Chocolate & Raspberry Cake

My mum made this cake for my sister's birthday and despite not normally liking raspberries, I thought it turned out to be amazingly delicious. She found the recipe online but decided to make a few changes to it, to make it a bit easier. It's very rich and very moist, so you definitely don't need a huge slice (unless you really want one!).

Ingredients: 

Cake: 

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

2 cups sugar

3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup hot, strong coffee

Raspberry buttercream filling:

1/2 cup unsalted butter

Fresh raspberries (mashed up) or raspberry purée to taste

1 tsp vanilla extract

450g icing sugar

(this will make more than enough filling, we had quite a bit leftover which we will probably use to ice cupcakes)

Chocolate buttercream frosting:

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup cocoa powder

2 cups icing sugar

3 tbsp mascarpone

fresh raspberries to garnish

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Grease and flour two 8 inch round cake pans, then line the bottom with baking parchment. Mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a bowl. In a smaller bowl, mix the buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla. Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix well until smooth.Then add the coffee and mix it well, but don't over mix it. Divide the batter between the two pans and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave the cakes to cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes, then run a knife around the edges and put the cakes on to a cooling rack to cool completely. The cake will probably feel a bit sticky but that's normal. 

To make the filling, cream the butter and then add some of the sugar and mix together in an electric mixer. Then add the vanilla and the raspberry purée and the rest of the sugar. Put the filling in the fridge until needed. 

To make the frosting, beat the butter until fluffy for about 2-3 minutes. Add the cocoa powder and sugar and beat until incorporated. Then add the mascarpone one tablespoon at a time and mix well. 

Once everything is done, you can put it all together. Spread the raspberry filling on one of the cakes, then top it with the second cake and frost the top and the sides. Add a few raspberries on top and it's done.

Milkmaid Braid

Confession time: I love the TV show Teen Wolf. It's right up there with my favourites and I am not ashamed. It started out as a funny, not so scary werewolf show and has slowly turned into a much more serious, a lot scarier werewolf show. And I love it. My favourite character, apart from Scott obviously, is Lydia. I love her style and I especially love all of her hairstyles, many of which involve plaits. I tried to recreate one of the easier ones, the milkmaid braid. It's quite a popular hairstyle and is really easy to do. 

I decided to keep my fringe out and kept that parting but then parted the rest of my hair down the middle. I did two quick plaits on either side of my head and secured them with little elastic bands. Then I pulled them out a bit to make them thicker. I pinned the smaller one up first and used hair pins to secure it to my head and then repeated this step with the thicker plait. I made sure to hide the end of the first plait and then tuck the end of the second plait behind the beginning of the first one and pinned it in place. Then I pinned them more wherever I felt everything needed to be more secure.

I especially love doing this hair style on second or third day hair, where I just want it all out of my face (apart from my fringe obviously). It's pretty but really easy and looks like you made more of an effort. I was in a hurry while doing it and the back did look a bit messy but I though I would just embrace the messy look. You can neaten it up if you want to though.

Fête Nationale

The 23rd of June is National Day in Luxembourg, which means it's a national holiday. Everybody celebrates the day before National day by going to village parties or, in most cases, to Luxembourg city. No matter where you go, you can guarantee that there will be a lot of alcohol, burgers and very loud music and at 11pm they set off fireworks. We usually spend our evening in the village where we live, where they hand out free champagne (and other drinks) until around 9. But they usually play really awful folk music and it's also always crowded, so this year we hopped on a free bus to the city! (Free because of the celebrations, usually it costs 2€ to take a bus to town.) 

I had never actually spent National Day in the city before and didn't know what to expect, although I had been told that it would be incredibly busy and that there was a parade at one point. We tried to book a table at Chi Chis, a Mexican restaurant right in the center of town, but they weren't taking reservations and told us to just go along and ask for a table. Which is what we did and despite the place being packed we actually managed to get a table after a few minutes of waiting. We had cocktails and nachos and watched some of the football match that was on at the moment, before heading to the road where the parade was meant to be. It was empty. After looking on a news website we found out that for the first time in basically forever they changed the route of the parade. So we decided to explore and find out what else was going on. We met up with my sister's best friend and along the way saw a few live performances. You had to look around for one that was your preferred genre of music, as a few of them weren't that great. We found a tiny stage in a courtyard that had an amazing view of part of the city and some really cute garden furniture. They even decorated the tree with multicoloured lights. 

We wandered around a bit more but didn't find anything particularly interesting so we decided to head home. Despite not actually doing much in town, it was still a fun night because of the company! We got the bus just as the fireworks started and were able to watch them for a few minutes while on the way home. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any decent photos what with being in a moving bus and all. Then we spent the rest of the night watching the Portugal vs USA match and eating ice cream.