Hot chocolate orange cake

Indeedy, I wasn't initially going to post this recipe as I felt like I could have made it better, however Jim said he liked it! Wahey, success :D

Side note: I pinched the base recipe from here and then modified it as I went along.

Hot chocolate orange cake.
Ingredients
+ 75g butter or margarine
+ 100g golden caster sugar
+ 1 orange, juice and zest
+ 2 eggs, beaten
+ 150g self raising flour
+ 50g hot chocolate powder
+ 1 medium sized bar of choccy :)
+ Pinch of cinnamon
+ 1 tbsp milk (I might change this as I think it made the mix too runny)

Method

+ Weigh out the butter and the sugar, pop that in a mixing bowl and, using a wooden spoon, give it a damn good beating until the mixture goes all smooshy looking and fluffy and whatnot.

+ Grab your orange, grate all the outside until the orange essentially looks just white. Then squeeze out your juice (lack of equipment might leave you with sticky hands as it did for me!) Pop all of that citrus-y goodness into your mixing bowl and give it a swirl around.

+ In a separate bowl, quickly beat your 2 eggs, add in the cinnamon and chuck that into your mixing bowl and give it another whip around.

+ Weigh out your dry ingredients and add it in bit by bit. Make sure you keep mixing your dry ingredients in. The mixture then did seem to go quite stiff for me which is why I added milk, although my cooking time seemed off because of it so maybe I would try without next time.

+ Chop up your chocolate and mix that in.

Bake at around 160 for 30 mins.

The original recipe calls for 180 but I found the outside was cooking far faster than the inside so I turned it down.

Et viola:

The top even felt nice and sticky, like an orange should :D

Goodtimes!

xxx

Wheelie good fun

As I had yesterday free I decided to completely finish tidying and organizing the front room so I would finally have myself the little office space I have always wanted! Right in the far corner next to the fish tank, plenty of room for books, a desk and a LOT of wall space for all my verb tables :)

Only 1 thing missing though.....

.....I lack a chair.

So I set off to the charity shops to try and find myself something to sit on as all the nice wheelie chairs I found online were about £40 and up D:

Found one eventually for £10:

Only trouble is, not having a car meant I had to bring this home on the bus, much to the despair of many. Although in my defense, I managed to wheel it into the disabled section where you have the option of folding a seat up or down, so I wasn't technically taking up any extra space!

Also there was still a fair amount of snowy ground....and ice. 

I did actually ride it the last part of the journey home after I made sure no-one was looking.

I tried my hand at chocolate and peanut butter biscuits but they turned out absolutely dire. They tasted like dog biscuits! I shall have to re-attempt this later. Also the chocolate orange cake I just made needs more work. Infact I shall make a note to myself:

Work on your cake/biscuit timings!

I can hear bakers all over getting ready to thrash me right in the knackers for conflating the 2, I know cake and biscuit timings are very different but I need to work on both!

Peace <3

Call me Shelob

Today I made pancakes whilst playing "Call me maybe" as loud as my Ipod speakers would allow.

I got distracted by dance-worthy tuneage and therefore burned the pancakes.

I then got attacked by spider-babies whilst cleaning out some old boxes.

As I hoovered them up I said +2XP for every one I got.

Also whilst playing "Call me maybe"
Today was an excellent day
xxx

Schnee

Hello dear ones :)

If you're looking for some audible deliciousness then I recommend listening to a beautiful soundtrack (or anything really, it mixes surprisingly well) and this <3 

I've currently got the Lord of the rings soundtrack on, and "concerning hobbits" has been given a whole new feel by the beautiful sound of the rain. 

I finally have a day off now after all that overtime. I suppose I shouldn't be taking on too much extra work seeing how uni is looming over me and I have another 14 extra side courses I should be looking into. Yes 14. I got a package deal on a voucher website, £20 for 10 languages instead of £300. A wonderful deal, however incredibly ambitious. 1 language (Polish) is split into 4 courses as I'm attempting to take that into slightly further detail.

Honestly the main reason I try to take so much overtime is because we're still setting up really. When Jamie moved into this house, he moved here alone. I remember the house as I visited just after he'd moved in, he had clothes, a bed, a fridge. Mostly necessities, he was lucky enough to have a TV and a few old games consoles but that was really it. Whilst we have been together we have been piecing the house together with sheets and curtains (he had boxes against the windows at first!) and furniture. Everything is very expensive nowadays, everyone is lucky just to have rent money right now, but everything will get better over time. We saved up and now we even have special things like an aquarium and a cross trainer and a blender! (Indeed my blender is very special to me <3 How else would I find out if stuff blends?)


As everything is still beautiful and snowy I decided to have a little walk. It is surprising how slow everything moves in just a few centimeters of it. Although I have to say I did feel quite bad for the little old lady who runs the fruit and veg market, the awning on her shop didn't stretch quite far enough and she kept having to run out and brush the snow off her produce.

That actually wasn't the only strange thing I saw trapped in snow and ice:



Know what that is?

Sweetcorn!

Somebody must have gone fishing and not had much luck.

These were some others I took throughout the day:

Please excuse the uselessness of my photo editing, I take all of my photos on a camera phone which unfortunately does not have the best of cameras on it. Plus I use an automatic editing website as I have absolutely zero photography skills, this is something I intend to work on this year!

It is strange to think that somewhere around the world, all this snow is just everyday weather. Here we get a lot of rain but snow is rarer, although it seems to be becoming increasingly more likely as each year goes by.

Anyway, tidying now must happen!

Cheerio :)
xxxx

Snow and Banana cakes

Well, Hello there :]

It is snowing quite heavily outside, although it seems to be turning to slush rather rapidly. I suppose it's not late enough yet for the ground to freeze over and let the snow settle. Slush, I think is something we are quite accustomed to here in January. Although, having said that, it is settling quite beautifully on the rooftops.

See? :3

Also you have no idea how much junk I waded through just to take that photo! As a student I work only part time so with the extra time at home I have been attempting to de-clutter the house. It's getting there!.....slowly.

As it is the 17th today, this means I have been with my Leibe for 15 months now. The poor thing has had to go to work today, on the bus, in the snow :( so, I feel like a cake should be made for him.

I decided on 1 of his favourite cakes (which admittedly comes off a lost of about 3 dozen cakes) Banana cake!

I should say whenever I find a recipe, I ALWAYS mess about with it, usually I just find an extra spice or ingredient I think would taste nice and throw it in. So I shall write this down so I don't forget!

Banananananananana Raisin cake.

150g butter
150g golden caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
2 mashed bananananananas
200g self raising flour
60ml milk
1 handful of raisins (currants, whatever you feel like really)
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp mixed spices

I also added a little bit of chocolate slimfast and a teaspoon of honey. Admittedly unnecessary as it didn't add much to the flavour but have a go if you will!

Cook at around 160-170 for 45mins.

1.) Pop the sugar, butter and vanilla in a microwaveable bowl and melt it together.

2.) In another bowl sieve the flour, add the cinnamon and mixed spices then add the nice melty goodness you just made.

3.) Mash the banananananas and put that in the mixture along with a handful of raisins.4.) add the egg and the milk and the honey and chocolate powder if you feel like it)

(This is what it looked like for me :P)

5.) Cook it at 160-170 for 45mins and it should come out something like this:

Tasty treats!

I believe he approved :3

By the by, the cake tasted amazing with golden syrup on top. I know that is overstepping an enormous calorie boundary but it just tastes so good!.

Merci beaucoup!

xxxxx