Cake & Other Good Breakfasts

This morning I woke up and had an urge to bake fairy cakes for breakfast. So I did. There is nothing better than freshly bakes cakes out of the oven, and when they've got blackberries, red currants, strawberries and black currants in them then that seems healthy enough to make them suitable breakfast food.

The fact that I added pink butter cream icing and jelly beans may have detracted slightly from this way of thinking, but they were delicious and as I said, anything straight out of the oven can't be ignored!

As I was baking them, alone in the kitchen as it was early on a Sunday morning, I was thinking about breakfasts and who decided what we should eat for them. It's all the norm to eat toast or fruit or cereal but why. Who said we should only eat those things?

(Early morning pizza in Mwanza, Tanzania after catching the overnight ferry across Lake Victoria)

I'm a big fan of eating cold leftovers for breakfast and some dishes taste so much better when cold the next day, as if all the flavours have had a chance to soak in to eachother properly. When travelling as well, I always seem to find that Pizza finds its way onto my plate for breakfast and why not? Sometimes all you crave at the point of waking up is pizza, and if you happen to find a pizza restaurant open and serving pizza at that time in the morning then why not?

(Another early morning pizza in Lusaka, Zambia after being on a train for 56 hours....)

Especially when we were travelling through Africa and would often only have one or two meals a day, we weren't going to waste a meal on only eating a banana and toast, especially when bread was always so disappointing. I wish more places served pizza for breakfast here....maybe it will catch on one day.

Tribal & Other Prints

I fell in love with a tribal print skirt at Boden recently, but sadly, although it was gorgeous, it just didn't suit me. It was a bit grown up officey for me and as much as I loved it, I just knew I wouldn't wear it.

I was a bit sad about it so had a bit of a look around for another tribal print skirt and instead found this dress from asos which I love. I'm sure you're not really supposed to wear it with a fur wrap (vintage) and this amazing hat (Debenhams), but why not (although I didn't actually end up going out like this, don't worry). 

I also now have my eye on this beautiful dress from Zara. It's got a bit of an Aztec-y feel, but then with all the beading, kind of an African essence too. It reminds me of all the beautiful African batik fabrics you can buy, and as I have a fair few in my collection, I might have to get sewing. 

Banana Bread; with Berries, Coconut & Other Additions

I always buy bananas and then forget to eat them, and I cannot stand them when they start to go a bit brown. Luckily, this is when they are perfect for banana bread and I LOVE banana bread, so I end up making it pretty often!

I feel like even though it is cake, it's healthy cake as there is so much fruit in it, so it's perfectly acceptable to eat lots of it - especially when it's straight out of the oven.

After a few months of making plain banana bread, I started to experiment and add other ingredients in, such a raisins, frozen berries, coconut, carrot and most recently fudge!

I had found some fudge in our kitchen cupboard which had gone a bit hard so not good for eating but perfect for cooking. I was all set to bake my banana fudge muffins and then discovered that our housemates who had moved out the previous weekend had clearly owned (or just wanted) our kitchen scales so had taken them with them! As I had all my ingredients laid out ready, I didn't want to just not bake so I thought I'd have a go at guesstimating the weights of everything....

It started out ok with butter, sugar and then eggs, but by the time I got to adding the flour, I think I got a bit carried away. Then it looked too thick so I added lots of milk to make it runny, and then it just didn't look like normal cake mixture...it was still a bit thick but tasted of flour so I didn't want to add any more so I just scooped the mixture in to the paper cases and hoped for the best!

They turned out a bit like rock cakes or scones more than fairy cakes, still nice, and the banana and fudge combination was amazing, I will definitely have to try and make them again, but this time I have some shiny new lime green electronic scales, so I will actually follow the recipe!

Africa

I've been watching the Africa series, catching bits every so often as they seem to be repeated a lot and I am in love with it! I'm also a little bit in love with David Attenborough, I could listen to him talking about absolutely anything, I just find his voice so soothing.

Anyway, inspired by this programme, and the success of my elephant mobiles, I decided to branch out and add in some other African animals into a mobile. I also used some African batik fabrics which I bought in Tanzania and Zambia which I think compliment the animals colours beautifully and also add to the African theme of the mobile. Here are some pictures...

A Bit Of A Pants Update

So after my exciting week and a bit surrounded by pants I was very excited to see some of the final photos from the shoot they were used from. These images should be loaded onto the Boden website fairly soon but in the meantime here are a few background shots which show off my beautiful pant decorations perfectly....