Bonjour Samedi!

Goddamn fabulous if you ask me

For those of you who don't speak French (like me), Hello Saturday (thanks google translater!).

This past Saturday, the annual Brisbane French Festival took part in Brisbane. This basically gave The Boy and I an excuse to gorge ourselves on crepes, macarons and petit quiches. Delicous no?

We also attended a French themed Housewarming party where everyone got into the theme with black and white stripes with a touch of red...including moi. T'was tres chic.

Ze french pout oui?

Mon Amour

Berets in every colour!

 

I couldn't resist posting some photos of the delicious Macarons which we devoured in less than 24 hours. Yum yum yum yum yum!

xx

Macaron...Fail

Source of Oven Love

I’m not sure who is to blame. Was it Mr Humidity? Mrs New-brand-of-Almond-Meal? Or was it simply my heavy handed use of food colouring (I just wanted to make them pretty I swear!)?

Whatever the reason, my second attempt at making macarons was a bit of a fail. Not quite an epic fail but a fail nonetheless.  

Now before I launch into a big spiel of how I repeated the same process as last time and how I was really careful not to over or under mix my eggs and how when I lay out my macarons they looked perfect and I dutifully let them sit for an hour before putting them in the oven but then when they came out they just didn’t look right and I don’t know where it went so wrong and my baking fail made me sad for about a half an hour before I watched Adam Hills In Gordon Street Tonight and danced around my living room with my puppy dog to Architecture in Helsinki…oh wait. Oops.

Source: Gourmet Baking

Luckily, all hope was not lost on my slightly weird looking delights. I filled them with homemade lemon curd and cream cheese icing. How can that not be a winning combination? I mean it’s lemon curd and cream cheese. Alone they are already incredible but the two of them together make a super-delicious, tooth-enamel fighting team with the magical ability to put you into a sugar-induced coma of happiness…mmmmm 

Anyway, everyone who ate them told me they were delicious despite their lack of 'structural integrity'. I don't care if they were lying or not (I don't think they were as they did taste pretty delicious).

Source: Not So Humble Pie

I didn't take any pictures of them because they pretty much just dissolved in your fingers before even reaching your mouth and I don't really want photographic evidence of such a disappointment. However, I know you're hungry for macarons now so let's all pretend that in real life I made ones that closely resembled the perfect specimens in these pictures...pretty please? Do you have any tips for making Macarons? What is your favourite flavour?

Growing pains and goodbyes

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? 

Was it a marine biologist, an astronaut or a painter? Perhaps you dreamt you would discover a new species of dinosaur as an archeologist or that you’d win an Academy award.

Whatever it was you wanted to be, I would like to know – are you doing it now? Does your current reality resemble your childhood imagination in any way?

And if (like me) it doesn’t, when was the point you realized that you weren’t really cut out to be a Pilot/Baker/Zoo Keeper because you hate flying, can’t eat bread or have an abnormal fear of giraffes? (For the record I love flying and giraffes but could probably live without bread).

I can’t remember a single time in my childhood where I thought to myself ‘you know I really want to grow up and work in marketing’. Not once. Where did that idea even come from? Oh my father…moving on then. 

Anyway, this weekend I was able to live my childhood career fantasy at a ‘When I grow up’ themed house party.

Naturally, I went as Snow White……..

Nordic Princess + Disney Princess (and yes I know my cleavage is ridiculous, just avert your eye if it offends)

Mmmm Fairy Bread. Just as delicious as I remember.

Shenanigans

Snow White and A the Masterchef

I also went to my friend KL’s going away brunch at Sassafras – a Paddington institution. KL is going to London for a working holiday. This makes me jealous. BUT if all goes well I will be over there in no time myself.

Lovely brunching ladies - Bon voyage KL!

In other news I have been inspired by Gem Fatale’s colourful digits and decided to try something a bit different on my nails. I’m still a bit unsure where I sit on the nail art scale (I don’t generally love it but the more blogs I read and the more of it I see the more I am beginning to like it –call me a follower if you want, I don’t really care).

Anyway, with the costume party looming (giving me a convenient excuse to have ‘crazy’ nails if I needed one) I had my first foray into nail art: a Half-Moon mani using Kit’s High Kick.

I freehanded the white half moon so it’s not exactly perfect but for a first timer it’s not totally atrocious either. And of course it matched my costume too – win-win!

What are your thoughts? I’m actually quite partial to it and think I may try it again with some different colour combinations...how does Ulta3's Spring Blossom and OPI's Chapel of Love sound? 

Oh and this is how my first attempt at Rose Macaron's went. I know. They are far from how they are meant to look but they tasted perfection.

Rose and White Chocolate Macarons

Until next time xx