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Posted on: Tuesday 16 July 2013

Let's go to the beach, beach.

Hello all!
So now that the summer has well and truly started (and christ it's hot in England...well, for British people!) I've been busy going out and I've claimed back my love of taking pictures and I've made a pact in my head to take a lot more this summer! 

So I went on a little trip with my mum to the seaside town of Weymouth which is a seaside town that some may recognise as the 2012 Olympic Sailing area. What I would say about Weymouth is that it's super picturesque, if you take a little wonder away from the usually packed beach and into the town you will come to the really impressive harbours and adorable little squares to go eat and drink. 



Not only that, me and my 'Scared of heights' mother decided to go on the 'Sea life Tower' which gives you a 360' guide up high of the coast...or the Jurassic coast as my old GCSE Geography teacher would want me to say. It is a breathtaking sight and the guides are so upbeat and charming, I would recommend everyone to take a trip up there (I think it was about £9 for adults) even if you're scared of heights my mum really enjoyed it. 

So, if you are thinking of coming down to the South-West, Weymouth is a great place to go, I had so many memories from there as a kid (mostly wasting my pocket money and the arcade games) and its still a great place many years on. 

Keep checking back soon as I'll be putting up my GlossyBox June Box review up! 

Posted on: Thursday 4 July 2013

Bake.Bake.Bake.

So the summer has finally arrived, and college is done with until September so I have a lot of free time on my hands, and since I'm very content with being on my own and enjoying my own company I thought I'd go back to one of my favourite hobbies. Baking.

And since it was my best friend's birthday coming up I thought it would be a great idea to bake some cupcakes for her (since a couple of years back I made her some 1D cake pops which she obsessed over) and I decided to create 3 different ones. Cookie Monster, rainbow and Nutella cupcakes. 

And here they are!

I was actually so surprised at how well they turned out! So I thought I'd give you some little info on how to make these!
I don't put anything special inside the actual cupcakes, because the amount of icing and extras I put on decorations is filling enough and sometimes inside stuff tends to not work well.

For the rainbow style cupcakes (although they just look pink from the picture) I made up 3 butter cream icing  in separate bowls and got some food colouring (or gel, both work well) I decided on pink, purple and orange. These came out quite light so the colours aren't that stand out so I'd recommend getting brighter colours to use or adding extra colouring until the icing turns a darker colour.

For the Nutella I followed a usual chocolate icing recipe but added about 80g of Nutella (depends on how many you're making) to the mixture, and added some cute decorations to the top.

And finally the Cookie Monster ones, which were by far the most fun to make. When I first saw these on tumblr I thought they were going to be super hard to make, but they are really simple. All you need is to make up some blue icing, have some cookies (cut them in half the create the mouth) and some marshmallows. I guess I'd recommend to practice your icing technique first, and luckily I have a good icing nozzle that comes out in a star-like pattern, I elongated them out to make them look like hairs so you get the fluffy look affect of the cookie monster.

Once you've done one layer I placed the half cookie at an angle (some people cut the cupcakes but there is no need to, or just leave them flat) and placed some icing underneath to hold it and on the top to give it the look that it's in the mouth. Then place two marshmallows at the top and I used a black icing pen to create the eyes. 

And that's it! Easy! 
And to make it look more 'Present Like' I got some cellophane and some ribbons to jazz it up a little, and this is the final look!
My friend seemed to really enjoy it despite the fact that some were ruined on the way driving to her  house to give them to her, but other than that I'm really impressed how well they came out!

Has anyone else had an really creative baking moments recently? Let me know in the comments!
Don't forget to follow my tumblr! harrystop-stagram.tumblr.com
Bye!

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