joining the daring bakers

I'm going to become a Daring Baker! It's very exciting and also a bit intimidating. I've been following Daring Bakers for over 6 months now- in fact probably closer to a year and finally decided to take the plunge. They have recently launched an awesome new website, the daring kitchen which you should check out but to summarise:

The Daring Bakers: A History
In November 2006, Lisa of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice decided to challenge themselves to bake pretzels for the very first time using the same recipe. They each went ahead and posted about it on November 18, 2006.

Having enjoyed that experience tremendously, they decided to try it again the next month, this time choosing to bake biscotti. And to make matters even better, they were joined by a few more food bloggers.

As the months went by, their baking group continued to grow, until it was finally decided that this "little baking group" had to have a name and The Daring Bakers were born!

Today, The Daring Bakers span the world as bakers of all nationalities come together once a month to try something new in the kitchen!

Now I know I like to think I can bake but what will my first challenge be? Will it flop? Will it be awesome? And, almost more importantly, will I be able to take good photos of it? I should seriously look in to doing a food photography course, there's only so much I can do at home with my trusty sony compact and my imagination.

I'm slowly going to start catching up on the backlog I have of baking photography and will put recipes up as well. Pics are all well and good but I'm always gutted if something looks good enough to eat and there's no recipe on how to do it! So for now, I will leave you guys with my latest endeavour, Banana Malteser Muffins. Believe it or not, it's a Weight Watcher's Recipe and it's bloody good!
BANANA MALTESER MUFFINS

Makes 16 muffins

400 g plain white flour
4 tsp baking powder
200 g brown sugar
150 g Mars Maltesers
2 whole whole egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
100 g butter
200 ml milk
2 medium banana, mashed

-Preheat oven to 180°C. Place 16 paper muffin cases into a muffin tray, or line muffin holes with 8 squares of baking paper.
- Sift flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Add brown sugar and stir to combine. Reserve 16 Maltesers for decoration and cut the rest in half. Add these to mixing bowl and stir to combine.
-In a jug, combine egg, vanilla essence, melted spread and milk. Stir into dry ingredients with mashed banana until just combined. Do not overmix.
-Spoon into paper cases and transfer to oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until risen and golden. Cool.

NOTES:
1- I only had 8 paper cases and the rest were silicone ones which were smaller so my paper cases were really full and they rose up perfectly and were great so I reckon you could put this over a dozen paper cases and they should be fine.
2- This is their icing recipe:
Beat 200g cream cheese and 2 tsp brown sugar with electric beaters, allowing a couple of minutes for the sugar to dissolve. Spread an equal amount onto each muffin, then place a Malteser on top!
I just about never following icing recipes and in fact was icing some biscuits first and had some icing left over (melted butter, lemon juice, icing sugar) and just took the left over of that and mixed in some Philly lite. (and natural food colouring)

This one's a little blurry but is a nice shot of my kitchen timer beside a muffin. I didn't even see the resemblance until my Mum pointed it out.

but wait, there's more!
As if one baking cahllenge a month weren't enough, I've also signed on to the Daring Cookers and through the complex path that in web surfing, came across sugar high friday which sounds like exactly my kind of thing. But I think before I commit to this one, I need to find some more people to feed. My current audience has mentioned that they will only be able to roll places in the not too distant future...

And if this book can teach me how to make decorations like the one on the left (lifted from Cream Puffs in Venice, well then I MUST get my grubby little oven mitts on a copy. Holy chocolate butterflies!

And this book also looks like another gem. I try not to judge by covers but when it's hard, especially when it comes to cookbooks! (Yup, I've been trawling through Cream Puffs in Venice again. I tend to find a new blog and totally scour through it, like playing a new CD on repeat for about a week. I'm awful like that.)

The thing is- I keep finding all these 'things' that I can do each week or month. I can Daring Bake, I can Daring Cook, I can Sugar High Friday but I haven't even managed to Illustration Friday it yet. I'm shocking. And I'd really like to Paper Cut Month it but now that freelance stuff is taking off (s-l-o-w-l-y but surely it would seem, fingers crossed), time for these things seems even more scare than before. What's that I hear you say? Enough with the excuses Noever, make like Nike and just do it. Indeed. Although it's much more in my style to make like Yoda.*


*"Try not, do, or do not. There is no try." I'm only writing this for the benefit of those who are so culturally deprived as to not be able to guess what I was going on about.

whose litte pony?

Some of my friends find the coolest things on the internet. I came across this posted link on Facebook this morning and it totally made my day. I love things like this. Totally awesome.

The much-loved children's toy, My Little Pony, has undergone an extraordinary transformation. The new collection sees the ponies mimic a variety of characters from cult films like Batman and Alien.

The creator Mari Kasurinen, who admits she preferred Star Wars dolls to My Little Pony as a child, has been inundated with orders for the quirky toys, which are on sale for a whopping £330 each

I had to put every photo on, they are all just great, I cannot choose a fav, can you? All photos by Mari Kasurinen and check out marikasurinen.com.

Eames envy

Hello my name is Aynia and I have Eames Envy.

The image above was found on designsponge.

For a very long time I have been deeply. DEEPLY in love with the Eames lounge chair and ottoman. Parents of a friend of mine have a genuine one and I swear it is the most comfortable chair on earth. As soon as I have enough room of my own, I believe that my love may, not so slowly, become an obsession. I want one. Bad. Even if all I can get my grubby little mitts on is a modern-day replication, I want it. Form AND function. *dreamy sigh* Perfection.



And now it seems like every second home interior picture I see has one in it. Even the white ones are growing on me. (But I could never have white, I could never keep it clean.)

that's a wrap

Do you lend books to friends and want them back but they just keep circulating? Keep track of it! I bet you could even stick these inside DVD covers. If so, this is cute. Very very cute.



In fact the whole site of Kate's Paperie is filled with rather drool-tastic things. I mean holy moley, check out this wrapping paper. How on earth do you use it when both sides are beautiful?! And I am so adding them to my list of places to go when I finally get myself to New York.



There really is something to be said for living in the states. But then if I did I'd be stoney broke, having spent all my money on Etsy or things like this. *sigh*

A freakin' good idea

Ikea. I love it, I hate it, I hate loving it, I love hating it, oh Ikea.

Whereas one part of my loves the clean, simple lines, another part does NOT like the mass-production factor because suddenly everyone has it and it's not unique anymore. Every house can look have some sleek modernist Scandinavian wanna-be-retro-esque interior. I want to be original. And now, anyone can be.

Given my current obsession with surfaces and patterns, this seems like a site sent from above. But instead I found it on design-undercover. I really must start trawling (ie stumbling) the web again properly to come up with my own material as opposed to finding awesome links on other people's blogs... (And what's more, I have this exact side-table in my bedroom at the moment. Sure, technically it belongs to my parents but that's just pedantry.)