She takes my time and I don't mind

You may have seen me mention earlier in the week that I'd had a stroke of madness and decided to enter a cupcake competition. I've been a regular at the Iron Cupcake competition since it started a few years ago but have always seen my role as one of the judges more than as a baker. I'm definitely quite talented at eating cake, not many people can munch through a selection of entries as quickly  skilfully as I can. And yet, despite knowing where my real talents lie, I somehow convinced myself that this was going to be the month I'd bake lots of cupcakes fit to be scrutinised by a hoard hungry people with score cards. 

I didn't win the competition, there were far too many amazing entries as always (sneak a peek at the rest of the entries here), but I'm more proud of myself for actually challenging myself to bake for an audience other than my office at work (who quite frankly will eat anything I put in front of them!). Plus being a baker meant I saved myself from the usual Sunday evening sugar induced coma I tend to experience after the competition. I'd like to say I'd turned over a new leaf and was becoming a healthy little bean, but then I'd be lying about what happened to the leftover back-up cakes I'd made in case my first set went wrong...

So, my efforts for the competition were Cookie Dough cupcakes. I'm one of those people that enjoys eating raw mixture just as much as I love the end product, so if you're anything like me this cake is the absolute best of both worlds as a hefty chunk of uncooked cookie dough is hiding inside each cupcake. The basic recipe was from Making Cupcakes with Lola and, not that I'm one to blow my own trumpet or anything, they tasted bloomin' amazing!

Cookie dough cupcakes

makes 12 (although I doubled the recipe and it made 28... the mixture goes a long way!)

for the cookie dough and cookies for decoration:

4 tablespoons butter

100g light brown sugar

150g plain flour

6 tablespoons condensed milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 tablespoons of chocolate chunks/chips

for the cake mixture

200g plain flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

180g butter

175g light brown sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

3 tbsp milk

60g of chocolate chunks/chips (I used chopped up bars of milk chocolate because I'm not a big fan of chocolate chips, plus I decided the chunks looked more authentic!)

for the cookie flavoured icing

175g butter

150g light brown sugar

150g icing sugar

50g plain flour

3 tbsp milk

2 tsp vanilla extract

(You're best off starting with the cookie dough as this needs to sit in the fridge for an hour after making)

Combine the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the flour, condensed milk and vanilla extract and beat until the mixture is smooth and combined. 

Once you've done this, add the chocolate chips/chunks and mix them into the dough.

Form into 12 balls (pictured below) and 12 small, flat cookie shapes for the cookie toppings. 

Bake the small cookies in the oven at 180C for about 5 minutes/ until they're just starting to go brown around the edges. 

Place the balls of cookie dough in the fridge for an hour or so whilst you make the cakes.

For the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 180C. 

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla extract. Once you've got a fluffy mixture, add the eggs and beat well. 

Sift about a third of the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt and mix well. Add about 1/3 of the milk and mix well. Repeat this until all of the milk and dry ingredients have been added and mixed together. 

Once this is done, add in the chocolate chips.

Divide the mixture between your cake cases and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, until springy to touch.

When your cupcakes have had time to fully cool, using a sharp knife, cut a hole in the middle and fill each cupcake with a ball of the cookie dough mixture.

Whilst you're waiting patiently for your cupcakes to cool, make the cookie flavoured icing. 

Cream butter and brown sugar together then add in the icing sugar until it has formed a smooth mixture. 

Beat in the flour and salt, then add the milk and vanilla extract and mix until smooth.

Spoon the icing into a piping bag and pipe onto the cupcakes.

Top each of your cakes with one of the cookies you made earlier. 

Apparently its World Baking Day today, so if you're feeling like rising to the occasion, these would be a perfect way to spend your Sunday! 

She changes the weather- Swim Deep

I wanna get lovesick with you

I love bank holiday weekends. Especially this one as living in Leeds meant that I could spend the weekend surrounded by lots of my favourite bands at Live at Leeds festival. Buying a wristband for the Saturday gets you into all of the main music venues in the city centre where an endless list of bands are playing throughout the day. I went last year and saw more bands than you can shake a stick at, this year we didn't manage to see quite so much, partially due to not waking up until lunchtime (we were really sensible and went on a pretty heavy night out the night before...) but also because both The 1975 and The Pigeon Detectives attracted  huge queues that I don't think the organisers had quite anticipated which meant that there was a massive backlog of people who were forced to queue for miles to get into the venues for the acts that were later on in the day. Inevitably we ended up stuck in all of these queues since all of the bands that we wanted to see were inevitably playing at those venues later in the day. 

But really, its quality over quantity at these things (at least that's what we had to force ourselves to believe during our hour long wait to get into The Cockpit) and the acts we did manage to see put on a brilliant show. We managed to catch Backyards who are a great little band that we went along to support because one of my friends is good friends with the drummer plus they're a really talented bunch, Tribes (who I've seen about four times now but still really love the energy they have on stage every single time), Swim Deep (singing along to their songs after our horrendous Cockpit queuing experience was exactly what I needed) and Peace. Peace were the absolute highlight of the day, I've loved them for ages and have been dying to see them live after missing out on seeing them at a tiny little venue in Leeds way back in October and they completely exceeded my expectations. They're still a pretty new band, their album hasn't been out for long at all but they've really exploded in popularity lately and so the venue was absolutely rammed with fans singing back every word of every song. Plus, they snuck in a cheeky few lines of Daft Punk's Get Lucky (which forces me to dance like a loony every time I hear it!) and sent the entire room crazy. Perfection. There's no way they'll be playing a venue as small as Cockpit again from now on, they're destined for far bigger things! 

After another night out and a much needed Nando's to recover, we discovered that The Pigeon Detectives were playing a free set in the tiny Made in Leeds shop in Leeds Trinity. After missing out on seeing them the day before we decided that the chance to see them playing in a really tiny venue would more than make up for being caught out by the enormous crowd. Somehow we ended up on the front row, close enough to see the beads of sweat dripping off the lead singer's hair...sometimes being so close has its downfalls...

To top off our weekend, we had tickets to see The Vaccines playing in Millennium Square in Leeds so after our little encounter with The Pigeon Detectives (and a stop off for a few bottles of cider and a slice of cake) we headed into the arena. The sun was shining and there was a great atmosphere because of it, it felt like we were at a real festival but with less mud and more buildings around us. The Vaccines were bloody incredible. I didn't think I liked their second album quite as much as the first but seeing them playing all the songs live completely changed my opinion and made me love some of the newer songs just as much as the first. If you ever get a chance to see them live then go, go go- they know exactly how to make the crowd have the best time watching.

My photos aren't exactly the best I've ever taken, I was mostly relying on my phone as there was no way my SLR was being let loose in the thick of the crowds I'd been stood in, but also because I was too busy singing until I lost my voice to be bothered about watching the whole show through my camera lens. In fact, it gets on my nerves when people do that at gigs... just enjoy the show and focus on the music rather than missing out on a good boogie for the sake of a few pictures.

Lovesick- Peace

Tell me what it is that you wanna be

necklace: Urban Outfitters, jacket: Republic, dress: Topshop, converse: Schuh

One of the few shops I can tolerate at sale time is Urban Outfitters, particularly when it comes to rifling through their gorgeous jewellery. However, my mission to find cheap jewellery went a little bit wrong when I found this necklace nestled amongst all of the sale stuff without a sale sticker on it. Giving them the benefit of the doubt that one of the sales advisors had just forgotten to mark this one down I took it to the till to check the price because I didn't particularly want to pay full price for it. But apparently I did actually like it enough to pay £18 because when the girl at the till offered to put it back for me I practically threw my bank card at her shouting "It's ok, I'll buy it anyway". I'm great at sales shopping.

Also, if you haven't heard it being played on Radio 1 this week, then check out the song below by Swim Deep. They'd been floating around for quite a while in 2012 and I've become a little bit obsessed. It looks like they're set for big things this year :)

The Sea- Swim Deep