Smoke Barbecue

I have finally finished University forever. I have absolutely loved being in Sheffield and calling the amazing city my second home. Before leaving Sheffield there were a number of places I wanted to visit and one was the famous Smoke Barbecue home of the massive meat platter. Myself and a friend finally visited on the bank holiday weekend.

Smoke is renowned for selling meat, and lots of it. Typically the menu is very limited You can choose from ribs, burgers, or chili, standard plates, or the smoke plate.

We shared the smoke plate, which comes with pulled pork, turkey leg, chicken and sausage, twice cooked chips and another choice of side - we went for the mac n cheese.

We were warned the platter was big, but did not anticipate for it to be so huge! We really struggled to eat everything, but tried our best! The twice cooked chips were simply delicious, but the mac n cheese, was something else. When in America we had the best mac n cheese in Vegas, and this one at Smoke, could quite easily match it! My favourite part of the meat was the sausage - it was yummy!

If you are ever visiting Sheffield I would recommend a visit here, the men of the family/party would thoroughly enjoy it and may be interested in the Man vs Food challenge, with the opportunity to win £100 and appear of the Smoke Facebook Page......?!!!!

A visit to Cambridge

With the stress of assignments and dissertation, I totally forgot to write this post!

Over Easter myself and my family took a day trip to Cambridge. Now I thought I had never visited, however on arrival I started to recognise places, and turns out I came to Cambridge on a Geography field trip many many years ago!

Anyway, we parked in a Park & Ride, and took the bus into the centre of Cambridge. It was nearly lunchtime so we decided to pop into Nando's for some food, which is always a winner!

After devouring Nando's mum took us on a massive walking tour of Cambridge that she had found online. It was lovely, she took us down all these streets and into the many beautiful college grounds.

The sun was shining and everything looked stunning, and it was such fun watching all the punters on the river!

After a long walk, we ended up at this cute cafe called Sticky Beaks. The cafe was rammed, so we sat on stools at the window which was nice as we could watch the world go by! I would definitely recommend this cafe if you ever visit Cambridge! They serve lunches as well, which looked delicious, and also a variety of cakes and sweets too!

xoxo

Easter Nest Cupcakes

You can tell I am home for the weekend, as the baking begins. I have decided to take the weekend off from Uni and writing my dissertation to enjoy being with my family, and of course doing lots of baking!

Yesterday I make Easter Nest Cupcakes for the family to enjoy.

I used to basic classic sponge recipe as I have explained earlier in this blog. You weigh the eggs, then whatever the eggs weigh, everything except the baking powder and vanilla essence should weigh this too. So my 2 eggs weighed 120g, so my flour, butter and sugar was also 120g - very easy to make cakes this way!!

I divided the mixture between 12 cake cases, not filling them too much as wanted to be able to decorate them!

Once cooled, I made glace icing, iced the cakes and covered them in hundreds and thousands.
I then made butter icing and piped a little nest on top of the cake and placed mini eggs on top.

They looked so cute and tasted good too. I got a little snap happy taking pictures!
Happy Easter! xoxo

Waitrose No Bake Raspberry Cheesecakes

I love going to Waitrose and picking out the recipe cards and getting some inspiration from them, so when I popped into my local Waitrose with my mum we saw these and decided to bake them as soon as we got home.

They are the most simple and quick desserts to make, but taste delicious. Most of the ingredients are from the essential range as well, which makes them relatively cheap too!

The recipe can be found here, however I will give a quick summary below:

The recipe says to crush 6 essential Waitrose Rich Highland Shortie Biscuits, however I wanted to be generous with the biscuits so ended up crushing about 20!! I then crushed the biscuits and divided between 5 tumblers (there are 5 people in my family, the recipe serves 4!). Then you mix 250g of Waitrose Lighter Soft Cheese, with 100g essential Waitrose Greek Style Yoghurt (I did about 150g in the end) and 2tbsp pure clear honey. These go in the fridge whilst the 200g frozen essential Waitrose Raspberries thaw with 2tbsp cordial (I used summer fruits cordial as that was in the cupboard but the recipe recommends blackcurrant cordial or squash). Once ready to eat, divide the thawed raspberries between the beakers and layer on top.

I really loved this as a dessert and will most definitely be serving it in the summer as it is a very summery pudding!

Wagamamas

I have been craving a Wagamamas for ages, and couldn't honestly tell you the last time I visited. So when my friend suggested a dinner date to Waga's I couldn't turn it down.

When I first started visiting Waga's I always had the chicken katsu curry, because it is simply amazing. However on more recent visits I started to have the chicken raisukaree, which is stir fried chicken in a coconut thai sauce served with sticky rice.

However since I hadn't been in ages I went back to my roots and thoroughly enjoyed my katsu curry! The crispy chicken and the sauce are divine, and I loveee the salad and the dressing they serve on it!

We also had my favourite duck gyoza as a side. The duck gyoza are served with an amazing cherry hoi sin sauce, and I will order these without fail whenever I visit Wagamama's.

The thing I like Waga's is that you all sit on long tables so it feels very warm and welcoming and the staff are always super friendly and helpful.

However, I just wish I knew how to use chopsticks!

What's you favourite dish at Wagamama's?

Recent Beauty Haul

I have never done a beauty post as all the posts I read the photographs look absolutely amazing! I cannot afford a great camera just yet so my pictures never look the same, so I have never braved a post myself!

However, that said I love make-up and in particular buying and trying new make, so when John Lewis were doing Price Match on many make-up brands, plus my discount on top I jumped at the chance.

The well anticipated Roller Lash by Benefit was even on the price match and I am a sucker for new mascara's so had to buy it. I wear mascara everyday, so I always spend more on eye make-up as I feel I get my money's worth. The mascara is great, I really like it. The bottle is very unique and I love the brush and feel it definitely extends your lashes.

Additionally, I have been wanting to try the new Clinque Beyond Perfecting Foundation and Concealer. This comes with a strange brush, kind of like a concealer one, which I was not expecting. However I am enjoying wearing the foundation/concealer. However because it is quite thick I only wear it for a night out!

Lastly, when working at Harrods I was recommended to try the Bobbi Brown Long-Wear Gel Eyeliner. I am so glad a customer recommended it, as it has now become my favourite eye liner to wear on a night out. I find it so easy to apply with the ultra-thin brush and have even perfected the perfect flick!! When working at Harrods, I bought two brushes and two of the gel pots and they have lasted me 2 years. However, I needed a new one and this was the ideal opportunity.

I hope you enjoy my first every Beauty Blogger post!

Fifty Shades of Grey

So, it arrived the long anticipated film finally arrived on our screens at the cinema.

Being typical girls we pre-booked our tickets in advance just to make sure we got seats, and all ventured to the local Odeon on Friday 13th February.

We followed in many other groups of girls and picked up our tickets. The film started at 8.15 and we got there are 7.45 to get seats (you don't get reserved seats at this cinema!). All the good seats had already gone, how early did people arrive?! We took seats on the left hand side and even then it was a struggle to get seats for all 7 of us!

The whole cinema was full of girls, with 4 couples dotted about!

As soon as it started me and my friends thought, oh no what have we done this is so cringe. But once the first sex scene was over and we knew what to expect we settled and enjoyed the whole thing.

The cinema had such a nice relaxed environment so we were able to whisper little comments to each other, or laugh at our friends reactions to the raunchy scenes!

After all the bad reviews, we all went in not expecting a great film, but left loving every minute of it. I know I enjoy a film when it felt like it flew by, it seemed as though it was only 10 minutes long, when in fact it was nearly 2 hours!

The film was cleverly and tastefully done and I would recommend it to any group of girls wanting to go and see it.

Just wait for the ending........?!!! xoxo