Travels

I'm currently in Exmouth, WA. The trip has been amazing so far. On Saturday, WWKIP Day, I spent most of my time swimming with Whale Sharks. I did manage to get in a couple of rows of knitting though.

Choc- Cup Cakes

At the start of the week I was impatiently awaiting a package of peanut butter cups. The disappointment of finding the post office box still empty on Tuesday lead me to make a half batch of choc-peanut butter cup cakes. Of course the peanut butter cups arrived the following day, and I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch of cups, followed by a cupcake, followed by more cups. (Followed by a jog!)


Mum requested more chocolate cupcakes to take to her boyfriend this weekend, and I opted to use up some leftover coconut milk to make choc-coconut cupcakes. I made the batch using normal wheat flour and thus couldn't eat them, but I did take out a scoop of the batter pre-flour and mix in some spelt flour to make a single wheat free cupcake for me. To compensate for having only one cupcake, I claimed all the extra icing. :)


Both batches were made using mashed prunes instead of butter or oil, and I was really surprised by how well they turned out. The original chocolate cake recipe calls for the butter and sugar to be creamed, as well as for the eggs to be separated and whites whipped to soft peaks. I just chucked the prunes, sugar, and eggs together and mixed them thoroughly, and the cupcakes turned out really moist but still light and fluffy. Little bits of prune are visible in the cakes, but don't alter the flavour at all.

Lemon-Blueberry Cake

The above is a picture of the Lemon-Blueberry cupcakes that I made to take camping on ANZAC Day long weekend. My mum loves lemon flavoured desserts so I'd been saving up recipes to make for her, but I decided to use the Lemon-Blueberry Yogurt Loaf recipe that was posted on Smitten Kitchen not long ago.

The cake was wrong in so many ways: the juice from the frozen blueberries spread through the batter and turned it grey; the berries all sank to the bottom; I overfilled the cases; they were over cooked and stuck to the cases; and the cake itself had the weirdest texture, being light but not crumbly, slightly rubbery, and incredibly moist (despite the fact that I marginally reduced all liquid amounts).

But mum LOVED them, and wants me to make them again already. I think they would be perfect served as pudding with icecream.

Here's a few random photos from camping:

Coconut Cake

Mum used to make this cake for us all the time when we were kids. We have dozens of coconut cake recipes in all the different cooking books, but the recipe for this one is handwritten into a book that is older than I am, and mum doesn't remember where she got it from. It's an incredibly moist cake, but I still decided to up the richness this time by using coconut milk where it calls for normal milk. It was great.




I never mean to make the icing quite so pink, but I always end up spilling a bit too much into the mix. And just quietly, I really like it like that.

Lacey Scarves

I finished and blocked my Lace Ribbon Scarf on the weekend, and it's now sitting in a post pack waiting to be sent off to a friend in the States. I wanted to make something for my friend's husband as well, but I have no immediate access to yarn at the moment, and I want the scarf to get there so she can use it a bit before the weather warms up. (I know exactly what to make for the Mr, so he'll get his own package as soon as I can manage it)

I originally intended the scarf to be for me, but then realised it was perfect for my friend so I designated it hers, and bought some more Regia Silk to make another scarf for me. Given that there are thousands of options for making a lace scarf, I couldn't bring myself to make the same one again, so I chose this standard fern pattern because I'm lazy and the pattern is easy to memorize, but also because I think it's really pretty. The yarn is 'natur' because the colour range for Regia Silk is fairly ordinary, and I want to give dying a go. I'm thinking dark turquoise or purple.

I'm almost finished the second of three balls for the scarf, so I need to hurry up and procure some more yarn before I finish and have nothing else to knit.

Australia

I love Australia.






(Learn about Tim Tams here)

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.