Carob espresso brownie slice

Weirdest.  Brownie.  EVER.

I know, it's all about baking at the moment and you maybe don't care (although if that is the case, I wail at you - how can you not care about noms ??), but I'm trying to get two mojos back - baking and writing, so there's a lot of writing about baking. I'm completely out of the swing of both.  If it gives you hope, I expect that in a couple more recipes it'll be a lot of writing about baking and exercising.  Just to mix it up.  And so I can still fit into my pants.

Ok, ok.  If it makes you feel better, a little bit of the old me is having a wee bit of trouble with my Winter clothing budget.  I've found a Juliette Hogan cardy ... Not only is it beige (although beige called something a bit cooler) but it has leather patches on the elbow! Leather patches!!  On the elbow!!  Nevermind anything else, if I buy it I'll be instantly brainy!  I'm not giving you a link though because it's bloody expensive and the husband will have a whole litter of kittens if he sees how expensive.  At the moment he chooses to be ignorant and  I know for a fact that he's too lazy to actually go looking, so I'm kicking it in the safety zone of what he doesn't know won't hurt him.  Many of my senses have dulled over 4 years of sleep deprivation, but I'm still pretty quick with the ol' make-the-visa-bill-disappear slight of hand.  Woe is me, the beach house doesn't have a fireplace which is ultimately the best way of dealing to such things, but the husband has started making noises about wanting to put one in so YAY!  I think he's more focussed on heating the house somehow, but whatever.

Anyway.  I don't really have a budget as such, more that the husband set himself one and I have a healthy sense of competition.  I suspect I may come in walking in this race (or limping ... or carried on a stretcher with an oxygen mask in place) but we'll see how it goes.  I have good intentions, but then I also want a Winter jacket and something resembling Winter sneakers (THESE) ..... and then there's the cardy.  Le sigh.  I'm sure there's a way, I just have to knock a bit of rust off my skills.  And possibly try to win lotto.  Or at least, win lotto more than I did last week because 26 bucks a cardy does not make.

Aaand, brownie.  More about cardys another day. 

The brownie looks sooo good, but it also looks like chocolate, so ultimately it's really disappointing.  It's the weirdest thing - the texture is gorgeous and it tastes really good ... but it's not chocolate and you really expect chocolate, so you just feel screwed with!  It's not like we don't know this, that it's not chocolate, it's just that the mind expects what it expects regardless (which is chocolate, if you're confused. I wouldn't blame you if you were).  Even while you're eating it, you're still waiting for the chocolate.  It's like it's pulling a prank on you.  It's a very tricky brownie.  The kids love it.  I'm not sure myself and I think the husband is equally hoping the kids will finish it (they love it - or rather, the not-ginger loves spreading it all over the house and giving what's left to the dog.  The little ginger though thinks it's the best thing ever).  Mind you, for all of that, even without the chocolate it's an incredible treat and I doubt you'd actually get a slice made out of chocolate down you.  Very tricky brownie.   

There are walnuts and cranberries too, which you can't really see - really nice touch though, they are.

Oh, and nailed it!  I think.  It doesn't look like the picture in the book exactly  (Dean's version looks a bit more biscuit-like, less cakey) but it seems to be everything a brownie should be so I'm thinking the only difference is that bakers are just different, person to person, in the way they handle ingredients etc  Meh, I have no idea.  He says to leave it to cool and cut it with a hot knife so could be it wasn't cool enough and the knife wasn't hot enough just as easily as anything else. 

Next recipe will a do-over.  I'll keep you posted on whether I blow my entire clothing budget on the cardy.

(P.S.  I even flashed it up!!  A stylist I'm not, but it's better than baking paper, no?)

Fruity Anzac biscuits - BAM!

Nailed them!  Thank heaven for that.

I'm not a huge fan of either fruity or Anzac biscuits, but I'm busting for afternoon tea so I can have another.  They. Are. Yum.  I think that these biscuits also mark the first time I've actually used the word delightful in its proper context.  More usually I'd say, describe my little people as such, meaning the exact opposite.  It's the figs that do it.  I'm having my first Anzac bicky, fresh out of the oven and thinking noms, these are amazeballs, I'm so glad they're huge* ... and then I get fig.  In particular, an extra happy layer of texture that came from the fig seeds right at the end, after getting through oats, coconut, fruit and sunflower seeds and already thinking they're great.  I really was delighted.  Wide eyed surprise and all.  Mock me if you like, but my bickies are awesome so I don't care.

And that's the other side of the Global Baker project-coin.  I want to push myself to not only make different things, but try different things.  As I said, I was generally a fan of neither aspect of this recipe - fruit in bickies, or Anzacs - but I love this recipe, and will definitely make it again.  Had it not been part of the project, I don't know if I would've tried it at all and I probably would've missed out on something really good.

(Also, can we pretend that the below bicky is sitting on a Crown Lynn saucer, probably from the Tam'o'shanter set, which would also cleverly hark back to the celtic roots of oat cakes in general, rather than on baking paper?  Ta.  Appreciate it.  Am far too lazy)

* One bicky is one bicky, big or small - that's the rules according to me (and possibly why a lot of bickies in this house look a bit like they've been on the 'roids) ... unless I'm at Jess' and she's made double chocolate happinesses (they have a proper name, but that one works for me) because they are so much like flat brownies, I feel very strongly that you can have four of them before they roughly equate to a single normal height brownie. Your confidence doesn't really start to waiver until you're halfway through your second one (brownie, that is ... or bicky no. 6 for people with no sense of fun).

Hot cross bun crash and burn

Quite baffling, these hot cross buns.  They tasted amazing (chocolatey orange heaven!) which was a surprise because the explanation to the recipe said that it had been developed for supermarket sale.  Supermarket buns .....? Meh.  Plus I'm a bit of a traditionalist.  Hot cross buns without fruit and spice? Hmmm.  I should have had more faith. A.MAZ.ING.  Unfortunately, it was a quick trip back to earth again because if you were to drop one on the floor I suspect it'd go straight through.  Not ideal. 

All cards on the table, it was a mortifying first step into breads and I have a lot more to learn than I imagined.  Stinkballs.  The husband gave me a quick lesson in the principles of bread baking (he's been playing with bread for a couple of years) and I have a couple of ideas, so I'm going to take another run at them soon.  I did nail the cross (that bit looked just like a bought one!) but I still feel like I should offer them to the neighbours who are currently re-piling a building on the front of their property, and I generally have no idea what went wrong with the dough which is really frustrating.

My thoughts are that the dough was too solid, not elastic enough.  I've never done bread before but my instincts tell me that I need to make this more about feel than following a recipe.  I may teak a process or two as well - where yeast and water go into the mix in the beginning for example, I might put the yeast in warm water and let it get itself going a bit before putting it in the mix.  Just in case my yeast is a bit bollocks.

I did think I was clever enough at baking that I'd take a run through the book, find a few challenges but generally read twice, bake once, and feel pretty pleased with myself.  The challenge in my mind was to bake everything for a start, and the project would be a good way to push myself to learn new tricks ... tarts and wotnot.  So, somehow bombing pretty much everything so far leaves me feeling a wee tad humble just now. 

And really sad that I don't have hot cross buns!  But, their time will come again (probably after fruity anzac bickies).

Before and after pics. Barely any change after baking equals bad, bad, rock-like buns.  They also look ugly.  I knew they would but I was terrified of over-handling the dough at that stage and so didn't want to work them too much to shape them.

P.S.

It's also pretty much exactly what I had in mind for these two.

Life with a view

We've been living on the Coast for 8 months and it still feels like we're on holiday.  I thought the feeling would wear off, but it hasn't so I really hope it doesn't and I never take this place for granted. The view is always a bit different - the sea is blue, green, grey or brown, like glass or bad-weather roughened and awesome no matter what.  It's beautiful and I love it.  There's always something to laugh at on the water as well.  I saw a couple of fishermen out with a net several weeks ago in the most dreadful weather.  They were working the net, and you could just see over the waves, the black tail of (I think) a labrador circling them.  Last weekend I was out really early with the dog and spotted another two fishermen getting into the water off their boat to work side by side - one in full wetsuit (including a hood) and the other in just his stubbies.  Heh.  It was not a warm morning.

 

I've developed such an addiction to coffee missions too - for the view that (which?) you get the whole way there and back and is intoxicating (it lifts your spirits no matter where they are), for the coffee (RSC because I couldn't possibly go anywhere else. I'm addicted to that spot as well) and for the people who make you smile.  People who make you smile should always be appreciated.

 

'tis just great.

 



 



 

My favourite view of all ... coffee on the dash.  Coffee in a paper cup on the dash.  That's all the happiness, right there.  I'm pretty sure I shouldn't admit to this (to anyone even remotely serious about their coffee, or the poor environment), but coffee in a paper cup just does it for me.  Love!

Hey 2013 ...

I made the most horrendous batch of cookies yesterday. Iced sugar cookies which I didn't ice for a start.  I also didn't bother rolling out the dough and breaking out the cookie cutters. I just rolled it up in a log shortbread-style and cut the cookies off.  They're really uneven too. I should bin them and make something decent but the little ginger and the not-ginger have no idea and they're staring at me from the cookie jar, so accusing in their horrendousness (the cookies, not the little ginger and the not-ginger) that I feel quite motivated.  It was a moment.  Crap baking is not good. 

It feels like I've been running for years, unable to concentrate, in need of so much sleep and with so much to do, some days feel like it's just about me turning in a hundred circles.  Fast circles.  And yet not getting enough exercise either.  That batch of cookies is the point where good intentions must be pushed into practice.

2013 feels different.  I have way too many ideas and a total lack of focus, but if I can just get one or two of those ideas going then that'll be a start.  So, I've just taken the dog for a walk and came home with the two that I want to get off the ground. The first is my Global Baker project, barely started then shelved late last year.  I have a lot of respect for Dean Brettschneider and I love to bake, when I let myself have the time to love it, and I want to learn from him.  Global Baker terrifies me, but I really want to do it.  It's probably going to take some time, and that's part of the problem. I've lost the art of taking time.  I move too fast, and anything that can't be done fast doesn't get done.  New beginnings though, and a recipe for chocolate chip hot-cross buns should get me started.

Awesomely, in a nod to my total lack of focus, I can't remember what the other thing was. Seriously. Not joking.

Ah! There it goes!  Thank heaven.  I have two chairs sitting out in the garage that I want to restore.  We bought them when we first tried to buy on the Coast, and they have become part of the journey of ending up here.  They were pretty tired when we bought them and now they need some real love.  I just have to find somewhere to do the fabric side of things for me, and work out how best to strip back the wood and they'll be the perfect addition to our home.

I'll attempt to refocus enough to blog along the way to boot. 

There are other things, but I think I'll just do them quietly in the background and see how they go.  I might make a list so I remember what I'm working towards.  First thing is graduating, which is next week.  I've been eligible to graduate for ten years.  I was so focused on not having completed the degree that I started that I didn't focus on what I had achieved which is two Diplomas.  Life has changed since 18.  What I want has changed. How I think I'm going to do it has changed.  And I'm really proud of that first Diploma that gets signed off next week.

So hey there, 2013.  May you be awesome.