Chocolate Brownie

 

A couple of weeks ago we went to a friends house for dinner. It was my turn to make a pudding of some kind – so I needed something easy that would travel well and make an impact.  What better than chocolate brownies!

Out comes Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess and her faultless recipe.  Its pretty easy, you have some dry ingredients and melt all the meltables into a liquid, mix them together and then bake.  And bake some more.  The thicker it is, the longer it will need in the oven.

I think its lovely, you get a rich, dense chocolate delight.  Yum!

What is your favourite recipe for brownies?  Do share, I LOVE trying out new ones.

Thanks for popping by!

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Nicole By Opi – Hard-Kourt Fashionista

I caved.  I bought one of the Kardashian Kolors from eBay.  OK, maybe three in total.  I got Hard-Kourt Fashionista (the one featured in this post), It’s all About the Glam and My Empire…My Rules.  I also REALLY wanted Khloe had a little Lam Lam, but bidding got a bit crazy and I refused to pay TOO much for my polish habit!

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Anyway, onto the polish.  As with my experience with my previous Nicole By Opi Justin Bieber Polish, the formula on these is amazing.  Smooth, easy to work with and like partially melted butter.  Smell wasn’t too bad.  I did two coats, but then noticed a little bit of drag, so went for a third.  I was painting my nails in a partially darkened room.  These bottles don’t have the new style brush, which I had gotten fond of, but maybe there is a reason for it that I don’t know.  The images of the polish do not have top coat.  In terms of colour, well, what can I say, its molten chocolate and yummy.  I’m very pleased as I don’t have a brown creme in my stash.

Then, as a little treat, I added a flakie top coat that I recently got in a polish swap.  It went from great to fab with one simple brush stroke.  I think its a great autumnal colour and I can’t wait to wear it again.

Do you have any Kardashian Kolors?  And there are more to come… see here…

 

Weekend Baking – Crispie Cakes and Self Saucing Chocolate Puddings

Back from holiday in NYC where I went a *little* nail polish crazy… posts on purchases to follow.

But this weekend, we got back into the baking mojo. Firstly, the Boy Wonder wanted to make Crispie Cakes, based on a recipe his teacher shared with the class.  He was very insistent on how it should be made, so he pretty much made them himself.

Then for the grown ups, I made a self saucing chocolate pudding I saw in the hubsters Olive Magazine.  Very simple and super yummy! Although worth noting that you have to chill it for 4/5 hrs before baking.

Having lost the plot, here are all the phases from two onwards

After my last post I got stuck into the baking hard core.

I made 50 chocolate cupcakes, as see in the previous post, and then 50 vanilla cupcakes. Then I iced them. Then I make a large cupcake cake for the happy couple to cut open.

In terms of time, we are talking about 5 or 6 batches of each.  I planned ahead, weighing out my dry ingredients into large jugs, so that I could whip them together quickly.  This worked surprisingly well as I know that just doubling up the mixture can cause problems with the bake.  Each set of 12 took about 20 mins to bake, so we are looking at about 8 hours of prepping, mixing, baking and icing.

Here is the gallery of images, enjoy!

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