festive spiced cookies

Today I have done some baking! And what I made actually turned out well! Unusual! Browsing on Pinterest during Christmas time is a recipe ( get it ) for disaster. You sit staring at all the cakes and cookies baked to perfection, and you convince yourself that you actually need a copper kitchen aid. Being a baking enthusiast, I'm always looking for really easy recipes that are very hard to mess up, and I think I've found a fool proof way of making Christmas cookies.

You will need -

8oz Plain Flour ( sieved )

4oz Butter 

2oz Sugar

1 Egg 

1tsp Cinnamon ( optional )

1. Add all of the butter to the bowl and stir until it is a creamy consistency. It took me ages to do this but it's really important for later.
2. In this order, stirring in between - add the sugar, the egg, and the cinnamon. Add the flour in sections, stirring in gradually so it isn't too hard to mix in. You should now have a dough.
3. Pour some flour on a clean surface, and cover a rolling pin in flour to prevent the dough sticking.
4. Roll out the dough until it's about half an inch thick, and start cutting out shapes with your cookie cutters.
5. Once you've finished, spread a tiny bit of butter over some greaseproof paper on a baking tray and pop your cookies on them, and put them in the oven for at least 10 minutes, at 150-200 degrees.
6. Take them out of the oven, and leave to cool completely, otherwise the icing will melt when you ice them.
7. Stir in the colour of your preference in a bowl of icing sugar and water. I went for red because it's the most Christmassy!
8. Ice your cookies, and do some cute little designs in icing pens. You're done!

(This post is part of a little blogger series I'm taking part in called the "secret blogger project 2015" run by teen bloggers Emily , Rebekka and Charlotte. About 30 of us will be writing 4 times per season on selected little lifestyle topics and you can also go onto the twitter and Instagram hash tag "#secretbp2015" to have a little chat and view everyone's posts. If you would like to join or know more (we'd love to have you!)  Instagram dm @theperks0fbeingemily or if you don't have Instagram, send a quick email to  rebekkarosebeautyxo@gmail.com!)

the best salsa

ft disgusting veiny hands dye to cold weather. I'm back with another recipe post yippeeeeee. This time I'm going to be showing you how to make possibly the best salsa/guacamole ever. Ever. This is super addictive to make, and I make it pretty much every time I eat doritos, which is a lot. It's definitely become a tradition in my house...

There's four main ingredients I like to use, but you can mix and match to your taste:

Avacado

Onion

Tomatos

Coriander

Chop all of the ingredients up into tiny tiny pieces. I'm lazy with this part because I eat salsa in gallons ( not really ), so it takes a long time. I chop them up roughly, and put them in the blender for 3-5 seconds. It goes the perfect texture, and I can't get over how delicious it tastes. Probably just because I'm obsessed with coriander and put it on whatever I can.

peach and raspberry smoothie recipe

A super quick post today, but I thought I would post a recipe on here. It's for this delicious smoothie which I actually drink all the time, and... it's healthy ( what? ).

You will need:

a banana

a ripe peach

frozen raspberries ( I didn't have any when I was taking the picture.. )

milk

a blender

Just blend all the ingredients and you've got yourself a delicious peach and raspberry smoothie!

instagram/bloglovin/tumblr/pinterest

halloween foods

Amongst all the Halloween excitement, one thing I can't resist is making lots and lots of food. No, no, not just any food. Pinterest and tumblr inspired Halloween food *smirk*.

Jack Skellington Cupcakes

You will need:

• 1 box of chocolate cake mix ( I used a betty crocker brownie one )
• 1 egg
• 40ml vegetable oil
• 75ml water
• fluffy white icing ( betty crocker vanilla )
• black gel writing icing
• oreos

1. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C. In a large bowl, mix together the cake mix, eggs, oil and water. Mix until it's completely blended with no lumps, and a dark brown colour.

2. Divide the batter among all the cupcake liners you can fit, and put in the oven for around 25 minutes, or until they are ready ( put a knife through one, if the knife is clean when you pull it out, it's baked ). Let cool.

3. Ice all the cakes. Use the black gel to make two large eyes. Next, pipe on two short lines for a nose. Finally, pipe a long line across the bottom of the cake and add dashes for the mouth.

4. If you're like me, you'll only have bought one tube of writing icing and run out of it. If this happens, you can cheat and pop some oreos on the remaining cakes.

Orange Sherbet Sorbet

You will need:

• oranges ( or lemons if you've run out, like me )
• orange sherbet/ice-cream
• mango sherbet/ice-cream. Luckily for me, at asda they had a mango and chocolate orange tub of ice-cream.

1. Slice off the top of an orange, and get rid of the insides, or make juice.

2. Put the orange and mango sherbet inside, until the top of the orange is flat enough to replace the top.

3. Serve immediately and enjoy!

'Eyeballs'

You will need:

• babybel cheeses
• black olives
• ketchup
• red food colouring/icing
• a paintbrush

1. Paint the veins/blood vessels ( !? ) on the cheese to make it look more like an eye.

2. Slice open an olive, and using a very thin piece from the middle, place on top of the cheese.

3. Fill the center of the olive with ketchup. If you're not a ketchup fan, leave the center of the olive empty.

So, all my favourite quick, easy, yummy Halloween food recipes in one post. Lucky you *wink*. Let me know if you're going to make any of them!

chocolate raspberries

As the pure freezing-ness of winter is nearly in full-blow, it's time to take advantage of the leftover fruit. This is more of a summery snack, but chocolate is for all seasons. This is such a simple recipe it's almost too easy to post, but I feel like more people should know about chocolate raspberries, as they taste amazing.

You will need:

Melted chocolate

Some raspberries

A working freezer

1. Melt some chocolate. I find that dark chocolate tastes best with the raspberries ( I used a cadburies fruit and nut bar, if you're wondering why the chocolate it so lumpy - not the best idea ).
2. Scoop it into the raspberries. You don't have to be careful at all with this, it will freeze right through, and the more chocolate the better.
3. Put them in the freezer for around 10 minutes ( 15-20 if you want them to be frozen solid, which is nice too ).
4. Put them on a new plate if necessary, to make it look nice without all the chocolate stains.

Enjoy! Told you this was easy.

ps - I'm working on putting together a Halloween Week. From the 25th October, I'm going to be posting Halloween themed every day up until the 31st, when I'm going to be doing a big big post. It's been really fun so far, and I hope you enjoy it once it's up!

now playing: hudson vampire weekend/diamonds ben howard/gotta get away the black keys

mint and vanilla apple juice recipe

A few posts back I mentioned going to the fanciest restaurant in the history of forever ( so fancy I've forgotten the name ), and I had this amazing mint and vanilla apple juice. It was so delicious I asked the barman for a recipe. He was pretty rubbish though. Only gave me the obvious. This left me to do a bit of trial and error, and, after making about 4, I was getting compliments from my family about how delicious the drink was. So here's the recipe.

You will need

• a glass/mason jar jug
• crushed ice
• cloudy apple juice
• fresh mint
• vanilla extract

Method

• fill the glass up half way with the crushed ice
• fill up the rest with the apple juice
• put the teeniest tiniest drop of vanilla extract in and mix it thoroughly ( I swear I've never used that word before )
• put the fresh mint leaves somewhere in the drink and the flavour will soon spread, adding some sweetness
• drink outside in the sun and be glamorous with your non alcoholic cocktail. I very much doubt this counts as a cocktail though

fancy restaurants

So, as you know, if you've read my most recent post, I'm in a treehouse resort thingy in Hampshire, well I left yesterday, and on Tuesday we went to the most AMAZING place everrrr. It's this hotel/restaurant with the hugest front garden ever with a swing and everything. The inside of the restaurant ( I think it was called The Pig ) was designed as a greenhouse ( glass roof, lots of plants ). The atmosphere was so relaxing, and as for the food, WOW. It was honestly the best I've ever tasted. So, if you're ever in Hampshire and you can somehow find this restaurant, PLEEEAAAASE at least have a look around. They also had this mint and vanilla apple juice which sounds grooosss, but it's delicious. I'll probably post the recipe in a few days. Yup - I was so obsessed I asked the guy at the bar for a recipe.