Category: Pudding and Dessert

lick an ice cream cone, crack a bone

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Supposing yesterday began when I woke up around 8am, I then went on to spend roughly fifteen or so further hours in bed. I rose briefly around noon to make myself some roasted vegetables, which did not have the galvanising effect on me that I’d hoped they would, because I then went back to bed until just after midnight when I had a sudden fit of activity: I got up, ate the remainder of this white chocolate and burnt butter ice cream and then made myself a small loaf of cornbread. Oh sure, I’m super tired at the moment, but it was more than just tiredness, it was like, One of Those Days. Apologies for referring to depressive times with a knowing wink, what else can ya do.

(Okay I have to confess here that I accidentally typed “knowing wank” instead of knowing wink which is ridiculous because the i and the a are not even remotely close to each other on the keyboard, it just happened and I can’t stop laughing at it.)

Anyway: there is nothing profound about the fact that I ate this ice cream after a day spent in bed willing myself to do anything, even to just binge watch TV shows, but being unable to maintain any kind of momentum; it was not even a particularly abnormal day, it was a day that anyone might have every now and then. But! If nothing else, the ice cream is exceptionally delicious and as I was eating it I was like “well this is nice,” and it being a nice moment was enough, just for now.

knowing wink knowing wink

I’ve said it before, but ice cream is one of my very, very favourite foods and I love coming up with recipes for it. I mean, I argued successfully for an entire ice cream chapter in my cookbook. I love the stuff, and something in that cold, cold, creamy texture is the perfect vehicle for flavours to shine.

It sounds almost like I’m parodying myself to load an already loaded ice cream with literal butter but my reasons are sound, I promise. Butter, when browned over a high heat, becomes intensely rich and nutty and caramelly. When you put this with white chocolate – gently buttery, soft and vanilla-y – the effect is absolutely glorious.  It’s like butterscotch, like white chocolate refracted through a prism, like freezing cold fudge, like plunging your hands into a pile of expensive folded robes made of the softest fabric at some kind of fancy department store. The pile of robes topples over. You slink away, unseen. You got away with it but you feel bad about the probably underpaid store attendant who has to tidy it up. You think about it still, eight years later. I don’t know where I’m going with this. The ice cream is delicious.

I’d like to emphasise that it is very, very simple to make, which is how I like my ice cream to be. You don’t need an ice cream maker! That’s what Big Ice Cream Maker wants you to think! I mean if you have one, that’s lovely, I just try to make a point of making recipes that require minimal equipment so that the maximum amount of people might consider trying them out. This ice cream requires three steps – browning the butter, melting the cream and chocolate together, and letting the cornflour thicken the cream mixture somewhat. Then you bung it in the freezer, don’t even worry about stirring it at this point, just wait for it to freeze and it’s all yours.

white chocolate and burnt butter ice cream

a recipe by myself

  • 100g butter
  • three cups (750ml) cream
  • one tablespoon cornflour
  • 200g genuinely nice white chocolate, eg Whittakers
  • 3/4 cup sugar

First, your butter: melt it in a saucepan large enough to hold all the rest of the ingredients, since you might as well use as few pans as possible. Once it’s melted, keep it on the heat so it starts to bubble up and brown – once it’s at the point of having thick golden fluffy foam on top and being a rich golden brown underneath, remove it from the heat and transfer it to a small bowl to cool slightly. 

Rinse out the pan and then over a low heat, melt the chocolate into the cream, stirring occasionally. Mix the cornflour with a couple of tablespoons of water – I just do this in the measuring cup I used for the cream – and tip it into the chocolate/cream mixture. Continue stirring over a low heat until it thickens a bit – you’ll feel it changing as you stir, going from being very thin liquid to a more saucy, thickshake type vibe. Remove it from the heat.

Stir in the sugar, and finally, spoon or pour in the butter, or more specifically, the dark golden brown middle layer of the butter – it will have separated into sediment on the bottom, super rich dark brown butter in the middle, and a golden salty layer on top. The middle stuff is what we want, but if other bits get in the mix it’s not the end of the world. 

Freeze till solid – around 4-6 hours – and then it’s all yours for the eating. 

The cornflour, without any effort on your behalf, thickens up the cream and turns it into a pseudo custard, and the texture when frozen is incredible – so, so smooth and satiny. But the burnt butter with the melted white chocolate! Seriously, I don’t know whether I’m more excited about the flavour or the texture in this one. Just trust me on it and try it for yourself. For what it’s worth, it tastes good no matter what kind of day you’re having.

Also! If you like the idea of ice cream then I have a ludicrous quantity of recipes for you, but you could consider: apple cinnamon ice cream; chocolate peanut butter ice cream; and grapefruit curd ripple ice cream.

Also I’m still laughing about “knowing wank”.

title from: The Dead Weather, Blue Blood Blues. This song is so crunchy, I love it.

music lately:

Brandy, Tamia, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Missing You. This was playing at the coffee shop I was at this morning and I got a sudden flashback to being ten years old and (rightly) getting suuuper emotional over this song.

Billie Myers, Tell Me. This song flew massively under the radar in 1999 or whenever it came out, but it’s so good and the chorus is so big, I love it.

next time: well that cornbread was amazing. I am very sure I’m going to make it again at some point. 

you can start by having a chat and then a glass of brandy then I will start playing mind games

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I’ll often insist that I don’t like change and that what I do like is, in fact, a good status quo to settle into, but I think what I really mean by that is that it’s a bit sad when nice people go far away. I’m honestly always trying to change things, most of the time incredibly rapidly without considering any consequences. Or at least, I will have thoroughly overthought the consequences, and then I’ll just be like “uhhhh what if I leap head-first into this and whatever happens after, that’s ten-minutes-from-now-Laura’s problem.” This could be anything from spontaneously bleaching my hair to the entire state of my life at any given time. It’s certainly not the most advisable way to live out your days, but it does kinda get stuff happening.

Anyway I got to thinking about this (with some self-awareness but no real emotional growth or change) following two events: I recently bleached my hair in almost panicky haste, and also some super nice people who I work with went far away to travel the world for a bit. I have no idea what to do with a status quo except frantically push in the opposite direction of it, but when people are about to leave, I know exactly what to do: make delicious sweet things for them. That’s how I ended up making this gorgeously dense fudge, bejewelled with brandy-soaked sultanas. I had, in a nice piece of symbiosis, nicked the sultanas themselves from work prior to this, where they had been lending their flavour to brandy for a cocktail we were doing over Easter. One of the people who was leaving – Brooke, a gem of a lady – suggested that I turn them into fudge at some point, and so it seemed like a nice way to sweeten up the last shift we all worked together.

I don’t expect you to have sultanas sitting around in brandy for the opportunistic thieving, but they can be very easily recreated by quickly making your own (leaving you, joyfully, with leftover infused alcohol.) You don’t even have to use brandy, rum is an obvious contender here, or you could use some other dried-grape-friendly liqueur, or – honestly – leave the fruit aspect out altogether and simply make yourself a slab of creamy, gloriously plain fudge.

This fudge has the silkiest bite to it, like your teeth are sliding through cool water. It dissolves on the tongue with rolling caramel flavours punctured by bursts of eyewateringly boozy sultanas. The sweetness of all the sugar and the heat of the alcohol plus the generally deliciousness of the butter come together to make something astonishingly balanced considering it’s, y’know, a rectangle of sugar. And while it’s not as comfortingly crumbly as super-traditional fudge but the incredible satin texture more than makes up for this.

brandy butter sultana fudge

adapted from this recipe. It’s really easy to make, I just do a lot of explaining in the method below, in case you’re freaking out at how long it looks.

one cup of sultanas
brandy – something not horrifically cheap but don’t use anything expensive either
100g butter
one can of sweetened condensed milk (the kind that’s roughly 395g in size)
two firmly packed cups of brown sugar

Put the sultanas in a bowl and pour in juuuust enough brandy that they all get a go at being in it. You don’t have to swamp them, but it’s all up to you – after all, you can use the soaking brandy however you please later, so if you want more of it then cover them in more. If you’re like “noooo my precious brandy” then use a smaller amount. Leave it to sit, covered, at least overnight, but to be honest you could probably get away with like, an hour, if you’re incredibly impatient. There’s probably some way you could speed up the process by gently microwaving it all, but I don’t have one and have completely forgotten what to do with one so couldn’t really advise there.

Put the butter, condensed milk, and brown sugar in a large saucepan. Bring to the boil, stirring pretty much constantly, and let it all bubble away like there’s no tomorrow until it reaches the soft-ball stage. What is this? Get a bowl of cold water. If you drop a small spoonful of the fudge into the cold water and it forms a soft ball of like, fudgey stuff, then it’s ready. If it simply dissolves into the water or collapses into nothing, it needs to keep boiling.

Once it’s ready, remove from the heat – I like to stick it in a sink that I’ve partially filled with cold water – and stir aggressively for honestly ages until it thickens and you can see it starting to crystalise and set around the edges. Halfway through, stir in the drained sultanas. Reserve the brandy for your own good times. Usually fudge will lose its gloss and become rather crumbly as you stir but this one was a little different – it just thickened up considerably. When you feel chill about it, spatula the lot into a baking paper-lined brownie tin (or similar regularly sized baking dish) and refrigerate till super firm. Cut into slices of whatever size you like, and eat.

The fudge went down very well with the crew when I brought it in and achieved lavish praise (oh my god, do I only do this for attention and lavish praise, not just to be nice? Does it even matter if we all still get fudge as a result?) Literally all I’ve been doing otherwise is trying to stay awake long enough to write this post, and listening to Judy Garland (I was going to say “through tear-filled ears” but not only is that anatomically inaccurate it’s also troubling to consider, but what I’m trying to say is that she makes me majorly emotional.) However! One exciting thing has occurred lately: I had another crush cake published on The Toast. This one is for glorious Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda, currently crushing it in the gasp-makingly successful musical Hamilton. Go me! (Really, go me. Back to bed. Go back to bed, me.)

small cake, big crush
title from: Roll Deep, The Avenue – only one of the best songs to come out of the year 2005 ever.

music lately:

My Shot, from the musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, Leslie Odom Jr and Anthony Ramos performing live at the White House – I honestly get aggressive shivers the minute this starts and can’t stop watching this.

Judy Garland, The Man That Got Away. Is there a duststorm happening inches from my face in this room? Oh wait no I’m sobbing uncontrollably at this.

Soulja Boy Tell’em, Crank That (Soulja Boy) I dunno, I just really felt like listening to this.

next time: I reallllllly feel like making bread, so maybe that will have happened by the time I next am here?

 

pile on many more layers, and i’ll be joining you there

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three chocolate cakes sandwiched together with cream cheese icing and crushed up creme eggs and you can’t see it but there’s also an implied *painting nails emoji*

Well, Mars may be in retrograde and my April tarot card may be the tarot card equivalent of a heavy resigned sigh, but: ya girl is out here being thirty finally. (She says, quite thirty-ish-ly.) It seems only right that the first blog post I do after my birthday is for a birthday cake, yeah? Not my own, but instead one I made for my pal-and-colleague’s girlfriend’s 21st, because that’s a thing I do sometimes. Such a momentous occasion and an honour of a task calls for something a little no-holds-barred, and with the simple brief of “Cadbury Creme Egg” I set to work on what turned out to be this three layer masterpiece. Being the dingus I am, I stupidly only took a few cursory snaps of it on my phone rather than sitting it down and lovingly photographing it with my proper camera, but I was so pleased with the results – like, look at that thing! It’s beautiful! – that I decided to blog about it anyway, hasty photos and all. Who knows when you, yourself, might need to make a three layer creme egg cake!

 champagne for my real friends

As for my birthday, I won’t sugar-coat it for you: it was wonderful! It started when the clock ticked over to midnight the night before because I was still working; however all the hugs and frolics made it fun and I liked that I got to catch my birthday in the act, right as it started, without wasting a drop of it. As someone who wastes a lot of time fretting about wasting time, that was nice. The day proper had a professional hair wash and straighten like I am a fancy rich woman who just does that, real champagne, delicious brunch, the receiving of exciting gifts like tequila and a gilded bowl and Lana del Rey vinyl and a rather gobsmackingly beautiful record player; rewatching Once More With Feeling; a phone call home where tales of my birth and incredulity at the passage of time since then were recounted, and then lashings of wine and platters and selfies with beauties at the place where everybody knows your name (yeah, that’s right, I went back to work to hang out on my birthday, that’s how much I like the place.)

a bad but maybe useful photo of the three layers waiting to be iced

So, the cake! Oddly enough it was incredibly un-stressful to make – I made it in my mornings between doing wall-to-wall shifts at work and was still generally very serene the entire time. The mixture generously makes three moist, rich cakes with near-perfect tops for stacking and icing (I sliced a bit off one to make it super evenly flat, and this is how I know it tastes extremely good.) The icing of it is also very straightforward, and in fact the hardest thing about it is getting your hands on some creme eggs. I was going to ice the whole lot like a more traditional cake but decided to leave the sides nakedly exposed with the icing tightly spread into every gap a la momofuku – it’s actually much easier, and that way you can see the cakes themselves in a “you’re damn right this cake is three layers tall” kind of way and it’s all rakishly messy yet neat at the same time.

I could’ve gone for a more hardcore filling but decided that the tang of the cream cheese would gently counteract the bone-dissolving sweetness of the fondant inside the eggs while still showcasing them. Honestly, the more novelty involved the more serious and thoughtful you have to be. This cake is so majestic and tall and the creme eggs look so cute all halved and nestled in together that you really don’t have to worry about any further decoration but there’s also nothing stopping you – my one concession was to quickly melt a caramac bar and pour it onto the top layer to echo the look of the eggs’ filling, but it’s not that necessary.

These recipe instructions are long as hell, I grant you, but it’s honestly more or less chill. I just like to reeeeally explain stuff. As I point out in the recipe, I only had two caketins so baked two layers at once followed by a third, and it all worked out. Also, this would be easier with a cake mixer probably but I used a mere wooden spoon and honestly didn’t even do that great a job of creaming the butter and sugar and it STILL worked out fine so – let’s all just breathe.

triple layer creme egg cake

I made the actual cake itself by following the recipe from this site pretty well to the letter; all the random measurements are a bit of a faff but the cake same out perfect so I’m happily and trustingly passing it on to you. I deviated and made my own icing, if you wanted to take this cake in a whole other direction you could use whatever filling and icing you like. It’s a very good starting point.

cake:

one and a half cups good cocoa powder
one and a half cups boiling water
one tablespoon instant espresso powder (or plain instant coffee if it’s all you can find)
three quarters of a cup of sour cream
one tablespoon vanilla extract
375g soft butter
two and a half cups sugar
three large eggs
one and three-quarter cups plain flour
one and a quarter teaspoons baking soda
a pinch of salt

Take three 20cm springform caketins and line the bases with baking paper. Grease the sides with butter and sprinkle a little cocoa over them, shaking the tins about till they’re fairly evenly covered with a cocoa dusting. Set your oven to 180 C/350 F.

In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the cocoa, coffee powder, water, and sour cream till smooth. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together till creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time till thoroughly incorporated, then add about a third of the flour and baking soda (you’re gonna want to sift them if you’re going to all this trouble, the last thing you need is baking soda lumps) along with the cocoa mixture in alternating quantities, mixing till it’s a suddenly-enormous dark, smooth chocolatey batter.

Divide the batter evenly between the three cake tins, smoothing down the tops. Place them all in the oven and bake for thirty or so minutes, rotating their positions on the oven shelves halfway through to ensure even baking. If you only have two pans, then just bake two cakes using 2/3 of the cake mixture, then while they’re cooling, put the remaining third of the batter in one of the used cake tins and bake that after. This is what I did and it was totally fine.

Allow the cakes to cool completely.

Icing:

100g soft butter
500g cream cheese (this sounds like a lot but it’s just two of those Philadelphia packets) at room temperature
two cups icing sugar, but have more just in case
five or so creme eggs (perhaps grab a few extra in case anything goes wrong.)

Make sure both the butter and the cream cheese are soft, and your icing sugar isn’t lumpy, and then just mix the hell out of all three ingredients till you have a ton of icing.

Assembly:

Slice the peaked tops off any of the cakes if they’ve risen too much, so that they’re all more or less flat. Place one cake on your chosen serving plate, and place a good dollop of icing in the centre. Spread it out fairly evenly using the side of a knife. Unwrap one creme egg, roughly chop it, and sprinkle/drop the whole lot evenly on top of the icing. Then place another cake layer carefully on top.

Don’t worry if there are massive gaps between the layers, we’ll take care of that later. Repeat this process with the next layer of cake and another egg.

Finally, put the top layer of cake on and spoon most of the remaining icing on top. You want a decently thick, even layer on here. Now, using the side of the knife, smear remaining icing into any gaps along the sides, running the knife’s side around the sides of the cake to press it all in and to create a messy yet smooth look. Does that make sense? You kind of want the cake to look like it has just fallen out of a cylinder. Halve three creme eggs and arrange them, cut side up, on top of the cake. I melted a caramac bar and drizzled it into the centre just to add to the creme egg look, but it’s not essential. You now have a damn creme egg cake.

So I ate a bit of cake off-cuttage and a lot of icing and loved it all, but in order to strike real faith in your hearts about this recipe, let me quote the actual recipient of the cake, the birthday lady herself: “Argh it was amazing! With all of the layers and all of the creaminess and chocolate and just the fact that a cream egg could be transformed into a cake. Super awesome and delicious”.

I had a lot of fun making this cake and it was such a nice opportunity; and should you ever be called upon to make a fancy big cake I definitely recommend this one. If creme eggs are emphatically not your jam, I think this would be amazing with roughly chopped caramel-filled chocolate covering it with the caramel dripping everywhere; or with smashed up oreos, or with milk chocolate melted and drizzled all over the top, you see what I mean? For an enormous time-consuming cake made to a very specific brief it’s really quite versatile.

what a cute 30 year old.

Finally: fun birthday fact! It turns out that if you say “Happy Birthday” to me I’ll immediately say it back to you without thinking. I’m not sure if it’s cute or weird or both (the Laura Vincent Story) but it’s what my brain has decided is a fantastic reaction and I can’t break it. Not that I – or indeed, you – have to worry about it for another year. Happy birthday!

title from: Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond. I may not be inspired by Pink Floyd to write poetry anymore as I was in my teens – for which we can all be relieved – but this song still goes off. Very slowly. And what an imperative in that title!

music lately:

Something To Sing About, from Once More With Feeling. As I said, on my birthday I rewatched this, the musical episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Joss Whedon can be ever so Joss Whedony but I’ll never deny the incredible cleverness that went into writing this episode. All the songs are brilliant and Something To Sing About is 100% NOT the best place to start if you don’t know the story because of the massive spoilers and lack of context but it’s still my favourite and you should watch it anyway. Buffy’s eyes! The discordant wobble when she sings “heaven!” Spike’s half smile when he sings back at her! The time signature changes! I died.

By My Side, Godspell. I busted out my copy of the original broadway cast recording of the musical Godspell on vinyl and while it hilariously does not hold up, the music is still endearing and By My Side is still one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Penguins and Polarbears, by Millencollen. Couldn’t say why, but I truly adore pop-punk singers when they sound completely congested, which Millencollen delivers upon handsomely. If the lead singer makes you want to swallow an antihistamine for your own safety, then chances are I’m all over it. (There’s a point during the Green Day Bullet in a Bible concert performance of Brain Stew where I’m pretty sure lead singer Billie Joe is literally just dribbling incomprehensively and I love it.)

next time: I think I mentioned last time that I made homemade matcha mayonaise but I also made this awesome granola stuff. Either way: deliciousness awaits you.

 

perfect hexagon of the honeycomb and you soothe yourself with the shapes you know

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how much trouble can one ice cream be?

Prologue: Laura.

Confused yet? I decided to write this blog post somewhat in the style of a Baby-Sitters Club book, for no good reason other than it occurred to me and I ran with it.

Chapter 1

WHUMP! CLATTER! 

That’s the sound of me jumping onto my bed while holding a bowl of ice cream and delicious homemade honeycomb sauce, immediately knocking over the worrying number of empty juice cans that I’m lazily keeping beside it instead of putting them in the bin. “Auughhhh!” I just manage to stop the rapidly-melting ice cream and warm sauce from spilling over onto my bed. What a day!

I guess you’re wondering by now who I am, and what I’m wearing. Well there’s me, Laura – I hope you’re taking notes, I’m going to quiz you on this later! Psych! I’m kind of the humorous one here, or so I always say. I’ve got chin-length unruly red hair and glasses, but people do still hang out with me. I’m wearing these old cerulean blue shorts that I think used to be part of some boys’ high school regulation gym uniform (I love vintage!) and a white crop top that has the word “CHALLENGE” written across the front in big black letters, because I like to wear clothing that doubles as a friendly warning for what kind of person I am. I don’t have pierced ears, but people do still hang out with me. Most importantly, I’m eating ice cream, even though it’s not even breakfast time yet. I know what you’re thinking – how do I eat all this ice cream without getting in trouble? The thing is, I’m kind of an individual when it comes to doing what I want. I’m also the only person ever that has ever been into cooking. It’s kind of my one personality trait. If anyone else likes it, I’m certainly not acknowledging it!

this ice cream is sensitive and a good listener

Chapter 2

My best friends work during the day and I work at night, but when we get together, we always have a good time! We’re the best friends you’ll ever have. Does that sound like a threat? I’m inclined to tell you the intimate details of their respective family history, but that would be really weird, so I’ll just do a brief hagiography (that means documentation of the lives of saints, it’s a word I learned recently). There’s Kim, who has lo-oo-ong dark hair and the enormous macadamia-shaped eyes of a curious woodland deer. She’s kind of the wise, yet wickedly fun one of the group. Kate has just dyed her hair blonde, which means she is now even more popular and sophisticated – she also has a crazy household with a cat AND a dog, and a real, live, husband! Confusingly, Kate is also wise yet wickedly fun. This week because of Easter and having days off I’ve been able to see them relatively heaps and it has been very good for the soul, as the saying goes. For example, on Monday night we sat on the floor of my bedroom (it’s a great meeting space, I’m so lucky to have my own one!) and ate Pop-Tarts and drank Boulevardiers. That’s a cocktail which is like a negroni but uses bourbon instead of gin, and it’s one of my favourites. We clinked our glasses together in what we call “a toast”, and in that moment we felt like real Big City women.

darn it! I said ruefully. I only described their hair, not their outfits. 

Chapter 3

“We’re finally getting to the plot!” I thought ruefully, tucking a lock of unruly red hair behind my tragically unpierced ears. So, I’m kind of the “food blogger” around here. I’m also kind of an ideas person. I have Big Ideas and then Occasionally Make Them Happen Around Three Weeks Later If I’m Awake Enough, I know, it’s a little exhausting trying to keep up with me! When my Ideas and food blogging combine – bam! Honeycomb Sauce. Okay, okay, I had honeycomb ice cream at a local restaurant and immediately decided that honeycomb was the new salted caramel, and wanted to make some version of it for myself to have again and again in the comfort of my own bed and/or more normal area in the house to eat. But after some time I learned a little bit about myself and a lot about the true meaning of friendship: it’s not a competition. Salted Caramel may be heavily overexposed, but that doesn’t make it any less delicious. Honeycomb is just a flavour I hadn’t thought about in forever!

I know what you’re thinking – just honey and sugar? Way too sweet. Booooring. About as fun as a pop quiz or getting Salisbury Steak for lunch, neither of which I’ve ever actually experienced.

In fact, the delicate floral sweetness of the honey and the richness of the butter come together to make something pretty magical, and very individual. It doesn’t taste overly of honey, it’s more reminiscent of (that means “reminiscent of”, it’s a word I learned recently) actual honeycomb, the kind of stuff that you find inside Crunchy Bars or other similar candies hidden around your room. This sauce isn’t perfect – I admit! – half of it remained saucy and the other half solidified as soon as it hit the cold ice cream, but this was all so fun and delicious that I decided to share it with you anyway.

honeycomb sauce: a delicious prototype 

A recipe by myself. I’m thinking of adding a tablespoon or so of cream to it next time to see if that keeps it more liquid but I do love it just like this. 

100g butter
half a cup of sugar
one tablespoon brown sugar
one heaped tablespoon honey

Heat everything together in a saucepan, stirring gently as it comes to the boil. Remove from the heat once it starts bubbling and continue stirring for a bit. Allow it to cool somewhat (it’ll be like actual lava initially) before pouring it all over your ice cream. 



Chapter 4

I decided to end the day with ice cream and honeycomb sauce – after all, I’m a grown up and kind of a bad girl who makes her own rules. The remaining sauce had turned rock solid in the fridge, so I had to carefully sit the bottle inside a cup of boiling water to soften it, but during this time, I learned five more lessons about friendship. Unfortunately I’m still wearing the same outfit that I was at the start of this story, but to pad things out a bit, I’ll tell you about what I wore yesterday: a vintage white minidress with pink and orange diamond patterns across it and a high neck with a collar. I wore it with my yellow socks with pizzas on them and chunky black ankle boots – pretty wild, huh? I’m a pretty wild dresser!

feel free to judge how well the illustration matches the description

Prologue:

Ice cream twice in 24 hours – that day was a summer I’ll never forget.

title from: One Beat by Sleater-Kinney. Howl-y goodness. Oh yeah, and while I’m all “what would Kristy Thomas, President of the Babysitters Club, have to say about Sleater-Kinney?” I’m also dropping the conceit for the remainder of the blog post, okay?  

music lately: 

I’ve finally given Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton a proper listen and I am predictably entranced and addicted.  Listening to one modern musical about historic political American times got me thinking about another one: Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which in the opposite direction of the incredible success of Hamilton, ran for a mere hundred and twenty-something performances on Broadway before closing. I saw a production of it in New Orleans a few years back but haven’t listened to it since; its pop punk sound is like…perfect? I don’t know what the best entry point would be, maybe Rockstar if you want something fast or Saddest Song if you want something amazing.

Kid Cudi with MGMT, Pursuit of Happiness. Whatever track this samples is intoxicating and then the rest of the song has the temerity to be excellent as well. This song is moderately ancient but sounds so fresh.

next time: the novelty is over, kids, and I have some brussels sprouts to emphasise this (they’re fried with pistachios and truffle butter though, so) 

for the want of the price of tea and a slice

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Things I’ve said at work lately:

– here, have this salted chocolate cashew butter slice that I made. It’s dairy free and gluten free!

– uhh I have to go to the bathroom because my satin jumpsuit is actually on backwards and I’ve only just noticed

– hey, I know we’re kind of busy but I have a rather singular situation, the centre bit of my bra is hanging on by a fragile, tautly pulled thread and if I shake one more cocktail it will very likely break and bust open, and since I’m wearing a cropped top there is very little room for error here. Is it okay if I run home and change my bra? I can be back really soon- oh, you were just coming to tell me I could sign out? So there was actually no need for me to tell you any of this?

As well as wearing clothing quite uselessly, I also like to occasionally bring in treats to work to boost both morale and blood sugar. In this case I’d been toying with an idea, batting it about like a cat with a small felt mouse on a string, about some kind of nut butter slice covered in chocolate. What I made was fine, with a soft, fudgy texture in the base followed by the snappish crunch of cold dark chocolate, but it wasn’t quite there. As soon as I sprinkled some salt on top the flavours sprang to life and it all made sense and tasted properly delicious as opposed to giving the illusion of tasting delicious. So don’t leave that bit out, even if it seems either excessively sodium-ish or small enough to forget about.

This is so easy to make – truly, the hardest bit is getting the various nut butters and coconut oil out of their jars without flinging them everywhere. Indeed: if you end up getting slightly more than half a cup of each ingredient it’s completely fine. I know I probably did.

salted chocolate cashew butter slice

a recipe by myself 

  • half a cup cashew butter
  • half a cup peanut butter
  • half a cup coconut oil, melted
  • half a cup LSA mix, or ground almonds
  • quarter of a cup icing sugar
  • one tablespoon honey or maple syrup
  • 150g dark chocolate
  • sea salt

Mix the nut butters and oil together till smooth, then tip in the sugar, honey, and LSA and stir again. Pour it into a brownie tin lined with baking paper, and freeze till firm. Gently melt the dark chocolate and remaining coconut oil together, and pour over the base. Freeze again. Once you’re pretty confident that it’s completely solid, sprinkle with plenty of sea salt and slice up however you like.

(Regarding that bra situation: I juuuust made it home before I heard this muffled popping noise indicating the valiant thread had finally snapped. I was sad to see it go, I called it my “power bra” because I got it in New York and it basically positioned you in such a way so you could break a glass ceiling with your own buoyant cleavage. I was like…I’ve defeated my power bra. Am I too powerful? Do I have to eat the bra now, like that scene with the Khaleesi in Game of Thrones?)

As well as giving you an energy boost and being full of shiny-making ingredients, this has a gorgeously buttery, mellow flavour with a pleasingly dense bite to it. Texture is everything here but you can totally play with flavour too – you’re welcome to use entirely cashew butter in the mix, but I decided to cut it with the much cheaper peanut butter so as to not make this ridiculously extravagant. You could, however, use almond butter or all peanut butter or add cinnamon to the base or whatever you like, really. If avoiding dairy isn’t a daily task for you, then you could definitely use white or milk chocolate on this instead – and I do adore both – but the bitter plainness of the dark chocolate against the creamy, nutty base is genuinely pleasing.

We ended up being extremely busy on the night that I brought in my container of this in to work, so I left it in the freezer and when I opened up the bar the next day it was entirely gone: I am taking this as positive feedback. I myself couldn’t stop eating the stuff that I’d left in the freezer at my apartment, so for what it’s worth my own personal feedback is highly positive.

All I’ve really been doing is working lately and I’m so tired that all I can talk about is how tired I am like it’s my one personality trait (as opposed to in high summer, when my one personality trait is that I’m sweatily overheated.) But I managed to make this delicious stuff, and I somehow overthrew my own Power Bra, so I guess I’m doing alright.

title from: Us and Them by Pink Floyd – I used to be incredibly obsessed with them, then dropped off a bit, and now am back to gently sincere fondness.

music lately:

Billy Bragg and Wilco, Walt Whitman’s Niece. I used to listen to this song all the time, it has this rollicking, shambling quality that I love and the call-and-answer bit is charming.

Roots Manuva, Witness Dub. This song is on the work playlist and no matter how exhausted I am it brings me back up every single time. It is a TUNE.

next time: I’ve been mucking around with this roasted broccoli turmeric coconut thing recipe which may appear here.

i don’t think you’re ready for this jelly

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Much as I have respect for juice that is usually followed by the word “cleanse” and involves several pulverised green vegetables bringing joy to your liver, my preferred kind of juice is the sort that comes in rainbow colours, is preferably imported from somewhere exotic like America, and is found in the fridge in the dark back corner of the dairy down the road. Golden Pash is my absolute favourite, a passionfruit-tinged fizzy beverage in a purple can with hangover-healing properties in every carbonated bubble. I believe it’s manufactured in New Zealand but there’s something about its rather desperate insistence that it contains a whole 5% fruit juice that is kind of charming. Like, mate, my shampoo probably has five percent fruit juice in it. My shoes are probably five percent fruit juice (I’m a bartender, so this is actually possible, as opposed to hyperbole for hyperbole’s sake alone.) I’m ride-or-die for Golden Pash…but I am also easily swayed by pretty packaging and the promise of exciting flavours.

example: the results of a very casual trip to the dairy 

Anyway, after a recipe misfire where I thought I was making gummy-type candy out of Peach Snapple but instead ended up simply making delicious jelly, I thought: jelly! Fun! And so set about to make jelly on purpose out of the next juicy beverage which took my fancy. And that happened to be Arizona Iced Tea, pomegranate flavour.

one of two ingredients

Some might ask, why make your own jelly? But like, why do anything, really? In its favour, this is cute and really easy and perfect if you need to take a dessert to some kind of potluck situation or provide something for your friends – either go childs-birthday-party-esque and make a big bowl of it to be scooped up and served with ice cream, or pour it into dinky glasses and ramekins for individual servings. Oh, and it’s completely delicious – the surprisingly delicate flavour of the pomegranate, all fresh and gently astringent, tastes wonderful when suspended in gelatine. It’s refreshing, it’s barely sweet but just sweet enough, it’s gloriously wobbly when you smack it with the back of your spoon for no good reason other than to bring about your own good cheer; and if you hold it up to the light it glows gloriously red and pink like some kind of magical crystal, the sort of thing that Captain Planet would have as a household knick-knack, like a sunset’s reflection caught in water.

And there’s only two ingredients! One is simple: some kind of juice; you obviously do not need to use Arizona iced tea or even pomegranate flavoured iced tea or EVEN iced tea, I mean if you want to be truly unkind to yourself you could literally use plain water, this would not be a good time at all, but the gelatine won’t know the difference. However as I’ve outlined above, pomegranate flavour makes for a delightful jelly. The other ingredient is gelatine: mysterious, unfortunately-non-vegetarian, gelatine.

I used leaf gelatine which is pretty easy to get hold of in supermarkets and very easy to use – just let the sheets of gelatine soak in water, give them a squeeze, and then stir them into hot liquid and that’s literally it. However, if all you can find is powdered gelatine, I mean, that will be a perfectly fine substitute, and google should be able to help you with converting quantities.

pomegranate iced tea jelly

a recipe by myself

one 500ml bottle of arizona pomegranate flavour iced green tea; or whatever you like
4 sheets of gold-level leaf gelatine (I use Equagold) 

Soak the gelatine sheets in a bowl of cold water till they soften, then pick them up and give them a squeeze – this bit is delightful, not gonna lie – and tip out the water. Put the softened gelatine leaves back in the bowl and pour over about a third of a cup of recently boiled water from the kettle – just enough to cover the gelatine leaves – and stir till they’ve dissolved, which should only take a few seconds. You don’t need the entire bottle of tea, so you might as well have a sip or two first before pouring it slowly into the gelatine/hot water, stirring as you go. From here, simply pour it into cute serving bowls or one larger dish and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours to set. 

pomegranate jelly or a still from the sinister film Picnic at Hanging Rock?

Bonus: apparently gelatine helps put a shine on your coat and make your nails strong, so I look forward to being intimidatingly sleek and glossy any day now.

Speaking of monitoring one’s glossiness levels: somehow it’s March already, which means I’m turning thirty actual years old next month: I fluctuate between being terrified at this and all like “what if I am suddenly no longer interesting to anyone and everything I do is the actions of an elderly crone who no-one wants to care for” and being all like “Beyonce arguably did the most important and amazing work of her life post-thirty and she is only becoming more powerful with the passing of each day also you are not the first person to turn thirty so this is really kind of patronising and it’s probably the patriarchy’s fault that you have a weird sense of fear about leaving your twenties and how that relates to your value as a woman, nay, as a person, and to the merit of your work.” If there’s anyone out there who turned thirty and didn’t immediately turn into a small pile of ash, feeble and unwanted, then holla at ya girl!
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title via: Bootylicious by Destiny’s Child (speaking of Beyonce). I don’t think you’re ready for how obvious this song choice is for this recipe. 
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music lately: 

The Pharcyde, Drop. Made even better by its hypnotic backwards-forwards music video.

EMF, Unbelievable. I don’t really go in for youtube comments (full stop) where people are all nostalgic for the 90s when they were never even there, but there are a few songs where I’m like damn it why wasn’t I out clubbing in England somewhere in 1993. This is one such song.
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Next time: I haven’t had time to cook anything in a while so mate, I don’t even know. 

you were rubbing both my hands, chewing on a candy bar

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mutiny on the bounty

I, like Homer Simpson, am the highly suggestible type. If you need someone to rob a bank with you, just ask me: not because I am particularly stealthy (although I can do the splits with ease which I imagine would be useful for getting around laser light security) or inclined towards a sexy danger crime life, but simply because I’ll probably be like “ummm yeah why not, I haven’t got much on tonight” without even thinking about it too deeply. Indeed, the other day when my friend Jen was all, “My kingdom for a bounty bar!” I was all, “you know what? My kingdom, also, for a bounty bar!” And then I thought it would be way more fun to go to great effort to make my own, rather than just walking 200 metres to the dairy to retrieve one in a matter of moments. Jen is also currently crashing at mine, which means I was able to get both of us bounty bars while neatly using only one kingdom as bait. Or…something.

okay sure I could’ve tried to have been neater about this but the chocolate could’ve tried too

These are, charmingly, entirely vegan and really pretty cheap to make, although I confess I am a milk chocolate-adoring heathen and so used that to coat them, but all you have to do to keep them vegan is use a dark chocolate like Whittakers which has no milk solids in it. I found this recipe online and basically didn’t change a thing; but it’s worth keeping in mind that chocolate-dipping stuff uses sooooo much chocolate.

It might seem like far too much trouble to go to for a mere chocolate bar dupe, but there is a significant motivating factor: these taste so, so, so incredible. The coconut is all damp and squishy (there’s no better way to describe it sorry) and the feeling of the firm crunch of chocolate giving way to it all is straight up heavenly. I truly don’t want to be one of those people who are all “it’s practically health food!” because that kind of talk makes my teeth feel like I’ve just bitten into tinfoil, however, as these are blessed with twelve hundred different types of coconut by-product, you take one bite and you can practically feel your hair getting shinier.

homemade bounty bars

from a recipe on healthyeah.co.nz (which is a v cool site!) 

  • one cup full-fat coconut cream (I like Fia Fia which has the texture of whipped cream and the highest percentage of actual coconut that I could find, according to the ingredients list)
  • three cups dessicated coconut
  • two heaped tablespoons coconut oil
  • pinch sea salt
  • two tablespoons golden syrup or maple syrup
  • two 250g blocks of dark chocolate (or chocolate of your choice!) 

Put the coconut cream, coconut oil, and golden syrup into a small pan and heat gently, just till the oil is melted fully. Stir in the salt and coconut and remove from the heat. Spatula into a baking-paper lined brownie tin (y’know, one of those regular sized rectangular baking tins) and refrigerate the mixture till it’s firm. Then slice into even rectangles or squares and freeze (or if your freezer is tiny like mine and won’t fit a damn thing in it, just put it back in the fridge and hope for the best.)  

 Once you’re quite convinced that the mixture is as solid as it’s gonna get, gently melt the chocolate in a small pan, and carefully dip each coconut block into it, coating it on all sides, before resting it on a fresh sheet of baking paper to harden. Unfortunately the best way I can think of to do this is to literally sit each slice of coconut stuff in the chocolate and spoon more chocolate over the top, but you do you. Transfer the slices to the fridge once they’re all coated. It’s probably easier to melt the chocolate in two separate batches, just to prevent it burning while it melts. 

So very worth the effort. Honestly, can not emphasise hard enough how good the bit is when you bite through the hard chocolate into the soft coconut.

Literally nothing of significance has happened in my life since my last blog post since all I’ve been doing is apartment-hunting and taking the distressing heat of summer very personally. I mean, I do love summer! I do not, however, love being all “why is someone pouring water down the back of my neck how rude oh my god it is my own sweat, how vulgar and embarrassing…better tweet about it.” But seriously, it’s so, so hot. Sweaty is my one personality trait. Wait, there’s a back-up personality trait: joy at having eaten a good 75% of this bounty of fake bounty bars that I made, while gaining mountains of praise for the mere 25% that other people managed to get their hands on.

title from: Blood Bank by high-pitched gentle-mongerers Bon Iver.

music lately:

Eliot Sumner, After Dark. Am 100000% in love with Sumner (fun fact: child of Sting and Trudi Styler!) and their music.

CHVRCHES, Lies. It’s so fizzy and atmospheric and the beat is addictive and I’m soooo bummed that I couldn’t go see them at Laneway on Monday.

next time: let’s all keep our fingers crossed that it’s some kind of cleaning-out-the-pantry type activity on account of I’ve finally found an apartment and need to, like, clean out my pantry. 

and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere

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rum’n’raisin your hands in the the air like you just don’t care
I’ve been really sick this whole past week, and every time I even tried to blog it was like, what if I just lie here and groan throatily instead? Yes, that’s a better use of my time. I’m still a little tickly of the throat and having to blow my nose a ton, but things are definitely improved. I pushed myself a couple of times last week – to go to work (alas, no sexy 2005 Lindsay Lohan voice for me but more of an enthusiastic honking goose noise every time I opened my mouth) and to go to the launch party of the Visa Wellington on a Plate festival. I really could’ve stayed in bed that night of course, but the promise of free wine is a rousing one and reading the new event programme is always exciting and damned if I’m going to let feeling like death stop me from doing some hard mingling and trying to feel like I’m vaguely relevant in the food-related scene, whatever that even is. Upon arriving at the launch my sheer black fringed robe immediately got tangled in a low-hanging plant in the foyer, causing an old man to say in a concerned voice, “This is the Wellington on a Plate launch“, as though I’d wandered here by mistake while looking for like, The Quarterly Symposium of Sewer Dwellers, but fortunately my name was in fact on the door and I managed to extricate myself and have a wonderful time. Love a good launch party! And now I have till August to meander through the programme and hedge my bets as to which set menu in which fancy restaurant looks the funnest. 
What with my throat feeling like an actual garbage can and all, I thought the ice cream I made a while ago would be a soothing thing to eat, but unfortunately my stupid nose, with all the functionality of a flickering lightbulb, meant that I couldn’t really taste anything. This was distressing. Since this ice cream is honestly the most delicious thing ever. Luckily, I made some well before I got sick, ate the lot in one sitting, then made some more and ate half of that before I got sick, so I have a good frame of reference from which to describe it to you. And I will describe it to you like this: omg it’s amazing. 

I don’t even like raisins at all, those gritty little scrunched up no-fun ex-grapes, but my swell girlfriend was saying how she loved rum’n’raisin ice cream when she lived in England and never saw it anywhere here in New Zealand. I like a challenge, even if I don’t like a raisin, and I adore making ice cream, and actually had never even tried this particular flavour before, so how was I to know if the look on my face I made when I thought about it even matched how it tastes in real life?

I cheated massively and substituted the more tolerable sultanas while audaciously keeping the name, but if you’re not averse to the real alliterative thing then by all means substitute raisins for my substituted sultanas. Really though, it’s the rum and the coconut sugar which make this recipe particularly magical – I used Cruzan Blackstrap rum which is full of dark, sticky caramel flavour, and anything along those lines would be perfect. I feel like I’ve gone on heaps about coconut sugar lately, but it’s so fudgily butterscotchily good and really gives the custard an intensely, gorgeously mellow flavour (yes, both intense and mellow). Making the custard is a pain – so much transferring between bowls and pans and so much stirring! – but it’s forever since I’ve done this proper method of making ice cream and the soft, dissolvingly creamy texture you get once it’s frozen is worth the effort, I think.

And yes, the sultanas themselves are wonderful – all swollen from the rum, and strangely chewy and confection-like once frozen, little bursts of alcoholic warmth amongst all the caramel iciness. 
look at this good ice cream I made

rum’n’raisin ice cream 

makes around a litre/1200ml, depending on how much custard and mixture you eat. 
a recipe by myself. I didn’t consult any other recipes so this is literally ice cream that has rum and also raisins in it (I mean, sultanas, but same diff) and I have no idea how similar it is to the established flavour itself, but since I never see it around and have never tried anything but mine I can only conclude that my version is totally superior to everything. 

3 large egg yolks
half a cup coconut sugar, or brown sugar
one cup full cream milk
500 – 600ml cream (sometimes it’s only sold in 600ml bottles and if that’s all you can find all that happens is you’ll get a bit more ice cream, wheeeee) 
half a cup of sultanas, golden if you can find them
dark rum, I used Cruzan Blackstrap

Firstly, place the sultanas in a small bowl and pour in just enough rum to pretty much submerge them. Leave them overnight ideally to absorb as much alcohol as possible, but if you’ve only got an hour then I’m sure it’ll still be okay. 

Slowly heat the milk in a saucepan, till it’s almost, almost, at a simmer – you want it to be hot but barely starting to wobble and move around with the heat, if that makes sense? While it’s heating up, mix the egg yolks together with the sugar – it might turn into quite a thick paste, don’t worry – and then once the milk is hot, remove it from the heat and briskly whisk a few spoonfuls of it into the egg yolks, slowly adding the rest of the hot milk while continuing to whisk. Now spatula all that back into the saucepan and stir this mixture over a low heat – either using a whisk or a spatula – until it thickens up a little, like the texture of a good milkshake. This will take a few minutes of stirring but keeping the heat low prevents the egg yolks from cooking instantly. Once you feel like it’s sufficiently thick – less a milky texture and more a creamy, saucy texture – remove from the heat immediately. 

Now all the hard stuff is done, and to turn this into ice cream, all you have to do is: stir the sultanas and remaining rum into the cooled custard, whip the cream until it’s thick and aerated but not fluffy and stiff, fold everything together, spatula into a freezer-safe container and freeze, without stirring, until it’s solid. That’s it.  
 that’s it

Also, the person who suggested that I try making this in the first place really loved it, which is excellent. There are so many things I’m not good at, but it’s nice to remind myself how amazingly great I am at making ice cream. I mean, I really did eat the entire first batch in one sitting, as if in some kind of delicious fugue state. And so I conclude that raisins are in fact pretty okay, but only if they’re actually sultanas. And filled with rum.

Also: ya girl has blue hair now! Although as I type I’ve randomly smudged some purple and pink into it to see what happens. What will probably happen is I’ll forget I’ve done this and take a nap after I’ve finished writing this and I’ll end up dying my face and pillow but somehow not my hair. But I want to nap so hard right now I’m not sure I even care? Either way, fun times should ensue.

Some other exciting things I’ve done lately include, appearing on Radio New Zealand to talk about preserved lemons with Jesse Mulligan – I love being on Radio NZ, they are good people – and also I wrote about a local coffee shop for US site Sprudge. Ya girl is doing stuff! Also ya girl is so ready to be completely unsick again. There’s only so many times that I can Leslie Knope myself into action, being all “okay I can’t actually stand upright okay time to go interact with the public and do the responsibilities” (by “only so many times” I mean “I will do this endlessly and as many times as I have to”, but yeah.) On the upside, being sick and having my tastebuds wavering in and out of service means I still have quite a lot of untouched rum’n’raisin ice cream left in the freezer…

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title from: Carly Rae Jepsen, Both Sides Now. The more I see “sacrilege! gasp!” comments about her cover of the Joni Mitchell song on youtube the more amazing and legit it sounds, tbh.
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music lately:

She Cries Your Name, Beth Orton. The opening strings on this are so dreamy and haunting! And then it stays that way! 

Shakey Dog, Ghostface Killah. Speaking of dreamy and haunting, I just looove the sample that serves in place of a chorus here, every time it changes up a chord into that “uhhhhhhh” bit (I’m so great at describing music lol) it’s so amazing. Also Ghostface Killah is massively engaging and I love how he always sounds a bit stressed.
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next time: even if I have this cold forever and ever I’m gonna make myself blog sooner, okay? Being asleep all day is no excuse for not writing! 

it’s a little secret, just the robinson’s affair

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got a secret, can you keep it, swear this one you’ll save

In a completely unsurprising turn of events, I fell asleep while writing this blog post and now have a very small window of opportunity – more like a mouse-hole of opportunity, or perhaps a fissure of opportunity – to get it done before I have to take off for work. In fact I have no real proof that I’m not still asleep right now, so please keep this in mind as you read on. What I’m saying is, I coolly absolve myself of any need to make any sense as I try to finish this thing without falling asleep again.

Speaking of cool absolution, I am so chill with being inspired by my own self, which is honestly kind of practical – I mean, I should theoretically like and use the recipes I’ve created. Last Sunday I was invited to my girlfriend’s flatmate’s fundraiser potluck for local charity Kaibosh, and with cheerful self-absorption I turned to my own cookbook to browse it for suitable recipes. The recipe for Secret Centre Mini Pavlovas caught my (probably half-asleep) eye, as it is both elegant and awesome yet easy and inexpensive to make.

gonna lock it in your pocket (I’m quoting the Pretty Little Liars theme song here btw)
I was absolutely correct about these chocolate stuffed meringues being easy to make, and for the filling I used Whittaker’s caramel chocolate, partly to be obnoxiously excessive and partly because I thought it would taste wonderful. 
However! Diligently I walked from my house to the potluck venue at In Good Company, and about halfway through the journey I came to a long set of concrete stairs. A set of concrete stairs that I once fell down. Aha, I thought, my old foe, we meet again. Luckily I’m going up, not down this time, hey? HEY? And then I fell up the stairs. 
While I was totally fine, with little more than a delicately bruised knee on top of doubtless another bruise that had only just barely healed – the container of meringues that I was carrying dropped and they got all banged up inside. They were still edible but the edges were all ragged and shattery and some of the tops were a bit crushed and essentially they weren’t particularly photogenic. So, I decided to forgo my own photos altogether and just use the ones that go with this recipe in my cookbook. I can’t remember whether it was Kim or Jason who took these, so a huge thank you to them both just to be safe. 

secret centre mini-pavlovas

a recipe by myself from my cookbook HungryandFrozen: The Cookbook. I just wrote out the instructions from memory rather than copy-pasting what was in the book, even though it’s all my own words (I don’t know why I did this) but either way the recipe is a lot simpler than the length of this recipe would make it seem – I just kind of overexplain stuff a bit. 

two egg whites
a pinch of salt
100g sugar
filling of your choice – in this case I used caramel-filled chocolate but dark chocolate is a good starting point

Set your oven to 150 C and line a baking tray with baking paper. 

Whisk the egg whites (or use an electric beater if you’re more sensible than me) with the pinch of salt till they’re white and a little fluffy and when you raise the whisk the fluffy egg white raises up with it and falls down slowly (this is known as “soft peak stage” but in case you needed an expanded explanation, there it is.) At this point slowly whisk in the sugar, initially about a teaspoon at a time, until the mixture becomes thicker and shiny and gorgeous. It should get to the point where it’s really very stiff, and if you raise the whisk up out of the bowl the mixture will be thick and dollopy instead of falling in ribbons off the whisk. God I hope these descriptions make sense! 

Place heaped spoonfuls of the thick, gleaming meringue onto the baking tray, leaving a little space in between to allow for expanding. Top each spoonful with a piece of chocolate, and then spoon over a little more meringue mixture, so that the chocolate is entirely encased in white. 

Bake for thirty minutes, although check them at around 20 – 25 minutes in, just in case your oven is more grunty than mine. They should be a delicate pale brown colour on top and appear firm. Allow them to cool in the oven with the door slightly ajar, and then carefully remove them from the paper, peeling it away from their fragile bases, and then all you have to worry about is eating them.

never not dazzled by fairy lights

While my falling asleep constantly or falling up stairs or generally being involved in some kind of falling is barely news, these secret centre mini pavlovas are, at least, notably spectacular. Crisp, dissolving meringue gives way to a burst of chocolate that you wouldn’t otherwise know what there unless someone forewarned you. While it’s sweetness upon sweetness, something in the mix of textures keeps it fresh – whether the chocolate is still warm and gushes into your mouth or cooled and firmed and crunchy under the brittle meringue. The potluck dinner was so fun and fortunately no-one minded the mini-pavlovas being a little smashed up, and there was a ton of delicious food and lovely people and a very decent amount of money was raised for Kaibosh, an outcome sweeter than a meringue secretly stuffed with chocolate.

Am about to fall asleep again but before I spatula my tired self out of bed to get ready to go, I wish to impart two more pieces of crucial information to you:

Kate and Jason (the stylist and aforementioned co-photographer for my cookbook, but also like, wonderful people in their own right aside from their relation to my cookbook) GOT A BEAUTIFUL DOG and I got to hang out with him today. He’s blindingly white and fluffy like a freshly laundered towel and so friendly and silly and I’m quite in love.

 this is Ghost, also a good name for me because I am dead after looking at his face

Secondly, I had another Crush Cake story published in The Toast! The Toast is probably the very best website on the internet, if I was pushed to choose one, and little makes me prouder than being able to contribute to their spectacularly high quality accumulation of writing.

This is a crush cake dedicated to Drake. If you’re not intrigued and inspired to immediately find out exactly what this is all about, then…I mean I can’t blame you, but that’s kind of a bummer. 

bonus! dog! so! blessed!
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title from: Mrs Robinson, that cheerfully weird song by Simon and Garfunkel. I love the punchy yet thoughtful guitar chords. And also the lyrics which sound like they were written by a committee passing notes to each other. 
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music lately:

Ummm so the video for Beyonce and Nicki Minaj’s song Feeling Myself is still only available via subscription to Tidal but this 30 second teaser alone is giving me more life than literally anything else right now. Watch it and feel yourself become a better human. 

King Kunta, Kendrick Lamar. Yeah, still can’t stop listening to this on repeat eh.  
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next time: I made ice cream so amazingly nice that I literally ate nearly a litre of it in one sitting. Maybe you’ll be able to make it soon too. 

let’s just make this part go faster

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mugging for the camera
Comfort food can take many forms. For me it’s usually something that gives you the masticatory impression of gently sliding into a warm bath, like a slowly-stirred risotto or a bowl of soft, butter-saturated polenta or an enormous pile of mashed potato, but sometimes comfort food is more about the act itself than whatever form the food ends up taking. Sometimes it can simply be like, it’s 2am and I just finished work and it’s too windy to stand up straight and you’re sad and I’m sad and I bought you this bag of crisps from a 24/7 dairy because the line at BK was too long and also I didn’t know what else to do but this $3 gesture represents a lot more than merely just crunchy sodium goods…y’know? 
But sometimes comfort food is very obvious and straightforward, in this case: a chocolate peanut butter cake that you make in a mug (the most comforting vessel!) microwaved briefly so that quite instantly you can reward yourself for existing with a piping hot, warm, rich cake. Just for you. I’d never made a mug cake before but I’d sure heard of them: in my completely unresearched experience mug cakes started off as the sort of thing that an enthusiastic relative would email you accompanied by sparkly gifs of puppies and a phrase along the lines of “This is the most dangerous cake in the world…..Because now chocolate cake IS OnLy five minutes away!” A few rotations of the earth and the very simple recipe is now a staple of pinterest and has morphed into such things as “choc chip cookie in a mug” (why would a cookie be in a mug though) and “red velvet layer cake in a mug” (this does not sound comforting or fast tbh.) However you come to it, and whatever your opinion on microwaves, there’s something thoroughly charming about going from point A – you standing there with no cake – to point B – you eating a small cake from a mug – within about five minutes. And so, in the mood for sugar and immediacy, I recently made my first mug cake. 
 stay inside, drink more coffee, make cake really suddenly

I made this recipe up based on ingredients I already had in my possession, basically just whatever dusts and pastes I could find that might together form a half-decent cake. A little cocoa, a little coconut sugar (included for its extraordinarily deep caramel flavour, but just use brown sugar or plain sugar if you like) a little peanut butter for those this-is-a-fun-cake vibes…and after a long 90 seconds it transformed into a soft, meltingly chocolately, utterly delicious brownie-type thing, which I poured cream all over and ate in a chocolate-scented haze of beatific calm. All of which could be yours really, really quickly if you make yourself this.

chocolate peanut butter mug cake

a recipe by myself

two tablespoons butter (around thirty grams)
one tablespoon coconut sugar or brown sugar
two tablespoons cocoa powder
two tablespoons peanut butter
quarter of a cup milk
a pinch of baking powder
a couple of squares of chocolate, roughly chopped

Place the butter in the mug that you’re using and soften it in the microwave. Stir in all the ingredients – a teaspoon with a long handle or a narrow whisk is good for this – and add a little extra milk if it seems toooo stiff. It should come to about halfway up the mug. I microwaved it for a minute on high, then another thirty seconds, by which stage it was firm enough on the surface for me to decide it was ready to eat. 

Plunge a spoon into the cake, pour cream or milk into it, and eat all by yourself. 

It doesn’t rise very much, mind you, but I was astounded at how filling it was, so what it lacks in height it makes up for in cellular density I guess? Also for the work of minutes that you can count on one hand it’s a pretty tidy result. In fact pretty tidy is underselling it: it’s really, completely, wonderfully delicious.

This blog post is also going to be fast and mug-sized, but to distract you (and indeed, myself) from this I will leave you with Wednesday the silly beautiful tiny dingus of a cat being a literal loaf.

loaf cat (the demonic glow is coming from my heater/the camera on my phone not being able to deal with said glow)

Wait, one more thing! If anyone out there could please recommend a rad web designer that would be excellent. I’m thinking about refreshing this old blog here since it currently looks thoroughly ancient and un-cute. I don’t know anything about anything so am hoping to go by personal recommendations for people who do good work like this, and am also hoping that my blog can undergo some kind of movie makeover transformation to the effect of a stunning brunette removing her glasses and undoing her ponytail and suddenly everyone gasps and notices how bodacious she is. 

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title from: mate, it has been a while since I’ve quoted RENT on here. This song that I quote today, I Should Tell You, is so fragmented and tentative and nervous and beautiful. Jonathan Larson could really, really write. 
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 music lately:

I don’t know why Anna Kendrick’s voice in the Don’t You Forget About Me bit of the final number in Pitch Perfect makes me feel emotional, but there you have it. (I saw Pitch Perfect 2 last night, there is wonderful singing and Anna Kendrick is great and it’s so weirdly racist and many other bad things! That’s my review.) 

Shazam, by Spiderbait, from one of my favourite music genres, “bratty”.
Lorde, Royals. I hadn’t listened to this song in forever and ever and wow it is still such a tune.  
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 next time: roast chicken in a mug! I’m kidding.