Okay, so we have our three recipes together, right? No? Well then, check these links –

For the Easy-Peesy Chocolate Brownie, click here.

For the Honeycomb, click here.

And for the Dark Chocolate Mud Ice Cream, click here.

Three desserts in one make something special!

Now we have all the recipes in order, if you’ve managed to keep the end results away from sticky fingers, it’s time to put them all together for something a bit special. Just like the three previous recipes, this one is way easier than it looks. Plus, no new ingredients! It’s just a matter of plating up.

What You Need:

Homemade Chocolate Brownies, still in the pan, cooled but unsliced.

Homemade Honeycomb. Crushed.

Homemade Dark Chocolate Mud ice cream that has been set in a slice tray.

A round cookie cutter, aprox 7cm.

A round cookie cutter, aprox 4cm.

To serve, I added golden syrup and a commercial chocolate sauce.

Dark chocolate ice-cream with brownies and honeycomb!

How It’s Done:

After all that hard work, this is the fun bit! Using your cookie cutter, cut a circular shape from your brownies. My brownies were quite thick, so I cut it in half width-wise, but if yours are thinner, cut two circles. Cut one circle from your set ice cream – make sure it’s the same size and your brownies. Place one brownie on the plate, the ice cream directly on top of it, and then another brownie piece. You need to work quickly and carefully at this point. Then, using a smaller round cookie cutter – or a small ice cream scoop – cut another two discs of ice cream. Place one flat on top, the other sitting on an angle. Then, crumble honeycomb pieces over the top and a few more on the side of the dish for garnish. I added a quick swirl of golden syrup and chocolate sauce too.

*Experiment! Just because I’ve used round shapes here, doesn’t mean you can’t cut squares, heart shapes or anything else. And, if you’re taking your dessert directly to the table, a warmed chocolate sauce would be DELISH.

I made this one for a birthday party and while I don’t like coconut, everyone was loving it! It was quick, easy and simple! I promise!

Ingredients:

For Custard-

• 1 premade pie crust
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 ¼ cup of sweetened coconut flakes
• ½ cup of sugar
• 1/3 cup of flour
• ½ cup of milk
• 1 stick of unsalted butter
• ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract

For Meringue-

• 3 egg whites
• ¼ cup of sugar

Instructions:

1. In a medium sized sauce pan, mix egg yolks, sugar, flour, milk, and butter. Allow to thicken over medium heat, whisking constantly. (Be very careful and pay close attention to the pot.)
2. Once the mixture has thickened, take the pot off the heat, and add 1 cup of coconut flakes and vanilla extract, stir.
3. Pour this mixture into the prepared pie crust.
4. Preheat oven to 325F. In a mixing bowl beat the egg whites and sugar until stiff. You should be able to turn over the bowl without being afraid the meringue will fall out.
5. Spread the meringue onto of your custard mixture in your pie crust and sprinkle the rest of your coconut flakes over top. Allow to bake until meringue has turned gold!

Enjoy!

If you can’t stand twisted fairy tale re-tellings, read no further, this is not the book for you.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first two books in the Demon Trappers Daughter series, so I didn’t quite know what to expect from this offering from Jana Oliver. I needn’t have been concerned. It rocks.

 From goodreads.com

“For Briar Rose, life is anything but a fairy tale. She’s stuck in a small town in deepest Georgia with parents who won’t let her out of their sight, a bunch of small-minded, gossiping neighbours and an evil ex who’s spreading nasty rumours about what she may or may not have done in the back of his car. She’s tired of it all, so when, on her sixteenth birthday, her parents tell her that she is cursed and will go to sleep for a hundred years when the clock strikes midnight, she’s actually kind of glad to leave it all behind. She says her goodbyes, lies down, and closes her eyes . . . And then she wakes up. Cold, alone and in the middle of the darkest, most twisted fairy tale she could ever have dreamed of. Now Briar must fight her way out of the story that has been created for her, but she can’t do it alone. She never believed in handsome princes, but now she’s met one her only chance is to put her life in his hands, or there will be no happy ever after and no waking up.”

This retelling of Sleeping Beauty is complete with evil mechanical creatures, the obligatory sleeping princess, and guys on horseback. However Briar is a Rose, not a shrinking violet. THANK GOODNESS!

I am finding that authors who allow their female lead characters to work with their male counterparts, rather than belittling them, seem more authentic, more relatable, and far stronger than their ball-busting sisters. Briar shares the glory with not only her best friend, Reena, but her three leading guys.

Some reviews compare this book to Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. To that I say, ‘Did we read the same books?’ There is re enactment in both books, and they’re set in the south. That’s about where the similarities end.

Dialogue is humorous, and the action is easy to picture. Romance is peppered throughout because it is a fairy tale after all. Pacing is steady and there is no sagging middle.

 A sweet escape for the first few weeks of the new term. Check it out.

http://www.janaoliver.com/  

Paperback, 470 pages

Published September 12th 2013 by Macmillan Children’s Books

ISBN

1447241096 (ISBN13: 9781447241096)

We’ve been loving the reviews coming in for SERIOUS SAS and MESSY MAGDA but this one is special because it coins the phrase “Magda-isms”. You can read the full review over at the Book Bag site, but here’s a sneak preview:

“This book can be enjoyed on a couple of different levels. Younger children will enjoy the humour of an adult breaking the rules, acting like a child and unleashing mayhem. It may take a slightly older child to identify with the embarrassment felt by school pupil Sas and to take away the lesson that different can be good. Given that the relationship featured is mother and daughter, the story may have more of a draw to girls than to boys. It may also appeal to older children who are less confident readers as the drawings are quirky rather cutesy…”

Ruth Cohen has been cosplaying since 2009 and has attended around 8 official conventions. She enjoys shiznick and stuff, amongst other things. Plausibly addicted to social media, she spends large amounts of time on Facebook and Tumblr. An avid reader of all genres of fiction, this is her first foray into ‘proper writing’.

When I first sat down to write this blog the first thing that came to mind was Sheldon Cooper (from ‘The Big Bang Theory’) attempting to teach Penny physics in an episode called ‘The Gorilla Experiment’. He is standing there with his white board and starts “What is physics? Physics comes from the ancient Greek word physika. Physika means the science of natural things.”

I tried to imagine myself delivering a similar, comprehensive version for cosplay. “What is cosplay? Cosplay comes from the combining of two words, costume and play. Cosplay means to use a costume to become another personality.”

But realistically, whilst true, that seems a bit dull… cosplay is a hobby. At its heart, it’s about having the time of your life with the character you’ve chosen. It certainly doesn’t mean you have the most recognisable, the most complicated, or even the most flawless costume.

Let’s try for some examples shall we?

This is a cosplay:

MiddleEarthBarbie as Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Munroe Cosplay

This is a cosplay:

This is a bloke I snagged a photo of at GoldNova 2012. He’s Marten from the webcomic Questionable Content.

Questionable Content Cosplay

Are you beginning to grasp the picture I’m painting?

Cosplay is often mistaken for costume that MUST be DC/Marvel comic or anime/manga related. But for the Cosplay Community it is so much more than that. In fact, since it began, cosplay has grown so vast that there are now sub-categories or ‘cliques’ of different styles. Let’s test my memory now, as I walk you through them.

So you start with the standard cosplay. This is for a person who fell in a love with a character’s personality or one particularly awesome outfit they wore. For example, I’ll put myself in the line of fire with a favourite I did of Sarah Williams from Labyrinth:

Labyrinth Cosplay

Then you have Crossplay. Crossplay is best described as people who love a character but happen to be the wrong gender. So say you’re a girl and you love Link from Zelda. If you were to Crossplay then you would simply strap down those boobs and strut your stuff.

Exhibit A, Li Kovacs AKA Pikmin.

Crossplay

Moving on to the uber impressive, con-floor hogging, Mecha cosplay. Mecha is those who are decked out in armoured characters. Tricky to make, but it has an incredible effect.

DreamCoat Photography snagged this Mecha at BrisNova 2013.

Mecha Cosplay

Genderbend! The Cosplay community is a quirky one and this sub-category is no exception. Similar to Crossplay, the Genderbend messes with the mind a little. When you Genderbend, you take a character you love who is male and create a female version of it so you can wear it (or vice versa of course!).

I snapped these fantastic Fem!Goku and Fem!Vegeta ladies at GoldNova 2012.

Genderbend Cosplay

My final category is what I refer to as Crossover cosplay. I imagine there are many other names for it, but essentially it is about taking a character and re-imagining it in a different style. For example: Steampunk, Lolita, and historical era versions of a character.

One of my personal favourites is ‘The Artful Dodger’ as Steampunk Ariel.

Crossover Cosplay

So that’s me finished for now. Hopefully you now have a vague idea of what cosplay is now, and are intrigued enough to explore this community a little more …

Happy cosplay hunting!!