Gluten & Lactose-free ‘Pizza’

I had a go at making the Nouvelle Daily gluten-free ‘pizza’ - with great success! I was a bit sceptical about the cauliflower base, but actually it was really nice and didn’t taste over-poweringly of cauliflower. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly or precisely measure anything out (I’m not great at doing that!) but it turned out just fine. And pretty healthy too!

Pictured: Nouvelle Daily's delicious gluten-free pizza

Clinique Foundation - Free 5-Day Trial

My skin is far from perfect - I'm prone to oiliness and occasional breakouts (especially when I'm stressed!) as well as suffering from dehydration, (I sound so attractive...) and I've never quite managed to discover the perfect skincare regime or makeup for me. When I discovered Clinique was offering a free 5-day trial of their foundations I decided to give it a go, and use the opportunity to attempt my first beauty post!

Vanilla Cupcakes with Cinnamon-Latte Frosting

It was my mums birthday back in February but I had a few scarily close deadlines for training contract applications and coursework, so I made and iced these cakes in advance, and froze them so they kept - they freeze absolutely fine, and my mum loved them - apparently my best baking so far!

I adapted Nigella Lawson's gluten-free vanilla cupcake recipe.

She specified using 110g Dove Farm Gluten free self raising flour, however I realised after setting up and weighing out part of the ingredients, that I had barely any gluten free flour mix left… so after success with using ground almonds in cake mixtures previously, I decided to improvise with the ingredients in my baking cupboard. the cakes turned out fantastically well, with a deliciously rich vanilla flavour, and a moist, open crumb texture.

Old Banana Cake

Mmmm old bananas... how enticingly delicious, I hear you say!

I bought loads of bananas from the market recently, and this particular batch had a slightly odd over-ripe taste from the beginning... like super-strong banana flavour, even though they were bought under-ripe?! Weird. 

Apologies for the rather uninspiring phone picture of my last piece of cake - I promise you it was very moist and delicious!

Anyway I needed to use them up, and cooking them with various sinful things turned out to be a great way to disguise their slightly 'old' taste. 

Obviously if anyone fancies trying this recipe, you don't have to hunt down ready-fermenting fruits, any slightly blackened, nice and normal bananas will do!

Doggles

I love Basset Hounds! They're so gorgeously sturdy and droopy, and hilarious when they run. Absolutely can't wait until I can get one of my own... until then, I'll have to content myself with trawling the internet for cute pictures and videos...

(more pics here)

Hey, World!

This is my blog. 

I have no idea how it will go, or if anyone will ever see it... but sometimes I feel I have so many thoughts and ideas in my head (most of them nonsensical) that need to be sorted out, even if it's just for my own peace of mind! 

I tried out tumblr, and although it's fun and fairly easy to use, I didn't feel I had enough control over the design or functions... what started off being fairly organised soon descended into an un-restrained chaotic mixture of my muddled late-night thoughts, inspirational re-posts and various baking projects. I don't know how other people do it so well! 

So here goes. My blog of self-indulgent, probably frivolous, maybe interesting, or possibly even useful, stuff...

Maia