Bad Blogger

Okay so I've been a terrible blogger.
Very very bad.
I got distracted with work and life and boyfriend and stuff.
I will try very hard to start posting stuff again once I have my appetite back.
I went badly off track for a few months and got another sinus infection, stupid, my fault.
I will do better.
Just bear with me and give me a little more time.

Carrot Cake and Excuses

So far the year has been pretty alright. I know we're two full months into it now and this is my first post for year year (oops) but life does this thing where it just gets by you.

I've been a little slack lately with my baking. Oops again, no excuses really. I could say I'm not baking in an effort to be healthier, but that's just a convenient excuse. However this cake could almost pass as healthy.

Carrot Cake

1 cup raw sugar (mucho better for you than the super refined and bleached white granulated sugar)
1 cup veggie oil (I used rice bran oil, I guess it's better for you than butter, and it keeps the cake much more moist)

3 eggs

1 1/3 cups wholemeal flour (same with the sugar, better than the refined bleached stuff. Also more fibre)
1 1/3 tsp baking powder
1 1/3 tsp baking soda
1 1/3 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp all spice (my addition)
2 cups grated carrot (about 2 medium sized carrots, but just a rough measurement, don't be using 2 and 3 eights of a carrot)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I used pumpkin seeds instead, we didn't have any walnuts and pumpkin seeds are cheaper and go further)

Preheat oven to 180C.
Grate your carrots and chop your nuts.

Mix the sugar and oil together.
Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Sift the dry ingredients together then mix into the oil and egg mix, don't overbeat. In fact, probably better to leave it with a few lumps of dry mix showing through than over beating it.
Add the carrot and walnuts (or pumpkin seeds) and fold in. Your last little bits of dry mix should get mixed in during this stage too.
Pour into a greased and/or lined round cake tin, I used an 8 or 8 1/2 inch. Level if you need to.
Bake it.
My recipe said 70 minutes, it lied. I took it out at 50 and it was already well done. Well, not too well done, but the edge was crunchy but it was darn tasty. I like a bit of crunch with my cake.

Bourbon Yoghurt

1/2 cup plain natural yoghurt (isn't yoghurt better for you than ice cream, cream, or cream cheese icing?)
1 very heaped teaspoon of icing sugar
1 tsp - 2 tbsp bourbon

Mix all together. Sugar and bourbon to taste.
You could use any other boozy or vanilla or whatever, but I thought the bourbon went with the flavour and spices of the cake.

I dusted the cake with icing sugar, then served it with the yoghurt on the side. My family then promptly smothered the rest of the cake with cream cheese icing. Dumb.

Impending doom, and Pistachio Shortbread

It's my 21st party in under a week. I won't be 21 on the day, but because my actual birthday is so close to Christmas, it's kind of impossible to have a party on my actual birthday.

As you can probably imagine I'm excited and nervous, but also I'm dreading it.

It's exciting to be having so many of my family, and hopefully a lot of my friends, all in the one place because of me, celebrating something with me. There will be great food, good conversations, bangin' music, maybe a bit of dancing, and a bit of booze flowing.

Nervous because I hope it all goes well.

The impeding doom is another thing.

My sisters.

I get it. I'm on the outside when it comes to my sisters. I'll admit I prefer one to the other, but I know they prefer to be with each other than with me. They both are into art and stuff like that, one art history and the theory behind it, the other is an artiste. And me? I don't really care much about art. It looks pretty or it doesn't. I think food is an art - the science behind it, the creation of it, the presentation of it. If everything we ate was just brown slop on our plates, no matter the taste, no one would get excited about food. I love to hear people comment on how beautiful a cupcake or a decorated chocolate looks, I love to hear "Wow, you made that?!"

It makes my day.

Anyway, why I'm dreading the combination of my sisters and my 21st party.

Traditionally there are speeches at 21st parties. I know I wasn't a nice kid a fair bit of the time. I know I was a pain in the butt teenager. But I'm different now, I'm a lot more mature and calmer. I don't want that stuff brought up because that just isn't who I am anymore. It will embarrass me. And that is what my sisters do.

Pistachio Shortbread

I love these biscuits. I made something very much like them when I did some work experience at a major hotel in town a year and a half ago (OMG was it THAT long ago?!). Then a few months ago I went looking for a similar recipe to try and recreate them and I found this.

I was so nervous going to this work experience. I was so worried about screwing up and embarrassing myself, but it ended up being so much fun, I can only hope my 21st party will be the same, pleasantly suprised.

The lemon zest cuts through the butter and brightens the biscuit, making you able to eat a whole tray full of them.

250g butter

3/4 cup icing sugar

2 1/2 cup plain flour

70g pistachios chopped

Zest of one lemon

Cream the butter and icing sugar until it is pale and fluffy.

Mix in sifted flour - at this point mine looked like sweet pastry before you add the egg, I had some coconut milk left over so added a couple of small spoonfuls of the thick part to the dough so it just started to come together. Not sure if it was the right thing to do but it ended up being fine.

Add the pistachios and lemon zest. Mix. The original recipe called for the pistachios to be toasted, which would have brought out the nutty flavour a bit more but I didn't bother, and for them to be finely chopped, but I like being able to see the nuts and the texture when they are only roughly chopped.

Turn out and shape into four logs, you may want to lightly flour your bench first.

Wrap in baking paper and/or gladwrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

With a sharp knife slice 8mm (or however thick/thin you like) rounds and place on a baking tray. Bake at 160C for about 15 minutes. You want them to be firm, but not browned like mine, then again I liked the extra crunch.

Coconut Ice Cream and Chocolate Sauce

Coconut Vanilla Ice Cream

1 can coconut milk

2 egg yolks (one of my eggs was a double yolker, so I guess I used three)

1/4 cup sugar

Vanilla essence to taste (or anything else you may like)

Heat your coconut milk in a bowl over a pot of simmering water, until it is hot but not boiling. You can add your flavourings at this stage, so the flavours really infuse with the c/milk.

While the c/milk is heating, separate your yolks and mix with the sugar. Don't leave the sugar sitting on your yolks while you go do something else, because if you leave it sitting unmixed then a chemical reaction will start to take place where your egg yolks start to get cooked. So mix first. Mix until pale and creamy.

When your c/milk is hot enough pour a small ladle of the hot c/milk into your egg yolk mix and whisk together. Add the rest of your c/milk to the egg mix, whisking all the time, then return to the bowl over the pot of simmering water.

Stir the mix until it coats the back of a wooden spoon. This means that when you lift the spoon out of the mix and run your finger along, the mix is thick enough that it doesn't run and the line where you swiped your finger remains. It's ready.

At this point you can strain (helpful if you used something like vanilla pods or lavender) into a cold bowl and leave to cool, or place the bowl that was over the pot into another with ice and cold water in the bottom. This stops your mix continuing to cook and cools it down.

Wait until mix is cool/cold. Can put in the fridge to help once it has cooled sufficiently.

At this point you can put it into your fancy pants ice cream maker machine thing, or do it my way. Old school yo.

Place in freezer until it has just started to freeze around the edge. Then mix with your hand mixer. Repeat for about 3 or four hours (tip: do this on a day where you will be home all day. Don't start at 8.30 at night or when you have school/work the next day).

Freeze over night.

Ice cream!

It might not be as smooth or light/airy as normal ice cream, but that is because bought icecream has been churned constantly while being frozen so has had the air fully incorporated into the mix.

I know it seems super complicated, but really it's easy! Just time consuming!

Super Easy Yummy Chocolate Sauce

1 Tbsp Butter

2 Tbsp sugar

1/2 Tbsp custard powder (I accidently used 1 Tbsp, but I still thought it was super delicious, your choice what you do really)

1 Tbsp cocoa

1/2 cup water

Melt butter in microwave. Mix in rest of ingedients. Cook in microwave until thick (mine took about a minute/a minute, 30 on high).

I then beat in with a fork about a teaspoon of extra butter and some raspberry liqueur. Nom.

CAKES!!!

Sometimes I make cakes for people. They either ask me to, and pay me, or I choose to. Simple.

Here's an example of me going all out:

Four layers of rainbow cake on each tier, filled and covered with cream cheese icing, covered in white fondant. Whole thing = not dairy free, but look pretty good, ya!

In other news, here's my version of a quickie job for an awesome workmate:

Three layers of chocolate cake, filled with chocolate butter icing, covered in chocolate ganache (using Lindt 70% Dark Chocolate, no dairy or soy!, and coconut milk). White chocolate decoration (picked off of my piece when eating because that isn't dairy/soy free!).

About Lactose Intolerance

I'm allergic to dairy.

You've probably heard someone say that before right?

But what exactly do they mean?

There are two "allergies".

1) allergic to the milk protien

2) Lactose intolerant - I'm going to go more in depth into this one.

So being lactose intolerant isn't actually an allergy.

Let's first do a little background.

The sugar in milk is called lactose.

In order to digest lactose you need to be producing an enzyme called lactase.

Most mammals stop producing lactase while they are young, thus becoming lactose intolerant. But, typically *sigh*, humans have to be different.

A large proportion of humans have developed lactase persistence. This is where the body continues to develop lactase, instead of stopping, although adults do have lower rates of lactase production than younger people.

Interestingly, people from African and Asian areas have much lower rates of lactase production. When you think about it, European people, back in the day, continued to eat a lot of dishes that used milk, and other products that included milk. Where as people from Africa/Asia weren't particularly likely to do so.

Another interesting point, human milk is quite high in lactose compared to other milks.

So I guess what I'm trying to get at is you aren't allergic to lactose, it's an enzyme deficiency (lactase deficient). I could theorise that us lactose intolerants are more normal, and more following the natural order like than everyone else.

To aid in digesting lactose, you can eat those slightly pricier yogurts (you know the ones: Acidophilus!, Cultured Yogurt!, Bacteria!, Lactillobactus!). The bacteria in the yogurt (unless you leave it sitting on your bench or in your bag all day, in which case it will be teeming with bad bacteria that will make you sicker) contains lactase or aids production of lactase, so some lactose intolerants can have these yogurts because the bacteria in it helps digest the lactose in the yogurt.

Am I making sense? i get the feeling I'm going in cirlces. I'm sure you get what I mean.

So anyway, I'm onto tub 2/4 of my gut repair vomit enducing powder, then I can start the desensitisation.

NOODLE CANTEEN!!!

So, after a slightly drunk conversation with my boyfriend last night, I realise that I can have Noodle Canteen still!!! There goes my eating out problems!

For those of you that have the misfortune of not knowing about Noodle Canteen, your life is not worth living (slight exaggeration? Maybe? No?). Noodle Canteen is the most delicious, freshest take-away I've found ever (ignore whatever the boyfriend says about Subway).

Because I can have soya bean oil and fermented soy products (eg soy sauce and miso), using my excellent culinary knowledge, I have figured out that I should be able to eat just about anything they serve up!

This little revelation comes just in time as I'm heading to the boyfriends tomorrow and he doesn't cook, and doesn't have anything in the house to cook *sigh*.

Just watch out for the molten-lava-hot temperature of the sauce, that stuff will burn all your taste-buds off so you can't taste the deliciousness.