Super easy seasonal iced biscuits!

If you're blogger, you should remember to post your content when it's most relevant, really, shouldn't you? Like, who wants a Christmas gift-guide on the 24 December? Anyway, I'm being a shit blogger, because I completely forgot to post my Easter biscuits, and now Easter is almost a month behind us, but hey-ho, I'm showing you them anyway, because they look goddamn adorable, I think.
My mum called me on Good Friday and showed me the biscuits she'd made, asking if she wanted me to help ice them... Who am I to resist?! 

The recipe for the biscuits itself, I can take no credit for - my mother made them, and I only iced them! But she reliable informed me that the recipe she used was this one from The Pink Whisk and they tasted amazing when baked to perfection. She also tells me that she used vanilla powder in place of vanilla essence! 

INGREDIENTS AND EQUIPMENT:
- 1 pack of Royal Icing or Icing Sugar
- Water at room temperature
- Several piping bags (or sandwich/food bags if you're cheap like me haha)
- Several small bowls and teaspoons
- Food colouring
- Cocktail sticks

1. Mix the icing to the instructions on the packet, depending on what brand you use, most of them will tell you how much water to add to the icing sugar. We measured out the water and then added it until I got the consistency I wanted. At this point, you want the icing to be quite thick, thick enough that you can pipe it and it will hold it's shape.
2. Split the mixture between bowls evenly, and add the colouring. For pastel colours, add a very small amount of the colouring, and mix well.
3. Spoon some of the thick icing into the piping bags (leaving some for flooding the biscuits) and pipe around the edge of the the biscuit shape to create an outline. For shapes like the eggs, pipe the desired design (like stripes or zig-zags).
4. Set aside and allow this outline to dry until solid and hard.
5. Add more water to the remaining icing in the bowls to create a more liquid consistency, it should run off the spoon with ease.
6. Using small teaspoons, add a small amount of the runny icing inside the outline you've already made.
7. To move the icing into the corners of the shape, tilt the biscuits or gently move with the back of a teaspoon. This is also where the cocktail sticks come in useful, to push the icing into awkward corners and to get rid of air-bubbles.
8. Allow to dry until completely hard.

These went down an absolute treat in our house, I must say! And there was not one child in sight, haha, but I imagine they would go down very well with kids. I think the yellow chicks and the blue bunnies were my favourites, and if you're interested, we got the biscuit cutters from Waitrose, they do a great selection of seasonal ones for Easter, Halloween, Christmas, etc.

Have you got a favourite biscuit recipe you go for?

- recipes -

this week via instagram

I know these kind of posts saturate the blogging world, but I do quite like these little snapshots into someones life, and how they choose to present a face to the world via Instagram. I will admit that I try quite had to get my images looking nice, my Instagram is quite carefully managed. I think thats an odd thing to hear people admit - people want to give off the impression that they live this perfectly curated life, of perfectly angled coffee cups and pastries, of perfectly styled interiors, etc..
I always feel a little bit like I'm not good enough, when I read blogs. I think that is good for me, making me push myself to produce better content and do better for myself: on bad days though, I compare my life to theirs.

This is a very long way of saying: my life isn't like how I show it on Instagram. I mean, sometimes it is, but at the moment, for example, I'm in my PJ's at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, make-up free, messy hair in a topknot, eating some easter chocolate, drinking an iced coffee and messaging my friend who is at work about how they've leaked the new episodes of Game of Thrones... 

Life isn't a really perfect Instagram shot, it's just me, trying to make things a bit prettier, and thats okay.

Easter weekend was spent a blur of food, cooking, baking, sleeping in, watching movies, and going on breezy walks with my brother. It was excellent - everything I needed to recharge my batteries and fully enjoy a bank holiday weekend! I've worked retail the past seven years, and I've never fully enjoyed the joys of the long weekend - I suddenly understood why everyone loved it! I made easter biscuits with my mother, walked around the heather gardens at Virginia Water, saw the Cinderella film with my friend, and just generally chilled. It was well needed.

This week saw me busy at work, I took my first solo business trip up to Sheffield, and sort of loved the city, from what I saw of it. I think it helps when you see somewhere in the sunshine, because it makes me happier. It's just over the Pennines from my mothers family, so I feel an affinity with the views and the accents, despite sticking out like a saw thumb with my home counties pronunciation. I ate dinner alone in Wagamamas, and it wasn't as hideous as I thought, and I was treated to the most stunning sunset over the hills, and I stood in the Meadowhall carpark until the sun colour drained from the sky just to watch it. (Oh, and I also took gratuitous selfies..)

This weekend has been a slow one, spent curled up on the sofa with coffee (alternating between iced, and hot), eating leftover chocolate, admiring the stunning blossom tree outside, going for lunch at the local revamped garden centre with my mother, and buying the most amazing, locally produced sausage rolls. I sat and devoured the Sunday paper, did some tidying and still, revelled in the joy of the weekend stretching out before me in one long stretch where I can do what I like! The sunshine has been close behind me all week, and I feel like it's pushing me along, edging me into summer with a little thrill of anticipation...

What have you been up to this week, and what do you think about how people present a face to the world on Instagram? I don't find it inauthentic, though some people would disagree -  I look at it as just trying to show your best face, like the difference between you in your PJ's, eating chocolate in the afternoon, or getting all dressed up ready for an evening out..!

an easter weekend

I wasn't very well last night, woke up late, and wanted to just chill with my family - so I am forgoing my usual Weekend Wanderings posts, in favour of a mini run down of things that have made my weekend a good one...

• Eating freshly baked, homemade croissants, straight out of the oven, smothered with jam for a very late breakfast with my family. Accompanied by giant mugs of steaming hot coffee, 
• Catching up with a friend and seeing the new Cinderella film - it's exactly what you expect from a Disney film, that saccharine twee-ness that sometimes you just need to zone out to when you've had a stressful week!
• Enjoying the small pleasure of a lie-in - first bank holiday weekend I've had completely off (four day weekend!) in about 5 years. I used to get Easter Sunday off in my previous job, but usually worked the bank holidays either side...
• Watching the garden come back to life a bit with the greenery, the blossom beginning to come out on the trees, and watching the pairs of blackbirds, goldfinches, blue-tits and collared doves that have made it their home (which all made me very happy).
• Bunches of spring flowers in the house, daffodils in my bedroom, tulips and hyacinths in the living room. 
• Spending an afternoon doing some Easter baking with my mum - decorating little biscuits and trying our hands at creme-egg brownies, too.  
• A roast in the oven as we speak, preparing for a good roast later today.
• And of course, a little pile of chocolate waiting for me this morning when I came downstairs - you're never too old for an chocolate rabbit, are you?

What are you up to this weekend? If it isn't stuffing your face with food, then I don't want to know! haha Hope you're all having a lovely time with or without your family, eating or not, spending time in the sunshine or curled up on the sofa watching Grease, I hope you have a nice long weekend. (:

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!