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Monday, 8 April 2013
MUSTARD ON WHITE .(scribbled at 09:00 )


...or hot buttery toast. Either way, this 1963 Lichtenstein work is now adorning my bedroom wall in the form of a 65p postcard. The frame is a bargain I picked up from an Oxfam up in the Midlands when I went home to visit my parents' houses the weekend before last. I do love a bit of museum and gallery memorabilia. From Stedelijk Museum Oyster card holders to pin badges from dOCUMENTA 13, I am literally a walking advertisement for every gallery gift shop out there. It's a bit embarrassing.

Here is just some of the cheesy stuff I picked up from Amsterdam, hahah. (From left to right): Rembrandt-shaped eraser, Rembrandt-figure pencil, Modriaan Cup, Vermeer mug, Vermeer Umbrella. The teabags on the left are pure cinnamon and the package on the right of the Vermeer mug is a gift that my youngest sister crafted for me in her Design Technology lessons. It's pretty adorable actually;  a rather abstract looking metal pendant which is attached to packaging that she made herself (and even made a 'Tate' logo on the back, haha). I wish my classes in secondary school would have been that cool... my lessons didn't extend much beyond learning how to make a net for a cardboard box.




I'm posting this because I'm proud of the enthusiasm I had for hanging my own pictures after 8 hours at work taking frames off walls. I had to trim the mount for Youth With an Ivy Wreath , which I picked up at the Leonardo: Painter at the Court of Milan exhibition at the National Gallery a few years ago. Yes, that exhibition was all the way back in 2011 and I've only just bothered to dig it out from a cupboard. The other works are all by Ed  (http://mrmoltonium.tumblr.com/) , the top one being a gift and the other two I bought at last year's Zine Fair at the New Art Gallery in Walsall.

So, my sister is studying Pop Art as part of her GCSE in Art, so I offered to have her stop the night in London so she could catch the Lichtenstein retrospective at Tate. Which isn't a huge deal of effort on my part, as the 141 bus stops literally outside my house and goes directly to London Bridge, but it involved a huge deal of effort to not implode each time she referred to Lichtenstein as 'Roy' ...as if they were on first name terms. I mean, if you're friends with Damien, Tracey, Jake & Dinos then refer to them as that by all means. But I'm beginning to get a little angry at the GCSE Art syllabus if its condoning referring to artists by their first name. Arghhh. Thankfully, after 30 hours of me reminding her that Lichtenstein died whilst she was barely a 6 month foetus, I have now taught her the ways (ha.). Regardless of all this, I'm pretty damn flattered that she's chosen to draw me repeatedly for some of her GCSE project work:


It was a pretty crazy couple of days, but I managed to give her an insight into what I find so cool about London in less than 30 hours. Starting off at Shoreditch High street to explore Boxpark and the surrounding shops, we walked down Brick Lane via one of the 24hr bagel shops to grab a few cheese bagels for breakfast. My sister is now hooked to those, and the oreo cupcakes that are sold at the café a few doors down from there. Although my sister wants to be a florist (!), she's also got a thing for Rachel Whiteread, and instantly snapped up one of her Olympics 2012 posters (you know the one with all the circles on?), so I thought it only made sense to walk past Whitechapel Gallery so she could see her sculptural work in the flesh, on the Gallery's façade. 

I'm a little obsessed with Tower Bridge, so we walked over that and then snacked our way through Borough Market up until we reached the Tate Café, where we stopped for a spot of Earl Grey before enduring half an hour in the queue for my sister to collect her ticket. Hardly surprising, but she spent just as long in the gift shop buying Tate publications as she did actually looking at Lichtenstein's paintings. I spotted a book with a Maurizio Cattelan's Untitled (2007) on the cover (a horse stuck in a wall, basically), which is about the various elements that make up the contemporary art world, so I'll pop by next weekend and pick that up. I hate it when you see something you like in a shop, and how you can utterly obsess over it in your head for days/weeks until you get it. I have no willpower or self control with these things. I only lasted 2 weeks obsessing over investing in a high quality bag before I caved in and bought a 14" Cambridge Satchel in their Covent Garden store. I got a 'V' embossed on its front though, so I guess my first born child will have to be called either Violet, Victor or Veronica so I can pass the bag on to them.

 There's this room at Tate where you can arrange your own text and image to create your own Lichtenstein inspired wall piece. It's aimed at anyone under the age of 10 really, but a good 15 minutes was spent there at the beginning of our visit:



I bought this new Penguin Specials book, written by the lovely Alastair Sooke. It's mightily tiny at only 45 pages long, but who can't resist spending money on a brand new paperback?



Admiring a few bits of Bruce Nauman in the Tate's collection:





We walked over Millenium Bridge and marvelled at St. Paul's before heading back to make pizza (from scratch, obvs.) and pig out on cream scones and trashy horror films. Parfait.

I'd taken a day off work the following day, so after a lie in we made time to bake (some of Jus Roll's, ha!) croissant pastry. Sammy and I both filled ours with an entire bar of dark chocolate each, to replicate a more rich take on Pain au Chocolat. You can pick it up from Sainsbury's for under £2, bargain! We'd planned to start our day at the Treasures of the Royal Courts exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, so we hopped on the number 19 bus, which travels on a very architectural-friendly view of London on its way to Knightsbridge. I might start getting this bus to work actually; the views of Westminster would be so beautiful at 7:30am every morning!




Sammy's croissants were to die for!

Freshly squeezed orange juice as part of the David Bowie Is exhibition.

After checking out the Tudors and Stuarts exhibition at the V&A and a few quick gift shop purchases, we hopped over to Harrods for our mid-morning patisserie fix. Sammy opted for a delicious glittery glazed doughnut, which lost most of its icing in the bag, unfortunately:


I on the other hand, had my heart set on making a lego building of chocolate and scoffing it all. These are adorable and admittedly, a little overpriced, so I couldn't afford to build/scoff anything larger than a 2 bedroom semi.


The rest of the Easter weekend was mainly spent eating a ridiculous amount of desserts and buying lots of new homeware things from H&M, like this new duvet cover (I feel middle aged for getting excited about new bedding...) but I did make time for baking a batch of Slutty Brownies. These are so easy to make, and theoretically it is cheating as the ingredients don't extend much beyond a few packets of Betty Crocker cake mix, but they are worth baking if you haven't already! The recipe is from Rose, who writes for my favourite blog; The Londoner. Her posts are quite literally beautiful. I was a little short on time to take proper recipe photographs, but these should give you the gist of how wonderfully moreish they are:





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Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Off to Amsterdam/See you next week. .(scribbled at 23:05 )

A few years ago, I had a job at a contemporary gallery which largely involved arranging itineraries, transportation and accommodation for an artist. As demanding a role as this sounds, it was actually one of the best experiences of working in galleries that I’ve had. The artist was an absolute pleasure to work with (and shared a love of patatas bravas, which can only be a good thing! I now work in a very different department, which is equally incredible, albeit a tad less glamorous at times: 


Now, fast forward a few years and it is a whole different story. I am meant to be on a flight to Amsterdam in 12 hours, and I have literally spent my entire evening pigging out on cakes and brownies due to stress. Along with the internet intermittently breaking, I am actually finding it somewhat impossible to check myself in for my own flight. This is ridiculous… I have become somewhat inept at confirming my own itinerary, but could manage someone else’s at complete ease a few years ago. Anyway, I was suddenly thinking about how this reminds me of my friend Lucy’s blog post, which is aptly titled “Stressed is Desserts Spelt Backwards”. That said, as much as I wanted to be a good blogger and post about a cake I made to help relieve stress, I’m going to have to ‘fess up and just admit that I ate a box of Sainsbury’s brownies and an entire Victoria Sponge to myself instead (see photograph*). Yes, as much as my waistline is not thanking me for either of those, at least I stayed loyal to the name of my blog, right? Hopefully, tomorrow afternoon will be spent with both Vermeer and Victoria Sponge at the Rijksmusuem. That’s if I manage to finally manage to navigate this online check in process….


In the meantime, it is my birthday this weekend and I’m currently in a quandary of what to treat myself to. It’s a pretty big birthday (boo!) but that means that splashing out is entirely justifiable. I’ve wanted a McQueen skull scarf for a fair few years now, but for the past few months I’ve became a little bit obsessed with the razor blade motif. I love this one fromHarvey Nicks, although I really can’t decide if I should be looking at an investment piece, like a watch, or something that I actually need.

I think I’m becoming too sensible for my own good.

*The rest of those delicious cakes in the photograph weren’t actually all scoffed by me. I shared the coffee and chocolate cakes with folk at work, for a bit of pre-birthday celebrations. The other box of brownies I gave to one of the homeless guys on Euston road.

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Saturday, 2 February 2013
I am about to change your life .(scribbled at 22:03 )


Admittedly, that post title sounds a little big headed but I think it can be justified. I’m beginning to regret stumbling across The Instructables, an online manual for innovative and fresh ideas on how to do just about anything. After browsing through a few DIY tips involving redundant IKEA furniture, I ventured onwards to its food ideas section…

BIG MISTAKE. I am now doomed to a lifetime of being morbidly obese after reading the recipe for ‘Instant Brownies’. I wish I could have photographed my creation, but it was so incredibly moreish that instead of getting out my camera to take a few snaps, I made a second batch of brownies. And a third. In fact, I kept on repeating this recipe until my pot of Green and Blacks cocoa had been entirely used up. It is so ridiculously addictive that I am actually experiencing my first sugar high, something which feels not so different from getting drunk on M&S Banoffee liqueur at Christmas. I warn you that this recipe is not for the weak willed. I know there is no such thing as a healthy dessert, but this takes the utter biscuit.

Instant Brownie (Serves 1)

-4tbsp plain flour
-4tbsp sugar (any sugar will do, I tried it with both brown and white. Each are equally delish’)
-2tbsp cocoa powder (not drinking chocolate)
-2tbsp oil (I opted for grapeseed, but as long as it’s not something with an overtly distinct flavour like Olive Oil you should be fine)
-2tbsp water
-Pinch of salt

1. Mix all the ingredients together in a small bowl until fully combined. It should resemble your average chocolate brownie batter.
2. Microwave for 1 minute.

That, is the entire recipe. It’s so easy to adjust too- just add chocolate chips/cinnamon/nuts/banana as you wish, and if you want a less cakey result, just microwave for a few seconds less.


Anyway, hasn’t January just flown by? After a sleepless night with HTML, I have amended my blog template slightly and shifted a few things around. Sometime last month, I read that it takes the average person an entire 66 days to create a new habit. That’s just over 2 months, 9.4 weeks or 1584 hours. Although a depressingly long amount of time, it does sound fairly realistic in terms of having a good new habit (or breaking a bad one, if you wish). If you’re a fellow blogger then I imagine you’ve seen countless of posts from others discussing their resolutions for 2013, which seem to vary from “Spend more time blogging” to “Losing weight” (…from their already emaciated figure, ffs).

Anyway, as someone who works a 40hr week and possesses an increasingly concerning addiction to patisserie, I’m afraid I can’t commit to either of these usual resolutions; I have no desire to reduce my portions of cake anytime soon, and I’ve became rather content with my intermittent blog posts anyway. So I’ve adopted a different approach; of setting myself a To Do list for every month between now and December.  By being specific, they’re far more realistic and achievable. Also, by putting it on my blog it might actually give me the incentive to cross off the list. I recommend this wholeheartedly if you blog; I’ve already crossed off ‘Make Puff Pastry’ for February: (see the "Liste de Tâches" tab at the top of the page)


Yes, this was my first time in baking puff pastry. Prior to becoming a GBBO addict, I’d always written off puff pastry as being far too difficult to bake from scratch. With the exception of short crust, I’ve always used the shop bought stuff when it comes to baking. But now, thanks to Gordon Ramsay’s deceptively simple-lookingrecipe on the BBC Good Food Website, I am now a tiny bit closer to the lifelong dream of running a Parisian patisserie:


After last night’s sugar fix, I decided to play it safe this afternoon with a savoury Tomato Tarte Tatin. I’m going for coffee tomorrow with my friend Damien who’s from France so I’ve practically done nothing apart from speak French all day as a means of prep’, which feels absolutely amazing but now I have a desire to bake nothing but French patisserie. I would have opted for a tasty pear-based tarte tatin, but I think eating pudding for each meal of the day would be somewhat socially unacceptable.

I don’t have a recipe for this tart I’m afraid; I pretty much just baked a tin’s worth of cherry tomatoes (600/700g worth)with a dash of black peppercorns with olive oil drizzled over it for about 10 minutes, then threw my puff pastry on top for an addition 30 minutes until it had cooked.

Anyway. I feel sick right now as I ended up eating the whole thing, and using the remainder of my puff pastry mix to make miniature tartlets. At this rate, I’m going to be too heavy to even board my plane to Amsterdam. I’m telling myself that it’s too cold to eating salad and light desserts, ha.



With payday yesterday, I ended up making an impulse purchase in the V&A shop. I will undoubtedly be giving it to my younger sister next week, as I believe now that I’m in my twenties, I should have passed the child-like phase of drawing on myself ages ago. Even though its packaging would dictate otherwise, this is essentially the L’Oréal Superliner, albeit a few quid cheaper. It’s meant to last for a whole two days, so I’ve only tested it out on a tiny portion of my arm; a Barcelona Chair, an Ionic Column and I’ve drawn a Juicy Salif on my wrist. 



I finally saw Les Misérables when I was in Liverpool last weekend, which was absolutely amazing. Even if musicals aren’t your thing, the abundance of tricolore waving at the end, combined with Anne Hathaway’s rendition of Dreamed a Dream even brought a tear or two to my eyes. The Artist came quite close, but this is definitely the best film I’ve seen in the past 5 years. Pretty damn sure that even Victor Hugo himself would have fallen a little for Hugh Jackman’s achingly-hot performance as Jean Valjean. I’ll probably waffle on about this some more in my next post, which is going to include an abundance of Liverpool photographs that I have yet to upload.

Happy February!

X

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Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Brownie Bottom Cheesecake .(scribbled at 21:33 )



Wowzers. A baking post for the first time in yonks. So, my memories of the first few weeks of my job pretty much circulate around discussing The Great British Bake Off with fellow colleagues over our morning cup of tea. It was brilliant, as soon as we all started talking about Mary Berry, Shortcrust pastry and the sparks between Paul Hollywood and Cathryn, I knew I was totally at home.

A couple of months later, I had an email pop into my inbox about a Collections Department bake off, to be held shortly before Christmas. Unlike GBBO, this was essentially just an afternoon of bringing in some form of bread/biscuit/pastry dish/cake to be judged against others in our department. Which sounds bloody amazing, non? As much as I would have liked to opt for a tarte tatin, it is much easier to carry a cake on the Victoria Line in rush hour. Evidently, everyone else who entered this bake off had a similar trail of thought, as what was originally intended to be an afternoon of sampling different baking techniques just turned out to be a massive cake fest’.

Unfortunately, my brownie-bottom-cheesecake lost to the Eggnog Cupcakes (FAR more original, and Christmas themed), but it was pretty tasty, without being too heavy on the stomach. That said, this cake is not for the faint hearted (or faint waistline, for that matter.). Yours truly managed to have her cake and eat it on Monday afternoon… along with everyone else's. In a matter of 20 minutes, I’d consumed 2000 calories through sugar and cream cheese alone. Speaking of, if you’re going to bake a cheesecake, do it properly and don’t opt for any of that ‘light’ cream cheese. There is no such thing as a health conscious cheesecake, and anything other than full fat will result in a grainy consistency. Also, in the past I’ve opted for the super cheap own supermarket own brand cheese, and this creates a similar effect. It may set you back an extra couple of quid, but it’s far much easier to choose the better made cheese (read: Philadelphia).

Brownie Bottom Cheesecake (Serves 16*)


Ingredients:

 - Enough premade brownie mix to line a medium baking tin(you can either quickly mix up one of those dead easy BBC Good Food ones, or make up a packet of the dried brownie mix that you only need to add an egg in)
-400g full fat cream cheese
-300g dairy toffee (I opted for the 33p packets that they do in Sainsbury’s)
-2 eggs
-100g caster sugar
-170ml tin of evaporated milk
-1tsp vanilla extract

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180 C and line and grease and line a 9 inch baking tin (a springform tin works best.

2. Make up your brownie mixture and apply it evenly into the baking tin. Bake for around 35 minutes/until cooked.

3. Melt the toffees with the evaporated milk in a saucepan, over a low heat. It takes persistence but it should eventually form a smooth consistency. Once complete, pour two thirds of this onto your initial brownie layer (the remaining toffee mixture will be used to drizzle over the final cheesecake).

4. In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla extract together until smooth. Then beat the eggs in one at a time. Pour this into the tin, so it evenly covers the entire toffee layer. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes.

5. Following this, leave the cake to chill in its tin. Run a knife around the edge of the cake, and take it out the tin. Then drizzle over the remaining toffee mixture (if it’s gone a tad gloopy just reheat it for a few minutes…)

6. Stuff yer face.


*I ate a third of this cake. Whoops...

Unwrapping toffees is an arduous process, trust me.


Once your toffee layer is in the tin it should look a little like this:


Cheesecake done:


Once done, it should look a little something like (read: better than) this:


and here are all the other entries, they looked (and tasted!) INCROYABLE








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Friday, 6 April 2012
Administering Les Framboises. .(scribbled at 14:16 )

I’m currently 125 miles away from London for an entire week, enjoying the peace and quiet back home until I finally begin to crave The Evening Standard and red buses once more and literally dive head-first on to the next Marylebone-bound train. And Easter is here, which means goodbye to denying oneself of chocolate, biscuits and other of life's little pleasures.

Of course, if anything I've gorged more on chocolate over the past 40 days, having given up bugger all for lent. So, perhaps a tiny bit of a break from baking the usual chocolate-covered-muffin is needed? 

I am partial to a rare cheesecake-baking session, so here’s one I made earlier, using a recipe from Olive Magazine. It’s a baked raspberry cheesecake, which is so simple to do! I usually opt for a really time consuming New York Cheesecake, which delivers superb results, but involves refrigerating the bloody thing overnight (who can wait that long?!)














Tip numéro 1: Don’t skimp on the cream cheese with the ‘low fat’ nonsense. There is no such thing as a health-conscious cheesecake, so just get the normal stuff.

Tip numéro 2: The only supermarket in my hometown is a Waitrose, which means this cheesecake hit the £10 mark. There is no such thing as a purse-friendly cheesecake.
And if you want the same mouth-watering raspberry delight, here’s the recipe:

 V xx


Ingrédients

Méthode
  1. Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Crush 8 digestive biscuits in a food processor (or put in a plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin). Mix with 50g melted butter. Press into a 20cm spring form tin and bake for 5 minutes, then cool.
  2. Beat 600g cream cheese with 2 tbsp flour, 175g caster sugar, a few drops of vanilla extract, 2 eggs, 1 yolk and a 142ml pot of soured cream until light and fluffy. Stir in 150g raspberries and pour into the tin. Bake for 40 minutes and then check, it should be set but slightly wobbly in the centre. Leave in the tin to cool.
  3. Using the remaining 150g raspberries, keep a few for the top and put the rest in a pan with 1 tbsp icing sugar. Heat until juicy and then squash with a fork. Push through a sieve. Serve the cheesecake with the raspberry sauce and raspberries.


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Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Muffins in the Oven .(scribbled at 04:30 )



Blueberry, banana and cinnamon make a fantastic flavour combination. FACT.

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about
diaristic ramblings about architecture, design, art, baking and shoes.

...all posts penned by Vikki, a twenty-something girl based in London (but currently having itchy feet and wanting to move back to Neuilly).

all these poorly taken photographs are indeed my own.


Vermeer's Victoria Sponge.