inner pickle

stuff I learnt this week

: Turns out some newborns do just eat and sleep. I thought that was something people just claimed. We're not naive enough to know this may not all change tomorrow, but we're super grateful for Ivy being so chilled out right now. (And not feeding two-hourly through the night like her sister used to!)

: Having a newborn makes your older kids look ridiculously big and grown up.

(Henry and I having some downtime in a cafe this week over hot chocolate and gingerbread men. Gamer-boy preoccupied while I was breastfeeding.)

: Friends are awesome. This week ours took our older kids away and sent Ad and I out for lunch, they brought cake, they brought/sent/made amazingly thoughtful gifts and came around with champagne and lots of laughing. 

: Sydney Aquarium rocks.  

: It's a bit of a shame to go to the aquarium with a flat camera battery. (The iPhone doesn't really cut it.)

: Sydney Aquarium has a pretty proficient lost child procedure.

: Note to self: dress Matilda Daisy in bright colours, preferably fluorescent, when taking her to fascinating places with hundreds of other people amongst whom you can easily lose sight of a waist-high person in search of the turtles; thereby saving us ten minutes of rising panic wherein we each shed ten years off our lives. 

: My brother, visiting from the US this week, is superbly talented (no bias here. Absolutely objective.) New demo CD. He rocks. 

: My friend Vanessa, mum of one of Henry's besties at school, is super clever. Check out these cupcakes she made and brought over yesterday!

  

 
Amazing, right?

: Adam can cook. I don't mean to sound surprised, but I don't mean whip-up-scrambled-eggs-and-bacon cook. He's been cooking all week, and we had friends round for dinner last night and he made fabulous gourmet burgers (yep, a bit of meat is back on the menu here - more on that in another post) with haloumi and chutney, served with crispy and fluffy twice-cooked potato chips and a divine, light passionfruit flummery for dessert. Damn I hope this doesn't mess up our I cook/he cleans arrangement. I am seriously crap at cleaning. 

: It's illegal to bury someone without a coffin. My friend Ben (who appears in post comments here as Benoss) and Adam were cheerfully discussing funeral options, as you do, and Adam was saying he wants to be buried in a completely compostable (preferably cardboard) coffin, preferably with worms included. (Could you be any more green, baby?) Anyway, Ben suggested doing away with the coffin and so we sent another friend (the other Vanessa) who loves this stuff, off to call up a few funeral homes and find out the deal. Deal is: gotta use a coffin. No shroud only option. But she's making more calls so will update you as news comes in. 

: The weirder the better. And if you can come up with REALLY weird, send it over to Kate at Picklebums, OK?! (Everyone's going way too easy on her so far.)

xxx

delicious carrot cake recipe!

Hello!

Nope, still no baby... My problem is I have thought since last Sunday that the event was imminent; but apparently not. 

Ah well. 

What do I do when I'm at a loose end? First: read. (At night after the kids are in bed, obviously.) Which is why my knitting and sewing projects are sitting unfinished and ignored at the end of my desk right now. 

Tilly and I went to the library today. We love the library. She borrowed two books and I borrowed one: 'Crime and Punishment', Dostoevsky. Oh yes. Not because I'm highbrow and gagging for some heavy Russian narrative. 

I am suffering serious insomnia. 

I thought this might be a plan. And then talking on the phone to my Mum tonight, it turns out when she was pregnant with us, and waiting waiting waiting in hospital, she read 'The Brothers Karamazov', also Dostoevsky, and promptly fell asleep after one page every night. How funny is THAT?! 

So I think this is a good plan. Well tested.

Second loose-end occupier?

I make stuff up in the kitchen. Like carrot cake!

This one was inspired by a dreadful one I made a fortnight ago. So dreadful I actually threw it away. I'm not actually going to tell you which book it came out of because everything else out of that book is good, and maybe I was just having a bad recipe-following day. 

But that being the first carrot cake I'd ever made, I knew what tasted good (and what didn't - I've eaten a lot of it, just never baked one myself) and knew I wanted something that was low sugar and low fat for the kids. And no nuts. And no sultanas. Tilly doesn't like them.

So I ventured out on my own. I split this mix into two and made an adult version (below) in a loaf tin with cream cheese icing sprinkled with flaked almonds. YUM.

Then I made lunchbox-sized muffins for the kids...

I am delighted with this cake. So moist and sweet and carroty and delicious. 

INGREDIENTS

½ cup brown sugar

100ml macadamia oil

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups plain flour

2½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarb soda (baking soda)

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp ground ginger

2½  cups grated carrot (I used 3 medium carrots)

½ cup desiccated coconut

1x 440g tin crushed pineapple (drained)

METHOD

Preheat oven to 180° celsius. Beat sugar and oil for a minute, I used electric hand beaters. Add eggs one by one and beat well. Add the vanilla. Sift in the flour, baking powder and soda and the three spices. Stir to mix. Add carrot, coconut and pineapple and combine well. 

I made one loaf tin and a dozen small muffins. 

The loaf cooked for about 25 mins, fan forced oven. The small muffins took about 20 mins. 

Gosh they're yummy. 

Hope you like them!

Off to bed now, hello raspberry leaf tea + Dostoevsky.

xxx

 

well hello!

 

No, not hello new baby, hello brain! (And hello enormous belly!)

How interesting is acupuncture!? Wow. I had a small moment of panic as she came at me with a needle for my tummy, but gosh, what a cool treatment. And I swear I felt like I was seeing the world more clearly when I was finished. Clear. That's kinda how it felt.

Anyway, while being slightly less knocked about by the blood pressure meds today, I thought I'd drop in and say hello. 

We've been having the most lovely time, Tilly and I. 

Doing a bit of IKEA shopping, the kitchen section. Gah, LOVE it. 

Look at these cupcake (actually 'patty cake', more like it) pans:

(And you KNOW I'm not here to sell you anything, right? But seriously, these are $1.99 for 65 papers. That is SO cheap.) 

And with the Drömmar pan, they make the cutest stand-up shaped cupcakes. 

 

The skill I am most proud of in my three year old? Her ability to smoothly crack eggs, zero shell. Awesome. 

  

Yum!

Good to go. 

Happy as Larry. 

Right as rain. 

OK UNIVERSE?! CAN YOU HEAR ME??!

  xxx
 

quick kids lunchbox muffins

Henry, like his Dad, adores sultana cake. 

Every week he gets to pick something for his morning tea snackbox at school and this week his pick was sultana cake (again.)

As the Best Recipes one I've been using has a LOT of butter and sugar and eggs in it, I whisked up these muffins instead this week, using wholemeal flour for fibre and cutting the fats and sugar. 

Going down a treat, I have to say.

Lunchbox Sultana Muffins

Ingredients

125g butter, softened

½ cup raw sugar

2 free range eggs

2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour

1 cup milk

1 cup sultanas

Method

Cream your butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs. Beat in one cup of flour then half a cup of milk. Then the other cup of flour and then the rest of the milk. Stir through the sultanas. Makes 18 morning-tea sized muffins (or 12 large). Bake at 180°C for approx 20 mins or until firm and golden. 

Notes: You could easily make these dairy-free if needed: there's an argument that 'good oils' (sunflower oil, nut oils) are better for children (and us) than butter anyway. However, I'm not convinced that the amount of butter (125g across 18 muffins for instance) is harmful enough to substitute oil which I do not love baking with. You could always replace the cup of milk with a cup of apple or orange juice. With two eggs and self-raising flour these little golden gems will always rise. (And vanish for afternoon as well as morning tea.)

xxx

 

Easy sponge cake recipe

First, I have to admit, this is not my Grandmother's award-winning fabulous spongecake recipe, which I committed to making before June, along with other un-accomplished things on that list over there on the left which I will address shortly.

This is what my mother and aunt thought might be the recipe, but having made the original cake in question three times in a row when I was fourteen years old, until I got it perfect, it was as I was not separating the eggs here that I realised we had the wrong recipe. 

This one is pretty good:

Light, fluffy, perfectly spongy. And very straight forward. But not as good as Grandma's.

Mum and I spent an hour scouring her old recipe collections on the weekend and we now think we've found Grandma's original. It looks familiar. And with four eggs, not three, which sounds about right. 

But this is delicious and easy and worth a whisk!!

Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

3 eggs

½ cup caster sugar

½ cup cornflour

2 tbsp self raising flour

Method:

Grease, flour and line 2 x 20cm cake pans. Using an electric mixer beat three eggs on high until thick and creamy. 

Gradually add sugar and keep beating. 

Sift together your two flours and quickly and very lightly fold into the egg mix. 

Divide evenly between the pans and bake at 180 C for 15-20 minutes. 

Allow to cool for a few minutes in the pans then turn onto a wire rack. 

Fill with jam and cream, or apparently passionfruit cream which is essential in a sponge according to Adam or in my case left over pink butter cream from the many many cupcakes I made for a small catering gig on Saturday morning!!

Grandma's recipe to follow...

xxx

one more for the road

Yes, there seems to have been a LOT of cake this week. 

Not really representative of this house, but whatever. We've had a cake or two this week. 

So I thought I'd leave you with one more on this lovely Friday: the one Henry's had in his lunchbox this week. I originally made it for Adam who loves loves loves sultana cake (particularly his mother's - I know I have the recipe here somewhere, I have to get around to organizing my maniacal recipe collection someday soon) - but turns out H-Bomb loves it too. (Or maybe he just loves everything his Dad loves. Olives. Camembert. Cakes with fruit.)

I found this recipe here. And it's truly great. Not as great as my mother in law's - but still great. 

I made it in a ring tin and so cooked it for only an hour, not an hour and three quarters. 

It has a LOT of butter in it compared to an average cake, and twice the number of eggs. 

But a sliver for morning tea for a kid who otherwise snacks on bananas and carrot sticks and organic dried apricots is OK with me. 

Hope your week has been stimulating and your weekend ahead is relaxing. 

The kids are almost in bed (thanks, honey!), the sewing machine is out and the iron's on. It may not look like Friday nights once looked, but gosh it looks good to me. 

Happy Fridaying!

xxx 

when bad things happen to good cakes

To be hereby named the 'lapse in judgement' cake.

It is in fact the very easy orange cake (one of my favourites), iced and also filled with good old butter cream (not the white chocolate icing I've made previously) and due to time pressures, iced and filled while still warm (oops) and transported with icing not set (oops again.)

Hence lopsided and wonky and truly not that attractive.

Luckily it wasn't really about appearances.

It was about this dude's birthday:

Kevin, who makes up half of a couple who are some of our best friends and also Henry's godparents.

  Henry counted out the candles. Kevin told him he was turning seven which Henry thought was about right, but added a couple of extras for good measure. 

And really, who cares what cake looks like?

Nope, me neither.

Hip hooray!

 xxx

hey guess what?

Would you believe in blog-land there's such a thing as a blogiversary? And that I completely missed mine? I've been posting to Inner Pickle for over a year now! May 4th last year was my first post. 

Never being one to turn down an opportunity for cake, here's to a year that I never expected and totally adored!

 THANK YOU! 

Thank you for reading and commenting and supporting and getting it. I'm so incredibly happy to be here in this little spot and that you come back daily and be part of it. I wish I could serve you all up a slice of delicious 4-egg chocolate cake (recipe at end of post), I seriously do. Just to sit down with you and a cup of tea and a cake fork. 

Instead, we're going to play a parlour game. I'm going to tell you a few things about me that you might not know and then you have to tell me something about you.

OK, here goes.

1. When I first met Adam I may have pretended to be more outdoorsy than I actually am. (Although I don't believe he was fooled by my shiny mountain bike for a second. Might have been the black beret/9-hole Doc Martins that gave me away.)

2. I keep talking about learning French but never get around to it. 

3. I have a partially researched PhD topic that I would love to go back to one day. It was on the food supply of the armies of the Crusades. I may have been the only person on earth who thought it was terribly interesting. 

4. A small piece of my heart lives in a small town outside Frankfurt, Germany (one of my beloved sisters moves around a lot.)

5. Turns out pregnancy number three is a total breeze. If you've got two and you're considering a third, I'm a big advocate for the pregnancy bit. Let's review "breeze" in six months time. 

6. In high school I wanted to be a composer. I started writing a musical with a friend of mine when I was 15. (He's gone on to become a very accomplished composer. I now compose silly songs to amuse three year olds.)

7. My favourite novel is Middlemarch, by George Eliot. I think. Or maybe it's a trashy Sharon Penman historical fiction. Or The Little Bookroom, by Eleanor Farjeon. 

8. My favourite food has been variously baklava, cheesecake, grilled cheddar on toast, marinated goats cheese and a really good apple or blackberry pie. I am a fickle, fickle lady.

9. The job I've held down longest was in corporate marketing and communications in financial services. My shortest job was as a private investigator reporting on a medical professional under investigation for fraud. My favourite (and lowest paid) job was for four months only, as a cook for a big preschool.

10. I've lived in Gerringong (country NSW), Sydney, London, Brisbane and Edinburgh for the duration of the Fringe Festival for two seasons. Of the places I've visited I'd most like to go back to Jerusalem and Istanbul. Of the places I've never been, the one I'd love to go to most is India. Or Nepal. Or Tibet. (Hoping our kids like travelling.)

OK! Please tell me something about you! Go on! One or ten things, whatever you like!!

And meanwhile, here's the Chocolate Cake recipe.

It's from the Country Women's Association of NSW and I found it on the side of the White Wings flour bag!

INGREDIENTS
2 cups self raising flour

125g softened butter

1½ cups caster sugar

4 eggs

½ tsp bicarb soda

1 tsp vanilla essence

½ cup cocoa powder

1 cup milk

METHOD
1. preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan forced.) Grease and line 20cm round cake tin.

2. Place all ingredients in large bowl and use a mixer if you have one (I don't) - I used hand beaters - for 3 mins, on medium speed.

3. Pour into tin and bake for 1 hour 15 mins - 1 hour 30 mins, or until cooked. Cool for 5 mins in tin then turn onto wire rack. Ice cake when cool (if your kids are leaning on you for icing!) 

xxx

Homemade Vanilla Icecream

Yuuuuuummmm. 

Ever made your own icecream? I've made it a few times, including a semifreddo phase I went through in the early nineties. THAT one was bad for my bum.

But I've never made a 'custard' based icecream. I wanted to try this because being pregnant I can't eat anything with raw eggs in it - which most homemade icecreams have.

This recipe is based on the AMAZING David Lebovitz's vanilla recipe here, with, I admit, a few steps skipped out. He's the king of the scoop, David Lebovitz, and I wonder if I'd stuck to his method, if it really could have been any more sublime. Truly. This stuff rocks. 

I served it for lunchtime dessert to a bunch of friends on Sunday (with this pavlova) a pairing which conveniently uses up all the whites of the yolks you used in the icecream! 

SO good. 

Here's the recipe:

Vanilla Icecream (Recipe by David Lebovitz - with a couple of minor adjustments (*cough*, short-cuts)

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup (250ml) whole milk

A pinch of salt

3/4 cup (150g) sugar

1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

2 cups (500ml) heavy cream

5 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

METHOD:
1. Heat the milk, salt, and sugar in a saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the milk with a paring knife, then add the bean pod to the milk. Cover and remove from heat.

2. In a separate bowl, stir together the egg yolks. Gradually pour some of the milk into the yolks, whisking constantly as you pour. Scrape the warmed yolks and milk back into the saucepan.

3. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heat-resistant spatula, until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula.

4. Stir the custard into the heavy cream, add the vanilla extract and remove the vanilla bean.

5. Either put into an icecream maker (which has a pre-frozen bowl and freezes the mix quickest) or a container with a lid or foil over it, in the freezer. Needs at least 8 hours to really freeze through. If you're using an icecream maker make you would usually pull it out and blend it again when semi-frozen (after 3-4 hours). I don't think this is necessary though. Still the creamiest, vanilla-y, most delicious icecream I've ever tried. 

There's about 2 small scoops left. Which I think Ad and I might polish off shortly with a small slice of this (even though it's not Friday night dessert night!!)

A new chocolate cake recipe with 4 eggs in it! (I only ever use 2.) Will try it and if it's any good, will blog it!

(All in the interest of recipe testing, of course. The things my bum and I do for you gorgeous people.)

xxx

little apple teacakes

I've been thinking about cupcakes this week after a friend emailed me for a cupcake recipe and I realised I didn't have one (rather, I just split the good old butter cake mix into cupcake pans when the need arises.)

So while I'm thinking about cupcakes and looking at a box of apples that will need stewing sometime soon, I imagine this:

hmmm.

And so I put these things together in a bowl:

INGREDIENTS

125g butter, softened

⅔ cup sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1½ cups plain flour

½ cup custard powder

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

½ cup milk

2 green apples, sliced

1 tbsp butter, melted

extra cinnamon and sugar

METHOD

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one by one and mix well. Add vanilla then sift in flour, custard powder and baking powder. Stir through cinnamon and milk.

Makes 12 cupcakes. 

Press sliced apple into tops of cakes and bake in moderate oven (180deg) for about 25 mins. 

While still hot, brush tops of cakes with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.

Lovely with tea.

xxx