The fact that up until now I have never had cashew soup of any description is a big mistake on my part. Cashews are one of my favourite things in the world, and now so is this soup.
Author Archives: cakecrumbs
My 24th Birthday Cake
As I mentioned in my last cakey post, Easter weekend was my birthday. I ended up making three cakes that weekend, which is probably some record for me. This was the one I made for my birthday.
I seem to have such a lack of inspiration for cakes lately. The month leading up to my birthday, I just could not figure out what I wanted to do. Even as I began making it, I had little direction. It's those unplanned cakes that usually come out the worst for me, so I wasn't expecting great things.
Back To Basics :: Kitchen Tips and Tricks #2
The hardest thing about baked goods is that it can be difficult to tell how the final product will turn out until it has, well, turned out. It's not a multi-step process that you're involved in along the whole way and can reverse or intervene at any time: you make the batter, throw it in the oven and hope for the best.
Sometimes, what comes out of the oven does not resemble the picture of perfection you had in your head before you closed that oven door.
The list of faults that may occur in baked good is lengthy, so this week I shall focus on cakes. Here's a guide to some of the most common errors made and how to avoid them.
Juke Kartel Cake
Last weekend, one of my favourite Melbourne bands, Juke Kartel, returned home to Australia over Easter and decided to treat us with a little tour. Amongst the gigs was an exclusive houseparty scheduled on the same day as my birthday. I really couldn't think of a better way to spend my first night as a 24-year-old, so I grabbed tickets straight away.
The invite said to feel free to bring a plate. Plate… cake… same thing, yeah? Besides, there's some unwritten rule about birthdays involving cake, so I really was fulfilling my duty in bringing one along.
Cook Book Challenge: Week 18
This weeks book is one of the cook books that I have no idea where it came from. It was either one of the many cook books my mum decided not to take with her, or another op shop gift from dad. Either way, it's been sitting around forgotten about until I dug it out for the challenge.
It's written by Alison Holst and is called "The Best of Home Cooking". It's very old school, and I find a lot of the directions to be either irrelevant or too vague to follow. But it contains a wealth of great ideas and tempting flavour combinations, so even when I can't follow the recipe, I can usually take the idea away and fill in the blanks myself.
This weeks recipe is "Mushroom Mounds".
Back To Basics :: Kitchen Tips and Tricks #1
One of my favourite things about food blogs on the internet is getting exposure to all new dishes and ideas: it's lovely seeing everyone elses creations. But as united as the interwebs makes us, we're still divided by a common language. Ingredients have different names, measurements can mean different things, terminology can sound foreign. So I'm writing a series of posts to help troubleshoot some of the most common questions and problems I've found or been asked about around the internet.
The secret to being a good baker is to be an organised baker. It's no secret that I am not an organised baker. In fact, baking in my kitchen leaves it looking as if a tornado invaded it. "Baking powder? WHERE'S MY BAKING POWDER? FIND ALL THE BAKING POWDER!"
Having all your ingredients ready to go, and even measured out will make your kitchen endeavors all the more successful. But even if you're a tornado in the kitchen like me, there are three things you absolutely must do before unleashing your mighty fury on the dish at hand.
Easter Nest Cake
I hope you all had yourselves the most fantastic Easter imaginable, filled with love, great company, and of course – chocolate.
One of my favourite excuses around Easter is the ability to bake the most indulgent desserts. And when it comes to indulging, you can't go much further than this mudcake.
I've baked this flourless chocolate cake a few times. You've seen it for Father's Days and for Birthdays. This cake is so delicious and so loved I'm constantly looking for excuses to revisit and reinvent it.
I've done the Basket thing for Easter quite a lot, so I decided to step away from that and go for a nest instead.
Cook Book Challenge: Week 17
The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits used in this weeks challenge boats 128 pages of classic biscuits, old recipes without the flair and twist. It feels almost like a surrogate nanna – I never met my grandparents so never had the opportunity to learn from them in the kitchen.
One classic biscuit I love to death but have never made at home is shortbread. I have no idea why it took until now to make it, but I'm so very glad I did.
Home made is always amazing…
Hunger Games Cupcakes
To say I live under a rock is an understatement. I don't watch TV, I don't listen to the radio, I don't read newspapers, because mainstream media just gets me aggravated. So it wasn't until last week, after a friend convinced me to join Tumblr, that via her fangirling there I even knew The Hunger Games was coming out. I immediately asked my boyfriend if he wanted to go – I had to wait until Sunday as the previous two days of the weekend were already booked in for a Sub Atari Knives gig and a Blacqk Audio/Evanescence concert.
Like many of you, I totally loved every second of the movie. So when I got totally frustrated with an assignment I was working on, I decided I should go into the kitchen and get frustrated with some cupcakes instead.
Prawns in Puff Pastry
In an attempt to evict the old second fridge/freezer to save both money and power, I undertook the feat of condensing two freezer-loads worth of food into one. My Tetris skills, whilst impressive given the final result, were not so good that there were not casualties. I had a large, space eating bag of frozen prawns that were deemed to big to fit anywhere, so the just had to be eaten. As if that's a shame. Given than this months’s challenge on is seafood, I decided to revisit on old favourite.
I cooked this dish with salmon for the very first week of my cook book challenge, so I thought I'd try it with my favourite seafood.
Cakecrumbs 