Red Velvet Cake.

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

I’ve been wanting to try making some red velvet cupcakes for ages. Then I bought a giant cupcake tin. It also happened to be my birthday and I had to take something to work to share.

Enter giant red velvet cupcake.

As New Zealand is not know for it’s red velvety goodness, I turned to my favourite American baking blog, Bakerella.

It is an amazing blog by a wonderful lady and her recipes are absolutely to die for.

I decided to use her red velvet cupcake recipe from Valentine’s day and adjust the cooking time for a cake. The quantities didn’t need changing at all. It fit perfectly in my giant cupcake tin.

In cooking a cake though, you need to turn the temperature down slightly and cook for longer. I ended up being quite pressed for time and cooking if for 40 minutes, but then having to go out when it wasn’t quite cooked in the middle. I just turned the oven off and left it in there. Upon my return it was perfect, albeit a bit crispy around the edges. Charred as well.

Although this did not worry me as I needed to cut the top off both the cakes to make them flat in order to put them back together again. Just like Humpty Dumpty.

Now you can ogle the food porn:

Mix all wet ingredients together.

Beautiful red.

Mix dry ingredients together.

Pour wet ingredients into dry and mix.

Pour into cake pan.

I may or may not have skipped a few photograph steps here (by accident I swear!)

What you need to do, once the cakes are cooked, have been tipped out, and cooled. Make the icing. I used Bakerella’s cream cheese icing as well, but instead of the 6 cups of icing sugar it called for, I actually only had three left in my cupboard so that’s all I put in there. It still tasted amazing though. I don’t think three cups is really necessary. It would have been super sweet and I had excess anyway.

Which I may or may not have eaten.

Anyway, with the giant cupcake, you spread some icing on the top of the base and plop the top on it – this is so they stick together.

Once all together – ice!

Tada!

 

 

On the inside. It was delicious too.

Oscars: What were people thinking?

/ Lisa / 1 Comment

The Oscars were yesterday and all I can say about the dresses was, What were people thinking? Talk about bland, uninspiring, or gross. I struggled to find any that I liked, or thought something could be better about them.

Shall we start with the worst dressed?

Worst Dressed:

Emma Stone: She went from best dressed to worst in a matter of weeks. The bow is just awful.

Kate Beckinsale: The patterns, the cut-outs, the added extra frilly bits. Just no.

January Jones: Who knows what the designer was thinking with this dress.

Rosario Dawson: I can be a fan of block colours, when they are done right. This is not one of those times.

Sofia Getty: Who said a jumpsuit would be a good idea? Jumpsuits are never a good idea unless you are under the age of five.

Shailene Woodley: Are you trying to be a nun? No, just no.

Gwen Stefani: Usually Gwen has some good taste, but this is just wrong. It looks like a prickle bush. Although it might look alright if it was sleeveless and strapless and had a heart neckline. So yeah, get rid of the arms and chest bits.

Mena Suvari: Did you want to be a cloud when you grew up?

Lily Collins: I'm not sure how I feel about this dress. I think I'm coming down on the side of bad. Maybe without the sleeves it would look better.

Natalie Portman: So bland, so very, very bland. But at least it is better than that pink thing she wore to the Emmy's.

To bridge between the worst dressed and the best dressed, I would like to bring your attention to two very similar dresses to show how things can go completely wrong or look utterly fabulous.

Here is Rose Byrne.

And here is Anna Farris.

The dresses appear to be made of the same material, gorgeous, black and shinny. One is utterly gorgeous and the other looks like she is wearing a garbage bag. Can you guess which?

I’ll put you out of your misery. Anna Farris looks like she’s wearing a garbage bag.

Best Dressed:

Sarah Hyland: Simple and gorgeous.

Ellie Kemper: The colour and the sparkles are amazing. The cut is simple and elegant.

Kelly Osborne: She's starting to do things right. This dress is lovely.

Anna Paquin: I love this dress and Anna looks amazing in it.

Claire Danes: I love the colour and the fluffy, frilly skirt. I want a dress/skirt like this. She also looks amazing.

Cameron Diaz: She looks absolutely stunning in this dress. The dress is pretty amazing too.

Jessica Chastain: This dress is amazing. I love the gold on black.

I don't know who this is, but I love the dress.

Kristen Wiig: I love the frilly, floatiness of this dress, but I'm not sure about the colour. Perhaps something darker?

Wendi McCendon: I love this dress. I could possibly wear something like this to get married in.

Sandra Bullock: The reason I love this dress is the two-tone, the looseness and the detailing around the waist.

Lastly, I have to mention Angelina Jolie. Not because of the dress, but because of the leg. Just what, I don’t even…

Tweet, tweet.

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

This post has been a long time coming. Lately I’ve been feeling a bit over twitter, made more so because of the platforms that I use to tweet,  because they essentially suck.

The one that I probably use the most is Twitter for iPhone. A few months ago it was updated with some rather significant changes. I understand why Twitter has updated the apps and web with wanting to streamline usage. Any official twitter app essentially has the same interface. Even though this makes it easier to switch between the various applications, I still prefer the old version of Twitter for iPhone.

Reasons for why I dislike it:

1. You can no longer swipe across a tweet and get quick reply, retweet, favourite, etc buttons. I loved this. Now, you have to go into a tweet and wait for it to load, because it does take a little bit to load now, before you can perform any actions. Although, I did just download the update today and swiped across a tweet because I still want to do it, and it did it! I was all, “WHAT?” so it looks like they have put back a few things they had removed.

2. People show up in your timeline with what they put as their “name”, not their @ name. Some people write some pretty weird things in there. So now I don’t know who half the people showing up in my timeline are.

3. The progress bar when sending a tweet has disappeared. This was a great indicator of whether a tweet would send or not. Now it’s not there and you kind of can’t tell if the tweet has failed to send or not. And let’s be honest, this actually happens quite a lot.

4. Direct messages now appear under “me” instead of a similar button appearing like mentions (sidenote: what is with ‘mentions’ now known as ‘connect’?) So now you have to go into “me” and then click on DMs. Slightly annoying.

5. Switching accounts is so much harder to do nowadays. In the old version it was as simple as hitting “settings” at the top left and you could go change accounts. Now you have to go into “me”, scroll down, then hit “switch accounts” in order to select which account you want. It is no longer intuitive and actually annoying, because it does not allow for quick changing between accounts.

6. No longer saying whether someone follows you or not when you look at their profile. It’s a pretty handy feature because I don’t want to look like a twat when talking to someone who doesn’t follow me, especially when I’m private.

7. Swiping to get back to your timeline. Yes, just hitting the ‘connect or ‘home ‘ button does that. But this is what I got used to. I don’t like change. Why fix something I it’s not broken? Also, sometimes I’ll look like a twat trying to get the swipe working, kind of like trying to use the swipe on a Mac touchpad when you’re actually using a mouse. And windows.

8. Not saying which account you are one. Where there is now the twitter bird at the top used to be which account you were tweeting from. It’s a bit frustrating trying to determine which account I left the app on instead of just seeing it at the top.

So does anyone know of an app which is like the old version, free, and allows for multiple accounts?

I’m not clowning around anymore.

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

I’ve been struggling lately to find shoes that actually fit.

Since moving to Auckland my feet seem to be in a constant swollen state and a lot of my shoes I now struggle to even get on.

Some of them probably were a bit small when I got them, but I sometimes don’t have a choice. I have clown feet and I hate it.

Would you wear these?

In order for shoes to fit me, I need at least an 11, if not a 12. Sometimes I can get away with a 10, but they do bad things to my feet and when my feet are swollen, there is no way I can even get in to a 10.

Having been a student, then unemployed, and now one of those lowly paid journalists, I have always relied upon Number 1 Shoes to provide me with cheap shoes that I could get in an 11, usually.

Now every time I go in there, I can never find an 11. Nowhere in sight. Even Hannahs only really stocks up to a 10/11.

I tried on a pair of really cool ballet flats in Hannahs yesterday. They were purple with a black buckle across the toe. They were awesome. The shop assistant brought me an 11. I put it on, and even though I could get it on, I knew it was going to cause me problems if I bought it. My toes were at the end and I could already feel it rubbing on my big toe. So I didn’t buy them. If they had have been in a 12, I might have.

I’ve also been into Overland and Mi Piaci with no luck. One of the sales assistants said to try Nine West. I looked, I loved, and I found 12s. However, I could not sign up to the American website. I managed to sign up to the Australian one, but alas, they didn’t have the shoes I loved or really any in an 11 or 12. Sad face.

I know of Willow Shoes, which I have bought from before. Or should I say, my Mother has bought for me. There is no way I can ever afford any of the shoes there unless they are heavily discounted, even then, still rather expensive.

So I ask you, internet, where can I find relatively cheap shoes in a size 11 or 12? My feet need your help, because right now, I wear nothing but jandals. And those aren’t really “business shoes” now, are they?

Or these?

The one where I get engaged.

/ Lisa / 11 Comments

Yeah, what now?

You read that correctly: ENGAGED.

So Man Piece and I have officially being seeing each other for a year. On that one year anniversary, he decided to pop the question. Quite a surprise, I will tell you!

Everyone has been asking for the story of how he proposed, so to save me time, I’m blogging it. ‘Cause, yanno, that’s what I do.

At the weekend we were in Wellington. Man Piece had managed to get grabaseats for both of us over Auckland Anniversary, which was quite awesome. He even booked us in at The Bolton Hotel. Flaaaaaash.

We had just been out for dinner on Sunday and had wandered back to the hotel. I was fairly exhausted as I woke up Saturday with a cold which has really sucked all the energy out of me.

I had collapsed on the bed, about ready to fall asleep and Man Piece was lying next to me. We were talking about things that had happened throughout the year – lots of lovey, vomit worthy stuff.

The whole, “You make me feel like a better person.” “I don’t want to be without you.” “I love you.” etc etc.

I noticed his heart was beating quite fast at one point, almost beating out of his chest.

He then said something like (because honestly, it’s all really a blur. Remember I was sick, rather delirious from fever at the time too. In fact I might be imagining this whole thing.) “I don’t want to be without you for the rest of my life. Lisa, will you marry me?”

I was in shock. Like, WUT.

Then I said something stupid like, “I want to say no, but I want to say yes at the same time.”

Then I wanted to try on the sparkles.

After that I was like, “I guess that’s a yes.” Smooth, real smooth.

But the most important thing is that I said yes and I get to be with the man that makes me feel special for the rest of my life.

So now I’m engaged. I’m the future Mrs Carr. WUT. And I have a wedding to plan. We’re thinking around February 2013. I want a summer wedding and to get married before my bridesmaids flee the country.

So yeah, um… *freaks out*