Christmas day OOTD | Present Haul | Other Antics

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you have all had/having a lovely day. If you don't celebrate Christmas I hope you are having a great 25th of December.

OOTD

Here is what I wore for the day. After I stayed in my PJ's for opening the presents in the morning.

 Black Dress - New Look £25

Silver Bow - New Look £3

Necklace - Accessorize  - A present from my friend Helen

Present Haul

I am very grateful for all of my gift's. I feel very loved and I appreciate everyone's generosity and kindness.

 Great British Bake off Big Book of Big Baking - I have only read a few pages and some of the recipes look delicious, I can't wait to make them.

We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler - I am very excited to read this book. I have read some good reviews.

The Little Mermaid - My favourite film when I was a kid. I had it on VHS but never got it on DVD but now I do. I am very happy about it.

Hemp Hand Protecting body shop - I love this hand cream, I use it all the time as I get sore hands and can't really use any other hand cream. I think this is really great for me.

Other Antics

Our living room was such a mess after all the unwrapping of six people but that's all part of the fun! 

 Till dinner we watched films and snoozed. My brother looks so cute (he will kill me later).

My dad did 'napkin face' at dinner to much hilarity.

Dinner Time

Not a brussel sprout in site (for me). My Dad cooked us a lovely meal, we had great company, lovely conversion, if not a bit weird sometimes. That's what our family is like.

Spent the rest of the night watching Doctor Who, Miranda and Call the Midwife. We Skyed with our family that is in New Zealand. Over all it was a pretty perfect day.

I hope you all have a wonderful day. Hope to hear from you soon.

If you didn't have such a great day or if you were working as my cousin was in a hospital. You can spend time with your family or with your friends on any day and make it a special time. It doesn't matter what day it is on. 

Rachel xxx

How to Ice a Christmas Cake for Beginners

I was going to call this one 'How to Ice a Christmas Cake for people that don't know what they are doing - like me' but I decided it was too long.

I am really not a professional baker or cake decorator by any means but I do enjoy making cakes with as little hassle and frustration as possible. Here is a quick tutorial of what I did to decorate this years Christmas cake.

I started off by buying the fruit cake. I know this seems like the lazy option but realistically I thought it would be the guaranteed way that it would turn out well. In other years I have made the cake months in advance which is what you are supposed to do but I was just not organised this year. I also had to get a gluten free cake because a member of my family is allergic to gluten. I did not want to make a gluten free cake from scratch as I thought it would be a difficult thing to get right.

I got a cheap and cheerful marzipan to cover both cakes.

Then I just kneaded it for about a minute till it was soft enough to roll out. I put some icing sugar on the surface and the rolling pin so it wouldn't stick. 

 I rolled out the whole block into a circle a bit bigger than the actual cake. My home economics teacher at school taught me that if  you turn the icing/marzipan 90 degrees after every up and down roll it will be a more or less perfect circle and won't stick to the surface.

Next I melted a little bit of strawberry jam so the marzipan will stick to the cake.  I know traditionally you are supposed to use apricot jam but this was what I already had and if I bought apricot it will never get used till next year.

I melted the jam in the microwave instead of in a saucepan cause it was less washing up. I also just used the back of the spoon to spread it around the top and sides of the cake. You can use one of those pastry brushes if you want to be fancy, but I don't own one.

Putting the marzipan on if by far the hardest bit. You just need to get your whole hands and arms under it and plop it on. Sounds easy right? At the end of the day if you mess up it wont be seen under the icing.

Then I just cut of the extra and used it to cover the sides of the gluten free cake.

I left the marzipan on the cake to dry out for about a day before I started the icing. You don't really need to do this. I just thought it was easier when it was a bit harder.

For the royal icing I loosely followed a Mary Berry recipe. I used three egg whites, all the juice I could get out of this lemon and a ton of icing sugar. The recipe said 675g of icing sugar but I added a few extra spoonfuls. The recipe also says add glycerine but I left it out and it turned out fine. I think it just gives it more of a shine.

Apart from that I followed the recipe. I wanted to make sure the icing would hold it's shape so I added more icing sugar (you can't really add too much).

I spread the icing over the cake just using a butter  knife. You can use one of those big pallet knifes but I found this just as easy.

 I then used the tip of the knife to add this spiky affect and added some decorations.

 For the other cake I went with this up and down wavy pattern. I just did by dragging the knife lightly though the icing.

 I still need to find a nice board to put the cakes on but apart from that you just need to leave it to dry out for a bit then eat with mulled wine or a hot chocolate or whatever festive delight takes your fancy.

Baking and decorating doesn't always have to be really complicated as long as you are okay with cutting corners to get a similar result that no one is going to notice apart from Paul Hollywood.

Rachel xxx

1st of June-BBQ-Family-Friends-Celebrations

Hello Blogger Friends,

Quite a few weeks ago I went to my Uncles 40th Birthday BBQ celebration. I took squilions of photos and also made a short video of the day. I am really enjoying documenting my life on this blog. I have ended up treating it like a bit of a scrap book of my life that I can look back on when am old and wrinkly. I hope you are enjoying me sharing my experiences with you. I know I enjoy sharing them.

Here is the video I made. I hope to get better at editing the more I practice. 

 Defiantly not helping with my cupcake addiction!

 Please look away if you are vegetarian! 

 My 8 year old cousin who was feeling very camera shy on this day. I still managed to get a photo when she wasn't looking! Aww sweet freckly nose and long eyelashes <3

 Millions of calories! I can feel my arteries clogging up just looking at it! Still deeeelioosssuss though!

 Aww.. My mum and Dad. 

Also in true British fashion it had to rain at some point.

 Still find this hilarious! Let me know if you understand why this is funny.

This is what I looked like on the day.

OOTD

David Bowie Tee-shirt - Primark

Pink giraffe print jeans -H&M

Shoes- River island

Camera- Canon EOS 1100D

Thanks for reading my post! What was your favourite photo? What is your favourite thing about summer?

xxx

Murder-Mystery-Mischief

Hello Blogger Friends,

Sooooorrrrrrreeeeeee that I have been away from blogging for a super long time (five days to be exact but that is still a long time in internet land). Anyways, I have been really busy and stressed out with work stuff but I don't have that job any more which is a story for another day. At least it gives me more time to do what I actually love doing which is talking to you lovely people! 

Side note- I don't think I can do the 30 Day Snap any more because I am so far behind. I am hoping to post everyday though which is exciting and scary for me.

Now that's out of the way onto the actual post. Even though I have been so busy I still had time to go to my friends birthday party. I have mentioned my friend Lydia in my previous post and now she has her own blog! You can have a look at it 'HERE'. It was a Murder Misery theme which if you know how much I am in love with Sherlock then you will understand how much this excited me. Basically what happened was we were having a yummy meal when we were been informed of the 'Murder'. We had to guess which one of us at the table had done it. It was good fun giggling at our stupid names and most of our pathetic attempts at acting. After all the fun we had a little party and got up to our usual mischief and obviously I took squilions of photographs!

I have become a little bit obsessed with cupcake and these were deeelissssioous! Made by Lydia and her family.

My character was supposed to be a 1950's movie star. Still not sure if I pulled off that look? What do you think?

Obviously it wouldn't be a Birthday Party without awkwardly opening your presents in front of everyone!

Get it!? It took me a while to decipher these puns...

Why do I have such weird friends? Only joking! Never a dull moment with this lot!

This the present the group gave Lydia. It reminds me of a fairy tale necklace.

The crew! Still not quite all of us are in this.

Please don't look at my neck for too long! It gets disturbing...

 Selfieception.

Thanks for reading this super long post! I actually think it is the longest post I have ever done. 

What have you beautiful people been doing since I've been away from the internet? Miss all you lovely people in the comments!

Rach xx