The easiest Teddy Bear chocolate cake recipe

I am no cake baker and I certainly don't pretend to be any good in the kitchen but I do know for one thing, that this chocolate cake tastes really good and there is just no way to mess up a recipe with two steps.
They are as follows:

1. Mix 200g of self raising flour, 50g of cocoa powder, 125g of butter, 250g of caster sugar, 2 eggs and 160ml of water together until the mixture has changed from a darker to a lighter shade of brown (add some vanilla essence if you're feeling 'adventurous')

2. Pour into a pre greased cake pan and place in a Moderate temperature oven

Conversion: Moderate = 180 degrees celcius = 350-375 Fahrenheit = Gas mark 4-5

It takes about 30 minutes to cook, but keep checking on it to ensure it doesn't burn, the mixture is quite 'wet' so I find that one moment it looks of a mousse texture, and the next it's got a burnt top

I made an unsuccessful teddy bear shape the first time around due to not greasing the pan (from Morrisons, £4) well enough, so I was not taking any chances this time.

If I can give you one magic tip it would be to wait until your cake is stone cold before icing. Stone cold doesn't mean a bit warm, or just warm on the bottom, it means cold as though it has been left alone so that every single crumb can cool. It's the most painful part of baking I find, but then I remind myself that there is no point taking all that effort and love to make something, to ruin it at the last hurdle. Happy baking! Happy Bear!

Wedding Cake!

You may or may not have heard from my million of previous posts on the matter that my sister is getting married this year. It is of course super exciting, but I keep having little mini meltdowns when I remember the things that I still need to sort out (and I'm not even the bride!)

I'll be so ecstatic when I can share the day with you guys via real photographs but for now here is a sneak peek of the sketch of the cake!
I don't want to give it all away because that might ruin it for the bride... but I will tell you that the bottom layer is fruit cake, the middle is sponge and the top is chocolate!

No day is a dull day!

I would love to tell you all that I did something very exciting and glamorous and fabulous today but that would be a lie, so instead I will tell you what actually happened- it was a fun day but maybe not so glamorous.
I handed in coursework - dull

I went to my japanese lesson - fun this lesson was all on Japanese culture which was really interesting, they showed me temples in Japan and a place where people go to look at rocks and be all peaceful, they showed me beautiful japanese gardens, panda bears in the zoo, geisha walking in Kyoto- one of the girls had actually seen a geisha for real! I was so excited by that, perhaps she did not quite understand my excitement...

She also showed me pictures of cute christmas cake- we do not have christmas cake so much on Christmas day, we have Christmas pudding but that's it! Apparently all they really eat on Christmas day is cake!


Then I came home and recorded a video that was super fun to do! It involves a whole lot of just jabbering to the camera and there's about a 50% chance that you will fall asleep before the end of it, but that should be up on Thursday/Friday time!

Then I do what I do best, curl up into bed and just clickity type away until tomorrow when a whole new day begins!

Don't press on my stomach

So it's Friday and I'm about to share with you a food-based crime that has taken place tonight
Actual, real criminal activity.
I saw this gateau in the freezer at the supermarket and for the sweet ol' deal of £1-something-p it was off home with me.
The gateau probably says on the side that it serves 8, maybe 12 people.
Tonight, I'm ashamed to say this served 2

I can't even tell you that I had the smaller half, the halves were even and I gobbled it up!
The delicious creamy icing, the wonderful chocoalte mousse like filling
wah it was so good.
But now I'm paying the price and am about 10 seconds away from falling into a food-coma
(One of those naps that you just have to have when you're so god damn full and the only way to not feel so gross and like a lump is to sleep it off)

It's going to be fun fitting into christmas party dresses!

It's my birthdaaaaaay!

Another sweet birthday has passed on by and now I can't believe it's all over

It's been filled with delightfully pink candyfloss clouds of love and happiness so I simply cannot complain.

I love birthday gestures that indicate that people just 'know' you, like how my friends made me Barbie cupcakes using one of those kiddy mixes, because they know I think Barbie is the queen of sass and style!

And how my roomate knows that I get excited over recieving mail, so she put my birthday card in the post box rather than just handing it to me over breakfast!

And how my mum travelled hours just to see me on my birthday and shower me in lots of love! And lots of brithday cake... this was my cake, a hot pink pig!

It tasted so amazing, after those Percy Pig sweets they sell in Marks and Spencers, so the icing was a delicious strawberry scented goodness, I love birthday cake so much that I think all birthday cakes should be sponge cakes, chocolate to me seems more like an 'all year round' cake

To top it all off, we ate in Wagamama's and I had the Cha han of course (no prawns, extra chicken) and it was yum-a-dee-doo

P.S If you were wondering about presents, I'm kind of weird with them, I like to keep them all together in a pile in the corner of my room and not put them away for about a week so that I can just absorb them in and look at them all together in one go, even if I use something that I got for my birthday I will put it back in the 'birthday pile' for example, a bottle of perfume- I would use some of it then place it in its original packaging back in the pile- I don't know why I do this, I have done it since I can remember! I do it at Christmas too- I just have a hard time putting presents away!

Bye-see-bye healthy habits!

This week has been full of a lot of goodbyes and goodbye dinners, but next week it will be full of lots of 'hellos' to new people, it's funny how life balances out like that.

Today I went out for a goodbye lunch at Pizza Express- usually I have those greasy-buttery dough balls for a starter, but I thought as it was lunchtime I'd skip on multiple courses and went straight for a four seasons pizza (pepperomi, mushrooms, anchovies and olives) I switched out the anchovies for extra mushrooms and it was pretty delicious for someone who doens't 'looove' pizza

after we'd finished that and all agreed we were full the dessert menu came...

　

and then the chocolate fudge cake came...

and then the final goodbyes had to follow which were bitter but made a little sweeter by the thought of that delicious slice of cake... It's not totally unhealthy... it has a strawberry on it which is fruit after all! haha...

Sister, Sister

Today was my sisters birthday, so we drove on down to see my sister!

One & only and favourite sissy! (She had not been awake long when I arrived and as you can tell, less amused by a camera lens in her face)

She got this fanciful picture of shoesies! All in a pretty and modern frame to jazz up her house! We both agreed pictures like this are way more fun than modern art where you can't distinguish anything specific, just fragments of 'what might be'

 

You are never too old for a Colin Catterpillar cake!

Just wanted to show you these lil' chicks in the mail this morning! They made me laugh so much, the one in the middle on the floor looks as though he went through some real trauma in the post! 

I love spending days with my sissy! It's not like when we were younger and would get to see each other every day! We had a fun day of shopping and picking a pretty dress for her to wear to a wedding, and then we ate lunch at one of our favourites 'Cafe Rouge'

I love wonderful and sunny Saturdays, and Birthdays!!

Cakes can be art too!

My beautiful friend makes to most incredible cakes, they are so delicious and cute- with iddy bitty icing detail so perfect it looks like it's been modeled from clay.

The most amazing part is that she's had no professional training, she just taught herself!

But she has oodles of talent and creativity, I hate having to cut into beautiful cakes like these...

I love the detail on the motorbikes- that would be so fiddly and need such a steady hand!

My favourite part of these is the iddy bitty rubber ducks! They're so cute, and the ruffly icing- I never saw ruffles in icing before!

I love how this compiles so many of Gagas looks, with a little icing version of her shaking her hiney!

Does this remind anyone else of a real life Farmville! The perfect little rows of cabbage and the white picket fence, so dreamy!

I sure hope these pictures made your day a little sweeter! Personally, it's gotten me hungry for cake...

Which ones your favourite? Mine is the last one, the perfect garden!