Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Hi everyone!
I'm posting this post quite early cause I don't know if I will be able to get at my computer in the next couples of days.

Here are my pictures for this Sunday:

Walking:

 

This is the cat that belongs to my host-au pair family. She's a sweet little thing but is hard to get a photo of cause she always sniffs the camera.

Yummy to my tummy:

For my uncle's birthday last Sunday, my aunt made this "Banoffee" Pie and I fell in love with it! It's heavy but soooooooooooo good! Definitely going to make this when I get home.

Favourite toy:

It didn't even take me a second to know what picture to take for this one. My little canon will always be my favourite toy :)

What I did this week:

This week I experimented on making nutella cookies (same recipe as the last post I wrote) and added peanut butter and oats in the centre. Unfortunately, forgetting that they needed less time in the oven since they were flatter than a nutella brownie, they burnt :( I had to throw them away. SO annoying!

Anything

I was babysitting my 2 year old cousin the other night. She was fascinated by my camera and we took this picture of this art craft her and her 3 year old brother made. Turned out to be in focus for once :) (my 50mm lens's autofocus is terrible). Such a cute crocodile!

So those were my scavenger hunt pictures for this week! Hopefully I will get to do the next one as I love picture hunting.

Have a nice weekend everyone! .

Macro Photos...without the macro lens.

Hello hello,

I was a bit bored today and was playing around with my camera when I remembered reading about a technique to take close-up shots without having a macro lens.
I tried it and I was quite happy with the result, and it was fun!

 

 

So the method is to take off the lens and turn it around. You have to hold the lens against the camera as it doesn't click on backwards. And voila! shoot away and play around to see different methods.

I find these pictures look very arty. I don't think you'd get good close-up pictures of insects and that but it's fun being able to get closer :)
Since the lens isn't attached, the camera doesn't allow me to change the aperture which is constantly on 00. This is why the pictures are quite blurry, but I find it gives a lovely dreamy look to them.

Here are some pictures of how close I can normally get with the lens put on correctly on the camera:

 

As you can see, my prime 50mm lens doesn't allow me to get too close. With a zoom lens, you could get much closer I am sure.

The only problem with this method is that it can let in a lot of dust on the sensor. I was a bit worried about that at first but then I just did it and I don't see too much dust on it.

Well there you go! I learn something new every day :) I'm definitely going to take more in the next days.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Nutella Brownie (or Cookie)

Today I finally tried the recipe I found on the internet.
As you might know, I'm an au pair at the moment in Ireland and the family I'm staying with are not the type to cook anything other than chicken and spuds, so imagine them baking!
I didn't want to ask the mother to buy extra things for me to bake cause that kind of felt impolite so this recipe is perfect!

It's a 3 ingredient recipe: nutella, flour and egg. Things you can find in your kitchen (and that I found here!)

But before I begin to show you how to make this, I have to tell you that I slightly changed the recipe by reducing the amount of each ingredient (otherwise I would have ended up with 12 cupcakes and on my own that would have been way too much). I also didn't find any cupcake pan in the house, so I used a regular cake one... which makes my creation look and taste more like a cookie than an actual brownie.
Well, next time I will try and use a different tray!

Ok so let's begin.

 

 
Ingredients:

. 2 and a half tablespoons of flour
. 4 tablespoons nutella
. half an egg
 

 

 
This was the tray I found. I think it would have been better to use a cupcake pan so that the mix isn't spread too much and becomes more fluffy inside (my one was very crispy; more like a cookie).

 
You can add whatever you want on top: nuts, chocolate flakes, etc. These white decoration toppings were the only things I found in the cupboard that I could use.
I only put them on half of my brownie as a test. Couldn't really taste them when the brownie was finished but it's one way of decorating it.
 

 

 
I was using my phone to know how much time to put the brownie in the oven.
I put it in the preheated oven for 30 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius.

 
I was quite amazed when my brownie started rising after only a couple of minutes. I was quite happy cause I had no idea if this was going to work or burn or go flat.

 
30 minutes later it's time to take it out of the oven.

 

 

And this is how it looks like!

 

 

 

Voila!
I really enjoyed it. However, it was very dry and I had to drink a glass of milk with it but maybe with some crème anglaise or some chocolate cream this would have been perfect!

The real recipe is for a much bigger amount (don't be surprised if your nutella pot is empty afterwards). If you want to make the original one, here is the recipe:

- 1 cup (280g) nutella
- 10 tbsp (62g) flour
- 2 eggs

Bake them the same way I did this one and you will end up with about 12 cupcakes. Great to share with the family!

Well, it was fun sharing this with everyone and I was happy to end up in 35 minutes with a brownie (cookie in my case) in my hands :)

Have a great weekend and hope to post soon again!