Honeycomb

Personally, I have never really though about honeycomb as something I could ever make, it never really crossed my mind. However, when I saw 2 people on my Facebook say that they had made honeycomb I thought I would give it a go to see how it went. 

When I found the recipe on Google I was really surprised at how easy is sounded, as I hadn't expected it to be that hard. 

The recipe I found only needed golden syrup, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and some water to test when it was ready. I made sure I had all of this and then set about making my honeycomb. I will post a link at the bottom of this post in case you want to try it yourself.

In the recipe it says you need a greased 10cm square tin and I was thinking... err no thanks I think I will line it with greaseproof paper, this could get messy! You start off by making a syrup and then take it off the heat and add bicarbonate of soda, which makes the mixture expand A LOT. Now luckily I had plenty of excess paper sticking out of the tray, as the mixture continued to expand when I poured it in. Note to self: next time use a bigger tin. 

Now this is the end product, it tasted scrumdiddles!

After a day or 2 they start to go a bit sticky, and therefore a bit difficult to eat so next time I am going to cover them in chocolate so we can have our very own crunchy bars!! Yummy!

I have been thinking for a while about starting a cookery channel on YouTube as I do quite a lot of cooking at home but I'm not sure yet, and besides I would need to get a video camera first. Let me know what you think. Either in the comment section or if you know me... on Facebook or something. 

If you want to make honeycomb then click here for the recipe. 

My Extended Essay Hates Me...

Anybody who is doing/ has done the IB will understand how frustrating this is. I am currently doing my extended essay on food technology, specifically genetically modified foods. Because it is a food technology I have to do an experiment. For me, this involves making 2 batches of cakes, one containing lecithin powder. 

Now to start of with back in June/July I did my experiment 3 times using a different flour, later finding out that I would never have got the right results because it was the WRONG flour!! I then only found 2 companies which sell the right flour so had to contact them, but they could not send me it before the end of term... this was when the deadline was. 

Luckily, I was given an extension until September. Now, I have literally just been making my cakes and yet again I have faced problems. I had put all the ingredients into the bowls, I whisked the first batch containing no lecithin powder... that was fine. I go to whisk the batch containing lecithin and BOOM my whisk dies. It didn't literally explode but it did die. Graham said the motor has gone and it even made that horrible smell that electrical objects make when the motor dies. 

I swear my extended essay just hates me, it is fate that I'm going to fail it!! Well, I hope not!! 

Luckily, James was at Joely's at the time so my sister rang him and in 20 minutes or so he was back home with Joely's electric whisk!! Thank you Joely! 

Hopefully they will turn out well this time and actually give me good results!! Fingers crossed. But I guess the feeling is mutual... I hate my extended essay as much as it hates me... probably more! 

Summer Holidays So Far

This holiday has already got off to quite a good start, I have been out, seen friends and just generally had a good time... even on the days when I am inside because I have my pooch! So I am just going to 'summer'ise... yeah I know it's terrible but I genuinely accidently wrote that when meaning to write summarize.

Thursday 28th July - Imogen came over, to meet Ella and see me of course. She loved Ella... even though Ella later attacked her (playfully of course, she wouldn't mean harm - honest.) Also, because we both love boardgames we played monopoly a couple of times. The first game I won by more than 6500 monopoly dollars and the next game Imogen won by an amount similar to what I won by. They were good games. We also played scrabble, it was pretty crap game, we had rubbish letters and so nothing decent got put down. I had a ton of vowels and Imy ran out of them... wonder where they went. Well, Imy won that too. I think we also played downfall, but I don't remember who won those games. We had a great day, well I know I did anyway...

Friday 29th July - BBQ at the beach. Now this day was not the best weather, a little cloudy, but it was still nice to meet up with people and the BBQ wasn't all that bad. We bought lots of food from Iceland, including burgers, skewers, burger buns, fizzy drink and pink and whites. (I had already bought the sausages and people had already got the BBQs.) I was even smart enough to bring some tongs with me... it would have been a little more challenging if I had not remembered! The food was good, I did now touch the burgers because they looked like circles of ice cream and just complete crap. I think only a couple of people had any. Alex mainly... he took the remains home. There was also a little dog that came on to the beach, no owner about, and it found a string of sausages (not left by us) and it was pretty funny watching this little dog and the big string of sausages walk around the beach. After this, Maddy, Lauren, Dan and Amy asked to come and meet Ella. I had got the train, they got the bus so I told them where to get off and Dan used his phone satnav to get to my house. It worked well and they all loved Ella... of course! 

Tuesday 2nd August - Pottermore. This is the day I got my pottermore account. I got the right answer of the question, after failing the day before, and was sent to a guardian website. Meanwhile, Tim had already found it so he was telling me where it was and thinking I was thick when I couldn't see it because apparently I couldn't miss it. I was getting so annoyed because I couldn't see it. Then I realised that my adblock might be blocking the quill, so I paused it, refreshed and... what do you know... there is the quill!!! So irritating. I registered but I still don't have much of a clue what Pottermore is so I shall have to wait for my welcome email. Kinda excited! If anyone knows what Pottermore might be... let me know!! 

Wednesday 3rd August - BEACH! I had heard the day before that the weather would be good, so I had already decided I would go to the beach. But I had nobody to go with because my sister kept abandoning me for her friends. I didn't think anyone was free but then Tim decided he would change the week that he had planned to do his extended essay so I invited him over to see Ella and go to the beach. My sister and her friend Emily also came along and we took the dingy too... it was great fun. We used the oars as bats and played some sort of ball game with a tennis ball. Although... I later broke the oars... oops! Never mind... they are fixable! And to top it off we had toffee and butterscotch ice cream, which was SO nice! Yummy!

Thursday 4th August - Boardgames Day! Now this really was a great day, so fun! Imy hosting the day this time, so me, Tim, Julian, Jess and Jack all got the train over to hers... although Tim missed it - stupid boy ;)

We played all sorts of games, uno (which Imy said she would win... but didn't haha), cluedo mysteries, scrabble and of course... Articulate. Probably one of the best games ever!! I will definitely get that game for myself at some point! It's basically pictionary but speaking instead of drawing, and you only have 30 seconds for your team mates to guess as many as possible. Everyone gets so excited. The other team (Tim, Imy and Julian) got to the end and they had to do one nature question... the answer was trout. Tim was the speak and jsut told them to name lots of fish. They were naming cod, mackrel etc and Tim said 'bigger fish, bigger fish' and Imy shouted 'SHARK' and Tim was getting so frustrated, it was so funny. Meanwhile, Jess, Jack and I were staring at the timer waiting for the last drop of sand to go through and cheered when it did. So funny. They still ended up winning though. We played another game after that and Jess, Tim and I won.