Friday 20 October 2017

Pumpkin Spiced Pumpkin Cake 🎃




OK first off I know many of you won’t have time to go all out and make an almost real looking pumpkin, but that’s OK! Just make the cake and serve with the glaze of your choice, slather it in buttercream,or eat it plain with some tea!


Ingredients:

For The Cake-

  • 3 eggs, room temperature
  • 3 tablespoons milk, room temperature
  • 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla Extract 
  • 1 ¼ cups (150 grams)  flour
  • 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup (150 grams) caster sugar
  • 3/4 cup (150 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp ground ginger
  • 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 1/8 tsp ground cloves
For the Buttercream-

  • 550 gms confectioner's sugar / Icing Sugar
  • 250 gmssalted butterroom temp ( you can even use 1/2 butter and 1/2 vegetable shortening)
  •  2 tbsp cold milk 
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • orange food coloring & Black Food Coloring

Fondant-

  • Orange Ready To Roll Fondant 
  • Green Ready To Roll Fondant 
Tools-

  • Measuring Cups
  • knife for carving the cake
  • Mixing Bowl
  • Whisk
  • Weighing Scale
  • Measuring Spoons 
  • Bundt Pan
  • Cooling Wrack 
  • Turn Table 
  • Pallet Knife 
  • Cake Side Scraper 
  • Electric Mixer/ Hand Mixer
  • Rolling Pin




Lets Get Started!

For The Cake-
  1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees C and place rack in center of oven. 
  2. Grease and dust 2 small Bundt Pans. 
  3. Sift flour with baking powder and keep aside.
  4. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, and vanilla extract.
  5. In your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes). Beat in the eggs, gradually, until well combined adding a tbsp of flour with first addition
  6. add the flour a little at a time
  7. Scrape the batter into the prepared pans, Bake for about 35 minutes  or until the cake is golden brown and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. 
  8. Remove the cakes from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool for about 10 minutes.
  9.  Remove the cakes from the pan and cool completely on a lightly buttered wire rack.
For the Buttercream-





  1. Beat butter until light and fluffy. 
  2. Add vanilla and then slowly add sugar. 
  3. Add milk a few tablespoons at a time until desired consistency is reached. (If want a stiffer buttercream, use less milk.)
  4. Divide the buttercream for the filling and for covering there cake
  5. Add in the food coloring, black for the filling and orange for covering the cake!
For the Assembly:

  1. Cut bottoms off cakes.
  2. Smear buttercream frosting onto bottoms. Sandwich together.

3.Depending on the shape bundt pan you use, you may need to contour the outside using a knife to sculpt into a pumpkin shape.
4.
Cover in orange buttercream. Refrigerate to help the sculpting process.
5.For the final smoothing chill the pumpkin in the freezer and use the back of a spoon dipped in hot water.





               


6.Roll out some Orange fondant.
7. Drape onto the Cake.
8. Smooth out with your finger to give it some shape.
9. kneed some green fondant and shape to to form a stem for the pumpkin
10.Add stem to the top of the pumpkin. 
11. To give it a more realistic look you can shade the fondant with some Orange, brown and Green Petal Dust!

                                         

            



              




HAPPY HALLOWEEN 🎃👻
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Wednesday 4 October 2017

Too Faced Natural Love Palette Review


I bet the cat ladies out there will feel me on this! There’s a shade in the Too Faced Natural Love Palette called Kittens!


In this large but slim cardboard packaging printed with gorgeous hand-drawn illustrations of flowers, bunnies, and birds The Too Faced Natural Love Ultimate Neutral Eye Shadow Collection  is a 30-shadow palette with 7 matte, 13 shimmer and 10 sparkle shades., but yes, of course, Kittens was the first one I got on my lids. 

I would have preferred a metal or plastic compact but I can see how that can get quite bulky for a 30-shade palette...



The Palette offers up a very nice range of pinks, peaches, and browns. In terms of the overall quality, the palette is pretty nice! The majority of the mattes are soft and creamy while the shimmers are pigmented and buttery smooth.
They also blend together like a dream, which is perfect for those of us who aren’t that great at applying eyeshadow (raises hand slowly and looks to see if anyone is doing the same thing…)
However, a few of the sparkles and darker colors are a bit chalky or fallout-prone!

[The best way to combat this is to do your eye makeup before your face makeup so you can easily sweep away the fallout. Once the shadows are on the eyes there shouldn’t be much of an issue concerning fallout throughout the rest of the day.]

If you already own a lot of Too Faced palettes or neutral palettes from other brands, then the Natural Love Palette is probably not a necessity. Also, a few of the shades.... the browns, in particular, are quite repetitive, making me wish that Too Faced was a bit more creative with the colors. 

I personally feel like this palette will work for most people that do natural makeup looks more frequently. 
You really get  a ton of product in this one, so it will likely last you the rest of your life!
The price for this one is more than fair if you enjoy most of the shades in this palette. 
You can put together so many different looks and it is truly a complete palette. 


There really isn’t much to complain about with this guy. The packaging is very pretty, but not very sturdy. 
It is possible that it might not be great to travel with. 
Since the packaging is light pink with velvet lettering it is prone to getting dirty. 
There are always some shadows in every palette that fall a little flat, but all of these shadows are workable


I’ve used the Natural Love palette every day since I’ve had it, and I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon! 


Other products in the pictures-

Too Faced Natural Love Eyeshadow Palette- Too Faced 
Pink Quartz Crystal- Celestial Kitten
Wonder Hand Cream- Zoella  (Superdrug)
Blushing Hearts Blush- I Heart MakeUp  (Also available on amazon)
Blossom Lip Gloss- Urban Outfitters
Make Up Brush- Spectrum
Le Fizz Bar- Zoella (Superdrug) 


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