Fangirl away!

K, I don't know why I'm about to post this as it's actually kindof embarrassing however I believe I am not the only one who holds this view. I went online beforehand guys, I checked!

Anyone ever played Dragon Age: Origins?
(Slight spoiler coming up so don't look if you're playing it!)

Answer No: I thoroughly recommend this bit of sexiness to you.
Answer Yes: Well done! I salute you!

Anyone ever played through the Romance with Alistair?

Yes? That's encouraging!

Anyone get slightly too involved in the story and had to stop playing if/when Alistair becomes king and leaves your sorry ass?

....

Really?......Just me then?.....




*tumbleweed*




......*cough*


You know what the weird bit is? 

"Yes Apple, we do, you got friendzoned by the AI on an RPG and you're dork enough to get sad about it"

Hush up guys, that's not what I meant.

I meant that I never really get too invested in anything fictional. Somehow while everyone else is sitting there getting their Kleenex all boogery, I'm there totally blank facing the whole scene. Like, seriously, nothing up until now has done it.

Bambis mom dies? Obviously sad but no tears.

The beautiful love story that is "Ghost"? Love it, but nope, not a single tear was shed that day.

Ol' Jack and Rose on the Titanic? Hey! I musta drank a whole bottle of Johnson and Johnson cos we got no more tears here!

Even love scenes have an amazing power to make me feel super uncomfortable. Whenever I'm watching a movie with people and 2 characters that have been crushing hard on each other FINALLY get it on and everyone is all like "Awwww, how sweet!" I just can't quite look. Nothing at all against the act itself, or the characters, they should get along with their business and it IS cute but I feel almost....guilty for watching it. Like any minute they're going to look directly at the camera and shout "OH MY LIFE! WHY ARE YOU WATCHING US YOU FILTHY LITTLE WOMAN, YOU! AVERT YOUR EYES AND REMOVE YOURSELF FROM OUR PRIVATE MOMENT LEST I TELEPHONE THE AUTHORITIES AND HAVE YOU PUT AWAY!"

Anyway, that aside. I thought I would just share a bit of awkard, dorky love for this game and its beautiful characters:

*SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE <3*

Peace out
xxxx

The Dexter baking day!

Many people will know the joys of that wonderful show: Dexter. This series is based around one Dexter Morgan, who works for Miami metro police with his sister Debra, despite being a serial killer. (Don't worry he only kills bad guys.) 

 I haven't actually known about this show for too long, but as soon as I did I spent my TV time every evening watching it. As my chum Kiran also loves this show (and we always end up talking about it whenever we see each other) we decided to have a Dexter themed baking day :D 
 I will just say here that there are potential spoilers down below as one of the ideas displays some of the people that Dexter ends up whacking so unless you're up to season 7 I would recommend you go ahead and skip this post ;D 

First of all: Dexters blood slide traybake.

In all honesty, for this one, I like the idea more than the result. I think there would be a better way to perfect this, but it'd require more thinking....

Jamie said they looked like little Japan flags :P

For the 1st time I have EVER used rolled icing I think we did a decent enough job. We didn't totally smoosh it!

Next up we have: Gingerbread victims.

Now these I liked, we painted their faces using chopsticks and coloured fondant icing (we had no access to piped icing :P) and this turned out pretty well.

We put strawberry ice cream sauce on the spot where Dexter usually stabs his victims and then wrapped them in Cling film. We also put a little red slice on their faces where he takes the drop of blood for his slides.

And last but not least: Cupcake bodybags.

We just made cupcakes, dipped them in chocolate and sprinkles coconut over them :)

I would put up the recipe for the cake but it was absolutely ghastly. I just pulled a quickie recipe off of the internet and it tasted vile. Next time we experiment something like this I shall endeavor to find a decent recipe first!

And there we are :)

Just wish we didn't have to wait so long for season 8 to come out!

xxxxx

Cooking with Mama :)

Buongiorno!

So as both my Mama and myself have the baking bug, we decided to learn and bake together! This was our first baking day and we decided on making 2 cakes, both taken from the BBC good food website. We made Super chocolatey brownies and Dorset apple cake.

Both turned out truly amazing. Although a word of caution about the brownies: 1.) They are practically 1 million percent chocolate 2.) Once you have had 1, you will ALWAYS want more.

We will start, as we did, with the Super chocolatey brownies!

Ingredients.
+ 185g unsalted butter
+ 185g best dark chocolate
+ 85g plain flour
+ 40g cocoa powder
+ 50g white chocolate
+ 50g milk chocolate
+ 3 large eggs
+ 275g golden caster sugar


This recipe does get super involved but the end result is entirely worth it. I am also proud to say that we didn't stray (much) from the recipe on this one!

I have included the links to both cakes and where to find them on the good food website but I shall include the method and some pictures here so you guys know exactly what these steps should look like. :)

+ So first you gotta chop the 185g of chocolate and the butter into cubes and melt them together like so:

Also I know there's a lot of white choc there too, we didn't have enough dark so we improvised.

+ While that chocolatey goodness is cooling, sieve out the flour and the cocoa into a bowl:

+ You then have to chop up the rest of the chocolate into squares and put that to 1 side. Then you have to put the eggs and the caster sugar in a bowl and blend it super hard until you get this light frothy egg mousse thing. Just follow Orlando Murrans original recipe in the link, he is very descriptive. 

+ You then fold the cooled chocolate into the egg mousse shizzle, and fold it all together. Then sieve the floury cocoa over that and fold that up too. Put it in a baking tin and bake it on 180 (normal) for 25 minutes until the middle bit doesn't jiggle when you take it out and wibble it. That's right I said wibble it, you take it out when it looks done and shake it like a polaroid picture capiche?

Once it stops shaking its wibbly sections, let it cool and then you'll have one hell of a batch of brownies <3

NEXT:

The Dorset Apple cake by Lesley Waters
Taken from the BBC Good food website.

+ 450g cooking apples (such as Bramley)
+ juice of ½ lemon
+ 225g butter , softened
+ 280g golden caster sugar
+ 4 eggs
+ 2 tsp vanilla extract
+ 350g self-raising flour
+ 2 tsp baking powder
+ demerara sugar to sprinkle
This cake was MUCH simpler than the brownies and was ready a lot quicker.

+ First of all, chop up all the apples into slices and squeeze the lemon juice over the top of that. Pop it to 1 side.

+ Mama demonstrating le skills ;D

+ Get all the other ingredients, and blend em.
+ Smooth 1 layer out in the baking tin.
+ Line with half the apples and then pour the rest of the mixture over it.
+ Sprinkle demerara sugar over the lot of it.
+ Bake it at 160 (normal) for 45 mins.

Enjoy ;D

xxxxxxx

Valentines durrrrr

You know what's been stuck in my head all day?

That old song, "someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, someone's in the kitchen I kno-o-o-ow"

I always wondered who it was who was in the kitchen with Dinah and if she were aware they were there. Or if the person with her was a ninja or a sniper or something.

I guess actually being in the kitchen would be pretty close range for a sniper. Unless Dinah had a REALLY long kitchen....

She would also have to be some sortof Crime lord or a person of interest for someone to want to put out a hit on her, which is unlikely although a lot of old nursery rhymes have scary themes about them...

....sniping a mafia boss probably isn't one of them though, right? I've probably just been watching Jimbo play metal gear too much.

Anyway moving swiftly on to cakes!

Jimbo and myself decided not to go all out this Valentines day as we are saving for a holiday! So he cooked me one of my favourite dinners (Spaghetti Carbonara) and I thought I'd make use of my new silicone heart mould and make some tasty treats for him.

This recipe was actually a total accident. See, we love the cookie recipe from budgetgourmetmom so much that I was going to make it again, except I kinda screwed it up a little.

So, here we have "Heart cake-ies"

Ooooft they were some tasty little muffinthings!

Which were made entirely by accident >.<

See, Y'know that super tasty cookie recipe I posted last time? That was actually what I was going for this time. Except I slightly bodged the recipe.

I am still trying to train myself out of throwing in all the ingredients in willy-nilly as the recipe is put in order for a reason. If you don't follow the steps correctly then things don't react with each other as they should, consistencies get all bloopy when they should be smooth. Sometimes it's salvageable and sometimes it's not.

Sometimes you end up with something totally different from what you were trying to make :D

This is the modified recipe I used to make the cake-ies:

+ 1 1/4 cup butter, melted

+ 1 cup granulated sugar

+ 1 cup brown sugar (I used dark)

+ 2 large eggs

+ 2 teaspoons vanilla

+ 1 teaspoon baking soda

+ 1 teaspoon salt

+ 2 - 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour+ 1/3 cup self raising flour
+ 2 bars of milk choc (200g in total)
The method was also slightly different, I followed the 1st steps of the cookie recipe where you melt the butter, put it in with the granulated and brown sugar. However THEN, while the butter is still hot. Take about 50g of chocolate, chop it up into fairly small chunks, give it a minute or so and THEN mix the butter and sugar together. What you should be watching for is the chocolate melting with the heat of the butter. This actually cancelled out the need to add any cocoa powder. SUPER tasty.

Continue the recipe as normal UNTIL you start adding flour. When you're ready to add flour, measure out about 1/3 of a cup of self-raising and add that in first. Then continue adding the plain flour as you would have with the cookie recipe. When I was baking, I was also watching adventure time and so I accidentally picked up the wrong flour >.< 

You end up with pretty much the same consistency mixture, and for the 1st batch, just for jokes I used my new silicone heart mould :D I also baked the cakes for a few minutes less than the cookies, just to watch them. I think I started with 9-10 minutes but they actually needed more like 14-15. I don't know what kind of oven y'all have so always check at the 10 minute mark to make sure it's cooking right! Same temp as the cookie recipe ;D

Happy Valentines!

B'awwwwmovingon.....

xxxxxx

Triple chocolate cookies (Y)

Ever get that moment of fear where you look at the calendar and see 3 leaving do's and 2 birthdays in the 1 week?

Then the extra terror when you know you; a.) can't go to all of them b.) really have not got the dolla to buy everyone the gift you know they deserve?

*waves*

Yep! That was what happened to me this week! I felt so bad, there was just no way we could work that amount of parties into our, already hectic, schedule and fo sheezay no way we could afford to eat out that much. But I felt so bad telling them we couldn't come, especially as so many of them are moving away so I don't know when I'd really see them again! As luck would have it, I had just bought all of that lovely sugar on my last shopping trip, so now it was just down to finding a recipe...

Let me just say 1 thing: "Thank God for Pinterest"

I managed to locate this gorgeous recipe for Triple chocolate cookies.

The recipe below is adapted from the budgetgourmetmom.com link above (Y)

Triple chocolate cookies <3

They were seriously good, they cake out as almost cake/cookie hybrids. If you've ever tried lebkuchen, I guess in some ways it was a similar texture in the middle. Cake-ies!

Ingredients+ 1 1/4 cup butter, melted+ 1 cup granulated sugar+ 1 cup brown sugar (I used dark)+ 2 large eggs+ 2 teaspoons vanilla+ 1 teaspoon baking soda+ 1 teaspoon salt+ 3/4 cup cocoa (I used chocolate slimfast...it was all I had!)+ 2 - 3 cups all purpose flour
+ 1 medium bar of milk chocolate*
+ 1 medium bar of white chocolate*
+ 1 medium bar of dark chocolate*

* In all honesty, you can freestyle the chocolate a fair amount. I made the first batch with about 2 lines of a big bar of each but the second I made with 4 lines and it turned out just as good. (If not better, in my opinion extra chocolate is ALWAYS better.)

Method:+ Preheat oven to 160°-170° 
+ Measure out the butter and pop it in the microwave just long enough for it to melt, which was around 12 seconds for me. Put it in a mixing bowl with the granulated and brown sugar and stir until blended.+ Add in the eggs and vanilla. Then beat until smooth.+ Stir in the baking soda, salt, and cocoa/slimfast/hot chocolate powder. Add the flour 1/2 a cup at a time and mix it in until the dough is no longer sticky.+ Chop up the chocolate into small-ish chunks and fold it into the mixture.+ Place tablespoon size balls onto a baking sheet, 2 inches apart then bake for 12 minutes.
amnamnamnmanam.

Batch 1 made around 24 cookies, which I wrapped first in baking paper and then in some ice cream fabric which I had in my craft box :) I cut small lines of yellow material off of another stray fabric I had in the box and used them as ribbons to tie the ends. Cookie bon-bons! There is a picture of it up top. I handed them out and everyone loved them. I've been asked to make more! I'm so happy they liked their gifts and I wish them lots of love in their new homes <3

Happy baking!
xxxxx

Jamie's mamas apple cake :)

This cake is just a little bit beautiful <3

So beautiful that we have called her at least 10 times for the recipe....

...I totally need a binder for my recipes, that's next on my bake-related "to-do" list.

Anyway, here it is:

Fresh outta the oven (Y)

Ingredients
+ 115g self raising flour

+ 85g butter/margarine

+ 85g sugar + 1/3 cup extra
+ 2 tsp cinnamon

+ 1 egg

+ 2 cooking apples
+ 1 tsp milk
+ 1 tsp vanilla

Method:
+ Preheat your oven to Gas mark 4/5 (180 - 190c)
+ First, core and peel both apples. Chop the apples into relatively thick slices and spread them, as evenly as possible, at the bottom of a glass dish.
+ Measure out 1/3 of a cup of sugar and add 2 tsp of cinnamon. Mix them together until the sugar turns brown and sprinkle this over the apples.

+ In a separate bowl, cream the margarine, sugar and vanilla essence.

+ In a cup, mix an egg with a small splash of milk, then add that to the mixing bowl.

+ Slowly add the flour, always continuing to stir everything together until completely mixed.
+ Pop it in the oven for anywhere between 30 and 40 mins. When I made this, I only left it around 32 and it was completely done, so I recommend testing it at the 30 minute mark.

Chicka chicka yeah ;D

After a long day of work/cleaning/studying I had the best evening eating this, listening to this, and playing Guardians of Middle earth (Y) Pure Badman ting (clearly.)

Happy baking! <3
xxxx

Baking boner

Ok, so I have seemingly taken my whole "occasional-cake-making-if-it's-in-the-cupboard-throw-it-in-I'm-sure-it'll-be-fine" hobby up a notch.

Well, a notch and a half really.

I am a massive fan of slapdash baking and I often find myself substituting a lot of the original recipe purely because I lack the ingredients. While this is convenient and I'm all for being experimental, I feel like on some level, I could be missing a very sexy flavour.

So I went a bit nuts when I went to do the weekly food shop....

Well hey there sweetness!

Yep, that's definitely a whole lotta sugar...
I got Plain white, Dark brown, demerera, light brown, icing sugar, regal icing and fondant icing.

I already had caster and golden caster.

If I feel especially adventurous I might get some muscavado and some Jam sugar, just to really complete the set.

And diminish my teeth.

"OHai tooth fairy, would you mind leaving me some dentures under my pillow in exchange for all these teeth? Grand, ta very much Skip!"

I also picked up a couple of interesting items, just to see how they turn out:

Apricot baking glaze and Rose water (Y) I feel some tasty cupcakes are heading this way! Plus a pretty snazzy "Bam" sticker (Thank you Pixlr)

Mmmm good ;D
xxxxx