for mum.

made two bunches of hot cross buns this easter using two different recipes, nigella lawson’s and mummy’s. mummy’s turned out really well, nigella’s not so much. i promised mummy i’d post up some pictures of the buns (her recipe), so here they are!

i was too lazy to follow mummy’s cross recipe so i made a variation of nigella’s and piped it out. needless to say, it was too liquidy. doesn’t matter, i always peel the crosses out before i eat them anyway.

heehee, ate too much food so must hide faces.

cross my teas.

seriously, i think the more pressure i am under, the more likely i am to start blogging. however, i am hoping that i slow down the blogging when my exams come ringing around the corner or else seriously..

okay. anyway, i just was on google doing research for the government essay and got a wee bit distracted and that was when i came across this article.

i’m sure many of you have popped by my house for tea and so you would all know that i adore tea (probably more than coffee) and the copious amounts i drown myself in. i now have to stop drinking my regular bushells and milk, which really does upset me because i really really do enjoy my tea with a dash of fresh full fat milk. i guess it’s only earl grey or green tea now because i don’t like normal breakfast tea without milk. this sucks because i just (last night) bought a new packet of bushells and some milk.

so i got a wee bit excited and did more tea related things. I checked out t2’s website and took the tea personality test. the first question however i found hard because there isn’t a select all option. in the end i just chose my favourite time to drink tea which is in the morning. here are my results.

they are pretty accurate, three out of the five they listed are my favourite. then again, i think my answers spelt it out for them. i like my tea in the morning in a mug. i like the traditional stuff and milk in my tea, easy.

okay one more favourite tea website.. bushells! i like the tea etiquette bit! next time we have tea (the girls’ tea at vic park probably) i’m going to show the girlies what i have learnt except i doubt i’m going to brew hot tea in the middle of the park.
stop stop. less tea (with milk) and more government provision..

sous-chef

this year i’ve taken a more backseat role in the kitchen .. lesley cooks and i clean up. but this doesn’t mean i don’t think about my fantasy kitchen! i know i know, under my wing, these babies will probably never live up to their full potential, but maybe with time who knows? for all you know, a year from when my fantasy comes true i’ll be rolling out pots and tins of joy just like that.

here they are in no particular order

1. The slow cooker $74.95
   I think this would be brilliant for all the stews i ever so love craving for but never cook. mm lesley’s osso buco immediately comes to mind.
2. The glass kettle $84.95
   I’ve never really seen a glass kettle before and the idea of one does appeal to me. but for someone who should live on a pillow island this might not be the best kettle. i think this kettle is pretty and won’t die under my rule.
3. The cake mixer $699.00
   I know mum’s got a kenwood cake mixer too but my dream cake mixer is heaps better than her’s and a million times more deadly to the pocket. all the same, i would love a cake mixer so i can make merguines and every other cake that requires the arms of a handball player.
4. The kitchen scale $132.06
   I think this is ideal for somebody who like me is heavy-handed. i tend to over salt, sugar, butter, chocolate, and flour my mixes. so having this around would reduce the chances of me free pouring and thus reducing the risk of over somethinging my food.
   i adore the idea of a traditional scale as opposed to a digital one and it would make my kitchen look really really really cool. i guess it would take a lot longer and less convenient to weigh everything but how awesome does it look?
5. The jars for medium $34.95
   it is highly impractical because this means i can’t fill my jars all the way to the top but HOW CUTE ARE THEY?!?!  arguably pink is the cutest colour but i’d get all the colours because i hate pink. i’d get them in all sizes too.
6. The famous sandwich maker $43.50
   I have been craving for one of these things for the whole year so naturally it’s part of my fantasy. i chose this one particularly over the other fancier ones because of its triangular griddle mold.

and all that comes up to a grand total of $1,069.41. not a bad price for a fantasy.

haha my fantasy kitchen from the looks of it will be very mismatched.

so what’s in your fantasy kitchen?

i think i need a sunrise

i’ve been so busy with the mountains of odd things that find their way to the top of my to-do list that i haven’t really had the chance to sit down and complete my thoughts. and when my mind is blank food creeps in..

i saw this entry on simply recipes which reminded me of nanna and her version of sloppy joes which is made with a sandwich maker and with normal bread instead of the buns the recipe uses. also the recipe itself is quite different from the one on simply recipes. nanna put a hint of curry powder in her beef mince which gave them nice kick and probably didn’t use as many ingredients as they do. i don’t remember nanna putting tomato sauce in or red wine vinegar or celery. actually on hindsight, i doubt the recipe even vaguely resembles nanna’s recipe. oh well.

back to nanna and her recipe (and my tummy). i used to slip in some cheese just before nanna closed the lid to let it toast which would always get her cross because the cheese had a tendency of oozing out of the bread and getting messy. but the result was always fantastic with gooey melty cheese on top of a brilliant beef mince in a perfect sandwich triangle. it made getting nanna cross very worth it.

how wonderful it is that sometimes though a recipe differs so much from how we know it to be, they still bring back memories and a good chuckle.

hmm, now i feel like going out and getting one myself.. along with a cake mixer..

okay, i m done! have a good weekend!! (for the lucky few with three day weeks or who just don’t feel like going to uni)

eat my little heart out.

I had a terrific cup of hot chocolate with marshmellows inside today at urban bites; and i’m especially happy because i love marshmellows in my hot chocolate. for some reason the coffee culture in Sydney has no place for marshmellows in hot chocolates. and because of this, i miss Perth. well not Perth exactly, but the really yummy coffee shop, Lemon, in Claremont in Perth. i remember soon after we realised that it made the best cups of coffee and hot chocolate, it was good-bye Barista and hello Lemon!

apparently, it wasn’t a well-kept secret as we thought it was. i always kept on bumping into familiar faces there, which made me wonder why the familiar faces didn’t tell me about Lemon?

so anyway you can imagine me squealing with excitement when the coffee lady carefully dropped them into my disposable cup of delight, for an extra 20 cents. now, thats a lot of money for 2 plain medium-sized white marshmellows, but can one put a price on euphoria?