New Recipes: Bake off final buddies!

My friend Michelle (Mish) and I have been saying for a little while that we should have a baking session. And last Sunday we finally got round to baking! We are both fans of bake off and in the final Tamal did an amazing sticky toffee pudding cake. As that is one of my favourite desserts, we just had to give it a try.

I hadn't cooked with Mish before and it was great fun. We made a great team, from getting the ingredients, to dividing up what we had to do, it just worked like clockwork.

The recipe wasn't that complicated which was surprising as I thought because it was in the bake off final it would be. The only complicated bit was the spun sugar decoration but we didn't have enough time to do that. Also I reckon it would have been seriously messy, so we gave it a miss.

The most exciting part was making the toffee and using the sugar thermometer, the excitement built as we waited for it to reach 115 degrees! It finally did and it was a great feeling as it hadn't burnt and was just the right consistency.

Mish had to leave once we got the cake and sauce made, so I did the finishing touches and cut the cake and spread the toffee sauce between the two cakes as well as spread it on the top.

By far it’s the best cake I've ever made, and definitely the best cake co-baked. The cake mixture had lemon and orange zest which gave it even better flavour than normal.

We've already planned what we want to bake in our next baking session, so hopefully it will feature on here in a few weeks’ time.

New Experience: A play on the big screen

Last Saturday my evening plans fell through, but I still wanted to do something instead of just staying in. So I checked out my local cinema’s site to see what was on. The Broadway is a great local cinema, although it only has 4 screens, they still put on quite a variety and from Monday to Friday it’s only £5.

Like quite a few cinemas in the country the Broadway show a few plays, some are broadcast live and when it’s a big play they show it in all 4 screens. My parents went to see Swan Lake and the whole place was packed.

I saw advertised a while ago that they were going to show the Broadway (New York Broadway) production of the John Steinbeck book Of Mice and Men. It starred James Franco and Chris O’Dowd and was originally put on last year, so this was a recording.

I wanted to see the play as I studied the book at school and really liked it, so when my plans fell through this was the perfect plan B.

Seeing a play in the cinema is actually pretty good, for one thing you've got the best view in the house as you can see their emotions up close. There was also the added extra of in the interval they showed interviews of the cast and the director, which gave you extra context to the play.

The play was well acted and seeing something on my own is something I've done plenty of times before. However it was the first time I saw a play at the cinema. I had a nice chat with the old man who sat next to me during the interview. I didn't get his name but he was on his own too as his wife didn't want to see the play. He liked his plays and had seen a lot of Shakespeare, and he was going to New York for the first time in April, so I gave him some suggestions of where to visit while he was there.

Seeing a play in the cinema was not only considerably cheaper than the theatre itself (my ticket was £10) but you got more than you would see if you went to see it live. I’ll definitely see more plays at the cinema in the future.

Thoughtful gifts: Housewarming

This weekend my friend Carmella, otherwise known as CDL had a housewarming for her new place. I couldn't go as it was too far and petrol would've cost a lot for an overnight trip. But I still wanted to send something as a housewarming gift.

CDL is very stylish and I know with moving into your own home you want things to be in your own style and have it look just right. So buying a furniture piece or a personalised piece for someone might not go with the décor.

So what I did was very simple. I used one of the gift boxes I got from my shopping spree at Tiger the other week and filled it with Thorntons chocolates which I bought in a Christmas bundle as presents for friends and family.

Chocolates are always a winner and CDL could either have them for guests on arrival or to keep her going when tidying up the morning after.

Challenge within a challenge: Was the routine of success a success?

On Friday I completed the Routine of Success Challenge. The final week I did 62 things which meant it was my most productive week. By the end of the week I’d had enough of getting up before 6am and really struggled on the final day. I also had a drumming parade on the Friday evening, so after having a 20 minute power nap I was good to go.

So what have I learnt? Well the main thing is that you can get a lot done before breakfast if you put the time in and are organised. Usually before work I have to get up an hour before because I take my time getting ready, but with the challenge having a list of things I had to get done meant I had some purpose.

I'm not sure I’ll continue with the meditating. You’re supposed to do it in a quiet space, but as I live right by a bus stop, the buses start arriving from about 5.30ish onwards, there’s no chance of quiet. Also the final day of meditating the video I was watching mentioned a random phrase which I realised was a lyric in the Full House theme song I heard years ago, and then I got that in my head and meditating sort of went out of the window.

Writing what you were grateful for in my opinion didn't really work. I get while people do it, but I found it a bit cringy. It comes up a lot in gratitude challenges, but it’s just not for me.

One thing I did like doing was in the final week I found a great playlist of 5 minute exercise videos from POPSUGAR Fitness and I did like doing them first thing in the morning, so when I can I'm going to do them.

For a person who isn't great at maths I do love a good stat. There were 210 things to do in total over the 3 weeks and I did 143, so nearly 70% of what I set out to do, which isn't too bad.

Did I gain any success out of the 3 weeks? Not really, I was just more productive with my time. It was an interesting 3 weeks, but I’m really looking forward to getting up after 6!

New recipes: Gluten free baking

Every year my school friends and I have a girlie Christmas get together. We do meet up throughout the year as well. I had the idea last year that instead of Secret Santa presents, we do Secret Santa experiences. So we each pick a name and then an experience. Then you’ll do that experience with that person. It also meant you got two presents each as I didn’t fully think through how the whole thing had worked.

The idea I thought was a good one, but with all of us being so busy, I’m the only one that has done both my activities so far. The first was months ago and it was painting nails with my friend Rachel.
The second was to do baking with my friend Louise and last Sunday I went over to her house and baked in her very stylish kitchen. She runs Whimsical Wonderland Weddings, a very successful wedding blog, so if you’re getting married anytime soon, check it out for inspiration.

We made a pavlova which I had already done before, coincidently for my 29 challenge earlier this year. And we also did some gluten free baking, which I hadn't done before.

The mince pies we made were gluten free, and all that was different in the baking was the flour we used. There was a slight difference when rolling out the pastry as it wasn’t as strong and broke when rolling it out thin. But we got there in the end, and as you can see the results aren’t too bad. They tasted pretty good as well!

Challenge within a Challenge: Song sisters

This week I will be starting another challenge, and this one will be with my pole sister Linsey! If you were a 29 challenge blog reader you may recognise her as she was involved in quite a few of the categories.

While thinking of challenge ideas I thought I’d check out Pinterest to see what they suggested for 30 day challenges. After trawling through all the 30 days to a better butt challenges I came across a site called Thought Brick. This site is brilliant and gave a list of 100 challenges you could do in 30 days, that weren't about better abs.

I’ve taken quite a few from this site, so they’ll feature on here in the future. But the first one I’ll be doing is listening to a new song everyday. To make it more interesting I got Linsey to take part as well and so we are listening to new songs, we’ll listen to each other’s choices.

So what songs do we pick? Well after more googling I found Heck Yeah Tumblr challenges had a great list. I won’t put the full list here, as I’ll put it in full at the end of the challenge, along with my choices. But here are the first five.

A song that makes you happy
A song that helps you clear your head
A song that makes you laugh
A song that reminds you of something sad
A song that has a new meaning to you every time you hear it

This is going to be a fun challenge and just picking the first song alone, I've changed my mind half a dozen times already. It’s like I’m picking songs for my own Desert Island Discs! It will also be really interesting because as Linsey put’s it we’re going to learn a lot of random stuff about each other.

Try thinking what you’d song you’d have for the first five songs; it might be as easy as you think.

Random act of kindness and thoughtful presents: Baking exchange

For Halloween last year Charlotte and I held a party, and to warn our neighbours that there would be noise, we did the smart thing and invited them to the party.

One of them called Laura showed up and she brought along some cake-pops which she baked. I pointed out that Charlotte and I also like to bake, and jokingly said that if she needed a tasting panel to let us know.

Imagine our surprise when 2 days later I come home from work to find a foil package on our doorstep which was warm banana bread in! It tasted great and so a few days after I returned the gesture with some pumpkin pie that I had made.

Just over a year later and the exchange is still happening. There’s no rota, it’s all very sporadic which makes it even better as you never know when there’s going to be some cake on the doorstep!