From baker to banker: I have a job!

A real job starting when I graduate next summer! A real, I have to move out and iron and hoover and pay taxes and worry about my pension kind of job, in which I have to try and use my "economic" knowledge (ha!) and do clever things (uuhhhh) kind of job! This is scary stuff. 

Like, responsibility? Woah.

So I shall try and pass on my *ahem* interview wisdom...

(skip straight to the next photo for just the bento making part)

p.s. I just showed this post to my dad in which he said 'they look kinda like monkeys'.
They are penguins. PENGUINS.

Reindeer Cupcakes

Who feels Christmassy?? Actually, let me put that another way. Who's been listening to Michael Buble's Christmas album on repeat?

I have! I have! I have!

And in keeping with last year (I made chestnut cupcakes), this year I've got reindeer cupcakes.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town!

"On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me,

A santa made from plastic cheese..."

Merry December!

I thought I would start off the month with a Babybel Santa. When I was 10, I hated cheese. In fact, I would go to pizza hut, peel off the topping and eat the crust. But I did love peeling babybels. In fact, I would spend every lunchtime asking my friends (the cool ones who had packed lunches because I always had school dinners) if I could peel their babybels. I think you got a bit annoyed of me after a while (so I'm apologising! I know it's 10 years too late but I'm sorry!)

Plus, I'm going home (from Uni) on Sunday so I will be reunited with my oven very soon :) Although I have a mountain of work to do my Secret Santa got me a Christmas apron so I've got no excuse not to bake! Watch this space!

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I just also wanted to let you know that Cooking Gallery is hosting a Bento contest.It's being sponsored by CasaBento (the cool people who make those cool Bento boxes that I use), so I think you should check it out - even if it's just for oogling the adorable Bento box on Cooking Gallery's competition page!

I'll be making a Christmas themed Bento soon as well. Christmas + rice = Christmarice??

(I'll have another think and get back to you.)

Matcha Cheesecake

Did anyone used to watch Bernard's Watch?

I did! I did!!

Because, there are days, even weeks, that have passed when I have actually forgotten that my blog existed. It's not that I'm getting tired of it/ bored of it/ found some superior hobby to baking (because, frankly, the day that happens is the day I'll understand the Principles of Microeconomics), more that I don't have time.

So as I was in bed reading about the second welfare theorem after having written the third essay of the week, BAM, I had an IDEA. Actually, the idea hit me.

In the form of a magical time-stopping pocket watch. Oh yes.

I mean, wasn't it just a month ago that they discovered those proton neutrino thingies that travelled faster than the speed of light? So there. Time travel is totally possible.

Bento Box: Pikachu!

Did anyone else play the Pokemon cards game when they were cool? Anyone remember the special edition Mew card that came out with the Pokemon movie? Or battling your Pokemon on your gameboy colour and doing that cheat where you swim along the shore and get all those special Pokemon?

Or was that just me?

Supersize me: burger cake edition

Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

"Look! Up in the sky!"

"It's a bird!"

"It's a plane!"

"No, It's a giant-super-burger-cake-that-would-totally-feature-on-epic-mealtime-had-I-put-any-bacon-on-it!"

I will let the pictures do the (majority) rest of the talking, but I do promise you this burger has some strange qualities that can help you leap tall buildings in a single bound. I'm sure this burger could if you threw it hard enough :)

Bento Box: Walrus(es Law)

The title of this post is dedicated to all those Economists out there... you know who you are!

(It's something called Walras' Law, which says that excess supply in one market must be matched by excess demand in another so it balances out. Kind of like Ying-Yang. Kind of not.)

And to any budding Economists out there (you know who you are!) I challenge you to make this bento box before you apply for an Economics degree, see how dedicated you are ;)

Summer Sunshine

Christophe Roussel macarons in Paris

I'm not dead! I was just very busy... (it's practically the same thing).

I've now finished my internship, and am now back home for a few weeks before I go back to uni for my very last year (sob). So, I have some exciting things to post in very soon, watch out for:

- I've got a new bento box! (i.e. a new bento post to come)

- My guest post for Jill Colona from Mad About Macarons! (Yes, the very one)

- A little giveaway and info about Le Cordon Bleu cookery school

- Um. Cakes. Lots of them.

And as to The Internship, unfortunately I didn't get the offer from the investment bank but I'll be doing grad applications until I physically cannot type anymore (or get RSI, whichever comes first). If... you know anyone from an investment bank in equities sales who may be able to get me an interview, I will bake you the most MASSIVE TASTY YUMMYLICIOUS cake you could ever want. Ever. And I'll teach you how to solve the Rubik's cube too...

It's really an offer you can't refuse.

But before I leave to go bake/cook for my next post, I'll leave with some photos from various places I've been/things I've done this summer.

Hello Kitty cakes in Chinatown (London)

Blueberry American Pancakes

****If you stumbles across here because of pancake day, here are 10 facts I found out, courtesy of *ahem* The Mirror. Full link here*****

1. The first recorded pancake race was in Olney, Buckinghamshire in England in 1445.

2. The first pancake recipe appeared in an English cookbook in the 15th century. And it’s a tradition that continues all over England. It is said to have originated in Olney as a housewife was so busy making pancakes that she forgot the time. When she heard the church bells ringing for mass she ran out of her house, still carrying her pan and pancake. Olrney still has a pancake race every year.

3. The largest number of pancakes tossed in the shortest amount of time is 349 tosses in two minutes, which was achieved by Dean Gould at Felixstowe, Suffolk in 1995.

4. The longest race in the quickest time was held in Melbourne, Australia. Jan Stickland covered 384m in 59.5  seconds on 19 February 1985.

5. The largest pancake ever made and flipped measured 15.01m wide, 2.5cm deep and weighed 3 tonnes. It was made in Rochdale, Greater Manchester during August 1994.

6. It is customary in France to touch the handle of the frying pan and make a wish while the pancake is turned, holding a coin in one hand.

7. On Pancake Day in Newfoundland, Canada people place items in the pancake batter before it is cooked to tell the future for family members. If it happens that boy receives item for a trade, it means he will enter the trade but if a girls receives item from a trade, it means she will marry a person from trade.

8. Maple Syrup was originally a sweet drink, discovered by the Algonquin Indians who collected sap from Canadian sugar maple trees and then boiled to produce the delicious beverage.

9. Taking the easy way to make your pancakes is not a new thing. The first ready-mix food which was sold  ommercially was Aunt Jemima pancake flour. It was invented in 1889  in St. Joseph, Missouri. It wasn’t very popular at the beginning.

10. Pancake Tuesday is known as Carnivale in Italy which comes from the Latin for ‘goodbye to the flesh’.

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I decided one weekend to go all out, and cook breakfast. It took two hours. Two hours of my precious weekend time when I can have a lie in and don't have to think about stocks or exchange rates and stress about the red numbers on the computer screen.

...nope, I think I was still doing that. Its's an infection! Like chicken pox!

But it never goes away!!!

Bento box: Froggy faces

It's Kermit The Frog! Or as my friend said when I asked him what he thought I had made this time, 'oh, that's obvious, it's Kermit The Toad'.

It's like that time when my other friend was reading the paper and asked 'what's a Wayne Rooney?'.

I love my friends :D

The House That Xinmei built!

Yes I know the photo isn't great, but it sure tasted good!

I made this for my boyfriend's birthday, Notebook style (because if I can't make a house out of wood, I can at least make one out of cake!) - except I'm being Noah here... :) There is a story, but that's for another day... (Hope you had a happy birthday!)

The cake is coffee cake, because it is The Boyf's favourite. The roof is shortbread because I like it (and yes, I just said 'Boyf'... please don't hate me, I don't think I'll ever say that again!). The icing is white chocolate, because it was on offer in Tescos ;)

Brown Sugar Fresh Fruit Cake

Sorry I've been so rubbish with my blog lately. I thought that after I'd finished my exams, I'd have loads of time to bake and blog and read things and occasionally do Other Meaningful Things.

But I was wrong!

Investment banking internships take up a lot of time :(

Especially when you have to be in work by 6.45am. (And no, we don't get to leave at 5pm). However, I quite like what I'm doing and learning...

I think.
I hope....
I pray.

I mean, I better, since I have 8 more weeks to go. So, sorry for not catching up with reading your blogs out there, but don't sorry I still click through and drool over the photos! :) Oh, and thanks for those recommendations about places to eat on my last post, hopefully one day I'll actually get to try some of those places out!

Meringue Roulade With Chocolate

I'm worried that since exams I've gotten less... funny :S I mean, not that I'm saying you guys were falling-off-your-seats-lolling about at my blog (yes, lolling, not 'haha'-ing, because if so, you are living in the dark ages), but I'd just run out of sarcasm (mostly pointless, sometimes witty) and jokes (mostly at myself, sometimes at someone else) to keep even myself entertained :O

I blame it on the exams. I blame it on the stress. I blame it on the lack of sugar I've been eating recently.

But it's fine, this meringue if full of it! I'll be back to normal in no time!

Cambridge - May Week

I'm just doing a quick post on May Week in Cambridge University, which will be brief because I run the risk of sounding just a teeny bit pretentious. Absolutely spiffing. Darling.

(I almost thought of not blogging about this, but I got some weird looks taking all those photos of food, I didn't want my weirdness to go to waste!)

May Week is the official week of celebrations, which happens afters exams end, is actually in June. It might have been in May sometime 200 years ago, but things never change around here.

This year, I went to 3 different colleges within the University's May Ball's: Robinson College, Trinity College, and St John's College. They're held inside the college, and are from 9pm to 6am. Various food, entertainment, and bopping around uncomfortably in tailcoats to Rihanna ensues. 
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For me,

I dressed up.

I took loads of photos.

I ate loads of food.

I'm now showing you said food :)

So as you can see, for the price of £150 a ticket for each ball (which works out to be a sacrifice of about 300 Snickers bars - think of the calories you're saving!), we had oysters...

Bento box: Little Elves

This is my first post using a CasaBento bento box. It's adorable. Soooo adorable. Look!

Loook! :D

(It's the Little Kokeshi Hanako Bento Box in case you're interested).

Three Pôts de Crème

I finally finished my exams :)

Life is pretty good right now.

Super Mario cake pops

Before I go on, I don't want to take the credit and say I made these, because I didn't. Two of my friends saw my first cake pops post and the link to Bakerella I put up, and wanted to try their own version of her Mario ones. I was lucky enough to be given a few after they made them (thank you!), and I thought they were awesome and cutesome and yummy...some, so I took some photos and put them up on here to share :)

Lolly Log Cake

Over dinner in hall the other night:

Me: "Oh, you said your sister knits hats? Is that what she's wearing in that picture?"

N-: "Yeah, she knits hats for herself."

A-: "Haha, that's like Hermione, she knits hats for house elves!"

Me: "No no, N- said that his sister knits hats for HERSELF, not HOUSE ELVES."

A-: "I know, I wasn't talking about his sister."

N-: "Well, I'm glad we cleared that up."

Completed unrelated to anything I'm making, but this is just to showcase... my stupidity?

Oh dear, exam week isn't looking good.

Also, if you are at Cambridge University, have exams, and are within cycling distance from me (sorry Girton/Homerton College people... and I may give preference to Economists, seeing as I feel your pain and all), then I will deliver a slice of this to the pidgeonhole of the first 6 people to comment :) (on the blog, or on facebook, but if you do both that doesn't meant you get two slices!)

If you don't have exams, well, you can make your own :p

I award thee...

A while ago, I was so lucky to get not one, or two, but three (times a lady...) blog awards in one week. I'm so sorry it took me something like a month to blog about it, but it just took me an age to think up seven random facts about me that weren't:

a) incredibly boring
b) economics related 
or 
c) both.

Anyway, it's not that long. I made this Light and Dark Chocolate Mousse in 2009 and am FINALLY getting round to blogging and posting a recipe on it.
:)

Watermelon cake pops

I FINISHED MY ECONOMETRICS PROJECT!!! If you have been within a 20 feet radius of me within the last week, I apologise now. No one deserves that much economics bombarded on them. (Sometimes I wonder if I deserve to have this much economics bombarded on me.)

And so to celebrate, I am rewarding myself with a new post on here :)

I made these a while ago when I made the first 'accidental cake pops', which is where you can find the basic recipe.

When I made these at a family barbecue, all of the comments where 'oooh, what lovely strawberry cakes!' They're meant to be watermelon.

Watermelon!

Well, maybe it could look a bit like strawberry from far off...

Actually, nope. Definitely watermelon.

Also, I also made this as I know that now the weather is warmer many of you feel inclined to eat more fruit. This counts as one of your five-a-day, right?

Ever thought "I need to get off Facebook and put my face IN A BOOK"?

Well, now you can!

This is probably definitely the geekiest cake I've made. 

Did it help with any revision for my upcoming exams? No. 

But was it tasty? Yes. Well, I hope so anyway :)

This is a post for those of you who have upcoming exams (or have already had a few!). I'm not sure about other universities, but at mine we call Easter term 'exam term', though as my friend very rightly pointed out, it should probably be renamed 'procrastination term'. This is very true. From what I have observed, we have two types: a) those whose facebook usage increases exponentially b) those whose facebook gets disabled and actual work takes place. I have, unfortunately, this term, begun to fall victim of the former category.

Incidentally, I have created a facebook page for my blog! I would be eternally happy and smiley if you would hop over and take a look. You could even click the 'like' button if you fancied it :)

Chocolate Chilli and Lime Bread

Yes, it's from the Green & Black's cookbook! (And no, I'm not being paid to make all of these recipes.) I haven't made bread from scratch since Food Technology lessons in year 9, when we made bread, and I really really wanted to do well so I could get a green slip. Green slips were like getting merits, but green and had stars on it. If you got a red slip, you were in trouble. If you got three green slips, you got something really cool and special.

Or maybe it was just a letter home. I forget.

Pets De Nonne, which means...

"Nun's Farts". Hehehehe.

You can totally tell I'm turning 21 next summer.

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(I know I know, I didn't do a royal wedding related post. But if you really want, you can hop over to see the chocolate digestive biscuit cake, which is not quite as elegant as the one Prince William chose, but it will do :) Also, William and Kate are now Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, where I spend my time predominatly studying procrastinating (i.e. baking) who needs Fiona Carns when they can have someone like me baking for them?? I just don't understand.)

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I bought this to back to university at the beginning of term, que lots of:

"Would you like another fart?"

"Where are your farts?"

"She did do that, but it was quite half-farted".

Spicy Pork & Herb Chilean Chocolate Burgers

Woah. Woah woah woah... this isn't a pudding. Or a pie. What's it doing here?! 

Because it's got chocolate in it! 

That's right, it's from the Green & Black's cookbook, and with every chocolate cookbook the inevitable had to happen. Savoury chocolate food.

Bento box: the Easter rice bunny and a hatching chick

Happy Easter everyone! I hope you are all prepared for the next week or so of bank holiday breaks, ice cream eating, and the inevitable sunburn.

Unless... you are like me and go to an Oxbridge university which does not recognise such a thing as a 'bank holiday', but you can still do number 2 and 3 :)

(in the library.)

I was originally going to make an Easter basket cake, as it would be quite interesting to try and weave a basket out of icing and see how that went, but then I saw Cooking-Gallery's blog, fell in love with the cutest bento boxes, and forgot all about cake.

Green & Black's Brigadeiros (gone wrong) - International Incident Cake Pops Party!

So I shall call them upside down cake pops instead!

What? You don't know what cake pops are?? :O I saw them on Bakerella and I thought they were the cutest thing. 

I was meant to make brigadeiros (a Brazilian chocolate truffle) from the Green & Black's cookbook (which I have finally added a countdown to in the sidebar! As you can see, I mostly just have the weird recipes left) after I made the fish cake, but then I had all this cake left over...so I decided to put them in the milk mix. Also because the original brigadeiros recipe went a bit wrong (read the recipe section to find out why...)

I also made some fruit shaped ones as well, which I shall do another post for. This is because cake pops aren't as easy to ice as I thought they were, and I want to show you my better attempt first :)

Fruity Fishy Cakey...Thingy

"I'm a little yellow fish, in the deep blue sea, won't somebody save me?"

That song takes me back to the days of B*Witched and N Sync, and when people wanted to Reach for the stars. Basically, before the days when 16 years olds sang about babies. 

And then I was going to say I'm bringing some old skool cool into baking, but then that just sounded weird.

SO.....

I mean, it's not like I'm obsessed with fish or anything, it just happens that I made sushi cake a while ago, and this recipe is from the Green & Black's cookbook. So obviously I had to make it!

It did say I could make it any shape I wanted to, so why didn't I made a chicken? Or a sheep?

Chocolate Crusted Lemon Tart

I get cranky if I haven't baked for a long time.

When I'm cranky, I don't want to bake.

Well. Thank god I managed to break that vicious cycle.

Chocolate Pecan Pie

This is a story about a chocolate pecan pie. (Feel free to sing along :)

Early morning, girl wakes up,

Chop chop chop, on the board,

It's time to bake up, perfect smell,

It's you they're all eating for, they go:

Chocolate and Lemongrass Mousse

When I made this, it was just to get another one made from the Green & Black's cookbook. I thought chocolate and lemongrass would be weird, but it was...actually nice. Really yummy.

Yay :)

It's just that the first 4 years that lemongrass was in my life I'd only ever known it in the form of Fairy lemongrass antibacterial washing up liquid. And so it took me the next 4 years to get over the idea that lemongrass was in fact, an ingredient, and not just what washing up liquid tasted like.

I actually quite like the chocolate and lemon combination now. Maybe I might even try dipping lemons in the chocolate fountain next time. It can't be worse than dipping in cheddar cheese slices, but that's a story for another day...

Sushi Cake!

I don't normally like to say I'm particularly good at baking, but I'm going to make an exception. This is epic...unless you don't know what sushi is.

But for those who do, well, hello world, I have arrived ;)

I was trying to think how long this took me compared to my meringue brownie cake, but then I decided I couldn't compare them. This is bigger. This was better. And it was definitely not blander.

Oh, and if you really don't know what sushi is (?!?!), then head over here for some good old rice lovin' and here for sushi photos!