Cooking 9/10ths of the time

Recently I attempted to prove myself via baking. Prove myself as a mother, a baker, a friend and a party thrower. This is my story. Starting now. Almost now. But first; I am not a regular blogger at the best of times, and these are not the worst of times, no they aren't. But they are the busiest of times. So I tend to bake when I'm not screamingly stretched to breaking point. So, recently, no baking. Until now. And with what sweet crumb driven morsel did I decide to rejoin the baking world? A birthday cake for my darling 7 year old. He had expressed many desires over the last 12 months. Gabe tends to plan ahead. For example, as he cut into his cake last year he said "Next year I want a Minecraft Cake". True story, literally as he cut the 6 year old cake. The Minecraft Cake morphed to Angry Birds, Spiders, Volcanoes (again) and then Minecraft and... the Adventure Time cake. And there is stayed - virtually solid. Do you know what Adventure Time is? Short answer

I'm back to the book. David Herbert's wonderful "Best-Ever Baking Recipes". I have been cooking things from this from time to time, but such is my posting malaise I am only now managing to report back. Why a posting malaise? Not sure really, I note that other, more prolific and famous bloggers also go through this and I imagine that this is my, much tinier and less significant version. In fact a few of my absolute favourite bloggers have slowed right down, if not having stopped entirely. I realise how much I loved those posts, now that I have them no longer. Also some of them used to blog a lot. Thank god for Julia - still posting and still as brilliant as ever. Anyway sticky toffee loaf and all that conjures up. It's winter here, the most beloved season by my household, and I am in full winter cooking swing. Baked risotto, lamb shanks, casserole, curry... oh swoon, all so lovely and rich and warming and EASY. Screw summer with all it's salads. This loa

I have no compulsion to bake in summer. None. Zero. You may have noticed, if you're a fan of my banal chitchat, that there hasn't been so much of that lately. That's because Melbourne became hotter than Hades. Think eggs fried on bonnets of cars, lungs singed, poets crying and women gnashing their teeth. Mainly me. Not a fan of the heat. At all. That's WHY I live I live in Melbourne actually. Melbourne is not known for it's temperate climate, instead it's known for freezing winds, unpredictable rain and coffee loving inhabitants. When I visited Seattle I felt right at home.  So, no baking. Screw that. It was 45 (113) outside and approximately 32 (90) indoors and I was only putting the oven on if I was climbing into it, and things didn't get that bad. Whilst American swirled in their Polar Vortex (which sounds like an evil nemesis) we sweltered in Satan's Underpants. But not anymore. Here we are in lovely March, the month that used to be the hottest

Well, you can't blame me for naming the post thusly, the number of trollop style jokes that fly around when you make tarts is disproportionately large. Clearly demand outstrips supply in the provision of tart related joke telling opportunities. Not sure how to exploit this for gain, but theoretically one could. Woohoo! Legs in the air. Not tarty at all. It's was the season to be merry folks and I made a few treats - full disclosure dictates that I need to put the treat making in the context of Book Club and also reference Sue and Michelle. Each year we gather on the Saturday morning before the final book club and we make treats for the group. This year marks the fourth year we have done this and we were as game as ever. And very organised, very, very organised. There is some fun lost when there's no panic - whilst we coasted politely to the denouement of the treat making it was nice, but not frightening and we didn't think that anything would fail. So, yes. Not ve