Girly Goodness

I have 3 boys. I don't often get to enjoy the girly things. However this weekend gone we went to two girl's birthday parties. I had so much fun buying girly presents - one I got a bead set and a couple of little things, and the other I got a paint your own ceramic tea set. How cool do they sound?

Anyways, for one of the birthdays I told my friend I would bring a plate. So I made girly cupcakes. Oh I had so much fun! My pink and purple food colourings don't get used all too often, so out they came. I ended up making vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing. But the cupcakes were pink and purple stripes. They looked so cool. And I shall share with you my vanilla butter cake recipe too because it is a pretty awesome recipe. Nice and moist, not dry like some vanilla cakes can be. AND it can be made dairy free by using a dairy free spread in place of butter. Perfect :)

Vanilla Butter Cake

½ c butter

¾ c sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
½ c milk

1. Preheat oven to 170ºc
2. Sift flour and baking powder in one bowl
3. In another, beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs and beat.
4. Combine milk and vanilla
5. Add flour and milk alternately to beaten mixture, beating till combined
6. Pour into a greased cake tin and bake for 30-35 minutes

Now, obviously if making these as cupcakes the cooking time will be less. I don't really time them though, I just check on them periodically.


Now, to make the cupcakes all stripey, you take the raw cake batter and put half the mix in one bowl, the other half in the other bowl. Add your colours (I recommend using gel food colouring, need less to get an intense colour), and beat well. Then get a teaspoon and put a teaspoon of one colour into a muffin tin. Then directly on top in the middle of that drop, add the other colour. You can do as many colours as you want, you aren't limited to two - try a rainbow! Then keep repeating, adding a teaspoon of the next colour directly in the middle of the colour before. If you need to, use the spoon to flatten the mix down a bit to spread it towards the sides more, but carefully! You dont want the batters to mix. You can see the one I did first in the top left hand corner got a bit munted. Still look cool, just more marbled.



All baked!

Now time to ice them! I just used a pretty basic buttercream icing recipe, getting the ratios right is a bit of trial and error to get the right consistency.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing

Beat 125g of butter until white (if you have a kitchenaid type mixer, its good to just set it going, and come back later, the whiter your icing, the truer colour you will get if you are adding colours to it, especially if you want red icing!).

Add a cup of icing sugar and beat well again

Add 1 Tablespoon of milk and a teaspoon of vanilla essence, and beat

Then add as much icing sugar as you need to get the right consistency. Start with about half cup, beat that in, then add more slowly till its the consistency you like. I like mine quite thick but not so thick it won't go through a piping bag. So probably a full 2nd cup there but I never do measure...

Oh yeah, add colouring if you want a coloured icing, or you could also change the essence to another you prefer - strawberry is a nice change

Then simply pipe the icing on, and I happened to have been given some girly cupcake toppers you can buy ready made at the supermarket that obviously I would never use on my own kids, so on they went to finish them off.

Breakfast, the most important meal of the day - A product review

Recently I was asked to review some cereals. I agreed then promptly forgot about it. Then one day the courier arrived with this massive mystery package. It wasn't until I opened it that I realised what it was - I was not expecting 3 full sized boxes of cereal plus 2 boxes of trail bars! So over the past few weeks we have been slowly getting through the different cereals. These are my thoughts:

Be Natural Pink Lady Apple and Flame Raisin -

This one was my absolute favourite. I am partial to fruity cereals so it was right up my alley. Nutritionally it isn't too bad either, logging it into myfitnesspal wasn't a concern - this goes for all the cereals I'm writing about today. Just so full of flavour, loved it! It is definitely one I would buy again, so good! I was sad when the box ran out.

Be Natural Cashew, Almond, Hazelnut and Coconut

This one was my husband's favourite. He likes nutty (must be why he likes me haha), I prefer fruity (hmm, I'm not saying I like my husband because he is fruity! hehe). I quite liked this one too, the flavours all worked well together, just lacked the fruitiness I love.

Be Natural 5 Whole Grain Flakes

Ok, I have to say it. This one bored me. Nutritionally it was the healthiest - but that's because it doesn't contain all the yumminess the other 2 have. For a very plain cereal it was good, but it lacked something. It wasn't exciting. I love eating breakfast but I didn't look forward to eating this each morning. I added sliced up strawberries to it, couldn't eat it plain.

Now, the trail bars. I LOVED these. There were 2 flavours, Berry and Nut and Fruit. I especially loved the Berry one, Hubby especially loved the nut and fruit one. Do we see a trend here? I did like both, just preferred the Berry one. Oh, and the best thing is, the berry one is only 110calories per bar, and is quite a nice filling snack. They are on the shopping list!

The Christmas Rush

You know what the problem of Christmas is? You are so busy getting everything sorted all month for the big day, that little things don't get done.

I made all these really yummy treats to share on Christmas day. I got a lot of positive feedback about it all, and I wanted to make a really cool blog post showing you all, photos, recipes etc. Well, um, I never did get around to taking those photos! But I want to share the recipe for what I thought was the winner on the day (and I think it was the favourite of pretty much everyone) - gingerbread cake balls! (yep, them cake balls again lol). So christmassy, and something a little bit different. I actually got the idea from Pinterest, from this blog here - linky link. I, however, don't do packet mixes, so I baked my own gingerbread loaf from scratch - and I have to say, my recipe its pretty damned awesome. So here it is

Gingerbread Loaf

50g Butter
1Tbsp Golden Syrup
1 egg
1/2c brown sugar
1c flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
(I then also add some grated fresh ginger in, just to make it extra yummy!)
1 tsp baking soda
3/4c milk

Melt together the butter and golden syrup.
Mix together the egg and sugar. Add the syrup mix.
Mix all ingredients bar the baking soda and milk.
Mix baking soda and milk together. Gradually add to mix, and stir in.
Pour into a greased/lined loaf tin

Bake at 180c for 35mins

Now, this particular recipe makes a very flat loaf in my loaf tin, so the last time I made it (for these cake balls) I doubled it, and it was the perfect loaf! I cannot tell you how long it took to bake though, it did take quite some time. But the end result was this beautifully moist, gingerlicious loaf that I nearly cried when I had to crumble it up to make the cake balls haha!

Right, now to make them into cake balls. Just use your fingers and crumble the loaf up (cake balls are the perfect way to use up cake that has failed... even if its dry and overcooked, cake balls make them so moist and yummy). Make up an icing, I just made a very plain vanilla icing (ya know, a knob of butter, however much icing sugar, a dash of milk, a splash of vanilla and voila!), and then SLOWLY add it into the crumb mixture. The trick is to not put too much icing in, you only want enough to bind the crumbs together and no more. Though even if you do put too much in, they will still taste fine, just be a lot wetter in texture.
Then chill the cake ball mix in the fridge for a while (I actually prepared the mixture a day early, just as I ran out of time to finish them haha). Once they are nice and cold, start rolling them into balls (think rum ball size).
Now to finish the cake balls, you have a couple of choices. I choc dipped half of them in white chocolate (like in the link) but I hadn't bought enough white choc melts (and being Christmas Eve I was NOT going to brave the supermarket for more). So the other half I rolled in coconut. And you know what? I think I preferred the coconut ones, the white chocolate gets a bit much after a while, but you can eat more coconut ones in one sitting. Oh, did I mention I put on 1.6kg over this past week? Yeah, all my goodies along with the usual Christmas fare have not been diet friendly lol!
Anyways, other flavour cake balls I have done in the past I have rolled in cocoa - but the cake ball itself has to be really sweet to offset the cocoa, and then others I have rolled in drinking chocolate as that's sweet itself (or if you have no drinking chocolate, mix cocoa and icing sugar together).

I made a few other truffles and stuff too, maybe I'll blog about them another day! It is school holidays now, and being Summer I am spending less time indoors and more time at the beach and school pool, so while I will try to blog about some fun things we are getting up to, I may be slack about it!

From Flab to Fab

Recently I lost weight, and toned up... I have 3 kids so there was quite a bit of toning in the mid section to be done lol. Anyways, the past week or so I have been getting a few comments about my weight loss (it wasn't dramatic, I wasn't overweight to start with but as you will see in the photos I definitely had some to lose!). All up I have lost about 7kg. People want to know how I did it. So I have decided to write this blog post to tell you how I personally have done it. It's still a work in progress - I don't want to lose any more weight, but I do want to build more lean muscle. Especially in the mid section - it looks fine (good even) when standing, but when sitting, it pushes all the fatty bits back out lol, so I'm still working on it.

And for the first time in years, I bought a bikini. A well fitting one, and I wore it for the first time last weekend, in front of my husband's extended family. It felt a lil weird, but I have to admit, I don't think I looked half bad lol, despite having a VERY indulgent weekend with a lot of bad food and a LOT of alcohol.

This is the picture that sparked it all, the one that it dawned on me I had been putting on weight instead of losing it. I am normally around 60kg, and in this picture I was 66.2kg. A friend took it and posted it on facebook. And I had back rolls. I was horrified. It's the heaviest I had ever been without being pregnant. I wish I took a proper before photo for comparison, as the one in my comparison shots I took a couple of days before I weighed in around 64kg. But here, this is the culprit



Now, you may not think it's bad, but it sparked something in me! I wanted to get back on top of my weight now, rather than putting more on and having more to lose. I estimated my weight was about 65kg, I had been 64kg when I got married in March, and this photo was taken in June. But no, I was 66.2kg. That really shocked and upset me lol so there sparked my desire to lose weight.

So there we have it, excuse the fact I am in a bra (at least it's a pretty one aye! haha). I actually have abs you can feel. You can't *quite* see them yet though, that is what my next goal is, just for kicks!

So how did I do it? The old fashioned way really - diet and exercise. But I didn't "diet" - I still had my treats, I would still eat maccas and muffins and everything - I just moderated what I ate a lot more!

I joined www.myfitnesspal.com - HIGHLY recommend doing so. It's calorie counting made easy. It helped me learn a LOT about what I was putting in my mouth. It makes me think twice about eating all the treats I used to eat. I will still have one or 2, but I no longer will eat 6 or 7 muffins in one sitting like I previously might have lol (gross I know). With using MFP (myfitnesspal) I managed to shed 6kg in 6 weeks - I thought it would be a struggle being that I was already at a healthy (just chubbier) weight. But it was really easy. I wasn't even exercising at that stage.

But then it came time to maintain the weight. That was the tricky part. My weight started fluctuating, I started exercising, and it took many months to balance out to where I am now.

What do I do for exercise? Well I play netball once a week, I always have done that though. Then I came across Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred. I can not recommend this HIGHLY enough. It is only 20 minutes a day, and it gave me my abs. TWENTY MINUTES. Its so easy to find 20 minutes a day! I even did it in the school holidays with all 3 kids around me. Mr 1 likes to pretend hes doing it with me, and Mr4 and Mr7 like to have a go at the video when I'm finished. I have been lent a couple ofher other dvds but they are 40minutes long and so far I haven't been able to find 40 spare minutes. But 20, that's easy.

And then more recently I have realised I really need to step up my cardio, it's the only way I'm going to burn the last of the fat off my stomach. I have been walking/jogging just under 8km 2-3x a week. I wish I could do more, but unless I invested in a treadmill, it's just too hard with the kids.

So there we have it. I will repeat the important 2 things I said here, if you read nothing else, at least read this - www.myfitnesspal.com and Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred.

Santa is a-coming!

So tomorrow is December 1. This means it's the day we put up the Christmas Tree. It also means it's the day advent calendars get started.

I came across this really cool home made advent calendar idea on (you guessed it) Pinterest. Look here for the original blog post and how they did it

This is my version. The cotton balls will be added each morning by the kids, secured by double sided tape. I used the same poem and santa. I was quite lucky, I actually went shopping yesterday to try to find some papers to use but came up with nothing - I tried 3 local shops! In the end I decided I would just paint it. But today when I decided I realllllly had to get my A into G and get it done, I dug out some papers I bought ages ago when I tried my hand at scrapbooking, and turns out there were the perfect colours in there, even a skin colour! Fancy that. Was obviously meant to be.

Anyways, the picture:



The kids think its kinda cool, its hung on the wall in the dining room and the 2 big ones had to sit on the opposite side of the table to what they normally sit so that they could see Santa. A bit cute.

Filling a blank space

I have this wall in my kitchen that was happily empty. Till I started browsing Pinterest. Then I realised it needed something on it. I did have one particular craft idea that would have gone there oh so nicely, but I don't think I will ever find the time to do that project... at least not any time soon anyway. Anyways, the inspiration for this one actually came from TradeMe. I have no idea what I was browsing, but this particular wall art thing stood out to me, but I wasn't going to pay for it when I knew I could make it for free (had all the materials I needed just lying around - cardboard, a craft knife and paint).

This is what I created:

All I did, was find plates, bowls, plastic containers of various circle sizes. Grabbed an old cardboard box from the recycling and found my trusty craft knife. I looked for circles that would give me roughly the same dimensions per circle. This is what they looked like to start with:

As you can see, I off centred them, looks better that way. I then used my craft knife and carefully cut them all out. I did this 4x.



Once I had them all cut out, it put them back together and painted them (half black, half white, I found I needed 2 coats to get them looking nice. I wanted to throw a colour in there too, but my whole kitchen is in black and stainless steel, and the walls are a greyish pinkish colour so I thought I best stick to plain black and white and I'm glad I did). I'm quite happy with how it turned out, not bad for something that didn't cost me anything!

Another wall art I have done previously was in my bedroom - I always liked those wall quotes you can get but (in case you can't tell) I loathe to spend money on things like that. So I made my own - printed the letters out, traced them onto cardboard, cut them, painted them, and blu-tac'ed them to the wall:

(BTW it IS straight on the wall, I just took the photo on an angle!)

Cake gone wrong

It always happens when you are pushed for time. I need to baked 2 square shaped cakes in order to make mr7's birthday cake on the weekend. I needed it on Sunday, and unfortunately hubby had to work on Saturday. So along with making the cake, I also had 3 kids to wrangle, AND had to make a trip down to the Shore. And I was fully aware my mother-in-law was coming up in the afternoon too to stay the night.

So I decided to bake one cake first thing in the morning, then do the trip to the Shore, then when I got back around lunchtime I would bake the next one, then tackle the housework. Well, the first cake stuck to the pan. To the silicone pan. This never happens. It shouldn't happen. I came to the conclusion its a stupid pan. Anyways, the cake was unusable as a cake. Cue stressy me! I was ready to throw the bloody thing across the kitchen haha.

In the end, I just left. I couldn't face making another cake and I was running out of time to do my trip to the Shore before mr1's sleeptime. Luckily driving helps me clear my head.

I realised I could turn the cake into crumbs and make cake balls. Yum! Ok, doesn't help the fact I still had 2 cakes to make AND it also added to my workload, but at least the cake wasn't a total waste.

 

All you need to do to make cake balls is to crumble the failed cake, make up a batch of icing (various flavours, cream cheese icing makes for very yummy very rich cake balls), mix the icing and the crumbs together, roll into balls and roll balls into something like coconut, cocoa or my personal fave is to chocolate dip them! yummo!

These particular ones I separated into 3 batches (one I did later on so didn't photograph). The cake was vanilla flavoured. The first I mixed with lemon flavoured icing, and rolled in coconut. The 2nd I added chocolate chips to the mix, made a plain vanilla icing and rolled in a cocoa and icing sugar mix (as I was doing that I realised I could just use drinking chocolate!). Then later I made a chocolate peppermint icing and mixed that into the last lot and rolled in drinking chocolate. Oh yum!

I managed to bake 2 more cakes without any issue (I sprayed the bloody pan with oil lol), and that evening when the kids were in bed, over a glass of wine or 3, I decorated mr7's cake....