When you are a student baking is probably not something that is on top of the agenda, but it should be as its great fun and can be very easy and cheap if you follow a simple recipe.

If you haven’t baked before we have put together a really simple recipe to get your started and hone your skills.

Baking tips –

• Preheat your over first to the temperature you want to bake at.
• Use room temperature eggs not eggs from the freezer.
• Baking isn’t like cooking – you need to be precise with your measurements, so you will need scales.

Basic Sponge Cake
The following is a simple recipe for a sponge cake. You can use this as a base to make other cakes – with a few additional ingredients you can make a chocolate cake for your friends birthday, a coffee cake for a party, or a lemon cake…. the list goes on.

Equipment:
2 x cake tins (20.5cm)
Baking paper
Whisk
Large mixing bowl
Sieve
Wire rack

Ingredients:
Butter, for greasing tins
3 eggs, separated
225g caster sugar
70ml warm water
150g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tsp baking powder

Method:
Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5.

Spread a little butter around the cake tins and line them with baking paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and caster sugar until combined. Carefully add the water and keep whisking until you have a light fluffy mixture and all the ingredients are well combined.
Sieve the flour and baking powder into the bowl.

Whisk the eggs whites in a separate bowl and add them to the other mixture, using a large spoon to scoop them in so that you don’t lose the air.

Spoon the mixture evenly into the two cake tins and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. When
cooked, turn the cakes onto a wire rack to cool. Fill with jam, cream or fruit compote and dust the top with icing sugar.

And thats it! Sit back and relax and once the cake has cooled you have a delicious cake to eat!

If you would like to learn more about baking or for more recipe ideas visit www.bakingmad.com

The company RUSH was created sixteen years ago by Andrew Phouli and Stelios Andrew. They set the company up to offer the highest of hairdressing standards as well as exceptional customer service, and this has led to them now running a flourishing Hair and Beauty group which is right a the forefront of hairdressing in the UK.

With 60 salons across London and the South, they’ve won various awards across all areas of the business including 12 British Hairdressing Awards.
Today they can provide a variety of services to help you to stay beautiful, for your hair, face, and body including:

For Hair:
Styles
Colouring
Perming
Treatments
high and lowlights.

For the Face:
Guinot Facials & Guinot Lifting Facials
Elemis Skin Solutions, Elemis Skin Specific Facials & Elemis Advanced Anti-Aging Facials
Waxing
Eyebrow Threading
Eyebrow Shaping

For Hands & Feet:
Manicure
Pedicure
French Manicure

For The Body:
Stone Therapy
Wraps
Guinot Body Treatments
Waxing
Electrolysis
Indian Head Massage
Swedish Massage
Deep Tissue Massage
Endermologie-Lipo Massage

Plus a variety of other beauty treatments such as eyelash and eyebrow tints, Hollywood lashes, tanning and they even offer a variety of male grooming procedures too, so you can take your fella along with you and he won’t get bored.

Although their prices are already competitive, you can often save money by looking online at printable coupons. These can offer further discounts such as 50% off at one of their new salons for example.
They also offer rebooking discounts, recommend a friend discounts, and even student discounts and discounts for kids under 12. Of course many of these come with conditions that mean you can’t go at the busiest times and still get the discount, but as some of these offer 20% or more off the prices, they can be well worth using.

Settling in to student life can be exhilarating and daunting all at once, one of the biggest challenges you may have to face is dealing with all your own finances and making your money last for the year. You need to know how to make money go as far as possible on everything from nights out to books, food, and well, everything else really. Here’s our guide on how to do this.

Books
Don’t just go out and buy everything new. Start off by seeing if you can borrow books from the library at your university or in town. Look at book swapping sites like readitswapit, and bookmooch. Failing that, try the notice boards and see if anyone’s selling them off cheaply, look on ebay, amazon market place, abebooks.co.uk, stellstudentstuff.com and second hand book shops around town.

Computers
Question deals that offer you a ‘free’ laptop – they’re not always what they seem, and the strings that are attached can make them seriously unviable. Instead, shop around and find the best price you can, then use a cashback site to earn money back when you make your purchase.

Entertainment
We all need down time, time to chill out, relax and let our hair down, so do budget this into your plan, otherwise you might find yourself blowing way too much money in frustration. Take advantage of free and cheap entertainment such as cinema tickets through SeeFilmFirst.com and MomentumScreenings.co.uk where you can get free tickets to new movies. Share a dvd and some snacks with friends, look for special student discount entry prices too.

Food & Shopping
We all need to eat, but the cost of food has gone up so choosing takeaways, and convenience foods will make a big hole in your finances. If you haven’t already learnt to cook, then start learning now as a priority, and check out sites such as TheStudentCookbook.co.uk and YumYum.com for recipes that are aimed at students and are simple and use cheaper ingredients.

When you do your shopping, always write a shopping list, and set your budget for the week avoiding impulse purchases. If you struggle to do this, then look at ordering online instead so you can’t be tempted so easily.

Check sites such as studentbeans.com and NUS.org for information on some places that definitely offer discounts, and remember, never buy something JUST because it’s discounted. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it!

Travel
Plan ahead – book tickets in advance and they’re often cheaper. Remember students can often get discounts on public transport in the form of season tickets. If you’re a student you can get a railcard which will reduce travel costs by around one third too.