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

Banana and Raspberry Smoothies

 

This is an unplanned post as I hadn't really intended to bake or make anything today but found myself making smoothies... Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just me? Whilst trying to avoid doing boring things I end up spontaneously making something? 

I must admit though, I'm very glad that I did as smoothies are one of my all time favourite things and are just so easy to make, but the result is Amazing! With a sprinkle of oats on top Raspberry and Banana smoothies are like heaven in a glass... or milk bottle!

I found this cute bottle in the local Cook Shop a couple of months ago and it looks just too adorable in these pictures, but its one of those things that I own but just never know what to do with? 

I have so many cute jars and bowls and tins that would be lovely ways to present bakes but I just can't get them right... Oh well, I suppose that practise is a good excuse for baking more! 

This smoothie is Banana and Raspberry flavoured but smoothies are so versatile that you can swap the flavours around to suit what fruits you've got in the house. All you need is, a good handful of chopped fruit or berries, one banana, two tablespoons of plain yoghurt, a blender and oats to serve it with. Throw the fruit and yoghurt into the blender and blitz until smooth them pour into a glass and top with oats! 

For a twist on smoothie you could add ice cream and then lemonade to form what as a child we used to call "Foaming Volcanoes" I'm sure they have an actual name but that's what we used to call them. Putting Ice cream and smoothie with lemonade sounds like a disaster but trust me its delicious. *WARNING* Your Volcano will foam and froth quite a lot so make sure your glass is plenty big enough!

What do you do to waste time when you have something boring to do?

Much love Alex-Rose xx

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

Hot Cross Buns

So it's almost Easter! This means a number of different things to different people, but for me Easter means, hot cross buns, lambs, and my birthday. 

You may notice that there are no chocolate eggs on my list, that is because my parents, alas, weren't the Easter egg type.. deprived as a child, I know, I know.. (sarcasm). This doesn't mean that I've never had an Easter egg, as over time other people have given them to us, or my Mum has given in to the chocolate wanting children. But it is for this reason that my image of Easter doesn't solely involve chocolate.

My uncle has a farm and around Easter  and the Easter holidays, is always lambing time. As little people me and my sister would go and stay at my Grannies to "help" at lambing, I put this in quotations as I can't imagine how having two small children running round wanting to cuddle and feed all the lambs was even remotely helpful (?!). But it is for this reason that lambs and baby animals remind me of Easter time.

Now, this is the important one, My Birthday! My birthday is a week today and I am already exited (you're never to old for birthdays and presents)! I must also point out another reason for my excitement is that we are going on holiday for my birthday, we're going to Centre Parcs, this does also mean that I will be without wi-fi and therefore blogger. I'm afraid you'll just have to do without me for a week! (For those of you that don't know what Centre Parcs is then go here). My birthday has always fallen in the Easter Holidays so I always associate Easter and the run up to it with my birthday!

Finally hot cross buns. For me I would say that hot cross buns are the food of Easter  In the house where I grew up we had an open fire and around Easter time we would toast hot cross buns over the fire, I have many memories of being curled up in our living room in front of the fire, (don't think it's weird to have the fire going in April) this is England that I live in so, it's never really warm during Easter.

I decided I wanted to bake hot cross buns after watching a number of shows on telly, then when reading through the Good Food magazine I found their recipe for Hot Cross Buns. So, I spent today baking Hot Cross Buns! I don't bake breads that often as I find dough and yeast all rather tedious and time consuming but when I do take the time to make dough I always enjoy it. This probably means I should put my impatience aside and bake bread more often... 

What makes you think of Easter?

Much love Alex-Rose xx

Buttons

Well, the observant bunch amongst you will probably have noticed that their is something new in the sidebar: The Light and Sweet button! After I nominated her for the blog award (look here) Filiz contacted me and offered a button swap. Now, this was something I just couldn't turn down, so there's her button! xx

Ps. If you have a blog that you think fits with the feel of Raining Cake and Cookies and would be interested in a button swap then comment below and I'll be in touch xx

Salted Caramel and Chocolate Chiffon Cake

Dear Snow,

I admit, at first you were fun and we had a nice time. You caused chaos but that was fine because it felt like Christmas always! 

But now, oh no, you are cold and wet and windy and bloomin' freezing! Not enough for sledging but enough to make it feel like the Arctic! Except it's not the North Pole; it's England! I mean for god's sakes it's Spring, officially spring! 

So I am hoping you understand that it's now time for you to clear off, and clear of for good! I have summer/spring clothes that want wearing! Also it's my birthday in just over a weeks time, I dont want snow on my birthday; my birthday in April!

So, bye bye, ta-ta, au revoir, good day, guten tag, despidida!

Much appreciated,

A frozen English girl xx

Anyway, rant over. As you can probably see/have heard, the snow is back! Yay, (sarcasm)! But this does have one benefit, good excuse for cake! So, whilst outside it was awfully frozen I was toasty and warm baking the most delicious cake, ever, Salted Caramel Chocolate Chiffon Cake! It's just perfect. And this is coming from someone who doesn't usually like chocolate cakes. 

The recipe is from the most recent Good Food magazine and is an adaptation of John's final show-stopper bake (from the Great British Bake off 2012) the heaven or hell cake. After watching the episode (and drooling over his gorgeous cake) I was itching to bake my own one, so as you can imagine I was thrilled when Good Food released this simple-r version!

It is so good. The method isn't too difficult either, I was scared about making the caramel but that was fine! The biggest problem that I encountered was mixing the butter and the caramel to make salted caramel butter cream. I don't really know what i did wrong but it was much too runny and just would thicken, so in the end I whipped some double cream and then added the runny salted caramel butter cream to that, making a delicious butterscotch-y cream.

The bitter dark chocolate ganache on top, the light sponge and the sweet cream just make the most heavenly combination. Honestly, I could quite easily eat the entire cake (I didn't though, don't worry)!

I honestly don't think the photos do it justice because the spiked piping to decorate looks really dramatic and striking in real life; you can't really tell that well on the pictures hut you'll just have to take my word for it!

Much love Alex-Rose xxx

Exiting Stuff

Recently this week I was contacted by the lovely Cupcake Girl from My Cupcake Habit (check out her blog it is so worth a read!) to tell me that she would like to nominate me for the Versatile Blog Award! I was so surprised, and so touched! It came as such a shock as this blog is only a baby, not yet six months old. 

So I'll explain a little about the award, it's passed on from blogger to blogger, if/when you are nominated you must then do two things: firstly nominate 15 more bloggers, then tell your readers (you guys) seven facts about yourself so that they know a little more about you.

So lets get started, the fifteen bloggers that I am nominating are:

1. Being little -by lyzi
2. Sprinkle of Glitter -by Louise
3. Ella -by Ella
4. Ruby Ruby Slippers -by Lianne
5. Sally Tangle -by Sally
6. Frikken Duckie -by Duckie
7. Light and Sweet -by Filiz
8. Amour La Fille -by Leah
9. Zoella -by Zoe
10. 'Amy Valentine -by Amy
11. Bonjour Cupcake -by Amy
12. Charlestown Vintage -by Charlie
13. From Gem Love -by Gem
14. Spoon Fork Bacon -by Jenny and Teri
15. The Briar Rose Blog -by Megan

Now for seven facts about me:

1. I have one older sister, two older step-sisters, one younger step brother and one much younger half brother; lots, I know!
2. I currently have a bouncy dog called Barney (spaniel and collie cross, 1 1/2 years old) and a lazy but cuddly tabby cat called Titch. 
3. I used to play the Oboe, but I quit...
4. I started this blog 5 months ago because I love reading other peoples blog and was encouraged to start my own.
5. The first blog I ever read was being little by Lyzi
6. I am grade four in Tap, and also do contemporary.
7. When I was little my favourite toy was a red cow called "cow", I was such an imaginative child... (sarcasm)

Hope you've enjoyed this,

Much love Alex-Rose xxx