a little bit savoury | a whole lot sweet
Last year, Adriano Zumbo had a television series about his work and in the third episode he headed back to the town where he grew up. In that episode, he visited the local school and made chocolate and caramel brownies with some of the students.
The recipe looked pretty darn tasty which was a good invitation to make it as far as I was concerned.
Now I am a scone lover from way back. Growing up, I remember going to my Nan’s house to make scones, or help her eat the one’s that she had just finished baking. Smelling them as I walked through the front door and seeing them on top of the stove wrapped in a tea towel waiting to cool is one of the most vivid things I remember about my time cooking with Nan.
One of the places on my “to visit” list has been The Victoria Tea Salon in the new Westfield shopping centre after reading about it on Not Quite Nigella’s blog. I am not a tea drinker, but given my love of all things sweet and cute, I was ensuring we were able to go on our recent trip to the big smoke to savour their scones.
The hubby and I have a little addiction to pine nuts. We will put them in everything we can whether it be pasta, lasagne or salad. However, I have never had them in a sweet dish.
Imagine my delight when I bought Classic Cakes by The Australian Women’s Weekly with one of the very first cakes in the book being a Lemon Sour Cream Cake which just happens to be topped with pine nuts. The oven was calling.
Another one of the cookbooks I purchased recently was SprinkleBakes by Heather Baird. I came across Heather’s blog when I was looking for red recipes to use up the extra food colouring purchased for My Best Friend’s Wedding Cake and I made the Red Spiral Biscuits, also featured in the book.
As I was flicking through the book when it arrived, one particular recipe stood out and I knew I had the perfect occasion to make it. The recipe was for a Southern Bombe and the occasion was yet another September birthday celebration for two of my beautiful friends.
As is the case for many people, I have a lot of birthday’s amongst my family and friends in the month of September as well as Father’s Day. This year, we decided to combine my dad and brother’s birthday plus Father’s Day into one Sunday lunch at our house. However my brother decided he would go to the snow instead (and learn how to fall on his butt), so it ended up being all about our dad’s.
In May I was asked to recreate the red velvet rose cake from My Best Friend’s Wedding Cake by the mother of the bride for a luncheon of the local Inner Wheel group in August.
The cake was to be predominately the same as the wedding cake, however as the symbol of the Inner Wheel is a red rose, a few of these were scattered in amongst the white.
At my primary school, we often had a day or week where a particular country was the focus. One year was the United States and in the newsletter that came around there was a recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies. As the recipe is for the most ridiculously good Chocolate Chip Cookie, since then it has been the only version that has ever been made in my family. As they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
The first time I had cinnamon scrolls was when a friend of my brother’s came over from Canada to visit about 4 years ago. They were the fluffiest, gooiest and most delicious cinnamon treat I had ever had. I previously have had a love/hate relationship with cinnamon but it is now easily one of my favourite spices (it is tied for first place with nutmeg). Of course this meant I had to track down a recipe so I could continue making these myself.
A long time friend of the hubby is from Canada and kindly enough invited us to their Canada Day celebrations. Of course this means I found the perfect excuse to bake.
Since making My Best Friend’s Wedding Cake I have litres of red food colouring leftover and am trying to find ways to use it. After a friend linked to this spiral biscuit recipe on Pinterest, I searched to find an actual recipe and came across one on another blog for some red spiral biscuits.