Valentines Viennese Hearts

Hi!

I love my cups of tea but I cannot have a cup of tea without a snack. I decided to make Viennese fingers for the first time but I decided to make them heart shaped.

Ingredients:

125g Unsalted Butter (Soften)

125g Plain Flour

40g Icing Sugar

1 Medium Egg Yolks

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

100g Chocolate (Whichever you prefer)

Equipment:

Mixing Bowl

Hand Mixer

Baking Tray with a baking sheet 

Piping Bag with a Star Shaped Piping nozzle

1. Place the butter and icing sugar together into a mixing bowl. Cream together until its fluffy and paler in colour.
2. Add the egg yolk and vanilla extract into the mixture and beat well.
3. Place the flour into the bowl and fold it into the mixture until fully combined.
4. Place the mixture into the piping bag and pipe out some hearts. 
5. Bake between 10-15 minutes or until golden on top.
6. Place the chocolate (I used dark chocolate) into microwavable bowl and microwave for 15 seconds until melted. Put back into the microwave for another 15 seconds if not completely melted.
7. Put the chocolate into a piping bag and pipe either a message or a chocolate heart in the middle to cover. 

I loved these as it was soft and crumbly and the dark chocolate worked well as wasn't too sweet. I placed chocolate in between 2 viennese hearts to make a chocolate viennese sandwich. You can be as creative as you want especially as Valentines Day is coming up.   

Hope you get a chance to try this recipe

TC

xx

Ferrero Rocher Inspired Chocolates

Hi!

A couple of days ago I was on Facebook and came across a video of someone making their own version of a Ferrero Rocher so I thought I'd give it a go but with a few changes (Click HERE to watch).

Ingredients
- 14 Malted Milk Biscuits (Blitzed)
- 25g Rice Krispies
- 200g Nutella
- 10 - 15 Whole Hazelnuts (depends on how big you want the Nutella balls to be)
- 200g Milk or Dark Chocolate
- 10 Hazelnut Chopped finely

1. Add the Nutella and Rice Krispies into the bowl and fold the ingredients until it is completely mixed.

2. Spoon out a small mixture and place a hazelnut inside and roll it into a ball

3. Chill your Nutella balls in the fridge for atleast an hour so they harden

4. Melt the chocolate and mix in the chopped Hazelnut. Add the Nutella balls one/two at a time into the mixture and cover completely.

5. Leave on a baking tray and chill for another hour so that the outside chocolate hardens.

Verdict:
I made mine a lot bigger than I originally had planned but they still taste yummy although I would suggest using less Malt Milk biscuits or take them out completely as it left a gritty feeling in my mouth. I would need to add a little bit of milk to make it less sweet and also make them much much smaller lol.

Hope you get a chance to try these out

Tc

xx

DIY Rice Krispie Christmas Pudding

Hi!

I mentioned in my Makeup Revolution London and DIY Gift post that I added some homemade chocolate rice krispie puddings to my cups and so I have added the recipe below with a step by step instruction on how I made them. 

Chocolate Rice Krispies Pudding

Ingredients:-

- 125g Rice Krispies

- 225g Plain or Milk Chocolate (You're own preference)

- 3 tbsp Golden Syrup

- 100g White Chocolate

- Holly and Berries sprinkle (I found these in Poundland. It was 2 for £1)

If you can't get hold of these you can always use fondant icing to make the holly and berries.

Equipment:-

- Mixing bowl

- Spoon

- Baking tray with grease proof paper

1) Break your plain/milk chocolate into the mixing bowl and put it into the microwave for 30 seconds. 

2) Take it out and mix until you feel the chocolate starting to stiffen. Repeat steps 1 to 2 until the chocolate is completely melted.

3) Add the Rice Krispies and syrup into the mixture. Mix well.

4) Take a spoonful of the mixture and place it into your hands and roll it into a ball. Place onto the baking tray.

6) Once you've used up your mixture place the balls into the fridge to cool down.

7) Take the Rice Krispie balls out and let it rest whilst you melt the white chocolate.

8) Pour a small spoonful of the mixture on top of the pudding (it doesn't need to be neat as its supposed to represent the cream dripping down the Christmas pudding)

9) Add your sprinkles onto your puddings and place it back into the fridge so that the white chocolate hardens.

These are super easy to make so super yummy! Z helped me make these and even though it got a bit messy with the chocolate mixing it was fun. They make amazing gifts especially wrapped in cellophane so I hope you can give these a try.

TC

xxx

DIY Snowmen Cup

Hi!

In my Makeup Revolution London and DIY Gift post I mentioned these snowmen cups. Below is an outline of how I did it but you can be as creative as you want with them. You can make snowoman, snow dogs, snow angels anything you desire but I just kept to a simple snowman because I had to make 15 and I didn't have the patience to sit and design different cups.

What you'll need:-

- Polystyrene cups 

- Black Marker

- Orange Felt

- Glue/ Double Sided Tape

- Coloured dots (optional)

- Coloured Felt (Scarf)

1) Stick the coloured dots on to mark out the eyes (you could also draw them on if you don't want to by the coloured dots).

2) Cut triangles with a curved side out of orange felt for the nose and stick it with either glue or double sided tape.

3) Using your marker draw dots smaller than the eyes for a mouth. 

4) Using your chosen felt wrap it around the cup and mark out where the two felt meets the beginning. Add an extra 2cm to the felt and cut it out.

5) Cut small slits on each sides to make a fray effect and stick it onto the cup. 

I made 15 of these and had to make more because Z was using them to play ball games with, which was a good and different idea to what I had from them. These cups are so simple to make but it does take some time to put together but you could ask your children to help and see what creations they come up with and it means the world to them if someone received and appreciated a gift that they created.

TC

xx

NailDesigns

Helloooo

I know post are coming along very slowly and I'm sorry.

I haven't been doing my nails much lately as they keep breaking and I didn't want to always use fake nails lol
I painted my nails with a white polish before I added any colour on as I find it brings out the colour more.

I recently made several purchases at Fragrance Direct and managed to get some polishes for 49p. BARGAIN! lol but I never managed to used any so I decided to use Manhattan Rock Topia (3) which is the Apricot colour.

I only needed to put on 1 coat of the colour and the colour shone through. I didn't really like the colour when it arrived but once I had it on I fell in love with it as its such a summery and fun colour.

I didn't know what to do as I never plan my nail art designs but I was determined to use these:

Yep! Ring reinforcements. LOL

I've seen many people use these in their tutorials and wanted to try using them in my nail art.

The following are basic tutorials on how to do these designs.

 Aztec inspired nail

1. Cut a ring reinforcement in half making sure you cut away the middle circle.

2. Paint on your chosen colour (I picked yellow). It doesn't matter if you paint onto the ring reinforcement as it will be peeled away. 

3. Peel the ring reinforcement off once the polish is dry and using nail varnish clean away any excess polish on your skin.

I painted on a white angle to separate the orange and yellow to make it stand out more. I also added black gems to the center of the yellow section to give it a nice texture.

Feathers:

1. Draw a line diagonally. This will be the center of the feather.

2. Starting from the bottom draw lines coming off the center outwards; make sure that the size of the flicks get smaller as you reach the tip of the feather.

-Optional-

3. Do the same on a corner to show that there are other feathers

4. Using a lighter colour repeat steps 1 and 2 on top of your first feather but leaving wider gaps between the flicks to make it look as if it has texture.

----------

I have to admit that I hate birds. LOL but I love this simple and easy feather design.

The first time I ever saw this design was on Instagram (nailsbylins) and I just fell in love with it but I will NEVER come to like birds. 

--TCx--