A Day In The Life.

This post is a bit different, after seeing this on many other blogs I decided to give the "photo an hour" post a go. It turned out to be more difficult than I had expected so I'm very sorry that I missed out a couple of hours... I would have liked to have uploaded this yesterday but by the evening I was too busy drowning in essay notes... But anyway, here's what I did yesterday!

9:00 Breakfast! Chopped fruit with yoghurt, granola and a hot chocolate on the side because I can't stand tea or coffee!

10:00 Ready for a dog walk! Doc. Martins, I love them <3

11:00 Dog walking with Barney, or more dog swimming... 

Ok, ok so it was meant to be one photo an hour, but he's just too sweet...

And another... but just look at the ears!

12:00 Quick stop for another hot chocolate...

1:00 Lunch! Vegetable soup with tomatoes and toast.

2:00 This cute thing, Titch our cat and resident pillow stealer, came to visit me.

And another, if you haven't noticed by now I kind of have a soft spot for the pets. They're just too cute...

3:00 The final layer of the millionaires shortbread I was making is added.

Terribly sorry as at 4 and 5 O'clock I totally forgot to take any pictures so we'll just have to skip straight to 6 O'clock.

6:00 I was making tea at this point and the picture shows some of our roasted peppers as for tea I was making roasted peppers with chicken goujons and spicy couscous. Delicious!

7:00 Taking pictures of the finished Millionaires Shortbread, and I can confirm that it is absolutely gorgeous! 

8:00 Snuggled down with the laptop to continue essay writing... and getting distracted... again. 

This isn't really anything to do with baking but I want to incorporate more of a lifestyle element to the blog and this felt like a good thing to start with. I hope you've enjoyed this little nosy into my life and I promise that I do actually leave the house for more than just a dog walk on a daily basis it just happened that today I ended up spending a lot of time as a house slug! Do let me know if you would like more posts in a similar style to this? 

Much love Alex-Rose xxx

Hot Chocolate Tea-Cup Cakes

Well hello there,

I have returned to the land of blogs! After a week or so away I have so much catching up to do and feel very out of the loop. It seemed like I chose the busiest week (in blogland) to go to a little forest with no wi-fi! It was this week that my first button swaps went, mostly, up and running(!). 

I must thank and apologise to the lovely bloggers who've swapped. Thank you for helping me sprinkle my love for baking, a little wider, around the blog-O-sphere and sorry for being a tad scatty! 

Now would seem a good time to point out the new buttons in the side bar: Me + The Moon, Amour la fille, as well as Light and Sweet. I seriously encourage you all to go check out these wonderful blogs, these lovely spaces of web are such good reads and some of my many favourites!

Anyway, on to the bake, the idea for this was inspired by my holiday in general as I drank bucket loads of hot chocolate over the last week. I literally live on a diet of marshmallows, cream and hot chocolate when the weather gets colder so when I was given these adorable "cup"cake cases (for my birthday, thank you very much lovely older sister) I knew I wanted to bake hot chocolate themed cakes!

The cases themselves were from Lakeland and can be found here. Although, I'm sure you could find others from different shops, as they are such a cute idea! You bake the cake inside the tea cup so it holds the shape and they come with adorable matching saucers; what's not to love?

I've topped my chocolate cakes with plain butter icing, mini marshmallows and a sprinkling of cocoa powder. They are designed to look like hot chocolate but if that's not your style I'm sure you could remodel it to fit other hot drinks!

I'm thinking up an earl grey cupcake recipe for one of my sisters birthdays, and will be using these cases for definite!

Anyone ever used other shaped silicone cases before?

Much love Alex-Rose xxx