Kate Donovan

Author: kate

  • Meeting Charlotte Tilbury’s right-hand man

    Meeting Charlotte Tilbury’s right-hand man

    Charlotte Tilbury is my hero. She is partly responsible for getting me back into make-up after a very long break. I love her as an artist and I love her make-up brand because she has made celebrity style red carpet make-up accessible to everyone.

    When I heard that Charlotte’s global lead artist, Nelson Catarino, would be teaching a masterclass at the Charlotte Tilbury Covent Garden store, I booked myself on it straight away. This was my third masterclass with Nelson and I’ve become a huge fan of his as well. He’s also a wonderful make-up artist, specializing in glamourous looks and this time he was showing us how to achieve a glam New Years Eve look. He used the Colour Chameleon pencil in Bronzed Garnet as a base on the mobile lid and a beautiful red eyeshadow from the Vintage Vamp palette on top and in the crease. This was finished off with the lovely bronze glitter from the Dolce Vita palette. Nelson also showed us how to achieve dewy glowing skin.

    I had an amazing evening (but probably drank a bit too much prosecco!). I never get tired of seeing Nelson at work and I’m sure I’ll be going to several more of his masterclasses in 2018!

  • Banana muffins

    Sick of looking at the two overripe, rapidly turning rotten, bananas staring at me from the very stylish new fruit bowl we received as a wedding present, I thought to myself, what better way to avoid wasting that which seemed like such a great idea during last week’s supermarket shop? So I used the recipe for Chocolate and Banana Muffins from Nigella Lawson’s new book Kitchen but, since cocoa powder isn’t the easiest thing to find where I live in Munich, I had to do a bit of adaptation and they became just plain old banana muffins. A teaspoon or two of ginger or mixed spice powder probably would have been a good addition but my main motivation today was just to use up these damn bananas. Why didn’t I just do a search and find a plain banana muffin recipe, you might well ask? I should explain that, in a fit of newly-wedded new-found enthusiasm for cooking, and due to my homesickness for British TV being cured by the recent broadcasting on the German channel RTL of Nigella Express, I have once again become completely obsessed with Nigella Lawson and her recipes. Accordingly I purchased both Nigella Express and Kitchen recently and can’t even countenance eating out at a restaurant right now (totally out of character for me!) such is my obsession with cooking and adapting her recipes. Another recent obsession of mine is the pressure cooker, more of which to follow very shortly, but in the meantime I can confirm that the banana muffins were delicious, not too sweet, and thoroughly recommend them as a breakfast or coffee time treat.