Snapshots from my week and a review of Life is Sweet!

Happy Friday, friends! This has been one crazy week…! 

This past weekend was really busy! Friday saw me up in Sheffield for the day (and what a lovely city it is for a visit!) for a work conference on using social media for local government comms. I met some lovely people and learnt some useful bits and bobs! On the train home I also started reading Dark Places by Gillian Flynn – lucky I’d brought my ereader with me as the train was super delayed. 

I also took this selfie of me and Bella – how funny does she look! I can assure you she does have other facial features!

On Saturday I went to the gym to meet my personal trainer and run through the programme she’s put together for me. It’s got some challenging sweaty cardio, and then the focus is weight exercises using kettlebells, then some core work and finally a stagger home from the gym!

Sunday I hosted friends for lunch to celebrate / say farewell to our friend Erin who is going on a wonderful long holiday to Australia for seven weeks! I made sandwiches, and baked Carrot Cake Cookies and Blueberry Scones, which we enjoyed with locally homemade blueberry jam and clotted cream – they were SOOO good! 

Oh and I want to KISS my food processor every time I make anything with chopped carrots! My life has been a zillion times easier since it’s been around!

On Monday my week got a little crazy! I was at the gym on Monday evening when I noticed my blog hits had spiked (I normally get around 2000 a day), thanks to my Creme Egg Chocolate Caramel Shortbread (a recipe I blogged for Easter 2014) being shared on Iced Jems Facebook page (check out her site and blog here!)

On Tuesday (a day I thankfully had off work to go to the opticians – glamorous!), my blog started having issues under the strain of so many people trying to look at it at once. I quickly edited the recipe to add ounces and cups and explain what plain chocolate is to people in other countries so that more people would be able to make it easily. 

I got more hits on Tuesday (40,000) than in probably my first year of blogging, and my facebook fans went up at a crazy rate. On Monday I was excited that I was about to hit 1000 facebook fans, and on Thursday I have almost 6000!

People from all over the world tweeted and facebooked me their pictures of the dessert, and the facebook post ended up having a reach of 3 million people – wow! 

So, the lesson to be learned here is that people really really love Creme Eggs a whole lot!

Coincidentally, I was making something ELSE Creme Egg related on Tuesday too – this Cadbury Creme Egg Chocolate Brownie Pizza – yes I’m calling it a Pizza! I’ll share the recipe with you on Monday. 

This week I was also sent the new Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook Life is Sweet to take a look at by the kind publishers. I have the two other Hummingbird cookbooks so I was pretty excited! The book features cakes, cupcakes, pies, ice creams, traybakes, biscuits/cookies, and more. (Below is a peanut butter and jelly/jam cake!).

 There are lots of recipes in there that I’m intrigued by, especially the cornmeal cookies and honey cornbread cupcakes (I love cornbread as you can tell!). I also have an idea on how to incorporate the graham crackers in a bake I have coming up!

• Currently reading: I finished Dark Places and have tentatively started Elizabeth is Missing. I say tentatively because I really need a break from anything too intense and murdery after Dark Places so if it takes a turn for the darker I might have to find a children’s book to read for a while.
• Currently watching: House of Cards, but of course! We’re on episode 8. Are you watching?
• Currently listening to: Nothing new at the moment, but I’m loving radio 2 as ever, especially the Jo Whiley show.

Happy weekend friends! What are you up to?

 

x Kerry

 

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