Category: Vegetarian

shorty get down, good lord

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Whether or not I want it – and I think I do – I am definitely more of a “why on earth did I do that” person than a “what if, why didn’t I do that” person. Hamlet, in the movie Hamlet (and also the play: Hamlet) goes on a lot about thought vs action and much as I’m like “goddamn Hamlet be nicer to Ophelia, she knows cool facts about flowers and doesn’t need your bad attitude”, I do get why thought vs action is such a huge theme of the play. As I discussed with dear-dear-dear Kate yesterday, it’s hard to reconcile long-term planning vs short-term dirtbag heedlessness. I love planning things, having lofty goals to look towards, building anticipation and hope and excitement and so on. But sometimes it seems like I just make plans so huge and lofty simply so it won’t be considered unreasonable if I never actually achieve them. I also am hugely impulsive and really enjoy being talked into things in the moment, act now and see what happens and worry about it later. I guess I approach life like it’s a window, that I’ve spent a long time learning how to open carefully and slowly so it doesn’t break, but then at the last minute, impatiently refusing to wait, I punch a hole in it and leap through to whatever might be on the other side, fragments and splinters of glass twinkling in my hair like diamonds (it’s my metaphor and I’ll twinkle if I want to.) 
By which I more or less mean: I got impatient halfway through making these shortcakes and kind of screwed them up. 
They still taste excellent, and there’s every chance they’ll succeed for you, and they look fairly cute, so I figured I’d blog about them anyway. Also as a sort of penance, as if making myself blog about this will teach me for not paying attention, maybe this time. 

In my defense, the recipe is from my Momofuku cookbook, and those recipes can be straight up fussy. Like, make an enormous cake, take a tablespoon of it and throw the rest away, then layer it with five other different cake batters and baste it for thirty hours and then store in an ice bath and then grill briefly before throwing it all away and serving the remaining crumbs or something. They are also recipes deeply ingrained with amazing technique, respect for tradition, playfulness, inventiveness, and deliciousness. I just often find that like haircuts, they’re better done by someone else. These shortcakes are one of the more simple recipes in the book, and I know exactly where I went wrong – I got impatient and added too much liquid, when I should’ve just let it be and allow the dough to absorb all it needed while it was resting. The result being, the shortcakes spread out hugely, making one large nebulous mass. At first I wanted to fling kitchen appliances into a ravine with frustration, but then I looked at them again and figured I could salvage them easily enough. So here we are.

By the way, my limited understanding is that shortcakes are supposed to be sort-of cakelike and sort-of scone-shaped, small and puffy, and delicately smooshed around whatever filling you like. Comparatively, my shortcakes are kind of longcakes, but they still taste good when sandwiched around thick plain yoghurt and strawberries that have been saucily sitting in icing sugar. And I have no doubt that if you just pay more attention than me, they’ll turn out perfectly. But isn’t it comforting to know that even hastily screwing them up still more or less works? To the point where I maybe haven’t learned a lesson about the importance of methodically thinking things through at all?

strawberry shortcakes, potentially not-so-short though.

Adapted just barely from the Momofuku cookbook.

1 large egg
just under 1/2 cup cream
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch salt
125g butter, cold, cubed
3 tablespoons vegetable shortening (I used coconut oil) 
1/2 cup icing sugar, for dusting

Okay, bear with me: crack the egg into a half cup measuring cup. Stir it so that the white and yolk are thoroughly incorporated, then remove about a tablespoon of this egg, throw it in the sink or whatever, and pour cream into this measuring cup till it’s full. It just is what it is, okay?

Luckily the next bit is easy. Stir together all the dry ingredients, then add the butter and shortening and use your fingers to rub it all into the flour, or alternatively pulse it in a food processor for a bit or use a cake mixer if you’ve got one. Going by hand is simple enough, as you only need to get the fat more or less into the flour and sugar – you can stop once it’s looking gravelly and rubbly with lots of pea-sized bits of butter and shortening. Tip in the egg-cream mixture and stir to bring it together, mixing it as briefly and as little as possible. Leave to sit for ten minutes. Don’t be tempted to add more liquid, it will all come together as it sits.

Use a spoon to scoop out dough and form into rough ball shapes – about two tablespoons or so per shortcake – which should make around eight to ten, then refrigerate them for at least half an hour but you could leave them overnight if you like. Then, bake at 180 C/350 F for about 15 minutes on two different trays or in batches, because they need room to spread. 

Allow to cool, then do what you like with them. I sandwiched pairs together with really thick plain yoghurt and frozen strawberries that had been defrosting in a pile of icing sugar. 

Buttery, tender, cakey yet cookie-esque, crumbling into cold yoghurt and absorbing sweet red strawberries. These are amazing. Who knows, maybe they would’ve been too good if they’d actually worked out how they were supposed to? I know it’s pretty much winter now and strawberries are completely out of season, but I wanted Strawberry Shortcake and frozen berries are pretty cheap and there’s just something about that lemonade-sweet berry against the tender shortcakes that is rather magic.

I mean, you could use any fruit you want, and whipped cream instead of yoghurt, but this particular combination is a plateful of sunshine on a cold rainy day. (Side note: it has been very cold and rainy lately.)

to be or not to be? Thanks darlin’ Sarah-Rose for the birthday banner.

Last time I wrote here, it was the day before my birthday and also my final day at my then-job. I had a more wonderful and happy birthday than I dared hope, to be honest, it was just nonstop lovely. I am still looking for a job (hi!) but cannot fling my arms wide open enough to express how much more mellow and unstressed and happy I am to be wilfully unemployed right now. I spent the last week doing some Hard Relaxing, and am now ready to actually blog as much as I initially insisted I would.

Other than that, I have been knitting, getting a small crescent moon tattoo on my shin, home-dying my eyebrows, working on being businesslike with my new freedom, organising sponsors for this blog, trying to be as kind and full of love to myself as possible, inventing new recipes, and getting used to being 28 (especially considering last year for about six months I thought I already was 28? Maths, hey!)
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title from: Blackstreet, No Diggity. I’m cool that Pitch Perfect got people saying “oh wow that’s right that song was amazing” because for the first time since 1996 I hear this song allllll the time and couldn’t be happier. 
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music lately:

Uffie, Hot Chick. Obnoxious as hell stuff that I was really into in 2006/2007 and damn it, I still am. But also she released this truly amazing song called Difficult a few years later that I’ve been listening to a lot too.

Eartha Kitt, I Wanna Be Evil. Was there ever a better title? Her voice is so fascinating and gorgeous and every fraction of every movement she did, every flicker of her face or flourish of her hands was so full of power too.

Janine and the Mixtape, Hold Me. Have been pretty obsessed with this dreamy song since I first heard it, but especially right now, and there’s a new music video for it, so…yay!
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next time: a recipe that I can actually make, what with me being a food blogger and cookbook author and all, yeah? 

girls girls get that cash, if it’s nine to five or shaking that ass

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Every winter I forget how to take photos when it’s dark outside, but decided I liked the mysterious moody what’s-her-story vibe that I ended up getting from these ones.

Tomorrow is my last day of work. The day after that is my birthday. Let’s face it, I am both commanding and exuding some serious special snowflake-ness right now.

With that in mind – the sentence could actually end there, like, just always keep in mind that I am a special snowflake, but actually I did have more to say than that – I have installed a donate button, just on the offchance that anyone feels like supporting me fiscally. Then, after Easter, I’m going to start featuring sponsors. Sponsors being the elegant blogger word for advertising.

This may make my blog seem less authentic or more cluttered to you or something, but honestly, everything is advertising. Why, I’m advertising myself right now just by getting you to read these words. Furthermore, money is useful and nice, and I’m sure you can relate to that.

Don’t for one second feel like you’re obliged to click the donate button, it’s mostly there in case some opportunistic rich person looking to burn through some cash just to feel something real happens to wander past and like what they see. It simply doesn’t hurt to have it there. I adore this blog and while I’d love it to be my primary source of income…somehow…I’ve been more than happy thus far to throw myself at it with every resource I have. But considering I’ve been writing it since 2007, and again, I’m going to be unemployed from 5pm tomorrow, I am entirely chill with my new gimme-the-loot attitude. Plus I’m only going to be collaborating with lovely, cool sponsors, in case you’re worried that you’ll start seeing ads for margarine.

And so, to the food. I made up this recipe in my head as I wandered around the vege market on Sunday. Considering I’d been kept up till 3am on both Friday and Saturday night by fun and good times, I feel I definitely deserve a bouquet of flowers for just being able to put on pants and make decisions like this. But honestly, it’s barely a recipe, it’s just vegetable A on vegetable B on vegetable C, and what motivated it was the freezing weather and the thought of having the oven on for a long time to warm up both the house and the soul.

I tend to blast eggplant with as high a heat as possible, but figured that slow-cooking might break it down in an equally appealing way. And, forever keeping texture in mind, I decided that it needed some kind of contrast, which is where the fried cauliflower comes in. It was all very easy, it worked, and it tasted wonderful. By the way, you can arrange the eggplant and butternut however you feel. My alternating slices felt more pleasing than typical lasagne-style layers, but it all gets covered in cauliflower and falls apart when you spoon it onto your plate. If you still need to arrange them really specifically even with this in mind, I can most definitely respect that.

slow roasted eggplant and butternut with fried cauliflower

recipe by myself.

1 large butternut
2 medium eggplants, or one large one, or literally whatever
1/3 cup cream
1/2 cup vegetable stock
olive oil
butter
half a cauliflower
thyme leaves

Set your oven to 160 C. Slice the eggplant and butternut into rounds. This will be harder with the butternut, just do what you can. I had lots of half-moon scraps that I just tucked underneath everything else. Layer them up how you please, pour over the cream, the stock, and plenty of olive oil – a good couple of tablespoons – and roast for two hours, although check at one and a half if you’re impatient.

Melt at least 25g butter in a pan till it’s sizzling. Roughly slice the cauliflower florets into tiny pieces and fry in the butter, not stirring too much, till they are all dark brown and crisp and crunchy. Remove the dish from the oven, sprinkle the cauliflower over evenly and scatter with thyme leaves. Serve immediately, because the cauliflower will lose its crunch if you leave it sitting too long. Oh and PS, you could replace the cream with more stock and the butter with more olive oil if you want to make this vegan/dairy-free.

I was nervous before I started eating it that I’d somehow failed at putting vegetables in the oven. The liquid hadn’t reduced down much and some of the eggplant looked unpromisingly undercooked. But I was wrong. Which means I was actually right in the first place. The bottom layers slowly absorb the stock, and it was all excellent: butternut softer than the plush underside of an expensive persian cat, yieldingly silky eggplant, buttery nutty popcorn-crisp cauliflower. You can add a zillion more things to this – mustard, nuts, more cream, more herbs, spices, bla bla bla, but I felt like being lazy and letting the flavour of the vegetables shine. Plus there’s butter, and sometimes that’s all you need.

As I said, the liquid doesn’t reduce down very much, so ideally you’d serve this over rice or couscous, or just something that can absorb it all and which you can squash the butternut into with the prongs of your fork. But just as is: super cool.

I feel like I say this a lot lately, but thanks for the kindness following my mega-bleak post last week. While I’d like for you to not have to worry about me (apart from in the “is Laura famous enough yet? Whatever can I do to make this happen? Let’s talk about our top 25 favourite instagrams of hers” kind of way) it also doesn’t sit right with me to be falsely perky simply to attempt to reassure you. It’s not like I’m the only person going through stuff here, I just happen to be very open about it on the internet.

Who could possibly be falsely perky while eating pizza while wearing pizza socks? Admittedly I always get some existential angst going on around my birthday – about how I have this one day, and I have to make it the best it can be and not waste a second and have the time of my life and have I achieved anything lately and so on, but am hoping I can trick this one into being low-key yet excellent. Could also go for dramatically excellent, as long as there’s some excellence involved.
title via: feminist icon, rap icon, general icon Missy Elliot dispensing sound financial advice in her song Work It. “Ain’t no shame ladies do your thing, just make sure you’re ahead of the game.”music lately:

PJ Harvey, My Good Fortune. This song has been with me a long time and remains so, so good with that zig-zag guitar riff and the ey-ey-ey-ey stretching out of the words that is so perfect for dancing to.

Patsy Cline, Walkin’ After Midnight. This song is everything.

Trip Pony featuring Jaykin, Daze. Dreamy dreamy dreamy.
 
next time: hopefully things will be looking even further upwards, and I can get some cool baking done over the easter break.

 

i could make you smile, in the morning i’ll make you breakfast

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First, let me use a lyric from Staind’s damn-that-holds-up-well-there-goes-my-snide-attitude 2001 song It’s Been A While to ruefully acknowledge that I haven’t posted on this blog in some time.
It’s been a while. 
In case you’ve been living under a rock, a metaphorical rock that represents your own sufficiently full life with its own things that you are perfectly entitled to focus on instead of me (but hey! Me!) here’s your “Previously, in HungryandFrozen! The Musical: The TV Series” intro before I go any further. In my last blog post I’d already come out and broken up with Tim (a sad side-effect of being gay: really can’t marry that guy. A positive side-effect of being gay: I’m gay!) And now to add to that I’ve moved into a new house and also quit my job. 
The last thing happened for a number of reasons (most of which were along the lines of “it’s not you, it’s me”) but really crucially because I want to focus on my writing and my cooking and My Cookbook, which I just haven’t been able to do to even a squillionth of the level that I’d like to be. I say this a lot, but like, having my own cookbook published is one of the most incredible things that has and can ever happen to me, and sometimes I forget I even have it, because I just don’t get to think about it or promote it or talk about it or even just write about food in general. So if anyone out there has some cool part-time work (I’m good at marketing and sassy group emails, bad at lots of things) that they feel like letting me know about, I can’t recommend myself hard enough. Like, my last day is really soon and I have no idea what I’m going to do. It could very well have been a really stupid move, I mean, I need to pay rent and I can’t assume I’m going to just land on my feet, but…it felt right. So that’s where I’m at. 

This recipe is really simple and I know people have been talking about Bircher muesli for ages, but I’m not trying to claim any authority on it, more just like…this is what I made for breakfast and the light was all dreamy and it was delicious and you could make it too. The push in this direction came from my sweetness-y friend Charlotte, who in turn got it from her friend Kimberley, and it sounds like it has evolved along the way with each new person’s bowl that it’s made in.

Oats though: so filling, so good for you, in ten minutes I’d undoubtedly eaten more healthy things than I ate all of last week. Hand on heart, it is one undeniable heck of a pain to remember to make it the night before, but if you get into a routine or put a reminder on your phone or tape post-it notes everywhere (Trab Pu Kcip springs to mind) you should get there. I actually made this at 2am and it was totally do-able. I was completely sober, I’d been knitting and watching TV shows and tidying my room and it was all of a sudden really late to be doing such activities. I was just drifting off to sleep when the thought of Bircher Muesli jolted me awake. Eventually I sternly told myself to get up and make it because damn it I’m a food blogger and an adult and as ever, think of how happy you’ll be tomorrow when you get to instagram it in the swoony morning light. And also eat a nice breakfast. So I did.

how i made bircher muesli

3/4 cup rolled oats
grapefruit juice
thick plain yoghurt
an apple (I used a variety called Smitten because damn that’s a cute name)
pumpkin seeds
pinch salt
Any other bits and pieces: coconut, nuts, dried fruit, so on. I used a handful of this preloaded “raw mix” or something from the bulk section at the supermarket, it has coconut and sunflower seeds and like three goji berries per kilo so they can throw an extra two dollars on the price.

Before bed, place the oats in a bowl and cover – just – with the juice. You can honestly use any juice you like here, apple is standard but I both had and like grapefruit. I also mix in a heaped spoonful of yoghurt at this point – I like to think it helps make the oats particularly tender. Grate the apple into the bowl and stir. Go to bed.

The next day, stir in a pinch of salt (if you forget this bit, that’s fine – I just do enjoy my sodium) pile on some more thick yoghurt, sprinkle with whatever bits and pieces you like, and there you have it. Breakfast. 

The oats swell and almost dissolve into the liquid, becoming much lighter than you might anticipate. Their mild beige flavour is perked up by the tart yoghurt and bittersweet grapefruit, with little bursts of apple and the soft crunch of nuts making it less like obligation-paste and more like an abundant bowl of serene joy.

Moving out of my old flat was nonstop exhaustion for every particle of my body, and I’m going to miss it. But I love my new space and it has that same happy-to-be-here haven feeling as the old one. And my new flatmate Caroline made donuts from scratch on Friday. I think that’s almost more important a factor than living with someone who pays rent on time.

See? Instagrammable. I was barely even trying with this one. 

In case you’re like “yes but Laura say the word gay again and also talk about yourself some more” (I don’t know, I say this to myself a lot, it’s plausible you might too) I was recently lucky enough to have a piece published on The Wireless about coming out. Lots of people said lots of nice things. I felt both brave and like I was hardly worthy of the word, which I guess is actually how many of us feel about small and large things in our life. Mostly just glad though.

So anyway, now that I’m finally 100% completely almost unpacked, you can anticipate, with earnestly shining eyes and earnestly clasped hands, a lot more blogging from me.

PS: Speaking of significant things happening in my life, the Pretty Little Liars season finale, what whaaat? If there are any fans of the show out there who want to talk about theories and character development and representation of women and shiny shiny hair then hit me up. Because I can talk about this for days. Can I put that on my CV?
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title is from: Siren Song by Bat For Lashes. It’s gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. As per usual with that one.
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music lately: 

Donde Quiera Que Estes by Selena featuring Los Barrio Boys. The first 20 seconds are unpromising but then it gets soooo good. And what I’d give for Selena’s fringed leather jacket. 

Darlin‘ by Emily Wells. I love her record Mama so much. I got to meet her in New Orleans and we joked about fizzy drink and kombucha (I’d never even tried the latter but was hoping for the best.) The song is still great even without that pointless anecdote. 
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Next time: the return of I Should Tell You interviews, alriiiight! With Anika Moa! Double, nay, quadruple alriiiight!

no good deed goes unpunished, no act of charity goes unresented

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There’s this bit in the really wonderful Hyperbole and a Half book where the author, Ally Brosh, elaborates via her artwork, about how she’s kind of a bad person. Because when she does good deeds, it’s usually because then she’ll in turn appear to be, and receive the acclaim of, a good person. As opposed to doing a good deed for the sheer bountiful joy of actually being a good person. I can’t impress upon you enough just how aggressively this resonated with me. Well, the reason these cookie dough chocolate pretzel things came about is because someone – local artist Pinky Fang – did a very good deed just because she’s an excellent person. And then someone else (*waggles glasses*) was like “I should make her some really cool cookies to say thanks and then I can blog about them and I need something to blog about so this is great and I’ll look like such a nice person but also it really was nice what she did and this is my small way of sincerely saying hey, thanks.”
The deed in question that merited rad Pinky these edible trinkets: she designed the logo from the kindness of her heart and the talent of her, uh, hands I guess, for the Wounded Gazelles team, who are doing the Round the Bays race later this month and raising money for the Casper organisation. I know a lot of dear-to-me people in this team, but also wouldn’t run ever unless like, it was towards Lucy Liu in a kind of slow-motion-high-emotion scene at an airport to try to stop her leaving town. Otherwise, I do not run. Not for money, certainly not for love – a combination of remembering embarrassment and panic attacks in PE class and sports days at primary school, plus too many vexingly bouncy body parts, plus zero interest. What I can do though, is let you know that Casper is a really important organisation, and that the Wounded Gazelles have so many cool people on their team and if you want to pledge a little money, or buy a branded tshirt, tote, or singlet, why, it’s not that difficult. They’ve raised a thousand dollars so far from so many kind people. 
Also, I am a literal hero, because I made these cookies and blogged about them. Um, but really, I adore Pinky’s work (ocular proof: one of her insolent pink cat prints is on my wall) and it’s so great that she donated her skills to make the super-endearing logo for the Wounded Gazelles. Check out her shop!
Admittedly I initially was going to make some kind of fall-back chocolate chip cookie type thing, but then I thought damn it, this deserves something special. I thought: I’m going to make some Internet Cookies. The type that appears on pinterest and is named something incoherently noun-heavy, as if someone just opened up their pantry and threw darts at things and then put all of those in a recipe together. Chocolate peanut butter brownie stuffed waffles with snickers cronut frosting. Cake batter donut cake donuts cake pops. Or something. 
These, though, these cookie dough chocolate pretzel things, are quite coherent. And coherently delicious, importantly. They’re oddly not too sweet, being more about texture than merely exfoliating your lungs with three kinds of sugar. The crack of the chocolate coating, the crunch of the pretzels, the bulge of cookie dough, the roar of the crowd. 

They are also strangely easy – the dough comes together in minutes, they sandwich easily, and then all you have to do is chill them and then half-assedly dip them in chocolate. I know we don’t quite have the same tradition of eating cookie dough here in New Zealand as America does – more’s the pity – but like, it’s the same ingredients that are in actual cookies, so no need to get nervous. And more objectively, there’s no egg in the recipe. I guess putting pretzels in sweet things isn’t quite as well-known here either but we should really get used to it because it’s the best. Thanks, America!

pretzel cookie dough chocolate things 

Inspired by this recipe. However, maybe don’t actually click through if you don’t like words like “sinful” used to describe your completely non-sinful food that you’re eating because you want to eat it. 

makes many.

125g butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups or so flour
a couple of tablespoons of milk
150g dark chocolate (I’m very partial to milk chocolate, but dark is what I had.)
1 packet of pretzels

soften the butter, and beat together with the brown sugar. Tip in the flour and mix into something that looks like cookie dough – since that’s what it is – and add a little milk as you see fit to make it something that can be easily rolled into balls. Not too soft, not too not-soft, just feel your way. 

Roll a very small ball of the dough with your hands, and sandwich it between two pretzels, squashing it down a little so the dough bulges out through the pretzel holes. Continue with the rest of the dough until it’s finished (or you run out of pretzels) and chill them thoroughly in the fridge for at least half an hour. 

Melt the chocolate and dip the pretzel sandwiches so they’re halfway covered, and then chill them again till you’re ready to eat them. 

I…haven’t actually given these away yet. But I’ve only eaten one. They’re stupidly delicious and I couldn’t exactly blog about them without trying them. But your stash is intact, Pinky, I promise.

It has been a quietish time lately, I’ve either been knitting or…knitting. Or watching very sad movies, while knitting. But on Saturday night I danced my cares away in town and it was very wonderful. (Incidentally, Pinky was one of the DJs that night, sorry if I’m weirding you out by saying your name too many times in this one post, Pinky.)

While I may never ever run anywhere, I can dance for hours in the dark. (Also yeah my lipstick here is mint green, I’m not in the grips of scurvy or something.)

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title from: um, I guess I’m not quite on-theme here but any chance to be like, “hey! look at my idol Idina Menzel! And can we talk about Wicked?” so here she is singing No Good Deed in her role of Elphaba, Wicked Witch of the West. 
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music lately:

Lana del Rey, Born to Die. Sometimes I’m just in a Lana-del-Rey-singing-sad-songs-mood.

The Breeders, Saints. Ughhhhhh so cool.

Selena, Bidi Bidi Bom Bom. Jennifer Lopez was exquisite in the biopic about this tragically killed, amazing singer (I told you I’d been watching sad movies) but this song is nothing but joy.  
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Next time: I discovered that you can buy candy love hearts in 2kg quantities online so upcoming will probably be recipes like “a bowl of candy love hearts” and also “candy lovehearts, served in clenched handfuls”. 

pretty as a peach, she’s so out of reach

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Sometimes, no matter how significant it feels like it ought to be, little changes and developments can tip-toe into your life and establish themselves quietly before you even realise they’re there. By which I mean, it was after having a particularly miserable day recently, that I realised how great this was. My miserable day was caused by things that had happened that day. It had been quite a while since I’d felt really crushingly bleak for no apparent reason. Therefore, I think the medication I’m taking is helping. Since I wrote about it on here back when I started taking it, I thought I’d better, you know, clap my hands since I’m happy and I know it. Not that everything is solved or perfect, I am still reliably not-together, but bodies are such a work in progress at best, that I’m very pleased to have discovered this small but important thing about myself. So there’s that.
There’s also this. I have no idea really, how I come up with recipes so easily – perhaps it’s similar to how I can do the splits easily without ever practicing. The making-recipes part of my brain is as flexible as my hamstrings. (C’mon, being able to do the splits is kind of impressive, allow me to drop it into conversation sometimes.) This morning I woke up and thought about seasonal fruit and the idea for this recipe, which I’m calling peaches and cream, appeared quickly and fully formed. And since today was a Sunday where I’d managed to get my act together and get out of bed and deal with the crowds at the vege market, I decided to just go ahead and try making it. 

Seasonal fruit! Did you know it’s abundant and priced kindly? I really need to get to the vege market more often. 

As I said, it’s Sunday today, so what better day to make yourself pudding on, to try fend off any back-to-school blues you may be feeling, and to greet the new week with a sticky, happy smile. (Your smile might not actually be sticky, I just tend to always end up with with food on my face when I eat.) This requires some attention but not a lot of effort. Just peaches, simmered till soft, thickly covered in lemony cream. Through some mysterious augury the combination of cream and sugar heated together with lemon juice added, creates this satiny, smooth, rich, incredibly delicious substance. The method is based on this recipe I used to make all the time in my teens, back when cooking was starting to become “my thing”. So, you don’t actually have to have the peaches underneath, you could just divide the cream between a couple of ramekins (or very adorable teacups) and still be guaranteed a good time. But! Peaches! So peachy!

now you don’t see it…

now you see it. 

Heating the peaches turns up their perfumed, ray-of-sunshine sweetness, which the vanilla and lemon help bring out too, with their respective richness and tartness. I can’t overhype the cream enough, eating it is honestly like the feeling you get when you’re loitering in a fabric shop longer than your brief errand warranted, and nonchalantly but dedicatedly caressing all the rolls of satiny fabric. (Shout out to my people who do this, please be more than just me.)

peaches and cream

a recipe by myself

two large or three small ripe peaches, roughly diced
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or the seeds from a vanilla pod if you’re feeling baller

300ml bottle of cream 
1/3 cup sugar
juice from two lemons (the mean, supermarket kind, that is. If you have a generous, homegrown lemon, you’ll probably only need one.)

Put the peaches, the tablespoon of sugar, and the water in a saucepan and stir over a decent heat, and continue till the water has evaporated and the peaches are very soft. You don’t have to turn this into jam or puree or anything, just break them down a little. The latter would probably be more sophisticated. But here we are. Divide the peaches – a couple of dessertspoons each, I find  – between two or three 125 ml ramekins or similar. Refrigerate.

In the same pan – maybe give it a quick wipe with a paper towel – bring the 300ml cream and the 1/3 cup sugar to a gentle boil, slowly, stirring constantly. Once it’s bubbling, stir for three minutes exactly, then remove from the heat. It’s science, okay? Seriously, watch your phone (or, I guess, your watch, mine tend to have stopped working and become what I call “sculptural bracelets”) and let that surprisingly long three minutes pass in full. Then, remove the cream from the heat, and stir in the lemon juice. With any luck, the cream should mysteriously yet delightfully thicken up as you do this. Divide this mixture between the two or three vessels of peach, bearing in mind that if there’s three, you’re gonna have less…and refrigerate. A couple of hours should thicken it up properly, but feel free to make it the night before.  

Make it for yourself and your significant other/s, eat it all by your significant self, or make someone pay to watch you eat the lot. If you want more, double the quantity. If you don’t have peaches, use something else. Just, um, don’t bother dusting it with icing sugar and sprinkling over lemon zest, because unless you have tons of it the zest just looks messy and the icing sugar absorbs into the surface but also looks dusty, and you’ll be all “but my food blog!” Luckily it tastes brilliant and also my teacups are cute enough to distract somewhat.

Hark! A new knitting project! It’s eventually going to be a very simple short-sleeved top. I’ve never knitted a garment or with two colours before, so it’s all very thrilling. As thrilling as an activity that involves sitting silently and barely moving can be, that is (hint: super damn thrilling.)

One month down, 2014 has already proven to be strange and fascinating and full of promise. Hopefully February will be even better. I, for one, am prepared.

(this was a conversation I had with Kate. I credit her with coining womanifest before my use of it here, and I credit myself with ordering a triple cheeseburger shortly after sending this txt.)
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title from: Jeff the Brotherhood, Leave Me Out. Their scuzzy, gloomy sound suits me.
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music lately:

Tegan and Sara, Drove Me Wild. Well, it does.

Ja Rule and Ashanti, Always On Time. I can listen to early-2000s Ja Rule/Ashanti all day (also quite a lot of J to the L-O and Ja Rule) especially this, with its dreamy, rather timeless chorus.
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next time: I don’t know why I have this next time bit! I never really know! I just want to entice you into coming back again! There, I said it. 

they’re probably drinking coffee, and smoking big cigars

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Some late nights, some perfectly nice food that I ate too fast to photograph or just didn’t care to, a couple of evenings where I didn’t feel well, some nights where I was brain-tired from work, lots of very nondescript things like that are the reason I haven’t blogged in a while. I really wanted to! So badly! If only I could freeze time for a bit so I could get everything done that I need to, then pick up where I left off. But then I’d probably end up making, say, 9pm on a Thursday or 6.30am on a Monday morning last for years, and then no-one would get anything done while I end up all Dorian Grey or something, so it’s probably good that I don’t have this power (this power that’s so improbable that I don’t even know why I’m worrying about it in the first place.)

Now that I’ve torn myself away from repeatedly watching the Beyonce videos that I’d promised myself I’d danced to once I finish this post, I probably oughta try make it good. Like a snake eating its own tail but instagramming the process and taking notes on the taste, I do love blogging so much even though it seems like I never have enough time and energy for it. (I don’t actually know if that allegory quite quite works but I cracked myself up when I thought about it, so.) So: the food. I had a dream the other night about caramel slice with coffee in it, and unlike many of my better dreams, I had a good chance of making this one true.

It tastes excellent, but I mean, it’s low-key stuff. This really is just the same caramel slice that it ever was – biscuit base, condensed milk filling – with some instant coffee added to it. I mixed the base ingredients together in the tin I was baking them in. I sort of burnt the condensed milk. I wasn’t even awake when I thought the recipe up. And yet – so delicious. With that in mind, you can definitely achieve it too.

coffee caramel slice

Did I invent this recipe? In my dreams…

  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar (pack it in, y’know?)
  • 125g melted butter
  • 1 tin condensed milk (if you can, look for the stuff that just has milk and sugar in the ingredients, not milk, sugar, and water)
  • 2 tablespoons golden syrup
  • 50g more butter
  • 2 tablespoons of instant coffee (espresso style gives the best flavour)
  • 1/2 cup white chocolate buttons or similar

Set your oven to 180 C/350 F. Mix together the flour, melted butter, and brown sugar and once it comes together in a kind of crumbly, damp, sandy way, press it into the base of a baking tin, the sort you might make brownies in – about 25cm square, or thereabouts. Bake it for fifteen minutes.

Once the base is out of the oven, heat the condensed milk, golden syrup, 60g butter and coffee powder together in a pan until it’s bubbling and thick – stir it lots as it heats to prevent it sticking and burning, and also remove it from the heat as soon as it bubbles. Spread it evenly across the biscuit base, and refrigerate for an hour or two. Melt the white chocolate and drizzle it over the top, refrigerate again till it’s set, and then cut into squares. Or whatever shape you like, don’t let me hold you back from your star-shaped caramel slice fantasies.

Of course caramel is wonderful on its own. But instant coffee powder – so flavourless in a cup with hot water! – blasts it with smoky caffeinated depth, making it just a little more fascinating than regular caramel already is. You still get the depth of almost-burnt sugar and the rich butteriness of uh, the butter, but it has a pleasing aggressive roasted and slightly bitter undertone. I’d like to add that until about five years ago instant coffee was all I even made myself at home if I wanted a coffee, so I’m not wanting to sound judgey. It’s just that these days the coffee I drink makes instant taste sort of watery and bleak in comparison. But I give instant espresso powder a gold star for how great it is in flavouring baking. Particularly this sticky candy-sweet confection, full of friendly sugar granules that just can’t wait to make friends with your teeth.

I don’t have any particularly life-changing news to report to you from the time when I last blogged till now, but I am excited about one thing: my friend Tash has opened a second branch of her Holland Road Yarn Company right in town (Wellington right-in-town that is, apologies if you don’t live here) and it’s so lovely and full of beautiful yarn and I already have two new projects lined up to knit and I can occupy myself for a good, oh, twenty minutes by just doing laps of the shop and patting the balls of wool and deciding which ones are my favourite colours.

Oh and I got my sideburns shaved off, having hyped it up to many people beforehand as some kind of “Laura’s summer of rebellious hair and expressing one’s self through stuff” thing, and it turned out so ridiculously subtle and imperceptible that I’m a little red-faced. And now there’s slightly more of my face to get red.

What’s that? Just playing the world’s smallest violin for the world’s smallest buzzcut. (Also: I never understood that “world’s smallest violin” joke until very recently, but it was used at least once in Baby-sitters Club books so I always liked to imagine I could just drop it casually into conversation like I knew what I was talking about. I also feel this way about the phrases “false economy” and “load-bearing wall”.) (Oh and I like my haircut.)

title from: Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues. Voice like thunder, face like thunder, legs like thunder, oh wait sorry I’m describing thunder by mistake. Uh, but for real I love this song and Johnny Cash and his deep voice.

music lately:

Haim, The Wire. Yes. I, too, adore this song.

Laura Marling, Master Hunter. Aggressively dreamy.

Uzo Aduba, By My Side. This wonderful actor from Orange Is The New Black, well she was also on Broadway in Godspell, being incredible while singing this sad, weird song.

next time: I won’t make you wait so long. I’m pretty sure I say this a lot, to be fair. But I always mean it!

 

it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day

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I am back! With some really ordinary brownies. I did look thoughtfully into the middle distance for a while over the idea of making something that really said “it’s a new year!” in a jazz-handsy kind of way, but I didn’t really have it in me, and also wanted brownies. In the same way that every person is the lead character in their own story that they’re living – if that makes sense? – January is still just another month that happens to have danced around to the front. I guess what I’m saying is…brownies! They’re not surprising, but they are excellent.

That said, I enjoyed having the opportunity to reflect upon 2013 and think about what I want to achieve in 2014 (besides just being like “whoaaaaa it’s 2014 the movie Practical Magic is sixteen years old”) and to gather together my intentions and so on. Without loading too much pressure on myself, since no-one needs that. More just things like…I want to pay attention to the phases of the moon, and read even more books written by women this year, and cook more proactively than reactively, and learn lots of new words and their meanings…and on a more specific level, I would also like this year to bring Lorde-levels of spectacular fame and success for my cookbook and me, for my wedding at the end of June to be fun and not financially whimper-making, and – sigh – to be way tidier. So, a little bit of pressure, I guess.

Despite my complete underselling of these brownies (great food blogging, Laura) they are of course delicious and are going to help me beat the back-to-school blues when I take them for lunch with me to work every day. This is something I’ve done before, but never quite sustain it for very long – hopefully this year I can be more (as I said above) proactive rather than reactive in the kitchen.

What better way to start the year than under the velvety influence of my queen Nigella Lawson, whose cookbook Kitchen is where this recipe comes from. She charmingly calls them Everyday Brownies, which, given that the 75g cocoa she specifies is nearly a cupful, says a lot about the quality of her days. But like all brownies should be, they are reassuringly easy to make, taste brilliant, keep for ages, and will probably help embiggen your day somewhat should you be eating them on your lunch break too.

Everyday Brownies

(or just Brownies, for the rest of us) (I know, I’m going on like she’s living at the level of Marie Antoinette, it’s just 75g cocoa really is a lot.) (Though to be fair her other brownie recipe has 300g chocolate and six eggs so comparatively, this is rather austere.) (I’ll stop talking now.)

From Nigella Lawson’s book Kitchen.

  • 150g unsalted butter
  • 300g brown sugar
  • 75g cocoa powder, sifted
  • 150g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • pinch of salt
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • approx 150g milk chocolate, chopped into small chunks (or similar – whatever!)

Preheat the oven to 190C, and line a 25cmx25cm (or thereabouts) baking dish with baking paper.

Melt the butter, and stir in the sugar. Sift in the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda and salt – cocoa tends to be lumpy, and baking soda is no fun to get a mouthful of, so sifting really is useful here. Add the eggs, vanilla, and chocolate, then stir, and scrape into your baking tin and bake for approximately 20-25 minutes. It depends on what you’re into, but brownies tend to be better when they’re a bit undercooked, so don’t worry if everything’s wobbly on top when you take it out of the oven.

These are wonderful – unstressful to make, perfuming the house delightfully, and achieving that perfect balance between the crisp exterior and the barely-contained mouth-rush of satiny chocolate batter within. I used some white chocolate buttons and chunks of Whittakers milk chocolate which made for a caramelly, melting contrast to the stridenly cocoa-y brownie around it. But use what you have – chocolate chips, dark chocolate, anything. These are such good, dependable, quietly lovely brownies that damn it, they really should be for every day. Thanks, Nigella (not for these brownies, I just wanted to thank her for existing.)

A cat deigned to have a selfie with me! (The Laura Vincent Story.)

I hope that the 13 changing to a 14 has seen good times for you all. I had a really nice xmas at home with my family (including – one of whom is pictured above – the two truculent cats who eventually acknowledged my presence after an enormous loss of dignity on my behalf), and read, and knitted, and that was about it really. Then, camping. I’ve been camping at this one place with my family since I was six months old (am still about as useful at helping to put up the tents now as I was back then) and it was a joy to be there again for a few days. A freezing, rained-upon, mosquito-bitten joy. I did, however, manage to read The Luminaries in 48 hours, and it was worth every last mosquito bite to be able to do that.

This place is so tightly knitted and purled into my life that it seems like the most beautiful land on earth.

But, it’s nice to be back here nestling back into this blog. I plan to resurrect my I Should Tell You interviews, which fell by the wayside as I worked on launching my cookbook, and of course there’s my aim to be mondo-successful in a low-key, unpressurised kind of way. I got so many messages around the 25th of December from people telling me that they’d given my cookbook as a present, that they’d received it, or that they were making recipes from it – every single time I read one of the messages it made my little heart wiggle with happiness. So it may be just another day of just another month, but I’m looking forward to making every second of it as excellent as possible. (Even the bits that aren’t my brownie-filled lunch break when I’m back at work next week.)

Oh! One more thing: I’ve had fun contributing to Radio New Zealand’s Summer Nights programme. I completely love public speaking, so it was super cool to be broadcasting live to air on Monday when I was last there – if you want to listen to them there are audios available at Radio New Zealand’s website. Presuming you’ve made it to here while reading this, it’s not implausible that you could handle more?
 

title from: Nina Simone, Feeling Good. While up at home I saw her performance at Montreux in 1976 played on TV, she was sublime. I love her so much.

music lately:

St Vincent, Cheerleader. Annie Clark of St Vincent is such a dreamboat and I love how this song is so stormy and dreamy. Also, rather cool name she’s chosen to perform under, hey?

Speaking of dreamy, I danced to Beyonce’s euphoric song XO on New Year’s Eve and it was…um. Dreamy. Guess I should’ve put “diversity of adjectives” on my xmas wish list.

next time: no idea but I’ve done the groceries so it will be more than just an instagram of marmite on toast or a handful of chocolate buttons. Promise.

 

one more dawn, one more day, one day more

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I don’t know who even has time to read blogs at the moment (indeed, I hardly have time to write this) with Christmas insisting on being closer and closer every minute. And it’s not just Christmas – there are other festive high days and holy days, people have birthdays, people have work, things still need to happen. So I’ll keep this as succinct as I can manage, which for me means a quick nine paragraph dissertation on my feelings followed by another six paragraphs on my feelings for today’s recipe, followed by an essay on why a particular song I’ve been listening to this week accurately and devastatingly reflects all this. Brevity! It’s the soul of wit. Or the lowest form of wit? Whatever, I guess it’s too late to carry on pretending I’m gonna provide it for you, but I honestly am trying, for what it’s worth. 
So, I’ve mentioned a few times on here about my steady diet of two-minute noodles, microwaved pies, and microwaved marmite and cheese sandwiches as I grew up. But, after getting out a thrillingly American cookbook from the library at the age of, oh, nine or so, I was struck by a rather chic and unusual sandiwich combination: apple and cheese, which it turned out, I loved. So, if I really felt like putting in some effort, like making myself a baller snack, like putting the glam in glamwich (which also puts the glam in sandwich. Portmanteaux! Talk about classy) youthful me would forego the marmite and instead make an apple and cheese microwaved sandwich. I know. You can see how I got a cookbook deal.
(PS: I’ve never actually said the word “glamwich” before and my christmas gift to you is that I’m never going to say it again.)

Nigella, that moon of my life, has an excellently fast recipe in her book Kitchen for something she calls Crustless Pizza. It’s kind of a cross between a yorkshire pudding and cheese on toast, hence its enormous appeal to me. While the original recipe of Nigella’s is perfectly brilliant, I suspected that an apple and cheese variation, spattered with mouth-heating mustard so you know for sure it’s not pudding, would be…equally brilliant.

Apple and cheese together have this bizarrely pleasing salty-sweet, crunchy-melting symbiosis, which isn’t so odd really. I mean, fruit appears in all forms on cheeseboards, and there’s something lovely about the clean, crisp, delicate freshness of the apple slices subverted by the golden, buttery, bubbling cheese. Oh wait, I was supposed to be succinct. It’s just really good, okay?

apple, cheese and mustard pie

Adapted from a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s important book Kitchen. Serves two. Or four, I guess, but I am terribly whiny and reluctant about sharing anything with melted cheese on it. 

1 cup flour
1 egg
1 cup milk
pinch salt
150g cheese, something cheddar-esque, grated
1 apple, I liked Granny Smith here
Dijon mustard

This is very simple. Set your oven to 200 C. Butter a 21cm pie plate or similarly shaped dish. Mix together the flour, egg, milk, salt, and about half the grated cheese. Bake for ten minutes. Meanwhile, slice the apple thinly. Remove the pie from the oven, arrange the apple slices howsoever you please on top, and sprinkle over the remaining cheese. Bake for another ten or so minutes, then drizzle over the mustard. Slice into four, and use a spatula or something to wiggle the slices out – they’ve never stuck once for me, so hopefully they don’t for you either.

And that’s it, really. It would be quite nice with a kind of peppery, crunchy salad of rocket and stuff like that, but there’s no need to play up the sophisticated side of this. It’s just as good eaten with your hands while staring glaze-eyed into space because you’re very tired and just want to deliver carbs to the outstretched, clasping hands of your blood cells with zero distraction.

So, Christmas, huh? It has arrived. Considering it’s Christmas Eve today, I really shouldn’t be too surprised about this. Were I much more flush with cash than I currently am, I would shower myself with the following gifts:

Vogue Knitting magazine
A deposit on another tattoo
At least one really pretty, out-of-my-reach sundress from twenty-seven names
A copy of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Nigella’s book Nigellisima
A supermarket pallet of San Pellegrino Limonata (when I get famous, this is going to be on all my riders. It’s tooth-zappingly lemony and my best friend while mildly hungover. But also I like to drink it other times.)
A bottle of Campari
An intense hand and nail cream
Candles, for lighting and feeling deep and purposeful (and flatteringly lit)
More Devon Smith artwork
A meadowlark trinket of some kind. So out of my reach currently that I’m not even at the stage of choosing one or two to sigh over.
A landlord who will let me have a pet cat. (I don’t know quite how, but I figure being rich makes everything simple.)
A pet cat.

What about you?

Whether or not you celebrate Christmas (even “celebrate” might be a little too enthusiastic, occasionally my mood is more like… “accept stoically” or “admit defeat in the face of”) I of course hope that times are good and people are nice and social situations are fairly stress-free and that your tables are laden with good food. Because stuff like that should be for life, not just for Christmas. (Like a pet cat. Hmph.) I’m flying home today to my parents’ house, and I can’t wait to see them, and the rest of my family, and the cats, who are of course family, but oh man I should really stop talking about cats. I’m planning on knitting myself a beanie, reading books, and taking lots of selfies with the cats.

Also, uh, I suppose it behooves me one last time to remind you that my cookbook Hungry and Frozen is super amazing and makes a majorly excellent present idea. Also if you already have it, there’s a fairly simple Christmas Cake recipe in there which you can make quite last minute and still feel good about.

May the rest of your December be dreamy.
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title from: facing the season with bared teeth and dizzyingly contrapuntal arrangement, One Day More from Les Miserables. The version I’ve linked to is the 25th anniversary concert. Featuring the bafflingly handsome Ramin Karimloo as Enjolras (look him up on Google images if you’re so inclined, I thoroughly recommend it.) I also like Key and Peele’s highly apt take on it. 
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Music lately:

I know I’ve linked to it twelve million times, but this is the only time of year I watch Turkey Lurkey Time from Promises Promises, and marvel at Donna McKechnie’s loose-limbed perfection and the sublimely bonkers choreography leading to a rather shivers-making ending.

Speaking of people worth looking up on google images to marvel at, Zooey Deschanel’s band She and Him made a thoroughly endearing Christmas album. As if Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree wasn’t already massively endearing to begin with, too.

Sleater-Kinney, One Beat. It’s not allllll carols round here.
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Next time: I might be reunited with this blog before the year is out, and then it really just depends on what I can excavate from my fridge….

cry into your christmas cake, don’t know what else to do

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When I was a child, and Christmas inched towards me in the distance like an achingly slow-moving but manifestly mighty steam-roller, I loved the season, hard. Now that I’m older and busier, Christmas emerges with a hiss through the cracks and fissures in the pavement like a sinister steam – suddenly everywhere without warning, and prone to fogging up one’s glasses and making one’s fringe get sweaty. My feelings about Christmas these days are more than just “I’m sweaty” – I love it. I do. I do! I’m not just convincing myself here, honest. I love the sparkle and hustle and bustle and food, all the food, and there’s little more gratifying (to me and me alone) than lustily singing the alto descant to Joy To The World or Hark the Herald Angels Sing, to fill me with pine-needle scented exuberance. 




But: it’s also stressful. I mean, money. Where’s that stuff hiding lately? How does one go about getting really rich without much effort? Why is so much effort required to get rich and even then it’s not guaranteed? Answer me that, Santa! Also just the sense of wanting to spend lovely, important time with family but then that being high-stakes and needing to go just right, and also trying to get everything done while still working and feeling tired-er and tired-er with every day that passes. But then sniffing a christmas tree, or running your hands idly through a plush, cool pile of tinsel, or staying up late to bake something really special for someone just as special, and Christmas specials of TV shows and Mariah Carey and candy canes… 

So yeah: Christmas. I have now made the ground-breaking observation that it is happening and stirs up some feelings across the spectrum of what feelings feel like.

Even though buzzfeed and pinterest have rendered trying to list anything slightly superfluous, still I heedlessly present my annual round-up of anything I’ve ever made on this blog that might make a decent-enough edible gift for someone. Give the gift of food, yo. People want things – or at least, I want things, ever so badly – but people LOVE food. And you know it’s going to get used, not consigned to a Shelf of Guilt because you visit quite a lot and will absolutely know if your gift is not on display. 

Also – sorry if you’re getting sick of seeing Christmas everywhere and you don’t participate in it for any number of reasons. It’ll soon be over. And also you can make these things at any time, not just during this particularly pervasive and dominating seasonal landmark. 

Things In Jars. 

Note: We may have reached Peak Mason Jar Awareness but there’s no reason why you can’t ignore this, because…jars are cute! And you can’t put a price on that. 

Orange Confit (This is just slices of orange in syrup, but is surprisingly applicable to a variety of cake surfaces. And pretty. And cheap.) (vg, gf)
Cranberry Sauce (Impossibly easy.) (vg, gf)
Bacon Jam (Best made at the last minute, because it needs refrigerating) (gf)
Cashew Butter (vg, gf)
Red Chilli Nahm Jim (gf)
Cranberry (or any-berry) Curd (some effort involved, so make sure you’re awake, but very, very pretty.) (gf)
Rhubarb-Fig Jam (gf)
Salted Caramel Sauce (gf, has a vegan variant) (also: don’t even try fighting it, salted caramel is not going anywhere.) 
Apple Cinnamon Granola (vg)
Marinated Tamarillos (vg, gf)
Taco Pickles (vg, gf)
Pickled Blueberries


Baked Stuff: the classic choice. Or: The Person Who Actually Likes Doing Baking’s choice. 
Look, my Christmas Cake is amazing. It just is: deal with my lack of coyness. Make it on the day, it’ll still be great. 
Christmas-Spiced Chocolate Cake (Also a good xmas-day pudding) (gf)
Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake (y’know, wrap it in brown paper and tie with string, ba-da-bing, ba-da-cute.)
Vegan Chocolate Cake (It’s good! It’s easy!) (vg)
Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
Also, if you click on the link to the Orange Confit above, you’ll see a recipe for the easiest, fastest fruitcake loaf. It makes an excellent present, for the sort of person who’d like to receive fruitcake. And ’tis dairy free.

Novelty! Novelty? Novelty! 


If all you have energy to do is melt some stuff and sprinkle some other stuff over it, the bulk of this list is for you, oh head-pat-needing-friend.
Moonshine Biffs (like homemade Milk Bottles!) (gf)
Raw Vegan Chocolate Cookie Dough Truffles Candy (vg, gf)
Lolly Cake
Peppermint Schnapps (vg, gf) (Pictured above)
Candy Cane Chocolate Bark (No effort, vegan – well, I think candy canes are vegan – gluten free, amazingly delicious, just store it carefully so it doesn’t melt)
White Chocolate Coco Pops Slice 
And there you have it. If nothing else, a prompt to lose a pleasurably hungry hour or two on something like Pinterest, looking up endless variations on The One Cookie That Will Affirm Your Belief In Humanity or something. 
It has been a dreamy and mellow weekend – pizza eating and head-pats; wedding dress shopping and quietly reading in a cafe and swooning; watching Pretty Little Liars and drinking beer (more swooning here); book group and snacks and knitting. 
Many, many, thrice many candy canes. I love them so much and they only come into season in December! So if I’m fixing to eat five in one sitting, no-one’s going to stop me. 

Oh yeah, that’s right, more wedding dress shopping. I found the one. The two, in fact. Which sounds diva-ish, to which I say, don’t use diva as a negative term to devalue powerful women, and also that the two dresses together cost half the price of some other dresses I tried on, and also they’re both intensely beautiful and I really like the idea of having a dramatic costume change halfway through the ceremony. 
And for one fervent blogger, christmas came early this year: I got to hang out with this hund friend! Called Bruce! With a very soft, fluffy head and a huggably squat body. Like me!
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Title via: Rilo Kiley, Xmas Cake. Putting the aaaagh into fa-la-la-la-la.
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Music lately:

Sheep Dog and Wolf, Egospect. Blimmin’ rad, is my indepth description of it for you.
Janine and the Mixtape, Hold Me (acoustic). Could this babe be any more talented or amazing? Possibly, I mean that kind of thing in terms of measurability to – anyway. Here she is singing an acoustic version of a dreamy song that I already loved, somehow making it more gentle and delicate and yet saltily searing. 
Um, also Beyonce did the staggeringly amazing move of dropping an entire album with a video for each song in the middle of the night without any fanfare. Do yourself a favour and try to find them – they’re brilliant. ***Flawless and Grown Woman are pretty much perfection, but it’s impossible this early to choose favourites: it’s just the most excellent, saucy, in charge R’n’B I’ve heard since Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange. (Not that he was thaaaat saucy.) I am just so inspired by her control and confidence and complete difference-from-everything-else in releasing her album like this. Makes me want to write an even better cookbook. And also dance lots. 
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Next time: I made an apple and cheese pie, but who knows, eh? Christmas! What a time. Be as nice to yourselves as you can muster.

it’s been this way, since christmas day, dazzled, doused in gin

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For all that I’m really messy, inside and out, and will spend long stretches of time putting my nailpolish bottles into order by colour spectrum while ignoring, say, the dishes, every now and then I can really Get It Together and Be Organised. 
Every year, commencing 2006, I’ve held a big dinner party for flatmates and friends, which started as a way to toast ourselves and do something nice together before we all part ways for the summer. And that’s how it continued, because it’s a pretty decent concept that doesn’t require messing with. Last year Tim and I couldn’t have one because we’d just moved house and everything felt too difficult, but I feel like a good tradition should be malleable and flourish, rather than rigid and immoveable. 

And then, because why be merely fancy when you could be fancy in italics, Kate helped embiggen everything with her beauteous hand-made menus and table-setting ideas. It was dreamy, which is my favourite way for things to be or have been or have potential to be.

I was proud of myself at how it all worked out – it was a very last-minute fandango, but I managed to cook everything myself (including FOUR KILOS of pork belly, I mean really) and have it all appear ready to eat at a reasonable hour. Which may not sound like rocket science, but y’know, my oven is small while my ambitions are sky-high.

Speaking of, every year I use this as an opportunity to make a significant pudding. Like the year I made Baked Alaska. This year’s concept was not as impressive as I’d have liked, but luckily my concept of “not as impressive as I’d liked” is a bit like my concept of “corporate, office-friendly clothes” – quite, quite different to most other people’s.

So: berry ice cream pavlova layer cake! Two hastily thwacked-together discs of meringue, some insta-ice cream, and some preturnaturally glossy red pomegranate seeds, and you have yourself a rather fascinatingly-textured and terrifically-flavoured and most crucial of all, monumentally instagrammable pudding.

I know, pavlova is not necessarily that simple, but the good thing about this is that you can be a lot more confident about the making and baking, since it’s going to be buffered up with ice cream and covered in icing sugar and it doesn’t matter in the slightest if it cracks or deflates or, heck, breaks in two, because everything can be squished back together.

While my patriotism at the level of “New Zealand, it’s okay I GUESS” it is nice to graciously nod to the classic pavlova and time of year that xmas falls upon – high summer! – with this cold, fruity confection. You can use an electric beater, obviously, but all I have is a whisk and I managed just fine, and there’s nothing like standing in your underwear on a humid day furiously whisking egg whites to a stiff meringue to make you feel tantamount to Xena, Warrior Princess.

berry ice cream pavlova layer cake 

a recipe by myself. It looks complicated but that’s just because I’m the hand-holding type (hand-holding sounds much nicer than micro-management, yeah?) You could use cream or yoghurt instead of coconut milk but now it’s entirely dairy-free, which seems to suit a lot of people I know, so hurrah!

4 egg whites
200g sugar
1 teaspoon cornflour
2 teaspoons lemon juice or white vinegar

2 cups frozen berries (I used a packet of frozen mixed berries since they were cheapest, but plain frozen strawberries would be rad)
1/2 a can (although possibly more) coconut milk

Set your oven to 160 C/320 F and line a baking tray with baking paper. Using a 20cm caketin, or your own circle-drawing prowess, trace two circles on this sheet of baking paper. It doesn’t matter if they’re very close together. 

In a very clean, non-plastic bowl, whisk the egg whites briskly with a pinch of salt until soft peaks form. This means that the egg whites will be foamy and thickened, but not shiny, and when you lift the whisk up some mixture rises up with it but sinks back down into the bowl – if that makes sense. 

Continue whisking, despite your sore arms, and as you do this, slowly add the sugar a tablespoon or so at a time. The mixture will thicken and get shiny and bright white, continue whisking in the sugar and as hard as you can until the mixture is stiff and when you lift up the whisk, the mixture follows but stays quite still. Spread the mixture evenly between the two circles you’ve drawn on the baking paper, piling up the meringue mix and then smoothing it out so that they’re fairly evenly flat on top. You can be pretty aggressive with the mixture by this stage, so don’t worry.

Place this in the oven and bake for around an hour, although check at 40 minutes – it should look firm and dry and a little browned. Turn the oven off and allow the pavlovas to slowly cool in there, although I admit, I got impatient and took them out after half an hour of cooling. 

To serve, place one pavlova half on a pretty plate. Blast the frozen berries and coconut milk together in a food processor till they turn into a magical purple ice cream. Spoon/spread this immediately on top of the pavlova on the plate, and top with the other pavlova. Dust with icing sugar to cover any inevitable cracks and pile on some pomegranate seeds if you’ve got ’em, although fresh strawberries, raspberries, or simply more icing sugar would also be rad.

It may just be all the Poinsettia (fizzy white wine, cranberry juice, Cointreau) that I’d allowed myself to consume by this point, but this was damn spectacular. There’s something deliciously fun about the soft, dissolvingly sugary crispness of room temperature pavlova against creamy, freezing, tart berry ice cream. The juicy crunch of pomegranate seeds on top provides further antidote to all the sweetness, while still being friendly with the berry flavours in the ice cream. And they look SO pretty. The pavlova layers are a little bit of a pain to slice through, but by the time people get to pudding they’re not going to mind a hasty scoop of this in a paper bowl.

It was a wonderful, happy, lovely night. We listened to old xmas records and ate candy canes and talked good talk and also amassed a large pile of food brought by everyone to drop off at the foodbank. Even though I was a little oddly apprehensive that I was being pushy and annoying at trying to make this happen, perhaps mostly because everyone’s so busy this time of year and frankly a lot of my reasons for doing this are highly selfish, it was just a dreamy, excellent night and I’m so glad it happened.

And then on Saturday I went on a wedding dress shopping montage! Mostly with Kate, although I was joined by Kim later, with a cameo from Sarah-Rose, and man it was a strange but amazing day. Something about trying on dresses to get married in – I mean, I could marry Tim in the next five minutes very casually and not think twice about it, yet I could hardly look at myself in the mirror while trying on these beautiful dresses and when asked what occasion I was shopping for, I was all “a wedding…mine…pretty much…”

I did dally with the idea of a black wedding dress but ultimately what I was really wanting is just EVERY glorious dress I tried on. You’d think I’d get used to vicarious thrills sometime since there are so many in my life, but nope. There’s a particular ache at trying on a perfect garment then sadly putting it back on the rack.

I just love material possessions so much, okay. 

I’ve narrowed it down to two and a half potential definites, and if you’re curious, I don’t care if Tim or indeed all of the internet sees the dress before the wedding, but I do – now – want something very pale or white. Basically, it was a weekend as swoony as swoony can be, and I’m very pleased with that, even though now that it’s Monday it all feels like a million half-remembered dreams ago…
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title via: Placebo’s moodily terrific Taste In Men.
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Music lately:

Planet Z, Idina Menzel. Admittedly my love for her and my fondness for her early music is perhaps more boundless than most, but if there’s a song more bonkersly endearing and mid-nineties than this then I’ll probably listen to that too.

Frosty the Snowman, Fiona Apple. Have I said the word dreamy too many times in this post? I care not. This is the dreamiest.
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Next time: I’m gonna make a list of every recipe I know that is good for xmas presents and so on and so forth and it will be ever so much fun!