Viennese Whirls

Hi Guys!

So today I thought I would do a baking post for you. I first tried doing these last weekend and they turned out really well even though I didn't have the right flour. However it would be the one weekend I didn't take my camera home so I couldn't take any blog photos. Therefore I thought I would make them again this week using the correct flour. These look way harder than they actually are and will really impress people! Also it will help to improve your piping skills having to pipe both the biscuits and the icing, so get your piping bags at the ready!

This recipe is actually from the hairy bikers of all people and can be found here.

Ingredients

For the biscuits:

250g/9oz butter

50g/2oz icing sugar (and a bit to decorate if you fancy)

250g/9oz Plain Flour

50g/2oz cornflour (the first time I did this I didn't have cornflour and ran out plain flour half way through so did half plain flour and half self raising and they turned out pretty well)

½ tsp vanilla extract

For the icing:

100g/3½oz soft butter

200g/7oz icing sugar, plus ½ tsp for dusting

½ tsp pure vanilla extract

You can also use some jam in the middle, but personally I prefer them without.

Steps for Biscuits:

Step 1 

Preheat your oven to 190C/170C (fan)/Gas 5 and line 3 baking trays with greaseproof paper.

Step 2

Put all of your ingredients for the biscuits into a food processor. I personally used by KitchenAid with the paddle attachment which seemed to work fine.

Step 3

Pipe your biscuits onto the greaseproof paper using a star nozzle. Don't worry if you are not very good at piping and quality control as they will look fine once they have baked.

Step 4

Bake for 13-15 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack to cool down whilst you make the icing.

Step 5 

To make the icing, put all the ingredients into a bowl and beat until light and smooth.

Step 6

Put your icing into a piping bag and pipe onto the biscuits using a star nozzle (I lost mine so used a round nozzle instead, but it seemed to work pretty well). Then place another biscuit on top. Sieve a small amount of icing sugar on top before serving.

Hope you enjoy making them as much as I did! I should have another baking blogpost coming along soon.

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Southwold Pictures 2015!

Hi Guys!

So I promised this blogpost in my update and here it is! Every year for the last four years and several times during my childhood we have been to Southwold for our family holiday. It is a lovely seaside town in Suffolk and is small enough to walk everywhere, but big enough to have things going on. Hopefully we will go in 2016 and I will hopefully get some better shots next year (I will get better at photography!)

Any without further ado.

This is a lovely photo of the beach from the pathway which runs above it. You can even see the pier in the distance!

Not quite sure when I took this, but have a random picture of a boat!

I love this photo! Southwold has some lovely beach huts and it is lovely to stroll along the sea and see all the great names that people have picked and the designs and colours they have used.

This is a picture that I took from a little cafe place at Gun Hill. They do the most amazing ham baguette and they are fairly reasonably priced. Also it is little right next to the beach, so it's great for if you have kids. Also saw Tanya Burr's parents here on the last day! (nearest thing I have to a claim to fame)!

Another picture when strolling down the pathway next to the sea. It is so lovely to take the dog and walk down hearing the calming sound of the sea.

Some lovely flowers by the sea.

Closer view of the pier and an action shot of Poppy, my dog!

Lovely view of the beach huts from the pier.

This is the coolest clock EVER! It goes off every half an hour and has a mechanism making the people in the bath move. I remember as a child waiting with anticipation for it to go off, it was great! And it still is!

Cool shot of a seagull that I took from the pier. Love the pebbly background!

Lovely shot of Poppy at Aldeburgh. We went and sat by the sea and ate a lovely picnic.

This is a lovely shell sculpture on Aldeburgh beach, which about 7 million school children came to visit just after I took this photo! (I may have exaggerated).

One more photo of Aldeburgh as we were walking down the seafront.

I hope you enjoyed this blogpost and it cheered you up as much as it did for me when writing it.

Thanks for stopping by! :)

September/October 2015 Books

Hi Guys!

*sorry this post is a couple of days late*

Over the last few weeks I have read a lot of texts. Doing a literature degree involves studying a wide variety of texts. From poetry to plays, sonnets to short stories and of course novels. I've probably read more in the last two months than I have in the last year.

1. Kate Atkinson - Behind the Scenes at the Museum

This was the first book I read for my course. It was a very interesting read. It took me quite a long time to read as the story had lots of characters and lots of different events. I enjoyed the way that footnotes were dispersed within the narrative. The novel tells the story of Ruby Lennox from the moment of conception. The footnotes tell the story of Ruby's female ancestors, something which intrigued me.

2. Ovid - Metamorphoses & contemporary poetry

This took me AGES to read! I wouldn't say I enjoyed reading this, but I do appreciate how much Ovid has influenced literature. We had to focus on five stories and they were all fairly straight forward. The main theme is transformation and this is the main reason why Ovid is referenced in so many other pieces of literature throughout history.

The week after we studied a collection of contemporary poetry which was influenced by Ovid's work. My favourite was Mrs Midas by Caroline Duffy as it changed the perspective of Ovid's story of Midas so that the story was told from Midas' wives point of view.

3. Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey

Personally I didn't like this book. I just didn't really feel like a lot happened. She only arrives at the Abbey in volume two and the ending was really predictable. Normally if I don't like a novel, I at least appreciate what the author was trying to achieve. However with this I don't even really appreciate it.

4. Don Patterson - 101 Sonnets

These didn't take long to get through and were ok. It helped to see how the sonnet form was represented in many different ways. It helps to see how the form was deviated from.

5. Claude Mckay - America, The White House and If We Must Die

These three poems have the common theme of racial inequality. McKay manages to put a high level of emotion into his poetry and that is what makes the poems so persuasive. I don't know why but I didn't think I would like these, but they really surprised me.

6. Graham Greene - The Destructors

This short story at first perplexed me and I was really confused as to the meaning behind it. If you are going to study this I was suggest to do some research about Britain after the Second World War as I promise it will really help. Part of it reminded me of George Orwell's Animal Farm with the struggles with leadership and the way in which Trevor treats the other boys.

7. George Saunders - Tenth of December

These short stories were weird! But they were also very interesting once you understood what was actually going on. This is the most modern text I have studied so far, being published in 2013. It has the main theme of a failing America giving it a dystopian edge. It is very interesting to see his views in the form of fictional short stories. But having said that it was probably the hardest text so far in terms of not having a clue what the heck was going on!

8. Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper

I first studied this short story in second year of sixth form and it was great to be able to study it again. I really enjoyed studying it the first time, but it was great to see how my views have changed and was my reading of it is now in comparison to this time last year. It was a pleasure to complete my portfolio on this in relation to the historical context behind it.

9. Caryl Churchill - Top Girls

A found this quite hard to read due to the overlapping dialogue throughout. Therefore it is easier to watch it and I would recommend the BBC version. I enjoyed studying this much more than I enjoyed reading it. I have ended up doing a 1,000 word assignment on it, so I must have enjoyed it. Word of advice if you are studying this is to research 1980s Britain and Thatcherism whilst reading to understand the historical context.

10. Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest

I first studied this in first year of sixth form and I have to say I didn't love it. It seems that all of the books that are deemed essential to read are the ones I just don't seem to like! Studying it two years later I still don't love it. However I think I've worked out why I don't like it. It is aesthetic meaning it is made to judged on the look of it rather than the meaning behind it. One of the reason why I enjoy literature is that I love learning the meanings behind different texts. At least I feel like I have improved in the last two years. In year 12 I did a whole presentation on aestheticism and decadence and I still had no idea what the heck it was!

11. Zoe Sugg - Girl Online On Tour

Wow different background, mind blown! This is something that I have little been waiting three months for. It was really good and was a pleasant read as it was just fluffy and didn't require as much brain power as when you are studying a text. Also I listen to this on audiobook when I was walking to and from uni and on the train on Friday and it was great as I managed to fit it around studying.

12. Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo

Technically this is not a book, but I have had to study it for my course in a similar way to studying a book. I found this a little bit weird, but it was really cool to study a film as it was something I had never done before. Learning about things like the use of colour and camera angles is something that will forever be imprinted on my brain so I will probably never watch a film in the same way!

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Halloween Cupcakes

Hi Guys!

So today's post is all halloweeny (is that even a word...probably not, oh well). I basically doubled the quantity of the ordinary cupcake recipe I use to make loads of them. These would be great for if you have friends or family coming over for halloween!

Ingredients

For the cupcakes:

200g Butter
200g Caster Sugar
200g Self Raising Flour
4 Medium Eggs

Steps for Cupcakes:

Step 1:

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius (170 degrees Celsius for fan oven) and prepare your cupcake trays. This recipe makes 12 large cupcakes and 12 small cupcakes.

Step 2:

Firstly you need to cream your butter and sugar together for around 5 minutes. Doing it for this amount of time helps your cupcakes to be nice and fluffy and definitely makes a huge difference. It needs to be a light and fluffy consistency.

It needs to look something like this:

Step 3:

Then you need to gradually add your flour and eggs until throughly mixed. However don't over mix the mixture otherwise you'll end up with your cakes being too dense.

It should look something like this:

Step 4:

Spoon the mixture into your cupcake cases and bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes. If your doing different sized cupcakes like me, you will need to remove the small ones after about 10 minutes, but the bigger ones will probably need closer to 12.

Step 5:

Transfer your cupcakes to cooling racks and leave to cool whilst you make your icing.

Ingredients for the icing:

100g Butter
250g Icing Sugar
2tsp Vanilla Extract
Food Colouring (I used purple and orange, which turned out more peach but hey ho!)

You will also need a piping bag and a star nozzle

Steps For Icing:

Step 1:

Beat your butter and vanilla extract together for 5 minutes.

 Step 2:

Gradually add your icing sugar in, until it looks like this:

Step 3:

Separate your icing into two equal sized portions.

Add your food colouring (A little goes a long way!)

Step 4:

Put your icing into piping bags. If you're like me and only have one star nozzle you will need to do this one at a time.

Step 5:

Pipe you're icing onto your cakes.

Decorate with whatever you want. I went with what Tesco's promised me were fangs, but I believe these are more like an old person's dentures!

I hope you guys have fun making these!

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Living With Anxiety

Hi Guys!

I know I have already posted today, but I have been wanting to do this blogpost for a while and I thought seen as it is World Mental Health Day it was a good day to post this.

I have never been official been diagnosed with anxiety, but I'm pretty sure that I do have it.

When I was nine I started to worry about stupid things. For example saying something nasty about someone in my head. To be honest the things I worry about seem to be so small that I don't even remember what most of them are!

I personally find that my mum is the best person to go and talk to when I'm worrying. Back then I used to tell her anything I was worrying about, no matter how small. Nowadays I only really tell her the things that are really making me anxious. If I had to give anyone who has anxiety one tip it would be to talk to someone you trust. For me that person is my mum. You would not believe how much better I feel after talking things through with her. Also she does the best hugs, one of the things I miss the most as virtual hugs when at university is definitely not as good.

As I got older my worrying got slightly better or at least more manageable. I found that it would happen in blocks. So I could anything from a couple of months to about a year without worrying. Then all of a sudden I would just feel so anxious and worry loads for a few weeks. It felt like when you haven't seen a friend for a while and when you finally see them all they want to do is talk to you. Now that I am older and have more responsibility I find that my worry periods have become more frequent and, although I still worry about simple, irrational things, they tend to be harder to get off my mind.

When I was 14 I was sick in my maths lesson and that really set my anxiety off. I found that I couldn't go to school and I had a lot more of the physical symptoms of anxiety. I would wake up in the morning and even before I left for school I had stomach ache and felt sick which didn't exactly make me want to endure a day of school. Slowly that has got better and now it's only on the days when my school/uni routine is different do I feel this way.

I have always had more psychological symptoms rather than physical ones. It tend to have this sense of dread and anxiousness. At the moment it is fairly constant and the time when I don't feel anxious is rare. I think the worst thing about anxiety is when I can't work out what I am worrying about. It makes me feel quite down and my mind is constantly racing to find out what it is, which doesn't make me feel any better.

Moving to uni has really intensified my anxiety. I find that now I am worrying about the most irrational things mostly to do with fire safety. I will talk about this more when I write about my first month at university, but I will say that it is making my uni experience a lot less enjoyable as I feel constantly on edge. This makes it harder to get into uni life and homesickness doesn't help!

So there is how I find my life living with anxiety.

Please leave any tips or comments below!

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Update

Hi Guys,

Firstly I should probably say sorry for my appalling absence, can't believe how long its been!

I thought I should probably update you.

Well, when I stopped in March it was because I had started to revise for my A-levels. I finished sixth form in May and then came the long summer waiting for my results to see whether I'd got into uni.

I had a fairly fun summer, going to the seaside with some friends (believe me, it's a great achievement for me!) Also I went on holiday to Southwold (post with pics should be up soon, hopefully).

Then came the tedious search for a job for the summer, which believe me it's harder than you would think! Finally after several applications, I got a job at Travelodge as a Hotel Room Cleaner (I know, glamorous). I have to say it was probably the hardest seven weeks of my life. My whole body ached when I got home at night! However I am glad I did it, as it allowed me to gain some experience within a working environment. Also it helped me gain in confidence having to speak to lots of people, even though I wasn't very good. I feel it prepared me slightly for uni.

I got my A-level results on 13th August. I don't think I have ever been so scared as when I logged into UCAS that morning. However finding out I got into my firm choice to study English Literature was probably the most excited I have ever been. My results were B in English Literature, C in Psychology, D in History and a D in General Studies. It was slightly disappointing that I got a U in my final history exam. I kind of expected to get a D overall and I got an A in my coursework, which I am so pleased with as it was such hard work!

I really enjoyed getting prepared for uni with my mum. I have been here for 4 weeks now and I can honestly say they have been the longest 4 weeks of my entire life! I will have a blogpost of how the first month has been soon.

Finally at the end of the month my little nephew, George, was born! He is so gorgeous and I miss him loads!

Thanks for stopping by! :)