Lush Lovin' | Hyacinth Girl

Hello all,

Most people must know about the wondrous world of Lush and its products but this blog post is some real appreciation for the store. Over the years I've received plenty of products for Christmas or Birthdays but never really chosen the stuff for myself. So I decided to treat myself to a few products - and this may not be the biggest haul - but I am definitely excited to use the stuff.

One of the best things about Lush is their customer service. Everyone is so cheerful and nice, the staff have great recommendations, especially when it comes to the face masks or body scrubs - sometimes they'll even give you free samples to take home or actually show you how their bath stuff works. 

Personally I think Lush's best and most unique products are it's bath bombs/melts, and such great value too. If you're sparing you can use each product for 2-4 baths! Most of the bath products are around £2.50-£4 so definitely a great place to buy presents for people or to treat yourself.

The colours and smells are so enticing, every product is so pretty too, some really look like works of art. Alongside each product is their name and description (the ingredients used) so you get a real feel for what they can do. Below are the products I recently purchased.  

This is the Fizzbanger: Bath Ballistic costing £3.25. It has an incredibly strong smell and the bomb itself is huge! When put into your bath it fizzes and changes the colour of the water. I can't wait to try it, definitely for when I need a quick pick-me-up. 

Above is the Cream Candy Bubble Bath which cost £2.60. Honestly, I picked it up initially because it was so pretty but of course it smells lovely, too. To use, you crumble it under the tap which creates lots of bubbles. Compared to other bubble baths, Lush products create really big long lasting bubbles (always important!).

Finally I purchased the Avobath: Bath Ballistic at a sweet £3.25. I reckon it contains avocado and other good stuff, like all Lush products. It's slightly more soothing than the Fizzbanger so more of an evening/relaxing bath I'm thinking. 

Above is the final piece of a bubble bar I've been meaning to use up for ages. As you can see you need so little to create a lot of bubbles and they're just so easy to use, I adore the colours it creates. Below are some pictures of the bath I enjoyed, I can assure you it was heavenly! 

As I think I've shown in this post I can't get enough of Lush products and I would recommend them to anyone, any gender, any age. Let me know if anyone has any Lush recommendations for when I next visit. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend (I know I will!).

Love Skye

 xxx

Red Velvet Cupcakes | Hyacinth Girl

Hello all,

The majority of my day today was spent with the small task of preparing some tasty treats for the evening activities - going to see a play in Cambridge. Way back in 2012 I went through a period of making, icing and tasting a variety of cupcakes every week! But that fascination soon died down (even though the extra pounds didn't...!) so instantly I decided on making cupcakes today, as it's sort of a special occasion.

Deciding on cupcakes was easy but deciding which cupcakes to make was the hard part. There's so many things to take into account - allergies, ingredients, quantities, taste etc. Finally, after rummaging through at least 5 different cupcake recipe books I settled on the Red Velvet Cupcake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cupcakes and Muffins Recipe book.

Red Velvet cupcakes are the epitome of the classic cupcake and have a really unique taste. I felt pairing Red Velvet with a dark chocolate butter cream would be absolutely delicious!

The ingredients I used are as follows:

• 150g Caster Sugar
• 1tbsp Cocoa Powder
• 60g Butter
• 150g Self Raising Flour
• 1 Egg
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 2tbsp Red Food Colouring
• 1tbsp White Wine Vinegar
• 120ml Milk
• Golden Balls (to decorate)

And for the icing:

• 200g Icing Sugar
• 100g Butter
• 60g Dark Chocolate
• 1teaspoon Vanilla Extract

These beautiful cupcake cases came with the Hummingbird Bakery Recipe Book which was a present from my Dad a few Christmases ago.

As with most cupcake recipes, you begin by blending butter and sugar together, then adding an egg and adding this mixture to all the dry ingredients. Before doing this however, I quickly mixed the food colouring, cocoa powder and vanilla into some sort of paste. Word of warning! Food colouring tastes pretty disgusting and the recipe asks for two tablespoons...!? In my experience I find I'd rather have a slightly orangey/red cupcake (as opposed to the famous blood red ones) and something that tasted really scrumptious - so please go easy on the food colouring and taste a tiny bit of the mixture as you go along!

A useful tip I've learnt overtime is to never fill your cupcakes too full. Around 2/3 high is enough, this way it has room to rise and won't overflow onto your baking tray, plus you can easily make up the rest of the room with icing.

Out of the oven - (I get the best results by looking at them to find if they're cooked rather than timing it all). I left them on a wire rack in the fridge to cool.

Onto the the butter cream which usually just involves blending icing sugar and butter and maybe adding vanilla or some cocoa powder. I decided to be a little more adventurous and melted some dark chocolate to go in it. I know dark chocolate isn't a huge favourite with people but I didn't find the icing too bitter. Tip: Blend all the ingredients for a little longer than you might think and the texture is much lighter.

And above are the finished product! I was so happy that these came out the way they did. The golden balls are optional, you can use any kind of sprinkle/decoration - how about some holly at Christmas? Or mini eggs at Easter? Decorations can make any cupcake flavour fit an occasion.

I'm looking forward to devouring the rest of these later with my family, and I can definitely vouch for how delicious they were! Good thing I made more than one! 

Hope you all have a splendid week! I'd love it if you shared your creations with me via instagram (@skyehumbert). Can anyone recommend other cupcakes to try? Or other recipes in general? Let me know in the comments!

Love Skye 

xxx