A bit of art for a change (:

Hey, I know this is meant to be a baking blog and all but I thought i'd show you all something different. As in my art work. Baking is my hobby but drawing/painting is aswell, and i know this sounds cheesy and so many people have said it before, but its what I do when i'm stressed out and/or don't want to talk to anybody. Which happens quite often. Which is probably how I ended up being nominated for "The quietest person in the year award" for the yearbook *sigh.* I know, it was really really really embarrassing. I'm quite shy, not that you would notice from these posts. Example A: English, i'm great at rambling on in essays and everything and i get good marks but as soon as it comes to speaking and listenening, I ended up with a D. Great! So thats my A gone down the drain:(

Anyways, back on topic, here are some of the pieces I did for my GCSE art and some other random stuff that i did in my free time(which is a rare occurence these days thanks to revision.) The first topic was pop art and the second was animals:

Ok, a bit blurry but it will do. This is a pop art piece i did of the UK singer ' Jessie J'

Heres another one of her, done under exam conditions ( I know i like the quiet sometimes but 2 whole days of complete silence is ridiculous.)

This is the owl that i painted, didn't go too well, the eyes went wonky but at least it gave me and my friend a good laugh.

A pencil drawing of a rabbit and a toy rabbit <3

A pencil drawing of my cat, Millie, half asleep

The same picture, just painted this time(:

And finally the other day, when i felt like punching a wall and bursting into tears, this is what i painted on my wall. Its a Beatles themed design thing, I'm a big fan of The Beatles by the way, got a T-Shirt and everything that I wear practically every day.

Yeah so I will be posting more baking soon, I've got loads of things i've made but not had time to blog because of these stupid exams all the time.

See Ya!!

How to make sugar cookies.

I didn't make sugar cookies until a few months ago when i first visited Bake at 350 ' s blog, and even the  i only tried a simple design because although they look AMAZING  they're a little daunting to say the least. A few weeks ago i made a hello kitty cookie for my food technology gcse coursework and everybody loved them because they looked so cute! And then last week, while checking the hundreds of blogs that i seem to read, i came across Lilaloa's cookie contest and decided that i absolutely NEEDED the prizes, although after seeing everyone elses designs, i think thats nearing on impossible.

Anyways, back to making the cookies, i followed this recipe but using 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla and not using any almond extract.

The dough should look something like this, but i found it was a little sticky at first so i kneaded  a bit more flour into the dough so it was easier to roll.

Using a cutter is a lot easier than stencils, especially when the stencil has 14 sides. *sigh* Anyway cut out the stencil and then cut the cookie dough around the stencil with a knife.

This is what thedy looked like after i'd cut them out, quite cute aren't they?

When the cookies have cooled a bit, draw out the design with edible pen. I use the americolor ones that come in a 2 pack from The cake decorating company in Nottingham.

Then trace the outlines, where you have drawn on in pen, with royal icing. All the outlines with my designs were black so thats the colour that i coloured the icing.(p.s. don't make the mistake of thinking glace icing is the same as royal icing. It isn't!)

Then colour the icing all the different colours you need, and add water until its the consistency of golden syrup or something similar.(p.s. use a toothpick to get into the corners of the cookies and to pop any airbubbles)

So thats it! After i used the edible pen again to draw on the details like the eyes and faces. Simple! (kind of.....)

See below posts to see the finished designs, and don't forget to check out Lilaloa's great competition.

Abbie x

Cookie contest!

Heres the miffy cookie:

Cookie contest!

Heres the powerpuff girl:

Cookie contest

Heres the green pig from angry birds:

Cookie contest

Heres the green angry bird:

Cookie contest

Here's the yellow angry bird:

Cookie Contest!

So Lilaloa is having a cookie decorating contest and here's the task:

Bake a cookie using this cutter. If you don't have this cutter, that's okay, just print out this high-tech sharpie version (or trace it right on your computer screen. It's the right size.) and then hand cut a cookie or four. And then decorate that cookie to look like anything except a present. That's it. Easy peasy. You can cut off parts of it if you want, or add pieces if you need to. Just make sure that we can tell it came from the present cutter to begin with.

 

In the end i decided to do angry birds, miffy (the cute little bunny) and a powerpuff girl, not quite sure which one but oh well :L

 

Red Angry bird:

Yellow angry bird:

 

 Green pig from angry birds:

Green angry bird:

Powerpuff girl:

Miffy:

Enjoy!

 

Gold bling cake!

So a while back me and my cousin made this cake. Sorry it took so long to upload it, the photos were on my old computer and i only just transferred them. Anyway, i will say no more, i think the cake speaks for itself!

It has 6 layers!

To make it you will need:

12 ounces flour

12 ounces marg

12 ounces sugar

6 eggs

blue ( or a different colour if you want) food colouring

12 ounces flour ( take about 3 tablespoons out and replace with cocoa powder, more if you want a really strong chocolate flavour.)

12 ounces marg

12 ounces suagr

6 eggs

Just a few ingredients then!

You'll need to make the two different mixtures in different bowls you can either

 a.) put all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk. i.e the method you use when you can't be bothered or are in a rush or just like to make things easy.

b. ) cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add one egg and a teaspoon of flour and whisk until all the ingredients are used.

Spoon the mixture into different round cake tins but if you don't have enough, which we didn't, you will have to put them in the oven at different times.Annoying i know. Bake for 25-35 minutes at 180°c or until a wooden skewer comes out of the cake clean.

After the cake has cooled level the off with a knife and eat the waste cake :D Layer the cake with Better Crockers "Chocolate fudge frosting" and then cover the outside of the cake. and then for the fun bit.

Spray the whole cake with Dr Oetker gold shimmer spray and the eat a slice.

Yum.