Saturday, 28 April 2012

Hey Mambo! Mambo Italiano!

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Last week I went to see the Rat Pack Tribute with Chris and it was amazing!

I hadn't previously got into the Rat Pack, only watching the songs that Chris has made me watched but after that night I am in love with them =D By far, Sammy Davis Jr was the best- as well as singing he brought out his tap shoes for a number and was very talented. All of them certainly had well tuned pipes. I guess that the only thing I would have wanted was more songs- there was an opening act of three sisters and although they were very good, there wasn't as much time with the Rat Pack, so they didn't sing 'Ain't that a kick in the head' and 'Come fly with me' but it was still a lovely evening =D

 

For now I am holding out for a young Frank Sinatra to seranade me....=D 

But until that happens I shall settle for listening to him, hope you enjoy these songs =D

 

 

 

2 comments

Monday, 23 April 2012

Lazy blogger...

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Hello!

I have been a stranger the last few weeks although it is mainly because I have dissertation stress! And the day before my dissertation I have another essay to hand in! But after Thursday I will be done with dissertation, very hungover and ready to cake and blog again!

Sorry for being lazy but since I have nothing to post about for just now have some fun pictures that I am finding amusing/helping to distract me from my dissertation.....



I love these dwight facts!



Incase you don't have time for the gym! Haha!





On a bit of a Rat Pack high now :)







Can't wait until Thursday for some of this! =D



There's really no point in making cake if you can't lick the spoon....=P



Funny animals are always funny....



Forever love Harry Potter!



=D

Once I have spare time after Uni work is done I shall have a proper update and hopefully soon a new cake =D

Labels: LOL | 5 comments

Sunday, 8 April 2012

Chickpea pasta!

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I am actually trying to keep up with the eating vegetarian every so often and the meals aren't tasting toooo bad :) This was a pretty quick and easy vegetarian meal to do for during the week when you can't be bothered to spend ages cooking something. All that is in it is pasta, chickpeas, spinach and chopped tomatoes. Simply cook the pasta, add the chickpeas and tomatoes for 5-10 minutes and for the last couple of minutes add in the spinach. I think I actually used frozen just because I had some kicking about but fresh or frozen is fine :)

 Again, any suggestions for vegetarian foods are always welcome :D

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, vegetarian | 3 comments

Sunday, 1 April 2012

Sesame Street Cupcakes

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So while at work on Saturday I found out that one my work mates had just moved house, so clearly a baking opportunity ;)

 I was originally going to make house cupcakes but then I saw lots of cupcakes that people had made using the faces of the sesame street characters. It seemed like a lot more fun even if it has nothing to do with moving houses haha! But moving can be quite stressful and seeing a crazy face on a cupcake hopefully would cheer people up :)

They were quite fun to make although I didn't get to spend as much time decorating the cakes and I ended up finishing them off the morning of work as I was running late as usual! I only managed to do the faces on 6 of the cupcakes:

They were a chocolate cake that I have used before and judging from the reactions I think it will be my go to chocolate cake. I didn't have a filling for it but because they were small cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream, I don't think that they needed it.

The main problem with these cupcakes was the buttercream. I am not sure if I did something wrong or if it was too hot but the buttercream kept separating a wee bit. I guess it will take a few more practises :)

My favourite was definately cookie monster, mainly because I think that I am most like him in real life haha! Although I actually didn't used to watch Sesame Street as a kid!

Labels: cupcakes, sesame street | 11 comments

Thursday, 29 March 2012

Tim Burton Cake

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This cake was made for my best friend's work mate and she wanted a Tim Burton themed cake focusing on The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride and Alice in Wonderland! I was super exited to do this cake!

The cake itself was 4 layers- 2 chocolate and 2 vanilla with raspberry jam and a vanilla buttercream. I was very sad as I had to carry the cake to her party and by the time I had gotten there the cake managed to shift, so the Happy Birthday was all smooshed- ah well! I will one day beat gravity!

After putting the cake on the cake board I decided to turn it into a 'mad hatter' cake;

I made the fondant accents to look like the swirl mountains out of the Nightmare Before Christmas. All the fondant is as usual Marshmallow Fondant.

Some of the photos are a wee bit blurry but hopefully you will be able to make out the chocolate part, made to look like gravel and tree branches as I wanted to express the scene from the corpse bride where the rind is put on the finger/branch. I did dust the 'ring' with gold dust although I am not too sure if it gave it a good effect or not.
All of the gravel and branches were actually made out of modelling chocolate but I am not too sure how I feel about it- I may do a new post on it.

This is the maggot from the Corpse Bride's eye and the top of some colourful mushrooms were added to show Alice in Wonderland.

Originally I had wanted to do a shadow of either Jack Skeleton or of the Oggie Boogie man from the Nightmare before Christmas but I ended up doing the Cheshire Cat :) You can also see the front view of Zero, but that was last minute added to I didn't spend as much time making him.

And the Pumpkin King himself, Jack. Half of his legs are actually stuck into the cake for added support but it did mean that the effect of his legs being so long wasn't there. I did enjoy making the wee pumpkins though!

And lastly I wanted to add in butterflys as they were so prminant in the Corpse Bride- first at hte start and also when the bride turns into butterflys in the end, plus it meant that I could use a butterfly cutter! I dusted the wings with silver dust as well to give it some colour!

I think (and hope!) that it was well received and I very much enjoyed making this cake!

Labels: cake, tim burton | 0 comments

Monday, 26 March 2012

Going vegetarian

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Don't worry, I am not going vegetarian properly! I would definitely not suit that at all- I love steak wayyy too much ;)

But one of my things on my list is to cook more vegetarian meals. Although I have been doing this at least once a week, its been pretty standard foods that I don't think is worth blogging about- most people know about omelettes!

A while ago however I found some quorn mince in the back of my freezer and decided to use it up with some vegetables that needed to be used. So a sort-of-but-not-really chilli was made.

I browned off the quorn with garlic and added carrots, celery, canned tomatoes, tomato puree, mushrooms, spinach and sweetcorn!
Yes, very colourful! You can add whatever you have in your kitchen pretty much!

After adding some seasoning-again you can be pretty adventurous with the seasonings as well- I ate it with some rice and it was not bad!

It was only because I had the quorn in the freezer that I used it but I don't know if I would buy it that often- I have tried the quorn sausages and the mince does taste a wee bit better than them, but I think that it was mixed in with other foods.
If I were to make this again I would add it kidney beans and chickpeas instead of the mince. Although you can obviously add other beans, these are my favourites! Plus very easy to make when super busy!

I am looking for more vegetarian meals just to try and bit a wee bit cheaper and healthier so what would you guys recommend?

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, vegetarian | 6 comments

Wednesday, 21 March 2012

Mother's day cake 2012

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For this mother's day I pretty much did the same as last year. Since I work on Sundays, I decided to go home on Monday armed with a cake for my mum. It was supposed to be a surprise but I ended up telling her, though this was mainly because I wanted to check that she would be in the house so I wouldn't have to wait outside!

I did have trouble with coming up with a cake that I wanted to do but after a wee look at cakecentral.com I came up with what I wanted to do; a bouquet of flowers;

The cake was a vanilla cake with white chocolate in it, one from my 'Cake Bible' book. I did a chocolate buttercream for in between the layer and under the fondant and also added fresh slices of strawberries in between the layers. Who doesn't love strawberries with chocolate?! I do wish that I had added extra strawberries but I shall hopefully remember that for next time.


I actually started this cake on Friday.
Friday I made up the Marshmallow fondant.
Saturday I made a start to the flowers. The main ones are supposed to be carnations, hopefully they look something like them! I spent ages just trying to get it perfect so I actually only did 4 on Saturday but it wasn't so boring as I was watching Black Books as well.
(If you have't seen this TV show I would recommend it- it stars Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey and Tamsin Greig)
Sunday, after 2 12 hours shift I got to work! I have one of the giant cupcake pans which helped to create the rounded top without having to carve it.

I do wish that I had done more of the carnations so that there were less spaces and I realllllllly want to be able to get properly smooth sides on my cakes! I know that this time it was because of my buttercream; although it did taste fine, the consistency was a bit weird and it dried very quickly so I didn't have time to smooth it all out, hence the bumpyness!

But I did like the cake as I hadn't ever really attempted flowers before. I am definitely going to make more fondant flowers as decorations! And if anyone has seen any good flower tutorials then it would be greatly appreciated! =D

Anyway my mum, one of my sister's and my brother liked the cake so was a successful mothers day!

Did you guys do something for your mums? I hope that they had a wonderful day because of it!

Labels: cake, flowers, mother's day | 7 comments