Festival Essentials!

Trying to get back into the swing of blogging regularly again! I'm going to Global Gathering festival this year (is anyone else?!) so thought I would share my list I made of things I plan to take to make life easier when camping :)

1. POP UP TENT - Call me lazy but I just can not be bothered to struggle putting up a tent after a two hour drive and probably a very long queue. This one is less than half price in Argos from £59.99 to £20.99.. what a flipping bargain! Plus the print will hopefully stand out a bit and make it easier to find in the sea of tents.

2. BUM BAG - Definitely an essential if you want to take money/phone out with you, and hate having a shoulder bag flapping around while you're dancing and having a good time! I also get really paranoid about nasty people stealing from my bag as it has happened to me a few times before :( So having it around my waist feels so much safer. I have seen loads of cheap Primark ones around on the internet, as well as some cool home made studded ones on Ebay.

3. HYGIENE - These are all pretty much a given, along with toothpaste and deodorant... I most probably won't be able to shower there, but leaving on Friday and being back home on Sunday won't be too bad and it's the festival experience after all :)

4. MAKEUP - I don't want to worry too much about checking my makeup during the day, so it's gonna be stains and waterproof all the way! The neon face paint is just a bit of fun and I know from experience that the Star Gazer ones don't budge easily. (Revlon Just Bitten lip stain, Collection 2000 concealer, Rimmel Scandaleyes waterproof mascara and eyeliner, Star Gazer neon face paint)

5. SUNGLASSES - Hopefully it will be sunny, but even if it's not, everyone knows it's perfectly acceptable to wear sunglasses at night at a festival :) I don't plan on spending much money on them as I have a habit of breaking/dropping/giving away my sunglasses when drunk so will probably turn to New Look for some affordable pairs. (All from New Look)

6. FOOD/DRINK - Okay I know this all looks really bad, but my reasoning is; I want to take stuff that will fill me up quickly so I can save money. I will probably try to eat as much fresh fruit and veg as I can before I go, but it's only one weekend so I'm not going to worry too much :)

7. MISCELLANEOUS - Cups for drinking on the campsite, plasters in case of blisters/cuts, and painkillers and allergy relief because I like to be prepared haha.

So yep these are some of the items I need to make sure I have before I go next month, I haven't mentioned clothes I'm taking because I will probably do a separate post on that nearer the time. 
Please leave a comment if you know of any other helpful items that I've missed, especially food-wise! And let me know if you are going to a festival this summer :) xx

Banoffee Cheesecake

A few months ago, I made a chocolate and clementine cheesecake from a recipe card which I picked up in Sainsburys (click here) and it had the best texture out of cheesecakes I'd made so far. So I decided to use the basic measurements to experiment and create my own Banoffee recipe, which turned out to be one of the tastiest (although definitely not the healthiest) things I have ever made :)

• I used:
• 150g butter
• 400g digestive biscuits
• 1 tin Carnation Cook with Caramel
• 100g  caster sugar
• 200g full-fat soft cheese 
• 250g mascarpone 
• 3 medium eggs
• About 5 very ripe bananas (depends on the size)

Grease and line your tin (the recipe said a 23cm tin but anything that looks as if a cheesecake would fit in is probably fine)

Put the biccys into a food bag and make sure it's tied tight! Then bash the hell out of them with a rolling pin/your weapon of choice...

Et voilà!

Melt yo butter

Empty the crushed biccys into the butter and mix it gooood, then squish it into the tin as tight as you can (yes that is a potato masher)

Chop your bananas

Put some of the banana on top of the biscuit base

Spoon over as much of the Carnation caramel as you want and don't eat it off the spoon like I did because you will feel sick after

Blend the rest of your banana, I think I blended about 3 

Chuck the rest of the ingredients (cheeses, sugar, eggs) into a bowl and give it a really good mix with the blended banana

Pour the mix into the tin, bake for around an hour and then leave it in the fridge until it is fully set - in the photo below it wasn't fully set but I was just too impatient to wait >:)

Okay so it wouldn't win awards for it's looks but it did taste amazing and I'm sure someone else could have served it a lot more neatly than I did!

I kept the cheesecake in the fridge for around 4 days and it was fine, but I would say you wouldn't want to keep it for too long because of the already very ripe bananas inside.

What do you think of this recipe, would you try a slice? :) xx