Baking Mad #3 GIVEAWAY

We finally have our Cookbook to giveaway, excited? We are!

So because this is for a cook book, the obvious route was to do another baking post, yay! This time we went for something which we thought was a bit different, bread.
We actually expected this to be a lot harder than it was, and were surprised that we didn't need much ingredients at all to make great tasty bread. We follwed this repcipe on bakingmad.com

This bread was amazing, even though it was just plain white bread, it tasted so good especially with Heinz mediterranean vegetable soup! David also made his own Hairy Bikers Beer and Cheese Bread which was just as good especially toasted!
I definitely would recommend using the Bakingmad.com website as it so easy to use and there is so many differenet recipes for you to use and browse through. There is also great ideas and inspiration if you're bored or just ran out of imagination. Also definitely check out The Pink Whisk, Ruth Clemens's blog, as we are giving away her Cake decorating book, which is amazing! It has some great tips, templates, ideas, and pictures, there is even a motivational ending on cake decorating!
I think our next baking challenge will definitely be either Chelsea Buns or Scones, because who doesn't love homemade scones! 

Also guys, what do you think of our new layout?!

Don't forget to enter in the competition and leave a comment of your favourite Bakingmad.com recipe!

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Day out in Lincoln, my shopping haul and OOTD

Hey Lovelies!

Since moving to Leeds for University I haven't really spent much time with my mum, so last week in the Easter holidays when I was at home, we had a lovely and well needed trip to Lincoln as it's only an hour away from my home town to do some retail therapy.

I love Lincoln, the architecture is just wonderful and luckily it was a beautiful day to walk up the 'Steep Hill', we raided Primark, had some wonderful pub grub lunch in Varsity, walked up to the Cathedral and had a look round and then caught the train back home.

This is the outfit that I wore for our day out. My favourite pleated leather look skirt and my charity shop jumper to make sure that I was still fairly warm when walking about Lincoln, as we all know the weather is a bit temperamental at the moment! I also wore my Topshop Hiking Boots as they are great when walking around for hours on end.
I must warn you, this is a heavily photograph based post!

 My hair looks so flat here :(

Jumper; Charity Shop

Necklace; eBay

Skirt; River Island (similar)

Shoes; Topshop (they've stopped selling them but you can get them here too)

There is so many cute boutique shops in Lincoln, I think we literally went in every one of them

Momma showing the size of the hill

There she is, Momma Bear

We came to the conclusion that the towers are wonky

Cute houses and cottages which surround the Cathedral

We did a bit of bargain hunting too, raided primark and got a couple of other bargains too!

I love the peter pan on this top! £6

This is such an adorable dress, it even has pockets! This dress will look fab in the summer too

Denim Skater skirt £10

I got some 3/4 joggers for chilling out in the flat in for £5

Adorable Jimmie set for £8

I got these fab glittery leggings from Miss Selfridge (in the sale from £24 down to £7 and I got them for £6.30 with student discount, wooo) At the time I was wearing these and trying to get a good photograph was very difficult. Also the whole time I was wearing them I just felt like a Mermaid. It. Was. Great!

 I got this adorable A5 notebook for £1.75 down from £3.50 in the Paperchase sale.
Paperchase was the first shop that we went in and it's one of my favourite shops because I'm a massive stationary nerd. There was originally 3 of these books, but for some reason I decided to get it on the way back to the train station and I was planning on getting couple, possibly all 3 to make cute photo albums. But by the time I went to buy it there was only 1 left, luckily. I love the pattern on the front of the book and I love the fact the pages are brown, if they weren't I probably wouldn't have bought it!

I bought my cousin these cute Worry Dolls £1.50 which go under her pillow and take your worries away!

My mum also made me get a pair of black skinnies for £11 as I she knows I have such a hate for jeans/trousers and just live in skirts and leggings. I have not worn them yet, but I am determined to get some wear out them and get out of my bad habit. But leggings are just too comfy right?

I also have some great news about our giveaway, the Baking Mad Cook Book is finally on the way to us so our first ever giveaway should be open by the end of the week! Yay!

Have you been to Lincoln before? What you think of my haul?

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Bakingmad.com #2

Hello Lovelies!

Happy Easter, hope you're all eating as much chocolate as you can. I've got my Easter egg waiting for me to demolish.

We have some exciting news, our FIRST GIVEAWAY will soon be published to win a Baking Mad Cook Book for all you food and baking fanatics! We haven't received the Cook Book yet, so as soon as we do we'll post more information about the competition, hopefully will be next week!

Anyway in the spirit of Easter, we've been doing a lot of Easter baking! First of all me and Tori made some cute cupcakes, cornflake cakes and shortbreads which all turned out fabulous check out the post here. Then bakingmad.com sent me some decoration ingredients to use so me (Charlotte) and David have baked possibly the most extravagant Victoria sponge I've ever made.

Be sure to check out bakingmad.com if you've not already as they have so many amazing easy recipes for you to follow like these Cake Pops, each recipe have a step by step guide of how to make it and they have loads of inspirational ideas to make your cooking better and more fun!

This is what we got sent. I've never used roll on icing before, so it was a challenge when we finally started decorating the cake.

We decided on a Victoria Sponge with a jam centre, following this recipe but changing the additional ingredients

Here's how to make a brilliant Victoria Sponge

As this was the first time that either me or David had used Roll on Icing I'm afraid I can't give you any advice or tips to perfecting it as we just improvised on our cake, all I can say is that you need a lot of patiences. Check out bakingmad.com here for more information on how to dye the icing.

Here it is! This took us all day long and after lots of stressing trying to get my chick and eggs to look life like, I was very pleased of the final outcome!
Massive thanks to David for helping me, and doing all the banner and the icing letters and for the morale boost!
After trying the cake, it was totally worth it, the Sponge tastes amazing and the icing is just the right amount, I wish I could give you all a piece to try.

We will let you know as soon as we get the competition sort and hopefully you will be a lucky winner of a new Cook Book!

Have you made an Easter Cake? What do you think of our cake?

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