Armed with cake and wine, she left me...

Saying goodbye to Rosaline was the most ridiculously emotional event that has occurred in my life in a while. Ridiculous because she's only gone to Bristol and I'm going to see her in a few weeks time. Emotional because SHE'S ALL GROWN UP AND MOVING ON WITH HER LIFE AND SHE'S GOING TO MAKE NEW COOLER FRIENDS AND THEN WHO WILL I EAT FROYO AND TALK ABOUT DIFFERENT ICING STYLES WITH?!

Ahem. Sorry. 

Yes, so Rosaline left for Bristol a few weeks ago (apologies for the lateness of this blogging, UCAS ruins lives) and the day before she left happened to be her 19th birthday. Which was a convenient excuse to have a classy get together and weep. In honour of her birthday and her leaving, I made her possibly the best cake I have ever made in my life. Which is not an understatement. Due to our shared love for the infamous chocolate peanut butter combo I scoured the internet for a suitably amazing cake. One recipe kept coming up again and again, however I was reluctant to use it because it contained 'white vinegar'. I know, vinegar in cake... weird. Especially 'white vinegar' which, after much googling, I could only take to mean white wine vinegar... even weirder. But after reading rave review after rave review and about two hours of dithering over the vinegar situation - tears followed by my mum telling me to pull myself together did occur many a time - I decided to take the plunge and bake it.

And thank the lord I did. It was a spectacularly moist, chocolatey, peanut buttery mound of deliciousness and went down extremely well. So well that Rosaline, on taking it Bristol, has made loads of lovely friends and is having a brill time (yes I am taking full responsibility - without my cake she would be nowhere). So if you have a rather large amount of time on your hands (there's a lot of chilling/melting involved) and someone especially important to you to make a cake for, you've hit the jackpot with this one. 

It Finally Occurred

We baked together.

Even though we've shared a blog for almost 7 months, and known each other much much longer, this seemingly rather obvious event has never actually occurred.

So, before Rosaline leaves for Bristol (sob) we decided that enough was enough, and finally, after many empty promises and cancelled dates, we did it.

And it was so much fun!

This momentous event occurred in Rosaline's lovely kitchen (interrupted by the arrival of the new toaster which was very exciting) and after much indecision (obviously, it's us) we decided to go with trusty BBC Good Food and make...

 'The Ultimate Chocolate Cake'

Even for the BBC, that's quite a large claim. In fact, considering the variety of chocolate cake we have both consumed in our lives, it's an enormous claim. 

But OMG did it live up to it's name.

We decided we were officially ADDICTED. It was so gooey and moist (ew ew ew) and delicious that once we'd started we just couldn't stop. (True Fact: Chocolate is marginally addictive. So, err, that's our excuse for glutenous behaviour)

We made this for our Say Goodbye To Our-Only-Follower Polly Party which was, as you can imagine very emotional, (she went to Manchester yesterday; we're sad) and so this seemed an appropriate cake to make. As in, one you're unlikely to forget in a hurry.

And Ultimate Chocolate anything is an appropriate send off really.

Polly seemed appropriately blown away by the whole thing. The champagne candles are optional (but really quite a necessity, we would say)

Pre Bristol Baking

I head off to Bristol very soon , so this afternoon Ellie and I are going to bake together!!

 

Eek I'm excited. And frantically clearing up my kitchen. Ellie has the nicest kitchen and mine is, at present, putting me to shame. My mother is thrilled by this development and thinks that Ellie should come over more often for baking (rather than just for parties and froyo dates which is normally the case) if it makes me tidy up this much.

 

We can't decide what to make (my crippling indecision once again) so watch this space...

 

I'm just off to buy some eggs.

Excitement!!

 

xxx

Slutty Brownies (aka heaven in a baked form)

These are, without a doubt, the easiest yet most delicious brownies ever. Yes ever.

I know what you're thinking - 'Oh but what about my grandmas/aunts/neighbours super secret recipe'... no. Nothing compares to these.

They consist of cookie, oreos and brownie. All in one. All made in under an hour. See? Easy yet delicious. Have I persuaded you yet?

Maybe this will:

I discovered this glorious creation whilst browsing (aka stalking)  The Londoners Blog. She's amazingly classy, cool and, from what I can gather, eats for a living. And she's got an amazing figure. So basically I want to be her (in case you hadn't got that yet). Due to their less than healthy state I'd been debating when was an appropriate time to finally bake them, and the fact that I go back to school again in a few days is definitely a good enough excuse. Speaking of going back to school, ROSALINE GOT INTO BRISTOL!! This is amazingly exciting and I'm so proud of her. However this does mean she's leaving me (but not for like a month yay) and I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to cope. Probably by making and eating many of these brownies whilst quietly weeping into a mug of tea (I'm being slightly overdramatic I realise, it's only like an hour away and I'm planning on regularly visiting). 

So yes, these brownies are possibly the greatest thing you will ever eat (although I slightly overcooked mine) and I highly recommend making them whenever possible. And obviously you can make them from scratch, but the box versions are just as delicious and much easier!

Blueberry Mad

It's official, summer has turned me and my family blueberry mad. There are blueberries everywhere in my house, including the larder because we've now run out of room in the fridge. So as you can guess, due to their short life span, it's becoming quite a challenge to eat them all. Therefore I thought, being the noble and selfless person that I am, I'd try to use most of them up in various baking escapades. My first use of them were in the 'Healthy' Blueberry Muffins however that merely dented the enormous quantity of blueberries, therefore I moved on to bigger and better things in the form of... Blueberry Cheesecake.

Personally, I don't really like cheesecake anymore. This shocking turn of events probably occurred due to the fact that my GCSE Food Tech final product was a cheesecake, and therefore I spent about three months testing every single possible variation on the classic vanilla cheesecake, so I'm slightly cheesecaked out. However I was required to contribute something to a barbecue, and as most people love cheesecake and it's quite a summery dessert I thought it would be the perfect opportunity.

I was er just slightly indecisive in choosing exactly what cheesecake I was going to make and therefore ended up making it the morning of the barbecue, so had to go for a baked cheesecake as there wasn't enough time for a chilled one to set. 

'Healthy' Blueberry Muffins

I know what you're thinking, the words healthy and muffin aren't usually put together. And if they are the result is usually tough and bitter and just generally an unpleasant experience. However, due to the whole summer aka wearing shorts and bikinis ALL THE TIME situation that has suddenly occurred I decided to try and find a solution to the fact that cakes aren't exactly low in calories.

It took a lot of googling, recipe book reading and consultations with my mum before I finally found a recipe that sounded like it could actually taste nice. And it was blueberry muffins, which is always a bonus because who doesn't love a good blueberry muffin?! Especially in summer, with a glass of lemonade and a really good book (even if it is 50 Shades of Grey -yes I'm talking to all you creeps that read it in public - just why?!) 

So I set about to making BBC Good Foods Blueberry Muffins with 'virtually no saturated fat', making a few adjustments along the way.

Chocolate Cake and An Apology

ROSALINE CAME HOME. And then I went away. And then I came home. And she is away again. So I still haven't managed to see her which is very upsetting. However in her absence I baked a lot, mainly to try and do something other than wistfully wish I was also travelling. However I didn't blog about it - dreadful I know - so that's what the apology is for.

But I'm back to my blogging ways in full force, having been inspired by Rosaline's multitude of posts. And trust me, this chocolate cake is worth the wait.

My uncle is one of those lucky people in that whatever he cooks will be absolutley delicious. Especially his chocolate flapjacks. So having been given the daunting task of making his birthday cake, I knew I would have to step outside my comfort zone. He loves chocolate, as most people do (except for those crazy ones- I don't associate with those people) and so after many hours of recipe searching I discovered what I felt was a suitably exciting but not too fancy chocolate cake recipe and so I set to work.

The original recipe calls this 'Moist Chocolate Cake' which although is true, moist is not a very  pleasant word so I would probably replace 'Moist' with Intense, or Delicious, or possibly Extraordinary.