Friday 26 February 2016

Red Velvet Cupcakes

As you may know, my other passion is baking. So I decided to post a recipe today for Red Velvet cupcakes that I made earlier. Most recipes online are for 24 cupcakes, but honestly who's going to eat that many cupcakes unless you're making it for a party or whatnot.

So this is a mix of different recipes I found online and slightly adjusted to make it suitable for me and my little convection oven (which I actually bought recently, best purchase along with my Kenwood Stand Mixer :D)





Okay, so this recipe makes 12 standard sized cupcakes
For those 12 little delightful mouthfuls (or two) you will need:

  • 117g Self Raising Flour
  • 7g Cocoa Powder
  • 125g Caster Sugar
  • 1/4tsp Salt
  • 135g Soft Unsalted Butter chopped into cubes (I use Stork for all my baking)
  • 2 Large Free Range Eggs
  • 1 1/2 tbsp Buttermilk (or 6ml Milk & 19ml Yogurt)
  • 1/2 tsp Red food paste
  • 1/2 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
  • 4g Bicarbonate of Soda
  • 3/4 tsp Lemon Juice

Cream Cheese Frosting

  • 37g Soft Unsalted Butter (or Stork)
  • 60g Cream Cheese
  • 210g sifted Icing Sugar
To start off with I set my brand spanking new convection oven on 180 degrees.

Next I sifted all my dry ingredients; that would be flour, sugar, cocoa & salt into my mixing bowl and attached it onto the mixer. Then I added in my Stork(butter) and eggs and mixed that at a low to medium speed for a couple minutes, until it was all smooth.
If you don't have a mixer you can use a hand mix or use the classic bowl and wooden spoon.

While I left that to mix, as I didn't have buttermilk, I mixed together milk and natural yogurt in a small bowl and added in the red food paste with the vanilla bean paste and mixed that together until I got a very bloody looking mixture. I added the blood mix into the cake mixture and that got whizzed for a couple of minutes on medium speed.

The last thing I did was mix the lemon juice and bicarb, which become frothy and added that into the batter and gave it one last mix.

I then put some cases into 2 muffin trays. I equally shared my mixture between the cases using an ice-cream scoop and put them into bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes, swapping the trays over half way so they'd cook evenly.

Once they finished cooking, I took them out and left them to cool, during this time I made the frosting.

For the frosting I mixed the butter and cream cheese until they became fluffy and then added in half the icing sugar and mixed that, I then added in the remainder of the icing sugar and mixed it all together until it became light and fluffy.

After the cakes had cooled down completely, I piped on the frosting with a large circle nozzled piping bag and topped mine with some wafer flowers, malteasers and micro edible pearls that I had lying around... and VOILA!





















P.s sorry this post is so wordy, next time I do a bake, I'll try and take more pictures whilst I'm baking so you guys can see exactly what I'm doing at each stage.


Saturday 20 February 2016

Review: NYX Liquid Suede

 I promised you guys a review on how I felt about the NYX Liquid Suede's. I bought a couple of shades on the Boots website a few weeks ago and have been using them. NYX describes them as  velvety soft with a matte finish. I totally agree!

Compared to most high street (cheaper) matte liquid lipsticks these last longer and for me personally they didn't dry my lips out.
The down side of these are they transfer onto whatever you touch, as they don't completely dry but at the same time this stops your lips from becoming flaky.



So I bought three colours to test, before I fully invested in the collection.

The first shade I got was Stone Fox

I'd been looking for a grey lipstick for agesssss now and when I found out that NYX were coming to Boots I had to buy this shade. It's a dark grey with a blue undertone.


The next shade is Vintage.

I see why this is called Vintage, it's a classy vintage rose tone with undertones of plum. The actual tubes for these make the shades seem a lot darker than they actually are, so for anyone that wants to buy these I would consider that.


Finally I have Soft-Spoken.

This is a very soft nude rose. I personally think this is a very universal nude shade, as I usually steer away from nude tones as they don't suit me but this shade is currently one of my favourite lipsticks to wear.


Final thoughts:  I think these are a great alternative to the usual matte liquid lipsticks as they keep your lips hydrated and they have a decent selection of colours. 

Next stop! to buy some more shades :D
Check out Boots online to get your hands on these beauties.
Thanks guys


Wednesday 10 February 2016

Update & The Body Shop Haul

So... Hey guys! It's been a loooooooooong time, I know. Guess what I've finally started University. So I'm studying Media & Communication at BCU. It's pretty awesome apart from the theory (ESSAYS and what not). So far things are going well. 

Anyway, apologies for the mahoooooosive break, I'm going to try and keep up with this blog thing now.

So during this hiatus I've accumulated a lot of 'useless junk' in me mama's eyes; makeup, clothes, more makeup, more clothes... I think you know what I'n getting at. Anyway, recently I've really gone into skincare and love healthy, glowy, natural skin.

Which happens to lead onto my post; which is in fact a mini Body Shop Haul.
I'll be reviewing these products in a couple of weeks, after I've had the chance to use them all properly.

(Btw I actually had a gift card attached to myself, cause it was free :)

[Starting clock-wise]

That's that, I shall be back in a couple of days with a review of NYX's Liquid Suede's (hopefully).