a little bit savoury | a whole lot sweet
I remember my mum making this Chocolate Coconut Slice often when I was a kid. The recipe my mum used was originally from a friend of hers and it was made using a butter cake packet mix as the base.
When I got the urge to make it a few years ago I didn’t have mum’s recipe at hand but I found something very similar in one of my Super Food Ideas magazines which made it from scratch and it tasted just like mum used to make.
There is a rule, in my house anyway, that on Australia Day you must eat a lamington. I did kind of break that rule this year, although we did eat Pavlova instead, but I think I more than made up for it by making a whole bunch of them a couple of days later.
A friend of mine from Mexico Victoria was staying with us at the time, and they do things a little differently down there by filling their lamingtons with jam so I made half of the batch the traditional way with just the plain cake dipped in chocolate and covered with coconut, and the remainder filled with jam and covered in coconut. I did run out of coconut so the remainder of the jam lamingtons were covered with coloured sprinkles, hence Sprinkletons were born.
In November there is a little race which stops the nation going by the name of the Melbourne Cup. I am not really into the whole horse racing thing, but I would not knock back the opportunity for time out of the office for afternoon tea.
This year we put on a spread, and over catered as usual, with my contribution being some Rose Macarons.
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.
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.