New Year New Blog

Hello everyone you may have noticed that my blog looks a little different and I've changed it quite drastically and this is because I thought as we are going into the New Year let's change it up a bit. But don't worry I won't be changing it for a while now.

I love how it looks and I hope you all do to and this makes you even more excited for more blogs in 2016.

Also, There is another page on my blog which is an about section and I'll hopefully be adding more throughout 201.

If you have any suggestions of anything at all you'd like to see on my  blog next year I'd love to know. That is everything I have to say but I will be back on the 3rd with another post.

Lyeira

12th Day Of Cakemas - See You In 2016

Hello Everyone and today is the last day of cakemas! I can't believe how quickly it has gone by and how quickly 2015 has gone.

I started my blog 3 months ago in October and absolutely love writing on it, creating baking posts and making up recipes to share with you all and also so that, in fucture years I can find them too. Even though it has only been 3 months I can't remember not having a blog and turn into a little kid every time I see how many of you take time out of your day to read my work and it absolutely amazes me to see that you all come from such amazing countries worldwide. 

I hope everyone has such a lovely festive season and a happy new year. I Can't wait to make new and exciting posts in the fucture.

Thank you to everyone who has taken time out of their day to read this and I hope you all have a great festive season and an look forward to 2016 and the next post to go up will either be the 30th of December or the 3rd of January.

Lyeira

11th Day Of Cakemas - Wrapping Presents

Hello everyone and wecome back to the 11th day of cakemas as you may or may not have noticed this blog was ment to go up yesterday and I'm super sorry it didn't, because it's so close to the big day now I have been super busy and wasn't able to put a blog up for you in time. Anyway with all that out of the way lets's get into the blog.

The chances are you have probably already wrapped your friends presents and have given them theirs   but, if you are giving your family's presents on Christmas day you may not have wrapped them and still if you have here are some super easy ways to make them a little more special really easily.

So first of all i just wrapped up a box in this brown paper with a print of santa on it. Because I'm not the best a wrapping it's good to cover the presents in other things.

First of all I used some twine and red bakers' twine and measured that to go around this present. I thought that doubling up on either ribon or twine to go around the presents is just a lovely touch.

Once I had tied the twine around the present I made a knot to hold it all in place, you could just finish here by making a bow which would still look lovely but I went one step further.

Next I added a really nice rustic bow to the center of the present to hide the knot.

After that I added these cute bells to the twine and then made a knot with the two ends of it so that they stayed on. You could also add a label at this stage so you knew who it was going to but I didn't want to so I just trimmed the ends of twine as they where quite long.

Thank you for reading this post and once again I'm really sorry it's so late but at least there will be another one tomorrow which definately won't be late!

Lyeira

10th Day Of Cakemas - Santa Inspired Cupcakes

Hello everyone Welcome back to cakemas day 10! I can't believe we are already at day 10 December is going so quickly. Anyway I feel like a recipe is way overdue so let's get right into it. P.S. I didn't decorate mine to look like santa but you definately could. (this bakes 12 cupcakes)
  

You Will Need:

• 115g Unsalted Butter
• 115g Self Raising Flour
• 115g Caster Sugar
  
• 2 Medium Eggs 
• 75g Choppped Glacier Cherries
• 2tsp Vanilla Extract

For The Icing:

• 100g Icing Sugar
• 50g Unsalted Butter
• 1tsp Vanilla Extract
• 12 Mini Candy Canes (Optional)

Method:

• Preheat your oven to 180 (fan) (gas mark 6 / 200C) 
• Make your vanilla cupcake batter ( If you would like the full break down of ingredients Click Here.)
• Make sure your glacier cherries are finely chopped so they don't sink and then add them into your mixture.
• Pop your Cupcakes in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes and then leave to cool for a further 10 - 15 minutes
• Make your butter cream (If you would like the full break down of ingredients Click Here.) 
• Pipe your buttercream however you'd like to and then decorate with whatever you would like, I used mini candy canes.

Hope you enjoyed this recipe and thanks to my friend who helped make these adorable and tasty cupcakes. See you next time for cakemas day 11!

Lyeira  

9th Day Of Cakemas - Gifting On A Budget

Hello everyone and welcome to cakemas day 9 and It's a week and a day until christmas and I'm so excited! Today I'm going to be telling you how to give the best gifts on a budget.

Give the person an experience instead of a present:

Obvisiouly it's nice to rip open the wrapping paper on Christmas day but, it's also a great idea to make memories that will last forever instead of a present that might not last as long. This could just mean saving a day to spend with that one person and making it extra special. Also take loads of pictures and you could even print these off and give them a photo diary for Chritsmas.

Loads of photos:

Even though printing ink costs a lot you could still print off a few pictures and combine them in a small album which would be a super centimental and personalised gift for anyone this Christmas.

Bake Something:

With plenty of recipes on my blog to choose from, you could bake something for your loved ones, it also shows you have taken a bit of time out of your day to make their christmas a little more special.

DIY something you know they'll love:

With of loads of places to find inspiring DIY present ideas, such as my blog, my friend's blog and pinterest, there are so many ways you can give lovely presents to people on a budget. 

Give something centimental:

You could give your friend such as a lovely letter that will make your loved ones day. Or you could just do something nice for them that would just make their day. 

8th Day Of Cakemas - Baking Chats

Hello Everyone and I'm super sorry to say that today there won't be a recipe and that is because, for peoples' presents I baking them ginger and still haven't mastered it enough to make up a recipe.

If You would like some really nice gingerbread recipe follow the links below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/gingerbread 

http://www.waitrose.com/home/recipes/recipe_directory/g/gingerbread.html 

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/cuisine/european/english/gingerbread-men.html

I think that gingerbread is the perfect personalised gift for a friend, family member or even a teacher. It also isn't to expensive in comparason to other presents and can even be decorated to look like the person.

I will be making different shapes and sizes of gingerbread and wrapping it in clear plastic which can them be given to anyone you like.

Hope you enjoyed this blog post sorry it was super short (but hopefully sweet) and I'll speack to you soon for cakemas day 9!

Lyeira 

7th Day Of Cakemas - DIY Festive Candle Holders

Hello everyone and welcome back to Cakemas Day 7! This DIY just goves that extra cozy touch to your house especially at this time of year. Also this is so simple and easy but super effective and relatively cheap.

You Will Need:

• A Empty Tuna Tin 
• Some Ribbon 
• Some Twine
• Glue / Hot Glue Gun

How To:

•  Clean out your tuna can; I had to use some spray to get rid of the fish smell.
• Wrap and glue the ribbon around the outside of your tin; I used a thick ribbon so that no tin would show on the side.

• Skip the next two steps if you are using real candle as they could catch fire, I used electric candles.

•  Glue twine arcoss the bottom half of the tin I did three layers.

• To cover the glue I made some small bows to stick on each side.

Hope you enjoyed this super easy DIY and hope to see you soon with Cakemas day 8!

Lyeira    

6th Day Of Cakemas - Mini Chocolate Christmas Puddings

Hello everyone and welcome back to cakemas day 6! I'm so excited for todays post because we are making mini chocolate Christmas puddings. I'm not a fan of Christmas puddings and it isn't for everyone and I think that a chocolate spounge with added chocolate chips is the perfect swap.

You Will Need:

For The Cupcakes:

• 130g Unsalted Butter 
• 130g Caster Sugar
• 2 Medium Eggs
• 20g Coco Powder
• 15ml Warm Water
• 140g Self Raising Flour
• 75g Chocolate Chips (or more it's all down to your taste)

 For The Decoration:

• 20ml Water
• 40g Icing Sugar
• Red And Green Food Colouring

Method:

• Preheat your oven to 180 (fan) (gas mark 6/ 200C)

• Cream together your butter and sugar.
• Crack in your eggs and mix until just combined, try not to over mix.
• Whisk your warm water into your coco powder until you have a smooth running chocolate heaven.

• Add in a small amount your chocolate mixture and then a small amount of flour until both are used up but make sure you finish with flour.

• Mix in your chocolate chips, these are ment to be the fruit so you could swap them out for fruit if you wanted to.

• Bake your cupcakes for 15 - 20 minutes and leave them to cool for a further 10 - 15 minutes.

• Make some runny icing by mixing together your water and icing sugar making sure there are no lumps (you might want to shift your icing sugar).

• Once your cakes are completely cooled removethe cupcake cases and if you wanted to you could carve them a little rounder on top so they look more like Christmas puddings.
• Drizzle your icing over your mini puddings.
• ice on your holly leaves and berries (you could use left over white icing and colour it).

Your Done this was my favourite recipe so far and I hope you enjoyed this. Hopefully you are all enjoying Cakemas so far and see you soon.

Lyeira 

5th Day Of Christmas - Favourite Festive Movies And Songs

Hello everyone and welcome to Cakemas day 5! Here are my favourite christmas films and songs with links so you can buy and listen to them. How very festive!

Songs

I've always thought that most of us where just born knowing the words to christmas songs because although they are only played for one month that month they are so overplayed and it's great and yet for the other 11 months we don't hear them and still remember all the words; but as soon I a school test came up... minds gone blank.

Let It Snow - Dean Martin

All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey

Santa Tell Me - Ariana Grande 

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday - Wizzard

Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree - Mel & Kim

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year - Andy Williams

Baby It's Cold Outside - Indina Menzel & Michael Buble

Christmas Playlist (All The Songs In One)

Films

Here are my favourite christmas films and where you can buy them, this christmas I'm going to try to watch as many of these as possible, also these are in an order; my favourite last.

Home Alone Boxset 

Fred Claus 

Miracle On 34th Street 

Nativate Box Set 

Elf 

Thank you for reading this post hope you enjoyed it, and enjoying cakemas so far, bye...
P.S keep an eye on the playlist as I'll be adding more festive songs on the build up to Christmas
Lyeira  

4th Day Of Cakemas - Candy Cane Cupcakes

Hello everyone and welcome back to cakemas day 4 and today is going to be some delious candy cane inspired cupcakes. To Make these extra special they are going to be marble cupcakes with a twist... Lets get baking! Please also excuse my terrible icing i have new icing equipment and am still getting used to it and my kitchen was super hot so... excuses over let's actually get baking now.

You Will Need:

• 115g Unsalted Butter
• 115g Self Raising Flour
• 115g Caster Sugar
  
• 2 Medium Eggs 
• Red Food Colouring

For The Icing:

• 100g Icing Sugar
• 50g Unsalted Butter
• 12 Candy Canes

Method:

• Preheat your oven to 180 (fan) (gas mark 6 / 200C) 
• Make your vanilla cupcake batter ( If you would like the full break down of ingredients Click Here.) 
• Once your batter is made seperate it into two equal bowls.
• Colour one of your bowls of batter red. I don't Put a measurements because you just have to keep adding a little bit of red food colouring until you have the colour you want.

• Marbel your normal batter and red batter together using a cake tester or knife, you don't want to do this for very long because it will mix even more after you put the mixture in the case.
• Pop your cupcakes in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes and leave them to cool for a further 10 - 15 minutes.

• While cooling make your butter cream (If you would like the full break down of ingredients Click Here.) 
• Icing on your cupcakes once cooled and they them decorate with a candy cane.
• Your done, enjoy your cupcakes!

Hope you enjoyed your cupcakes and see you very soon with another cakemas blog!     
 

3rd Day Of Cakemas - DIY Christmas Present Ideas

Hello everyone and welcome back to Cakemas day 3! today I'm going to be showing you some adorable DIY Christmas present ideas (you probably guessed from the title) these presents are great if you are on a budget or just need some cute homemade Christmas present ideas for family and friends.

Hot Chocolate In A Jar

This is such a cute present for a cold winters day for one of your friends or a family member, It also costs around £1 - £2 to make.

You Will Need:

• A Small Container (you could use a recycled tin or buy some small jars)
• Hot Chocolate Sachets
• Mini Marshmallows
• Clear Plastic Wrap
• Ribbons (Optional)
• Labels (Optional)

How To:

• Pour your hot chocolate into your small container.
• add in your mini marshmallows 
• wrap in clear plastic and decorate with festive ribbons and labels (optional) basically go wild. 
• You could add googly eyes and pipe cleaners to your jar to make it look like a reindeer.

 Bag Of Chocolates 

Although this is really self explanatory you could either use their personal favourite chocolate or use one of the (what i call) the Christmas trio which is either Quality Street, Roses or Heroes. Personally I prefer Quality Street but it's your taste. If you brought a big tub you could make these for multiple friends. These cost around £1 each but you have to buy the chocolate and bags in packs.

You Will Need:

• Clear Goody Bags 
• Chocolates Of Your Choice
• Labels, Tags Ext... (Optional)

How To:

• Fill your clear bag with your chocolates.
• Tie the bag at the top with festive ribbon.
• Add tags and again, go wild with decorations.

Scented Bags

These are adorable and smell of Christmas and all things nice, they can be made different to suit your taste. If you want to DIY your potpourri like i did here is a super nice recipe for it.
http://julieblanner.com/homemade-potpourri-gift/

You Will Need:

• Popeary Or An Alternative.
• Christmas Spices 
• Fabrics Of You Choice 
• Sewing Equipment / Hot Glue Gun
• Ribbon 

How To:

• Cut a shape of your choice out of your fabric (make sure you hold over your fabric first so you cut out 2 at a time).
• Sew or hot glue the two pieces of fabric together but make sure your fabric has the right side in and glue the ribbon on at the top too. Also, leave a small un-glued / un- sewed part at the end (hopefully at the bottom) so that you can put in your popeary and spices.
• Add in your popeary and spices and sew or glue up the bottom of the bag and your done!

'Brussel Sprouts' In A Jar 

These are so cute and if you have a family member or a friend who hates brussel sprouts you could give this sweet treat to them. Our brussel sprouts are M&Ms' although you could use any green sweeties.

You Will Need: 

• Green M&Ms'
• Small Clear Jar
• Labels
• Decorations

How To:

• Fill your jar with green M&Ms'
• Add on your label.
• Again, go wild with decorations.

Reindeer Tin 

This is such a lovely and adorable gift and costs nothing just requires a few things you might find in your recycling (or around the house), if you wanted to you could fill it with sweets, chocolate or even little lip balms, shower gels and mini bath bombs.

You will need:

• A Clean Tin
• 2 Small Sticks 
• Newspaper/magazine Or Red Sweet Wrapper 
• Paper And A Pen

How To:

• Make sure your tin is clean and the edges at the top aren't to sharp (you could use a nail file carefully to sand it down)
• Hot glue or use a strong glue to stick on the sticks (or antlers) to the top or the tin so that they are sticking out the top.
• Cut out a red nose out of either your newspaper/magazine or a red sweet wrapper (you could either colour one in) and glue that on to your reindeer's face.
• Make your two eyes out of paper and colour them in and again, glue those on.
• You could make a mouth out of wool, colour one o find something in, if you wanted to but it's still looks cute without one.
• If you wanted to you could fill them with small gifts and them gift to a friend or just give them this adorable pot that could be used for makeup brushes or pens. It also could be used as a decoration if you wanted!. 

 Santa's Snacks

For this DIY I'll leave it up to your imaginations or maybe do a post on it. These will be little bags of treats you can hand out to your friends and they are all so festive. You could either present it as a hamper for one person or as small bags for you friends. 

Hope you enjoyed this blog I absolutely loved making all the things and hope this has benefited you and made Christmas a little less stressful. P.S I will be doing a separate blog on Santa's Snacks which will be coming soon, see you next time!

Lyeira.