Easter baking and Easter hiking

We went to the Grampians this weekend with a few of our adventurous friends. The trip was fuelled largely by this amazingly sickly sweet but delicious Easter egg caramel slice (a.k.a. diabetes-in-a-block) that I had baked, and some discount Wispa bars that we picked up a big armful of in Coles. In the recipe, I only used half the quantity for sweetened condensed milk, and really, it was enough! The recipe says that it makes 15, but for us it made about 24... really sickly. Really easy to make, would highly recommend this recipe for any people with a sweet tooth out there.

We camped at Mt Stapylton campground and hiked along the campground track up to Mt Stapylton. Gib and I have hiked this one before, but I never made it to the peak. I was keen to do this walk as payback to Jocelyn taking us up the near vertical climb up Sugarloaf Peak at Cathedral Ranges a few weeks back. However, it turns out that my fear of heights has improved since the first time I did Mt Stapylton, so I managed to make it to the top this time and it wasn't nearly as bad as Sugarloaf! There were a few differences this time though: it was warmer and less windy so it felt less exposed, I had better shoes, and made the smart decision to leave my pack on one of the rock shelves below. The same ledge before the final peak that made me terrified the first time is still terrifying, but was manageable with the guidance of our good friends.

The following day we headed to the Southern Grampians to climb Mt Abrupt and do some off-the-track GeoCaching. We don't have any photos as yet because the memory card in the camera was full so our friends took the photos, but here is a photo of pretty much exactly what we saw. I think it offers one of the best views of the Grampians I have seen. That said, the view from the spot where our geocache was was equally spectacular, looking up towards the beautiful Mt Abrupt summit.

Image from here

For Easter Sunday (we arrived home from camping Saturday night, Jocelyn had to work - poo!) I baked some Koulourakia, Greek Easter biscuits. The recipe was great, easy to follow, and the result is delicious. My Greek work colleague tells me they store very well, however I don't think they're going to last very long around here.

Image from here

Hope you all had a happy Easter!

Lime and banana cake

For another baked treat for Gib to take to work, I combined this fantastic coconut banana bread with lime glaze recipe.

A very happy worker snacking on a slice of his Sticky banana, coconut and lime loaf for morning tea

It was fine stored in an airtight container for up to a week. It was moist, zesty and filling, and we'll definitely be making this one again to take to work.

Peach and almond slice

I used up some of my preserved peaches to make delicious snack for Gib to take to work. I used this very quick and easy Peach and Almond Slice recipe, with my peaches that I had preserved in a light cinnamon infused syrup.

It went from this:


To this:




The hard part was making sure Gib didn't eat it all at once! It kept well for about 5 days in an air tight container. Yumyumyum.

When baking and StarCraft meet...

It all started when a friend sent us this picture...


It turned out that there was some sort of awesome competition going on around the time of the StarCraft II Beta release, where you had to bake a StarCraft cake and the best one won a product key. I was stunned at how many other baking and gaming nerds there were out there. Gib was so excited to make his own StarCraft cupcakes just for fun, so at our next StarCraft night we brought surprise cupcakes, icing and lollies to decorate. Here are the results:

Almond biscotti!

Yesterday I had an itch to bake. I was tired and sleepy, but I really wanted to get into the kitchen. It was Gib's cousin's birthday, and there was a bit of a family gathering and there was an Italian food theme so I decided to try my hand at making biscotti. About half way through the process I realised it was kind of pointless, because right now me and crunchy food, especially seriously crunchy foodstuffs like biscotti, can't be friends. I think my hips and thighs might think it's a good thing though.

I used this biccotti recipe from Joy of Baking and it was actually surprisingly quick and easy to make. By quick I mean that the dough was quick to make, and cutting up the biscotti for the second baking was quick too. Baking time was a while, but if you're already hanging about the house doing other things then it's really not a problem. Dead easy. I thought biscotti would be an arduous task, but I was wrong. And they store so well, I think I might have to remember these again for Christmas time.

Biscotti: Dipped into a nice mug of coffee, it then becomes more edible for those who can't chew

Recipe Box Swap: No theme month!

This month I baked macaroons!

Macaroons have terrified me for ages. I don't even know why. I think it has something to do with heating the egg whites and then fear of burning them in the oven. But now that I decided have a go I'm sitting here going "What was all the fuss about?!". They were easy, turned out perfectly, with a light crunchiness on the outside and soft, chewiness on the inside. So good with a cup of peppermint tea. This is my grandmother's recipe.

Beth's grandma's macroons

¾ cup blanched flaked almonds
3 egg whites
140g caster sugar
Pinch of cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 140°C fan-forced.

Toast almonds in a small, dry pan until golden brown (be careful to watch them, don't get distracted!!). Allow them to cool, then blend until finely ground.

Combine egg whites, sugar and tartaric acid in a medium bowl over a small saucepan of gently simmering water until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat.

Beat the egg mixture with an electric mixer or in a stand mixer until mixture has tripled in volume and has cooled. Gently fold in almond meal. Spoon mixture into a piping bag and pipe small rounds of mixture onto baking paper lined trays (looks cute with a star end too). Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until a golden colour. Remove from oven and allow to cool on trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

I have photos, but unfortunately my camera cable has gone missing. If I get organised (ha ha) they'll be coming later. But mine looked like this:

Courtesy of here

What did you make this month?
Why not post in on the Recipe box swap?

Easter baking

I hope you all had a good Easter! The weather in Melbourne this Easter has been terrific.

This year we decided not to buy Easter eggs or hot cross buns and it the home made way. Mum made hot cross buns, and on Easter Sunday I decided to make Tsoureki, Greek Easter bread. I know I'm a week early for Greek Easter, but... oh well. I grew up near one of the biggest Greek communities in Melbourne, and love the Greek Easter treats! I prefer caraway in mine, so I used this recipe and added 1/2 tsp caraway seeds to the dough. I didn't have enough eggs, so unfortunately no bright red eggs in the middle either. Although the recipe said it made two large loaves, it only made one. I took a look at some other recipes on the web, and there was definitely half the quantity of flour than the two loaf recipes.

I've never done much work with yeast and bread and all of those things, but I kind of had a theoretical understanding of what's supposed to happen and why, so I was quite please with how the thing rose and came out! Yummo!

Recipe review: Leek & Aubergine Tart Tatin

I decided to follow Maggie and Simon's Leek & Aubergine Tart Tatin recipe, featured on the program last Wednesday. We substituted vino cotto for balsamic vinegar, sugar for honey in the syrup and made the dough half with wholemeal flour. Although, I did that silly thing when you take a hot pan out of the oven and place it back on the stove top, and then forget that it's been in the oven and grab the handle of the pan... not so smart. It was a joint success between Gib and I: It took a little bit of time to put together, but worth every minute. It was a definite success, smelled divine, tasted absolutely delicious.

Recipe review

So I've been doing a bit of baking recently, not only for my parents' 30th wedding anniversary celebration which was yesterday, but also just generally over the past few weeks. Unfortunately my camera's batteries ran out yesterday and my camera didn't like its new replacement batteries so I'm waiting on other people's photos to come back to me before I can show you what my mum and I made.

Sweet miso stir fry sauce
From cuisine.com. I just made the sauce for a general vegetable stir fry (I didn't use eggplant) and it was a success in tonight's dinner. I replaced the sugar with honey and added a 2.5 cm piece of ginger, 2 cloves of garlic and chili to taste and it was terrific. I was concerned that it was going to be too salty, which is always my concern whenever I use miso paste, but it was fine once it was tossed through everything. I love using miso paste as a base for stir through sauces as it gives a really nice, almost creamy consistency.

Blueberry and almond slice
I have been dying to try this sanitarium recipe for ages but I find it hard to justify baking slices when there are only a few people around to eat it, so I love big occasions (like yesterday) so I can finally try out all of these cake and slice recipes I've always oggled. This slice is very visually appealing, with the little blueberries poking through. It's moist and there's a great contrast between the almond meal base and the berries that burst in your mouth as you eat it. The recipe was easy to follow and no adjustments for time/temperature had to be made. It came out looking just like the picture on the website. The base was made a day ahead of time and still worked out fine.

From Sanitarium

Rhubarb muffins dusted with cinnamon sugar
Ok, ok, soon I will get over rhubarb recipes. I'm almost through the box of frozen rhubarb bits now. In an effort to try to use up the last of the rhubarb, I made these rhubarb muffins for Gib to take to work. Muffins freeze well and are a convenient snack for hungry men at morning tea time. Myself, I found them a little boring. They were very light and fluffy but a bit too sweet for my liking, and reminded me more of cupcakes with rhubarb than muffins. I prefer my muffins to have a more interesting texture, so maybe I'd make it with part wholemeal flour next time and perhaps add walnuts to the mix. That's just me though. Gib's mum loved them as they were and... well... they didn't last very long with Gib.

Roasted Cauliflower Salad
We've actually made this one a few times over the past month, sometimes making the whole thing, othertimes just roasting up the cauliflower on its own with the spices. It has become a favourite and I foresee it will be made many times in the future. We have learned not to go overboard with the lemon because it gets a bit too zesty with the capers mixed in too. A great side dish, I reckon this would go down well at a summer barbeque.

(un)healthy obsession with cranberries

I go through fads of favourite foods, but right now it's cranberries. Cranberry juice, cranberries, craisins (especially craisins)... it really doesn't matter. I can't get enough of their sharp, tarty, tangy flavour. Gib even bought me some real, unsweetened cranberry juice from Macro a few weeks ago - you know, the sort that make it feel like your face has been punched in if you try it straight. Cranberries are good for you too!

I spotted this recipe at Culinary Concoctions by Peabody for Pumpkin Cranberry Bars. I had a spare hour up my sleeve before going to training and had everything on hand, so I thought I'd give it a go. I used dairy free margarine, walnuts instead of pecans and I steamed and pureed some fresh pumpkin we had in the fridge. Because I'm lazy I made it in the food processor, leaving the walnuts and craisins until last.


The outcome was fantastic: as proof I've made 2 batches in 4 days! (Ok, so there was a book club being hosted at our house, and there were lots of people to share with). The walnuts and craisins gave the bars a lovely texture. This recipe goes into the "favourite recipe" pile.

The theme at Meet Met At Mikes this week is "A week of baking". Go check it out!

Recipe reviews, chasing lyrebirds and more octopus cakes

I've come down with the flu. I spent the day reading and sleeping (mostly sleeping) and now it's 2am and I'm wide awake. Needless to say I'm now regretting not getting my flu vaccination this year - I'd forgotten how horrid it is! So I thought I'd share some adventures I've had in the kitchen the past week.

Edit: Oops in a haze of flu, I forgot to add the bit about lyrebirds... see below!

Recipe review #1: Beer baked beans

I finally gave the Stove-top sweet and spicy beer baked beans a go (as mentioned in a previous post). After making the recipe exactly as it said, I found it was far too sweet. I ended up adding 500 g chopped tomatoes to the pot as well to make it less sweet. I'd probably halve the amount of sugar and add a 400 g tin of tomatoes in future. I could not find navy beans, but great northern beans were the best substitution (they're virtually the same size and shape anyway). And I decided on Coopers, a nice strong beer taste. I've been taking it to work and getting some envious looks in the lunch room.

Recipe review #2: Maggie and Simon's mushroom and leek calzone

Calzone are delicious. Often I'll make up a batch of 6 for Gib and I to take to work during the week, or for a quick, filling meal after training. When I saw this recipe featured on the Cook and the Chef last week, I had to give it a go. Mushroom and leek a favourite food combination of mine, and I was intrigued to see how the non-pizza bread dough turned out. I made the dough in the food processor, and the dough was quicker and less messy to make than pizza dough is (which sped up the calzone making process substantially). I substituted the fontina for gouda. Oh boy, it was delicious. I'll definitely be making this one again.

Sarah's octopus cake
Friday night I helped my friend Sarah bake a blue ring octopus cake for her friend who she goes scuba diving with every weekend. Sarah doesn't bake very often and we were a little pressed for time having to do it all in the one evening (usually I make my cakes in advance) so we decided to go with the classic packet chocolate cake and ice with butter cream icing. We discovered that Betty Crocker's chocolate cakes only make 8 cups, and the octopus cake is a 10 cup tin. The cake mix just filled the legs but not the base of the tin. It still worked out fine. The blue rings are made from candy necklaces and the eyes and beak (Sarah, like me, clearly also has an appreciation for anatomical correctness, even in cakes) are made from mini licorice all sorts. Congratulations to Sarah for her first ever character cake!

Chasing lyrebirds

I took the day off last Thursday to hang out with Gib to coordinate with his work hours, and I worked Saturday. We took a picnic lunch and headed for the Dandenongs. From Grant's picnic ground in Kalista we took the eastern loop (about 7km) and on the way spotted four lyrebirds! The first was a female just scurrying across the path and scratching about. We heard lyrebirds the whole way around though. We started picking their calls by thinking "Gee, that kookaburra sounds a little close to the ground" and then "Hmm.. that bell bird sounds a little flat, don't you think?". About half way around the track we spotted two males hanging out together (brothers?), practicing and strutting their stuff. Then another male came along and started up this massive repertoire, much more impressive (better mimicry). The three of them proceeded to have a bit of a sing off until the two boys scurried away. This is a poor quality video I took with my camera, but I took it for the sound. You can hear the more impressive male and see the other two scratching, strutting about and then finally scurrying away. The only bird you can hear on the video is the lyrebird, but my favourite is when he does the kookaburra. Exciting stuff. Lyrebirds can be very hard to spot so we were extremely fortunate to see not one but four of them!

Low GI rhubarb, apple and strawberry crumble

Tonight I had a punnet of strawberries that needed using up fast, some cut rhubarb in the fridge and a couple of apples sitting merrily in the fruit bowl. And then I found this recipe for rhubarb, apple and strawberry crumble. It's low GI too.

I love crumble. Any type of crumble with any type of fruit. With a little ice cream, custard or just on it's own. It's a cold weather thing and something that I look forward to each winter.

For this recipe, I just chopped the apple and put all the fruit in the baking dish, tossed through the sugar and cinnamon, put it in the microwave for 3 minutes, put the cumble mixture on top and baked for 30 mins. Too easy. Ok, so the photo makes it look ugly (need to improve photography skills) - I was in a rush to gt out the door - but it tastes so good, lots of tang.


After two hours of training I was absolutely ravenous and all I could think about in the last quater hour was that delicious crumble waiting on the bench for me when I got home. And boy it was good when I finally got to eat it.

Beth's Bushwalker Bickies

Ok, I'm a little late on this one. This is for the June Recipe Box Swap at I have to say. There wasn't a theme this month, so it was easy to choose a recipe.

I had an unusually quiet Thursday evening and I spent it baking biscuits and reading the newspaper. Nothing exceptional in the paper, but I managed to finish the sudoku. What was exceptional was how these biscuits turned out. They are sweet, but not too sweet, and a little bit nutty tasting. They have a wonderful, slightly chewy texture but the cornflakes and oats make them a bit crunchy at the same time. I think could happily polish off the whole batch on my own.

Beth's Bushwalker Biscuits
1/2 cup margarine
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp water
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup dates, chopped
3/4 cup wholemeal self raising flour
1/2 cup plain self raising flour
1 cup Carman's rolled oats
1 cup cornflakes
1/2 cup coconut

Preheat oven to 120-140°C (these cookies are very high in sugar and will burn easily). Grease baking tray.
Blend margarine and sugar together. Mix in egg, water and vanilla essence until combined.
Mix through dates, then the remaining ingredients.
Roll into balls then flatten on the tray. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Makes 25-30 (I got 26 in the batch I made, but I think there would have been more if I hadn't eaten the dough... it was so yummy)

A cake: inspired by Gib's Aunt.

I doubt whether there are any Australian mothers left out there who don't this cook book:

It's a classic in every household. Gib and I were housesitting for Gib's Aunt over the weekend and it was sitting on a little table next to the bed. I really should not have been surprised to find this book next to the bed as Gib's Aunt is one of the most amazing cake makers you'll ever meet. I had hoped that her amazing cake-baking skills would infuse into me during my time at the house, and it seems that that may have happened.

I had six passionfruit and two ripe bananas sitting in the fruit bowl and, lo and behold, on page 60 of the Women's Weekly Cakes and Slices cookbook there was in fact a recipe for Passionfruit and Banana cake that required five passionfruit and two ripe bananas. Here is the recipe, from Australian Women's Weekly (1991) "Cakes & Slices", p. 60

• 125 g butter
• 1 cup castor sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 mashed bananas (3/4 cup)
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 200 g passionfruit yoghurt (I substituted for 175 g natural yoghurt and the pulp from 3 passionfruits)
• 1 cup wholemeal self raising flour
• 1 cup plain self raising flour

Passionfruit icing

• 1 1/2 cups icing sugar
• 1 tsp soft butter
• 2 passionfruit

Grease a 20cm round cake tin, line base with paper. Grease paper.
Cream butter and sugar in a small bowl with an electric beater until light and fluffy. Add egg until combined. Transfer to a large bowl.
Stir through banana, walnuts, yoghurt, (passionfruit), then sifted flours.
Spread mixture in to a prepared pan and bake in a moderate oven for 1 hour (although it took 1 1/4 hours). Stand for 5 mins before turning out. Top with icing when cake is cool.

For the icing:
Sift icing sugar into a small bowl. Stir in butter and enough passionfruit to make a stiff paste (mine was a bit runny, I think. Oh well.)

Here are the results:


I reckon this was one of the best tasting cakes I've ever made. Moist, tangy and neither dense or fluffy. The icing was very sweet, but it was thin enough that it didn't bother me. Delicious.

Leftovers and seconds

I loathe to throw out any fruit or vegetables (except for maybe those furry gray carrots that get pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten about for a few weeks) and so I'm always trying to think of inventive things to do with nearly-past-their-used by date items in my fridge and fruit bowl. My food delivery comes on Fridays, so often Friday or Saturday is when I cook to make way for the new stuff.

I'd been pondering what to do with some broccoli I had in the fridge: I hate the stalks and I'm always trying to find ways to conceal them in things so I can't taste them and don't have to throw them out. I also had some daikon and carrot lying about so, before I headed off to work I whipped up some quick Japanese pickles. I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to turn out, but I'll let you know how it tastes in about 4 days.


My favourite thing to do with tired fruit, apart from stewing it and eating it with ice cream, is turning it into muffins. Three lonely kiwi fruit were still left. They'd been left in the bottom of the bowl and almost forgotten. I also had a banana that I had frozen in the back of the freezer. I made this recipe from a base muffin recipe that I have and hoped for the best. Although the photo doesn't look that exciting, these muffins are actually very tasty and are definitely on my "to make again" list. The kiwi fruit gives them a bit of zing, the banana keeps it smooth and sweet, and the ginger gives them a lift.

Kiwi fruit and banana muffins

Wet ingredients:

• 100 g butter, melted
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 banana, mashed
• 3 kiwi fruit, diced
• 1/2 cup low fat milk

Dry ingredients:

• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups self raising flour
• 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a 12 hole muffin pan.
2. Combine the wet ingredients.
3. Mix in the dry ingredients. Mix until the dry ingredients are just combined.
4. Bake for 15-20 minutes until cooked through. Let to cool in the pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool.

Apple and rhubarb compote

This morning I visited the Holmesglen Tafe farmers market and, in addition to the delicious goats cheese, locally made olive oil, freshly baked sour dough, zucchini pickles and organic kipfler potatoes, I also bought 1kg organic fuji apple seconds. I used a portion of these to stew up with some rhubarb I had lying about in the fridge.

I adapted this recipe from the recipe for rhubarb compote in Beverley Sutherland Smith's "A taste for all seasons".

• 250 g apples, peeled and diced
• 1 rhubarb bunch (500 g)
• Juice of 1 orange
• Several strips of orange rind
• 1/2 cup sugar

Place all ingredients in a dutch oven or heavy based saucepan (I added a little bit of water just to get it all started). Bring to the boil then reduce to a low simmer for ~30 mins until the rhubarb is just soft. Remove orange rind and serve. Can be frozen for up

Early Anzac biscuits

Next Friday I leave for Japan for 3 weeks, which will be very exciting, but it means I will miss out on Anzac Day. April 25, 1915, was the date that the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) troops landed in Gallipoli, Turkey. It was the first Australian and New Zealand involvement in World War I. During this time I like to bake Anzac biscuits. There are several ideas about how Anzac biscuits came about, but basically they're crunchy, well keeping biscuits that were eaten - and later sold by - the Anzacs.

This is my mother's recipe for Anzac biscuits:

75 g rolled oats
125 g sugar
70 g desiccated coconut
120 g wholemeal flour
2 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
40 ml boiling water
125 g butter, melted

• Preheat oven to 160 C.
• Mix oats, sugar, coconut and flour together.
• Combine the golden syrup and boiling water. Add the bicarbonate of soda, followed by the butter. Stir until frothy and then add to the dry ingredients. Mix until well combined.
• Spoon onto greased baking sheets, making sure there is plenty of room for them to spread. Bake for 15 mins.

Chocolate and banana loaf

Gib's mum made this tonight. YUMMO!

250 g plain flour
20 g cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
120 g butter, softened
130 g raw sugar
2 large eggs
2 very large bananas (~500 g), mashed
60 g shredded coconut
80 g dark choc chips

Preheat oven to 175 C, fan forced
Sift combined flour, cocoa and baking powder.
Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is combined before adding the next. Mix in banana.
Fold in flour, then coconut and chocolate chips. Mix until well combined.
Grease a loaf pan (22 x 12 cm) and line the base with baking paper. Spoon mix into the pan.
Bake for 60-65 mins or until the insides are cooked.

Peanut butter cookies

Betty Crocker is no good for my waistline!

It's my last day of work today (yes, ever, at this job) so at about 11pm last night I decided to bake a batch of peanut butter cookies. I found the recipe here.

For whatever reason my cookies didn't turn out exactly like the picture (I suspect my habit of not bothering to measure might have played a part in this... I think I put in too much butter) so they flattened out a little more, kind of like the cookies you buy at Subway, but damn they still taste good. I'll post my version of this recipe:

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1 1/4 cups plain flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
A handful and a bit of peanuts

1. Mix sugars, peanut butter, butter and egg in large bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and refrigerate about 2 hours (or overnight) or until firm.
2. Heat oven to 180ºC
3. Shape dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. Place about 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten in crisscross pattern with fork dipped into sugar.
4. Bake 9 to 10 minutes or until light golden brown. While waiting and watching the butter from your cookies ooze underneath the greaseproof paper, eat the remaining scraps of mixture in the bowl with a spoon. Cool 5 minutes; remove from cookie sheet. Cool on wire rack.

Mr Fish

I thought I’d document this cake too because I was quite pleased with how he turned out and will no doubt want to make it again in the future. This was a birthday cake for my friend, Amita, who loves fish! The innards of the fish is a caramel mudcake, and his outside is green meringue icing, licorice, sour straps and a chocolate eye.

The caramel mudcake recipe comes from Women's Weekly 'Cafe Cakes' (p. 46). I have tried several caramel mudcake recipes, but this one is the perfect density for a mudcake and isn’t overly sweet or sickly.

Whenever I’m making birthday cakes, I like to make them at least 2 days in advance and store it in an airtight container in the fridge. This means that if I bugger it up I have time to make another one, and more importantly it’s easier to cut and carve without it crumbling (a problem even with mudcakes!).

I prefer to make meringue icing because, again, it’s not as sweet as butter icing (despite what its name might suggest) and it also holds its shape better.

Ingredients for the cake:

• 185 g butter, chopped
• 150 g white chocolate, chopped coarsely
• 200 g firmly brown sugar
• 80 ml golden syrup
• 250 ml whole milk
• 25 g plain flour
• 75 g self raising flour
• 2 eggs

You’ll also need a 9” baking tin, lined with paper and a 2” collar and a good, sharp knife.

The icing:

• 220 g castor sugar
• 4 egg whites
• 330 g butter at room temperature, chopped into about 12 pieces
• Blue and green food dye

Making the cake

• Preheat oven to 160C, fan forced (moderately slow oven, I usually need to set mine to 150C).
• Line the base and sides of your 9” baking tin with baking paper, with a 2” collar.
• Combine butter, chocolate, sugar, golden syrup and milk in a medium saucepan, stir over low heat without boiling, until it’s smooth. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and allow to cool for at least 15 mins. I usually leave it for about 30 mins because the mixture is still way hot after 15.
• Whisk in sifted flours, then eggs, one at a time.Pour mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 1.5 hours. If still not cooked, keep checking every 10 minutes until done.
• Allow to cool completely in the pan (this increases the density and keeps the moisture in the cake).
• Turn onto cake rack.Wrapped in a layer of cling wrap, baking paper and foil, and place in the freezer. This cake can be kept in the fridge in an air tight container for up to three weeks.

I’ve never really had much problem with this particular mudcake say, rising in the centre, but if it has happened, just cut that bump off (it means you get to pre-sample the cake too!).
Turn the cake upside down, so the bottom of the cake – the flat side – is face up. This is a good, crumb free work surface to work with.

Cut the cake as below:

Transfer the cake to your mounting board and brush away any crumbs. Place a few strips of greaseproof paper underneath the cake. If you make a mess with your icing it means you can slide it out later without messing up your board.
Attach the other tail fin using a toothpick or shortened bamboo skewer.

Making the icing:

I should give you forewarning and say that this icing can be very strange. Sometimes it whips up in no time, and I think, depending on the weather, it takes ages to beat at other times. I’ll be standing there beating away, wondering whether I measured something wrong and debating whether to take action, and then a few minutes later it’ll suddenly fluff up. If it’s not fluffing up, don’t lose faith, just keep beating! It will eventually work!

• Place the egg whites and castor sugar in a bowl and dissolve sugar into the whites on the stove over a saucepan of water, making sure the bowl does not touch the bottom of the pan and that the egg whites do not cook!
• Beat the egg whites and sugar until they form stiff peaks (5-10 mins)
• Gradually add the butter one piece at a time, beating after each addition. It will take until the last few pieces are added before the mixture will really start to fluff up. Add a few drops of blue and green food dye, or whatever colour you’re making, until you’re happy.

Decorating:

• Smother the cake with icing, using a long metal spatula, or a butter knife works just as well. To get it nice and smooth, dunk your spatula in hot water.
• Cover your cake with the scales. I started from the tail and worked back.
  For the tail fin and dorsal fin, I simply used strips of the sour strap, cut to the shape of the fin.
• His little swimming fin (I can’t remember what that’s called) is just an oval shaped sour strap, about 5cm long. I just placed it on top of the scales. It’s not secured.
• His eye I made by melting a small amount of dark chocolate and dotting it onto a white chocolate melt with the end of a chopstick.
• His mouth is lined with wide licorice straps.

And you're done!

Gib's bug cake

I made this cake for my partner, Gib, for his birthday. It's some sort of creepy crawly larvae type thing. The cake is a raspberry chocolate bundt cake, with raspberry icing and white and dark chocolate. Yummo!

For the cake (Serves 12)

275 g frozen raspberries
3/4 cup butter
1 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cup plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup dark chocolate chips

Icing and decoration
3/4 cup dark chocolate chips
3/4 cup white chocolate bits

2 cups icing sugar; sifted
25 g Raspberries; fresh/frozen, pureed
2 tsp Lemon juice

1 pkt strawberry flavoured Pocky* (for the antennae)
Large white chocolate melts (for eyes and mouth)
Natural Confectionary Company ‘Fruit Salad’ soft jellies. (for the legs)

Making the cake

1. In bowl, cream butter with granulated sugar until fluffy. Beat the in eggs one at a time, and vanilla.
2. Spread half of the mixture into greased 10-inch Bundt pan. Sprinkle the berries on top of the mixture, then spread the remaining batter over the top.
3. Bake in 180 C oven for 40 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Let cool for 15 minutes. Invert onto rack to let cool completely.

Decorating the wiggly worm

Cut a wedge in the cake, about 1/3 of the cake. Turn the wedge around and butt it to the end of the main piece - it should look sort of like a question mark (or a wiggly worm!). Transfer the cake onto your presentation board. Put strips of waxed paper under cake, this will catch the icing and chocolate so as not to dirty your board.

Make the icing: Add icing sugar to pureed raspberries, mixing well. Then add lemon juice until consistency to spread thinly on cake. Wait until the icing has set before adding the chocolate layers!

Melt the chocolate and leave it to cool slightly. If it’s too warm it will melt the icing underneath. You may need to remelt the chocolate a couple of times during this process. Drizzle the chocolate to create stripes. Do the same for the white chocolate.

To make the antennae, I dipped the ends of some Pocky sticks into the white chocolate a few times, waiting about 30 seconds between each layer, with a final dip into dark chocolate.

To make the eyes, I used large, round white chocolate melts. I dipped the flat end of a chop stick into the melted pot of dark chocolate and then dotted it onto the white chocolate melt. It took a few attempts to get them looking good.

The mouth was simply a white chocolate melt cut in half.

Use your favourite coloured jellies for the 6 legs (I used them whole).

Inspiration for this cake came from here: http://novapages.com/index.php?itemid=228&catid=31

*Pocky is a Japanese sweet snack. I buy it from my local asian grocer for 99c a pack.