What to make when you have no oven?

So I haven’t done a post in a long time due to a very hectic uni schedule taking up every minute, and it’s about time I did another one! On the plus side I’m getting some good grades!

I live in a typical student house which is falling apart, damp, bit mouldy (you know the drill). The newest delight to happen in our house is our oven decided to stop working above gas mark 1, which makes it completely useless (yayyy…). So as a baking fanatic I was not happy!

As usual the urge to bake soon returned and there are limited recipes I know of that don’t require an oven. I stumbled across a recipe a couple days previously on pinterest for chocolate fudge which only needed 4 ingredients and I was intrigued.
Here is the recipe
http://chocolatechocolateandmore.com/2014/10/easy-chocolate-fudge/

First off, I have to say if you are wanting shop bought fudge, this is not the recipe you. This recipe makes a silky gooey sticky fudge which I absolutely love. The other bonus of this recipe is its simplicity. It takes barely any effort to do and I would thoroughly recommend it. It would also be great with the addition of other chocolates. Maybe maltesers, minstrels, chocolate chips, anything like that. Here’s the fudge I made

Anyway, give it a try and let me know what you think!
H x

The best chocolate cake you will ever eat

Hello!

So I know that the name of this post is a lot to live by but i’m telling you now, I have had a lot of chocolate cake in my time and this is by far the best one I have ever had.

So my little sister came to stay with me last weekend and we decided we wanted to make something chocolatey. After trawling through hundreds of recipes we eventually decided on this one as I already had most of the ingredients (and the picture looked amazing). Here is the recipe from BBC good food;

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3092/ultimate-chocolate-cake

We followed the recipe exactly (and yes it really does take 1hr30 in the oven!) but we ended up only cutting it into 2 layers (3 seemed too challenging and like too much effort). The ganache is gorgeous but from my point of view needed to state in the recipe to put it in the fridge for at least half an hour to cool and thicken before spreading on the cake. We also didn’t have any fancy chocolate curls to decorate with so we used Mini Eggs (our cake is below).

I am telling you now, this cake may take a while to bake but my gosh it is worth it! It is very rich and squidgy, almost like a brownie, and you only need a small slice to truly understand the deliciousness of this cake. So go on, give it a try, you will not regret it.

H x

Random goings-on

Hello!

I’ve decided that this next post will be a general update about what’s been going on with me recently (dull I know).

First off, anxiety-wise I am doing mountains better than I was last week. I haven’t had any breakdowns and generally haven’t been feeling low much at all. I’ve had a change in mindset where I’ve decided that work doesn’t matter as much as I thought, and also I’ve been concentrating on doing things I enjoy and that make me happy. I’ve been watching a lot more of one of my favourite tv programmes (supernatural… don’t judge) and have been going out to town and generally just reading and listening to more music.

Valentine’s day was yesterday as I’m sure you know and my boyfriend and myself went for a four course meal (yes you heard right) at ask Italian. It was lovely and absolutely delicious however we ate far too much and had to waddle home very slowly! As we went out for this posh meal we decided to only do cards this year and not presents, which is probably a good thing as he spoils me way too much!

Finally, yesterday morning I also had an archery coaching session which I paid to go to. I was told a number of different things that I needed to tweak and I wasn’t sure how beneficial it was going to be. I just had a normal archery shoot at my club and I scored a Portsmouth score for myself (normally 60 arrows in ends of 3 but I did mine in ends of 6) and I got a personal best of 463! I am so pleased that coaching session paid off and I’m actually improving!

Sorry for the non-theme for this post but it’d just what’s been going on recently 🙂

H x

P.s. I dreamt last night that I went to a theme park and my grandad showed up and started going on all the rides. So that was entertaining 😛

Chocolate orange muffins

Yesterday I did a major sort out of my bedroom to get everything organised (for a change) and found a massive bag of chocolates I had received over the Christmas period. In this bag were three Terry’s Chocolate Oranges (one of my absolute favourites). Usually when I have chocolate oranges I use them to make chocolate orange cookies, however this time I thought I would try something different.

My mum had recently bought me a carry case designed specifically for carrying cupcakes (only a pound from poundland!) and I was dying to try it out. Solution = Terry’s chocolate orange cupcakes. I trawled through the internet trying to find a recipe that didn’t just make plain cupcakes with chocolate orange chips in it and found this one from whatjessicabakednext.com

http://whatjessicabakednext.com/2013/12/07/terrys-chocolate-orange-cupcakes/

They looked so good with the icing and the choc orange segment on top so I followed the recipe exactly and this was my result (below).

I made 10 cupcakes (nearly muffin sized cupcakes really) and they have an orange zest flavoured sponge with milk chocolate chips and a chocolate orange buttercream top. These cakes are so so good, even if I do say so myself! Recipe can be easily doubled or halved, and it worked out perfectly as I used 100g melted choc orange for the icing and there were 10 segments left to be used for my 10 cupcakes as decoration!

Definitely a must if you or anyone you know is a fan of chocolate orange, so give it a go!

Happy Baking,

H x

Anxiety

For the past week or so I’ve been having a lot of problems with anxiety (as you can see from my lack of posts). I’ve always been a worrier, over thinking situations I guess so I can feel prepared for any outcome. However recently a number of things have happened with uni work piling up and ‘friends’ showing their true colours which just pushed me over the edge. I broke down. About everything and nothing at the same time. I didn’t know why I was so upset, but I felt like I was sinking into the ground for no reason at all. I was terrified with no monster I could pinpoint that I was afraid of. I didn’t want to leave my bedroom to go to the toilet/get a drink/make dinner let alone even think about leaving the house. I guess I didn’t want people to ask me what was wrong when I didn’t really know the reason myself.

Luckily my boyfriend is the most understanding and calm person I’ve ever met. He let me attempt to explain how I felt without pressurising me into giving a specific reason, understanding even though he’d never felt like that before. We ended up talking for over an hour, him calming me down and finding solutions to some of the ‘problems’ that could have caused my breakdown. A couple of hours later I felt miraculously better, even going downstairs and socialising with my housemates (which was a big step as I’d avoided them as much as possible for the past few days).

That evening I spoke to my mum about what had happened and she did what any mum would do and told me she wanted me to come home so she could look after me. I explained how much better I felt and she just told me to take it easy the next couple days. The next evening my dad rang to see how I was and all the previous day’s feelings came rushing back to smack me in the face. This time though as my dad has also been through this, it didnt seem as bad. He explained how he felt when it had happened to him and it matched how I felt. Again, he calmed me down but I still felt low. I textedy boyfriend and he immediately came over with crisps, dip, sausage rolls and cake as he knew I didn’t want to make dinner because that would mean seeing people. This was the point in time I realised something was probably wrong. My anxiety was affecting my sleep as well as my day to day life and then being tired caused me to be emotional and anxious which then affected my sleep. I was in a vicious cycle and didn’t know how to get out.

The following day I forced myself out the house to go have lunch in town with my boyfriend. I felt great, like I was back to the old me again. My mum also came to visit that day for the evening and we had a lovely time bowling and eating out for dinner.

Once she had left, the next day I felt like a new person. I decided then that what had happened before must have been because I was homesick. As soon as I had spent some time with my mum I felt completely better so I was all set to go to an archery competition that weekend.

We were travelling up to Birmingham Friday night, staying in a hotel (I asked for my own room just in case I got upset again), doing the competition on the Saturday and travelling back on the Sunday. All was fine until that Friday night. I got into bed at 11 as we had arrived very late and then I started to worry. This time it was the competition that caused it but I started worrying about stupid things like the noises in my room were making me panic. So even though it was 3 in the morning, I rang my boyfriend and he eventually calmed me down a bit. It was enough to get me to go to sleep but I woke up so many times that night I couldn’t have gotten more than about three hours sleep.
The following morning I felt sick due to this lack of sleep, but I still managed to complete the competition with a good score and so was happy. My dad had previously said that he would pick me up at any time if I felt anxious again so I asked him to come get me so I didn’t have to sleep in that horrible room again. I eventually got home around half 12 that night and stayed by myself in my room. Despite having a very bad cough I managed to sleep until half 11 this morning, and only woke up once in the night! This brings us to right now. I hadn’t slept that well in around two weeks and I’m planning on booking a doctors appointment for next week just to check there isn’t anything physically wrong.

There are a few morals to this story, especially if you ever feel like this in the future.
1. Do not be afraid to tell people you think you are anxious/depressed. The people who love you will not judge you and will help you in any and every way they can.
2. Do not be afraid to ask for help. Whether that means asking someone to come give you a hug or even make you food, do it.
3. Book a doctors appointment in case something is physically wrong.
4. Plan at least one thing a week to do that makes you happy. It could be eating out, having a movie night in with friends, going and buying a book, whatever you like! That way you have something to look forward to every week.
5. Do not think for a second that you are alone. So many people today have been through things like this or are currently. Do not think it is just you, it is so much more common than you think

That’s everything I believe. Apologies for this essay of a post but if this can help anyone or even just put someone’s mind at ease, then I will be over the moon.

H x

First post!

Hello,

I think that this first post should be a little bit about me (sorry about that). Unfortunately I’m new to the scene of blogging, I know everyone has been talking about it for years and I thought it was about time to jump on this bandwagon. I’ve tried recording my thoughts and general me-ness in a diary and even a video diary of my holiday to Florida when I was about eight (shockingly embarrassing, and yes it still exists in my dads roof to bring back excruciating memories. Long-story short it consists of wobbly film footage of my family, painfully boring speech of me explaining what we did that day and some actual decent film footage filmed by my dad). However, a blog may be more appropriate for me in this day and age of ever-increasing technology. So yes, I’m new to this, so don’t judge too much!

So, hi, my name’s Hayley and I’m a student taking Biology, with dreams of travelling the world and baking every sweet treat known to mankind (hopefully without turning obese in the process). This blog will probably consist mainly of food (my specialty), maybe some of my travelling dreams, and whatever else may pop into my head (particularly my dreams I have at night – they are usually a bit out of the ordinary!).

I have a younger sister who I adore to pieces, and an older brother who is somewhat distant but I love him just the same. Every morning when I am staying at home, I usually come downstairs and have another one of my crazy dreams to explain to my sister, hoping that she will prove there is some sanity in there somewhere. She has always told me I need to keep a dream journal or something to take note of these imaginative beings and so I guess this is finally me kind of doing it.

I hope you aren’t scared off by the crazy that makes up me and that you may even enjoy some of what I post. So, I will sign off with my most recent dream…make of it what you wish.

H x

I was staying at my boyfriends house and was walking upstairs to go to the bathroom when I noticed a cockroach on my arm. I brushed it off, confused as to why it was there and carried on (this is weird as I would have freaked out if this was actually happening to me). I then felt tickling again on my arm and rolled up my jumper sleeve to see hundreds of cockroaches crawling all over me! I then panicked and whipped off my jumper and started swatting all of the bugs off of me, but there just seemed to be more and more. I didn’t know where they were coming from, but they weren’t going away. After about ten minutes of frantic swatting, I had gotten rid of the cockroaches (which seemed to disappear…), so I shook myself to pull myself together. I had gotten fairly hot and bothered after all the bug-swatting so I went to tie my hair up to cool myself down, and that was when I felt a mass of wiggling cockroaches nestled into my hair! This caused a massive panic mode to erupt with me shaking my head whilst bent over to try and get the horrible creatures out, however it did not work and this is when I eventually woke up.

student-baker-candlestickmaker

Biology student – Baking fanatic – Dying to travel the world