Almost Guilt Free

I am not a chocolate cake person, I may have mentioned that before. I always go for the fruity dessert or the light cake option. I love a good sponge. I know many people who ooooh and ahhhhh over me making sponges, thinking it some magical undertaking. I don't feel too guilty about a generous slice of sponge, assuming of course that the cream is no more than 2" deep! and I've passed this appreciation on to my girls. This is a 2 egg sponge - 2 eggs, 2 once of sugar, 2 once of flour and voila - how easy could it be.

Granny Bet's Walnut Bread

Best sliced, slathered in butter and eaten whilst drinking a cup of tea.

Lemony Snickets

OMG I know, two posts in a row about homemade biscuits but these, OMG like like, they are totally amazing! You simply MUST try these. They are almost like a very moist lemony scone biscuits - if that takes your fancy. I won't tell you how many I've popped into my mouth (they are perfect popping size), but you should put them in a room you don't walk past often, otherwise you will simply eat them all!

Cc's

I'm not so fond of sweet biscuits, although strangely the occasional double dipped tim tam seems to fit into another category altogether. I prefer fruit cakes, coffee style cakes and biscuits that are a little sweet, but preferably with nuts over chocolate. Leila isn't fussed about sweet things and Ella can't have any nuts in her lunchbox biscuits because of all too prevalent allergy problems at school. So these are really just lunchtime biscuits and I'll make something else for my consumption, they're from one of mum's old recipes, probably from the UK Good Housekeeping, I love the crackles on top.

I love the "cookie of the week" over at A Friend to Knit With and think I'll give the lemony snickets a try.

Breakfast

I love this site. I love the simplicity of the subject and the photos. It's my favourite meal of the day, although my breakfast most often involves some type of caffeine and some type of yeast item, nothing I could surprise you with photos of. I love mornings, therefore I love their meal-mate.

I've posted about my love for this treat before I know, but it's almost December and I realised this afternoon that I haven't baked any yet. They are on their third rise now, but should be ready to have with a cup of tea for supper. Mmmmmm. If you have never had a good one and you live in Melbourne, call me for I think mine are pretty good and I'm only too happy to share. For those of you who live elsewhere, here's the recipe.

Australiana 2

Pikelets for breakfast with (not necessarily though ours was) French raspberry jam.

1 cup SR flour

1 tbs of caster sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup of milk

Mix it all together, let it sit for a few minutes (maybe 5) then cook in small batches, pikelets about the size of ummm a segmented tennis ball, or smaller! Eat hot with jam.

What says home, be it Australia or elsewhere, to you?

Australiana 1

Everyone has different ideas of what is typically of their own country. As far as Australia is concerned there are the externally typical such as Kangaroos, Ayres Rock (excuse me, Uluru), Koalas, Sydney Opera House etc. Then there are the icons for those who actually live here or are from here. For me, this is one of them, a very Australian treat, a plain sponge filled with pure whipped cream and topped with passionfruit icing. I confess that my recipe for icing failed me - it soaked in and ran off rather than sitting sweetly on top, but my defence is that my heritage is not Australian hence I couldn't ring my mum (although I'm sure my mum in law would know).

A lovely family dinner (which always makes Leila say "YEAH MUMMA FAMILY DINNER") with french bubbles (as all birthdays demand) and a belated birthday cake, the aforementioned passionfruit sponge made by yours truly.

Sweet or Savory?

You can never have too much fuss

made of you on your birthday, at least that's how I feel.

Tomorrow someone very special in our life is celebrating his birthday. We have got an adult present too, but this is what Ella wanted to make for him. The picture is of nan and pa dancing together while the band plays on the piano, guitar and tamborine in the background.

The spoils of birthday cake making, is the kitchen ever as quiet as it is when little ones are licking the beaters?

Muffins and Rye

Years ago I saw something about food stylists and how they prepare food for photo shoots. They had amazing tricks with dry ice for making roast chickens look as if they'd just been pulled from the oven. There were also weird and wonderful things, which of course now I can't remember any of. Must look it up, think that would be quite a cool job.

Mother's lost her oomph

It took her 10 hours to get to this point and she wasn't moving very much at all. I think the problem may be her initial mix - I used a more commercial brand of yoghurt rather than the biodynamic very alive one I previously did. Tomorrow I'll give her a feed with the good stuff, rest her up for a few days and then see how she is.

And the girls declared it "YUMMMMMO"

I do manage to produce some rather tasty bread but it's not always the prettiest. I think perhaps I need to work a little more on my forming, a bit hasty at the end. It is delish, well worth the wait.

She doesn't move so fast,

this mother of mine - there is no fresh bread for lunch today. A natural leavens takes so much longer than a baker's yeast or dried yeast. I started the bread this morning around 9am, it's now 13:30 and as you can see, we're still a couple of hours off oven time - so it's a dinner loaf today. This is a mill loaf, a combination of strong white, wholemeal and rye flour. I hope, by the end of the day to have some more appetising shots!

Attractive isn't she,

my mother. Come day 3 she's starting to separate slightly, she's also eating more. By the end of tomorrow she should really take off.

The spirit lives on

The Anzac biscuit, do only Australians and Kiwis know their origins, or supposed origins, by this name at least?

I feel I should feel embarassed about showing how badly I care for some of my kitchenwares, as witnessed by the state of one of these biscuit trays. Not sure what it says about me that I'm not, embarassed that is, or at least not too much to share.

Feeding Mother - day 2