Flavour of the month

My propensity for the sweet stuff has been shared with you all here, here and here. At the moment the fairest of them all is still the red velvet cupcake. I’m a bit surprised at this fact since I tend to be a bit fickle when it comes to sweets, and the flavour of the month rarely occupies my heart for as long as the red velvet has. Last weekend I tried my hand at baking a batch of these delicious beauties. I was a bit disappointed with the colour, as it turned out a brick red colour instead of the vibrant red that I was after. I will keep trying until I get this right. In the meantime if any of you have any tips on how to get the colour right, please do share!

 

Spring Break

As winter turns to spring, we females tend to run around frantically booking mani’s and pedi’s and preparing to “de-fuzz” for the start of the skin bearing season. This is not to mention the crash diets and sudden interest in exercise that occupy our every thought, in an attempt to chase away the winter bulge. It’s rough being a woman, especially when attempting to get ready for spring. With this post, I pledge to thee to make this transition a little easier on you, well at least on the fashion side of things, if you consider these easy tips.

1. Introduce POPS OF COLOUR gradually into your outfit with nail polish and

    accessories like headbands and handbags;

2.  Wear LIGHT WASH JEANS to brighten up your look a tad, I love these

      faded ripped skinnies. In the dead of summer I will pair them with girly ruffle

      tops,  and with touches of floral and lace.

3. STRIPES are the print for all seasons so you can wear them through rain

    and shine and they will never look out of place; let's take a lesson from Kim

    here, shall we.

Pics courtesy of fashionably inspired 

4. Keep it pretty and fresh with FLORAL PRINTS AND ACCESSORIES.

pics courtesy of cafemom

Love, me

xx

Welcome to my bedroom

When I furnished my room 4 years ago I thought it would be genius to put a gigantic red couch in it. It looked so pretty and was so me, it would be perfect! Right? Wrong! This gorgeous couch has now been downgraded to a glorified clothes hanger and general crap accumulator. Whenever I’m too lazy or too tired (which is always) to pack my shit away, that shit gets added to the huge pile of shit already on my couch! Not pretty on the eyes! So I had a brainwave and thought that I would feature my couch (the cleaned up version, sans the shit pile) in my next outfit post and if all went well, it would be a regularly featured prop in my outfit posts, which would certainly compel me to keep it clean and tidy. Sadly the lighting in my room is not great and so the quality of the pics isn’t the best. I will probably not photograph in my room again, so sadly the accumulation of crap will undoubtedly resume. I tried. I processed these pics with the orton-ish feature on picnik, so hopefully they are not too terrible!

 

{I told you here about most recent shopping escapade, this is the dress and one of the pairs of shoes that I bought}

Its almost Friday lovies, hang in there!

Love, me xx

The Big Cheese

I heart cheese! Cheese in all shapes and forms, from soft stinky gorgonzola to gooey brie and everything in between. I have also shared another dirty little secret with you here, about my love affair with sugar and my tendency to eat dessert for dinner. Seeing as cheese + sugar = cheesecake, you can safely conclude that cheesecake is a weakness for me. This weekend I made the most delectable baked cheesecake, I just managed to steal myself a piece before the rest of my family attacked it. I got the recipe out of my new favourite cake book. This is a New York cheesecake.

{hmmm lets get started}

{quick taste test}

{this cheesecake is full on flavour and FAT, it takes almost 4 tubs of cream cheese, yikes!}

New York Cheese Cake:


Ingredients:

CRUST

85 g butter
280 g digestive biscuits

FILLING

900 g good quality cream cheese
250 g Sugar
45 ml Flour
3 eggs and 1 yolk
250 ml sour cream
7.5 ml Vanilla essence

TOPPING

250 ml sour cream
15 ml Castor Sugar
Juice from 1 lemon


Method:

Preheat Oven to 180 °C. Grease and line a 23 cm spring form cake pan.

For the crust, melt the butter in the microwave, and then stir into the crushed biscuits.

Press crushed biscuits into base and sides of pan. Bake in oven for 10 minutes. Cool while preparing the filling. Increase the oven setting to 230° C.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, with the paddle attachment beat the cream cheese until fluffy. Add the sugar and flour and continue beating for another 3 minutes. Add the eggs and yolk one at a time. Stir in sour cream and vanilla essence.

Pour filling into prepared pan and bake for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 110° C and bake for a further 30 minutes. Switch off oven and open door, leave to cool in the oven for at least 2 hours.

In a medium bowl, stir the sour cream, castor sugar and lemon juice together until the sugar has dissolved. Pour over the cooled cheesecake and refrigerate overnight.

Say hello to my fury little friend

We are in the middle of a "freeze your tits off" cold front at the moment. I find it impossible to be cute and fashionable in this sort of weather. My main thoughts revolve around food, warm blankets, woolly unattractive socks, more food, hot chocolate, Oh and I don’t like to shave my legs either, you get the gist, it can get rather ugly! However, having said that, I do have just one item in my closet that, despite the lazy slump and lack of grooming that this dreadful weather brings, manages to ooze cool sophistication and turns me into a glamour queen at the flick of a hat, literally. I bought this funky fury hat on my recent trip to Prague, I affectionately referred to is as "my creature" throughout the trip. I must just mention that it was spring in Prague and the locals could spot the tourist, moi, a mile away. The one dude even had the gall to tell me that I was a season late for this hat. Rude! It’s cute, comfy and is every bit as warm as it looks. These pics were taken in Prague.

{this was taken in Old Town Square, Prague}

{Me and my boyfriend. He is the person responsible for all of the fabulous photography on my blog, have i mentioned he is a bona fide rockstar, check out his band, cutting jade on facebook.}

{The gorgeous Charles Bridge behind us, and the famous Lake Vltava flowing just under us}

It blows my mind that this city, which is situated in the centre of Europe managed to escape virtually untouched by the war that surrounded it. Whilst other countries were being bombed and invaded, Prague stood tall in all its glory and still stands today, unscathed. It’s no wonder it is called the Pearl of Europe. I like to think that this is because little tiny fairies inhabited the land back in the day and that their only task was to frolic all day, dusting the land with their enchanted dust. This is just the type of imagery that this mystical place conjures up. The Czech Republic boasts more castles per square mile, than any other major country, it’s just surreal and you can feel the magic right down to your toes.

Ahem...now for some shameless self promotion, if you feel that my blog is worthy of a South African Blog award, please do nominate me under the Best New Blog category, its number 9. You can just click on the badge on the right hand side. Go on now, clickety click! I will be hugely grateful.

Splurge filled Weekend

I hope all my fellow South Africans had an awesome long week-end! This weekend I indulged in every way possible, I over slept, I over ate and I definitely over shopped. I went completely nuts at the mall this weekend, I'm afraid I might have seriously bankrupted myself this time! I walked away with 4; yes F.O.U.R. pairs of shoes, a dress, two tops and some gorgeous make-up from Benefit. I was going to take pics of all my purchases and share them with you, "one-time" (for all my foreign readers "one-time" is sort of South African for all at once!) But I thought nah; I’ll keep you in suspense and show off one piece at a time. So these pics feature the new clogs that I bought at Aldo, I took them for a test drive yesterday and am happy to report that they are super comfy. I also love this flapper style hat that I bought at Greenwich Market in London. The lady that was selling the hats is rumoured to be the very same lady that was commissioned to make all the Harry Potter hats, pretty cool!

{My bag is the wrong way around, Dope! I love this bag, will have to get better pics of it from the front!}

Orange and Hazelnut Yoghurt cake

I don’t usually consider oranges to be the most inspiring of fruits. To me they are, well, quite boring and ordinary, actually. Except during this time of the year, our oranges at this time of the year are super sweet and filled with so much juicy goodness, that they just cannot be ignored. I decided to take full advantage of the season’s offerings and baked up this delicious Orange and Hazelnut Yoghurt cake this weekend. I got the recipe out of a book called Cakes to celebrate love and life by Callie Maritz and Mari-Louis Guy. The aroma that fills the air whilst this cake is baking is undeniably entrancing. The warm aromtic cake then gets doused in orange syrupy goodness, before being topped with roatsed crushed hazelnuts and candied orange slices.

Orange and Hazelnut Yoghurt Cake:

Ingredients:

Cake:

350g Self Raising Flour
115g Ground Hazelnuts
150g Castor Sugar
5ml Baking Powder
2 large eggs lighly beaten
250ml Bulgarian Yoghurt
155ml sunflower oil
zest of 1 Lemon

Orange Syrup:

280ml Water
350g Castor Sugar
Juice of 1 orange
Juice of 1 Lemon
zest of 1 Orange

Method:

Preheat the Oven to 180 degrees (Celsius). Combine all the ingredients for the cake and beat until everything is mixed together. The consistency will be very thick and sticky. Spoon batter into a prepared cake tin and baked for 30-45 minutes. While the cake is baking, prepare the syrup. Place all the ingredients in a small pot and bring to the boil, continue to boil until all the sugar has dissolved. Pour the syrup over the cake while it is still hot. Top with roasted crushed hazelnuts and candied orange slices.

Give me the funny

I love to laugh, so it goes without saying that I am a huge fan of stand up comedy. Pablo Francisco is without a doubt one of my favourites, so you can imagine my delight when I found out that he would be performing at the Nando’s Comedy Festival at Monte Casino, along with a host of other talented comedians. I immediately snatched up tickets, and I'm so glad I did, it was just what I needed in the middle of a stress filled week. Our very own Trevor Noah was the MC for the evening and provided the audience with laughs the whole way through, it was my first time seeing him and he had me practically crying with laughter.

I also have tickets to see Jeff Dunham in September at Sun City. Yikes! I’m starting to sound like a comedy groupie!

{I wore a dark charcoal dress, with beading on the shoulders that i picked up at H&M in Berlin. I paired it with tights and Black Boots from Migato}

{Pink and purple eyeshadow, to brighten up the outfit a bit...and of course a headband!}

 

{The shoulder detail is so delicate, I get nervous everytime it gets washed}

I hope you are all having a fantastic weekend!