Where has the time gone??

July has gone SO quickly and so much has happened since I last posted! I had a great time at home and it was so lovely to spend time with my family again. I have finally taken the plunge and I've moved out of my childhood home. I say "moved out" but I still have a lot of my belongings there so I suppose I've not properly moved out yet... I'm now living with my boyfriend, Mario, in Nottingham and so far it's going really well! I was naturally a little nervous about it all but that's expected.

I suppose the next big thing I need to share is this:

I graduated! I now have a BA Joint Hons in German with French from Nottingham Trent University! It was stupidly hot that day and I had a proper sweat on for most of the day! Delightful... It was lovely to have the support of my family there and they all seemed so proud! My sister even stayed with us for a few days after graduation which was so wonderful!

I've been doing a lot of baking lately! In case you don't know, my dream is to open my own tea room so I need to perfect the art of delicious cakes! Mario and my housemate, Matt, don't mind sampling them for me!

Vanilla cupcakes - my auntie's recipe. They're so tasty!

Earl Grey Cupcakes - the icing was incredible but the tea flavour in the cake wasn't strong enough for me at all!

Coconut cupcakes with lime and coconut icing - these went down a storm with my friends and my grandma loved them too!

Banana and chocolate cupcakes with Nutella icing - I thought these cakes were going to be a disaster. I over-filled the cases and the icing was too wet... Turned out they were delicious!!

Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate sprinkles - these didn't last very long either! Yum yum!

Banana and chocolate cupcakes with vanilla and chocolate icing - these weren't was banana-tasting as the last batch I made but were still tasty. Mario bought me a piping bag that allows two icings to be used! Grandma said that they looked very professional; what a compliment! :D

We went to Nottingham Pride on Saturday! I went with the intention to sell my friendship bracelets (Banana Bracelets) but we won't discuss how that went... *cough* I had a great time anyway and the atmosphere was great! I even did rainbow makeup to commemorate the occasion and to get into the spirit of things! I received a lot of compliments on it :)

SO MANY COLOURS!!

The job hunt continues but I do have an interview next week so hopefully my luck will be changing soon! *fingers crossed*

How To Make Chocolate Rice Krispies Nests!

My sister, Charlotte, and I decided to make chocolate Easter nests on Tuesday! We were in the mood for baking and these delicious nests require the minimal amount of "baking" ever!

I'm clearly a professional food photographer...

I know there are many recipes out there to show you how to make these appetising little nests, but I thought I'd share how we made them! None of the measurements are exact as we just did it by eye a lot!

 Makes 24 Nests

You will need:

200g Milk Chocolate

100 g Plain Chocolate

A packet of Rice Krispies (You won't need them all!)

2 packets of Mini Eggs!

First of all, we broke up 200g of milk chocolate and 100g of plain chocolate into a glass, heat-proof bowl. Just use the supermarket's cheapest brand of chocolate as it melts a lot better than the posh, expensive stuff! Put some boiling water in a saucepan, but don't fill it completely. Then place the bowl of tasty chocolate on top of the saucepan, making sure that the chocolate doesn't actually touch the water!

Yuuuuum!

Stir the chocolate until it has all melted into a delicious smooth mixture! 

(I know the following photo still has lumps of chocolate, but we did keep stirring it! It took a lot longer than I thought it would...)

We then bought the supermarket's own brand of Rice Krispies (students on a budget!) and added them into the bowl. There was no exact measuring going on here... I just kept telling Charlotte to add more if I felt it necessary. It's quite easy to tell; if there is a lot of chocolate just existing in the bowl without a job, you need to add more! Stir in the rice krispies until they're all nicely coated with the chocolatey goodness!

 

After this fun is done, line a cupcake tray with cupcake cases. We made 24 Easter nests out of this batch. Using a couple of teaspoons, spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases and make a little well in the middle of them, to make a nest shape.

We then spoilt ourselves by buying Cadbury's Mini Eggs. Obviously, if you're on a budget, you can buy the cheaper equivalent, but these were on offer! We put two Mini Eggs in each nest, apart from some that had three. I was a bit obsessive about not having matching egg-colours in the nests!

After doing this, just leave them on the side to set, or in the fridge if you're in a rush, then tuck in! The plain chocolate makes them a little more bitter than just milk chocolate, which is a delicious addition!

All over the table... We're so smooth.

Et voilà! There you have it :) Your very own delicious Easter nests! I hope that you enjoyed making them and let me know how yours turn out!

Turns out it's also delicious crumbled over ice cream! This particular flavour was raspberry ripple :)