Chi Chi London Beatrice Curve Dress Review

 

For the longest time I've been wanting to get my hand on a Chi Chi London dress. To be honest I've had no occasion to wear one until now. Me and the bearded wonder have a wedding to attend in a few weeks and I've not really thought about what I'm going to wear as I have so many dresses, and if I'm really honest I ordered this on a whim just to see how it looked but thought I'd have to return it as I have no where to wear it to... that is of course, until I tried it on.

The Beatrice dress from the Curve range comes in sizes 18-26 (mines a 20) but you can get the exact same dress in smaller sizes too. It comes in at £57.99 which I thought was really reasonable for an occasion dress. When it arrived I was instantly pleased with how heavy it seemed without actually being heavy, does that make any sense? It felt like a quality product. 

What I really love is that it's a Bardot neckline which I'm really into at the moment, a bit of off the shoulder action is perfect for summer. I have worn it with a little cardi here but you really don't need to. It's a really pretty floral fabric, not my usual style at all actually, where's the black?? But I love how girly it is, I really felt like I was ready to attend a summer wedding and it hit me that it would be perfect for the one we're going to that's coming up. Once I had that in my mind, the selfie stick came out. 

While it seems like a heavy fabric it's actually just fairly stiff so it has a lot of structure and keeps you in whilst really showing off your waist without making you want to die. You can still breathe too which is a huge plus. Because the fabric is stiffer the pleated skirt part of the dress really sticks out and has as much volume as my hair after leaving my victory rolls in overnight saturated in hair spray.

Look how much it sticks out! I'm not even wearing a petticoat! I do feel like my back fat is eating at the waist band a little but a little shapewear should smooth that out nicely. I have to say, I am a little bit in love with this dress, I really don't think I can face sending it back and I think I will just have to find a place for it in my ever shrinking wardrobe. Shame. NOT! Welcome my friend.

This is not a sponsored post, I just bloody love this dress! I think if you sign up to their newsletter you'll get 10% off too!

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Norwegian Bake Of The Month - Kransekake

Now I'm properly back in the country normal writing can resume! I haven't done a Norwegian Bake Of The Month for a little while so I'm making up for it with a good one - kransekake.

Now for some history (yay..... :D )
Kransekake directly translates as 'wreath cake' and is a traditional Norwegian cake (or Danish - but we'll ignore that for the purpose of this post) and you will always find one at birthdays, Christmases, Easters, confirmations and weddings.  Normally made up of 18 rings of chewy almond cake (some fancy bakeries have bigger ones), they are also normally in a steep cone shape, but if you're really creative you can make a basket and even a horn. Now you do need special tins to bake these in, and from The Caked Crusader's suggestion, you can get them from Lakeland for under £10! It's made up of ground and chopped almonds, icing sugar and egg whites, basically if you don't like marzipan you ain't gonna like this! Simply they are decorated with glace icing and Norwegian flags and sometimes small crackers, for weddings they place a bride and groom on top, streamers and other times they also pin sweets to the sides.

This particular cake was for my brothers second wedding reception (for all those that couldn't make it or travel to Lyme). I hadn't made one myself before so my ever clever viking mum showed me the ropes. We couldn't find a little bride and groom to fit or that looked nice so we found a cute little pair of doves holding wedding rings and also some small wedding crackers along with some white ribbon for the streamer effect. To add some glam we also pinned some wrapped sweets on the sides, easy to pick off for a sugar rush!

Warning, you do really need two days to make this cake for the best results!

Ingredients
Dough
500g of almonds (250g of which is ground)
500g of icing sugar
4 egg-whites

Icing
1 egg-white
3 decilitres of icing sugar (300ml)

Method

1. Skinning the almonds: Add the non-ground almonds to a pot of boiling water.  Turn off the heat and leave them for 2-3 minutes.  Pour the almonds into a strainer and rinse them under cold water.  Take a fistful of the almonds at a time and rub them in a towel to make the skin loose.  Pop the almonds out of their skin and leave to dry for a few hours or over night.

2. Making the dough: Grind the skinned and unskinned almonds in an almond grinder or food processor (why not just by all ground? You want some almond skin in there).  Add the icing sugar and mix.  Add egg-whites until the mixture becomes stretchy and firm.  Cover the bowl with plastic and put in the fridge for a couple of hours, preferably overnight as it makes them more elastic.

 

3. Baking the cake: Grease kransekake moulds and sprinkle with semolina or fine bread crumbs, we didn't have either of these so used icing sugar, works fine. Heat oven to 200C/180fan (390F).  Take a lump of dough at a time and roll into finger thick lengths that fit the moulds and join by squishing them together. Cook the rings in the centre of the oven for about 10mins or until golden.  Cool them before putting them in an air-tight box.  Leave the box in the freezer for at least 24 hours.  This will make the kransekake nice and chewy.

4. Constructing the cake: Defrost the rings for 30mins minimum.  Make icing by beating one egg white with 3dl of icing sugar.  Fill the icing in an icing-bag.  Assemble the cake from biggest ring to smallest using the icing as glue by zig-zagging the icing across the rings.

5. Decorate with tinsel, flags, party poppers, sparklers and wrapped lollies.

6. Eat!

Nom!

Recipe adapted from My Little Norway




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Las Vegas Giant Wedding Cupcake

So last week the wedding order took up a lot of my time, but I still managed to sneak in a cheeky giant cupcake order of course!

This one was quite different, it was to celebrate a wedding, but the happy couple got married in Vegas! Amazing right? So this was a little celebration cake for them to have when they got back which I think was a really sweet idea so everyone who may not have been able to go got to share in something weddingy.

So of course the theme was Vegas, which was brilliant. There's so much you can do, one thing for certain was that there needed to be the famous sign with 'Danny & Rochell' and 'Just Married',  I'm a little annoyed I didn't leave enough space for one of the names but I just got it in! It was hard to do the sign as fondant doesn't really dry flat but I placed balls of fondant under the ends of the sign and filled it in with buttercream to balance it all out.

I used the lovely Tala squeezey decorating bottles again, I think I may have fallen slightly in love with them! To do the edging of the sign I rolled out a long thin sausage of fondant and sprayed it all over with the Dr.Oetker gold spray, let it dry for a minute and then stuck it around the sign, I used some edible glue just to make sure it really stuck.

I took on the whole Vegas/Gambling theme as it is the main one isn't it but tried not to over-do it. the bottom I did in ivory and laid strips of red fondant and long thin sausages of black fondant around it as it reminded of the colouring of a deck of cards. To tie this in I also made up some bits from the suits of the deck to dot around the side of the cake. I kept the rest of it pretty simple as with the big sign and the stripes on the bottom I didn't want to make it look too full on, it was still a cake for a wedding as such.

To really give it some glamour I tied a big red ribbon around the bottom and gave it a really big bow so it looked more like a gift.

I'm really pleased with how it came out, actually how it was supposed to look!

Sugarflair colouring pastes used: Christmas Red, Licquorice and baby blue.

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