St. Paddy's Makeup

I wore my St. Patrick's Day makeup to work today because I will not be going anywhere tomorrow night because I'll be at work all night. Yay! That's besides the point. I made this awesome St. Paddy's look, and I have never been happier about a green eye color. It is absolutely gorgeous.

Here we go. First of all, always put primer over your lids. I am using Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion in Original. It made my eyeshadow stay on ALL day even when I was laying out and it was like 80 degrees. Seriously, it didn't melt off my face. So just use a bit on your finger and put it all over your lids. Then, I used Brazen's Charmed green shadow all over my lid from my lash line to my crease. That's pretty enough, but then I put Brazen's Get Lucky along my crease. To finish it off I used Brazen's Pharaoh, this beautiful gold shadow, on the inner corner of my eyes and then I swiped it from the inner corner up toward my brow. It's really really super pretty. I put my black gel liner just on the top lid in a moderately thick line. See the bottom picture.

I used bronzer swiped toward my temples over my foundation and Brazen Hi-Def powder.

Then I put an orangey chapstick on my lips. I used Covergirl's NatureLuxe Gloss Balm in Anemone. Then I put Brazen's Kiss Me, I'm Irish gloss over that. It's a shiny and incredibly glittery gloss that looks clear from a distance but when you look closer you can see little green flecks of flitter on your lips. It's very pretty. It sounds odd, but the whole thing works really well.

Over all of that I sprayed my new finishing spray from Urban Decay called Dew Me. I like a dewey, youthful finish, so this is perfect and worked really well. I went outside and laid out today and was super sweaty and shiny and my makeup looked just as nice as it did when I put it on. I was shocked.

PS. Sorry about the pictures, my cell phone is still my picture-taking mechanism.





These are some of my Brazen tools. The bottom green is Charmed, to the left is the Kiss Me, I'm Irish gloss, and the top color is Get Lucky.

Dark Chocolate Guinness Cake with Bailey’s Buttercream

This was the best homemade cake I have ever made. It's totally from scratch and just super super easy. I think this would be really good all year around, personally, but I know it has the Irish booze in it so it only makes sense that you would make it around St. Patrick's Day.

In the recipe, it calls for Bailey's in the frosting, I totally just used Emmett's. There's no need to splurge on the good stuff. Then again, you will have a lot left over, so get what you like, I guess. Guinness in a cake sounds gross, I know, but trust me, my coworkers were raving about this cake. So delish.

The recipe has you stacking the cake for a layered round cake, but I just kept them seperate and brought one to work and kept one for myself. They are thinner that way too so no one feels too guilty getting seconds.

The original recipe is from the blog Global Table Adventure (they have pictures that go with the recipe):

Dark Chocolate Guinness Cake with Bailey's Buttercream

Ingredients:

1 1/2 sticks butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 cup Guinness Extra Stout
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs

For the buttercream:

3 sticks unsalted butter, softened
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2-4 Tbsp Bailey’s, as needed

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.

2. In a small saucepan, melt butter and whisk together with Guinness, vanilla extract and cocoa. Remove from heat.

3. While the Guinness mixture is cooling, grease and line 2 eight inch cake pans with parchment paper. Next, whisk together the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, baking soda). Pour the Guinness mixture onto the dry ingredients, then whisk in the 2 eggs.

4. When the batter is shiny and smooth, pour evenly into two prepared cake pans. Lick the bowl when no one is looking.

5. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

6. Meanwhile make the buttercream by whipping together the softened butter and sugar in a standing mixer, then adding in just enough Bailey’s to get it loose and fluffy. The key to white frosting is to whip it a long time – the longer you whip it, the whiter it will become. I whipped this for 5-10 minutes. I just poured some Irish cream in. It's to your own taste, this recipe says 3 Tablespoons should be enough.

7. Once the cakes are done baking, cool completely.

8. Now, assemble the cake. But be very sure it's cool, if you try to ice it when it's warm it will get all crumbly and part of it will stick in the icing and it won't be pretty.

Mini Stout Pies and colcannon

Happy St. Patrick's Day, almost. Today I decided to make mini stout pies to bring to work for dinner and then colcannon as the side dish. Colcannon is just a traditional potato dish with greens and butter basically. It was super easy to make.

The mini pies are delicious, but you have to make sure you have a way to to cute out an 8 inch circle. I mean, most people probably have 8 inch circle cookie cutters but I do not. So, I had to use the lid of a glass which was probably like 4 inches maybe. That caused my pies to be tiny, like appetizer sized. I don't mind that, I actually really like finger foods and tiny pie-like-things. Unfortunately, the recipe calls for just one box of refrigerated pie dough. If you are going to make tiny appetizers, you'll need two boxes instead. I still have a bunch of meat and veggie filling left because I wasn't aware of this. I mean, the filling is good so I'm still probably going to eat it was potatoes or something, but if you are going to have a St. Paddy's Day party these would be adorable additions in the tiny size.

Also, next time I make them, and there probably will be a next time, I would brush part of egg mixture over the little pies to give them a golden color. They were lacking that. It doesn't diminish the taste, but it looks really yummy.

The colcannon is super easy to make, really really easy. It's like mashed potatoes but with more veggies, so it's a little healthier than just mashed potatoes. It's a nice new twist.

Here's the recipe, I originally got this from Pillsbury, but it comes from Inspired Taste:



Mini Stout Pies

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

6 oz lean (at least 80%) ground beef

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup diced onions

1/2 cup diced carrot

1/2 cup Green Giant® frozen sweet peas, thawed

1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

3/4 cup stout beer

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon sugar

1 box Pillsbury® refrigerated pie crusts, softened as directed on box

1 egg

1 tablespoon water

Directions

1 In 10-inch skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add beef; season with 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cook 3 to 5 minutes until browned, stirring frequently to break up beef. Add onions and carrot; cook 3 to 5 minutes or until softened. Stir in peas, thyme and garlic; cook 1 minute.

2 Reduce heat to medium-low. Stir in tomato paste. Add flour; cook and stir 1 minute. Add beer; cook and stir 1 minute or until beer thickens. Stir in Worcestershire sauce and sugar. Season to taste with additional salt. Remove from heat; cool 10 minutes.

3 Meanwhile, heat oven to 375°F. Line cookie sheet with foil.

4 Unroll pie crusts on work surface. Using 4-inch round cookie cutter, cut 8 crust rounds. Or if you are making the appetizer version, as many as you can with two boxes of pie crust (4 crusts in all.)

5 In small bowl, beat egg and water with fork until well blended. Brush small amount of egg mixture around edge of each crust round.

6 Spoon 1 to 2 tablespoons cooled beef mixture onto half of each crust round. Fold untopped crust over beef mixture (pies will be full). Press edges with fork to seal. With knife, cut 3 small slits in tops. Place on cookie sheet.

7 Bake 18 to 24 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 10 minutes before serving.

If you’re not a fan of beer, substitute with beef-flavored broth - But then you have Guinness leftover to drink, so the beer is totally worth it.

To reduce the fat in the pies, replace the beef with ground chicken or turkey.

Here's the colcannon, originally from Simply Recipes:

Colcannon Recipe

• Prep time: 10 minutes
• Cook time: 25 minutes

For a variation, sub out half of the potatoes with parsnips. Can add chives, leeks, or bacon too.

Ingredients

• 4 russet potatoes (2 to 2 1/2 pounds), peeled and cut into large chunks
• Salt
• 5-6 Tbsp unsalted butter (with more butter for serving)
• 3 lightly packed cups of chopped kale, cabbage, chard, or other leafy green
• 3 green onions (including the green onion greens), minced (about 1/2 cup)
• 1 cup milk or cream

Method

1 Put the potatoes in a medium pot and cover with cold water by at least an inch. Add 2 tablespoons of salt, and bring to a boil. Boil until the potatoes are fork tender (15 to 20 minutes). Drain in a colander.

2 Return the pot to the stove and set over medium-high heat. Melt the butter in the pot and once it's hot, add the greens. Cook the greens for 3-4 minutes, or until they are wilted and have given off some of their water. Add the green onions and cook 1 minute more.

3 Pour in the milk or cream, mix well, and add the potatoes. Reduce the heat to medium. Use a fork or potato masher and mash the potatoes, mixing them up with the greens. Add salt to taste and serve hot, with a knob of butter in the center.

St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day by paxvobiscum featuring rectangle sunglasses

Denim top
£48 - johnlewis.com

Vanessa Bruno cotton mini skirt
$480 - net-a-porter.com

Steve Madden lace up bootie
$165 - heels.com

Dogeared Jewels Gifts fresh water pearl necklace
$116 - endless.com

Tahitian pearl jewelry
$12 - kohls.com

Cutler and Gross rectangle sunglasses
£284 - farfetch.com

Slainte!

It's the week of St. Patrick's Day, and I have decided to theme all of my posts from today until the 17th about St. Paddy's. If you were unaware, "slainte" is said in Ireland as we say cheers. It literally means health. I love it, my boyfriend is very, very Irish, and is the first person to make me aware of this word and its usage and everything, so I decided to try and be authentic this year. The first recipe I made wasn't authentic but I used authentic phrases! Well....mostly authentic phrases. I made some sugar cookies with the words "slainte," "Graim Thu" (I love you), "Kiss me I'm Irish," "Erin Go Bragh," and "Happy St. Patrick's Day."

I made these sugar cookies earlier this week with the help of my brand new, super cute cookie cutters from Williams Sonoma. They are called Message-in-a-cookie Cutters and although they are kind of difficult to use, I think they are totally worth it. They allow you to make your own phrases to put into the cookies, and they turn out really well. The hard part is getting the little tiles into the cookie cutters provided. I ended up just using the cookie cutters and then pressing the little tiles in by hand because it took so long to slide them in. It didn't actually take long though, so I am still a happy camper.

Here's the sugar cookie recipe I used. The blog Fictional Foods is so fun, and since I'm a complete dork I am totally going to try basically all of them. I am going to make these cookies again for the Hunger Games since that's what she made them for, but I decided, since St. Patrick's Day is sooner than the HG premier, I'd try them out for this first.

Sweethearts

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 large egg

Instructions

1. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.
2. Add vanilla extract and egg and mix thoroughly.
3. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add to butter mixture slowly.
4. Lightly flour a piece of parchment paper and roll the dough out. Dip the cookie cutter in flour to keep it from sticking and cut your cookies, using the leftover dough to roll again.
5. Press names or messages into cookies.
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees until done.
7. Cool on rack and enjoy!