let them eat cake

It was my flatmate's engagement party on Saturday night, and we were all supposed to bring a dessert. So I decided to make an engagement ring cake!!! What a great way to procrastibake.

I started by making a buttercake from the Edmonds cake mix. I feel ashamed even admitting this because I don't usually like using packets for baking, but there's no denying it's a reliable and simple way to make a cake for decorating. (It's not half bad as far as taste goes, either.) If you are above packet mixes, try this recipe.


It's fairly easy to manipulate this kind of shape into an engagement ring, obviously:


The recipe I used for the icing was the Vienna Cream recipe:

125 g/4 oz butter at room temperature
1.5 cups icing sugar
2 T milk

Place butter in small bowl of an electric mixer and beat until it is as white as possible.
Gradually add about half the sifted icing sugar, beating constantly.
Add milk gradually.
Then gradually beat in the remaining icing sugar.
Mixture should be smooth and easy to spread with a spatula.

My flatmate's ring is white gold, with a sapphire in the middle and a diamond on each side of it. So it was easy enough colouring the icing for the stones - not so easy for the silver-coloured ring. I ended up choosing "gold" colouring for the ring, which turned out more yellow than gold. But never mind!


And then I made it more beautiful:


I felt pure happiness looking at my cake. I was also very proud when my cake was first choice for a number of children at the party.

ten of the mostest

About three years ago, on my old blog, I made a list of ten of the mostest. And here are ten more of them.

1. Most uncomfortable, crazy honeymoon ever?
This one would be it. Or at least it would be in the top five.

2. Most fun I will never have?



Sigh... if only I could dance.

3. Silliest, most pointless new law?

France's decision to ban the burqa/niqab/etc. As appalled as I am at the idea of wearing full body covering in this way, and as much as I feel that it's probably quite a repressive thing to make someone do, I am even more appalled at a society that thinks it can decide who can and cannot wear what is essentially just another item of clothing. The only effect such a law can have is to make wearing a burqa seem rebellious and therefore attractive.

Go Kenza Drider and a whole bunch of other Muslim women in France for sticking it to the French authorities.

4. Quickest homemade chocolate fix?

Three minute chocolate mug cake. Highly recommended if you are lazy and hungry. Make sure you include the chocolate chips.

Also, on a food- and chocolate-related theme, the recipe I am MOST tempted to use for our Singalong Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party?

Bavarian Decadent Chocolate Cake. [I did some internet research on Bavarian and Bulgarian food - figuring these are close enough to Vulgaria to be acceptable. More on this on some other occasion.]

5. The thing I am most looking forward to about having a job/career?

Money. Even a job that is not paid particularly well could more than double my current income! It sounds incredibly materialistic of me, and partly it is - it will be nice to buy new clothes etc. again - but I am trying to plan for this change wisely, budget well, keep a modest lifestyle and put a sizeable portion aside for savings and charity. Start well, so that I don't get used to squandering too much, and yet buy myself some nice things and enjoy them.

6. Most dreaded sentence?

"Hey Allie - it's Friday." (In a significant tone. Followed shortly by "And Saturday comes afterwards." Followed by mental anguish.)

7. Movie most recently seen?

Never Let Me Go, starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and some guy whose name I forget. I don't regret seeing it - it was good - but I wish I had read the book first, and as films go, it was very intense. Any one read the book, or anything else by Kazuo Ishiguro?

As for DVDs, my flatmates and I watched 27 Dresses last night. It was pretty funny. I was pleasantly surprised.

8. Most enthusiastic musicians?



9. Three things I am most looking forward to over the next month?

(a) Perfecting all the little details of my thesis. Printing it off and getting it bound. Handing it in, getting the photo of this crucial moment, and releasing it into the unknown.

(b) The royal wedding. I feel silly to admit this. I feel like I should be an anti-royalist. But I remember my sister telling me about how exciting it was to watch Charles and Diana's wedding back in 1981, and feeling jealous that she got to see something like that. (I also felt jealous of my dad, that he got to watch the first man landing on the moon, but this isn't in quite the same league.) Now I get a chance to see a royal wedding - it should be fun! I think it would be even more fun to have friends over with whom to watch it, to serve tea and scones, and to ooh and aah over the clothes and to judge every single last detail. Sounds like a plan, Stan.

(b) Our singalong Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party. Of course.

10. The place I would most like to visit, currently?

Israel. I know it seems like a dangerous place to go, but when is Israel ever going to be safe? I want to wander the streets of a place sooooo oooooold. I want to imagine. I want to do my own little pilgrimage. (I want to visit some of the places nearby, too. Damascus. Petra. Tripoli. Cyprus. Et cetera.)

things that are good

I've been feeling a bit bad lately that I've been loading all this dark earthquake stuff on you guys. And now that I'm back in Christchurch I'm feeling a lot more ... normal. So here is my list of things that are good in the midst of all the crappiness.

1. Having a home. As the facebook page says, you know you're in Christchurch when you are lucky to have a roof over your head, even when you're a millionaire. Also, being home.

2. Recent newsflash - the 22 bodies they expected to find under the rubble of the Cathedral were simply not there! A nice change to the rising-bodycount-stories.

3. This is not Haiti. This is not Libya.

4. There are plenty of ways to help out. The Student Volunteer Army is one of the more famous ways. There's also the 'Farmy Army' which rolled into town with its farm equipment and, with the SVA, got rid of a few hundred thousand tons of silt. There is also the Christchurch Baking Army and Comfort for Christchurch, to whom I dropped off sixty muffins (see below) and a bunch of other things today. You can volunteer for the Red Cross, or at a shelter for displaced people, or you can just drive over to the affected areas and start door-knocking and handing out supplies on your own initiative.


5. In the middle of all of this, people have a sense of humour. See the photo below. Also see Rocky, an uninvited guest to a Redcliffs home.


6. All these things are coming to the surface so visibly in a really moving way: Love, community spirit, humility, friendship, unity, inclusiveness.

7. I have family and friends who are alive and well.

8. I think my eyes have perhaps been opened a little. I will not scoff light-heartedly at material possessions again. They are useful, and the people whose possessions have vanished in the blink of an eye are living hard lives right now. At the same time, I have to recognise how little we have that is permanent, and how unnecessary many things are that I wanted before.

9. I am learning to appreciate people I didn't really value before, or look at them in new ways. Businesses and commerce are important. Many of them have been very kind in the wake of the earthquake. Engineers, the natural enemy of the University of Canterbury arts student, are important and hard-working. Strong muscles are useful, as shown by the video below:



10. Because the cordon around the city is still in place, we are unable to return some DVDs we got out from a central video store. :) Much more time to watch period dramas (Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Rebecca, and Sense and Sensibility) and classic movies (The Great Dictator, The Great Gatsby, and Love in the Afternoon)!

11. I know this is not particularly relevant to quaking, but there is a new issue of Halfway Down the Stairs out, and I really like it. That in itself makes me happier.

thank you, russian fudge

I had a meeting with one of my supervisors yesterday, during which I had a lightning bolt of knowledge, as it were. A thunderclap. It said:

I am really, really sick of this.

I went downstairs to my office space, and sat staring blindly at my computer screen while rebellious thoughts of dropping out of university ran through my head. Dropping out, and going to live on a Fijian beach, gathering shells for a living. Or starting my own ashram in the Indian hills. Or something like that.

Then I suddenly remembered that I was going to two different dessert parties that evening and still hadn't got anything to take with me. Oh joy!! I rushed out, went home, and procrastibaked.

Russian fudge recipe


3 cups sugar
Half cup milk
3/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
125 grams butter (about 4oz I think)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon golden syrup (= corn syrup)

Before you start, get a tin to pour the fudge into, and line it with baking paper. Later you will need to put the saucepan in a sink of cold water, to beat the fudge, so get the sink ready, with about a 3 or 4 cm water level. I find it works best, as well, if I have all the ingredients ready to go, measured out and with spoons ready, so that you can get them into the saucepan quickly.

Place the sugar and milk in a saucepan and bring to the boil.
Add the condensed milk, butter, salt and golden syrup. Boil, stirring often. Once the mixture starts to go a little darker, stick in a thermometer,* and keep stirring.
When the fudge has reached the correct temperature, remove from the heat and place in the sink of cold water. Beat for about 3 minutes with a wooden spoon. It's really important to beat quite vigorously until the fudge really starts resisting!! Then pour into the tin.
When cool, mark into squares. When completely set, break the squares apart.

* If you have a thermometer: I usually heat until the "soft ball" stage, which is about 116*C/240*F.
If you don't have a thermometer: Test the fudge by dropping a small amount into a quarter cup of cold water. If it forms a soft ball when pressed between your fingers, the fudge is ready. (I find this a pretty confusing way to figure it out, and so I would really recommend getting a thermometer!)

******************************************************************

Now, I feel not exactly wonderful about the amount of work I still have to do on my thesis. I do feel resigned to my fate, however, and at least a tiny bit determined to finish. At the very least, I still have a small supply of sugary fudgey goodness. Thank you, procrastibaking, for restoring equilibrium and sanity!

copycat procrastibaking

A friend of mine brought some cupcakes with her to university the other day. A mark of real generosity of spirit, I think, because these were truly great cupcakes. I got the recipe off her - it can be found here - and proceeded to copy her.

"Velvet Chocolate and Beetroot Cupcakes" - which I made with cream cheese icing, like my friend, instead of the chocolate fudge icing suggested by the recipe. (They also make about 24 cupcakes, unlike the 16 suggested by the recipe.)


I don't know if you've ever eaten baking that involved beetroot - I certainly hadn't - but I was surprised at how beautiful these cupcakes were. I think it was the beetroot that gave the chocolate an added fruitiness and moistness.

I had not realised, either, how happy cupcake-making can be. I don't usually make them, but there's something about their general prettiness that made me feel so much more happy to be in the kitchen. This was less of a procrastibaking episode than normal.

pie ... and cider

I'm going through a cider phase at the moment. I LOVE IT. And the other night when I decided to make a rhubarb pie, and discovered I was missing one ingredient - an orange - I decided to use cider instead!

Okay, so it's not the most thrilling recipe adaptation ever made. It's exciting for me, though, because I normally keep to the recipe as if I'm rewiring a circuit and one false move will zap me. This also happens to be the dessert that I always requested when I was a child, and which my mother always made for my birthday, etc. So it's pretty remarkable that I would allow anything to change about it.

So this is the recipe for my rhubarb and cider pie, which is MOSTLY someone else's recipe, from a long time ago, but partly mine!

I cheat and buy sweet shortcrust pastry, and use it to line the pie tin. Keep some aside for the lattice top.

For the filling you will need about 500g rhubarb stems (without the poisonous leaves) chopped up into small slices, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon jelly (jell-o?) crystals, 1/4 cup flour, 2 tablespoons melted butter, and enough cider to make the whole lot of this moist but not too runny.

Put all this into the lined pie tin.

To make a lattice top:
1 - roll the pastry out into a circle measuring the same as the top of the pie.
2 - cut it into 1cm strips.
3 - Drape half the strips across the pie in one direction.
4 - Fold every second one back.
5 - Lie a strip crosswise, near the centre, and then unfold the folded strips.
6 - Fold the previously unfolded strips back over the crosswise strip.
7 - Continue following this method, until you have used all the strips and formed a lattice design.
Press all of these against the edges.

Bake at 220*C / 430*F for 20 minutes until golden brown, then at 180*C / 350*C until the rhubarb is tender.

This is SERIOUSLY YUMMY. Be careful. It disappears fast.

wellington cookies

Tomorrow, I am visiting our nation's capital, Wellington, for two nights. I'm presenting a paper at a conference there, something I still have trouble saying without feeling like an immature impostor.

My big brother used to live in Wellington when I was a girl, and I would go up to visit him and his wife, upon occasion. I remember, the first time I went up by myself, baking some peanut butter cookies which he really, really loved, and so the second time I went, I baked the same cookies.

Yesterday, I was thinking, 'hm, I really should do some baking to take up to Wellington with me so I don't go and buy junk food' - and without realising it, my mind leaped immediately to the peanut butter cookie recipe which I still have. Only just noticed this now, and so I am rechristening these cookies for all time : 'Going to Wellington cookies' they shall be.

It is a really yummy recipe and I fully recommend it:

150g self-raising flour (5 oz)
125g sugar (4 oz)
125g soft butter (4 oz)
125g crunchy peanut butter (4 oz)
125g brown sugar (4 oz)
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F and lightly grease a baking tray or two.

Cream together in a large mixing bowl the butter and peanut butter until they are light and fluffy. Combine the sugar and the brown sugar, and add gradually to the butter mixture. Beat in the egg and the vanilla. Sift in the flour, mixing in well.

Flour your hands lightly and roll the dough into small balls. Place on the baking tray about 5cm apart, and flatten each ball with a fork. Bake for 10-12 minutes, and cool on a wire rack.

apple and lemon muffins

Last night in a fit of procrastibaking I made my favourite, favourite muffins. (I'm not always a muffin-fan but these are WONDERFUL and fairly healthy given that they are a sweet treat.)


They are also very quick, which slightly undermines the 'procrasti' element of the procrastibaking. 10-15 minutes to get them ready, 15-20 minutes to cook.

Start by preheating your oven to 220*C (430*F).

Mix in a bowl 2 cups of flour, half a cup of sugar, 4 teaspoons of baking powder, and one apple that you have peeled and chopped up into small pieces.

Melt 75 grams of butter (this is about 2-3oz). Mix into this 1 cup of milk, 2 eggs, and the zest of two lemons.
(The recipe I use says 1 lemon, but I find 2 lemons give it a better flavour. I am a lemonophile.)

Combine the two mixtures, and spoon into a muffin tray. Mix up a small amount of cinnamon with some sugar, and scatter over each muffin. Into the oven, cook for about 20 minutes - easy-peasy.

And very yummy. This recipe makes muffins that taste very, very good, but they also taste fresh and subtle and light.

crumbled

Someone donated us a big bag of cooking apples. What was I to do but make apple crumble? Time for procrastibaking!!

I've never actually made it before and I kind of made up my own version of it.

About 500 grams of apples, peeled and sliced. 40 grams of sugar, a couple of tablespoons of water. Cooked on low in a saucepan for about ten minutes.

Then tossed into a baking dish and covered with a crumble of my own devising, containing roughly 70g rolled oats, 50g brown sugar, a few tablespoons of flour, some slivered almonds, and about 60g melted butter.
Then into the oven for about 25 minutes at 200 degrees celsius.


Ta-dah!!!

cakes look good on my table

I bought a table and chairs!!! And they're sooooo pretty.


FIFTY DOLLARS. $50, off TradeMe, New Zealand's version of eBay. Not bad at all, in fact a veritable bargain, and our flat looks so amazing in comparison with what it was before. I can't share a photo with you but it was pretty dire - we had an oversized DESK that was held together with duct tape. You couldn't fit your knees under it because it had random bits of wood sticking down. We had cheap folding chairs, one of which broke underneath the weight of my flatmate's not-that-heavy father, and which all looked completely different.

The only problem was transporting said table/chairs to our flat. There are two cars among the five of us but neither of them have towbars and it's not like we want to pay some professional mover more than the table cost to move it for us. A very kind friend volunteered (hooray for facebook) and so I had a very good excuse to procrastibake!

Doesn't my berry and yoghurt crumble cake look lovely on my new table??


The original recipe is for a rhubarb and yoghurt crumble cake, by an amazing Kiwi cook called Annabel Langbein. I had to use a can of berries instead because there was no rhubarb in the supermarket or in the garden of Dad, my usual supplier.

I had a look online to see if Annabel Langbein has published the written version anywhere, but I could only find the video on youtube. So here's the written version. Hopefully I don't get sued!

Berry and yoghurt crumble cake

140g (5oz) softened butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
3/4C plain yoghurt
3 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
2 cups flour
190g (7oz) berries or 3 stalks of rhubarb, thinly sliced

Topping:
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 T flour
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1 t cinnamon
60g (2oz) butter, melted

Preheat oven to 180*C (350*F). Grease 25cm springform or loose-bottomed cake tin, line base with baking paper.
Beat butter and sugar together till creamy. Add eggs, vanilla, beat well. Beat in yoghurt then add dry ingredients and stir gently to just combine. Spread into prepared tin, place berries spread out on top.
Combine topping ingredients and sprinkle over cake. Bake until golden, about 50-60 minutes. Stand 15 minutes before turning out. Allow to cool before cooking.

Yum yum! (Unfortunately I didn't get to taste it as it was for someone else, but I've had it before and it was yummo then!)

brownies renounced

I've been naughty.


Need I say more? Probably not.

But here is the recipe for these scrummy brownies:

Ingredients:
250g butter, chopped
1 and a half cups castor sugar
1 and a 1/4 cups plain flour
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup cocoa
4 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla

Pre-heat oven to 180 C / 350 F. Lightly grease a muffin tray.
Put the butter and sugar into a microwavable bowl. Cover and microwave for 3 minutes. Stir when finished.
In the meantime, sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa into a mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle and add the eggs and vanilla.
Pour in the butter mixture and gently mix until well combined (don't over-mix).
Spoon into the muffin holes, filling to the top.
Bake for 20-23 minutes until firm.

Very, very easy. And VERY yummy.

However, I feel I need to make an announcement which may affect future procrastibakings. I have decided to stop snacking for the next month. My flatmates have been notified, and will be on the lookout for any covert snack-eating. This basically means I am no longer allowed to eat cakes, chocolate, lollies, chips, etc. (But I can eat as much fruit or veges as I want between meals.) This doesn't mean I can't bake anything, but as I can't eat it afterward I imagine the motivation will not be high.

I made sure I ate the last brownie before I started the new regime, though. :)

an introduction to procrastibaking

Happy Easter, everyone!

This is the first in what I had better call a series - Procrastibaking. This is, for many thesis students, a fundamental part of getting through.

At first I wondered if I had better not tell you what happened to me yesterday (Good Friday). It's a little bit embarrassing. However, I realised, if it helps anyone else to avoid making the same mistakes, it's worth it!

Yesterday, I decided to make hot cross buns. Suddenly being in not too good a place financially (yet another element of surviving being a student), this seemed like a really good idea. Also, there was a lot of sitting around waiting for dough to rise, etc etc, so it was a great way to go and study for a little while, and then as soon as I got sick of it, return to baking!

However, I managed to:
(a) on the first attempt, forget to knead the dough.
(b) on the second attempt, left the buns in the oven for about twenty/thirty minutes longer than they should have been.

Funnily enough, the buns (especially the first batch) actually taste quite nice. It would be pretty hard not to taste nice, I suppose, if you contain brown sugar, mixed spices, cinnamon, and dates. They're a little like hard scones. And they look quite pretty, and to say the LEAST, the crosses actually worked very well indeed. And so here is the recipe:

Hot cross buns

For buns:
4 cups flour
1 tsp salt
¼ cup brown sugar
1 tsp mixed spice, 1 tsp cinnamon
1 ½ tsp yeast
1 cup milk, warmed
100g butter, softened
2 eggs
1 cup mixed dried fruit (I used chopped dates)

For the crosses:
½ cup flour
1 Tbsp butter
¼ tsp baking powder
Milk

Mix the flour, salt, brown sugar and spices. Stir yeast and milk together, and leave to stand for 15 minutes in a warm place - it should be frothy. Beat eggs and softened butter into the yeast mix, then add to the dry ingredients. Mix until you get a doughy consistency. Knead for at least ten minutes on a floured board.

Place dough in a greased bowl and cover with a damp towel. Leave for one hour in a warm place; the dough should double in size.

Turn onto a floured board and divide into 16 portions, rolling into balls and placing on a greased oven tray, about 1cm apart. Cover, and leave in a warm place to rise, for 30 minutes.

Brush each bun with milk and add crosses to each bun. Bake in a preheated oven at 190 C / 375 F, for 20 to 25 minutes.


The final product. NB: Due to my lack of skill, this is not what they are supposed to look like! The darker ones are the overcooked ones.