Banana Bread

As you can see, I baked banana bread. Much to my surprise, this was the best banana bread I have ever made! I usually make banana cake rather than bread, partly because I grew up eating banana cake (with lemon icing) and I still use my mum's recipe which is perfect, and partly because I'm simply a cake fiend.

I opted for banana bread this time though, because Fran prefers it, and because last time I made the cake with white sugar rather than the specified brown sugar (which is very hard to find in Germany) it turned out really light and fine instead of dense and moist like it's supposed to be. This is also why I was so surprised that the banana bread turned out so well, because the recipe I used also called for brown sugar, but I used white, and somehow it still came out incredibly moist. In fact, it was almost a hybrid of banana cake and bread; dense and moist like the former, but not too crumbly and easy to slice like the latter. Perfect with a bit of butter (though it went down just fine without the butter too) and a cup of Earl Grey tea.

This banana bread was my last baking task in Berlin. The following day I headed back home, taking a big chunk of banana bread to eat on the first of three flights, and 30 hours later I was in Brisbane, Australia. I have mixed feelings about being back here, but at the very least I am excited to have easy access to brown sugar, liquid vanilla extract, choc chips, and of course fresh tropical fruit.

Choc Oat Hazelnut Cookies

I baked some ordinary cookies this afternoon. But in this household, even if your cookies are crap they will be eaten, and the first half of the batch looked like this ->
before the second half was even out of the oven.


I made these cookies a few weeks ago and they were really good, so the scribbled down recipe was stuck on the fridge and that's what I worked off today. Just by looking at the recipe I expected it to be too dry, and instead of doing my usual fix everything trick of adding milk (and what I probably did last time), I went looking on the computer for the recipe, couldn't find it, and ended up adding more flour and another egg. I knew this was stupid as soon as I did it.


The cookies aren't actually bad, but they're disappointing, and not up to my usual standard. They're a bit eggy (funny that), and not as sweet as they should be. The only other problem really is that they're just kind of... ugly.

Septopus!

It's mail out week for the Ravelry Australian Knitters Bag Lady Swap. The chances are pretty slim that my swappee will see this post, so I think it's safe to share a preview. I love this little octopus that I made. I know he's kinda lame, but he's just so cute and fun. Plus, he's actually only got seven legs because I was using the left over cotton from the bag and I ran out. He's a septopus!

Here's a horribly blurry pic of the package. I had thought that he didn't fit into the box, but when I was packing it up yesterday I tried folding the bag differently and just managed to squish the toy in too. So I was franticly weaving in the ends so I could include him and still get to the post office on time, and I didn't notice how blurry the pic was. I think he looks amusingly freaked out in the box there.

After all that, I got to the post office too late, so I'm heading there right now.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to everyone! As you can see to the right, the easter bunny (my flatmate) already visited our household, because she is going away for the weekend. Within seconds of taking this photo the eggs found themselves in my belly, and that was after I'd already eaten most of the chocolate bunny I bought for myself yesterday. (No, I didn't have chocolate for breakfast. I had muesli and banana for breakfast. The chocolate was my lunch). I'll be good and save the Lindt bunny for Sunday though.


Like 171 other people on Ravelry so far (plus the 1707 queues), I've already cast on the Lace Ribbon Scarf from the latest Knitty. It's supposed to be my aeroplane knitting for next week, but that's only if I can keep my grubby little hands off it. I've got several other projects that need finishing: I need to sew the lining for my Bag Swap bag, and hopefully knit two more small items for the package, ready for sending on Tuesday; and I want to get this Polo Top done before I leave in case I have to gift it to Fran, if it doesn't suit me.

Latvia

I recently visited Riga, the capital of Latvia. I really liked the city and the people, but unfortunately it wasn't the most fun trip ever because I ran out of things to do and felt rather lonely, and I spent the last few days mostly reading and hiding from the weather. Transport around the Baltic isn't very good, so visiting Estonia or Lithuania wasn't really practical without a bit of advance planning. Five days was just an awkward amount of time.

I had one day of sunshine to take some photos of the beautiful Art Nouveau buildings that make the old centre a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I actually liked the old and dirty buildings better than many of the restored ones, which seemed somehow fake and lacking in character.

The Latvians seem to really love their bread, cheese, beer, and pickles. I didn't try any bread or pickles (just gawked at the huge piles of pickled everything at the markets), but I ate plenty of cheese in a myriad of forms, and sampled a few local brews which were very nice. I was tempted to buy some real Latvian mittens, but I couldn't bring myself to do it when I can make them myself. So I searched out the local yarn stores, which stocked mostly italian yarns. One shop had a massive number of bags of balls or cones of all sorts of yarn, some of which were fantastic bargains. But I'm in no position to be purchasing bulk mohair, even if it only costs 10 Lats/kg! So I came home empty handed.

Sharing the love with soft and squishy yarny goodness

I enjoy knitting for other people, and it's always nice when the recipient of a knitting item is genuinely excited by and appreciative of a gift. I'm a serial beanie and scarf maker, and most friends have at least one of each from me. I'm pretty easy to please, all I expect in return is a thank you, so the list of will not knit for people is quite short, though I must admit that a couple of names ended up on the list because they appreciated the knitted items more than me!


A friend of mine who lives in London has been feeling a bit down lately, so I knit her some cheery yellow wristwarmers in squishy alpaca and sent them off last week. She sent me an sms on Saturday saying "I just got your gift and it made me cry. Thank you so so much!", and posted about them today on her blog, saying that she's been wearing them every day. In a comment to that post, another friend mentioned "I wear the maroon and black scarf you made every day btw". The scarf she's referring to was made in 2001, and was actually what got me back knitting regularly!

It makes me feel all soft and squishy like a nice ball of alpaca.

Baking

I mostly only bake in the evenings, which isn't the best time to photograph the results. Unfortunately there isn't usually much left the next day to photograph. This batch of cookies survived the night almost intact (I only ate a couple, and no one else was home). I wanted to play with the cookie cutters so I made some simple butter cookies with some mixed spice thrown in for interest. They were actually really good, and they disappeared very quickly once they were discovered by the rest of the household.


Since the the butter cookies there has been a batch of choc-hazelnut cookies, the last three of which someone had for breakfast the following day (I'd eaten half a dozen as my dinner, so I wasn't in a position to criticise), and on Friday night I made wholemeal bread rolls and pizza scrolls. There's two bread rolls left, and the last scroll was gobbled up this morning.