What's more delicious?

What is more delicious:

White chocolate or dark?
Red apples or green?
A website for sharing bookmarks or one for sharing recipes....

Surely a website called delicious.com should contain tales of delicious foods, recipes for delicious treats or at least photos of delicious morsels. As it does not, I have decided to bookmark websites that do indeed involve delicious food of some kind, plus a few crafty ones and one of cute little animals that will make you go awww.

Here is a photo of some beautiful and delicious macaroons from the Gourmet Traveller website to make your mouth water....

http://www.delicious.com/katiemc11

Wiki-licious

Ever tried a recipe you found on the internet and it just hasn't quite worked? I certainly have! Have you ever amended the recipe and made it better??? I bet some of you clever clogs have!

Well, imagine if you could change the recipe online so that all those that try the recipe in the future benefit from your cookery wisdom. A cooking wiki is just the thing! It's like getting your grandmas old cookbook with all her little notations in the margin. Plus you can add your favourite recipe for others to try.

Here are two I came across:
http://www.foodista.com/
http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Recipes_Wiki

Mmm, cooking...

A speedy cake indeed

A little while ago it was Miss K's birthday... In fact, it was so long ago that Miss K is now a Mrs! And to celebrate her fabulous day she decided to enlist her fellow workers in making a cake, a 3 minute cake to be exact. Yes, you heard right, a cake that takes just 3 minutes to make! Too good to be true? Well, I thought I would find out.

As I missed all the action by not working on Miss K's birthday, I tried the 3 minute cake at home. I googled a recipe and it was indeed a swift process. In fact 2 minutes in the microwave was plenty - thanks for the tip Miss K! But the big question is, did it work???

It is called the most dangerous cake in the world because all you have to do is crave cake and 3 miuntes later there it is. I would say that as a cake, it was pretty good. A little dense perhaps. But add some cream and call it a pudding and it was delicious! The girls at work added strawberries as well and I think that would make it just divine. A recipe to try for sure.

Another birthday cake

Picture 001
Originally uploaded by katiekatiemc

Why make one cake when you can make two? That was my sentiment when my son Rafferty had his first birthday. I have already posted his lion cake (roar), but I also made another cake for a family celebration from the delightful womens weekly birthday cake book.
This one more closely resembles the cake in the book although it was supposed to be a bear and came out looking more like a koala!

Do Re Mi Fa

I bought a new book the other day. It is by one of my fave bloggers, Pip Lincolne of Meet me at Mike's. It is called Sew La Tea Do and includes lots of crafty things to make for adults and kids. I am attempting to become better at using a sewing machine and plan to use this book as the inspiration for my new dressmaker self.

I love blogs that include craft and food. Some of my faves are:
gordongossip.blogspot.com - Cakes glorious cakes, I hope one day to make a cake beautiful enough to appear on this website!
theblackapple.typepad.com  - Craft, food, fashion. The most successful seller on etsy. I have some of her prints in my house.
meetmeatmikes.com/ - Meet me at mike's, maker of my book of intrigue/craft
rosylittlethings.typepad.com/posie_gets_cozy/atom.xml - Only recently discovered but ticks all the boxes
www.mamamia.com.au/  - Not crafty or foody, hmmm, but appeals to my closet magazine loving self

What shall I try to make first?? A beanbag? a dress? Hmmm....

What on Earth is a Yorkshire pudding?

Friends of mine are having their kitchen done and being the nice friend that I am I thought I would invite them over to have something that cannot be microwaved or made in an electric frypan - a roast!

And what was the reaction to this kind and generous offer.... Yes, we'll come over but are you going to make Yorkshire puddings? Firstly, isn't it a bit rude to make requests when you have been kindly asked to dinner? And secondly, what the hell is a Yorkshire pudding?

Some internet searchery later I was enlightened about this seemingly simple recipe that everyone apparently has difficulty cooking. Flour, eggs, milk, water, salt and pepper. How hard can it be??

The trick (according to my friends Nan) is to have the muffin tray with oil really hot and your mixture fridge cold. Then they will rise into glorious little puffs of amazingness. But I was skeptical. Would they, could they possibly work?

The photo doesn't really do them justice. They did indeed rise and took on a beautiful golden hue. And more importantly they were delicious. For someone who loves pancakes, tortillas, pizza bases and other bready things, they were on the very scrumptious end of the scale.

These will definitely become part of every roast dinner from now on.

A cupcake...with icing

What would the title of this blog mean if I didn't at some point add a post about a cupcake?

Well, yesterday I used a new recipe and made some chocolate cupcakes. The recipe was from a book called Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld, which is all about hiding fruit and vegetables in food for kids. These cupcakes used avocado instead of butter in the cupcake mixture and I was also supposed to add cauliflower puree to the cream cheese icing. But I just could not stomach the thought of cauliflower being anywhere near a delicious cupcake and I left it out!

The resulting cupcakes were interesting. Definitely yummy, but unlike other cupcakes I've made. They were not light and fluffy and yet were not stodgy. I would say they were dense in a nice mudcake type way. You could not taste the avocado.

Would I make them again? Yes. If you are going to eat cupcakes (and I am) then I guess the addition of a vegetable eases your conscience just that little bit. Mmmm, cupcakes...

Ta-dah!

Well, I promised a photo and here it is! Does it look like a lion? Hmmmm. Not bad for a first effort perhaps.

The version in the birthday cake book was a bit different. I freestyled it a bit to make it cuter. The mane was very time consuming to ice but I like the effect. But what about the birthday boy? What did he think?

Well, he doesn't look too impressed in this picture!

He loved eveyone singing happy birthday and blowing out the candles, but as for the cake... He liked looking at it and squishing his hand on it, but was not so interested in the eating of it! Never mind, the others at the party more than made up for his disinterest.

The most important question, however, is what to try next year...

Let them eat cake

Mmmm, cake. What would life be like without it? It would still be life certainly, but not quite so amazing, and not nearly as tasty!

On Saturday my boy Rafferty had his first birthday party. Finally I had the chance to make a cake from the iconic Womens Weekly Birthday Cake Book! Who of us doesn't remember leafing through the pages of the birthday cake book picking out which of the delectable cakes we wanted to have for our birthday? I remember the year I had the castle with white turrets covered in smarties, and another time the typewriter. My brother was lucky enough to have the train and I envied my sister the piano.

But what would my one year old have?

There was the number one covered in lollies. Simple yet effective. Or the teddy bear, definitely cute. But what about something to fit with the jungle theme on his invitations? The lion or the tiger, or maybe an elephant?

ROAR! Nothing says jungle more than the king himself, the lion.

I spent a couple of hours before the party madly icing and came out with what was mostly identifiable as a lion. Well, I think so anyway. Stay tuned for a picture of the finished product on my next post and whether the birthday boy was impressed...