Weekly Highlights. #12

L-R: Craig making cat friends, Street Feast, Homemade American Biscuits, Craig & Me at Street Feast, Advice from Katie, Craig & Me on the Skyline, Taco's at Street Feast, BoxPark in Shoreditch, Emirates Skyline, Joe's doggy Millie loving my hat, Post from Katie.  

This week has had its ups and downs for me and I can't say I've been happy for the majority of the days! More than ever this has made me appreciate my highlights post to remind me of the lovely things I've done this week. And the lovely food I've eaten....I think I may genuinely be a foodaholic!!

My highlights are:

1. Last Saturday myself, Craig and our friends Joe and Will went to Hawker House Street Feast in Shoreditch. This is an annual event that runs for about 10 weeks, in an old warehouse. There are loads of different food and drink stalls inside, all of amazing quality making you want to try everything in sight! We begun the night with a variety of different tacos before taking a pit-stop for a Camden brewed beer. I then went for Seychelle's cuisine and had a fish wrap that was SO good but oh my days spicy!! We then shared a bottle of Red, before I had doughnut balls coated in cinnamon sugar with warm salted caramel sauce and chopped walnuts. Yep. The boys ate so much more, like an amazing pulled pork brioche bun and the best fried chicken burger everr. The food stalls differ every week making sure there's something for everyone! If you get a chance I seriously recommend going! :) 

2. Second, is a more sentimental highlight and simply recieving a package from my sister in the post to cheer me up. She always has the best advice, and knows how to put a smile on my face  with sweets from my childhood like Wham bars and Dib Dab's! <3 p="">

3. Finally I had a lovely day with Craig this week on the only day it was sunny! Woo! We had a lovely coffee, mooched around Shoreditch and decided to take a trip on the Emirates Skyline. Relaxed days with Craig are my favourite kind of days. <3 p="">

What've been your highlights this week? :)

Aimée
Xxxx

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Video | Boots Haul!

Last week you may have seen that my January Favourites post was in fact a video! I rather enjoyed making the video and decided I would do another as I had really lovely feedback on the first! :) So as I'd picked up a few things from Boot's this week I thought I'd do a little haul and show you them in video form! I hope you enjoy it! :)



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Review | La Roche-Posay Effaclar Duo

I feel a little silly reviewing this product now considering that the Effaclar Duo+ has now been released! But, as there are only a few differences between the Duo+ and the original Effaclar Duo I thought it was still relevant.

I've been using this product near enough every day for almost two months now and I love it. I've featured it both in my Love At First Use post and my January Favourites video, I love it that much! My skin has noticeably cleared up and is looking better than it has done for a long time now. I hardly ever get a blemish now, and when I do it goes much quicker than it used to. I feel like my skin looks much brighter and clearer now too!

Its a thin serum-like consistency that spreads really easily across the face and sinks in super quickly. I only use two small pea-sized pumps on each application so the tube has lasted me really well. Even with the fact that I use it morning and night! I do like the fact that the tube is small as its handy for travelling! But, I wish it was a pump applicator as I never feel like I can get all the product out and I hate to see wastage!

At £13.00 I think its really good value for money actually, as it'll last you so long! Boots always do really great offers too. It's definitely become a Holy Grail product for me, and I don't ever want to be parted from it!!

Have you tried the Effaclar Duo before?

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Amazine - Create Your Own Magazine!

I was originally going to post a review on my Enrapture Totem Styler tonight, but instead I got distracted by this super cool website I found! When scrolling through Instagram I noticed that Company magazine were putting on a competition for the best magazine created using Amazine. I'd never heard of it but was totally intrigued.

Ever since creating Dress It Up I've been more and more drawn to the world of journalism and specifically magazines. Blogs in a way already are a kind of magazine, one that is so personal and unique to each blogger. I love this idea of creating magazine type content and soo wish I had realised my interest in it before I went to University.

Amazine is a way for me to express this interest! By 'clipping' my own blog material and other content from across the blogosphere and amazine world you can create your own personal magazine. I love the way it looks, with pictures and text placed at angles so distinctive to magazine pages. Its really fun to create, and a really great way to promote your blog content on another platform.

If you add the 'Story-Bookmarklet' button to your web browsers bookmarks you can clip photos straight from your blog meaning that like Pinterest people can click through the picture to your blog.

Am I late to the bandwagon with this one?? Let me know if you already have a 'magazine', I'd love to follow yours! :) My username is aimeelf6 if you want to find me!

Aimée
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Sunday Bake | Chocolate and Salted Caramel Rosette Cake

Chocolate and Salted Caramel? HELLO. Not gonna lie, I enjoyed making this cake farr too much purely as licking the bowl was an even bigger delight than usual. I made this for my best friend Amy's 23rd Birthday and I have to say, vainly I'm pretty damn proud of it! I love how pretty rosette cakes look but had always thought they'd be really tricky to make. I was so wrong though! As long as you get the right consistency of buttercream, piping the rosettes couldn't be simpler. I definitely want to make it again to get my rosettes even tidier!

To make the cake I didn't follow one recipe, I took a few different ideas and jumbled them all together. Essentially though, you can use any Chocolate cake recipe you like! I used my favourite Hummingbird Bakery muffin recipe and doubled the quantity to make a layer cake. For the Chocolate frosting I used a Hummingbird Bakery recipe again, but any recipe will do so long as it makes thick pipable (is that a word??) frosting.

The Salted Caramel Frosting however I borrowed from Sallys Baking Addiction. Her recipe makes the tastiest, thickest frosting ever. Its total foodgasm worthy. I urge you to make it now!! I used Molasses instead of Dark Brown Sugar which I think gave a slightly richer, deeper taste and I only let my caramel bubble for 2 minutes instead of 3. But its all personal preference really.

One tip I would say is, use the salted caramel frosting quickly once its cooled as I left mine a little too long and it became slightly hard to work with when I was piping. If this does happen, boil the kettle and pour the water into a bowl, then place your filled piping bag in the water for a few seconds to soften the frosting.

So to assemble! Sandwich your two chocolate cakes together with some of the salted caramel frosting and place in the fridge for 5 minutes to set. Then using a small amount of the chocolate frosting crumb coat the cake to make it easier to pipe the rosettes onto. Place in the fridge again for 10-15 minutes to firm up. Finally, if you have a duo-colour icing bag simply place each frosting in the bag and pipe away. If like me you don't, then its easy to DIY it. Just take a normal piping bag fitted with a star tip, and spread the chocolate frosting inside one half of the bag, turn it over and place the salted caramel frosting inside the other half. Then when you apply pressure to pipe, both frostings will join together and pipe as one. Its tricky to see the difference in colour in my frostings as the molasses made my caramel quite dark. If you used dark brown sugar as stated in the recipe however you should see more of a contrast.

To pipe the rosettes, start from the middle and pipe outwards in a circular motion. Depending on the size of your cake you could do two rows of smaller rosettes around the edge, but I decided to stick to one large rosette. The beauty of it is that they can look quite mismatched and still look really pretty. I touched up any spaces between the rosettes with curved lines.

I hope this has given you inspiration for the next celebration cake you make, or at least made you want to try the salted caramel frosting! Let me know if you do attempt the cake! :)

Aimée
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Weekly Highlights. #11

L-R: Millie the gorgeous Labradoodle, Tasty treats from Borough Market, Lunch @ Joe's Southern Grill, Katie in Le Pain, Beautiful view of St.Pauls, Baking Hearts, Homemade Muffins, FOTN, Engagement Present Biscuits, Caramel bubbling, Homemade cookies at Katie's 

Last week I mentioned that I was in a food coma after all the food I'd eaten in the week. After that I had planned to have a 'clean' week and purge my poor body of all the sugar I'd consumed! Looking at the pictures above I think its safe to say I failed in that mission. Next week?? ;)

My three highlights are:

1. Last Saturday I went to my friend Emma's engagement party! Emma is now my oldest friend as we first met back in year 7, a horrific 12 years ago now! :S It was a really lovely evening catching up with old friends and was so nice to see how happy Emma and her fiancé are! The wedding cake shaped biscuits above were my present to them both, and the recipe will be up on the blog soon! :)

2. On Thursday me and my sister went to see The Light Princess at the National. I'd already seen it a few weeks ago and fell in LOVE with it and I knew she would too! It finishes tomorrow, which fills me with heartbreak! It really is one of the best productions I've ever seen. It'll be a crime if it doesn't transfer to the West End. Before that we also had a super yummy dinner at one of my favourite restaurants Le Pain Quotidien. 

3. Finally, it's been lovely to spend so much time with my sister this week. We're both busy people and we don't see as much of each other as I'd like. So this week has been a lovely change, even if we do egg eachother on to eat FAR too much cake..oops!

I hope you've all had a lovely end to January! :)

Aimée

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My January Favourites Video(!!!)

Today I've taken the scary plunge into the YouTube world! I've been contemplating venturing in for a while, and I decided now was the time to do it. As I said in the video, I find writing my favourites post's can sometimes drag on and on, whereas talking about them is muchh easier!

The lighting is awful in the video, and I realised that I spend the majority of the time looking at the viewfinder and not the actual camera lense! For that I apologise, but I'd love any feedback you have on my first attempt! :) I'm not sure how often I'm going to film, I guess it depends on whether you all like it or not! But it was fun to make this video nevertheless. :)

Let me know what you think! Be kind though, ;)!

Aimée
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