01 October, 2010

Phew, it's been a while

And I haven't blogged in so long that I've forgotten how to type. Maybe.

I've been a busy little bee today in the kitchen, baking a cake for Jay's 14th birthday tomorrow. When it comes to cakes... and my cooking "skills"... um, there aren't any. I can cook an ordinary packet mix and it will taste acceptable, but the aesthetics of my decorating leave much to be desired. So today, much as I expected, my cake tastes like pretty much nothing. The banana can be detected (this is acceptable) but the chocolate cannot, and this is, well, disappointing if not unsurprising.

The real surprise so far is having extracted the cake from the tin without it disintegrating. I pondered how horribly sweet the icing would be on a tasteless cake and went a'Googling, and discovered Ganache. It's now cooling so that I can check if it will be thick enough not to slide off the cake in a gooey mess.

My industriousness has led to me thinking about Christmas. It's late for an Aussie to begin thinking about Christmas. It's ridiculously early for a Finn to, since the over-commercialisation of Christmas hasn't yet saturated the Helsinki streets, and you can wander into a shop on December 23 here and be out of the checkout in five minutes flat.

I have a few tried and tested ideas for do-it-yourself gifts, and I'd like to add a few more. Stay tuned... but don't hold your breath in case I completely forget to post anymore!

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