The Art of Baking

Good evening all! I hope we are all well.

As many of you may know, I love to bake. I used to bake ALL the time; cookies, cakes, brownies, everything. I love to see how things are going to turn out! I also have a baking partner, my wonderful friend Tara Mani Lundie. I love my baking partner. She's one of my bessies :)

Some of you may have been lucky enough to taste my chocolate chip cookies at some point in your lives. I used to make these with my Mum when I was about 11, and I attempted to make them in Food Tech once and they didn't go too well looks-wise, but by George did they taste nice! I didn't think I was going to get a very good mark, but then the teacher tried them and gave me 20/20, oh yes! I then didn't make the cookies again for a rather long time, until about year 12, when it was my friend's birthday. We were deciding whether to make him a cake or something, then I thought about my cookies. I tried them again and they were a great success! Well, at first no-one ate them but I thought okay, fair enough, random cookies at a party. T

hen I made someone eat one and they loved it. Therefore, within 2 minutes they had all gone and life was a GREAT SUCCESS (Borat). From then on, they were in high demand. They made an appearance at almost every gathering of friends we had, and were eaten rather quickly. I once made them at my friend's house, and we ate them warm. They were delicious. For another friend's birthday, I made her a GIANT cookie (see picture). It was YUM! As you can see :) I tried throughout first year to make some cookies but our oven was shocking so it burnt everything and they obviously didn't have the same effect so I didn't let anyone eat them. I made an excellent batch fairly recently, which obviously got gobbled up pretty quickly!

Now onto my other culinary successes. These include a marble cake, an Owl Cake, 2 wonderful chocolate cakes for birthdays/Christmas meal and chocolate fondants. Tara and I made the marble cake and chocolate fondants. However, we had a slight mis-hap on the marble cake making. Tara believed that putting the oven on at 230 degrees would be a reasonable temperature to put the oven on at; she was being impatient, and wished to make the cake be ready to eat quicker. This definitely did not go well, and just resulted in a burnt cake. However, we cut off the burnt bits and made some amazing icing (after Tara poured boiling water onto the chocolate to melt it!) that covered it and you couldn't tell it wasn't brilliant looking. However, again, it tasted amazing. A success. Tara and I have also made the Owl Cake and the chocolate fondants. Both were incredible, both to look at and eat!

I have definitely ranted about this, but I do love to bake. Baking is amazing, and makes me feel good. If anyone would ever wish for me to bake them something, just let me know. I am good. :)

Love and peace to all,

kjxxx

The Lives We Lead

Good evening all! I hope we are all well.

You currently find me hungover in bed, and having already been in bed for at least half an hour (time is now 10pm). I know it has been a very long time since I last blogged, but time has not been my friend recently. So little of it, and so much to do in that time. We've had so much work, and Christmas was hardly a holiday; more of a break from lectures and seminars just to do our assignments. I know the moment I step into school on Monday I'll be fine and I'll know why I'm doing it all, but I know I'm not the only one whose feeling like I'm losing sight of why I'm doing all this work in the first place. But tomorrow, we're going to go shopping and enjoy our last day of not having an urgent need to do work right that second and shop our little minds away.

Now, for the main reason of my blog. The drama that we have had this week has been UNREAL. After waking up last Saturday morning to discover that friend #1 had gone back with friend #2's friend after Fruity, things went from bad to worse. Friend #2 found out, and was ignoring friend #1. #2 had every right to do this of course, but it just made an already awkward house even more uncomfortable. Then friend of #2 piped up thinking #1 has 'issues'. And told me that I needed to tell her this, along with him saying a lot of other stuff that upset me greatly. So on Thursday night, I told #1, in the nicest possible way, a few things that upset her. The situation really upset me too, because I hate being the bearer of bad news, and yes, it does always seem to be me being this bearer. It was with the house, and it was with the issues, and I am actually quite fed up of it. It's one of those things; regardless of if one person is portraying the views of many, they will always be the one to hold the blame because its just a psychological thing to associate the awful feelings you have when you hear bad news with the person who told you. So I'm now going to be associated in her mind with bad feelings because I'm always the one to tell her. Now, does this make me a good or a bad friend? Personally, I feel shit about it. I've had a shit week, and I just can't wait to get on placement and forget about this all. My main hope is that once we get on placement and we're all tired in the evenings, the atmosphere will just start to get better. Because at the moment, its unbearable. We can't all sit in the same room together without someone getting pissed off. It's really upsetting because these are two of the most stubborn people you'll ever meet, and while they've both been wronged, we all have to live together. They've never been the best of friends, but it's never been this bad. You can never please everyone, and at the moment, I'm pleasing no-one. I feel crap. I literally hate talking about this all because it just upsets me so much but I've had to get this off my chest.

Love and peace to all,

kjxxx