Baking up a storm

I was brought up with Bero book cakes made by my Mum and my Nanna, (no wonder I struggle with a sweet tooth and healthy eating!) and so I have continued the tradition, as it really helps when I want to make someone a special Birthday or Christmas present and money is tight! I assumed everyone can bake a cake but my friends are always impressed with their sweet treats!

I'm going to try some of these healthy recipes I keep seeing all over the internet and Instagram to curb my sweet tooth, more blogs on them later, but I think if you can't have a cake on your birthday or at Christmas just when can you!? I imagine fitness enthusiasts would say 'never, don't do it', but, at risk of being a slave to a cliché, you really do only live once!

Clockwise from top Left: Raspberry Flapjack | My Sisters' summer inspired birthday cake | bubbling fudge in pan | Experimental '2- tier' baby shower cake | 'Dentist' inspired cupcakes | Celebration strawberry cake for theatre production | Hen party cupcake with mint butter cream | Fresh cream cake with berries | Sponges fresh from the oven | My attempt at 'Lego' cake | Chocolate parcel, fudge & brownie, same above | Chocolate buns & 'Christmas tree' cupcakes | white choc drizzled brownie & Easter nest buns

















Above are some of my prouder baking moments but I have had my fair share of mishaps. My most recent cake for a friends birthday I thought had gone well, one of my best yet. It was a simple design with two 'bears' made out of the icing, and I didn't put it in the fridge because that dries the sponge out and I was taking it to her the next day, but when I went to check it in its Tupperware box I was gutted to find that the bears and half the icing were falling off the cake! I possibly used too much jam as a way to bond the icing to the sponge and I worried the cake was soggy inside, but luckily it was well received and my dear friend Terri said it was a perfect cream/ sponge/ jam ratio!

A few times now people have said I should sell my cakes, I've always been apprehensive as I am my own biggest critic and I've seen lots of accounts on Facebook of some really impressive cake making & decorating, but, when I have had amazingly structured and designed cakes in the past they haven't always been as impressive in taste, or the texture of the sponge has been far too heavy. I'm inclined to bite the bullet and make a little page with a portfolio of my past master pieces and just start off by charging people ten pounds for my labour plus whatever the cost of the ingredients for their desired product. I've never been much of an entrepreneur and I'm worried that there is some business 'rules' I'm unaware of when starting a small venture so I'm going to investigate.

More baking mishaps and conquests will be shared soon I'm sure!

Homework: Have more fun!

This is a cake I made a while ago for my Amateur Drama Group show week when we did a play called 'Don't Misunderstand Me'. I didn't have time to make one for them for this week as it is show week again and they are performing three one act plays, I got a sneak peak last night and they were funny and professional as always!

I sadly wasn't able to take part in the performances this time because the rehearsal night clashes with my Leeds based acting class, which leads me smoothly into the point of this blog, and that is to reflect on what I learnt in class, which I'm going to try and do every week.

Usually we work on short scripts in pairs but this week we did group work in groups of 4, which was a lot of fun! The script was an extract from the play 'The Memory of Water' and I loved it! I'm not dying to see the play and would love to be in it for real too! In class I played the part of Catherine, in the particular scene she's drunk, high and flirting shamelessly with her sisters' married lover, having recently had the news that her mother has passed away. I myself cannot flirt for toffee and I'm more inclined to be the type of person who says sorry to someone who bumps into me on the street than someone who would be manipulative enough to flirt with someone else's boyfriend, so I find playing such characters the most fun!

I got quite positive feedback this week, and my advice was to continue to pick objectives I can have fun with as I did this week, because I can be on the 'dramatic' side! It sounds easy to just 'have more fun', but I'll really have to stretch my imagination for the next class depending on the script because I found this script easy to make fun, I saw the character as manipulative and sarcastic straight away, but usually I struggle to make a choice in the scripts to make them less serious.... I'll let you know how it goes!

My Resolutions:

After my late night ramble its time to bite the biscuit and put my resolutions in print. It sounds like no biggie, but once they are 'out there' I'll feel I have to achieve at least the ones within my power, so here goes:

1. Loose weight: Yes, that old chestnut. At 5. 7", I dream of the single day when I was nineteen, and stepped on the scales to find it read a dainty 8st 10lbs! It literally pinged back up to 9st the next day, now I'm just over a stone more than that my ultimate goal would be to be 9st again, but if I could reach 9st 5lbs before Glastonbury Festival this year it would make me more tan happy! So some of my blogs will be about healthy food & fitness. And it isn't just to be skinny, I'm from a family of sugar lovers with sky high cholesterol, so to feel healthy is important. I should also mention I'm a pescetarian, so expect lots of food full non meat protein and iron source veggies- yum! :-)
2. Get out of debt: Have you ever read the 'Confessions of a shopaholic' book series? Well I love them, mainly because its like reading my own thought processes when it comes to shopping. I mean don't get me wrong I don't have debt to Becky Bloomwood proportions, but my aim is to have even the tiniest savings in the bank by the end of the year, and for the first time in my life have money in the bank for Christmas (FYI, I LOVE Christmas!) because I love to spoil people. So if I discover any money saving or money making revelations I'll be sure to share them with you.
3. Move to Leeds: As mentioned in my introduction blog, I'm hoping to move to Leeds with a lovely friend in my acting class there by April... watch this space!
4. Become a Jobbing Actress: This is my favourite resolution. Its going to be more than hard and next to impossible but its the only thing I've ever been told I'm good at (although those moments are a rarity) and that I've ever really, really loved doing. I've been going to Act Up North for a year now, so definitely expect some Acting blogs! My next step is to get a show reel together which I'll definitely share with you if I'm able to!
5. My fifth and final resolution for now, ahem, is to (drum role please) go on a date: To be more specific, it is to go on my first date since 2010. And that last date was a baad one. Awful. The idea of going on a date with a stranger, with the awkward small talk and 'should-I-lean-in-for-a-kiss-at-the-end' dilemma fills me with dread and nausea. Luckily for me, in a way, the situation hasn't come up anytime recently, but, as much as I do love cats I do not want to be destined for my impending fate as a cat lady. I'm not really a loner in life although I don't mind my own company and am a very independent chick, as my friends say, its time for me to 'get out there'. I think I'm going to save this resolution for Leeds, because its fair to say in Hull it is s-l-i-m pickings. more on this later...

So I hope my stories on my quest for a life overhaul are enjoyed. If they aren't though, I'm sure this online diary can be printed as evidence that at some point I had a life, when my old withered body is found far into the future half eaten by my own cats.

A very good place to start

I'm not going to beat around the bush. I tried to blog once before. It was a fail. It wasn't a big fail, it didn't last long enough but it was a fail nonetheless. I've decided to give it another go because my dear friend Aimee has a cracking blog going on, and as were both part of the early twenty something age group that can't seem to get a degree related job out there in the big wide world she advised me that keeping a blog is a great way to basically stay sane!

At the risk of being a bore, here is a little bit about me and my blogging motives....

Some people are dead set against 'New Years Resolutions', reasons given including 'why will anything change, its only a new year', 'what's the point in making one I'll only set myself up for failure' and the classic, usually favoured by the male of the species I've noticed 'Why would I try and change, I'm already perfect'.

I'm a hopeless optimist to the point where every year I average on about 10 resolutions. Every year I believe its going to be THE year I change my life completely, its going to be 'MY year', I'm 'gunna OWN it' and other such corny emotive sayings and quotes I've been brainwashed with via Twitter and Instagram.

This year, having handed in my notice at my nice-but-not-for-me job that I'd been plodding along in for the last two years, in my kinda-nice-if-you-like-to-behind-the-rest-of-the-county-by-about-three-years-but-not-for-me-home-town, I was all ready to start my new job, my much better paid job that I was sure would be my ticket out of town once I'd raised the money. Not long after 2014 started I found out that the company had changed there mind and had a freeze on recruitment, they might change their mind in October. Oh. I passed my interview last July, so this had been part of my master plan for a very long time. Sugar.

I wont name and shame the company, I'm no dumb chicken so I know nothing should go on the internet that you wouldn't want people reading, but it was more of a means to an end than my dream career, so I have come to the conclusion that it was the absolute best thing that could've possibly happened!

I'm about to give notice at my beautiful flat that I share with beautiful people (sniff) to move in with my Nanna, while looking for a job in Leeds and saving to move there. Its going to be tough on many levels, for a start resolution No. 1 is to loose a stone, and my Nanna Shezza, well, she's a delight, but she's a feeder. Say no to a chocolate biscuit one too many times and she starts 'tut-tut-tutting' her disapproval while grumbling that 'you need some meat on your bones'. Its going to be the biggest test of my will power, possibly EVER!

Well, that's just about set the scene, in my next blog, I will list my resolutions in the hope that sharing them will motivate me to keep them! And once I have the hang of this blogging fan-dango I'll share what you can be expecting from the little voice in my brain from here on in!

Tarra for now! ;-)

P.s. I just realized I actually did beat around the bush didn't I? Sorry about that...