Red Sole Love

I know they say ‘diamonds are a girls best friend’ but shoes are pretty good friends too. In particular heels are the shoe of choice for millions of women out there. Women who want to add some extra height, women who want to feel glamorous, women who like to feel sexy, women who want to dress up an outfit, women who are going on date and for some women its just the choice du jour.

Heels may be painful or difficult to walk in, but millions of us wear them all the time because we want to. I couldn’t imagine going on a night out without my heels on, they instantly lift my mood and make me feel ready for the night ahead and good about myself and my outfit.

Now most of my heels are budget buys. I don’t have the kind of expenditure to be buying the big designer names but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to. After taking a trip to huge shoe section in Selfridges it made me fall in love with Manolo, Jimmy Choo, McQueen, Gucci and most of all Christian Louboutin.

Christian Louboutin is a world renowned designer who is world renown for his heels with the red soles. His shoes can be seen on the feet of celebrities, fashionistas, royalty and the most style conscious among us who have the money to spend on his expensive footwear. He is known for bringing back the stiletto which can be six inches in height, because as he has professed he wants to "make a woman look sexy, beautiful, to make her legs look as long as [he] can."

One day I hope to have a pair of Louboutins in my own shoe collection, although im sure this is more than a few years off at the moment. In the meantime however there is a Christian Louboutin exhibition at the Design Museum in London. This exhibition shows the 20 years of history for the designer since he opened his first shop. There is a display of his workshop and depictions of his influences which include showgirls, fantasy and trapeze artistry. He is not so concerned in celebrity or fashion but rather in creating shoes which he says are ‘like jewels’. So maybe diamonds are a girls best friend!

I haven’t had a chance to go to this exhibition yet, but am definitely planning a trip there before the exhibition ends on 9^th July. I would love to be able to see his various designs which include fabrics ranging from feathers to studs and lace to latex. It’s also a great opportunity to see his artistry and the design process which is involved behind his shoes and behind his own stores in which he has great input.

http://designmuseum.org/media/item/79025/4654/Press-Release-Press-Release-FINAL-FINAL.pdf

Jammy Dodger

As the resident baker in my household, I have been enlisted with helping my sister’s boyfriend Leo in making cakes for work. At his place of work they take it in turns to bake cakes of their choice for Friday’s. Now I think every work place should have a cake Friday. Wouldn’t it just be the perfect way to the end the week?!

The idea was to keep it simple. To me the simplest type of cakes are vanilla cupcakes. They are easy to make, quick to bake and come in their own cases so are perfect for individual portions. Vanilla cupcakes are also like a blank canvas. You can add flavour and design to them to make your own creation which is perfect for different events or just to use the ingredients you have on hand.

For these vanilla cupcakes we cooked them according to a simple Hummingbird Bakery recipe: http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/475442/The-Hummingbird-Bakery-vanilla-cupcakes. I actually use the good to know website for a lot of my baking recipes. They have every kind of recipe you can think of which are explained clearly and you can often see users reviews at the bottom which lets you see other people’s opinions and can give you a good idea off how the recipe works in reality.

Once baked the cupcakes came out of the oven golden brown and were left to cool. Now we could have followed the rest of the recipe which directed to make vanilla buttercream frosting and decorate with sprinkles, however I wanted to switch it up a bit. I really like a good Victoria sponge, and while the sponge itself may be light and fluffy and taste great, its really the combination of the jam and buttercream which makes it for me. This is what I wanted to bring to the cupcakes.

When the cupcakes had fully cooled, I used an apple corer to take out the central core of the cupcake which I then filled with seedless strawberry jam. This gives a great sticky, sweet centre when bit in to, which compliments the vanilla crumb exterior. It also looks good if the cupcakes are to be cut in half. For the butter cream I decided to go with half of the cupcakes having the traditional vanilla buttercream as described in the recipe and the other half had a new flavour of buttercream I hadn’t tried before– jam.

The recipe is exactly the same as the vanilla one, except you add in a tablespoon of seedless jam. The quantities of icing sugar may need to be adjusted in order to match your required consistency and sweetness. The jam buttercream came out a lovely shade of pink which looked great against the yellow colour of the cupcake and also continued the jam flavour throughout the cake.

So we had cupcakes, filled with jam and either a vanilla buttercream frosting or a jam buttercream frosting. But still I wasn’t satisfied! I like cupcakes to look as sugary sweet and eye pleasing as possible. To top them off we added sprinkles and sugar crystals which were (not literally) the icing on the cake and made the cupcakes look like they would definitely be worthy of putting you in a sugar coma.

According to Leo the cakes went down really well at his place of work, and everyone really liked the jam centres. I think you could definitely use different fillings such as Nutella, marmalade or lemon curd. Its nice to have that contrast in the middle and gives everyone a surprise as you are biting in.