Lightening Bolt

So we had a storm here the other night, and a massive lightening bolt hit a house round the corner from us, making a gaping hole in their roof & frazzling our internet. Although I'm glad we only got the second part of that deal, it does mean that I haven't written on here for a while.

I actually have a few crafty things to pop up on here as well but I haven't got any pictures yet so I'll save them for a later date, but I did go into a baking frenzy the other day before Josh left for snowboarding, so I'll post half the results today and half when I get a chance (if they haven't been eaten!).

Apple & Cinnamon Cupcakes

I made up a cake mixture using the usual 6, 6, 6, 3 method (I'll explain below), and used half to make these apple and cinnamon beauties, and half to make lemon meringue cupcakes. The lemon meringues don't look quite so good, but they taste divine. For this recipe, I've just written it out as if you were making a whole batch just of the apple and cinnamons.

Ingredients (makes 12)

6oz caster sugar

6oz butter

6oz self raising flour

3 eggs

300 ml apple sauce

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp mixed spice

For the icing:

Icing sugar

Butter

More cinnamon

Method

1. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 5. Cream the sugar and butter together until soft and fluffy, then gradually add the eggs, mixing well

2. Pour in the flour slowly, continuously mixing

3. Add the cinnamon, mixed spices and apple sauce

4. Spoon the mixture into cake cakes and bake at the top of the oven for 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

5. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

6. Meanwhile, make the icing. I played by ear to make mine, using roughly 3oz butter and adding icing sugar until it was the desired thickness. Add a generous helping of cinnamon.

7. Transfer the icing to a piping bag, pipe the icing onto cakes and top with sprinkled cinnamon (I also added glitter sugar because I like sparkly things)

And there we have it, another very easy cupcake :)

As I mentioned, Josh is away at the moment and he doesn't get back until after I've left for India (9th Feb aaahhhh!), so I won't be seeing him for 6 weeks. I've decided to make and eat as many yummy, sparkly things as possible in the next week and a bit, in the hope that it will take my mind off it, and I'll have hopefully worn them off by the time I see him!

And in the meantime, as long as we don't get any more lightening bolts I'll be back on here again soon! Have a lovely rest of your Tuesday

Amy x

Imagination

'A culture populated by a people whose imagination is impoverished has a static future’

- Elliot Eisner

I'm writing a drama assignment at the moment, and I decided to start it off with this quote, it makes me feel a bit like Martin Luther King when I read it aloud, I feel pretty inspirational haha. Anyway, enjoy it

Amy x

tropical pigs

Look what my boy made!

He saw this design which he has dubbed 'tropical pigs' in a shop in the Brighton lanes, so I got him the tea towel for Christmas, in the hope that we could make it into a cushion. And that's exactly what we did last night. Josh is becoming quite a dab hand on the sewing machine now, and even did a bit of hand sewing too :) I feel like a proud mother!

Anyway that's all I've got time for today because assignments call, I'll write soon

Amy x

Lydia

My little sister Lydia is a big inspiration to me, which is why today's post is dedicated to her. Seeing as we live together and therefore see each other every day, we have our fair share of arguments, but at the same time she knows exactly how to win me over again, we are two peas in a pod.

And we've been through everything together, the childhood stage...

The myspace stage...

From family holidays...

To our first girlie holiday...

And our first super spicy chillies...

She is one of the loveliest people in the whole world, not to mention one of the battiest whose favourite word at the age of 13 was 'promiscuous', despite not knowing what it meant! And she's one of the best people to talk to as well, for instance the other day we were pondering whether anyone can sound good with the surname 'poo' - we concluded that they can't.

She has coined phrases such as 'do proceed', 'release the hounds' and 'what the hell', she will go mental if her carpet gets scuffed the wrong way or if you mess up the tassels on her rug, and her hair was once sneezed on my a French man with well-endowed mucus production glands (bit of trivia). Anyway the moral of what I'm trying to say is, she is lovely, funny, ridiculously beautiful, and I am so proud of her and I love her to bits :)

And that's all I've got to say for today!

Amy x

Big year

The problem with not posting for a while is that although there are no posts, things are still happening, so the news piles up until you have so much to tell but not enough space to fit it all in. So I have a lot of news.

Firstly, I am engaged :) Josh proposed on 2nd December after a lovely picnic, and I obviously said yes, so we're now frantically trying to organise a July wedding and realising what a lot of work that entails! Secondly, my sister passed her driving test, we had Christmas, welcomed a new year, celebrated my Mum's birthday, and made I my very first Christmas cake! It's been a big year, and 2012 will be an even bigger one.

Everyone has their Christmas traditions, passed down through the family, which we relish in repeating year on year. For me it's the Christmas cd that Dad bought years ago, which still fails to be beaten and is on constant repeat from 1st December; it's decorating the tree with my mum and sister, dancing like loons to 'In dulce jubilo'; the amazing Christmas dinner; the rushing around to visit all the families; the mandarin cheesecake my Grandma always puts out for me. I hate change, and I love tradition.

Which is why it's surprising that I'm really excited about next Christmas - it's going to be a big change after all. It will be the first Christmas for me and Josh as a married couple, in our own house, with our own tree and own decorations. And yet I can't wait! Whilst I'm excited to share some of our old traditions, I'm also looking forward to creating some new ones of our own. Like a yearly gingerbread house, and handmade decorations which we've been making and collecting over the past few years. Just for a start anyway :)

So this year when my Grandma offered me a Delia Smith Christmas cake making set, I jumped at the chance. Not because I like Christmas cake, in fact I completely detest it, but it's another tradition which I'd like to say I've tried (although not kept!).

And I'm not going to lie, it resembled some sort of bodily excretion or 'vomit' as Lydia put it, before it went into the oven. Which didn't do anything to help endear it to me. And I wish I could saying that tasting it turned my life around and changed my whole thinking about Christmas cake, but to be honest it didn't taste much better than it looked before it was cooked. But the icing looked pretty, and at least I can say I've done it now.

Ignore the wobbly marzipan and icing, they're much thinner towards the middle, plus it's my first time doing anything like that so it was never going to be perfect!

So there we have it, my first and probably last Christmas cake. Check.

Happy new year,

Amy x