Just For You Birthday Cupcake Card

This is a quick and easy card that is quite girly; I made it when I was in the middle of actually tidying up after a card making session and putting everything away! As I did so, I spotted a piece of patterned backing paper with a cute cupcake design and decided it didn't need much adding  - and at the same time remembered I had a few puffy cupcake stickers left from a pack I bought in Paperchase years ago.

I also had a circle sticker saying 'just for you' which I put in the centre of the card, with a cupcake sticker inside the circle- it was just the right size. I added another cupcake sticker on top of one of the cupcake images on the backing paper and a piece of pink ribbon across the bottom.

I'm sharing this with Ooh la la Creations as their theme is food or drink.

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Bright Colours Festive Bauble Christmas Card

One of the card making magazines I subscribed to just before Christmas came with a selection of freebies to make your own Christmas cards. As well as the free gift on the front cover, there were the usual printed papers in the middle of the magazine. These are thin pages printed on both sides - which seems a bit pointless as you can usually only use one side - and related images that you can cut out.

What was unusual was the colour scheme - pinks, yellows, blues and purples, not normally colours that are associated with Christmas. I used one of the printed papers showing Christmas baubles to cover a card blank and cut around some other baubles and used adhesive pads to raise them off the card. The sentiment in the middle is also from the printed papers in the magazine, stuck onto card and mounted again with an adhesive pad. It's a bit different from the other Christmas cards you might receive!

I'm sharing this with Sparkles Christmas Challenges as this month they've asked crafters to use non-traditional colours.

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Nutella and Frangelico Pancake Bake

This Shrove Tuesday we invited my husband's mum over to dinner, and while I considered making savoury pancakes as the main course I knew I really wanted to do them as dessert. It would have involved me making several pancakes one at a time and keeping them warm and I wondered if there was an easier option - something where I could layer the pancakes together as a dessert.

This recipe for Nutella pancakes from Nigella was just the thing! I decided to make life even easier for myself and buy ready-made crepes, which I spread with Nutella and folded up and poured over some melted butter and Frangelico hazelnut liqueur. My husband doesn't like nuts (pieces of nut, anyway) so I left off the chopped hazelnuts that Nigella recommends sprinkling over the top.

They only needed ten minutes baked in the oven; serve with whipped cream for a delicious decadent dessert!

This is Frangelico, if you haven't tried it before. It's a liqueur made with Italian hazelnuts and its origins are thought to date back 300 years when hazelnuts were distilled by monks (hence the design of the label!). It tastes really nice in cocktails.

Spread the crepes with Nutella and fold and layer in a serving dish

Pour over the cream and Frangelico

Bake in the oven for ten minutes

Serve with whipped cream

Leftovers.... yum!

I'm sending this to CookBlogShare, hosted this week by Hijacked by Twins.

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Restaurant Review: Pizza Express, London Waterloo and Art of the Brick

The Art of the Brick: DC Superheros is an exhibition on London's South Bank of Lego figures - but not just any Lego figures. These are the DC superhero characters, like Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman, many of them life-size, made of thousands or hundreds of thousands of bricks - there is even a scale model of the Batmobile which is made of nearly half a million Lego bricks!

My husband and his brother, and his brother's children, really enjoyed going around the exhibition, which took about an hour. The rest of our group enjoyed it too, but I think it's particularly good if you are a fan of Lego or DC, or both!

I needed to find somewhere for lunch beforehand that wasn't too far away (we had timed entry ticket for the exhibit), that was suitable for children and that my husband would like. I decided Giraffe would be the perfect option, until I found that they didn't take bookings - and with a big group needing to be finished and at the exhibit by a specific time, that wasn't really going to work.

Pizza Express was then the next obvious choice as they would take a booking, and everyone likes pizza! The restaurant was good about the fact that half of our party were 45 minutes late; we were able to enjoy a drink and peruse the menu, then ended up speaking to the latecomers on the phone so we could place their order as we were worried we wouldn't have made the exhibition in time!

We needn't have worried as service was fast. I fancied something other than pizza so had seafood rigatoni - a mixture of salmon, white fish (Pollock) and prawns with pasta in a white wine and garlic sauce, which was really nice. Everyone was happy with their meal, which when you have a big group including fussy eaters, children (who are also fussy eaters but not the only ones), meat eaters and vegetarians, is no mean feat!

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Meal Planning Monday 2017 Week 22

The weather was glorious last week which meant we barbecued outside (or rather, my husband did – the only time he ever cooks dinner!) three times. I hope it’s going to be as nice this week, unfortunately it doesn’t look like it is going to be quite as hot!

 

Monday – bank holiday.

Lunch - scrambled eggs on toast for him, poached eggs for me

Dinner -meal with the in-laws

 

Tuesday – working from home
Lunch - soup and a roll
Dinner- chicken breast marinated in garlic, lemon juice and olive oil, with a baked sweet potato and salad

 

Weds
Lunch- need something very quick as I have to head to the school where I volunteer at 12.15 - and I have a meeting until 12. So think it will have to be a sandwich
Dinner- my husband is at his mum's so I will have spaghetti and homemade lamb meatballs

 

Thurs
Lunch- chicken salad
Dinner- salmon and veg/ chicken chargrill

 

Fri
Lunch - chicken salad
Dinner - BBQ

 

Sat

Lunch- Nigella's croquet monsieur bake I was going to make last week but didn't

Dinner- roast chicken legs

 

Sunday

Lunch- Doing the London to Brighton rally so will hopefully get to Brighton in time for lunch

Dinner – something quick from the freezer as not sure what time we will be back

This is a blog hop, join in!
 

An InLinkz Link-up

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Orange and White Chocolate Cake with Flower Nozzles Piped Buttercream Flowers

This is the cake I made for Mother's Day this year and finally tried out my set of flower piping nozzles which I got I think for my birthday last year - I hadn't gotten around to using them as I hadn't really made anything that I wanted to decorate with buttercream, but now I've seen how good they are I will definitely use them again!

The nozzles have different patterns of dots and swirls and allow you to pipe different types of flowers that look amazingly realistic and detailed. You just squeeze the buttercream out and pull up, which cuts off the flower -you pipe one at a time. These would work really well on cupcakes, or as I've done with different types and colours of flower covering a large cake, or you could do all the same type of flower on the top of the cake.

You use regular buttercream for this - it needs to be stiff enough to hold its shape but not too stiff that you can't pipe comfortably.

The cake itself is a recipe from the Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook, edited by Lynn Hill. This is one of Lynn's own recipes which I adapted a little; I didn't make the orange syrup and I used more milk as I prefer a looser batter.

You need:
225g butter
225g caster sugar
4 large eggs, beaten
225g self-raising flour
zest of 1 large orange
1/2 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp. milk

For the filling:
150g white chocolate
grated zest of 2 large oranges plus 4 tbsp. juice
200g butter, softened
75g icing sugar

Preheat oven to 190C / 170C fan. Cream the butter and the sugar and beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour, orange zest and baking powder and beat in the milk.

 

Spoon into two greased round cake tins and bake for 20-25 mins

When cooked, allow to cool in the tins then turn out onto a wire rack.

To make the filling, melt the white chocolate in a microwave or bain marie and allow to cool until it is still a consistency that you can stir. Cream together the butter and icing sugar and stir in the melted chocolate and the orange zest and juice.

Mix the buttercream (about 500g icing sugar to 250g butter) and separate into different bowls and add a couple of drops of food colouring to each one. Use the different flower piping nozzles in piping bags with each colour buttercream and pipe groups of a few flowers all around the cake. I filled in the gaps afterwards with green buttercream and a leaf nozzle, at least I think it was a leaf nozzle as it doesn't look quite right, but I still think the overall effect of the cake was good - and it tasted really nice too!

Below are some close-ups of the different flowers I piped:

 

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CAS Pink Heart Die-Cut Card

CAS means 'clean and simple'. In cardmaking terms, that means lots of white space; one main image or focal point and minimal embellishments.

 

I saw a blog challenge on Addicted to CAS calling for CAS cards with the theme 'pink'. I remembered this one I had made a little while ago and decided to enter it.

 

My husband and I were trying out my new Silhouette Cameo cutter (about a year ago) and used one of the free patterns as a test. Perhaps we didn't have the blade on the right setting as there was a small section that didn't cut through properly, on the left of the heart. I could have used a craft knife to remove the extra bit but in a way I quite liked the way it anchored the heart to the circle.

There was also a defect - a small tear, I think - on the heart in the middle so I decided to cover it with a small sentiment card topper saying 'to my wonderful husband'. With the die cut taking up most of the card, and the need to show the white space behind the design, I decided this would look best as a CAS card on a plain white background.

It's our first wedding anniversary in a few weeks so I could give this to my husband then, but I would rather make something special if I have time!

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