One mum, one son, four guinea pigs: Celebrating budget interiors, the joy of the ordinary, and cake.
A Cavill-cade of lights and colour on Cavill Avenue My son George is just about to turn 12, so the night wasn't that wild. But since he saw and did things he never had before, it was pretty wild to him. G and I have spent the past two weekends in Queensland, going back to…
Continue reading ➞ George’s wild weekend on the Gold Coast: Part 1 “Friday night”.
On Monday I worked from home as Spider Boy had a cold. It was also time for his plaster to come off. Once we got home from the medical centre, I noticed for the first time that the branches on the trees outside our window are bare. I don't know how long they've been that…
Continue reading ➞ Edited highlights: bare trees and summer memories
Halloween is tonight but you've just got time to bake some last-minute cupcakes. Here are some spooky-but-cute Halloween treats from around the web if you're needing some sweet inspiration. 1. "Broken glass" cupcakes from marthastewart.com The "glass" is sugar and water. 2. Reese's Frankenstein cupcakes from yourcupofcake.com 3. Ghost cupcakes from thecomfortofcooking.com 7. Chilly ghosts…
Continue reading ➞ 7 Halloween cupcake recipes… an Alexcellent roundup.
On Winter weekends I like to do what I can to improve my baking skills. This particular Sunday I decided to make apricot turnovers and a few mini chocolate croissants. If you have ready-made puff pastry in the freezer and a tin of fruit in the cupboard, you've got all you need for a yummy,…
Continue reading ➞ Fun with puff pastry: easy apricot turnovers and mini chocolate croissants
Señorita Margarita had told me there was a great bakery/cafe she wanted to share with me when I next trekked over to her neck of the woods. So last Sunday when Spider Boy had a birthday party to attend nearby, I dropped him off (after watching him ride a mechanical bull that looked like a giant…
Continue reading ➞ Review: Kurtosh House, where “gluttonous curiosity is to be explored”.
I love cake, but in my efforts to be healthier, I've been thinking about ways I could reduce the fat. No butter? Yes, it is possible to make a cake without butter. But let's not get too crazy. This cake does have some butter in it. But less than normal because today I'm substituting some…
Continue reading ➞ Baking with yoghurt: Mango and vanilla yoghurt cake with white chocolate ganache
With all the bad news in the news, especially lately, I am even more grateful for my ordinary joys. While making sure my head remains above the sand of this world (as much as I can stand), I remember and appreciate all the good things. Spider Boy and I are loving the lack of routine of…
Continue reading ➞ Ordinary joys: Bondi views, pudding and flowers from Spider Boy.
I should be posting Edited Highlights at the end of a week, not the beginning (and let's face it, we're rapidly sliding towards the middle of the week), but technical problems over the weekend has caused a delay to my "posting schedule", which is admittedly haphazard - but I'm working on that. The last week…
Continue reading ➞ Edited Highlights: delightfully pink, playfully green. And trashy chocolate.
I realise I seem to have developed a theme here in the past few weeks, namely involving snow, fake or otherwise, and chocolate. Well it IS winter! With all the bad news reports (the bad news that is additional to the constant bad news that already happens) lately, it would be very easy to be overwhelmed by it all…
Continue reading ➞ Edited highlights: chocolate pudding, snowdrops and other ordinary joys
I love baked goods. I own a lot of cookbooks. I look at baking blogs. I like to try to make something from the pages/posts of these books/blogs. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. A recent baking effort fell into the latter camp. I was determined to make a zucchini loaf and a batch of…
Continue reading ➞ Mortifying muffins and eye-candy neighbours
