100

Today is my 100th post!

Now don’t get too excited, it’s not THE 100, just 100 since I started this blog. I think that’s a pretty major achievement.

As an update on the cupcake selling, I am told by my very reliable informants (age 10 and 5) that all of our cupcakes were sold today! Yay! Well done Miss FF and everyone else involved. What a warm fuzzy feeling.

At home, Twinkle and Mercury were not feeling quite so warm and fuzzy. Fuzzy yes, as they now both have designer jackets in the style of their bigger “brother” Norton. Warm, not so much, as they were evicted from the house. They seem quite happy though they’re still struggling to work out what the calves are for.

Good news for Mercury – he has found a forever home this afternoon. A new arrival in the area has a daughter at school, who is desperate for a pet lamb for pet day. Mercury fits the bill, and the best news for him is that this is not a home that’s likely going to end up with him in the freezer. He is set to live out his days being a pampered pet. Some animals have all the luck!

A cupcake a day….

Will give you a heart attack in a very short space of time if the ones I helped make today are anything to go by!

Tomorrow is the SPCA’s annual cupcake day. The idea is that you register with the SPCA, telling them how many cupcakes you’re going to bake and sell, then you bake, sell, and return the proceeds to the SPCA. While this is definitely a worthwhile cause, I hadn’t managed to get myself involved…until today. An innocent visit to the house of the Friendly Farmer, and I’m up to my eyeballs in cupcake madness.

Miss Friendly Farmer, age 8, is a complete sucker for animals. She probably gets this from her parents, one who is a very ethical and caring farmer and the other who is a sucker for anything cute and cuddly. Mrs FF has recently started collecting cats from the SPCA and the vet, unable to walk away from a needy animal. There are other animal stories associated with this lovely woman, but this blog just isn’t long enough!

So Miss FF wanted to bake cupcakes. Her mum is not a baker (by her own admission, not a horrible judgement I’ve just laid down – in fact everything that she’s baked except for her healthy chocolate brownie (pah, choc brownie shouldn’t be healthy!!!!)  has been truly yum). So the help of another friend was acquired. I arrived as the carnage baking started. Mrs FF on one side of the kitchen, following her recipe to the letter, and Mrs Friend on the other side throwing together the ingredients in a seemingly haphazard manner. Both produced most excellent cupcakes, and I ended up being the “getter out of the oven” and “getter of cupcakes out of the pans”. So by a late lunch, there was an admirable number of naked cupcakes on the table.

As for adornment, there were a number of different ideas in the room. Miss FF, who had been absent (there’s a surprise) for most of the baking, along with my lovely Emily decided that making the tops look like animals would be great. Ooooo, yes, that sounds like a great idea darlings….but I haven’t got another 6 hours to achieve that, so let’s think of something else! In the end, piped butter icing, in shades of pink, yellow, red, pale green, proper green, pale blue, dark blue and purple, was topped with an almost endless array of sprinkles and mini M&Ms. I did the piping, and the kids (mostly) did the sprinkling.

The kids had a ball with the decorating, and to tell the truth, I really enjoyed the day. It wasn’t quite how I’d intended to spend my day, and the lambs were rather put out that they missed half a day of feeds, but I usually do all my cooking on my own. It was really nice to share a project with a couple of lovely ladies, and a bunch of raucous children.

So if you’re in the vicinity of Norsewood and Districts School tomorrow, I expect that you’ll be there at 12.30 to grab a sweet treat for lunch. They’re only 50c (what a bargain) and they’re for such a good cause. Well done, Miss FF, great idea….just don’t eat all the profits!!!!

Oh, and just in case you’re interested….112 was the final tally after a few quality control checks and a sneaky 2 year old!

The Changing Nature of Obsession

I’ve been thinking about this topic for a couple of weeks now. This is because I have gained an insight into myself….I get obsessed by things. But not necessarily for very long. Then I move onto something else to be obsessed about. Is that normal?

There are some obvious things that you might not necessarily call “obsession” but require a lot of time and effort. I mean things like cheese. Starting to make cheese does require a lot of time and a lot of reading, but is that obsession? Probably not, just something that is necessary. The part of it that becomes slightly obsessive is when you find every cheese book you can lay your hands on, when you feel the need to made a different cheese every day, when you feel you have to buy all the fancy cultures. So I guess there might be a little bit of obsession there.

Three years or so ago, I was obsessed with bread. We’ve been making our own bread for years, but I started to take it to a different level. I bought every book I could find on TradeMe about bread, and wanted to make every kind of bread there ever was. That was when I started my first sourdough, when I learnt to make a killer ciabatta, and nothing could be done in a shorthand way, it had to be done completely from scratch. I made croissants, pain aux chocolats…you name it, I gave it a go. And then I stopped. My sourdough died and I went back to making “ordinary” bread. Until now, of course, and I can feel an obsession coming on. In fact, I’ve just been googling many and various ways of using sourdough starter…you can even make chocolate cake with it!

Cake decorating, cooking Indian food…I’m sure there’s more Andi obsessions of the past (and at times the present too!)

Obsession doesn’t only apply to things in the kitchen. There’s been crafty obsession too….loom bands most recently, spinning, quilting, sewing clothes, making miniature teddy bears even.

So why does obsession change and am I the only one who does this? Is it good? Is it bad? Am I just unable to stick to anything? Maybe that’s why I’m not writing blogs every day now….my obsession has waned….oh no!!!! On the “glass is half full” side, perhaps this is my current stickability challenge. Let’s go for that one shall we?

In my own defense, I have managed one major stickability…. after 18 years, I’m still with the same man. Phew, I feel so much better now!

And now, I have to go make some sourdough waffles…..

Dear Diary

It’s been a busy day and I really can’t think of a lot to talk about tonight, so I thought a rundown of my day might be easiest!

Adrian and I spent most of the day at the Friendly Farmer’s farm again, planting trees. The area we were planting was approximately 250 metres long and probably 7 or 8 metres wide…that’s what, around 2 square kilometres of planting? Wow, that puts into perspective why I’m feeling particularly knackered tonight! The Friendly Farmer’s wife, also Super Friend no. 1, 2, or 3, looked after Briar so that saved quite a bit of stress. And while we were there, my new calf was born…we didn’t see it, but the Friendly Farmer texted me tonight with the good news.

And while we’re on the subject of calves, Emily is doing so well with wee Bambi. She is independently getting up at 6.30am, warming the milk and taking it down to the shed to feed her, then back at 7am to get ready for school. We pay for it a little in the evening with a more tired than usual Miss 10! After school, she comes home and has something to eat, gets changed and is back down with Bambi until she feeds her again at 4.30pm. She’s had a halter on the calf, and is getting her to follow her around really well. Emily appears to be loving the responsibility and also the relationship she is developing so quickly with Bambi.

On another Emily success front, we think that her rabbit, Arro, is expecting kits. After Emily had a complete panic last night that Arro could not be found, and hadn’t eaten any of her food, I opened up her living quarters to find that she had piled as much hay as she could find into the end of her hutch, made a nest in the middle and was filling the indentation with fur she was pulling from her chest. We figure another 9-10 days, given when she went to the buck.

Tara had her successes too today, getting a certificate from school for Super Work Habits. Not bad after two weeks!

Finally, after dinner and putting the children to bed, Adrian is now bottling beer, I’ve made Chewy Bread, sourdough crackers and yoghurt (from scratch with our own milk), and am proving some plain white bread rolls for the girl’s lunches. Tomorrow I’m on duty at Playgroup and have to take morning tea for the adults, so I’ll whip up a batch of bready swirls filled with brown sugar, butter, mixed spice and walnuts, with a lemony drizzle over the top. I should also make something sweet for the girls lunches. Just didn’t quite get round to that tonight…..

Sourdough Success

To start with, an apology. I know I do this all the time, but I really did mean to take photos to speckle through this post…..unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), my sourdough has been so successful that it’s disappeared!!! And not to the pigs or chickens I hasten to add!

As you will remember, I started my sourdough back here . It’s bubbled away on top of my pantry, and I’ve been feeding it every day. It’s definitely smelling sour now and a little mould around the top of the bowl yesterday prompted me to move it into a new bowl…a bit of hygiene won’t go amiss!

The first thing I made were sourdough crackers. I hadn’t ever thought about them until seeing a post by the Zero Waste Chef, but they looked good so try them I did. The first batch had a bit of a dry dough and came out a little too dry, not really crispy, just cardboardy…ooops! It didn’t help that I also forgot to put some oil and salt on them as well. Oops again! They did taste most awesome, however, with a dollop of peanut butter on them…the salt from the peanut butter and the sourness of the cracker reminded me a little of salt and vinegar chips, and there’s nothing wrong with that!

Unperturbed, I had another go as I was expecting dinner guests on Saturday. Dinner guest no.1 had perhaps unwisely told me how she loved sourdough (she’s American and everything she used to make comes out of a packet including the sourdough starter). So another batch of crackers were attempted. Adrian made the suggestion of putting some sesame oil and sesame seeds in the dough, and with me remembering the oil and salt on top, and then forgetting them in the oven, they were super crunchy and super tasty…great with the fresh cheese I made in the afternoon.  And they disappeared really fast, hence no photos!

Then came the bread, and even though I didn’t have time to do all the steps of my super-duper lovely French Country Bread, it still turned out very tasty. Today I’ve made another one, and that’s looking great though I haven’t tried it yet.

Yay for sourdough – great, nutritious, tasty food from flour and water and a bit of salt. Wonderful!!!!

And if you’re gluten free, this goodness is not necessarily out of your reach. I have a wonderful book by Andrew Whitley called “Bread Matters. Why and how to make your own” and he suggests a Rice Sourdough…anyone want that recipe, let me know and I can do a post on it.

Right, off to bed shortly, but might just need some bread and butter before then…..forget about the wasteline!!!!

The best bread in the world

OK, I know it’s not the best bread in the world, but it does qualify as the best bread in my world at the moment.

I discovered this recipe in a bread book I got out of the library about 3 years ago, when I was in one of my “I’m going to be a baker” phases. Unfortunately, while I wrote down the recipe, I didn’t reference what the book was called or who it was by, so if anybody knows, please tell me!

The best thing about this recipe is that it is a no-knead bread that requires two or three periods of two or three minutes to make. And it tastes superb. So without further ado, here it is.

NO KNEAD BREAD

3 cups flour

1 1/4 tsp salt

1/4tsp yeast

1 1/3cups water

Mix all these up in a large bowl. I usually put all the dry ingredients in and then add the water, and use my hand to mix it. Then you get a really good idea of the feel of the dough, and can add a touch more water if all the flour won’t combine. The dough should look something like this….

Oh, hmm, that doesn’t really help, does it…anyway, it should be a fairly tight lump of flour and water. Now put a hat on it and tuck it away somewhere in your kitchen, not necessarily anywhere particularly warm, for 18 hours. Don’t be too particular about the timing, but the dough should have doubled or tripled in size, look slightly bubbly on top, but not have collapsed on itself.

After this time you will have…..

Rather than a lump of stuff, it is now definitely a living breathing thing. Now, flour your surface HEAVILY. I can’t stress this too much. You’re going to leave the dough on the surface to rise again, and if you don’t put enough flour on it, you will never get your soon to be loaf off the surface without completely destroying it….which really isn’t the point, now, is it?!

Once you’ve turned it out of the bowl, just gather together the dough and tuck it up into a ball. I couldn’t really take photos of this because I was on my own, but fold it gently up on itself into the middle to form a ball, turn it over and then firm it into a ball shape so it looks kind of like this….

It’s a reasonably tight dough, and shouldn’t be sticky on the outside. Sprinkle more flour all over the place if you’re worried it’s sticky. Unlike a lot of other recipes, adding flour to surfaces you’re working on, or to the surface of the bread is not a problem.

Now cover with your bowl and leave for about an hour.

At this point, you want to get your oven ready. I know you’re going to leave the dough for an hour, but you want your oven red-hot. Turn it up to your maximum temperature.

The best way to cook this bread is in a Dutch Oven

It’s cast iron so gets super hot and it has a lid, which means that no steam escapes as the bread cooks. Instead, it recirculates, much as the steam does in a commercial bakers oven, which helps with the brilliant crust development. Put the dutch oven in the oven now so that it heats up.

After an hour, you will have….

Slightly wetter looking and probably a bit slumped. Take the dutch oven out of the oven, and this is where you want to work quite quickly. Whip the top off the pot, pick up the dough and dump it into the pot so that the bottom as it is in this photo becomes the top. I guess this doesn’t really matter, but it’s awful easy. Now, quick as you can, put the lid back on (don’t want steam escaping) and bung it back in the oven. Keep the heat super high.

At this point, you can make another dough in the unwashed bowl you’ve just finished using. I know not washing might sound a bit distasteful to some, but it does mean that you end up with a kind of mild sourdough taste to your bread after a few days. The bits of old dough that are in the bowl soak up a few environmental, wild yeasts and then impart that to the new dough you put in there. I guess it depends on whether you can cope with using a “dirty bowl”!

The bread takes about half an hour to cook, but you just have to observe what it looks like. You want a really deep brown colour to the crust. Anything less and it’ll be stodgy and with a really uninteresting crust. My kids call this “chewy bread” and there’s a good reason for it!

This is your masterpiece….

When you (carefully) get it out of the Dutch Oven, put it up to your ear and you will hear it “singing”. I can’t really describe it, but it definitely happens. There will be beautiful cracks in the top and the flour that was on the bench that you put the dough on to rise will now form a great snowy mountain look on the top of your bread.

Allow it to cool. While hot bread is a wonderful thing, it’s apparently terrible to digest, and I think this bread is better just warm. Then grab a good bread knife and start making those wonderful cuts…

The crumb is quite dense, but with these fabulous holes throughout. A bit of butter on that….ah, I’m in heaven!

But for Adrian today, as it was a running lunch, how’s this?

Fresh bread, eggs from our chickens, cheese from our cow. Yum! We could also do the lettuce and the butter, but they’re not available at the moment. Now that’s a pretty good lunch to go.

 

Don’t you love party food

The big party was today. Now, I’m not actually a big party person, but I love the idea of having a great kids party, and especially for “special” birthdays. I’d love to give you lots of photos of everything, but….well….we got a bit caught up in the action and forgot to take photos…sorry!

Tara decided she wanted a rainbow fairy theme. She’s just started reading the Daisy Meadows fairy books (well, having them read to her) and she loved the idea of having a party with this theme. I didn’t need any further encouragement, and dismissed outright any thoughts she might have had of a tractor cake (seriously, she asked me last week if she could have a tractor cake!), or of bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese (she’s 5 for goodness sake!).

First, the table dressing. Not being in a position to spend a heap of money on this party, I visited Spotlight (fabric store) and perused their masses of options. I found the most fabulous rainbow drill and it was half price. Now this was obviously meant to be…I didn’t even hem it, just let the selvages hang on the long side, and folded up the ends. Next, sprinkling the table with metallic sequins was fun for Tara and Briar, and I have to admit to splashing out on the fairy paper plates and napkins. For the glasses, we had plastic “baby cham” glasses (we can’t come up with a better description!) in pink, green, yellow and orange.

Food, glorious food…I’ll do recipes and the like at another stage, but here’s descriptions:

Fairy bread stars….who can go past the classic white bread (it was homemade, I promise) with butter and hundreds and thousands. Is this a worldwide phenomenon?

Fairy wands….bread sticks (yep, made them too) dipped in milk chocolate, then sprinkled with “pinkalicious” (some sugary pink stuff), edible stars and hearts and drizzled with white chocolate. Tara did mention that they really needed to have something at the end to make them look like wands, and I have to agree with her…they did kind of look like choc dipped breadsticks (or Harry Potter wands according to Adrian, but unfortunately 5 year olds don’t know about Harry)!

Fairy toadstools…rice crispie treats/honey crunch moulded into toadstool tops. Cut out a small long circle for a stalk and stick it on with chocolate. Dip the tops in chocolate and hundreds and thousands. I’ve made this recipe before and it was great. Unfortunately, I boiled the sugary mix a bit hard for a bit long so the finished product was tres brittle….not so successful but they tasted yummy.

Butterfly biscuits… these were really cute, and probably would have been a hit had I had time to get them decorated. As it was, they ended up being a back up in case there wasn’t enough food, and Adrian is enjoying snacking on them

Rainbow fairy fruit kebabs…not used to buying out of season fruit, we did get watermelon as there really wasn’t anything red in the winter fruit range. I think red grapes would have worked, but the watermelon was perfect. Mandarins, pineapple (canned so I didn’t have to cut it up), green kiwifruit and purple grapes. Now these went down a treat!

Rainbow popcorn…as hard as I looked I couldn’t find ready made and wasn’t prepared to settle for white popcorn! Made up a sugar syrup and three coloured batches gave the effect of rainbow without the hassle of making 7 batches!

Chippies…couldn’t think of a fairy name for these, but some ready salted crisps and some cheezels were the first things gone

Fairy fizz…we bought some Sprite Zero as we didn’t want the kids to be overloaded with sugar (oops, too late!), then at the table, we sprinkled in a dollop of raspberry sherbet (Emily had fun making it…and a mess….last night). It fizzes quite wonderfully and makes the drink pink. Doesn’t do too much to the flavour I have to say.

And then the cake. Sorry, Tara, I know it wasn’t a tractor cake, but it was kinda cool…and she did like the red and blue flashing wings. There was a slight technical hitch, because we hadn’t quite worked out how the wings worked. Sometimes you pushed the tummy button and you got one flash. Sometimes you got a positive light show. Just couldn’t work out how either happened, so it was a bit of a lottery at candle blowing out time. This evening, we discovered the one push is “on” and then you just have to move dolly around to get the lights to keep happening! Doh! Thankfully, when we were lighting the candles, Adrian was carrying the cake, so the wings worked perfectly!

Aaaaah…success…now onto next Saturday’s party….

Another one bites the dust

Not quite 1am, but I am finished. The cake is finished, that is. The party prep is still not quite done. Ah well, got till 11am before 6 little girls descend upon our abode…aaaagh! Really pleased with the cake. I have decided that Dolly Varden cakes are traditional for 5th birthdays in our family. After all, I had one when I was five and I know that at least one of my sisters had one for her 5th. So there. It must be a tradition!

Emily’s looked like this

Which I was pretty pleased with at the time. I had just had a baby (Tara!) and so to achieve any kind of birthday cake within a week I thought was kind of impressive.

But my sights are set higher these days, so this is what Tara is getting

We’ve moved from buttercream to fondant. Tara desperately wanted rainbow ruffles, so we did rainbow even though I probably would have preferred something more in keeping with the rest of the colour scheme. But who cares…she’ll be happy and that’s the main thing! The wings on this fairy even light up when you push a button on the tummy…oh yes!!!!

And she’s 5!

Yep, today’s the day. At 3.15pm on July 3 2009, Tara was born. She had a great birth, coming quickly but not too quickly, and while Adrian’s jeans will never be the same after me almost yanking the belt loops off, it was not too bad as labours go. Tara was a whopper, too ,weighing in at a portly 9lbs13oz. I remember vividly a midwife on the labour ward seeing me going up to the postnatal ward and viewing my gorgeous new bundle. Her only comment was “Wow, you’re gonna need huge bazoomers to feed that one!” Seriously, she said that!

Tara has developed into a cheerful, considerate, charming little girl. Everyone comments on her ability to empathise with people and creatures. She is very kind, thanking people profusely for her presents today. When her granny rang, the first thing she said (and there was NO prompting going on!) was “thankyou so much for my presents granny”. Tara is loved wherever she goes, and for that we are tremendously proud…and thankful!

Tara also has a steely resolve, and a strong personality which will probably lead her to significant teenage rebellion, fast cars, boys, and all the other things that go with that. Why do you think we moved to the country?! She runs the risk of being a bit of a bad girl and is already causing concern for some of the older group of girls at school as she is hanging out with the “bad” crowd! Hah! Is there such a thing at age 5? Two of her wee friends do get on the “hot seat” reasonably regularly, so we’ll see whether they lead her astray. Maybe at first, but I think Tara will sort out what’s good for her reasonably quickly.

But Tara still isn’t sure she’s 5. Yes, we sang her happy birthday today (but we did that yesterday too…twice….so I can see that that could be a bit confusing), and she got to open her bundles of presents and she went to school (but she did that on Monday and she definitely wasn’t 5 then, so that’s a bit confusing too), but the main thing that means that she’s not yet 5 is that she hasn’t had her party! Apparently, a party is the true, genuine, honest to goodness proof of a birthday. So for that we have to wait until Saturday. I think at that point, she’ll be convinced!

And now I’m off to make two more cakes for said party. I’ll leave you with the recipe I’m using, which is the Devils Food Cake that I got from my mum. It’s been many a birthday cake in our family, and it’s the girls favourite chocolate cake. Personally, if you’re thinking of making me a birthday cake, you can never go past a truly scrumptious chocolate mud cake, but the children reckon that’s a bit rich for them…..ah well, I’ll train them up on that one at a later birthday!

Devil’s Food Cake

Place 1 3/4cups plain flour, 1 1/2cups white sugar, 1 1/4tsp baking soda and 1/3cup unsweetened cocoa powder in a cake mixer or bowl. Add 2/3 cup of milk and 1/3 cup melted butter and mix together (take it easy or you’ll be covered with brown and white powder….funny for the rest of your family, but a bit inconvenient for you!) for 2 minutes. Add another 1/3cup milk, 2 eggs and 1 tsp vanilla, mix then pour into a prepared tin and bake at 180degC for about 45 minutes. My recipe says 30mins, but it’s always quite a bit longer than that. It’s a nice moist cake, as long as you don’t overcook it, and it holds up reasonably well for decorating (not as well as the aforementioned mud cake however….). Yummo…have a go and let me know whether it’s better than your chocolate cake. And then give me your recipe and I’m sure I’ll find some tasters!

Cakes Ahoy

I know that officially, I’ve missed today/yesterday, but I’m still up, so it still counts as today!

And I’ve finished the cakes for tomorrow’s farewells…what do you think?

I had different things planned, but Briar still isn’t well and I was disappearing off into her room every half an hour.

You don’t really see it, but there’s loads of glitter on these too, so I think my (nearly) five year old will be reasonably pleased!

Oh, and the fairy doll cake will have a “5” candle and sparklers! Oh, yes!!!!