Vegetable Spring Rolls

On a recent shopping trip my friend and I stopped by the local food market where we came across a little Vietnamese food stand.  We ate the most delicious spring rolls and since then every time we saw each other all we could talk about was how we wanted more! I decided we should make our own spring rolls and we were both very pleased with how they turned out.  We were originally going to deep fry them but I decided it would be easier and healthier to cook them in the oven instead, and they turned out just fine….. crispy and delicious 😀 especially served with some sweet chilli sauce.

Chocolate Brownies

 I think brownies may just be my favourite type of cake, which could be down to the fact that they are so chocolatey and I have a very big sweet tooth! 😀 I have tried many different recipes over the years and I think this one I put together makes the most delicious, perfect chocolate brownies.

Homemade Candles

I love candles and always thought it would be fun to make my own. When I looked up how to make homemade candles they all say you should melt the wax in a pan using a thermometer, and heat it to a specific temperature. I don’t have a thermometer and I didn’t like the sound of trying to clean wax off the pan afterwards, so I thought I would just do it my own way and see what happened. I decided to melt the wax in a paper cup in the microwave and it worked perfectly 🙂  I had no mess to clean up and just threw the cup away after, which seems like a much easier option to me!!

Spaghetti Bolognese

 There is a little Italian restaurant near where I live that I absolutely love. They make a great spaghetti Bolognese (which I order almost every time), and I always think ‘I wish I could make it like this at home’, because I’ve never really enjoyed it much when we’ve made it at home before. So I did some research on what goes into a good spaghetti Bolognese, added in some of my own ideas and tried out different variations. I ended up with this recipe that I really enjoy, along with my family and friends.

Cookies

I love cookies and really love how these cookies turn out. They are crispy on the edge and soft in the middle just how I like them.  I made plain chocolate chip cookies and, my favourite, chocolate cookies with chocolate chips… yummy 🙂 The recipe below is for the chocolate cookies so if you want to make the plain chocolate chip cookies all you need to do is replace the coco powder with flour.

Homemade Gift Box

For Christmas this year I decided to make some candles as gifts for my family members. I was trying to think of a good way to wrap them and I thought it would be nice to make a little gift box. As this was for a Christmas present the decoration I chose was very Christmassy, but you can make these gift boxes any time of year, for other occasions like birthdays, and use different patterns and colours. I am really pleased with how the box turned out and I can’t wait to give them to my family members on Christmas day.

Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

I always love to bake around Christmas time and I love to try different festive recipes. This year my friend and I were having a baking day and decided we should make something Christmassy. We started brainstorming what flavours we could add to our muffins to make them Christmassy, and cinnamon immediately came to mind. We decided to pair the cinnamon with apple and I absolutely love how they turned out. These apple cinnamon muffins were the perfect way to start off my Christmas baking and get me into the festive Christmas spirit.

Chocolate Truffles

With Christmas getting closer and closer it’s time to start thinking of gift ideas for my family and friends. Every year I enjoy giving my family members a little something that is homemade and this year my mum suggested I could try making some chocolate truffles. My family gets through a lot of chocolate, biscuits and cake at Christmas time so I thought homemade truffles could be a nice little gift idea. As there is still some time left before I need to make the chocolates for Christmas, I thought it would be a good idea to make some now and experiment with different flavours so I can pick out some of my favourites to give as Christmas gifts.