Next Day Tea & Cake Party

For the Ski Trip reunion party I hosted a Tea and Cake Party (Only after a night of excessive drinking, awkward but awesome shapes on the dance floor, and an impressive inability for one particular guest to avoid pressing the 'attack' button on our burglar alarm).

Here is the delicious cakey spread served to my hung over guests:

(Click on name for recipe)
Oats & Raisin Cookies
Carrot & Walnut Cake
Banoffee Muffins
Banana Bread (with added chocolate chips)
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Cheese Scones (baked by Chloe)
Poppy Seed & Orange Cake (baked by James)
Sainsbury's Chocolate Brownie Bites
A Giant Jaffe Cake Cake (See Recipe below)

Giant Jaffe Cake Cake

Ingredients:
Sponge Mix:
175g Self-Raising Flour
175g Caster Sugar
175g Unsalted Butter
4 Eggs
Jelly Filling:
1 pack of Orange Jelly
4 tbspoons Marmalade (without any bits)
Buttercream:
100g Icing Sugar
50g Unsalted Butter
Chocolate Topping:
3 x 100g Dark Chocolate (70% cocoa +)
1 pack of Jaffe Cakes

Recipe:
1) Line one of the cake tins with cling film. Pour jelly (made via packet instructions) & marmalade into tin. Freeze until set.
2) Preheat the oven at 180 degrees. Grease two cake tins.
3) Cream the sponge mix's butter & sugar together until light & fluffy. Add the eggs & mix well. Fold in the flour. Separate the mix equally into the two cake tins and bake for 25 minutes (until golden brown).
4) Leave sponge on a cooling rack until cool.
5) Make the buttercream by creaming the butter and icing sugar together. Then spread liberally over one of the sponges.
6) Place the jelly ontop of the buttercreamed sponge. Place second sponge on top.
7) Melt the dark chocolate & pour all over the cake.
8) Whilst chocolate is still setting, stick Jaffe Cakes around the outside of the cake.
9) Leave to cool before serving.

All in all, the party was amazing. Thank you everyone who came for a lovely weekend!

xxx

Chili Pesto, Olives, Feta & Sun Flour Seed Bread

The weather is cold, you've got some time to spare & you're in the mood for something tasty...

Why not try making this yummy loaf:

Ingredients:
For the Bread:
500g White Bread Flour
7g Yeast
1 1/2 tsp Salt (be carefully not to use heaped teaspoons!)
1 tsp Sugar
350ml Luke Warm Water

For the Topping:
Chili Pesto
8 Chopped Up Olives
25g Crumbled Feta
Handful of Sun Flour Seeds

Recipe:
1. Put all of your bread ingredients into a bread maker & set to knead the dough... or alternatively do it by hand (I know my preference)
2. Preheat the oven to 230 Degrees
3. Put the dough into a greased bread tin, place a tea towel on top & leave to prove for 30 minutes.
4. Remove the tea towel & place bread into the oven. Leave to bake for 25 minutes.
5. Remove the bread from the oven, leave to cool slightly.
6. Spread the chili pesto liberally over the bread. Add the olives, feta and sun flour seeds on top.
7. Bake the bread for a further 20 minutes, or until golden brown & baked throughout.
8. Leave to cool, but best served still warm.

My advice: eat with ridiculous amounts of hummus.

xxx

The Modern Mixtape

Recently it was my boyfriend's birthday - his 21st.
For this, his parents decided to get him an iPod (the awesome 160GB one).

To compliment this I decided to make him an ultimate music collection, 250 different artists, approx. 3500 songs. I thought an external hard drive would be a pretty good storage unit. It has 500GB of memory and is a pretty useful thing to have in general (as a backup of all your photos, music, work etc.)

Here's how the finish product looked:

Happy birthday!

xxx

My Life In Fancy Dress

I've just got back from the beautiful Les Arcs. A week of amazing snow and nauseating alcohol consumption... therefore it was a brilliant week for fancy dress.

As per usual, the needle and thread were out. However, instead of showing you just one week's creations, I thought I'd treat you my favourite fancy dress outfits (so far)!

The Perfect Christmas Present ;)

Happy St. Patrick's Day

The Fobster

Make Love Not War

The L Word

Mr. Men (& Little Misses)

Woof Woof (I'm a Poodle...but I know you'd rather I bbbbaaaaaa)

It's Just A Jump To The Left...

A Very Snap Happy Smurf

Never Forget The Power Of Primark

An Un-Unforgetable Night

The Boy Who Swang Over The Swing!

Where Else Could I Be?

I hope you've enjoyed outfits (I certainly have enjoyed making them!)

xxx

How To Make Your Mug Rather Snug

For my girlies I made very special Christmas presents...
The Cuppa in a Jumper...(with a Gingerbread man)

What you need to make this:
Some paper
Outside Material
Inside Material (for the jacket lining)
Wadding
A button
A Mug

And this is how..
Firstly, use paper to make a template like this: (make sure the mug handle can fit in the hole & that there is about 4cm extra length after wrapping around the mug)

Then pin & cut this shape out in the Inside Material (the tartan in my pictures), the wadding & the opposite way round with the Outside Material (the white material). Important: Make sure you don't cut the handle hole out of the Inside & Outside Material, just cut an X.

Next, place the wadding on top of the Outside Material & pin into place. Then pin the excess material from the Inside Material that is around the handle whole over the wadding.

Separately, pin the excess material of the Outside material to itself.

Then place the Outside material onto the Inside Material & Wadding, sew around handle hole.

Next fold & pin in all the edges of the materials.

Check it fits nicely around the mug. Make alterations accordingly.

Sew together.

Fold over edges & pin.

Sew on the edges a pretty quilted pattern (i.e. stripes)

Pin around mug & sew on a button.

As an option, you can use Porcelain Pens (as previously blogged about) to add lips & a beauty spot/some individual personality to the mug...

You can also add a Gingerbread man if you like... (recipe has also been previously blogged about).

But most importantly, use a variety of fabrics & styles to make each cosy mug as unique & quirky as your soon to be very happy friends...

xxx

Paint Your Own Porcelain Presents with Pens!

For my cousins' Christmas presents I made some fun and unique porcelain sets!
It's quick & easy to do, all you need is some porcelain & these pens.
They are great because you draw straight onto the porcelain and the paint sets without baking. Plus, you get about 30 seconds before the paint drys where you can easily wipe off any mistakes.

The first set I made was a Breakfast Set (Plate, Bowl & Mug):
For this I drew snowflakes inside all the pieces & a fun cartoon alpine scene on the outside.

The second set was a Tea Set (Tea Pot, Sugar Pot & Milk Jug).

For this I drew green & silver stripes. I also drew a quilted pattern on the tea pot to make it look like it had a Teapot Cosy on. 

They appear to have liked them, and I certainly loved making them!

Have a go :)

xxx

Merry Christmas!

I hope you have all had a lovely day! Tomorrow I will start to shed some light on this years Christmas crafts!

Merry Christmas
xxx