BIrthday celebrations!

This weekend I celebrated my birthday (a week early!) at an 80's club in London. My mates Jacob and Eddie also have their birthday's this week so we made it a joint affair... It was a fantastic night!

80's babies! 

Mel in her 'rock 80's' get up! 

Sam and Ram!! 

The photos are pretty self explanatory... SO many drinks and even more laughs had by all! 

Reading festival!

Backtracking a little, the few days leading up to my trip to Ireland for my cookery course I rocked out at Reading festival with a few of my London Aussie mates! 

Camp Aussie

SO many people...

Onesie Saturday! We saw Foster the People, Passion pit, Paramore, The Hives, Miike Snow, The Shins, The Vaccines, and many many more... 

But by far my highlight... Florence :) (also the only time on the weekend it rained!) 

Summer Fun!

We finally had a bit of sunshine to go with the amazing Olympic buzz London has had in the past month. 

So spent some time by the river... 

with Mel and Wes...

and then hit the beach about an hour out of London... 

 who knew London had such beautiful beaches!! 

So nice hangin with Mel! 

 and Rach :)

More Baking... this time in Ireland!

For those of your who don't know, this is me (having a bit of a bad hair day!) and Rachel Allen (who, after baking all day in a hot kitchen still looks lovely!).

Rachel is a bit of a celeb over this side of the world. She has brought out many great cookery books and is on the box baking all the time.

Her family own and run a cookery school about an hour outside of Cork.

So off I went to Ballymaloe to Bake with Rachel Allen! 

We started with a demonstration class where Rachel made about 30 different things!! 

...and then we got to taste it all.... :D 

After stuffing our faces and trying to decide what we would choose to bake the next day I took a walk through the gardens... they were beautiful! 

This was my home away from home... 

Day two and three we were able to get our hands dirty...

 I have to say, I could've stayed there for much longer than three days! I loved it! 

Here I am with my Aunt Florence's Orange cake.... with Aunt Florence! 

After coming home I got straight into testing out some of the recipes... 

I made my own raspberry Jam

and sweet scones to go with it! YUM! 

A bit of baking... and a wedding!

I have been a bit slack in my blog uploads... so bear with me while I update! 

A few days after I arrived back to London from New York I went into 'prep' mode for George and Bev's wedding. After a tipsy conversation in a pub with George a few months before, I put my hand up to make dessert for 150 guests attending his wedding in July. I then woke up the next morning thinking... 'HOLYMOLY what have I signed myself up for??!!'

After many hours of thinking and planning I decided on Swiss Meringues and a boozy Chocolate Mousse. 

The Meringues have to be in the oven for 2 hours... I can fit 14 in my oven at one time.... It took MANY hours! 

We also had to eat the contents of our fridge to fit the Chocolate Mousse cups... 

But I have to say, after many hours and a few moments of disaster, the compliments I received after I served up made it all worth it 

 The happy couple :)