BAKING | Happy Birthday to Mumsy and adding a little glitter

It's May. Which means: I am having to go through a hell of a lot of birthdays! Recently, it was mum's birthday. I don't usually need an excuse to bake a cake, but mother's birthday is a pretty good one.

I have been wanting to make a German cake called "Schneewittchenkuchen", which translates to "Snow White cake". I used to make this one all the time back in Germany. It is usually a traybake, but I found a recipe to make a Donauwelle (which to me seems the same, just with a different name. If anyone knows the difference between these two, please feel free to enlighten me!), and they had used a springform. I had to change the recipe slightly; pretty much halve the amount of sugar and use light brown cane instead of white granulated, I also used shortening instead of palm fat, and... that's all I can think of at the moment. Oh yeah, I used coconut milk instead of cow's milk. I couldn't completely veganise it, so tried substituting the ingredients I knew how to. 

Overall, it turned out alright! The custard-crème was a little too runny for my liking and the chocolate on top too hard, but people liked it. 

Cutting nice slices without everything exploding was a mission and a half!

The recipe I used was found on Chefkoch.de, but as I mentioned above, I modified it a little. 

Since I am here, I thought I'd show you a new nail polish I bought a while ago. I went into superdrugs and they had a 3 for 2 offer on all make-up, I think. Bought the Rimmel Wake Me UP Foundation in Natural Beige and a couple of nail polishes. 

The first one I had picked up was a Sequin Nail Effect polish by Barry M. Now, I have tried this on and, well, I can't decide whether I like it or not. I put two layers on and it does not look too nice with the second coat on, as the white in it is a little milky and paints right over the first coat of sequin-like glitter. It also gave the nails a structured feel, which I am guessing were the glitter bits poking out the top coat, so not sure how I feel about that bumpy feel. 

Two coats of the Barry M Sequin Effects

Quite glittery, right?! The second polish was a nice glittery one, too, but this one was from Maybelline. Even though the Barry M polish did not blow my mind, I am looking forward to trying the Maybelline polish, as it would make quite a nice colour for the summer, I think. It looks like the sea at night! 

Barry M Sequin Nail Effects in SNP1 White

Maybelline Color Show Polka Dots in 198 Shooting Stars

That's it for now. Happy Birthday, Momma!

Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!

x ♥ x

BAKING | It's Chocolate Cake time!

I have a major sweet-tooth and I absolutely love baking. When I was younger, I baked on quite a regular basis. Lots of traybakes, cakes, muffins.... I loved trying out new recipes. I would sometimes trade recipes with my aunt, talk about new things we have tried, school bake sales were awesome, although, admittedly, mum had to do a lot of baking for me then, since I was lazy and not organised enough. Thanks, mum!

When we moved to the UK, I just didn't get back into it, until I started working at my last job and people would bring in home made cupcakes. Cupcakes was something I had never tried before, so I looked online and tried. Over the last 2-3 years I have baked more regularly again, which my workmates possibly benefited from the most! More recently I have looked into more healthier ways of baking, including vegan baking. I am not confident enough with vegan baking just yet, but it is something I want to explore more.

Browsing the web for some new cook books, I came across a book called Cook Yourself Thin. It had the "Look Inside" option and after having a little peek at some of the recipes, I decided to buy it. At the time I did not realise that there had been a TV show with the same name on Channel 4 with Gizzi Erskine, who is one of the writers of the cook book. When I found out I could watch episodes on YouTube, I was obsessed with watching it! She had so many great ideas! The only downside was the lack of vegetarian friendly dishes on the show, but I think you could probably just swap the meat for a Quorn, or another veggie-friendly products.

Anyways, back to baking. I saw her make a orange chocolate cake on the show and remembered, that I had the cook book, which had a desserts section in it! It was not the same cake, although you can get that recipe from the Channel 4 website, but it sounded very delicious, so I tried it yesterday. 

It's the Beetroot Chocolate Fudge Cake. 

Sounds strange, but it is such a rich cake! You don't taste vegetable in there at all! I have had to improvise a little with the recipe, for example instead of muscovado sugar I just used light brown cane sugar and I have had to substitute the maple syrup with agave nectar. In this recipe it also says to use a high loose bottomed tin, but I only had two sandwich tins and divided the batter up into both and halved the baking time. It turned out fine! Instead of flower petals, I grated a little white chocolate over the top of the cake. Even my dad, who is probably the only person in this family without a sweet-tooth, liked it.

If you like dark chocolate and baking, you should give this a try! 

Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!

x ♥ x

BEAUTY | ***BOX SWAP*** Canada/UK

It has been a while since I have posted something on here. Not much has changed, still on the oh-so-daunting jobhunt (which never fails to point out the skills I DON'T have) and there just hasn't been much to write about. It's that or I didn't think it was something to be publicised on the internet. 

Anyways. I love YouTube. I spend hours watching all sorts of videos!  And a while back, I watched a box-/beautyswap video by Louise from Sprinkleofglitter and thought "that looks amazing! I'd love to do something like that!". And since I have a huge family spread all over the world, I thought I'd give my cousin in Canada a holla! My cousin Jenny has her own beauty blog and is known as JenBunny, so it would be perfect. We quickly decided on the fine stuff like what we wanted to include, the budget (which I may have lost track of when buying things...) and when we would send it out. I think we said we'd send our packages out on Wednesday 3rd, April, but funnily we both missed it and managed to send it off on the 9th (which I realised when I got her package.)

Now, I received her package within 2 weeks, maybe, but decided to wait till she got mine, so we could open them up the same day. And I waited a long time. On May 2nd, I received a package. I got quite excited, because I thought it was a bag I had won on ebay, but no, it was my swap package, which was supposed to be in Canada by this point. Everything inside (I had wrapped up everything individually) had been opened, even an envelope containing a note/letter. It turns out, you are not allowed to send nail varnish! They had taken 2 Barry M nail polishes out, as they are considered "potentially dangerous" and destroyed them. Not gonna lie, that destroyed my soul a little. As gutted as I was, I just re-packaged everything else and sent it off again, this time asking the lady at the post office, if there is anything else I should take out before sending. 

FINALLY, she received her package yesterday. Granted, it was in a bit of a state, and I am not sure yet, if there is anything missing or broken. I hope not, as this would just really annoy me further. But, it also meant, I could finally open up my package, which had conveniently fallen behind my bed! Out of sight, out of mind they say, and they were right! 

And this was what was inside:

Some bits were wrapped individually.

All of this was wrapped up in this beautiful white wrapping paper which had loose bits of glitter in it.

So pretty! The glitter got all over the bed! Like Ke$ha's dream blanket.

First off, there were these products from a brand called Quo.

Nail polishes: Quo by Orly, Lipstick:Quo and Lashes: Quo in Flirty

Magnetic Attraction, Kiss & Tell Gels, Wild Orchid Gels

The lipstick is pretty genius! You just press the silver bit at the bottom and then you can just pull it out. I think the packaging is really great! Something different! The colour is lovely, too! Don't really own the colour and it's not something I would usually go for, I tend to buy vibrant reds, dark reds or vibrant pinks. But this looks pretty natural and seems close to my own lip colour. Very creamy texture aswell.

Just push the silver and it pops out!

Next up, these two essence pigments. Absolutely gorgeous!! Although we do have essence over here, I don't think these have caught my eye anywhere. They are a Twilight- Breaking Dawn part 2 edition. There are (or were?) four different shades. These two are in 02 Alice Had A Vision- Again and 04 Edward's Love. You don't need to be a Twilight fan to appreciate the products! As you can hopefully see from the photo below, they are such lovely colours! Especially Alice Had A Vision- Again I can't wait to try out! 

  

To be fair, they are pretty cool names, too!

So shimmery!

Next up there were these two products from Milani. A very shimmery beige/golden eyeshadow in Golden Touch and a Baked Powder Blush in Berry Amore. Although I am usually not that big on blush, I am excited to try this one. It has pink and peach elements and I can imagine both being great for the summer (should we be lucky to experience that here in the UK.).

The blusher has a little mirror underneath the product and it also comes with a little brush. Probably will use a blush brush with this though.  

There were also these two eyeshadows from Hard Candy, I think. It also says "Single & Loving It" across the top of them, which I am guessing is the name of the range, maybe? Or the other way around? Either way, again, very nice summery, shimmery colours! The rose one is in the shade Flirty and the brown-ish one is in Attraction. Also just realised that there are pinky/purple-y glitter bits in Attraction. So pretty!

Also included were this brush from sonia kashuk and a Vasanti Liquid Cover Up in the shade V12. The Liquid Cover Up is a concealer and foundation all mashed up into one. Haven't tried it yet, but the shade looks like a good match. It comes with a brush similar to the Illamasqua highlighter. The brush is super-soft and feels very dense!

A couple of bath/spa products. I must say, I loved Bath and Body Works when we were in Canada! I still have my body mists. They smell so good!! (Apart from the powdery smelling one, wasn't too much a fan of that.) In this, i got a body lotion in Twilight Woods. It smells flowery and cool (as in, it has that cold kind of smell to it).I really like it, as the scent is not overpowering at all! Also got a Fruit Smoothie mask with Raspberry & Mango by Montagne Jeunesse. I believe we have these here, too. I think I tried a white chocolate mask from them before. I just wanted to eat it!! 

 Aaaaand, at last but not least: a Matt Effect Top Coat by GOSH. I was so thrilled about this! I know we have GOSH in the UK, but never really look at their products. I have two sparkly liquid eyeliners from them, in green and blue, because they were on sale. Tried it out on my hand and literally couldn't get it off me the whole day! But now I have this! I have always wanted to try a mattifying polish. Well, I thought I'd try the old Cornstarch trick, as suggested by Andrea from AndreasChoice, but it seemed like too much effort. That's right, I'm hella-lazy. 

Can not wait to try this on lots of colours! :D

So, there it is! Lots and lots of very exciting new products from beyond the pond! I haven't done any swaps or anything. If I do do them, I will add the pictures on later. 

Thank you so much to Jenny for agreeing to do this. I am really sorry for the delay with my package and I do hope you like the products you got. Thanks a bunch for my amazing package!  I am so excited and want to try everything at once! Haha!! 

This is one huge a** post, so I hope you enjoyed reading it, if you have come this far. If not, thank you for stopping by! :) 

Hope you all have a lovely day!

x ♥ x