Cooking 9/10ths of the time

So processed it hurts. Hedgehog falls into the same category as apple cakes and vanilla slices for me; they bring about a wonderful, dreamy nostalgia for the simple and over processed foods of my youth. Sigh. Yes, that's them to the right there: mass produced and not nearly as nutritious or nice as the home made one's. How I loved them. Even now if I discover one of those old fashioned bakeries with their white trays of piped meringues and rows of sausage rolls, cream buns and jam fancies, I cannot help but look for the custard slice or apple cake. Those shops are almost gone now, replaced with wooden floorboarded, caffe latte making establishments. Where gluten free options and slices and small cakes are piled in a haphazard, jaunty manner and the people behind the counter are 48% cooler than you'll ever be. Don't get me wrong, I like those places and I eat there - but they are devoid of nostalgia for me. And Nostalgia is powerful, about 63% more powerful then kr...

I added the exclamation mark, it's fair to say that it wasn't in the recipe as I think it would have placed too much of a burden on the surprise to be really fabulous. It's not really, it's mildly interesting. The first part of the this recipe extravaganza starts in K-Mart - just me and a four year old. We were both recovering from an almighty tantrum back at home, his, not mine, and so things were a bit delicate. His little face was still a bit wet from tears and I still had tufts of hair knotted through my fingers, mine, not his. K-Mart - I was there to find some bulbs for the garden, globes for the lighting fixtures and an art folio for Gabe's collected works. Gabriel has passed through his "yellow period" and we are now entering a more Escher-like technical phase. Subject matter is generally ladders and guns. Holy flaming castles Batman! We left K-Mart with bulbs (yay), globes (yay), three cake tins (triple yay) and a phone (what the?). I tho...

Normally I don't try brand new recipes on book club. Normally I test them on unsuspecting victims like my family and other friends. Yesterday, however, was an exception. Betchya can't wait to find out what this was.. perfect, that's what.  Book club is one of my highlights each month. Twelve funny, clever women meet and eat cake and talk about books, and TV, and often politics and usually children and sometimes gastro. Gastro came up yesterday anyway. Spot the child. Digression :  Right now, this exact second, my son is sneaking up on me. It is adorable. He loves to do this. And he would be aces at it if each door in this house didn't make a massive cracking noise when you opened them. This is because whoever has painted this house before decided that removing the previous layer of paint was prosaic and stupid. Therefore none of the doors fit the frames. "CRACK". Ok, now I can hear him breathing around the corner.  This will finish with h...

That is the bin. Those are muffins. They are the result of not following my inner cook. My inner cook said that the mixture was too wet, and she was right. She is insufferable right now. Insufferable. Anyway. No muffins.

I am making a gluten free cake today. I am doing that for three reasons. Ahem, hrrm, huh-hrm, ahem. Throat officially cleared, and listing will now commence:    1. I found a really awe inspiring recipe with plums in it and I am a complete sucker for anything with plums in it. Plum trees included. 2. I have lunch with my family tomorrow, two members of which are gluten intolerant. This means that should gluten be walking down the street towards them, they wouldn't just merely look the other way, they would cross the road and give it the stink eye. 3. I am trying to avoid more searingly cogent questions about the Easter Bunny from my son. Last night I popped some eggs on Gabe's bed, hoping to delight him in the morning. He was absolutely thrilled and when he said "How did they get here?" I should have answered "Daddy and I bought them for you". But I did not. Instead I said "The Easter Bunny brought them!" At that point he was still so heady wi...

I love me some brown sugar meringues. They remind me of my childhood when Marina's mother would make them and I would swap anything, ANYTHING for one of them at lunchtime. They were crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside and they were amazingly delicious. crunchily delicious My mother didn't make anything like this, in fact my mother did not bake at all. She was of the hippie stir fry variety of mother - she occasionally whipped up creamed rice, rice pudding and lemon delicious pudding. Cakes, no. It's possible that the reason why I bake so much is linked to some repressed desire for a different childhood - or because I like cake. A bit of both. Good session guys! I still love meringues and I make them from time to time as a sort of peace offering to my Dad who cannot have gluten and to whet all my brimming crunchy/soft desires. Recipe (no idea where I go this from - online somewhere) 100g castor sugar (I just watched Some Like it Hot again and each t...

Hello beetroot lovers, I know that you exist because you have been shyly telling me how much you dig the stuff ever since my beetroot carpaccio recipe popped up here. It's exactly like that situation where you mention one day that you were attacked by a squirrel when young and then suddenly everyone's like, "Oh yeah, I was attacked by a squirrel too". Exactly like that. So, I was asked to make a cake with beetroot in it by my co-star Libby, who has been on a de-tox. I think that detoxing is something that young people do, or dilettantes, or if you hit the sauce a bit much and end up rolling down a series of hills (or possibly sand dunes) at night thinking that you are a dachshund and then lay in a gutter and wake the next morning covered in vomit and some sort of red paint. That's just a guess though. Beetroot and chocolate have a high regard for each other. They like to be mixed and they are fond of being baked into a union that only a hungry mouth can free t...