The Starbucks experience!

Good evening my loves! So for those of you who are residences in Pretoria you’ve probably already been swept up by the Starbucks hurricane? That’s right, Pretoria now has its very own Starbucks – Yippee!

This world renowned coffee shop opened up in the new shopping centre ‘Menlyn Maine’ in the East of Pretoria on the Wednesday the 21^st of September. We made sure we made it through the crowds on opening day and I really cannot say we were disappointed by our first encounter. When we arrived we were greeted by a very intimidating line but what else could we have expected?! Being first timers we had no idea what their menu entailed BUT we were greeted by a lovely young woman who discussed various options with us, they even cater for tea loves like me #Impressed.

Happy campers

My sister being the total coffee lover that she is felt right at home with a menu filled with everything from a strong Americano to the usual cappuccino – yum. Once we had finally made a decision we were then attended to by a gentleman who took our orders and wrote our names on the ever so popular Starbucks cups... Needless to say we were really excited...

It felt like we were in the coffee shop scene from ‘Miss Congeniality’- that’s how packed the place was at the time. After waiting 30minutes from start to finish we finally had our coffee’s in hand, yay! Both my mom and sister indulged Mocha and Caramel Frappuccino’s and I very much enjoyed my Chai Tea, cinnamon lovers, I highly recommend it! Also, can we please just take a moment to drool over the delicious looking baked goods... Good grief, I think I'll treat myself to a chocolate chip cookie next time ;)

YUM!

All in all our first experience at Starbucks was a great one and I definitely think we will be going back sooner than I’d like to admit...

I’d love to hear all about your experiences at Starbucks and what you’d recommend for our next visit

S

Xoxo

Rainbow Cake!

So spring is upon us and I don’t see why we need an excuse to eat cake especially one that looks like this! Here’s how:

Ingredients

Basic sponge cake:

(This makes 2 cake layers- you’ll need to multiply the ingredients by 4 for 8 layers.)

4 Eggs

1 ¼ cups (310g) Sugar

1 ½ cups (225g) cake flour

1 Tbsp (15ml) baking powder

Generous pinch of salt

2/5 cup (100g) butter

1 cup (250ml) milk

1 tsp (5ml) vanilla essence

Food colouring (colours of the rainbow)

Butter Icing:

2 cups (500g) butter

2 tsp (10ml) vanilla essence

1 packet (1kg) icing sugar

3 Tbsp (45ml) edible gold dust

1 packet (about 200g) small, round sweets or chocolates (tumbles)

Method

1.       Preheat oven to 180C. Line and grease 2 x 20cm cake tins.

2.       Beat eggs and sugar together until fluffy. Sift dry ingredients together and gently fold into egg mixture.

3.       Heat butter, milk and vanilla until butter is melted – do not boil. Fold milk mixture through the batter.

4.       Divide the batter in half. Select 2 food colouring's and add a little to each half. Spoon batter into prepared tins and bake for 25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

5.       Remove from tins and cool on a wire rack

6.       Repeat 3 more times, using the remaining food colouring's, to create 8 sponge cakes in different hues.

Icing

1.       Whip butter and vanilla together until creamy.

2.       Add icing sugar a little at a time. If the icing is too thick, add 1-2 Tbsp (15-30ml) boiling water

To assemble

1.       Trim domed tops off cakes and ice layers

2.       Place them one on top of the other, in order of a rainbow.

3.       Spread a layer of icing on all sides of cake and sprinkle with gold dust.

4.       Spread a layer of icing on sweets and coat in gold dust.

5.       Top cake with golden sweets and serve.

Recipe taken from: ‘Pick n’ pay, Fresh living magazine’ May 2016 Issue

As you can see it’s a bit of a job but the end result is well worth it I think, enjoy the process and share it with all your loved one’s... or don’t ;)

S

Xoxo