Blowing things out of proportion since 1991...

Yesterday I wrote an article that I was intending on taking to press this morning. Everything moved very fast and all of a sudden I found myself in a situation where I felt like I would be penalised for expressing my opinion. I found myself fighting between my head and my heart and unfortunately I let my head win, I edited the story and ended up with something that lacks any passion, conviction or context. If I’ve convinced you to read it, here you go:

Since I started my undergraduate degree in 2009, 2 hours of lectures and seminars have been cancelled due to strikes and protests, and a fair few more to lecturer illness and extreme weather conditions.

Today is another day where an hour of my precious contact time has gone missing due to the public sector pensions strikes, and although thousands of fellow students are rejoicing over the extra few hours they’ll get in bed due to their teachers absence, I’m more concerned about the £16.28 that has gone missing from my tuition fees.

I’m not angry that I’ll be unable to travel by plane, I’m not angry about finding child care or being forced to take unpaid time off work; I’m angry that I have paid £3225 to my university in tuition fees, but I am not being delivered the service that I have paid for.

Though a full academic year spans 39 weeks from October through until June, only 22 weeks of these are actual teaching weeks. The others are reading weeks and Easter and Christmas holidays, leaving a whopping 13 week summer break.

I have 8 and a half hours a week contact time. That equates to a meagre 198 hours of contact time per academic year. If I had back to back lectures and seminars for 6 hours a day, the teaching of my entire degree could be to 33 days. Adding the remainder of the year to these 33 days would provide ample time for holidays and the completion of assignments and coursework. A standard 3 year undergraduate degree could easily and effectively be completed in a year, not only putting us on the job market younger, but also saving students a grand total of £6450.

It’s not just the tuition fees that are placing graduates in tens of thousands of pounds debt, it’s the maintenance loans and the overdrafts and the credit cards that are so readily available for undergraduate students. If a degree could be completed in a year, the phenomenal debts that graduates are faced with could be cut substantially.

Today thousands of union members took to the streets all over the UK, and though I sympathise with their motives and admire their dedication, I really would like to see the £16.28 that I paid for my media law and ethics seminar that never happened.

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Sorry things have been slow over the past few weeks, I’ve been visiting family in Scotland and trying to catch up with uni work.

Now I’m back I’m stressing about this craft fair I’m doing on December 3rd, I have to make 50 cushions… I have 0 cushions. Also have a dissertation to do and a couple of articles to write… And an essay. I will get through it!

I’ve been baking bread and omg it is tasty, but I’ve got to stop or I will be a bit more than ‘seasonally plump’ this year.

Can you believe that it’s a month to Christmas and I’ve not made a Christmas cake OR a Christmas pudding?! I’m a disgrace to the baking world.

I got a juicer today- lesson for the day- never buy a cheap juicer.

Happy Birthday Polly!

Here’s some photos of the cupcakes a made for last night. I ended up doing a few raspberry with the icing I had left from the other day and then did half vanilla and half lemon. Had a massive icing disaster when I was running to get to the venue before the birthday girl and all the cakes tipped over in the box and I almost cried. I just put the nice ones on top of the cake stand… But it still annoyed me all night. I got a lot of compliments from passers by and one guy even asked for my number to do his wife’s birthday so they can’t have looked too bad!

To ice or not to ice...

I made these today to see what the icing tasted like when it’s made with no artificial flavours. I’m making cakes for a friend’s birthday on Friday and her diet is crazy so I zoomed up some raspberries and strained all the juice out and added it to butter icing (if you look through my personal posts there will be the recipe I use for this somewhere.)

It was AMAZING. As the Daily Mail said yesterday- cupcakes are like crack.

Cupcakes > Crack

Did anyone read the article in the Daily Mail about cupcakes being as addictive as drugs?

Well, if you’ve not you can read it here.

I just made some vanilla cakes with raspberry frosting and omg they are like crack.

Carrot cupcakes

I made some carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting the other day and omg they were amazing.

Here’s the recipe I used adapted from a BBC Good Food recipe. I like mine quite orangy so adapt that to suit yourself!

CUPCAKES:

• 175g light muscovado sugar
• 100g wholemeal self-raising flour
• 100g self-raising flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• 3tsp mixed spice
• Zest of 2 oranges
• 2 eggs
• 150ml sunflower oil
• 200g grated carrots
• Splash of orange juice (I used Topicana with juicy bits, the mixture is a bit stiff so just use as much as it takes to get a good consistency. If you like your cakes less orangy you could also use milk or water.)

ICING:

• 100g olive spread/marg
• 300g cream cheese (unfortunately it had to be full fat and it works a lot better if it’s more of an expensive brand like Philli)
• 150g icing sugar
• 1tsp vanilla extract 

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180c/160c fan 

Mix together all the dry ingredients thoroughly and then add the beaten eggs and sunflower oil before folding in the carrots. 

Add as much OJ as you need and then put in 12 muffin cases and make for 20-22 minutes or until cooked through.

Whisk together the cream cheese and the butter and then add the icing sugar and vanilla essence. Pipe on to cooled cupcakes. 

Enjoy :)

Cake International at Birmingham NEC

Yesterday I went to Cake International at Birmingham NEC and it was PHENOMENAL. There were loads of demonstrations on basic stuff like tempering chocolate but then loads more advanced stuff on sugar/cake craft and it was amazing. I learnt loads and also got a handy cupcake carrier for a bargain £20! I’ll post a photo and the web address soon.

The cake competitions were amazing. I was a bit disappointed by the cupcakes though hence why I didn’t take any photos of them. There’s only so creative you can be with 10cm diameter.

It finishes today but if you live in/near Birmingham you HAVE to go. There’s wasn’t much cake to eat disappointingly…

Loads of stalls, loads of cakey bits and bobs, loads of demonstrations, generally fantastic day.

I also went to the Arts Materials Live that was on yesterday but it was mainly paper crafts and that’s not my ting!