipation! This was a perfect pizza though, with yummy mozzarella and cherry tomatoes and of course basil. I love basil, it is definitely my favourite herb.

I also invested in an ice cream machine, hoping for this heatwave of a summer we were promised by the weathermen. It never did arrive... The ice cream machine has made some lovely things still though. This was a summer fruits sorbet that was so delicious and refreshing. I also made a peanut butter ice cream that was gobbled up so quickly I didn't even have time to take a photo of it. However, I don't think a photo would do justice to it's tastiness so I shall leave it to your imagination. Peanut butter ice cream.... yum.

What have you all been cooking lately?

This is my new coat! I still have my winter coat from last year, which is lovely and snuggly, but I really needed a coat for inbetween the seasons. A cardigan and a scarf was just not cutting it anymore. I had my sights set on a simple mac, as they are timeless and classic, but when I saw this charming coat on the Topshop website, I knew it was the one for me. I saw in real life shopping with a friend, but this was before payday so I decided to hold off. Then, after being paid and deliberating over it, I decided to get it. Then, typical, it was sold out in my size in store! I finally got my hands on it last week after ordering it online where it wasn't sold out. It has a lovely ribbon rose on the collar and rose shaped buttons on the cuffs also. I am slightly scared of getting the cuffs dirty though.

This is what I wore underneath it, to go and eat South American food at Las Iguanas and watch Inglourious Basterds over the bank holiday weekend. It's my new 'goth' dress, as I have affectionately nicknamed it after Scott complaining that it was too 'gothy'. I like it. It's a litle less colour than I would normally wear, but I quite liked that about it. There really is something so chic and simple about black outfits.

P.S. The shoes are also new! I was searching for the perfect red skirt but couldn't find one so the perfect red shoes had to do instead. You can see them in more detail here.

Last week me and Scott visited the Cheshire Ice Cream Farm. I had a scoop of rhubarb and custard and a scoop of cherry crumble, it was so delicious! They also had a little animals corner there, my favourites were the pygmy goats. I really want one when I'm older, maybe two so they don't get lonely, they can mow the lawn for me! My pretty floral dress above has been a favourite of mine throughout the summer, it was from Asos in the sale. However, now I feel autumn is in the air and I'm lusting over winter clothes!

Betty's!

Today I went all the way to Betty's with my parents and grandparents. This is like a 2 hour drive away but we all agreed it was really worth it (I get my love of food from my family!). For those of you who don't know, Betty's is a very traditional English tea room with cafes only in Yorkshire. The owner apparently refused to open any outside of Yorkshire and I totally agree with him! It makes it so much more special, rather than a chain everywhere.

It was a really sunny day for a change when we arrived there. Betty's is so popular that you have to queue for a table (it is especially popular with tourists and daytrippers, like we were!). When we got seated, I decided to go for the traditional afternoon tea, which consists of 2 small sandwiches, 1 scone with jam and clotted cream, a pot of tea and a selection of miniature cakes (these were a lemon macaroon, summer fruit tarts and coffee-chocolate mousse cake today). Delicious.

Delicious. Nom nom nom. I couldn't eat it all though so I brought the summer fruit tart home with me and ate it before. Betty's also has a little shop that sells all of their goodies, such as the fat rascals (scone-y, rock cake-y buns), macaroons (almost as good as laduree's!), yorkshire curd tarts (my Dad's favourite) and loose leaf tea and coffee beans. I came home with a fat rascal and two packets of loose leaf teas, an expensive and exclusive white tea and a 'good luck' green tea. Doesn't their shop window look so inviting and delicious?

And the winner is...

Looby!

Apologies for the delays in choosing and announcing the winner, but thank you to everyone who entered! I have been super busy working lots at my part time job (13 1/2 hour shifts anyone?) and also searching for proper jobs and stuff.

I did have time however to make these cupcakes for my Auntie's birthday, they look rather professional don't you think? I am getting the piping technique just right! I have got a few lovely days off work, so my plans for this week include:

• Going to Harrogate with my parents and grandparents to visit Betty's Tea Rooms!
• Picking blackberries to make into jam and ice cream.
• Visiting a farmer's market where Valentine Warner is making an appearance.
• Drinking tea from my new tea set. I loooove it! It looks even better in real life too, I shall probably take some photos of it soon.

Giveaway!

I promised you all a little gift from Paris, to celebrate my blogiversary, so here it is! I picked up this Paris Style book from the Taschen shop on the Rue de Buci, just round the corner from our hotel. The 2 magnets were purchased from the cute little souviner shops along the Quais of the left bank. I also purchased one for myself which is now on my fridge. I love the vintage style of them.

I will also throw in this Festvial&Co poster that I picked up as a freebie from Shakespeare & Co. I got one for myself too and you can see it on my wall here! I like it; it makes me feel literary and clever although I didn't even go to the festival... Oh well.

To enter, simply leave a comment telling me about your favourite holiday! Winners will be chosen on 5th August, 12pm BST, so get your entries in now!

Paris

Paris was wonderful! Although my poor feet were so sore and were in dire need of a pedicure when I got back. We did so many things, including visiting Laduree (their hot chocolate is amazing, as are their cakes), going up the eiffel tower after queuing for over 2 hours, visiting the Pompidou centre (EU citizens under 26 get free entry!), having a picnic on the left bank watching the boats go by, eating lots of Bethillion ice cream (Scott became slightly obsessed with it), watching the bastille day fireworks from the Pantheon, going to Shakespeare & Co, going to the Scare Couer and being annoyed with all the 'tourist traps' and thinking it wasn't anything like in Amelie, wandering around the Pigalle and being asked if we want to see a 'show', having breakfast at Paul's bakery every morning and being embarassed by how badly we spoke French.

Happy Birthday Afeitar!

 

Jek in the box

My little blog is one year old today! It's been a wonderful year and of course my favourite thing about blogging is reading all your lovely comments and discovering new blogs. To celebrate, I looked back over all my entries and found some of my favourite ones to share with you - some that newer readers may have missed and some that older readers might remember! 

• My Bedroom - I did a little tour of my bedroom for you all. I love nosying in other people's bedrooms!
• Hats - Experimenting with Poladroid and discussing hats. I love hats and have always been a hat person.
• Beetroot brownies - trying out a Hugh Fearney-Whittingstall recipe, these were so yummy!
  
• Another Place - Crosby Beach & the Anthony Gormley statues.
• Chocolate & Hazelnut Cupcakes - Trying out the Hummingbird cook book.
• Blackberry Picking - foraging for blackberries with Pepe & Scott
• Apple Picking - A favourite autumnal activity!
  
• A simple outfit - just a nice outfit but I liked this post
  
• Day 2 in Bath - Visiting the Roman baths on a very cold day.
  
• Magnolia Vanilla Cupcakes - Some of the best looking cupcakes I've ever made I think
  
• What's in your bag - Again, I am so nosy, so I love these kind of posts.

I honestly can't believe it's been a year! I go to Paris at the weekend, so to thank all of my readers I shall bring back a little souviner to give away on the blog, so keep your eye out for that at the end of next week. Thank you all!