I would like a cake that is tall, and moist, and dark, and full of nuts and carrots and brown sugar. I would like a carrot cake that doesn't have pineapple in it.
I would like a recipe for carrot cake that doesn't need tweaking. A recipe that is perfect all on its own. A recipe that can become a household staple for me, one that I can pass down to my children and make for their birthday parties.
I do not want a carrot cake recipe like this one, the one that I used. It looked promising, but it wasn't meant to be.
And now I'll be eating this dry, dense, flat, undercooked cake for a week because I can't bring myself to throw anything away, and I can't even share it with other people because it just isn't good.
I did find the perfect carrot cake once, at my old work. The cake was exactly like it should be: tall, moist, not too sweet, with it's three layers full of cream cheese icing. But I didn't get the recipe because it's not appropriate to go into a bakery and ask them for their recipes.
So I'll just have to keep making every carrot cake recipe that I come across. I might even have to start buying cream cheese in bulk.
I've always wanted to make snickerdoodles. Just because of the name. I didn't really know what they were going to be like when I made them, but they're a biscuit, right? Obviously they're going to be nice. Plus, I didn't have to leave the house to buy any new ingredients to make them. Flour, butter, sugar, cinnamon? I'm sure you've got all those in your house.
For the moment, I'm undecided on whether I actually like these biscuits. They turned out great. They were cakey in the middle and crisp around the edges. They were rolled in cinnamon sugar and were all cracked on top.
But they didn't really taste like that much. And I used self-raising flour, rather than plain, and they were a bit metallic tasting, because of the baking powder that that brand used. Because I've never had snickerdoodles before, I wasn't sure if they were meant to taste that plain (read: bland)or if I'd done something wrong. It doesn't matter. I still ate them all anyway...
Preheat oven to 200C and line two baking trays.
In a large bowl, cream butter and 180g of the sugar until light and fluffy.
Add egg and mix.
Mix in flour, salt and 1 tsp cinnamon.
Combine remaining sugar and cinnamon on a plate.
Roll tablespoons of dough in the cinnamon sugar and place on baking tray. Place them quite far apart as they spread quite a bit. I did 6 biscuits to a tray.
Bake for 10 mins. They'll be soft still, but cooked in the middle and slightly brown on the bottom.
This cake was both a disaster and a success. It seems odd that one cake can be so contradictory, but it's true. It was a success because I hadn't made a cake with quinces before, and there were so many opportunities for it to go badly, but it didn't. The quinces were perfectly poached, the batter tasted good and the syrup on top was amazing.
It was a disaster, though, because of the syrup on top. If you only learn one thing today, please, let it be this: Don't be impatient.
I poured the syrup on the cake while it was cooling in the pan. And then I flipped out the cake onto a plate. When I tried to flip it back onto the cooling rack, the syrup was stuck to the plate and ripped the sticky top off the cake. Not completely, but enough for me to freak out.
I freak out a lot when I'm baking. And I don't think the cake was quite cooked properly.
So there you have it: Contradictions.
A quince is not a pretty fruit. They're motley yellow and covered in a grey fluff. You can't eat them raw because they're outrageously tart. And when you peel and chop them, not only do they brown almost instantly, but they smell funny. After they've been poached, though, they turn a lovely rosey colour and they taste much better than you could have imagined.
I made a fairly simple tea cake batter (is that what you call it?) for this recipe and mashed half the poached quinces into the batter. Then I put the rest of the quinces into the batter, imagining that they would be nice to bite into. Next time, I'd mash all the quinces into the cake, just to see what a difference that makes. I'll have to wait till next year, I guess, because I used all my quinces in this cake.
I took this cake into work and made everyone eat it, and they all seemed to like it. So take that, Disaster!
2 cups poached quinces*
220g self-raising flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
110g unsalted butter, softened
330g sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup pure cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 160C. Grease and flour a 20cm springform pan.
Cream butter and sugar.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one.
Mix flour, cinnamon and salt together.
Beat in half the flour mix.
Add the cream.
Beat in remaining flour mix and vanilla.
Strain poaching liquid from quinces and reserve.
Mash half the poached quinces and fold into the batter.
Pour half the batter into the prepared tin.
Arrange remaining poached quinces over the batter.
Pour the remaining batter over the quinces.
Bake for 1 1/4 hours, or until cake tester comes out clean.
[Optional] Make a sticky quince syrup. In a small saucepan, mix the reserved poaching liquid with 1/2 cup water, 3 tbsp caster sugar and 2 tsps lemon juice. Cook over a low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, until mixture starts to thicken. Pour this over the cake once it has cooled.
*Poach peeled, cored and chopped quinces with about 2 cups water, 4 tbsps sugar, cinnamon and 1 vanilla bean, until soft, about 20-30 mins. If you're new to quinces, you could use less than 2 cups. This was about 8 medium quinces that were a bit bruised and had been eaten by bugs. So I ended up with less use-able fruit than I anticipated.
Sometimes, things don't plan out the way you expected. Even the little things. Sometimes I'm not the perfect housewife I imagine myself to be (and I'm not even married, things must be all kinds of messed up around here).
You get up in the morning with a plan for the day: Meet a friend at 10 for coffee, finish doing the housework (i.e. finish watching "True Blood"), and eventually make something delicious for dinner.
But things don't always go as planned. Your Dad calls in the morning and tells you that your sister and her friend want to go see a movie and you should go too ("The Social Network" was pretty interesting, in case you were wondering), you don't end up meeting your friend till late, and then you have to pick up some new litter for the cat because he's so fussy all the time and doesn't like the stuff that he has at the moment. When you finally come home, you've forgotten to get anything for dinner and there's only 'other stuff' in the house (i.e. pasta and rice but nothing to go with it). Your lovely boyfriend is tired from work and doesn't know what he wants to eat, so you have to go to the grocer and there isn't much to choose from, so you end up getting fancy rissoles and some lettuce. Your lovely boyfriend fires up the barbecue, and starts to cook them. The patties are so big that they never really get cooked in the middle, but they're very crisp on the outside, so you decide to put the in the oven for a bit. But then you both forget about them (the news can be really interesting sometimes), and by the time you remember to pull them out, they're ridiculously crisp and burnt, so you end up throwing them out and having eggs on toast instead. And then your cat gets his paw stuck down behind the heater and can't get out (good one, Rooney).
But these things happen. And this isn't even bad! If burnt rissoles are the biggest problem I've got, I guess my life is pretty good. People burn things, life goes on, the clock keeps ticking on by. I just have to remind myself this sometimes.
But tomorrow, I'll be ready. You better watch out, Friday, here I come...
I made this Jelly for Brent's sister, Kirby's Birthday. She likes gin a lot.
Unfortunately it didn't look as pretty as I'd hoped, but it tasted good and Kirby and her boyfriend, Arie, seemed to enjoy it.
Nigella Lawson suggested putting white currants around the jelly, but I've never seen a white currant before, let alone know where to buy them. I used cucumber instead because Kirby and Arie often put it into their gin and tonics, and it looked pretty.
I was so excited about the jelly when I was making it. I told everyone at work about it, and I was so excited to give it to Kirby instead of a regular cake. I waited until the very last minute to unmould it, because I didn't want it to collapse from sitting around for too long. Unfortunately, the jelly wasn't firm enough and after I put the jelly on a plate, one side of it slowly, ever so slowly, fell away. Like a cliff crumbling after a storm.
I thought this was the last of it, and I turned away to get the cucumber and lemon out of the fridge. When I came back, a little crack had appeared in the middle. As I watched, the crack got bigger until it had split the whole way across. Luckily this part didn't fall away from the rest, but it didn't look good, and golly I was worried.
I perservered and cut up thin slices of cucumber and lemon and lovingly arranged them, hoping to distract from all the cracks.
The car ride over to Kirby's house was definately an interesting one. Brent thought it was hilarious that the jelly wobbled around so much. It looked like a little translucent squid, covered in cucumber. Thankfully he drove carefully and the jelly didn't crack any more.
In the end, I think I'd file this one away as a success and I'm planning to make lots of different flavours. Imagine the possibilities! Vodka and Cranberry! Rum and Coke! Martini! Man Panda!
I'm excited just thinking about it...
Recipe: From Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a domestic goddess'.
300ml water
300g castor sugar
zest and juice of 2 lemons
400ml tonic water
250ml gin
8 sheets of leaf gelatine
Put water and sugar into a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Boil for 5 mins.
Take off the heat and add lemon zest. Let sit for 15 mins.
Strain sugar syrup into a measuring jug. (If you don't strain the jelly, you'll get all those little zesty bits that are on the top of my jelly.)
Add lemon juice, gin and tonic. This should reach 1,200ml
Soak gelatine leaves in cold water for 5 mins.
Put 50ml water into a small saucepan and bring to the boil.
Take off the heat and whisk in the gelatine leaves (squeeze excess water off the leaves first).
Pour some of the gin mix into the sauce pan, then pour it all back into the jug.
Pour mix into a 1 1/4 L greased jelly mould and leave to set in the fridge for at least 6 hours.
It rained all day today. It was super cold and it snowed on the mountain. The first day that it snowed heaps all winter, and I have to work all weekend so I'm not gonna get to see the snow even a little bit! That's just typical.
It stopped raining just long enough for me to walk to the shops and buy the ingredients for a chocolate whisky cake. I've been thinking about this cake since Brent's sister left a bottle of Canadian Club at our house 2 weekends ago.We've got a cake at work that is a Grand Marnier Chocolate mousse cake which is delicious, and I thought I could make something similar using the CC. ThenI saw a recipe for bourbon cupcakes on everybody likes sandwiches, and I thought I'd adapt it a little bit to make a whole (non-vegan) cake.
I was super excited about it. Chocolate? Booze? What's not to like.
Except, something went wrong. On this cold, rainy day, somewhere, something went wrong and I just didn't make a very good cake. The sauce was ok, but it wasn't thick enough. It just ran straight off the cake and it was Super alcoholic. It was like eating chocolate liquors, but without the satisfaction.
The cake was soft, but wasn't as chocolatey as I'd hoped. Basically, disaster.
Originally I'd made this to take to a dinner party, but the party was cancelled at the last minute. This was a stroke of luck, really. How could I face anyone with this horrible, boozey cake I'd made? Thank god no-one else had to eat it. No. Not really. It wasn't seriously that bad. But it wasn't seriously good. It wasn't even plain good. I guess we can't all be good in the kitchen all the time. I'm not even gonna give you the recipe for this, because I'm sure you can find a nicer one somewhere. Maybe you could just have some whisky and some chocolate and you'll be happier than me.
So I'll just sit here, while Brent watches the footy, and eat my boozy cake. Maybe if I eat enough, it'll start to taste good. We'll see what happens.
