First Saturday Off In A Year

My day job rota has changed so instead of working Fridays and Saturdays, I am now working Mondays and Fridays. I'm so happy. Every craft fair and art exhibition in my local area seems to be on a Saturday and, as terrifying as it is to think of exhibiting/selling my stuff in public again, I know it's something I really need to push myself to do. Having Saturdays off could really open up so many opportunities for me.

For my first Saturday off (other than annual leave) in a year, however, I decided not to do any work whatsoever and take the day off to celebrate! 

Top: Restyle.pl

Jacket: h&m (+ Vastum patch)

Shoes: Primark

We had lunch at one of our favourite places. It's closed on Sundays so Tim and I haven't actually been there for about a year. We're usually the only people there who aren't pensioners (pensioners have good taste in food and coffee. What can I say?), but I think there were a couple of other "young" people there on Saturday too, haha.

I finally had a chance to have a proper listen to the metal mix tape my friend made me. Really digging the Agalloch tracks and Chelsea Wolfe who I've never really listened to before. We've got so many metal gigs coming up (including two next week we've already got tickets for) we both want to go to our wallets will probably be suffering by the end of the year.

At night, Tim and I made veggie sushi based on this recipe. It's the first time I've made anything like it and the first time I've ever ventured into a Chinese supermarket either. It was definitely worthwhile though. The rolls were delicious and the sauce totally made the meal.

I'm not actually a vegan though so next on the agenda is probably to look up some recipes for sushi involving (cooked!) fish.

Pink & Yellow

Why is it that life always seems to fall into patterns of colour. For instance, all my recent photos seem to be pink and yellow. Anyway, here's a wee rundown of recent fun:

Oi look, I've a beetle in my ear! ... It's a beetle earring I got from New Look last halloween. 

Hawkwind's 'Electric Tepee' has been in my CD player a lot recently.

Outfit shots in the mirror. Why do I do this when my clothes are all black and look the same? I don't know...

A new recipe I tried out. Pizza with sweet potato sauce, topped with cavolo nero cabbage, goats cheese, walnuts and parmesan. A really strange combination, but it tasted totally amazing. Check out the recipe I used here.

Tim and me, trying to take a nice photo outside to send to his grandma in Australia. You can't really see it, but he's wearing the black shirt with rainbow skulls I bought him (I love that shirt!)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

I made a chocolate chip cookie cake yesterday following this recipe from Love, Life and Sugar. Again, I was working with what I could find in the cupboard so it wasn't as chocolatey as it should have been since I didn't have many chocolate chips in the house. Despite that, it was still really tasty and was an exact mix of cookie and cake! Exactly what you want from a chocolate chip cookie cake, really...

Furry Scarf & Chocolate Pancakes

It's official: Special Effects hair dye in Atomic Pink does not fade. It's amazing. I haven't had to dye it since October. This is definitely the dye to have if you're lazy like me. Not only that, but the colour's really nice too (I mixed it with a lot of conditioner and a bit of purple dye to). 

Speaking of pink things, I treated myself to this pink leopard print furry scarf from River Island. Other than some CDs I ordered from amazon, it was my first "treat" to myself after getting a steady part-time job (meaning I can justify spending money on myself now and then now as long as I don't overdo it) so I guess that makes it kind of special. It's a little bit tacky and OTT, but that's no bad thing, I say.

And I felt sorry for my husband last Sunday since he was working from early in the morning to ten at night so I thought it would be nice to make something to surprise him when he got home. I didn't really fancy going outside in the bad weather so I had the challenge of making something out of what we had in the cupboards which ended up being chocolate pancakes: ordinary pancakes/crepes mixed with some cocoa powder. I also made some chocolate syrup for drizzling, out of melted butter, golden syrup and cocoa powder and made some cream for them by mixing brown sugar into sour cream. The verdict was: they were a success!

Chai Tea Cupcakes

I decided to make some chai tea cupcakes. I adapted a recipe for Earl Grey tea cupcakes (you can see the London Fog cupcakes I made using the same recipe here). The truth is that I wanted to use up this pack of Chai Tea teabags. I found that, in a tea, the teabags smell very much like lovely chai tea. However, the taste isn't the same - it seems to be all in the smell. So! The perfect solution: use them in baking! I think it worked pretty well. They sort of tasted like gingerbread, but gingerbread's tasty so it's all good, yeah?

Next time I'm going to try it with loose leaf tea and see how that goes. I already have a tin of amazing Yogi Yogi Chai from Tchai-Ovna, a local tea house here. I might try it with that!

This time I opted to skip the icing and sprinkled glitter straight onto the cakes when they were still hot so it stuck. You can use icing if you want though. Vanilla buttercream icing goes with everything.

Baked Camembert

My brother-in-law showed me how to make this really easy starter the other day so I decided to try it out at home. Yay!

1. Take the lid off a box of camembert and cut little 'X's over the surface with a knife ♥ 2. Slice up a clove of garlic and stick the slices into the crosses. Stick in some sprigs of thyme if you have some (we didn't, as you can see...) ♥ 3. Pour a little white wine over the surface (water will also do) ♥ 4. Bake in the oven at 200C for about 15-20 minutes or until the inside is melted ♥ 5. Serve with crusty bread or vegetables for dipping

Valentines Day

Last year for valentines day I made my husband (then just my boyfriend) a heart shaped box full of Earl Grey tea cupcakes. This year, I managed to find a heart-shaped cake tin just in time to make a cake for our first valentines day together as a married couple. It was a chocolate fudge cake and, yes, our initials are indeed 'T' and 'A' which is kind of awesome!

I made some heart bunting too because I had about ten seconds free time and thought it would be cute (I think this is what having pinterest does to you).

It seemed pointless to try to go to a restaurant for dinner since everywhere would most likely be fully booked. Instead, we walked to our usual coffee shop in town which was happily nice and empty. I even decided to dress up a little (I don't need much of an excuse really). I'm wearing the cross pendant my friend Ruth made for us as a wedding present. My husband has a matching one too.

We got a free valentines cake slice thingy with little hearts on it from the cafe. They were handing them out all day to customers. How cute it that?

Lavender Cake Pops

Here's my attempt at making lavender cake pops. I've given up on using the sticks lately so I guess these aren't technically cake pops, I guess. More like cake... "fancies"? Hmm, I'll have to work on this idea some more. Anyway, I used my cake pop machine for this (like a toastie maker but it bakes little round cakes instead!) and the recipe for vanilla cake pops that came with the machine. I just substituted the vanilla extract with lavender extract and added a little red and blue food colouring to make it purple. It turned out a bit more grey instead, but you get the idea.

The Best Pizza In The World

Ok, it's not really the best pizza in the world, but it is our favouite pizza to make at home. My husband or I make the base following Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's "magic bread dough" recipe. You make it up, divide into batches and freeze it so you can have it whenever you fancy. The toppings are just courgettes, green peppers, ricotta and cheddar. If you think that all sounds pretty ordinary, it's only because you haven't tasted it yet, my friend....

Yup...

Recent Instagram Photos

I thought I might share some recent instagram photos this time with some little numbered description below. I  tried to filter out most of the photos of food I've been taking lately so it's a bit less... um... 'foody'? Incidently, I'm @xenocblood on instagram if you want to follow me and see all my uninteresting photos of make-up, cups of coffee and general goth housewife things.

1. Trying out some red/purple eyebrows for a change. 2. The first dinner I made in the flat and it wasn't a disaster! Jacket sweet potato with tuna, onion and chili. I'm never having normal, non-sweet potato jacket potatoes again. 3. Loving the Christmas coffee menu in Costa this year. My favourite is a honeycomb hot chocolate and this picture is of a black forest gateaux hot chocolate. Not my 'cup of tea', but it looks awesome. 4. 'Made' some peanut butter by flinging some roasted peanuts in the food processor. Got some monkey nuts now to crack and try making some more with. 5. The dark chocolate peanut butter balls I made with the pb. Not great looking and tasted pretty bitter compared to normal, but I kinda liked it! 6. Re-dyed my hair for my first time in the flat the other day. Happily the bath didn't get dyed purple as well so that's a relief.

Wedding Colours, Flowers & Red Velvet Cupcakes

Choosing a colour scheme for our wedding has been something I've really enjoyed recently. I can't say it's been too difficult though. The choice was an obvious and instinctive one so it's not as though I've had to spend hours deciding between different options. At least I haven't had to worry about the whole Should we go for lemon bridesmaids' dresses with orange and silver accents or fresh greens and whites??! thing, not being into those happy colours!

It's not that I'm not fussy about colours though. Heavy contrasting black and white makes me feel uncomfortable and reminds me too much of Tim Burton films. Pillar box red has always been a big no-no for me as well: way too cheerful. I'm the same way with home decor as well, I guess.

Anyway, here are the results of messing about with colour palettes in colourlovers. I found it pretty helpful.

Right from the start, muted reds and purples stuck out to me as a classy colourscheme and a great way to be colourful without being light and bright. That way you can have black, bruise and aubergine with deep wines and plums and rich, dark reds.

When we went to the florist the other day, I mentioned this to her. She was fantastic and knew exactly what I meant. I brought along samples of my groom's tartan and and pictures of the bridesmaids' dresses (cream with black lace!) and she set about making samples up.

She said she would give me a list of all the flowers she used because I can't remember them all and I thought it would be useful in case someone asks. There's definitely one type of calla lily in there, tea leaves (she sprays the leaves and it makes them look like shiny, black pvc! It's awesome) and freedom roses. There'll be black baccara roses as well, but they're not in the picture.

Since I'll be in a black dress, you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd be having a black, red or purple cake. It's being made my future mother-in-law who's a great cake-maker and it's actually going to white (something has to be, don't you think?!) and heart-shaped... Also it's not fruit cake because fruit cake is yucky. It's three tiers so we're going for lovely rich chocolate on the bottom, vanilla sponge on top and red velvet in the middle. Now I know that red velvet is a bit of a gimmick and also hopelessly trendy at the moment (it could be worse: it could be ombre...), but you have to admit there's something pretty awesome about a bright red cake that tastes like a lighter, fluffier chocolate cake. You know there is.

Anyway, before we decided on it, I had a go making some red velvet cupcakes myself to see if everyone else liked the taste. I loved adding all the colouring because it looked like bloooooooood.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed this needlessly long and detailed post about my approaching wedding (three weeks left? When did that happen?! Arggh!). I really hope it's not just me that finds this nonsense interesting! I love reading about other people's weddings though, don't you?

Baking Successes & Baking Disasters

I'm not very good at wife skills. The important things like cooking and cleaning aren't going to come to me easily when I'm married, I don't think. We'll I do do a lot of cooking, but it's usually with my fiance rather than on my own and I never think of that as cooking - it's too much fun. Anyway, one thing I can do is bake.  So I decided to do some batch-baking to make the cupboards in the flat look a little less bare.

I made chai tea cupcakes by using a recipe for earl grey tea cupcakes and substituting  the earl grey teabags with Yogi Yogi Chai tea from the amazing Tchai Ovna tea house in Glasgow. Their specialty chai tea is to die for and you can get it from their website.

Brewing the tea with the milk. To make the tea you normally need tonnes of brown sugar to make all the spices palatable, but the sweetness of the cupcake mixture means you don't need any extra sugar in the milk.

And here are the ridiculously spicy cupcakes. I was following the recipe absent mindedly and put vanilla extract in without thinking. I wish I hadn't because I think that masked the taste of the chai a bit.

Chai tea icing too. I never thought spicy icing would work but it does.

And glitter is mandatory.

Some cinnamon cookies I found a recipe for in an old cook book.

I wish I had made more now...

This batch of cookies didn't come out so well as you might be able to tell, haha. Before I put them in the oven, they were the exact colour, look and consistency of what people around here call "jobbies". Look that one up if you have to. The recipe was for a chocolate biscuit called 'Midnight Cookies'. Hmm...

Actually they didn't turn out too awful considering the dog poo like baking mixture they came from. I covered them in black and blue sparkles and ta-da! They look ok, although I definitely went wrong with the recipe because...

The unfortunate side-effect is that they turn your lips and teeth black. And not just for a few seconds until you wipe it off either. It lasts pretty much until your next meal... so that went down well with all the workmen at the flat that week, I'm sure (I'm too scared to ask!).

Well, I figure it would be a good party gag maybe, like something you'd bake for a halloween party perhaps...