Corinne Bailey Rae

This is my first artist review. As such i have chosen to go with one of my all time favorite songstresses.



Corinne released her first, self titled, album in February 2006 and believe it went to number 1 in the UK charts! With mesmerizing songs like "Choux Pastry Heart" and dazzling lyrics displayed in "Like a Star" (which was song recently by Rebecca on the British X Factor) it was obvious that Corinne would be an international sensation.



Unfortunately after releasing her first album her husband, jazz musician Jason Rae, passed away in what police announced as a drug related incident. After such a traumatic event it would of been understandable if Corinne didnt return to the public eye at all. However, in January 2010 She came back onto the radar with the release of her highly anticipated second album "The Sea". releasing the single "I'd do it all again" just before the album.



Whilst the songs are just as beautiful there is a definite sadness to many of the lyrics, and justifiably so.



Corinne has a soulful voice unmatched in grace and mellowness. After listening to any of her songs even once you will definitely want to hear more. She has collaborated with some interesting characters, such as John Legend and John Mayer at the 2007 Grammy awards, and has produced some beautiful covers of Bjork and Led Zeppelin songs. If you are looking for a calm yet memorably gentle sound then look no further!

See you next time!
\(^_^)/

Worldwide Celebrations!

Happy Halloween!!!
I did my first Jack'o'Lantern for the ghoulish holiday!



It was Also Eid recently... So Eid Mubarak to all my Muslim friends out there! Also it was recently Diwali, so happy diwali all you Hindus.

My work colleagues decided to share thier celebration with us by bringing in some amazing indian sweets!



As far as i can tell these sweets are made from curdled milk, sugar and a vast arrangement of spices and decorations. Ranging from pistachios to edible silver leaf! If you have never tried Indian sweets, then its definitely an enjoyable and different experience especially if you are use to your western sweets. Not saying western sweets are bad, but its just different. Like when u go to Germany or Belgium and buy some chocolate... In the UK we have chocolate and its pretty good.... but the Belgian chocolate is like on a whole new level of epic!



Anyone else celebrating anything let me know how it went!

Ive got something a bit special Coming up next...

Until next time everyone, stay cool!
\(^_^)/

Apple and Banana Baby Cakes

A few days back i had been walking to my local tube station to get the underground to work. The rain was pouring down, and everyone was miserable because of this. As i had a bit of time i stopped in a local health food Cafe near me for a coffee before i carried on my journey.

In there the was a small baby girl and her mother on the table opposite me, the mum was feeding the baby Apple and Banana baby food.



Now i dont know about you guys but this brings back MAJOR memories for me... i use to love these little baby food pots so much when i was young that even when my younger sister, who is almost 5 years younger than me, was born i would sneakily eat hers!

Lol, dont worry, this story actually going somewhere.

Seeing this i was inspired to make my own version of this delicious little pot of gold. Obviously im too old for baby food now.... (atleast thats what i tell my friends) so i came up with a quick recipe to try and re-experience my toddler years!

Apple and Banana Baby Cakes!

The Recipe is an adaptation of Rachel Allens (author of Bake) Dutch apple cake with the additon of the banan and apple mini chunks throughout.

The icing was a typical icing sugar mix with reduced pink lady apple juice as the base rather than water, in order to counter the melllow banana'y taste of the sponge.



Find the recipe HERE

Yes i know..... i have nothing to do with myself... And yes, yes i AM very bored most evenings LOL.

Until next time
\(^_^)/

Anime ReChew: Scrapped Princess

Ive decided to actually start doing some anime reviews after a friend of mine from work has suddenly become interested (thanks to me) in japanese animation and cartoons.

Ive watch anime since i was about 8 years old and have never looked back. Whilst i have seen many, MANY, shows i have only had a few achive viewing excellence in my opinion. Whenevr i do an Anime ReChew (get it??? sounds like ReView but cause i like food i put ReChew!!!!???!! arent i hilarious ahhahahahahaah lol. feel free to shoot me if u see me irl) i will try and be as indepth as possible. And will also talk about series' that i dont think are worth a watch.

With all that said lets have a look at one of my favourite series' from the land of the rising sun!

Scrapped Princess

When i was first introduced to this anime it took me about a year before i actually watched it. The name threw me and i have no interest in cutesy magical girl shows (Sailor moon etc), but once you start watching it you see a very intricate story, held together by believable characters.The plot follows Paciffica Cassull. A young girl with who appears to be like any other little blond girl. She is bossy, rude, sweet, sensible and at times helpful. All of this being fine until you find out that she is a child born to royalty, bearing the stigma of an ancient prophecy which dictates that if she is to reach her 16th birthday then the world shall be destroyed. And all at once the story gets interesting.



Paciffica is accompanied by her step brother and sister whilst she runs from.... well... pretty much the world. Shannon Cassull, her brother, is an excellent swordsman. He has vowed to keep her safe from anyone who would do her harm, even though he is constantly bossed around by Paciffica he still remains loving and loyal. Raquel Cassull, Pacifficas sister, is a military class wizard with the ability to conjure tremendous power with only a few words (particularly impressive when noting that other magicians in the series have very long incantations to perform minor spells), Raquel has a very calm and gentle nature in contrast to her great magical strength, since both of the siblings parents have died trying to protect Paciffica, Raquel now assumes the motherly role in the group.Along the journey the trio are joined by some who wonder how true the prophecy is, and others who are oblivious that they are befriending the scrapped princess.



In a world where robotic war ships co exist with mysticism the scrapped princess must remain alive to find the truth about who she is and what will happen when she turns 16.One of my favourite things about this series is that it is only 24 episodes long, so it doesnt drag on and on and on....If you are new to anime then definitely start off your adventure with this. Truly a masterpeice of story telling.... and the fight scenes are mesmorising to boot.Hope you guys like it as much as I do!

Until next time! \(^_^)/

Move Completed... Finally!

Hello subscribers and visitors!

Its been a long LONG struggle lol.. and majorly stressful to boot.... but im finally moved into my new house!



Dining area!



Living Area!



Plant!



And a Bigasss TV! My Housemates idea.... but im warming to it lol! :)

So this is where im living now, will be able to upload alot more freely now. Hope everyone has been good and i will be back with something delicious soon!

Until then.... Stay cool!

\(^_^)/

Chocolate exploits

For the last few weeks now i have been learning about chocolate... I discovered what couverture is, i figured out why tempering is used... i also found out that different chocolates react to different ingredients in unique ways.

This is a quick post to show what i have been coming up with!

Plum Kuro

The garden has produced a billion plums this year, so i have mixed them with dark chocolate ganache to make these delicious little bars... based with crushed digestive biscuits and garnished with plum icing and cashews.


Diced plums were incorperated into the sponge which was dyed a slight pink to match the skin of the plums.


Dark chocolate melted with salted butter to give it the shine. I was going to use milk chocolate but the plums were sweet with the sour aftertaste, and milk chocolate would of definitely gotten lost amongst the flavors.


And Voila! They are complete. They are very simple to make and without going into too much detail...

The sponge was a basic victoria spong recipe with a tsp of red food colouring and the chopped plums incorperated whilst mixing.

The chocolate coating was choocolate and butter melted and mixed together

And the icing decoration was the remaining plums reduced in a bit of water and caster sugar, then when fully reduced over a medium heat strain out the juice (i used a sieve for this) and mix the juice with enough icing sugar to get the correct consistency, not too runny. this should also come out as pinkish color, depending on what plums are used.



Well thats it from me! but before i go, here are some chocolates i had at a japanese tea bar recently.


Strawberry and Chilli
Yuzu
Matcha
Mango and Balsamic

See if you can guess which is which! Until next time \(^_^)/

Indian inspired Revlation!

Ah............ Finally completed!

That took about 3 days to come up with a final design and after the initial prototype with the Mango Lassi cream cheese style frosting (seen here)


I decided to go in a new direction because the frosting was just so loose.... i considered thickening it with custard powder but then i had to watch his allergies (see previous post) so i couldn't do anything too risky... Also Look at that thing... It looks terrible lol... The watery looking stuff over the passion fruit is my attempt at caramelized decorations... turns out i should stick to chocolate work and leave the sugar spinning o the pros for the mean time lol.

All in all i think this original one looks terrible and i wasn't a big fan of the taste although mum and sisters disagreed and thought it was nice, but they are always nice when i make stuff and tend to eat anything that's put in front of them lol.....

So..... Back to the drawing board!!


In the end i went back to basics.... I had to think what would actually convey exotic fruits, but at the same time not kill him.

The inspiration for this cake kinda came from the Indian restaurant that me and my work colleagues visited the other day. For the First time i had Mango Lassi.... was so nice, tasted like milkshake but wasn't overpoweringly dairying.

The major problem however this time was..... THE CHOCOLATE!!! I know right... as if chocolate is ever a major problem lol... But this time it was. The person who was getting the cake doesn't like chocolate... so i racked my brain trying to think of substitutes.... Which led me to the Above DISASTER!

Then i thought about it a different way..... "Why doesn't he like chocolate?"



It turns out that he doesn't like the smell of it... And that sorted everything out, as well as confirming that i should be going with the potent smelling exotic fruits....

I decided to go in a different direction with it now finally! Mango White Chocolate frosting with a cheaper white chocolate so that the smell of it would not detract from the mango and alert him to the fact it was chocolate based. in the end it just tasted like mango ice cream (but not ice cream obviously).. was very lush. Passion fruits to trigger the nostrils initially and then the more subtle but just as delicious smell of the mangoes really drew you into this cake. The day I transported it to the party i had to go to work first in the day time, so the whole office smelt like a fruit cocktail lol.

On the inside was a cardamom infused sponge cake without the egg obviously. and running through it were strands of saffron for the color and for the subtle spice of it....

And then.... TADA!!!



The Left Over White Chocolate i just mixed with some cream cheese and butter to make a ganache kinda thing and added green food dye to tie in with the theme of the cake



And now, ill let you know how i made it!

Cardamom and Saffron Sponge With Mango Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients:

Egg-less Cardamom Cake:

175g Plain flour
50g Fine Cornmeal
400g Sweetened condensed milk
100g Butter
175ml Water
2tsp Baking powder
1tsp Baking soda
1tsp Vanilla extract
10 Strands of Saffron
2tsp Ground Cardamom
1/2tsp Salt

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees centigrade and Grease the bottoms of 2 9" cake tins and then set aside
2. In a Large bowl sieve the dry ingredients together and make sure they are all fully incorporated together (Salt, Flour, Cornmeal, Bicarbonate, Baking powder, Chopped Saffron and Cardamom)
3. Melt the butter and then add melted butter to the wet ingredients remaining minus the vanilla extract, so that's the Condensed milk and the water.
4. Mix the wet ingredients (now with the vanilla extract) into the dry ingredients and Incorporated fully with a wooden spoon of electric mixer if u are lucky enough to have one lol.
5. When fully mixed separate the batter evenly into the cake tins and even out the mixture before putting them into the oven for roughly an hour, check to see when the cake it done by using a skewer to see if the middle of the cake is ready or not.
6. When done, take both cakes out and set aside on cooling racks.

Mango White Chocolate Frosting:

Unfortunately i didn't do the measurements for this properly and it was all kinda doing it by eye and feeling my way through... but if you follow these directions you will know what to do when it comes to it.

ROUGHLY...

600g White Chocolate
350ml Mango Puree
25g Butter

1. Melt the Chocolate either in the microwave for a few seconds (stiring after 10 seconds), or in a ban marie over a stove.
2. Add butter to the melted chocolate
3. Pour Chocolate and butter mixture into a bowl and slowly add the mango puree, mixing all the time. When the mixture becomes stiff but manageable cover it and put it aside in the fridge until needed.

Green Chocolate Ganache:

100g Cream cheese
180g White Chocolate
80g Icing sugar
2tsp Green Food coloring

1. Melt the Chocolate
2. Remove chocolate from stove or microwave once fully melted and then stir in the cream cheese, icing sugar and green food coloring. It should go a kind of putty texture.

And VOILA!


Hope you guys like it as much as i enjoyed making it... pity i don't really like cake that much lol.

Until next time...

Enjoy \(^_^)/

Challenge!

Ok ive been set the task of coming up with an egg less, nut less, chocolate less cake by Friday....

One of my best friends is annoyingly allergic to all these things (and he just doesn't like chocolate.... such an awkward guy!)

Immediately i thought "Fruits"

So im gonna go with an Egg less Mango infused sponge (dunno if thats the right wording lol)



With Mango Lassi style cream cheese frosting....

Lassi is that Indian sweet yogurt drink, very light and refreshing. I was thinking of spicing the cake with Cardamom and a bit of saffron for the golden color of mango to really come through.



Anyone have any ideas on whether or not that is a good or bad idea... even if you have tried something similar and have any advice that could be valuable to me. I know that using mango in sponge will be risky because of the very watery nature of the fruit so ill have to find a way of compensating for that without it being too rigid because of the lack of egg.

Also is the Saffron gonna be wasted on this because.... you know.... saffron isn't the CHEAPEST of spices lol... If the mango will make the sponge golden yellow on its own then i could just omit the saffron... We shall see!!



Anyways, Here goes nothing!!! Gonna start practicing now.

Ill keep you all updated \(^_^)/

Veggie Cake!

Hello people, its been a long time.

GOT A PROMOTION!!! WOO!!!

Money money money lol...

OK on a different note, I'm sorry i haven't been around for ages, i have just had so much stuff to do.... I'm currently apartment hunting and that is just the longest process ever... on top of that I've started hitting the gym twice as hard. Been going every morning for the past 6 weeks i think (with weekends off as a break).... I totally recommend it, once you get into it you will love it.

Ok enough about my boring life.... on with the food!


You may be wondering "What is this ridiculously cute looking anime about?". Well quite frankly this has been filling the spaces of time when i'm not active and still awake.... Its called Yumeiro Patissiere and its an interesting anime show which is quite popular in japan at the moment..... Admittedly its probably mostly little girls watching it for the cute characters.... but i watch it for the inventive recipes they come up with (also its pretty funny at times).


The show revolves around Ichigo Amano who wants to be a pastry chef and joins a school where the young elite go to train... she is terrible at making sweets and as the show progresses she is helped by the "sweets princes" who are all experts in their own rights (Hanabusa is an expert in decoration, Kashino is an expert in chocolate stuff, and Andou is an expert at Japanese style desserts), as well as the strange but almost necessary additions of little fairy creatures who encourage Amano to not give up... Its pretty watchable and some of the recipes they come up with are pretty Ingenious (spelling...)

For example.... my next post will hopefully be a remake of one of their cakes either a Rose water infused Peach Pound cake, or a Spinach and cream cheese frosting carrot and apricot chiffon. Also looking at their presentation is inspiring (I know i know its a cartoon lol)

Definitely worth checking out though if you are ever bored! But now on to what i have made recently...

Spiced Carrot Cake with White chocolate cream cheese frosting:



I was set the challenge recently of trying to make something nice for the office out of semi healthy ingredients.... I instantly thought of fruits and vegetables... I was considering doing some kind of apple or pear something but those are boring... Then i realized i have never actually made a carrot cake... one of the most inspired combination of flavors.... (this is why i want to try that spinach cake at some point cause i like the idea of veg in sweet stuff, its interesting.

This cake was for a colleagues birthday and without blowing my own trumpet it was delicious.... so much so that the mother of the colleague who has been baking for years, actually called her daughter to ask me for the recipe. I was very proud of myself considering i just felt my way through the cake and added what i thought would be necessary to get that moist texture that any good carrot cake should have.

So without further adieu and so i can stop bigging myself up (lol) here is the recipe and method!

Ingredients:

300g Soft Brown Sugar
3 Eggs
250ml Sunflower Oil
30g Margarine
300g Plain Flour
1tsp Bi carbonate of soda
1tsp Baking powder
1tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2tsp ground ginger
1/2tsp salt
1/2tsp vanilla extract
350g Grated Carrot
200g Raisins
(A few Walnuts to decorate if you want)

Gonna need 2 or 3 cake tins for this also... I used 2, you can do it three tier if you like!



Method:

Preheat the over to 170 degrees Centigrade (350 Fahrenheit or Gas mark 3)

Put the sugar, eggs, oil and margarine in a bowl and mix them all together with a wooden spoon. (if you have an electric mixer then use the paddle attachment).

Then slowly add the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, salt and vanilla extract and continue mixing.

Grate the carrots and press as much water out of them as possible. Add the carrots and the raisins to the mix and keep mixing until all are incorporated fully.

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tins (coated in margarine or butter) and bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown and the sponge bounces back when touched.

Leave the cakes to cool slightly in the tins before turning out onto a wire rack to let them cool completely.

Voila... the cake is done.

Now, whilst the cake is cooling you can make the frosting.

Frosting ingredients:

800g White Chocolate (i used Milky bar)
500g Soft cream cheese
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
200g Butter
250g icing sugar

Method:

Melt the chocolate in a small pan and be sure not to burn it.

Once the chocolate is melted pour into a large bowl and slowly add the butter and cheese whilst mixing all the time until fully incorporated. The heat from the chocolate should melt the other two easily.

Add the vanilla extract and icing sugar and keep mixing until full incorporated.

When fully mixed leave aside in a cool area to reduce in temperature before using a pallet knife to place frosting between the cake layers and then completely cover the cake...

That's it you should now be done! I hope it comes out just as nicely as mine did, decorate it how you see fit :D!!



Until next time...

Enjoy!! \(^_^)/

Just a quick one

Hey there everyone, Long time no see!

Sorry its taken a while for me to post anything but my new job is keeping me busier than i thought it would. In addition to that i haven't had much time to cook anyone worth talking about.

However, A birthday has just gone by and inevitably i was conscripted (is that the right word?) to make something.

Now.. the fun thing about being able to cook is that i will never be short of a present or a surprise for anyone. Whenever i use to mess up with my ex-girlfriends i would usually be able to smooth it over by making something nice... and usually with chocolate or liqueur in it... or maybe even both depending on how badly i screwed up Lol!



So its come to April the 4th and i'm happily lying in bed when my youngest sister walks by my door carrying a present.... I'm like "oh whats that for".... She replies... "Um.... its Amanda's birthday Matthew....... OMG YOU FORGOT!! I'M TELLING!!!"

Lol turns out ive forgotten my Other sisters birthday....

So naturally i panic slightly, then i remember i had some flour and stuff in the pantry, enough to make a cake perhaps, but certainly enough to get me out of trouble with cookies or something at a push lol.

So here it goes!

Black Forest Forgetmenot Cake!



Ingredients

(It was a pretty big cake so feel free to half these values if ur making a smaller one)

200g Softened butter
200g Self raising flour
3 Eggs
180G Castor sugar
Pinch of salt
2 tsp vanilla essence
100g cocoa powder
40g hot chocolate powder
1 Tin black cherries (i think thats 325ml in a normal tin)

Method

1. Cream the butter and sugar together and then when full incorporated add the eggs one at a time slowly and beat them in.

2. Add the vanilla essence to this mixture and set aside

3. Sift the remaining dry ingredients into a separate bowl (i was lazy and sifted them right into the first bowl with the wet stuff)

4. Mix all the ingredients together and then when fully mixed remove most of the jelly surrounding the cherries and stir in the cherries. (you can save the jelly for other things if u want, but it wont be used int his recipe)

5. Grease up a cake tin, set the over to 180 (do this first lol) and then whack it in! give it about 25 minutes before checking on it, and poke it in the middle wtih a skewer to make sure the cake is done.

6. When it is done set it to the side and leave to cool. It will be difficult to decorate if it is still hot/warm

Chocolate frosting

For the chocolate frosting i improvised and (without my ego exploding too much) the texture and taste came out perfectly.

50g butter
100g cream cheese
180g chocolate (i used milk chocolate)
80g icing sugar

This is a really simple method. Just melt the chocolate in a banmarie or in a glass bowl over some water on a stove... or if ur in a rush, for 1 minute int he microwave then take it out and stir.

Once the chocolate is melted, stir it into a combination of butter and cream cheese and icing sugar. Mix until fully incorporated, it should go quite stiff and then just put it into your piping bag and GO GO GO!

Now what i did on the sides of the cake is to use the remaining frosting that i didn't use on the top to cover the sides. And then using the remaining pistachio nuts i had in the previous post, i chopped them up and (with a lil bit of difficulty) stuck them to the frosting that is on the sides.

Good luck guys, and remember.... Chocolate is ALWAYS a good present lol.

Enjoy!

The big day

Well i finally had to do it..the event has come around and it turns out that its some kind of womans empowerment day... lol i guess it was only fitting that they had a guy make thier food for them on such a day.

Things went well, and while there were no macarons in sight i did make redvelvet mini cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Bitter chocolate biscuits and just some ordinary cupcakes with chocolate in them.

In addition i made a few chocolate truffles just because i had spare time. I think they all came out pretty well, and the feedback was good so im happy.


I decided to decorate the frosting with pistchio nuts just for acontrast in flavour... the taste of them didnt really have much to do with thier inclusion.

Lol its always nice to see all the random crap that u buy before makign something suddenly become somethign nice and appertizing lookng. Red velvet is certainly an odd looking cake i must say, i was trying to go for purple because of the theme of the event, but i ran out of blue dye fairly early on and got a weird kind of maroon colour lol... i didnt tell anyone obviously haha.


The chocolate Chunks in the bigger cupcakes i thoguht at first were a bit too much but then i thought.. "Who doesnt like chocolate!"

At the front of each of the chocolate chunks is just a small decoration of dessicated coconut.

And heres how i did it!

Lol.. sadly these are not my own recipes this time, but i took inspiration froma fellow blogger. All credit for this goes to them, and im just gonna paste a link to thier recipe here.

http://www.pickycook.com/dessert/redvelvetcupcakeswithcreamcheesefrosting.aspx

Finally its over!

Now to do the dishes.... nah... that can wait til tommorow when the women folk come back!

HAHA only kidding... now where did i put that sponge...

Enjoy! (^_^)

Right.... lol

Ok i have accepted defeat... there is no way im gonan perfect the macarons in the next 3 days so i have decided to make Whoopie pies, Whitechocolate coconut truffles and coloured cupcakes instead... which i will be posting probably on monday after the event!

For the sake of mockery this was my final attempt at the macarons before i finally decided to just not bother...



These dont look like they are gonna turn out too badly...... UNTIL..............................

Suddenly...



Instantly failed lol.... OH well!

On monday ill be posting three different Deliscious things so stay tuned for 3 posts. ill take pics of the event also and see if anyone made anything deliscious that needs to be shared.

Till next time, Ill deffinatly work harder!

Enjoy! \(^_^)/

Still no joy... Gotta keep trying though!

Right so im still trying these macarons... got until the 21st to complete them and have them perfect... Things arent looking good though lol!

Even more anoying is that ive just seen on my facebook feed that an old school mate without any formal pastry training (as far as im aware) is making them left right and centre.... I REFUSE TO ASK FOR HELP FROM HIM! lol... its probably the testosterone kicking in... but ill keep trying until i figure it out for myself.. It will be much more satisfying that way.

In the mean time i have also been asked to make a cake for a work colleages leaving do...

The lucky sod is off to the carribean on a cruise... So jealous.. but i was happy to make the cake. Lol but im out of green! so i improvised!

First off i decided seeing as its the carribean but no specific island ill just go with a general theme! Also the fact that all she does is talk about how sunny its gonna be and bla bla blah...... *insert jealousy here* lol



In order to get this runout done correctly you first need to mix the colours and test them out... I used autumn brown and canary yellow in varying ratios to get the three colours seen on this sun.

First i drew the picture onto some paper, and then put it into a plastic wallet and began to make the outline with a less liquid ammount of icing. Try not to make it too runny or it melts together and becomes a nightmare... But also try and not make it too delicate... this makes it difficult to get off the plastic wallet when it is dry.

You proabably cant see it here but some of the suns rays actualy broke and i had to cleverly possition them back on so that noone would notice lol.



The cake was just an ordinary victoria sandwich sponge cake... jam, cream, vanilla... the usual. To be hoenst it was such short notice that i didnt really think of flavours, it was purely for the looks. If i had thought about it i would of slipped some ginger in there to keep with the carribean theme.

The cake is baked and the two seperate sandwiches are cut into squares so that they match, thi isnt necassary but makes things alot easier... again speed was something i was going for.

Royal icing is then mixed with colouring in order to make a decent covering for the cake whcih is tidied up with a plastic spatula and various other cake decorating tools.

Then the C scrolls were piped around the edge of the cake with a small line ontop of them for extra effect. Prettey effetive i think, and not much to it. Deffiantly have to keep a steady hand though.

My lettering is pretty shambolic so i tend to do fancy writing to hide the fact that i suck LOL.



And there you go! it was pretty simple to be hoenst. If i have more time next time and given a bit more notice maybe i can make something better... but i dont even know the woman that well... lol. Was fun though! And not nearly as daunting as it looks... you should try it. Im sure your local cake shop wuill be happy to talk you through anything.. and if u have any questions feel free to ask me! ill be more than happy to help!

Until next tim guys... Enjoy!

Back to the macarons again... grrr!! lol

Failure and Compensation

Right.. So ive been asked to make some macarons for a friends event... because i love putting my big foot in my big mouth i said yes... knowing that in all my years ive only ever succesfully made macarons once. Thants ONCE out of about 30 tries lol. As a result they were obviously a failure, but ive got a month so ill keep trying... These were the result of my failed almond treats.... they bassically tasted like sugary paper rather than ealgrey infused light almond shells :(



Ah well...

So after my failure i was talking to a friend of mine who i use to work at a cocktail bar with... She also knows a thing or two about food stuff but eventually she concluded that i suck lol... so unhelpful.

But it did trigger my memory as to when i started as a cocktail barman. I found it difficult to judge what liquers would go well with others, as well as what fruit to use or even if they deserved to be paired with somethng creamier.

We had to learn over 50 cocktail in 3 days... was very challenging but we all managed to do it. And of all fo them my favourite was my own variation on a Key West Cooler... which i embarasingly called Fooler Cooler (because i messed up the original so many times, but this one tasted better in my opinion lol).

So colourful and easy to drink, i gaurantee u guys will be trying this out at your next BBQ! The original recipe calls for peach schnaps, but I used malibu as the drink was introduced to the bar during a heatwave in England... and I trying to be all tropical lol... in england... the nonsense of it!

First off your gonna need to have these two bad boys at hand!


Malibu is a Coconut infused carribean rum... Im not sure if it counts as a liquer or a rum, but its deliscious and very fragrant. the coconut really comes through in it. If you cannot get hold of this (you should be able to... its like EVERYWHERE) then another coconut liquer or sum will do just fine.

As well as!


Midori! This is probaably my favourite liquer. The word Midori is japanese for "Green" which is pretty obvious. The colour is amazing and adding it to any drink will make it stand out really. Asides from the colour the taste is of sweet melons. Midori and lemonade is a classic... but its easily drinkable with coke as i have found.

Ok. Lets begin.

Ingredients:

12.5ml Midori
12.5ml Malibu
12.5ml Vodka
50ml Cranberry Juice
50ml Pineapple Juice
Some ice
1 slice of Kiwi and Orange (optional, decorate it however u want)

Method:

1: Pour the Midori and Malibu into an empty glass, then add one of the fruits to the glass.
2: Add ice up to the top of the glass
3: SLOWLY pour the cranberry juice over the ice so that it sits ontop of the alcohol at the bottom (cranberry juice is very light and sits ontop of most things... but vodka is even lighter!)
4: in a seperate tumbler (or boston glass if u have one) add the pineapple juice to the vodka and stir about 10 times. (DO NOT SHAKE, pineapple juice goes frothy and discoloured when shaken)
5: Now slowly pour the pineapple and vodka mixture ontop of the cranberry juice. It should sit on top of the cranberry juice because the vodka has lightened the pineapple juice. Decorate with the other slice of fruit on the side of the glass and add straws. COMPLETE!



There we go! That wasnt too hard now was it... Drink responsibly guys... im gonna try those macarons again.... back to the kitchen!

Until next time... Enjoy!