Wedding Morning Tea Cakes

Wedding Morning Tea Cakes

One of the ladies in Mum’s staffroom is getting married this weekend, so I made some suitably simply elegant cupcakes for the staffroom morning tea.

The chocolate cake recipe is from The Australian Woman’s Weekly cupcakes book

Double Chocolate Mud Cake
60g dark chocolate coarsely chopped
160ml water
90g butter, softened
220g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
100g SR flour
2 tbsp cocoa
40g almond meal

Preheat oven to 170°C (150°C fan forced). Line a standard 12 hole muffin tin with patty pans.
In a double boiler melt the chocolate in the water, stirring till smooth. Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs. Sift in the remaining dry ingredients and the chocolate mixture, stirring till smooth. That is it. Then it is just a matter of dividing the mixture evenly between the 12 pans (I used a pastry bag as the mixture is quite runny) and cook for about 20 minutes.

Once they are cooled it is time to decorate.
I warmed some blackberry jam to use as the “glue” and coloured the white fondant to a very pale pink. On a well dusted silicone mat, I rolled the fondant out nice and thin, then pressed a Fiskars Texture Plate into the fondant to make it “all pretty” on top.

Place in a container and every so often open the lid a fraction and inhale the chocolate. Or you could just eat one 🙂

Easter Cooking

no not hot cross buns but just good food. I had plans of going away this glorious four day weekend, going bush and exploring. Sadly though that has not been the case as it is nearly two months from when I wrecked my ankle and it is still causing me havoc. Most recently from me thinking it was better than it was and overdoing it, so much that I spent a fair bit of Friday in bed recovering.

Yesterday we had not one but three phone calls from Iceland!!!! That does not happen very often even less than once in a blue moon, more like once is a red moon. It was one of my brother’s birthdays so he rang to say hello and then he passed the phone to one of our other brothers. Then one of my sisters rang to have a chat. Then to top it off Karl the next eldest in age brother from me rang from Ísafjörður the town of his birth where he and a big handful of mates were at Aldrei fór ég suður or I Never Went South a music festival that is exactly how I think a festival should be and so looking forward to going to one year soon. One of the first things Karl mentioned was that he had seen Svavar play with his band Hraun earlier on and commented on his polaroid picture taking which I had to laugh at as last year when Svavar was here I think he quite possibly took more poloraids than he drank beers and that is saying something. A little while later Karl asked if I wanted to speak to Svavar as he had just walked outside, I said of course why not and that was then the most amusing thing. Karl handing a phone to someone who does not know him and saying there is a girl on the phone from Australia for you. Very hilarious. So that was quite a fun thing.

When I woke up Sunday morning I didn’t expect to speak to any family in Iceland and much less Svavar.

Back to the food.

Easter Friday I made a a big whopping batch of pesto (we are talking 1kg plus here). Don’t underestimate my love for pesto or the fact that my pesto could rival that of the best Nonna made pesto from Genoa well I haven’t tested it against a Nonna from Genoa but I think it could. I made a pesto loaf using a slightly different bread recipe to what I normally used and well moral of that story, when making a plain white loaf, use the recipe you know! It is edible but that is about it, the Mum analysis is that I probably altered the water content too much when adding the pesto.

Dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday.
lunch and dinner
Four slices of bread toasted on/under the grill, rubbed with a little bit of garlic, topped with some more pesto, then some toasted prosciutto, some semi-dried tomatoes, a sprinkle of salt/pepper/oil and a fine grating of pecorino. It was quite delightful, my only wish would if we had had some salad greens in the fridge to add as well.

Lunch for Mum and I today as well as lunch for the next two days.
lunch today for Mum and I
Little egg and bacon tarts.
Puff pastry shell pre-baked for a few minutes to crisp the bottom up, spread with some pesto, filled with sautéed onion, garlic, shallots and bacon, topped with egg, pecorino, seasoning and cream fraiche with a semi-dried tomato on top, baked for a handful of minutes and served with a quick grate of pecorino and served with a good handful of fresh beans.

Then in the freezer I have some lime granita and I made a pretty tasty dinner tonight which was cannelloni stuffed with mince, pesto, ricotta, parmigiano, bread crumbs, seasoning, parsley, semi-dried tomatoes, onion and an egg to help bind it all together in a sauce of tomatoes, spinach, ricotta, onion, garlic. Pretty nice, no photos of either though because the lime granita is just that and well the cannelloni as good as it tasted didn’t exactly look good and most of it disappeared pretty quickly.

Tomorrow it is Tuesday which means the end of the four day weekend and back to work.

line of eggs

Despite promises by Mum that we wouldn’t be getting any Easter Eggs this year, Pabbi just couldn’t resist and since Mum is walking the border line at the moment somewhere between the Mt Lindsay border gate and the Boonah border gate (hopefully much much closer to the Boonah gate since she started at the Mt Lindsay gate on Friday morning), Pabbi could do as he wanted.

I woke up this morning to find a carton of eggs on my desk. Never mind the fact that I still have my three Lindt Bunnies from last year on my desk and we only finished the other eggs in September. I did only buy them though to take photos of though and I didn’t eat them last year after taking photos of them so I could take photos of them again this year!

First thing I did was to go outside and have a play. This was one of the photos I took. Pabbi asked me what I was doing. I said taking photos because what else am I meant to do with them? Eat them?
line of eggs

Star Cakes

Wednesday at work I was pretty certain we had a birthday so I made some little cakes, if there wasn’t a birthday we would just have a nice morning tea, turns out that one of the girls did have a birthday so I was right after all.
This is what I made 🙂
Star Cakes

The cakes were lime buttercake which was really really really good. very very limey, every time I opened the container I would get this big lime hit 🙂

Lime Buttercake
This made 11 smallish cakes in a standard 12 hole muffin pan. In the future I would multiply the recipe by 1.5 to get 12 decent sized cakes.

90g butter, softened
90g cream cheese, softened
zest of 1 lime or an orange or a lemon or a grapefruit etc.
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
50g self raising flour
75g plain flour

Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan forced) and line a 12 hole muffin pan with patty pans.
Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar together till pale and light. Beat in eggs and zest, then beat in the flours till just combined. Divide the mixture amongst the patty pans and smooth down the mixture as best as you can. Bake for 15 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

To ice.
This was my first time playing with fondant icing and I quite enjoyed it. I was using readymade fondant icing so all I had do to is knead the colour in and roll it out. I do plan to have a play with making my own fondant sometime but not now.
What I did.
Warm some jam till runny and keep over a bowl/saucepan to keep it warm.
On a silicon mat or a bench top dusted with icing sugar, knead a portion of fondant till smooth, flatten fondant out into a pizza and with a toothpick dipped in food dye, prick the surface of the fondant repeatedly. Fold the fondant up and knead again till the colour is evenly distributed. You will have to do this a few times till you get the colour you desire. Roll out icing to about a 5mm thickness. Next comes the hard bit you need to find a circle cutter which is the same size as the tops of your cakes. My circle biscuit cutter was too small, next I tried a glass – too big, then I grabbed a Nalgene container, and it was the perfect size. Using your circle cutter cut out fondant rounds. Brush a cake top with the warmed jam, lift a fondant circle onto the top of the cake and smooth down. Repeat till all cakes are iced. To add the stars it is the same idea, cut out fondant, brush star with a little jam and adhere to the the fondant topped cake. Push a cachous on top and you are done 🙂

The week and the end.

Monday, 71/366
little lost shoe, 71/366

Tuesday, 72/366
lantern, 72/366

Wednesday, 73/366
ohhhh dof diptych, 73/366

Thursday, 74/366
the things that are dear to me, 74/366

Friday, 75/366
a ray of light on a the seat, 75/366

Saturday, 76/366
stop, the end, 76/366
Stop Driving, such a West End thing. In my case though it is Stop 366.
This photo marks the end of my attempt at 366 in 2008. I was going to try to hold at out to 100/366 but I am throwing my lens cap into the ring now.
I have taken some photos I would never have taken before in the last 76 days, photos that I like but I have also taken photos which I don’t really like and were only taken because I needed a photo for the day.

The last couple of weeks it has seemed that taking a photo for the day has been the only thing on my mind. What will I take for the photo for today etc etc. I have better, more productive things to do with my time than sit there thinking, what in my room have I not taken a photo of.

And perhaps I might even shock horror post here more as I won’t be spending time, thinking what oh what can I take a photo of today.

a place of music.

On the Tuesday, the computer said go to Rics, stay out late and enjoy every minute of it. I did as the computer said.

Grassroots Street Orchestra (herein referred to as GSO because that is a whole lot easier to say and makes me think of a SO when I say it) and Mister Laneous & The Family-Yah (herein referred to as Mr Laneous) played a late Tuesday night gig this past Tuesday and even though I stayed out way past my bed time (am not a uni student any more) as the show started a little bit later than they tend to it was worth every bit of it.

I had seen part of a set by Mr Laneous a couple of weeks ago when they were playing a Sunday afternoon slot at Rics and I had liked what I had heard for sure. This time I got to see a whole set and it was like I am tempted to say a spoonful of sweet chilli philly, though it was a more grittier feel than that. One thing I did make a special note in my diary of was this song which I will call Going Crazy/Crazy for You, which was a pretty sweet duet affair with Mr Laneous and Georgia Potter. Really wish now that I had taken more photos of them but I was a bit slack and I made up for it with photos of GSO.

The Family Yeah

GSO.
I remember the first time I saw an “ad” for a GSO gig in a Time Off and thinking that sounds like a pretty cool band and I should get up and go to the gig. For some reason I didn’t. I wish I had now because between then and when I first saw GSO live in January, I have missed a lot of opportunities. That is life though and as much as I wish I could go back and start things over I can’t so I move forward.

GSO was raw music, words, reason. It was not really about a band playing to an audience, it was a much more fluid environment with the band feeding off the energy of the crowd and the crowd absorbing every word, note and arm waving of GSO.

Side note: Something else I have come to realise in the last week about local acts over national acts and even more so over international acts is that whilst the sound of a local act may not be as polished or the stage show as an international, I think given the option nine times out of ten now I would pick seeing a local act as they live in the same city as you. They have to deal with the same politics, events, landscape as you and it is through the music that they express how they see it. I rarely accept friend requests on myspace from bands that are not local. I have so many ideas to develop and enrich the local music scene (in fact I have a notebook full) and one day I hope I am able to get at least some of them up off the ground.

Back to GSO. Apart from having total respect for how Surya wraps his tongue around those words, it is just the right music for life at the moment.
GSO Crowd
steve
Surya

Gig Gallery