November 13th, 2011 — 6:00pm
This weekend we held the first ever Butt-Numb-A-Thon. 24 hours of non-stop films. 5 of us chose 2 films each and we had to prepare food to match up to our film.
One of my films was the Labyrinth. An absolute classic 80s childhood film. I wasn’t really sure on what food to prepare but had a sudden brain wave.
I re-create one of my favourite characters from the film
I made 6 little worm guys in total and they took me FOREVER to do, but I was really glad I spent the time and effort because the response from everyone was really good!
He’s such a cute little character – love him!
And just in case you’re interested we managed to watch 13 films in 24 hours. Starting with
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Labyrinth
- American Movie: The Making of Northwestern
- Garden State
- Paper Moon
- Dark Night of the Scarecrow
- Mutiny on the Buses
- Bullitt
- Little Giants
- Black Narcissus
- Grizzly
- The Great Outdoors
- The Dark Knight
Quite an eclectic mix, and some were hard to watch at 4am in the morning, but we all managed to survive the full 24 hours and at this point I haven’t been to bed in over 33 hours!
All good fun and I’m sure we’ll do it again next year!
2 comments » | Baking
February 14th, 2011 — 5:40pm
Lots of love
xxx
Comment » | Baking, Laura's Life
August 11th, 2010 — 9:02pm
With the wedding eating up most of our money we had decided not to buy each other birthday gifts, but I couldn’t let Has get nothing from me on his birthday!
So, I made him a cake.. a dinosaur cake!
Yes it looks like a 7 year old made it, but I spent hours on it! The main things is, Has loved it and it tastes yummy! Good job too because by the size of it we’ll be eating it for months!
Has and I are huge music fans (You may have already guessed!) During the early years of our relationship, when we had more of a disposable income it wasn’t unusual for us to go to at least 1 live gig a week so as well as the cake I made Has a framed collection of some of our past gig tickets.
It doesn’t home all of our gig tickets, because unfortunately I couldn’t find a lot of our earlier tickets. We used to keep them in albums and they seem to be hiding! However Has loved his frame so much he’s now on a mission to find the other tickets and create a few more frames.
The last birthday as boyfriend and girlfriend! Eeeep!
3 comments » | Baking, Laura's Life
August 4th, 2010 — 10:27pm
To say thank you to my friend Steven, for helping me sort out this ‘ere blog (without his HTML magic I could never have made the move to WordPress) I made him a selection of cupcakes.
Vanilla and Oreo cupcakes.
I’ve never made Oreo cupcakes before, so I was a little nervous about how they would turn out… no need they are major yummers! ( I made the fail-safe Vanilla cupcakes in case the Oreo ones came out horribly wrong, then I would a least have something to give to Steven!)
I’m pretty sure Steven is happy with his treats… his tweet says so anyway! Thanks again Nashie!
1 comment » | Baking, Cupcakes
July 13th, 2010 — 10:49am
I’ve been a little more adventurous the past few weeks with my baking. Last week banana cupcakes with chocolate frosting, this week vanilla cupcakes with strawberry frosting.
I added a handful of mashed up strawberries to my butter cream frosting. Looking back I think I added too many strawberries as the frosting is a little too sweet for my taste, however everyone else seems to like them!
I piped strawberry jam into the middle of some of the cakes and left the others plain. I decorated them with a rose swirl (which I seem to have gotten the hang of now) and red icing hearts that I finished with a pearl spray.
Over all I’m happy with them, my friend at work has just told me they are my “best cupcakes yet” I’m about to serve them to the rest of the office with a nice cup of tea… anyone want one?
1 comment » | Baking
July 6th, 2010 — 11:19am
Last night I made banana cupcakes with chocolate frosting.
I added 1 and a half mashed up bananas to my usual vanilla sponge mixture. I’m still not used to using large cake cases so I tend to under fill them, I need to be braver and add more mixture. I won’t spill over Laura it won’t!
How ever small they look in their cases they taste great with a cup of tea
Really great
In fact I’m kicking myself that I didn’t bring one in to eat for elevenses!
3 comments » | Baking
June 20th, 2010 — 2:53pm
I made our dads cakes for Father’s Day.
Vanilla sponge men shaped cakes filled with raspberry Jam for Has’ dad and cherry jam for my dad. I also made green and red cupcakes to go with them.
Over half have already been eaten, so they must be tasty!
Has’ dad has already eaten his cake and I’m giving my dad his this afternoon.
Comment » | Baking
April 20th, 2010 — 9:41am
Friday night Suzie and tried our hand at making macarons. We followed a recipe we found on Bakerella
90 grams of aged egg whites. (We used 4 eggs and had some left over)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
110 grams of ground almonds
200 grams powdered sugar
Whip the egg whites until foamy then gradually add the granulated sugar until it looks like a glossy meringue. Be careful not to over beat
Place the almonds and powdered sugar into a bowl. Add the whipped egg white mixture and gently fold. If you want to add colouring now is the time. All the recipes I’ve seen say powdered colouring but seeing as we didn’t have any we added a tiny splash of red liquid colouring.
The recipes say not to over fold and because we’d never made these before we were very cautious. We could probably have folding the colouring in a little better, but hey these were only a test run!
Pipe the mixture on to greaseproof paper and leave to harden. We left ours for about an hour whilst we had dinner. Most recipes say between half and hour to an hour.
The bake for 18 to 20 minutes at 140º or gas mark 1-2.
Then leave to cool
We filled ours with a white chocolate ganache.
We melted 100g of white chocolate and then stirred in 150ml of double cream. We left for a few minutes until the mixture became thick then spooned on to one half of the macaron then sandwiched another on top to complete the look.
Having never tried a macaron before we have NO idea whether they turned out right or not! They are weirdly addictive. When I asked Has to try one, he couldn’t decide whether he liked them or not, calling them weird. Our friends gave the same verdict. Weird but nice. They soon polished them off though!
They have a strange texture, almost like meringue. Ours were quite sweet but we think that had to do with the filling. I’m currently on the hunt for powdered food colouring to have another go, maybe this time with a different filling.
Comment » | Baking
April 15th, 2010 — 11:20am
Suzie and I are going to attempt to make Macarons tomorrow evening.
Wish us luck! We’re going to be following this recipe from Bakerella. I hear they are difficult to get right so any handy tips and advice would be appreciated!
Comment » | Baking
March 31st, 2010 — 8:32am
Last night Has and I made what we are called “Chocolate Surprise Cupcakes”
The surprise being that they are filled with cream!
We scooped out the middle part of the cake and filled it with cream, then put the little lids back on top.
However this meant we were left with quite a bit of excess chocolate sponge… not wanting to waste any we gobbled it up with the left over cream! Yum!
We sat down to enjoy these bad boys with a cup of tea and an episode of “Come Dine With Me”
Comment » | Baking
