Cookie Swap!
On Saturday I got together with some lovely bloggers from Auckland for a Midwinter Christmas Cookie Swap! Cookie swaps aren’t really a common event here in New Zealand, so most people here don’t really understand what they are. For those readers who don’t know, it’s basically just a bunch of people baking some cookies and bringing them along to a gathering, eating some of them and then taking a few of each cookie home! It’s super fun!
The wonderful Lydia of Lydia Bakes hosted ours and put together this awesome cookie table for us with milk and shots of hot chocolate. That girl has a really good eye for dessert table decorating! The other bloggers who attended were Amanda of Here Comes The Sun (who brought along some delish teas for us!), Kirsten of High Tea With Dragons, and Melissa and Courtenay of Baking Makes Things Better. Was so lovely to meet those I hadn’t met before and catch up with those I already knew!
The cookies brought along were :
(I’ll be updating this with links as everyone posts their recipes up)
- Chocolate Truffle Cookies – Myself
- Brown Butter Snickerdoodles – Lydia
- White Chocolate and Raspberry Crinkle Cookies – Kirsten
- Monte Carlo Biscuits - Melissa
- Sprinkle Sandwich Cookies – Courtenay
- Chocolate Sprinkle Cookies - Melissa
They were all so good! I ate one of each while I was there, as well as some crackers and cheese in between to even out the sugar overload haha. And then we each got to take home a little goodie pack full of cookies. The packaging was kindly donated by the wonderful online store, Little Ink. If you don’t know about this store go check it out! I blogged about them ages ago and have bought quite a few little bits and pieces for packaging from them and love them!
Hopefully we can make this cookie swap an annual event because it was so much fun! And such a cool way to get together with other like-minded bloggers and bakers! You definitely don’t need to be a pro baker to do a cookie swap. Just get a bunch of friends together and do one! It’s easy peasy, and you get to eat a lot of cookies!!! 
Dress lust.
Umm. So I think I just found my most favourite wedding dress designer ever. Sarah Seven. Woah. I love nearly every one of her dresses, and all of the collections are just stunning. But this Fall 2013 collection may just be the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t stop looking at them! That little leather jacket and dress combo is perfection.
If I was getting married, this find would make things awfully difficult. I would even consider having to get multiple dresses and doing a few wardrobe changes throughout the day. Good thing I’m not getting married then right! Ha!
Light up the sky.
It’s getting pretty damn cold in the evenings now. The weather here has been a bit rubbish lately, so I was pretty stoked to see this sky tonight on my way home from work. Hopefully it means tomorrow will be a nice day!
Monday was a public holiday here in New Zealand, so today is a four day week. It’s only Wednesday and it already feels like the week is draaaagging on and on and on. Hanging out for the weekend. I’m pretty excited about it because I’m going to my very first cookie swap! I’ll be meeting up with a bunch of awesome bloggers from Auckland and swapping yummy cookies and hanging out. Woop! On the downside, now I have to actually bake something haha. Thinking of making these chocolate truffle cookies, which don’t look that appealing but they are DELISH. Considering making a batch of some other kind of cookie as well but can’t decide what. Anyone got any great cookie recipes I could try?
48Hours | Sneak Peek
Sorry for being a bit awol, but things got a little hectic in the past few weeks. Hook and I competed in the 48Hours filmaking competition a few weekends ago as team Night Owls and it was crazy! We had an awesome bunch of people in our team and we couldn’t have done it without them. The entire weekend was super full on but so much fun, and I can’t wait to be able to be part of it again next year!
Sleep levels were at an all time low during the 48 hours. I probably got the most sleep of all of the team members, having gotten 3-4 hours sleep on the Friday night and a further 5 hours on the Saturday night. Never been so tired! From being so run down during that time I ended up getting sick a few days after the weekend which was annoying. Still recovering!
At the moment the films are in heat stage (which is pretty much just airing all 800 films across the country for everyone while the judges do their judging business). We should be finding out tomorrow if our team got through to the city final stage (regionals), and then after that is the grand final (nationals). We’re unable to show the film while we’re still in the competition as you can be disqualified for doing so, but we will defintiely put it up once it’s out of the competition. But fingers crossed that will be a while!
During the heats, the audience can vote for their top 3 favourite films of the heat, and our film won our heat’s audience vote! So stoked. We also got some really great reviews up on the website too. Anyway… can’t wait to show you all it!
Lemon pound cake.
As soon as I saw the recipe for paleo lemon pound cake with lemon honey glaze pop up in my Feedly, I knew I HAD to make it asap. I’ve got such a thing for lemon.
Yesterday I woke up with a blinding headache and had to stay home from work. Ended up spending majority of the day asleep, or struggling to keep my eyes open whilst in pain. I finally got out of bed at 6pm and no longer had my headache. I made myself a huge dinner (because I pretty much hadn’t eaten all day), and then decided to bake the cake! Best decision ever. The only downside was that I ate way too much of it and then felt super sick. Oops!
The only things I changed in the recipe was using lemon essence instead of lemon extract (because my supermarket doesn’t sell it) and using vanilla extract instead of an actual vanilla pod. I don’t think either made much of a difference, and the cake tasted so damn good I don’t think I would bother trying it any other way now. Can’t wait to make it again!
Also, apologies for the average photos. I made them so late at night that there was no natural light left in the house, and we currently have a light situation here (under 50% of the lights are currently working) so it was too dim to get any great shots of the cake. I considered taking more photos of it today but nearly the entire cake was already consumed haha. When I make it again I will make sure I do it in the day time!
