Iced Biscuits Are My New Vice...

Iced by meee, inspired by Cupookie

I was at work the other day when I got an email from Emerald Street casually mentioning a competition to win an icing class at the Biscuiteers School of Icing in Notting Hill London.

Magical place of wonderment

I nearly fell off of my chair.

How did the existence of a such a magical place escape my attention?

Like really though...?

Cake :)

I entered the competition twice and then remembered that I can't leave key life events like this in the hands of competitions associated with the Stylist Magazine, so I booked a space on the first available class.

Butterfly cookies

Arguably, that level of urgency wasn't entirely necessary. Arguably, I could have put the money towards fixing my car or paying a bill. You could even argue that I should have waited on the outcome of the competition in case I won.

But what can I say? I'm impulsive like that. 

Plus I've been under a lot of stress lately and my heart skipped a happy beat when I thought about doing the course. It appears iced biscuits are my new vice.

Lorena - my cool teacher :)

Besides, due to a series of (un)fortunate events, I was the only person in the class. I think my excitement at having a 1-2-1 icing session was more than the teacher bargained for. 

Sometimes I wish I was slightly less impulsive & more sensible with my decisions. I wish I knew how to have balance and spend a little time in my comfort zone rather than on a constant knife's edge. And other times I love my life and the fact that I never know what the next day or hour might bring. I love seizing opportunities and being a pioneer in my own destiny.

Mostly though, I like icing biscuits and Notting Hill.

Peace & Love

xx

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Things I Love Thursdays... Nail Art

Tribal pink nail polish - life giving designs! :)

It’s that time of the week again when I share things that I love. This week, I’m sharing my love of nail art & in particular, nail art done by my home girl Liane! J

The master at work! :)

I’ve known Liane for a long time, since uni days to be precise and for the last few years I’ve been following her nail journey. Recently, we’ve managed to get it together and she has been blessing me with some of her awesome nail designs.

Cake pops and Keith Haring

Liane is a mobile nail artist based in London. Check out her website http://www.ldoesnails.com or her Instagram @ldoesnails to see more of her work.

What do you know about my nail artist??/

Peace & Love

xx

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Advent Calendars & Chocolate Biscuits

“Better late than never, but never late is better..” (Drake)

Yes, it’s that time of year again & even though it’s almost halfway through the month, these biscuits are just too cute to not share with you!

The biscuits are based on a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website, (click here for the link). I’m always on the look-out for a nice biscuit recipe, personally I’m into crunchy biscuits rather than soft ones. I found that the combination of the dark chocolate and the thick layer of white chocolate made this a really tasty mix.

Chocolate, ginger and white chocolate biscuits

• 300g plain flour

• 50g cocoa

• 1.5 tbsp ground ginger

• 120g butter, cubed

• 120g molasses or brown sugar

• 140g golden syrup

• 200g white chocolate

• Glitter, sprinkles and royal icing to decorate

• Put the flour, cocoa, ginger, butter and sugar in a processor, and mix until you can’t see any lumps of butter. You can also rub in the butter using your fingers. Slowly pour in the syrup and pulse until you get a smooth dough.

• Take about a quarter of the dough at a time and roll out between 2 sheets of baking parchment to the thickness of a £1 coin. Leave to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

• While the biscuits are in the fridge, heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4.

• Peel away the top layer of baking paper and use cookie cutters to make shapes. Circles, triangles, stars and Christmas shapes, whatever takes your fancy. Leave a small space between each biscuit as they spread slightly while they cook.

• Continue rolling and shaping all the remaining dough and trimmings while you bake a tray at a time, until all the dough is used up and you have at least 24 biscuits.

• Bake for 8-10 mins until firm. The time needed in the oven will vary according to the size of your cookies and your oven. It might be an idea to test with one or two first. My first batch burnt because I left them in for too long! Leave the biscuits to cool completely before decorating.

• While the biscuits are cooling, melt the white chocolate. White chocolate has a lower boiling point than milk chocolate so can be a bit tricky. Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to do it http://www.wikihow.com/Melt-White-Chocolate.

• Pipe a border around the edges of the biscuits and then cover completely using the melted white chocolate. If you don’t want perfect edges you can cover the biscuits using a spoon.

• Whilst the chocolate is drying, add sprinkles, glitter and anything else you want to use to decorate. I piped on numbers using coloured royal icing, but seeing as we are almost halfway through the month, it’s arguable if that’s totally necessary!

Let me know how you get on!

Peace & Love

Xx

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Easiest chocolate fudge sauce recipe ever!

If you know me, you'll know how excited I get when anyone asks me to make a chocolate cake. I think I got into baking for the sole purpose of baking chocolate cakes.

What you may (or may not as the case may be), surprised to know, is that there is an art to getting chocolate cake right. You need the right quality chocolate and sufficient moisture to make it wonderful. Dry chocolate cake is like stale cake - an exercise in disappointment and dissatisfaction.

Similarly, getting the right frosting to accompany said cake is another skill in itself. One of my favourites is the mighty chocolate fudge sauce. Fortunately, fairly early on in my chocolate fudge making journey, I stumbled across the easiest recipe ever from Nestle (click here for the recipe). 

Once you've got the perfect cake (complete with vanilla biscuits and strawberries no less), then all that's left to do is adorn the cake with candles and sing harmoniously to the birthday girls.

Peace & Love

xx

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