Never-Fail Chewy Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
NOT SOMETHING SIMILAR to my usual posts on here clearly, but I had to share my take on this amazing recipe I found for cookies. These cookies I promise will be chewy, large and extremely chocolatey. With them left out, they won't last long, I promise!


1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
170g melted unsalted butter
350g plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
100g caster sugar
200g soft brown sugar
325g chocolate


For the chocolate I recommend using 175g milk chocolate and 150g white chocolate. Of the milk chocolate I usually do half terry's chocolate orange (sounds unusual but trust me, it comes out delicious and different) and then split the other half between milk chocolate chips from the cooking aisle and cadbury chocolate. The chocolate orange and milk chocolate bar should be chopped into small chunks and a few larger chunks for a nice surprise. The white chocolate I like to use a chopped up selection of giant buttons and part of a rich, vanilla-y white chocolate bar.


Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C
2. I combine the dry ingredients into a bowl and then mix them together
3. Whisk the eggs together with a fork and add the vanilla extract, before putting this mix with the melted butter all into the bowl with the dry ingredients
4. Whisk together thoroughly- easier with an electric whisk to make sure there are no lumps of brown sugar
5. This should be a moist consistency but should still hold together. Then add the chocolate chips and mix in until all is covered. It will seem like you are adding a lot of chocolate chips but trust me, it works
6. Cover a baking tray with baking (or greaseproof) paper and drop two tablespoons of mixture onto the middle of half of the tray. Each tray will hold about two cookies. Keep them far apart from each other as they spread out a lot during cooking and also remember to not spread them yourself when you drop the mixture onto the tray; they will spread out themselves when they are in the oven so just drop the mixture and leave it
7. Cook for 15 minutes on the top shelf of the oven and when you take them out, leave them for 5 minutes on the tray before transferring them onto a wire cooling rack, otherwise they will break. When just taken out of the oven they will be still liquid-y, so do not be alarmed and leave them to set

I hope you all enjoy this recipe, it really works well every time, and I promise when you use this once you will never try any other recipe. Good luck and enjoy!

Let me know in the comments if you've tried this recipe or if you're going to try this any time soon.

Brandy Melville- The Best Around

Brandy Melville Haul
A BRANDY MELVILLE opened up on Kings Road in London a few months ago and after looking at pictures their clothes obsessively on Tumblr and their website I knew I had to go; just to check out their stock and of course buy some of their iconic pieces.

The way this shop works is somewhat unique; they only stock one size, with the motto 'One size fits most'. Somehow despite this, on me (a smaller 16 year old) everything seemed to fit extremely well. 

They also do something else very different. They have a few select patterns and images which are used throughout (such as the famous moon/eclipse pattern shown below) which they print onto their different standard shape clothes.

I decided to get three crop tops as i'm quite obsessed with crop tops at the moment, plus these Brandy Melville ones fit really nicely. These three pieces I picked up are similar in terms of shape but with different textures. This first piece to the left and right is a red crop top with an extremely detailed black or dark grey aztec print. It's not too over the top but gives a little more than just a plain piece.

Next is this plain navy crop top in the softest fabric I have ever touched. It's a different material than the first piece and feels so delicate that it could easily tear, but -touch wood- it seems fine right now, although I do worry. It's slightly sheer, but it's dark so wearing something under it other than a bra isn't really necessary. It has very flattering shape and feels nice to wear.

Finally I had to pick up something with the famous eclipse/moon pattern on it. I don't care if every person and their mum owns this print- I still love it. It is, to me, the epitome of Brandy Melville and one of the stand-outs that had people fanatical when it first cropped up (excuse the pun) on Tumblr. This is the only one of the three I have actually worn out yet. I wore it to a party and got a few compliments.

I'll definitely be going back to Brandy Melville soon to stock up on summer clothes- also there's an extremely soft set of jumpers and I want to pick one up. So there might be another Brandy haul coming along soon.

Have you been to Brandy Melville? What are your thoughts on it? Let me know in the comments below.

 

Rimmel Kate Moss Lipsticks

Swatches of 101, 22 and 16 

YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD a lot about these lipsticks around, so here's just another blog post about them. I got mine from Superdrug starting around two months ago; I bought one and really liked it, so I went back to buy another, before going back for the third time. And I love the three colours that I have.

These are the 'Lasting Finish by Kate' lipsticks and I have the original ones (the black bullets) in number 22 and 16, and the newer release matte finish (red tube) in number 101.

Number 101 is a muted beige-y pink colour which is slightly darker than my natural lips so it gives a more sophisticated look without being too heavy. This one is more sheer than the other two. Number 16 can be a bit too much as it's a bright coral/peach, but I really like wearing it either lightly dabbed over my natural lips or by mixing it with a plain nude such as Nostalgic by E.l.F. to create a custom light peach colour which is amazing for spring. If you like pinky-corals, then 16 really is for you. It's just perfect.

101, 22, 16

Finishing with 22: this one is my favourite. The colour is a classic red and the fact that it has blue undertones instead of orange ones helps to reduce the appearance of yellow teeth. The formula of these lipsticks is amazing, especially highlighted in this  extremely pigmented red colour. I usually find lipsticks hard to wear as I find most just look too obvious: like a thick layer of pure product across your lips, covering them up. But these seem to glide on and then sink into the lips and become part of your own skin: like real makeup should. This is especially true with the non-matte formulas which tend to look more natural.

Any other stand-outs from the collection I should try? Let me know in the comments below.

Put a SPRING in Your Step!

Top 5 Spring Nail Polishes

(L-R): Barry M 'Berry i/c', Essie 'Bikini So Teeny',
Barry M 'Blueberry i/c',  Elf 'Mint Creme',  Barry M 'Lemon i/c'

WITH THE CHANGE in season comes the excuse to dress up your nails in a different way. The transition from the darker trends of winter to the brighter spring pastel colours is definitely something to celebrate. Brighten up your attitude with something different on your nails!

These nail polishes are enough to be a change from winter colours without prematurely being too 'out-there'. They're perfect for April-May as they will go with the more summery clothes you'll be rocking if the weather is good.

Two coats with no topcoat

Check out the swatches on a nail wheel! Most  seem to show up true-to-colour with two coats.

I'm all ready to paint my nails with my first spring colour of this year: the one I've chosen is 'Bikini So Teeny' which is the perfect mix between purple and blue and isn't too outrageous. 

The true blue, 'Blueberry' has been one of my favourite all time nail colours. I also wore 'Berry' a lot last year as well as even gifting it to a few people. I guarantee you'll get a few compliments if you decide to wear it.

What are your favourite spring nail polishes? Which one of my 5 you like the most? Let me know in the comments below.  

Revision Breaks: Most Creative Times of my Life...

Nail Art Wheels

Yesterday in between bits and bobs of revision I used any inspiration I could come across through pictures and YouTube videos to find designs I could lay down on my new nail wheels. I had ordered a new set of 10 which had promptly arrived the day before.

Doing nail art was such a nice revision break for me, it took me a while to do the whole wheel but I am honestly happy about how each individual design turned out, and I will definitely be trying them all out on my nails.

For all those in the UK, here is the amazon seller link I used to buy my nail wheels if you're interested in getting some (x). They're pretty good quality and a nice natural colour. Also I think I got 20 nail wheels when I thought I was buying 10, which was a nice surprise.

Now I've just gotta choose which to wear to Reading Festival...

If you're reading this post- welcome to my blog! Let me know which designs are your favourite in the comments section.

My favourite summer options for Reading are the colourful dots, colourful leopard print, 4 colour swirl and 4 colour splat!

Are Those Nails Real?!

Cartoon Nails

I RARELY EVER actually end up doing nail art that I've seen tutorials of on YouTube, but as a form of procrastination/creative revision break I decided to try this one out. Obviously credit goes to Cutepolish- it's not her unique idea but she credited the 'owner' of this idea in her video so definitely check it out here (x) if you want to recreate this yourselves. 

When I wore this I got quite a few compliments, and people getting quite confused at what was actually going on. Clearly I didn't execute this to CutePolish standards but c'mon, cut me some slack here, I'm currently growing out my nails so they're not yet quite long enough and definitely not strong enough yet.

Anyway this is a really 'nice' nail look you can fairly easily recreate and it still ends up looking good. So give it a try if you're up for something different and unique to what your friends will be wearing.

Dark Blue Nails with Cute Accent Glitter

Current Nails

Just quickly showing the current state of my nails: I did a similar look around Christmas time but with red instead of blue and it ROCKED, this cute accent nail art looks good with any colour.

Today I, still being in a Winter mind-frame despite the unusually good British weather, decided to opt for this blue polish called Blue Plum by Barry M. It's one of the new(-ish) Gelly Hi-Shine range, which I love for their colour range and pigmentation. Only one coat is really needed, but for my own sense of self-satisfaction I decided to use two.

The accent nail was done with Yellow Topaz Glitter which I love and was kindly given to me by a good friend for a 'Secret Santa' Christmas gift-type scheme. This is a thick nail of polish- as I had to use 3-4 coats to get my desired effect. This could've been avoided by using a gold nail polish as a base under the glitter.

Blue Plum, Barry M

In terms of base-coat and top-coat; for base-coat as part of my current nail-care routine (a whole blog post on this routine is coming up) I used two coats the matte Nail Evvy by OPI which I love more as a nail strengthener than a go-to base-coat, simply because I have noticed slightly stained nails whilst using this with other polish before. The top-coat is the Sally Hansen Nail Shine miracle which is just as good as any other top-coat I have used, except it seems to take forever to dry...?

Yellow Topaz Glitter, Barry M

Anyway the state of my nails currently isn't the best, but I'm growing them out and they're not at my desired length or shape yet, this was just a procrastination nail-look which I threw on to give a cute, fun alternative to a solid block of colour.