Reet Petite

Never seen the video for this before.   Most peculiar.   I like it though!   And the song is great!   So cheerful and catchy.

 

Coconut meringue cake

This is one I'd been wanting to try for a little while.  I used:

125g butter
225g white sugar
3 eggs
125g self raising flour
125g dessicated coconut (plus some extra)
80ml milk

I softened the butter, beat in 125g sugar, separated the eggs and beat in the egg yolks.   I added the milk, flour and...a certain amount of coconut.   The recipe I found didn't have any coconut in the cake mix itself, but I wanted some in there too.  

So, that was the cake mix.   For the meringue topping I whipped the egg whites until stiff, and folded in the remaining 100g sugar.   I then added 125g dessicated coconut.   I thought it looked like quite a lot of coconut for so little meringue and I was right.   The meringue went completely flat and I was worried about whether it was going to come out ok.   But I spooned the cake mix into a cake tin, and carefully put the meringue mix on top of it and baked at 180 degrees.  

The cake came out pretty well.   It was very moist and tasty, and the meringue layer held together ok.  

However, I felt I'd like it better if the meringue on top was more of a meringue and less of a thin coconut crust, so I made a second attempt.   This time, I added the whole 125g coconut to the cake mix and just put a handful on coconut into the meringue mix.   I feel the second attempt worked a lot better!   Tasty, moist coconut cake with a light meringue topping.   Delicious!   Sadly, however, I seem to have failed to take a picture of cake number two.   Sad face.   You'll just have to take my word for it!

Making Plans for Nigel

Ooooh!  This is a good one!   Simple, catchy and poignent.  

Films

Another film review post.   I'm going to start off with The English Patient.   As previously mentioned, this is one I'd seen before.   I just wanted to rewatch it now that I'd read the book.   I have to say that being able to compare them now I like the changes the film makers made.   They gave the story a proper ending and took out some of the silly bits.   I love most of the casting as well!   Juliette Binoche was perfect for Hana, and Ralph Fiennes was perfect for the Count (though he ought to be careful; what with this part and Lord Voldemort he's getting to be quite type cast as people with no faces).   I loved Kristin Scott Thomas as Catherine Clifton too.   The only character I thought could have been cast better was Caravaggio.   Willem Dafoe was just a bit too sinister I thought.   But yes, I feel I can now definitively say that The English Patient is both a great film and a great adaptation.

Next, Lost in Tanslation.   One I'd never got round to watching before.   It's pretty good!   It's about an aging movie star, played by Bill Murray,who's in Japan filming adverts and lonely.   He's having problems with his wife and doesn't know anyone in Tokyo.   That's when he meets a lonely young wife (Scarlett Johansson) who's accompanying her husband on a business trip, but he's neglecting her and having fun with his friends.   The two of them strike up a friendship and go around Tokyo together.   It's quite an artsy film.   One you don't watch for the story or the dialogue, but for the shots.   A lot of the time it just seems to be show-casing Tokyo, especially Tokyo night life, and there are long periods with no dialogue at all.   It's very atmospheric and quite melancholy.   I imagine it to be a good film to stick on at the end of a night out, when there are lots of people crowded together in a dark room and it's very late and everyone is quite sleepy and perhaps a little intoxicated.   And they must have worked pretty hard to get Scarlett Johansson to look like a Plain Jane.

            





And finally, Ladies in Lavender.   This was an interesting one.   It's about two elderly sisters played by Maggie Smith and Judi Dench who find a shipwrecked boy washed up on the beach in the 1930s.   They don't have a language in common, but they take care of him and grow to love him.   In fact one of them actually falls in love with him, despite the massive age gap.   In the end he leaves for London without saying anything where he becomes a famous violinist.   This one was also pretty and atmospheric, showing off the English countryside, though I'm not sure about the colour palette they used.   It made the sea look quite odd and unnatural.   And Maggie Smith was brilliant, as always.

  

The Big Rock Candy Mountain

Got this on loop:

Again, perhaps something that's not quite my usual sort of thing, but I love it!

Shameless Self-Promotion

Tonight's blog post is brought to you by shameless self-promotion!   A little while ago I helped to write a photography workshop for the Education department at work.   For one of the adverts for it they used one of my photos.   I reckon that gives me grounds to say I'm a published photographer.   Huzzah!   Here is the advert:

The top half is the front of the flier and the bottom half is the back.   They're actually bright Spring leaves, not Autumn leaves, but nevermind.   One of my photos got used for an advert (even if it's not a particularly good photo), hurrah!  

Whilst we're on the subject of shameless self-promotion, I don't think I've previously included a link to my photos before.

This is my DeviantArt profile, and here is my 123RF (stock photography) profile.   So far I've made about 13 US dollars from it.   Better than nothing!   I did a roaring trade in these pictures during the Christmas period, which was nice.  

Hello

I'm not really sure why I like this song.   It's not normally the sort of thing I like.   Much more poppy than my usual taste.   Maybe it's because I can relate to the lyrics.   Or maybe it's just because it's catchy and gets stuck in my head.