The Bad Education Movie - Review (Sort of)

Basically this is just me wanting to talk about this film because I saw it today and liked it.

Now, I'm no film critic so don't expect anything in depth or good. I just wanted to tell you guys about this film because I saw it today - rather spontaneously - and really enjoyed it! However first and foremost I just want to mention that I don't intend to put any spoilers of the story line in here so I'm just saying this now as a warning in-case I do accidentally let something slip. Know that I didn't mean to and lets still be friends. Please? Yes? Okay? Awesome!

From the first series in 2012, I have always been a fan of Jack Whitehall's Bad Education. Having watched and been a fan of each series it was then pretty exciting to know that it was being made into a film, as it was quite sad knowing the series had come to an end last year. However, I must admit I was a little worried, as I didn't want the series, which ended on such a high, to then be remembered as something that wasn't that good because of the film spin off. Or film addition? Well - film either way right?

My worries were (as usual) for nothing! The film was - personally - hilarious! Full of randomness and fun I honestly could not stop laughing throughout. It had quite a intriguing - if a bit odd story line though - although as promised I wont delve into that because I don't want to risk spoiling it for you. Just know that its not too 'silly' like I'd imagined it might have been. Well okay, certain parts were a little far fetched but it was in a good way I guess. No joke seemed too stretched out and nothing was repeated in a effort to gain another laugh. Every funny part that happened in the film stirred a genuine laugh... from me anyway. (Does that almost sound review like? Check me out)

Image 1 - Looking pretty serious

To give you an idea of what the film is like I would say imagine The Inbetweeners films. Like Bad Education it started as a very successful TV series and then into two films. The tone and humour of Bad Education is also very similar to that of The Inbetweeners. So basically - if you're a fan of Will, Simon, Neil and Jay chances are you'll be a fan of Alfie Wickers and his class.

I must say however the film would probably be more enjoyable for fans of the series rather than watching it as a stand alone film. I think this simply because by watching it as a stand alone film certain elements may feel unexplained or confusing. (Don't let that deter you though if you haven't seen the series before!)

And that's pretty much it for today. Sorry again for any spelling mistakes or confusing parts. I know I'm not the best writer/blogger in the world but I really am enjoying this and I really do appreciate and thank you guys for reading! ♥ I hope you enjoyed my 'sort of' review and if you have seen the film too let me know your thoughts!

The image I found here by the way.

Ricicle x

P.S. The film also stars Iain Glen A.K.A. Ser Jorah from Game of Thrones!

CURRENTLY PLAYING (Admittedly rather late)- The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

<- Image found here.

Okay, okay, okay, I know this game isn't exactly new, but I've only just got around to playing it and I thought it might be fun to type up my thoughts of the game and tell them to you guys. (That was a really long sentence sorry)

So like I said this game has been released since 2011 on PC and 2012 on Xbox 360 and up until now I have never played it. However with The Witcher 3 being released earlier this year and it looking pretty cool, I wanted to get this game and have a see what its like. I'd also seen it in my recommended games on Xbox so I thought, why not? And here we are. Its probably a good thing to mention though that I haven't played the first Witcher Game as I simply couldn't find it at my local gaming store. #sorry

Today I literally JUST started the game, and by just started I mean I've just done the tutorial and a little bit of the main story (I think). The tutorial I thought was pretty good, it wasn't too annoying and I actually felt better for doing it. (I don't know sometimes I just feel the tutorials on some games can drag a little, but this one seemed just enough). I like the controls but I'll need to get used to them and the combat elements seem okay to me for now. Combat in the game reminds me so far of Dragon Age as does the circle menu. If anything there is only one thing I don't like so far and that is the process of potion making, only because it feels like you go through one menu into another. Maybe its just me. Other than that this game seems awesome and I can't wait to play more.

And that's it! Sorry this wasn't the best of posts regarding the game, I don't really know where to start with these kind of posts but I appreciate you reading and I hope you enjoyed it! Just as a warning, the next time I type up about this game it may include spoilers, so just in case you haven't played the game yet and would like to I'd just say be prepared.

Have a awesome day... or night!

Ricicle x

Take On A Bake - (Off!) / Arlettes

Arlette's. They are something I had never baked, eaten or even heard of before! But I love cinnamon so they had to be the task I chose to bake this week! (I ended up regretting this halfway through making them as they are so faffy! - but we persevere in the face of annoying recipes! ... right guys? *yeah*)

This week I chose to follow the recipe set out by the Hollywood himself - and my gosh was it frustrating. Not through anything he had done in the recipe, just because of how many steps where actually needed to make the biscuits. I had probably underestimated the amount of work needed for these biscuits... like - really underestimated! But hey ho, here we go!

It looks like pop art!

So for the Arlette's you will need:

• Strong white bread flour (I didn't even know this was a thing?)
• Plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• Unsalted Butter
• Granulated Sugar 
• Ground Cinnamon 
• Icing Sugar

Lets get started with Paul Hollywood's recipe; (like last week I will place images of each step to help give you a idea of what it should look like)

1. Put the flours, salt, butter and 50ml/2fl oz cold water in a bowl and gently mix to form a dough.

So in the bowl is 60g of strong white bread flour and 60g of plain flour, alongside 1 tsp salt and 40g unsalted butter (which needs to be slightly melted) this was just before I mixed it all and got it into a dough form! 

DOUGH FORM

2. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and knead for 5 minutes until smooth. Shape the dough into a square, wrap in cling film and chill for an hour (or freeze for 20-30 minutes).

Before kneading. 

After kneading - I wasn't sure of the size the square needed to be so I took a guess. Once this is done plop it into the fridge and start on the butter layer - dun dun dun. 

3. For the butter layer, cream the butter and flours together using an electric mixer. Sandwich the mixture between two sheets of cling film and roll out to a rectangle the same width as the square of dough, but twice as long. Chill in the fridge for 25 minutes.

 So this is after I mixed the 125g of unsalted butter and 25g of strong white bread flour and 25g of plain flour. It took maybe a good 2 minutes to get it nice and creamy.

I got a little confused by this step - I'm not really sure why I was just a bit unsure on how I could shape the butter. The clingfilm kept splitting on me so this was the best shape I could get! But anyway, once you have something like a rectangle, plop it in the fridge like the dough.

4. Unwrap the chilled dough and butter layer. Place the chilled butter layer, short end facing towards you on a lightly floured surface and place the square of dough in the centre of the butter sheet. Make sure it is positioned neatly and covers almost to the edges. Lift the exposed butter sheet at the top and fold it down over the dough, then fold the exposed butter sheet at the bottom up over the top, so the dough is completely enclosed in the butter sheet.

So this is what happened when I did this step.. I don't even know what happened. It was just a mess, butter was everywhere and well I really don't know how I fixed it. A lot of flour I guess. But I wanted to share it because retrospectively it was kinda funny. But don't worry if yours goes wrong either, its nothing flour wont fix! #TeamFlour

5. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface, short end towards you. Roll out to a rectangle, keeping the edges as even as possible. Fold the top quarter down and the bottom quarter up so they meet neatly in the centre. Then fold the dough in half along the centre line. This is called a book turn. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for 25 minutes.

See? Flour is the hero for your dough problems! From here it went back into the fridge for.. you guessed, another 25 minutes.................................

6. Remove the dough from the fridge and make another book turn. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for 25 minutes.

ANOTHER BOOK TURN GUYS - DO THE BOOK TURN.

Original photo found here!, but that masterpiece was edited by yours truly! (sorry Paul) 

7. For the filling, mix the granulated sugar and the cinnamon together in a bowl. On a lightly floured surface roll out the pastry to a rectangle as before and sprinkle over the sugar.

 So here is the 50g of granulated sugar mixed in with the 2 tsp of ground cinnamon

8. Make another book turn to incorporate the sugar, then roll out the pastry 1cm/½in thick, to a rectangle 12x20cm/4½x8in. Roll up the pastry from the short end like a Swiss roll. Wrap in cling film and chill for 25 minutes.

So above is how my pastry looked with the cinnamon all 'book turned' in and before I rolled into a tight swiss roll shape. As you can see its not a perfect rectangle shape but it really doesn't matter as in the next step we will chop the wonky ends of the swiss roll! So don't worry too much. Also so I can give credit, the second photo of Hollywood before I edited it was found here!

9. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas 6. Line 2 baking trays lines with silicon sheets or non-stick baking paper.

Easy step! We can do that!

10. Trim the ends of the roll and cut into 8 x 1cm/½in thick slices. Dust the work surface heavily with icing sugar and roll each piece of dough out very thinly, turning to coat in the sugar and to prevent sticking. Place the biscuits on the prepared trays and bake for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven, carefully turn the biscuits and cook for a further 3-4 minutes, or until golden-brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

This is the Arlette before being chopped up! As you can see the ends have been cut off so no matter what each section will be near enough equal! So like I said don't worry too much about forming a perfect rectangle.

Unfortunately I was engrossed in rolling out each biscuit that I forgot to take a picture of this step! Sorry!

This is what my Arlette's looked like before going into the oven! I made some smaller ones too out as I was able to make more than eight! I ended up using three different baking trays as I didn't have one that fitted them all in! They went in the oven for 5 minutes, and then what I had to do was flip them over and wait either another 3-4 minutes or until they were golden brown! I must add here that they smelt, delicious!

And here are the finished Arlette's -

They don't look too shabby do they? I am so happy with how they turned out as I have never attempted something as time consuming as this. I love how you can still see the swirl and the layers of cinnamon. I think its safe to say the frustration was worth it in the end!




And that's it for this weeks 'Take on A Bake - (Off!)', I hope you enjoyed this post and if you attempt this bake yourself be sure to let me know! I hope you all are enjoying The Great British Bake Off too, I know I am. Thank you again for reading and have a lovely day. (Sorry if there were any mistakes)

Ricicle x

P.S. I'm also sorry this post was up pretty much at the last minute, with tomorrow being the third episode of 'TGBBO', I've had a pretty busy and stressful few days so today was pretty much the first chance I've had to make them. But I did and I'm so glad I had time to do them as it was a great experience and learning curve baking wise! Hooray! ♥

A-Level Results Day 2015 - Don't panic!

Tomorrow for many students is perhaps the most nerve wracking day ever. Its A-Level Results day, which means students from around the country will be receiving their exam results and finding out whether they got the grades for their university placement. (Or whatever was needed for their next step.). This was me nearly a year ago, I was scared, nervous, somewhat excited but most of all - anxious! No matter how much I told myself; 'I revised its okay' or 'at least you wrote something!' nothing was putting my mind at ease the night before. On my results day I found out I had gotten into university before actually finding out my grades, so luckily for me my worries weren't so heightened by the time I had arrived to collect them! As is the case all my worrying led to nothing, I was so happy with my results and my friends also got the results they were hoping for as well. The relief was immense!

So why am I telling you all this? If you happen to be reading this and are going to collect your results tomorrow, just know that everything will be okay! I have been there, I understand that right now you will think nothing will be okay but I'm telling you it will. If you get the grades you wanted and hoped for, awesome!! (I know you will) But even if in the case that you don't, there are always - ALWAYS, measures in place to help you out. So please, promise me no more worrying! Below is a little picture I made with just a few tips (do's & don'ts) that may help you out if you need it  -

And that's it for today's post! Good luck to all receiving their results tomorrow - I hope you get all that you deserve! Like I said try not to worry, because in the words of Bob Marley, every little thing - is gonna be alright *cue song* - 

(Thanks Bob!)

Ricicle x

Take On A Bake - (Off!) / Madeira Cake

Hi guys! So this is the first of my little series called 'Take on a Bake - (Off!)'. This is inspired by the new series of The Great British Bake Off - a show I really enjoy. Each week I will choose a recipe that was attempted by the contestants on the show and basically 'have a go at it'. This is purely for fun and I hope you enjoy seeing my attempts. So anyway on with this week!

This week one of the challenges was for the contestants to make a Madeira Cake. If you're a little bit of a history nerd like me and want to know the history of the Madeira Cake - CLICK HERE. So here we go with our attempt at the - dun dun dun - Madeira Cake!

For this recipe I actually used the very same recipe that one of the contestants used - Marie's! I felt this made it more 'Bake Off-y' (my attempt at word play) as it was from one of the contestants! I have provided a link to the recipe but if it makes it a little bit easier for you I will copy what you will need so you don't have to open too many links! (Just know that all credit obviously goes to her!)

LOOK AT ALL THE COLOURS

Okay so these are all the ingredients you will need -

• Caster Sugar
• Unsalted Butter (However I used Stork because Stork is my favourite butter to use for cakes)
• Self Raising Flour
• 3 Eggs
• 3 Oranges
• 2 Lemons
• Icing Sugar 
• A pinch of salt!

P.S. Ignore the pineapple chunks in the picture! (I had already uploaded the picture before I realised - silly me!) 

Okay the first step in Marie's recipe is;

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/165C Fan/Gas 4. Grease a 900g/2lb loaf tin with butter and line with baking parchment. 

Pretty simple stuff - so now for the second step;

2. In a bowl, cream the sugar and butter until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating between each addition. Fold in the flour, a pinch of salt and the citrus zests.

I photographed each stage of this step so hopefully it will give you a guide at what the mix should look like.

After creaming the 150g of caster sugar and the 150g of butter!

Adding in each egg one at a time (I didn't pre-beat the eggs - I just cracked them straight into the mix and beat them from inside that - but one egg at a time).

The recipe didn't say whether the flour needed to be sieved in but I did anyway. #Yolo

- Additionally when it comes to folding in flour I tend to use a spatula as I think it allows me to make sure every little bit gets mixed in!

After folding in the 200g flour!

This is where you also add the pinch of salt!

ADD IN THE ZESTS AND MIX IN WELL!














Onto step 3! -

3. Pour the batter into the prepared tin, smooth the surface and bake for 1 hour. Check the cake after 40 minutes, if it is starting to brown too much cover with aluminium foil for the remaining cooking time. The cake is cooked when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

 All ready to go!

ONE HOUR LATER ...

It went ok guys!

We have one half of a Madeira Cake! Hooray!

So continuing on from Marie's recipe we have step 4 -

4. Leave the cake to cool in the tin while you make the sugar syrup.

Another simple step - we like those. 

5. To decorate, cut the lemon and orange rind into very thin strips. Add 100ml/3½fl oz water and the caster sugar to a saucepan over a low heat, stir gently until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil then add the rind to the pan, reserve a few strips of rind for decoration. Cook for about 5 minutes until a syrup forms and the rind is translucent.

Like I did for step two I will include images so it will give you a rough idea of how it should look. 

My very thin strips of both the orange and lemon skins! (rinds)

 The 100ml of water and 75g caster sugar. The caster sugar will eventually dissolve!

After the caster sugar has dissolved you need to wait for the water to boil and then add the orange and lemon bits. After a time it will begin to bubble and turn into a syrup! This also smells delicious!












Step 6 now!

6. Brush the syrup over the still-warm cake and set aside to cool completely. When the cake is completely cold, remove it from the tin.

Looking pretty yummy

At this point I was getting really excited because I've never made this type of cake before and I was pretty chuffed with the candied fruit and syrup. But anyway, now is time for the final step - step 7!

7.To make the icing, mix the citrus juices. Mix the icing sugar with enough juice to make a thin icing. Drizzle the icing over the cooled cake and finish with a few thin strips of citrus rind.

For the first half of the step I didn't take any pictures however it was pretty simple, I just added a teeny bit more icing sugar as the icing wasn't as thick as I would have liked it - but once I got icing I was happy with it looked something like this; 

Shiny!

I chose to not add any more strips of citrus rind for the top of the icing as for me the ones in the syrup were enough.

Anyway once all that properly dried I tidied it up a little and here is the finished product - 

So I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed baking the cake! I have never attempted this kind of cake before so I am pretty proud of myself. Like I said this 'Take on a Bake (Off!)' series is inspired by the show 'The Great British Bake off' and the credit for the recipe goes entirely to the lovely contestant Marie. (To whom I wish all the best for in the show) 

As far as I'm aware next week's episode revolves around biscuits so that should be fun! 

Thank you for reading and if you are a fan of the Great British Bake Off be sure to let me know who your favourite contestant is! (I'm so far undecided - however my past favourites were Howard and Norman!) 

Ricicle x

Whimsical Rainbow Cupcakes! (with pictures)

A.K.A. my best attempt yet using food colouring!

Okay so I know I said I'd tell you some facts about me today but I was so excited from creating the blog that I really just wanted to get started with a cake post. (Sorry - but I will tell you some facts about me soon) 

I wanted to show you guys these colourful cupcakes that I made a few days ago - they remind me of one of my favourite childhood books - The Cat in the Hat. I don't really know why but hey ho!

(I like polka dots - can you tell?)

How cute are they?! I was so impressed with the colour both on the butter cream and the sponge itself as when I've tried to do it before the colour didn't turn out quite the way I'd have hoped. Coincidentally it was my third time trying this out so third time lucky guys!

So anyway that's all I really wanted to show you but if you'd like to know how to make these cakes I'll provide everything I used and did below!

The recipe I use for the sponge has always been my go-to cake mix, I've used it for a few years and after some practice every batch is a good batch of cakes! If you would like to follow the sponge mix I use CLICK HERE, but by all means if you have a preferred method then go ahead and use that. Its once the sponge mix is all ready to go that we can have the real fun.

Once your sponge is ready to go you will need to get your food colouring! I really wanted to use rainbow colours so I opted for red, orange, green, blue and pink - however you can use as many or as little colours as you want. Now, regarding food colouring I have never had the best experiences, they have either turned out looking mouldy or just not bright enough for my liking, however recently, I stumbled upon Pro Gel rainbow dust and that will forever be the food colouring I use for future bakes. (Its brilliant!) Anyway - split you're sponge into however many colours you are using, e.g. if you are using 5 colours, use 5 bowls. And then add a small amount of your dye in each of the bowls and mix!

Once each bowl is properly mixed add in your colours to your cupcake cases. There are two ways for you to do this;

1. The first method is to add a colour and then flatten in down so the colour touches each edge of the case - so from a side view it will look stripy. I tried this for the cakes in the pictures above and it worked fine but some of the colours from a side view looked very thin. For example - 

   

   This is what I mean - you can see lots of orange and red however not so much of the blue! 

2. The second is to simply just throw the colours in at a time - making sure they don't mix with each other obviously. Since making the above cakes I did try this method and personally I thought it looked better both on the side and when you took a bite out of it! Here's a example picture of what I mean for the second method. -

Literally just throw them in! (Ok maybe not literally)

So once all this colour lark is done with put them in the oven for around 15-20 minutes - for me the cakes are done for bang on 15 minutes.

And voila! - Colourful cakes!

The next part for me - usually - is very 'faffy' and that's the butter cream. For these cakes I used the Betty Crocker Vanilla Butter cream Style Icing and again just split it into as many colours as I wanted and mixed them in with the colours. For the butter cream I used orange, blue, pink and green as I wanted colours that would really stand out against each other. Once this is done its then time for the piping bag! Dun dun dun!

For this magical method I actually have one large piping bag which is split into 3 small bags, so I can add my different colours and connect them all together and then the three colours come out nicely (I swapped between the green and blue colours). I purchased mine at Hobby craft but I'm assuming there are some elsewhere! However (I am yet to try this) but I have read and seen on videos that you can achieve the same affect by using one piping bag and adding in the colours individually by rotating the piping bag so they don't touch. When all the colours are in the piping bag just simply push down and begin decorating like you usually would. There are plenty of videos explaining this method in better detail than I can. 

Once piping is done you will have cupcakes that (hopefully) look playful and colourful! You can either choose to leave them as they are or if you are like me you can decorate them with some white pearl balls - or anything! 

Just as a disclaimer I am not a professional baker by any means - nor do I claim that this is the best method for achieving these cakes. I just enjoy baking in my free time and wanted to share with you my excitement for my first successful food colouring attempt! Thank you for reading and if you do try making these cakes please let me know! 

Again sorry if there are any spelling mistakes or badly worded sentences, I'm new to blogging and although I'm very excited to be doing just that I'm a tad bit anxious, hence any mistakes or 'waffley bits'. 

But thank you for reading and have a lovely day!!

Ricicle x 

Hello there!

HELLO FRIENDS!

Thank you very much for visiting my blog - I hope you are having a good day - if not here is a joke I just read - 

"What did one bean say to the other bean?

How you bean?"  

I know it was bad but it was one of those 'good bad' jokes right? Anyway - hello there! I'm Ricicle! I'm super excited whilst typing this as I have been wanting to make a blog for a while now but I've been totally clueless as to what to call it. The name may still change but I went for Short Cake for the two reasons below,

1. Because I am very very very small in reality - all my family and friends refer to it and honestly, I like being small - so I wanted to reference it in my blog name.
2. Because I like to bake cakes - lots and lots of them, and I'm hoping to make posts about the cakes I've made, pictures and all!

So ta-da welcome to Short Cake! Like I said I hope to type up posts about recipes I have tried but I also want to talk about other things, either to help or entertain. Anyway, whether you come here for cakes or help or for any other reason, I hope we can become friends! I will try my best to write on here as much as I can. I'll maybe put up a post tomorrow with some facts about me!

Anyway as I'm typing this its 12:13am and I'm starting to get sleepy so I think I'll say goodnight for now! 

I'm so worried this will be worded wrong or they'll be spelling mistakes - so forgive me if there is!

Goodnight my new friends, thanks again for visiting!

Ricicle x

<- A mini me! (Kinda)
^- I made this Here! (just in case you'd like to make one!)