Vintage Rose Cupcakes

As I am now off for the Summer Holidays I have went on a baking overdrive as I am obsessed. The other day I had been to the dentist and I was in terrible pain therefore I decided to go on YouTube. I found this great tutorial on icing roses so later on in the day I decided I would have a go at creating them. To be honest I was very proud of myself as this was my first try and they tasted great!

Ingredients;

Makes 12

Cupcake

• 110g/4oz butter or margarine,
  110g/4oz caster sugar
  2 free-range eggs,
  1 tsp vanilla extract
  110g/4oz self-raising flour
  1-2 tbsp milk

Icing

175g unsalted butter
350g icing sugar, sifted
a couple of drops of vanilla extract (optional)

Method

• First you preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
• To make the cupcakes you can use the all in one method where you basically just add all of the ingredients at once and just mix it with a mixer or with a spoon however sometimes I like to add the ingredients one at a time to make sure the mixture is smooth with no lumps.
• When the mixture is smooth you then evenly distribute the mixture into the cupcake cases on the tray.
• Bake the cupcakes in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes.
• when the cupcakes are springy to touch take them out of the oven and place them on a cooling rack.

Icing

• first cream the butter until it is smooth and then gradually add in the icing sugar mixing every time.
• if you are using the vanilla extract you would then add it in to the butter cream icing.
• fill your piping bag and you are ready.
• Instead of myself typing out the method of the roses I am going to link you to the YouTube video as it is easier to show than write and probably if I wrote out how to do it your cupcakes would turn out to be a catastrophe. Here is the link to the YouTube video.

If you decide to make these cupcakes tag me in your pictures on instagram and twitter so I can have a look at them!

Grainne

xox

Moses Sandals

Around a month ago I went shopping to Primark and I bought theses sandals. Personally when I was buying them I thought how practical they were for example the are a light brown therefore you can basically match them with anything and also they have a mainly closed toe which means you can get away with a bit of chipped nail polish. I also just thought they were pretty cute. This was not the story when I got home... my brother and sisters thought that my sandals looked like something that Moses would wear in the desert. Obviously they were only joking about this but I took it slightly to heart and they were then slipped into my wardrobe for another day. When the sun broke out and it was 28 Degrees Celsius outside I decided fudge it I am going to wear them and ever since them I have barely took them off. I decided that there isn't much point in caring about what other people think therefore I wore my Moses sandals with pride and I have gotten multiple compliments on them since.

The Sandals were around the 3-5 pound mark in Primark.

Grainne

New Name... again?

This is the third time I have changed the name of my blog and to be honest I pity the you who actually take the time to type in my blog name as probably I have lost a few followers along my way as the URL has changed multiple times. To be honest I changed my blog name from www.dancingwhileitisraining.blogspot.com as you can already see that it is far too long and basically is a eye sore. I tried many shortened down names still related to the topic but it ended up they were all taken by blogs that were last wrote on in 2000 (seriously do you not think blogger should have shut them down already), therefore I decided to create a name which was relevant to me as this is my blog.
After around and hour of thinking I came up with the name Bluebell Island this is because when ever my sisters and I were only at the highest hip height we would go exploring in our uncles fields. One day during the summer we came across a little hollow or valley which was flooded with Blue Bells. Ever since then we have called it Bluebell Island. Bluebell Island is a place where imagination flowed and dreams came true. Even though I haven't been there for a right few years now it holds a lot of memories from my childhood,  it is very special to me and so is my blog therefore why not incorporate the two?

P.S. Tomorrow i am getting my hair highlighted and cut for the summer as it is looking ferocious and if I am happy with it I may put up some posts of it.

Beautiful Roses in my Garden!

Grainne