Byron Bay Barbecue

Here in Byron bay, been cooking on the bbq, been good.

Philosophie de Cuisson

Exams are over, and summer's here! Exams take away from cooking time. That's really irritating. So it seems as if I should cook something, for the sake of cooking. Isn't that a great ideal? I'm going to cook not because I'm hungry, not because I need to cook, not even because I want to cook, but because cooking is demanded of me for some reason, not by any entity, not by me, maybe by the gods, but I think they lost out with this whole monotheism thing so it would be unlikely to be them, not for a competition, not for any conceivable thing that you might imagine, but for the sake of cooking, I shall cook! Damn the English sounds silly, how much better is cuisiner?

Cooked up Burnt Butter Biscuit recipe from Fulton on two occasions the other week: the first time I rolled the dough into balls, which were too big- how big's a walnut? I don't have any walnuts lying around how am i suposed to know how big a walnut is?- the recipe said roll into balls the size of a walnut, is that the size of a testicle?; the second time I did without the recipe and so by feel because I didn't think I had 4 oz. of butter- however much that is, the metric system is the only system for me, and it makes sense too- and I rolled the whole mixture flat into one big biscuit- this was tasty except i think if i had made several small bisuits they would have been even more satisfying being crunchier, never mind.

Tomorrow I'm baking another cake for another birthday, I think it will be rock cake!

Depression Birthday Cake Poem and other Musings

Cake was what I thought would be a nice present for a friend's birthday last Saturday, and indeed it was a nice idea. I mixed flour, water, sugar, fruit and spice for a cake that would provide plenty of cheer. I baked it to perfection, considered adding icing, and let it cool. A Depression cake it was, from the skill of some past mother, and when I presented it to the birthday-boy all he could do was drool.

Actually that's a lie, but I think I've written something that rhymes there? Even if the meter is off. No matter. In other news, my brother has gone. YAY! and oh!:(. But I think all those curries he was feeding us were rather bad for one's system. Nevertheless I've begun to start using the word "nevertheless" cause I think its a fun substitute for "however", however "however" has its merits. Oh and guess what, it hailed the other day so that it looked like snow on the ground, in Sydney!, in Spring! WOW! and it was so cold yesterday, yet so warm today. Weather make up your mind. Now what does this have to do with cake, well not much but I guess you could say its rather like yesterday was when the cake was being cooled and today was like it being cooked, so that the weather is in fact crazy, not me, and it's working in reverse. Are we in El Niño, or La Niña?

Banana dog desert and fiddling on the Internet

I have invented a new desert, maybe not, but I made it up on the spot, what I did was I made biscuit (cookie?) dough from one of the Margaret Fulton biscuit recipes - jam fingers - and then I wrapped a banana (several in fact) in the dough and put it in the oven for around 20 mins at a high temperature. The criticism I received for it was that it looked a bit odd, and wasn't terribly trés sophistiqué. My suggestion is that I cut the banana up and instead make some nice little sort of pie shape around the banana and then cook. Now in other news. And I thought I'd show a picture of some trees near my house:

Big Brothers

Well I cooked some snags on th bbq - nothing new - but i did cook eggs for th first time. You see my brother turned 21 today. But th thing about th eggs on th bbq is that i used rings to cook them in. So some of th rings were non-stick and others weren't. Luckily a trusty guest came and pushed th eggs out of th rings for me. I think that eggs are better cooked on stoves with pans. Damn that Merlin and his stupid sign - "th"!

Musings on a Winter's Day in Autumn

My brother has been cramping my cooking style in the kitchen recently with his little better than tinned boot-camp stews and more tasteless than manufactured tomato based pasta sauces, but what has been bothering me is life in general. Maybe its because its winter (its cold in Aus right now, while technically being Autumn [its not called fall - in Australia that's a verb!! and a noun, but still, Autumn, doesn't it have a nice ring to it?]), maybe its because I was clothslined a few days ago and was seen to have a "Marcia-style" nose, and puppy-dog eyes (due to the swelling), and was hence feeling like a 70's dog-man, however it could have been because some crazy woman just kept walking into me as I crossed the road, despite the fact that I made every effort to get out of her way, and ended up clipping my muscley shoulder (too bad for her), today, and hence therefore in conclusion, well make up your own minds, but I really just think we need to start cooking better food, using better ingredients, watching Iron Chef more often, creating an Iron Chef channel for cable (wouldn't help me I don't have cable, 80% of it's CRAP anyway), and generally life would get better for everyone; that crazy woman wouldn't be so peeved, and my brother would be inspired to learn some cooking skills to catch up with his peers. Hey some car just beeped its way past my house (in suburbia)! Dammit he obviously wanted a better dinner!

Plug-and-Play Robots

You have to click here

Flourless Cake

More on cakes: One of the best experimental cakes I've made thus far is flourless; it uses almond meal instead! I dunno off the top of my head how to make it but it's really tasty, and gluten-free, and you can make it just about everything free and it tastes super! I notice too that for some reason I now have more options when I post a message like: click here but I don't know if this means I can put other html up? let me try:
Yay! A different colour!.
Any way I'm also reading this famous book called Lolita- its pretty good.

Cake Base

So I've started baking cakes. I use a recipe for butter cake from a cooking book by Margaret Fulton; something along the lines of 1/4 cup butter with 3/4 castor sugar and vanilla essence creamed then add two eggs and beat then fold in 1 cup flour then 1/2 cup milk then another cup flour. Bake at around 160 celcius for 30 minutes.

What I've done successfully to change the taste, is to replace some of the flour with almond meal, and/or add some orange rind and juice- the extra liquid means a bit more flour or equivalent. Also food colouring is fun, plus you can use any type of essence like almond or peppermint - it doesn't have to be vanilla. This is a good cake to cook 'cause its really fast and really tasty and there's all sorts of different offspring from the mother recipe above.