Our culinary adventure one sticky step at a time...
Gingerbread People
Getting into the Christmas spirit I decided to make gingerbread men (and women) for my family. I know, Gingerbread is not so fashionable these days but I love those classic treats. Yes, I am a fan of carrot cake, rum balls and trifles.
So after seeing Margaret Fulton’s Christmas recipe I could not resist. A little bit of an overkill but I made two batches and around 35 ginger bread men and women (each with a custom name). It was very simple and incredibly fun.
“Food obsessions”. What causes them? An inexplicable inward desire to travel to the end of the earth to seek out the best, most enjoyable food items on this planet. While finding them, trying them and trying them again creates moments of excitement I cannot help but never feel 100% satisfied.
While this month my obsession has been macarons, I remember back to early April during my travels in Japan that I would hunt, seek out and destroy any Mochi that I could get my hands on. These soft, delicate sweet desserts to me personify the essence of the Japanese culture and Japanese psyche.
Perfect little pillows of soft chewy sweetness, hand crafted by tedious hours of pounding rice into a glutenous, chewy yet tender dough filled with various sweets – the most common red bean.
After returning from Japan and having put on a few kgs from endless mochi eating, my desire and obsession never quite left. While finding mochi’s in Australia is challenging, it is not impossible with packet varieties available in most asian supermarkets. However, my obsession required my very own Mochitsuki ceremony – so I made my own…
While busy exploring Twitter this week, I developed an instant obsession with photos of Quay’s 8 texture chocolate cake that adorned Reemski’s profile page (and check out her blog at http://www.tummyrumble.net/). The gooey, soft chocolate layers quickly prompted me to dig out my own chocolate brownie recipe that I had adapted from Nigel Slater’s “Very Good Chocolate Brownies” recipe. Here’s a teaser of the end result.
What makes a good muffin? To me it needs to be warm, moist and wholesome. If you have tried a fresh baked muffin from Steel Espresso in the mornings you will know exactly what I mean! Not only do the staff get creative with the daily flavours but their muffins are consistently moist with a crisp “muffin-top” that makes a die-hard foodie like myself extremely jealous!
Well, that jealousy and my obsessive curiosity got the better of me and I attempted to re-create the perfect muffin at home (although it wasn’t perfect – more on this later).
