Microwave lava cakes

Microwave lava cakes, is that even possible? Yes it is! And it solves a lot of problems in my kitchen.
Like all other girls on the planet, I love chocolat. In all it's shapes/styles and flavors. But my favorite still remains: lava cake. With cherries, ice cream, or just as it is.

Eventhough I'm a good cook, I can't bake a cake to save my life. Really, I can't. So when I read the recipe for microwave lava cakes, I was way too curious not to try it. But I wrote it down and kind of forgot about it. Until today!! Read, and get completely addicted to these five minute lava cakes!

They are so easy to make, and a great way to treat your guests to a nice surprise when they come over. Most of the ingredients will probably be already in your kitchen somewhere, so let's get started:

Five minute lava cakes

Ingredients:

4 tb self rising flour
2 tb sugar
2 tb coco powder
1 egg
3 tb of milk
3 tb butter/ oil
1 tb chocolate chips

1 large mug










How to make it

1: Mix the flour, coco powder and sugar

2: Add the egg and mix again

3: Add the milk and butter and mix until it's all smooth

4: Put the chocolate chips in

I used regular chocolate, and put them somewhere in the middle of the mixture

5: Put in the microwave for about 3 minutes (900w). Depending on your microwave you can put the cake in a bit longer/shorter. It should be fluffy and firm when you get it out.

Garnish with cherry's /ice cream /whipped cream or anything to your liking and enjoy!!! You can serve the cake in the cups you used to make it, or put it on a platter. Anyway, It's gonna be delicious!


Love,
-M


(found the original recipe here)

TV Cray: On Cooking Shows and Modern Television

A few years ago a new trend came to the world of TV. Someone with a lot of business sense suggested the idea that every show should have the same format. That is how today we watch not just one talent hunt, but several. Examples include The Voice, The Voice Kids, The X-factor, Whatever Country’s Got Talent, So You Think You Can Dance and several editions of Masterchef in any country with each time a group from a different age. Masterchef Kids and the Voice Kids are two of the reasons I don’t really watch television anymore.

In a world so fascinated with food all the time it is becoming more and more annoying when you’re not that hungry yet but it is dinnertime in the eyes of the world. There is no escaping cooking shows anymore. Where are the shows like Life & Cooking that had just a small element on cooking and focused on the rest of life? When did it become interesting to watch 9-year-olds cook some ridiculously fancy meal that nobody wants to eat anyway? Is it supposed to be cute?

One part of cooking, has caught my attention a little bit. Everyone knows the joy of making some kind of cake or pie, filling the house with lovely smells of freshly baked cookies and sharing the with your friends or family. I get that. What I don’t get is what the point is of making a TV-show about people baking pies. You can´t smell it, you can´t taste it, most parts about how it´s really made are skipped. You can´t get the recipe if you want to try it yourself. Then what is all the fuss about?

Reading over all my question another one comes to mind: what is the answer to all this? What else have we to fill the time on TV? Another re-run of Friends, Charmed, McLeod’s Daughters? By now we all know them by heart. I think it’s time we surrender to this trend because let’s admit: Say Yes to the Dress – Bridesmaids is just as fun as the regular series, and as long as they don’t start doing a Say Yes to the Dress – Kids edition, I’m fine with just switching channels whenever such a show comes on.

- MP

Sally Hanson Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Nail Color in Purple Potion

I love nail polish and I own over 40 different colors. I have pretty much every color. Except brown, I hate brown. I'm kind of an addict when it comes to buying new ones, every time I go to a store with a beauty or make-up department, I have to check out the nail polish.

I usually wear Rimmel or Essence. I love Rimmel because the quality is great and they have a lot of fashionable colors. I love Essence because they have so many different colors and their polish is really cheap.

My sister recommended Sally Hanson nail polish to me. When I saw the Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear polish on sale for €4, I decided to give it a try. I bought two colors: Purple Potion and Cherry Red. This week I tried on Purple Potion. In the picture it looks really blue, but it's actually purple with a blue shiny hue.

The brush is long and thin, which made it easy to be quite precise. I'm really clumsy when it comes to painting my nails, especially my right hand (I'm right handed), so I liked the thin brush. The polish is really thin, thinner than most of my nail polishes. This made it easy to spread the polish evenly on my nails, without leaving stripes. The only downside is the coverage, I had to use three coats instead of the usual two.

The polish took longer than usual to dry, perhaps because of the extra coat. I painted my nails Saturday and it only started chipping until the next Friday, which I think is really long. Usually my polish starts to chip after 3-5 days. I applied one top coat on Saturday and reapplying a top coat every (other) day might make it even longer lasting.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this polish. It takes longer to apply, but it also lasts longer than my usual polishes. I would recommend it to anyone with a bit of time on their hands.

4/5 stars, would wear again.

-R

Behind the Cray Cray: J

This will be a blog about me, J, one of the Craydians:  a 22-year-old ex-fattie who lives for experiencing passion. In my search for it, I write, bake, cook, work out mind and body, and share the produce of all this with friends and family.

One of the core elements of how I identify myself in daily life is through my studies. I am a cultural anthropologist by trade and heart and I have just finished an undergraduate program in it. I study  how society and the realm of the cultural works and changes. In my 4 years at the University of Amsterdam, I have focused on researching the workings of power,  processes of identification and the structuring and altering properties of language. This all might sound a bit complicated, but in its essence, it really isn’t. I might devote a blog to sort of explain cultural anthropology for dummies soonish.

I started off by saying that I am an ex-fattie. That might sound like a harsh self description, but it is the reality of my life. I used to be a ridiculously unhealthy 93 kg (or 205 pounds  or 14.6 stone) young girl of 1.69 metres (or 5.5 feet). At the age of 18, I decided to change my physical and mental habits and lost nearly 30 kilos (or nearly 66 pounds or 4.7 stone) through disciplining myself mentally and physically, forever changing my awareness of food. Maintenance is probably as hard as losing weight and after regaining some weight after my initial loss, I am more fit, healthier and slimmer than ever due to another new lifestyle change. As a result, I am almost overly obsessed with food, cooking, health and body image. This obsession structures many of my daily activities but I luckily enjoy it most of the time.

My residence is a room in a tiny cute little house in a small town. Although I might study in Amsterdam, I’m not much of  a city girl. I like the peace and quiet of living in a town, the fresh air and the abundance of nature in its vicinity. I actually feel like I truly need it in order to stay centered and focused. Living on my own gives me plenty opportunity to cook, as opposed to how it would be if I lived with my parents. As a result, I try multiple new recipes a week. I have three lovely roommates, who I love to surprise with baked goods from a new tried out recipe. For a bunch of students, are kitchen is quite spacious, although for me, it can never be too big. My most valued possessions in the kitchen are my food processor and my array of about 50 different herbs and spices. Now that I pretty much have all the ones I need, I am building a collection of quality knives, oils and vinegars.  If you have any recommendations, please leave them in the comments.

Passion is nothing without music. Not only do I listen hours of it a day, I also heavily associate memories and people with certain kinds of music, kind of building a soundtrack of my life. While I enjoy nearly all kinds of music in everyday life, like blues, jazz, rock, indie, folk, I also have a big heart for EDM (electronic dance music) when I go out. To me, the best kinds of electronic dance music are drum’n’bass (and related genres) and dubstep (especially the deeper, darker kind). There is nothing more thrilling, lust generating and exhilarating then the feeling of a sub bass in your belly.

I could go on writing about passion for pages, but I really shouldn’t. This blog has already become much longer than I intended.  I’ll leave the floor to the other craydians to spill the beans.

-J

The Summer Bore

Considering the lack of plans for my holiday I decided to inspire our lovely supposed readers with my solutions to the summer bore. This year I didn’t make any far away holiday plans so in order to still get the feeling of really doing something I planned some small things for myself.

Citytrip Maastricht

Instead of going on one far away trip, take little trips to far away cities within your country. Maasricht is a city in the south of the Netherlands, so far away from any civilization that we jokingly call Limburg, the province it’s in, Germany or a different country altogether. I have only been to Maastricht once before and that’s what started K and my little idea of our ‘holiday to Maastricht’. We were in the train for at least as long as we were actually in the city, but hey, it’s the getting out part that counts! Having an elaborate lunch, visiting a basilica and doing some shopping made me feel wholly refreshed.  

Take a Mind Trip

Read a book! Preferably one that has some traveling in it. I’m reading Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck at the moment. Steinbeck is traveling across the U.S. in a car/caravan mash-up with his dog Charley meeting all sorts of people and all sorts of different communities. So far, so good! Before this one I read Possession which was very interesting but kinda difficult to get through at times. Finishing this I felt like I also accomplished something intelligent which made these past few weeks feel less pointless.

Into the Wild

Go out, take a walk. My parents love to do this in the evenings. My mother likes to pretend to have an errand to run like posting a letter, just to have an excuse of getting out of the house on a nice summer evening. Because of the heat during the day, the temperature is actually quite nice in the evening. Taking a ride on a bike is not a bad idea either.

Hang out with friends

My last tip is the easiest to come up with. Do fun stuff with your friends. You don’t have to schedule an entire evening or afternoon of this, coming around for a simple cup of tea will do the trick sometimes. Unfortunately, not all of us have been able to enjoy the lovely weather due to deadlines and other which left me alone at home at times, being the only one with time on their hands for a change. Going over to my friend D’s house for a cup of tea, gave her a study break and me a tiny trip across E-city. I had a great time even if it lasted only for about an hour max. 

Take your friends to the cinema! Go out of your comfort zone and see something you normally wouldn’t. Go see some action-thriller-thing or a robot movie. I found it refreshing to be one of the two women in the whole room during World War Z and Pacific Rim. Besides, going to the movies feels like a glamorous evening out and if you dress like you’re going to meet someone new you just might… ;)

- MP