Baking Time.

Today my sister baked biscuits so I decided to whip out the camera and photograph the process. I had fun. The recipe and ingredients are pretty simple and the recipe makes approximately 50 biscuits.

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup self-raising flour
2. 1 cup plain flour
3. 250g butter (room temperature)
4. 3/4 cup castor sugar
5. 100g or 1 cup coconut
6. 5ml vanilla essence
7. Handful of coconut or rolled oats (or both)

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
• Cream the butter and sugar with a hand mixer. 

• Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar.

• Add vanilla essence and you can add a handful of oats if you want. 
• Hand mix the mixture (mix the mixture lol) into a ball. 

• Break pieces of the mixture and roll them into balls and roll the balls in oats.

• Place the balls on a baking tray about 2cm apart.

• Repeat with coconut

• Bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 10-15 minutes until the biscuits are flattened and golden. 
• Let them cool and then eat and enjoy!

Fishtail Plaits.

Okay for you Americans/British/whoever else doesn't use the term plaits - a plait is a braid. There has been this recent obsession with some of the girls in my class surrounding this and plaiting each other's hair in class. Up until about an hour ago, I hadn't been able to do one but thanks to WikiHow,  I have successfully learnt. My sister was gracious enough to let me use her as a model to perfect it and after about 5 attempts, I managed to do a pretty good fish plait. It's pretty easy to do once you get the hang of it and it's much easier to do if the hair is not layered - if it is you'll have to take the hair from underneath thus including the shorter layers.

The method is pretty easy:

1. Divide your hair into two large sections, parting it down the middle. 
2. Pull a thin strand of hair from the outside of the left section and pull it over the top of the left section and grip it under the right section. So over left, under right. 
3. Do the same with the right side, pulling a thin strand of hair over the right section and under the left section. 
4. Continue alternating sides weaving over and under until you have reached the end of your plait. 
5. Tie the end with an elastic and you're good to go. 

Some general tips:

• Try to use the same thickness for each strand throughout your plait so it doesn't end up looking uneven. 
• Use thinner strands to make it look more intricate. 
• It helps if you pull tighter. 
• If you feel the plait is too tight use your fingers to gently massage into the strands to loosen it slightly. 
• Just remember - over, under. 

I took this method from WikiHow and there are pictures which aid the method on the site, they also have an alternate method but that looks more complicated. 

The ideal. 

My fifth and final attempt. 

So at least I can say that I accomplished something today; I learnt how to do a fish plait. Yaysies.

Sohini out x