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! :)