Dirty Martini Cardiff's Choctails

Hello there!

We couldn't help but notice Dirty Martini had a special Easter menu available so we absolutely had to go and try out their Choctails. We are already huge fans of their chocolate martini and I can't tell you how many we've had before - we often go out for a meal and stop there for one as our dessert!

However for Easter they also brought out two additional cocktails to make the trio of choctails. So as a start to the Easter weekend we went to try them out!

Lush Cupcake Fresh Face Mask

Hey all!

I've been super crazy busy recently so my posts have been non existent - thanks to M for filling in for me! This is exactly why we blog together - not only would we blog similar posts anyway but we can help each other out when the other doesn't have the time.
My parents are both due into hospital again and I've been to Paris for work so things have been a little all over the place but with an upcoming week off I will be catching up on everything!

A few weeks ago we both went to Lush for their latest event (you can see our post here) and I stocked up my product collection with a few new additions.

I picked up the Yoga Bomb bath bomb, Ultrabland facial cleanser, Needles and Pine shower jelly and Cupcake Fresh Face mask as well as the infamous Porridge soap.

I've been using them all ever since and have honestly been loving them all!

This review however is dedicated to the Cupcake Fresh Face mask. This costs £6.50 for the 75g, and the reviews show 4* out of 5.

It contains only 13 ingredients including rhassoul mud, fairtrade organic cocoa butter, fresh mint and spearmint and peppermint oils.

The most important ingredient is rhassoul mud which works with the cocoa powder to draw all of the impurities from your skin and deeply cleanse it to remove all of the dirt.

Fresh mint can be used to stimulate and tone the skin and the linseed infusion and cocoa butter moisturise and hydrate the skin. I don't know about you but this sounds good enough to eat right??!

I was won over as soon as I saw it in store and wanted to to just dive right into a huge vat of it!



Unfortunately it doesn't come in a pot that big so i picked up the standard size and brought it home to try. As you can see I looked a little ridiculous with it all over my face!

I left this on my face for 10/15 minutes as recommended and my skin has been helped so much. The amount of oil has been reduced and so has the redness, breakouts have also pretty much disappeared which is amazing news.

I would really recommend this to anyone who suffers with break outs and redness, and needs that extra bit of oil mopping up.
Plus who doesn't love a face mask that looks like liquid chocolate?!

What masks are your favourite from Lush? 

L xxx

Fitness Friday: Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Bars

Hi there!

I've been a bit more adventurous with food recently - not that I've been eating weird things but just trying to vary it a bit more than usual.
I've been doing well making eggs with veggies for breakfast and replacing usual carbs with quinoa and cauliflower rice, but snacking is something i need to work on.

I found this recipe on The Daily Hiit blog (link here) and after reading it i knew that I had to try it.

I'm by no means a baker - I am so much better at cooking meals and proper food, when it comes to cakes I am (luckily!) rubbish so don't generally bother.
This recipe however involves no baking whatsoever, its a freezer only type bake - winning.



Here's the main ingredients - almond milk, protein powder, almond meal, coconut oil and peanut butter.
For the topping you need coconut oil and chocolate chips - as well as some kind of chopped or flaked nuts for sprinkling on top.
(For amounts you can read the original recipe, i won't bore you with that!)





Melting the ingredients in a microwave took about 1.5 minutes with regular stirring. I'm always wary of using the microwave to melt things but this didn't seem to cause any issues.

Adding in the dried powders and mixing thoroughly gave a batter type mixture that easily filled the square tin. So far so good, no issues and nothing that i can do wrong:





Next you just have to melt the coconut oil and chocolate chips together to create a super glossy mixture that you just want to dunk marshmallows in!

Pour this on top and you might get something that looks like this:



The instructions then suggest 20 minutes in the freezer.....I would say mine needed more like 2 hours. Not sure why this was but at 20 minutes it was still very gooey like the image below, and after 2 hours it was much more like the bottom image and had set:

Small setting issues aside, these are 100% amazing - if I say so myself.

After I made them on a Sunday around 11am I ended up eating about 4 throughout the day....oops!

I wouldn't recommend it as I felt extremely sick afterwards but OMG you need to make these!!!

I think maybe I'd add a little more almond meal to the mixture next time and it would set better, but these taste so good I don't care that I'll have to eat them out of the fridge.

Do you make your own snacks and bars like these? Do you have any other similar recipes?

I really want to make some more snacks like these - cleaner than shop bought and even more tasty!

L xxx

Life Update

Hi there!

It has been a little while since I did a life update as things have been so busy. I recently started a new job and things have been crazy, but I've been up to lots! Here's my pictures:

Having seen lots of pictures on twitter of everyone's Harry Potter t shirts I couldn't resist picking up the same as they were all from Primark and perfect for mine and M's upcoming Harry Potter party!
I got the Gryffindor tshirt (above) and the Hogwarts pyjamas.

I've been having a bit of a chocolate fest recently; it's been a long time since I've eaten it but with my Amelia Rope goodies (see post from yesterday) I've been given the taste for it again. I've made a nutella and banana smoothie, and my aunty made a massive white chocolate cheesecake for a family meal, it was HUGE!

 

That said, I've also been back at the gym a lot. My new job is based on shifts so I've been on earlies this week, meaning 4.30am starts which hasn't been too fun! However I've finished at 2 so this meant I could go to the gym straight from work and avoid the rush hour or go home and go back later for classes. I've been really enjoying being able to go to body pump again and building my weights back up, and hopefully seeing some results!

Both me and M went to an event recently for Neal's Yard Remedies and were kindly given the Wild Rose Beauty Balm. I honestly cannot describe how amazing this multi functional product is and it's become my go to for every skin problem. Come back tomorrow for a full review, even the packaging is just so beautiful!

With all of the NATO summit going on in Cardiff it was hard not to get frustrated with public transport and laugh at the ridiculous 'ring of steel' you can just about see on the corner of the picture above.
Me and my parents went down to Cardiff Bay to see the warships there, this is HMS Duncan one of the billion pound ships commissioned by the UK government. It was quite impressive to see it considering it's not something I'm interested in and the whole place was packed.

It was good to see so many policemen (and women!) from so many areas and they even grouped together for their own selfies in front of the ships!

I've also been on a bit of a spending spree (slaps the back of my hand). I managed to buy the Benefit items and Rimmel brow product with my points, the new eye liner was free when you swapped an old liner, the Mac lipstick (Coral Bliss) was a Back to Mac purchase and I also had money to spend on my Debenhams Beauty Card which was the rest of the Urban Decay products.

I was super lucky to have all of this as I've been saving them up for a splurge for a while! I've still got Boots points so I'm looking for my next Benefit buy! Here's a picture with the Pulp Fiction palette, Perversion liquid liner, Perversion mascara, Coral Bliss lipstick and Coralista:

I also had my hair dyed back darker finally! I've been waiting to do it for ages but wanted to wait until the summer months were over. Here's how light my hair was to begin with and how dark it was after dying it:

I loved it but unfortunately it's going to take a few goes to cover it all permanently as some of the colour has washed off already. I think when I go back to see my hairdresser next I will ask her to do it darker again too, as my natural colour is almost black.

I was planning on being good and not buying any more products now that I'm working again and can do overtime and hopefully pay my parents back whilst working my way through my stash.

That idea was totally thrown out the window when Space NK had their deal where you spend £150 and get a fabulous goodie bag, this time with 28 products in. I thought I was going to miss out but then I luckily sold some textbooks on amazon which helped towards the cost! Here's what I bought and am super excited to start playing with:

Up until this week I didn't own a Nars product....oops! Hourglass is a brand I've recently been reading about and their blush was too good to refuse, and I'm already a fan of Laura Mercier.

Here's a quick snap of the goodies in the Beauty Anthology bag:

Some products are only sachets or 5ml which is a bit disappointing as it doesn't give you much chance to use them but others are 30 and 50ml and I can't wait to try out all of them.

Do you see any of your favourite products in the goodie bag?? Have you been eating and exercising to make up for it like me? What do you think of my purchases?

I need to reel in my spending that's for sure!


L xxx

Amelia Rope Handmade Chocolate

Happy weekend everyone!

I've got a review of an indulgent treat today, perfect timing for the weekend. I was given these as a gift a few weeks ago, and having never heard of Amelia Rope before I had to investigate.

Look how pretty the bars are! The colours are gorgeous and specific to each type of chocolate that they produce. Having not bought a chocolate bar in about 2/3 years it was a bit of an indulgent thing to have four whole bars made available to me!

These retail on the Amelia Rope website for around £5.60 a bar so this is the most expensive bar of chocolate that I have ever eaten. If I had known this before I'd eaten it all (along with my family, I'm not that much of a pig!) I would have been horrified but quite honestly......it was worth every bite and crumb that I could get my hands on.

The White Edition chocolate with Pistachio Nut and Sea Salt was the best chocolate I've ever tasted in my life. The white chocolate is the smoothest creamiest mix and this is what you taste first; the pistachio nuts follow and taste really lovely with the chocolate; lastly you get a hit of sea salt and its the most perfect combination of sweet and salt. 

 I would never have imagined these flavours working but its quite honestly, phenomenal.

On the packaging the ingredients are listed and are a relatively short list, its great that there are minimal additional preservatives and chemicals.

Also I do love brown paper packaging and so this appeals to me greatly!

Just look at the arrangement of pistachios on the chocolate, yum!

The next bar was the Pale Rose edition with 39% cocoa from Ecuador. The chocolate in this was really nice but unfortunately I couldn't get my head around the Rose flavours; my parents absolutely loved it though and were the willing recipients!

They likened it to eating Turkish Delight flavoured chocolate so if this is your thing, you'll love it.

The third bar was the Pale Edition with 40% cocoa from Ecuador and was divine, just like a darker milk chocolate. The consistency was really smooth and it just melted in your mouth.

The Dark Edition was 75% cocoa from Tanzania and this was my second favourite. I hadn't realised I liked dark chocolate as much as I did this, I couldn't stop eating it!

It perfectly curbed any sweet cravings I had and I would fully recommend it to anyone.

Have you tried chocolate from Amelia Rope?

Apart from the website you can also buy from places like Liberty, Wholefoods, and Selfridges, sadly there aren't any place that you can buy from in Wales yet.

Do you like 'posh' chocolate like I do? Have you tried and weird and wonderful chocolate creations like these? What would you recommend?

L xxx

Recipe: Easy Oreo Cake Pops

Hey all

Hope you've not got the Monday blues! I thought I'd share an easy recipe, I've been struggling to resist cake lately. One of my work colleagues gave me it but I'm not sure where it is from originally.

It's an easy one, all you need is 

• Two packs of oreos
• Nutella
• White Chocolate (I used one pack of white cooking chocolate, think it's about 200g)
• Lollipop sticks (ebay is great for these)

These are really easy to make and taste amazing! Firstly you need to separate the oreo's and remove the cream bit and put them in a food processor (I don't have one so my blender did the job). Apologies for some of the photos, my camera wouldn't focus due to the silver and my hands were dirty!

Whizz them up till they are a smooth crumb. I found I need to keep scraping the sides and freeing the mixture up, as when it got smoother it got stuck a bit.

Once it's too a fine breadcrumb mixture add the nutella. I find it works best to add it a teaspoon at a time and stir well after each addition. Too much nutella made the soft. You want the mixture to just bind.

When the mixture is bound, roll into balls. I placed mine onto a tin foil tray to save them sticking. This part gets you very messy!! Lots of hand washing is needed as your hands will get very sticky.

When you've made it into balls pop in the freezer for 10 minutes to firm up. While they are in the freezer melt the chocolate. 

Pull out of the freezer and dip the lolly sticks into the chocolate, then press into the balls. The chocolate will work as glue for the sticks. Again freeze for 10 minutes so the chocolate sets.

Pull out of the freezer and dip each of the cake pops in chocolate. As it's white chocolate and dark mixture, I double dipped the cake pops so they looked white. It also makes a firmer shell. 

They can be decorated in a variety of ways. For my niece I made them into cookie monsters by colouring dessicated coconut and adding the features with icing. With these while the second coat of chocolate is still wet sprinkle with coconut. I also used fondant icing cut into shapes for a grown up version.

They are sooo tasty and super easy to whip up! Will you be trying these?

Love M

xxx