Being a Student Nurse .....

.... is going to be great! I am so excited about being back in school and I'm really glad that I've taken the plunge.

But of course this means that some things have recently taken a backseat to the course. One main thing being my obsession with baking. This past week I seem to be out of synch with baking and have had a few failures. I tried to make Cake Bites for my mother-in-law for her birthday at the weekend and they just would not form well. I think it was down to the fact that here in the UK we do not have pre-made Cream Cheese frosting and so I thought I would make my own and use it. Unfortunately, the frosting was not stiff enough and I'm pretty sure this was the downfall of the bites. Next were Home-made Doughnuts which turned out more like Fried Dough that you get at the State Fairs back home in the US. Not bad but not what I was aiming for.

So tonight since it's quite cold and windy, I have made an Apple Pie courtesy of Nigella Lawson. Nigella is one of my favourite TV chefs as you can really tell that she truly enjoys food and loves to cook. I highly recommend trying some of her recipes if you haven't already.

The smell of home-made apple pie always reminds me of home and Philosophy Apple Cider Bath Gel. Weird but true!

My First Daring Bakers Challenge: Eclairs

I'm pretty sure that the title of this post has given this week's baking surprise away. I joined the Daring Bakers last month and my first challenge with them was making eclairs. I have to say that I am happy to have made them as I can now add the experience to my baking repertoire. The whole recipe from start to finish took about 4 hours to make including cooling. I chose to fill my eclairs with home-made vanilla bean pastry cream (which was delicious, yum!). As much as I liked the pastry cream, I think if I were to make eclairs again I would just fill them with fresh whipped cream as the pastry cream is quite time consuming.

So here's my end result:

Also, last weekend I was asked by someone I know if I could make a birthday cake for them to bring to a friend and I gladly obliged. The cake I chose to make was a two layer chocolate devil's food with raspberry vanilla bean buttercream icing. I spread raspberry conserve and some of the buttercream between the layers and topped the cake with fresh organic raspberries. It smelt lovely and I was told that it tasted lovely.

On a final note, my best bud Emma bought a new car on Tuesday and I thought I would just share a photo of her new baby:

I almost forgot...I start my course at uni on Monday. I'm studying to become a nurse!