Thursday 27 June 2013

Thursday Feasts #1 - M+M cookies

Welcome to one of my new features! Every Thursday I will be showing you guys something I've cooked or baked in the last week. And to start, we have these wonderful cookies that I made these for my boyfriend to take into work with him and I have to say, they are the best cookies I've ever made! They're really chewy and as you can see, kept their shape fantastically.

cookies, baking, m and ms

Om nom nom. I made a batch of 16 and there are only 5 left... The recipe is very simple. And here it is...

Adapted from All Recipes

Best M+M cookies

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups plain flour
  • A pinch of salt
  • A pinch of baking powder
  • 3/4 cups of melted butter or margarine
  • 3/4 cups of golden caster sugar  (I took out the brown sugar from the original recipe as I don't like the strong taste of it. If you don't mind, then sub it back in.)
  • 1/2 cup of white caster sugar
  • 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract (Alternatively, if you have it, you can use vanilla flavoured caster sugar and skip this)
  • 1 whole egg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 3/4s of a sharing bag of M+Ms = reduce if you want more cookie to M+M ratio!*
Method:
Oven temp: 160 degrees C 
  1. Combine the dry ingredients into one bowl and set aside. Melt the butter. Combine sugars in a big bowl.
  2. Pour the melted butter over the sugars and mix until it seems to be fully combined/not very grainy.
  3. Add in the whole egg, egg yolk and vanilla extract if you're using it and combine again until light and creamy.
  4. Sift in the dry ingredients and stir/fold until just combined. Add in your M+Ms and mix again.
  5. Grab a baking tray and portion out cookie dough onto the sheet (no need to grease) roughly 3 inches apart. Put the tray in the freezer for five minutes.
  6. Take the tray out of the freezer and bake for 6 minutes to 10 minutes. They're done when they start to go golden brown around the outside. When you take them out, leave them on the oven tray for fifteen minutes before removing them to cool.
*I used a whole bag of M+Ms and there really were too many. I also recommend roughly bashing half the M+Ms so that you get a nice difference in texture and more colour 'oomph'.

Now, number 5 is an odd instruction but it makes a lot of sense; cookies rely on the butter and binding ingredients in them being cold to keep their shape. If you've ever made cookies before you'll know that warm cookies spread incredibly quickly and lose their shape rapidly - they go thin and greasy. This stops this totally! You don't want to freeze them completely, just make sure that they're cold to the touch. When they go into the oven cold they cook through fast and don't have the temperature needed to 'dissolve' onto the tray.

You really can't beat one of these with a cup of steaming hot fresh tea. If you leave them on the saucer they warm up and go all gooey again!

cookies, baking, m and ms
Tea and a biscuit, that Great British institution!

Tuesday 25 June 2013

NOTD - Leopard print nail art

notd, leopard print, accessorize, claires, barry m, blue, nail art, freehand,


What's this? Another nail of the day in less than a week? Amazing!

Hahah, well the devil makes work for idle hands... but only when they're nicely polished :)

I've been dying to try this style out but I didn't really have the time for it. I'm waiting for a job to start so I've got a good month of doing very little - which will mean a lot of NOTD posts, especially as I'm not allowed to wear polish at work!

notd, leopard print, accessorize, claires, barry m, blue, nail art, freehand,


Base coat - Accessorize 'Aquamarine', Spots - (freehand with nail art brush) Barry M 'Gold' with Claires Accessories 'Black' nail art pen accents.

This style looks great and is so easy to do; just paint your base coat on, then when dry do random blobs of your spot colour (as irregular as you can manage - if you have them it's easier to do this with a small nail art brush) and then when that's dry take a pin or a very skinny nail art brush to create a 'shadow' on each splodge. Sorted!

Monday 24 June 2013

Recent purchases

I've found it quite hard to find anything nice in the shops recently amongst the myriad of crop tops, maxi dresses in hideous patterns and high waisted skirts. My main gripe with these three items is that they just don't suit my body type... I don't have the belly for crop tops - besides, no-one wants to see a pasty white band of flesh, most geometric prints don't suit me and my wonderfully ample derriere grows to double the size in a high waisted pleather skirt (well ok, I tried a nice high waisted skirt on the other day which didn't look terrible BUT they're pretty much only appropriate when you have a crop top on, which brings me back to my first point).

Eventually I did manage to find a dress that I liked enough to try on and buy! Yay!

Here it is:



Isn't that gorgeous? £19.99 from New Look! It's so summery. Now we just need some sunshine so I can wear it.

In town at the same time I had a bit of a book splurge... I have a kindle so I don't normally buy books but occasionally I'll pop in to have a look and see if they have anything (some of the charity shops are cheaper to buy from than it is to download the same book onto my Paperwhite). On this occasion I found three books that I've been wanting to read for ages:


One of these books is actually going to be the star in an exciting new feature I'll be rolling out on both this blog and my other blog in about a weeks time - so watch this space!

Friday 21 June 2013

NOTD - Guardian Angel over Milan

It's very well documented on this blog that I'm not a fan of pink based looks but this combination of colours is the definite exception to the rule.

Glitzology - Guardian Angel bottle

For this I grabbed two of my untrieds - No. 7 'Milan' which I got through the NPAA christmas secret santa and Glitzology 'Guardian Angel'. Whilst it's not a complicated look, it definitely has the wow factor and would be great to brighten up an office!

Glitzology Guardian Angel No. 7 Milan

Glitzology Guardian Angel No. 7 Milan

Even though Milan has a silver based sparkle and Guardian Angel is gold based, they compliment each other really well. One that I'll definitely be wearing again!

Wednesday 19 June 2013

Who's been a bad blogger? I've been a bad blogger!

I'll try and spare you all the excuses but the truth is, life just got in the way of blogging for a few months there! But I've now finished uni completely and have moved in with my boyfriend so I'm pretty free. I have a job starting at the end of July but before then it's the wedding and a few other wonderful events that I will blog about later on - so it's still pretty busy here!

So what have I been up to? Here's a load of pictures to (hopefully) explain my absence!

During my last term at uni I spent a lot of time doing a bit of this:

  

And a decent amount of time doing this:


And just before my birthday I went to see this man play in concert and met him in the bar after the show:


And after a long few months of planning, I've just got back from a weekend doing this:


Me, my sister (it was her hen do) and my mum :)
Nail wise, I've done this:

My nails are looking a lot better than they were the last time I blogged, they're stronger and they're growing really nicely again so I shall be able to do some more nail posts in the future! Yay!