ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: cake

there was a brief moment on friday, as i walked down the crap end of pitt street with a box of cupcakes in my hand and central station rising up before me, when i thought i was in new york. sure, it was the crap bit of midtown manhattan that flashed through my head, but i was there, man.

how distant that moment is now, with me sitting here eating vegemite toast much too quickly, stealing minutes to blog in between too many jobs that involve fitting too much text into too small a page.

but, friday. cupcakes. rewind. << i'd been wanting to go to cupcakes on pitt for months and months, even before reading about saffron’s happy adventure back in november. but somehow i never got to the city before closing time, or i was never in that part of the city, or i just, um, forgot. but, friday. cupcakes on pitt just happened to be on the way to where i needed to be (the department of immigation).

it was like it was meant to be: the boy was off sick from work, the child was having her nap at home, the buses conspired to run off-schedule… and one of the two little tables in the shop was empty. there is a cupcake and coffee deal for $5 (cupcakes $3.50 each), so i had a latte, even though i’d given up coffee again. as for the cupcake…

how long does it take you to choose a cupcake? is there a length of time, after which it becomes embarrassing (or just freakish) to stand swaying before a display of eight-ish frosted beauties, trying to pick the one that will be just right? in the end, the classic combination of pink and brown won. the smiley counter girl brought it over, my chocolate cupcake with strawberry frosting. it was a bold, pretty thing, and when i turned it around, i discovered its deformity: a overhang of cake where it had risen unevenly in the baking tray. i was delighted, because… well, more cake. but that countergirl, did she know something about me? spooky.

i tried to make it last, but the cake was so light and moist and chocolatey and the frosting… see, i like the idea of twice as much frosting, but i’m thankful that they took the sensible route here; it was quite buttery, with a delicate strawberry flavour. and no doubt you would have noted the generous curls of good dark chocolate perched so jauntily on the top. it was really good, and just the right, sensible size.

it was so tasty that later, faced with the decision all over again for takeaway cupcakes, i eschewed the white chocolate cupcake, the dark chocolate cupcake, the plain chocolate, the jaffa on chocolate, the strawberry on vanilla, the passionfruit, the cappuccino, and picked the chocolate with strawberry frosting again. the cupcakes here are a flavoured frosting on either a vanilla or chocolate cake base (which saved my brain from imploding while trying to decide frosting as well as cake flavours), so i thought it would be good for the survey to also pick a vanilla one. this ended up being the lemon cupcake, topped with a modest swirl of baked meringue.

[ i have this fantasy of buying a slice of foot-high lemon meringue pie whenever i pass one by in a cafe window; it always seems like way too much meringue, though i suspect i would eat it all, and perhaps regret it, maybe.]

i wondered if there might be a dab of lemon curd beneath the meringue, and cutting into it when i got home, i discovered that there was. hurrah!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 March 2006 at 11:13 am

permalink | filed under around town, cake

shall i finish telling you about the picnic, and the tart, from before?

it’s just that, if a group of people goes into a kebab shop to pick up some supplies for a picnic, you might imagine that there may be a platter of meats shaved off the great revolving thing behind the counter, if not from the special grill set up by the door, with those kebabs that are minced lamb moulded onto a mean skewer, or chunks of marinated meat and onions; several tubs of salads and dips; maybe a handful of falafel; and a fat bundle of bread — maybe even a couple of those tasty-looking ones drizzled with oil and za’atar — for everyone to share.

instead, there was an unspoken consensus that each mini-group within the entourage would cater for itself. hence, boy’s olds bought themselves a doner kebab plate, boy’s sister bought herself a doner kebab plate and a bag of chips for her son, boy’s other sister bought herself a vegetarian pide and a can of coke zero, and boy tried to buy us and the kid a chicken kebab plate and a falafel plate but the shopgirl misheard and made us roll-ups.

thusly laden, we bundled ourselves back into our cars and drove to the botanic gardens, but waiting in line with our picnic, we saw the sign on the gatehouse telling us to stay on the path at all times, which is just not condusive to picnicking, now is it?

no.

we ended up at the picnic tables a short hike away, close to where some kids were playing with a heavy metal chain hanging off a tree branch. i suppose it used to be some sort of swing, but now, without a seat, it was just a braining waiting to happen, flung about as it was with glee and stupidity.

but we got through the meats without incident, and then there was baklava on the table, and the custard eclairs, and well, the plum tart had been there from the start. “this baklava is so fresh,” someone said, lips glistening with sugar syrup. “the chocolate on this eclair is really good quality,” someone said. (it was!) “it’s a pity we didn’t think to bring any tea,” someone said, “because it would be very nice to have with your tart.”

and then, with the tart still pristine, someone said, “i couldn’t eat another thing.” and reached for another piece of baklava.

so the tart went back into the car as we walked round the garden, and after the garden, no-one wanted tart still. well, i wanted tart, but no-one else did. i asked the boy if we should cut the tart up and give some to his family to take home. i mean, i had made it to share with them, but it seemed that these were people who did not want tart. could i force it upon them? was it more polite to leave them with tart or without? in the end, the boy cut a portion of tart that was uncomfortably just short of half, whacked it on a paper plate and saw it unceremoniously into his mother’s arms.

when i got home and finally had a piece of my plum tart with a cup of tea, i j’regretted that i had brought it along to that shamster picnic. i should have kept it all for myself. it was fantastic.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 March 2006 at 10:05 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, grumble, kitchen

two weeks ago… or was it three? either way. a recent weekend, and it was hot. the boy’s family thought it might be a nice outing to have a picnic at the botanic gardens in auburn. the plan was we’d all meet on the main street in auburn, pick up picnic supplies, and then head over to the gardens where we would sprawl on the grass and eat ourselves silly.

i seized this opportunity to make a tart, because who doesn’t want a slice of tart, all sticky summer fruit, while lying in the sun on a saturday afternoon? amalgamating two… (or was it three?) recipes from an old donna hay magazine, armed with a kilo of just right plums and a scant-used food processor, i spent friday night and saturday morning at the kitchen counter. minutes before it was time to head out west, i had this: a ricotta and plum tart in a hazelnutty crust. it was still warm — actually, hot — from the oven, radiant on my lap with two folded up tea towels in between.

we got to auburn road early, and inside of twenty minutes we’d bought fresh baclava and custard eclairs and little buns filled with salty white cheese and chopped herbs, and had finally come to a halt outside mado. i’d been wanting to come here for years, for the turkish ice cream.

late summer in 2000, the boy and i caught a ferry up the bosphorus to the edge of the black sea. we thought it was a boat trip there and back, but the steward ushered us off and told us not to return for two (or three) hours. we bought grilled fish sandwiches in an alleyway, climbed a grassy hill to a fort and ate our delicious sandwiches in the presence of hilltop cows. when we climbed back down to the town on the ground, our boat was ready and waiting. we had just enough time to get ourselves ice cream cones from a nearby café. what strange and gummy ice cream, full of fruity bits; gleeful, we chewed on them as the ferry puttered towards istanbul.

and now here on the main street in auburn, dondurma, waiting in tubs out front, for us. these were some of the labelled flavours: date, pistachio, mulberry, mango, turkish coffee, and cherry. there were also two unlabelled flavours, yellow with bits, and white, which the counter girl revealed to be apricot, and “… special turkish ice cream”. the price list only went up to three flavours, but i wanted four or maybe even five. but also, i wanted tart later, so i made do with cherry, apricot and special turkish.

it is fun, this stretchy ice cream. but we have to eat it quickly, so quickly, because not only is it very hot and melty sitting by the road, but if we do not shovel it into our mouths fast enough, the child will devour it all. as it is she has great red rivulets running down her chin and onto her AB/CD tshirt, so she looks like she’s on the losing end of a pub brawl.

but here comes the boy’s family now, and there we go to the big kebab shop on the corner.

to be continued…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 March 2006 at 2:39 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, cake, ice cream, kid, kitchen, snacks, trip

what?? february already?? then there is no better time to respond to saffron‘s gentle poke in the head, before the end of the year is upon us.

five food challenges for 0-6

1. eat less sugar
i don’t add table sugar to my food or drink… not that there are that many opportunities for this. as a child i would add a heaped spoon of sugar to my cornflakes and savour that viscous, sweet milky goo at the end of the bowl. i don’t even know why i even started this practice; i’m blaming it on pop culture references. later i bought frosties instead — much more efficient. anyway, after dalliances with froot loops and cocoa crispix, these days i get just right tropical or, since it was on special the last couple of times, sustain.

the photographs of vigorous and happy old people on the sustain box make me feel like i’m not really the demographic for this particular cereal. which is what i said to the boy this afternoon as i showed him the box in question.

“why?” he asked.
“because they are so happy and carefree,” i replied.
“ah well,” he said.
“no, i mean because they are old!” i said.
“well. you might be happy and carefree when you’re that age,” he said, “when you have a new husband.”

the only other food i can think of that i could also sugar is bread-and-butter, but i haven’t done that in years.

it’s not even like i want to eat sweet food. it’s just that a lot of the food i like to eat happens to be sweet. hey, there is a difference! i like cake, not because it is sweet, but because it is cake. really. how can i eat less cake, when the aim is to eat more cake?

i don’t particularly like sugary beverages apart from the occasional pink grapefruit fizzy, but i do need to try new products. this is why i have a guava calpico carbonated fermented milk beverage on my kitchen counter. and a bottle of peach soda. but that’s it, honest. and i need a cup of sweet tea every now and again. and ok, right now i’m drinking a glass of raspberry ice tea, made from a bottle of raspberry ice tea syrup… but it’s hot. and also…

2. do not hoard food until it goes bad
such a bad habit. if i have a really yummy thing i eat it really slowly… more and more so the further i go. it’s a way of making it last innit? unless i keep that last splinter of yummy thing in a box in the fridge and know that it’s there and refuse to eat it because then it would be all gone, until it goes all grey and furry with mould, and then i have to throw it out. or if i have a not-quite yummy thing, usually a gift, but i feel bad about throwing it out straight away, but don’t really feel like eating it because it is not quite yummy… yes, in a box, grey and furry, out it goes. either way, i feel bad about throwing it out in the end. stop the insanity!

the raspberry ice tea? it was a christmas present. i am drinking it. it is neither yummy nor not, so in a way consuming it has been devoid of the usual neuroses.

3. bake more cake
i have a mixer; i have no excuse. i don’t know quite how this will fit in with food challenge #1, but we shall see.

4. make risotto
it sounds simple, no? particularly when scompared to saffron’s #1 challenge of making a croquembouche from scratch. but i’ve been saying this for years, and it’s always come to nought. my one obstacle is that one of the ingredients is a cup of wine. i don’t drink it, so i never have any around, and what would i do with two-thirds of a bottle of leftover wine?

two more risotti.

5. learn some old family recipes
i suspect this will be the most challenging… yes, even more so than the sugar one, because my mother and grandmothers live back in the old countries and i have a natural aversion to recipes with more than five steps and six ingredients. so it’s unlikely that this is the year i’ll tackle otak otak or nonya chang, but would it kill me to be optimistic? after all, a couple of weeks ago i did lose my fingertip to the german supergrater at my aunt’s house, while shredding turnips to make popiah.

the trick, i think, is to start small. perhaps with the steamed minced pork-soy sauce-egg custard number. mmm…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 February 2006 at 10:15 pm

permalink | filed under cake

as nellie says, buy first, think later.

after i bought the bumper box of 30 assorted mochi for the bargainous price of $7.95, i thought it over, and then tried to get my aunt to take some of it home. “no, no, no,” she said, “i don’t want to eat these fattening things.”

but after she left i checked the nutritional information on the back of the box, and discovered that this magical mochi has 0% fat, 0% protein and 0% dietary fibre; one serving size of mochi — three pieces — is only 67kj. which is surprising, really, as one of the mochi is filled with peanut butter.

this box, almost a kilo of squishy delight, contains a selection of green tea, sesame, taro, red bean and peanut mochi. over the course of the day i managed to sample all five, and i can’t really say which is my favourite. the green tea one isn’t maccha flavoured, as i had assumed, but it’s understandable since this is not japanese but taiwanese mochi, produced by the royal family food co., ltd.

the sesame one is gritty outside and in, coated with black and white seeds, and filled with a ground black sesame paste. it’s the kind of thing that makes you check your teeth before smiling at anyone, after you eat it.

the taro one is a lovely shade of lilac, smooth through and through. the red bean one is as you’d expect, though sprinkled with perhaps more rice flour than necessary, and will leave a powdery white residue on your red carpet when you’re done.

the peanut one is strangely savoury, with its salty smooth peanut butter inside. i’m not a great fan of peanuts, but felt the same way about this as i do when someone else buys a jar of peanut butter, and it’s sitting there in the pantry, and one day he makes a slice of peanut butter toast, and i just have to have a little bite.

the little paper cases have been colour-coordinated with their contents; the red bean mochi sits in a white case, which is printed with fruit: pineapples, grapes, cherries… and the cherry is the same size as the pineapple and the bunch of grapes. that’s my kind of cherry.

some time in the week, this blog will be featured on australianreader.com, as part of their summer feature: delicious indulgence. it’s poetry, fiction and nonfiction by emerging writers, from now until 22 january. go see!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 January 2006 at 9:19 pm

permalink | filed under blog, cake

lessons i have learnt this week:

if you make banana buttermilk pancakes on sunday, and then save the rest of the buttermilk for an opportune moment when you can make a chocolate cake, even if it’s just two days later, when it comes to the part in the recipe where you add the buttermilk, you will find that you now have half a carton of thick, tangy yoghurt.

if you substitute normal milk for the buttermilk, the cake turns out fine, in as much as a cake can when you’re still experimenting with the hidden hotspots in a still-unfamiiliar fan-forced oven.

if the top of the cake rises way too quickly, and cracks a big, gaping smile all the way around one side, you can shave off the extra high upper lip, and then use pieces of it to fill in the sludgy hole in the middle of the cake where it hasn’t quite cooked through, which you discovered when you sliced the cake in two.

if you sandwich the cake back together with the pink grapefruit preserve that nellie gave you the last time she was in town, it will be a subtle and unexpected citrusy edge to the dark chocolate cake.

if you hide the scarred surface of the cake with a simple but decadent icing made of dark chocolate melted down with a bit of butter and a bit of milk, and if the chocolate you use is scharffen berger, which also came by way of nellie, it will be all glossy good.

it is a most agreeable thing eating chocolate cake for afternoon tea on the balcony, sharing alternate mouthfuls with the child, watching the planes go past.

if you leave chocolate cake on the kitchen bench in the moist, warm summertime, on the fifth day it will develop an intricate lace of tiny bubbles across its glossy chocolate icing, and make you wonder what will happen should you have another slice tomorrow.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 December 2005 at 8:27 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, kid, kitchen

what is a blog for if not to taunt a sibling on the other side of the world about treats you just found on a chinatown expedition? after a wanton display of white rabbits — lychee white rabbits — which i instantly coveted, nellie was nice enough to actually send me some.

you know white rabbits, no? the milky chewy candy wrapped up in a slip of rice paper? i was about to say that the lychee ones are even better, being somewhat less cloying and milky, but perhaps it is more accurate to say they are different. a little sharper with a mysterious and subtle… hmm, what’s that flavour? aahh. lychee!

a package of candy in the mail is a sweet surprise, but candy arranged snug in a blue leather candy purse (from orla kiely no less) is an interactive experience involving placing said purse on a worthy surface and savouring its beauty, unzipping and zipping and unzipping and removing piece by piece the candy, noting the differences between the original white rabbit wrappers and these ones (smiling lychee duo atop a banner reading “lychee” in chinese and english, with a tiny white rabbit logo along the edge), and then placing each little baton neatly back in its place. and then repeating the sequence over the next couple of days before finally unwrapping one and eating it, slowly. well, that was my experience.

a much more awful experience is taking a dud powerbook into the apple service centre at broadway, where the girl on reception will negate everything the phone support guys have told you over the last two days, and ask if you would like to book your brand new dud in and have the problem assessed in seven to ten working days.

“you ask like i have an option,” i said. “why, what else can i do?”
“yeah, no, yeah, you have to book it in.” she was blonde, but also, she was young.

if i want it seen to faster i can pay $80 for a rush service. she will not let me use her phone to call the support line, or the store, to verify all she has told me. “the apple shop and the apple phone support and us, we are all separate agencies and have nothing to do with each other. and we cannot call and speak on anyone’s behalf. ever. we can’t let you use our phones because it will tie up our lines. and we do not seem to have a phonebook we can lend you.”

resisting the urge to break her or the shiny white computer on her desk — or let’s be honest, the chunk of aluminium alloy weighing me down, i embarked on a chinatown expedition of my own. specifically i wanted meats. chinatown meats! but i was open to anything else that might throw itself in my way.

in front of a sweet shop i made the kind of abrupt stop where your whole body goes rigid, and then anchored at the feet, the top of you wobbles a bit and vibrates to a halt. they had constructed a stove in the window and were cooking up a storm of obanyaki. four flavours of obanyaki: redbean, custard (“the best in sydney”, is what the sign said), chocolate, and green tea. “delicious!” said mr. sign, and “buy three for $5!”, which i thought was diabolically clever, because which flavour does one leave out? in fact, none, because i played into their dastardly plan, and came away with custard, redbean, two chocolates and two green teas. “thank you. have a great day,” said the smiley counter girl.

and then meats were procured: char siu and siu yok and, because i couldn’t decide between soya chickane — i typed chicken, and this is what came out instead — and roast duck, i got a half of each. and green sauce. and because the bubble tea merchant is just a few doors down, and there was a sign outside that said, “happy 4th birthday easy way, 20% off all drinks”, i added some mango blended ice (for the boy) and pickled plum blended ice (for me) to my trusty shopping bag.

who’s the postergirl for that modern affliction of buying stuff to make you feel better? that would be me, doing lucky dips for obanyaki at the bus stop. it was the custard one, and may well have been the best in sydney, still warm and cakey on the outside, and creamy-gooey hot custard within.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 December 2005 at 7:58 am

permalink | filed under around town, cake, candy, drink, grumble, nellie, shoping, snacks

this morning, across the innernet, i asked saffron, “if i got into the city early, would it be foolish to try out one of those new starbucks xmas drinks? creme brulee latte frappacino!!”

to which she replied, “umm, yes it would :-I ”

a sterner emoticon never existed.

in the end, it turned out to be very sensible advice, because after spending an hour and a half trying on underwear, there was no time for starbucks. 2.30 came, and it was time for afternoon tea! past the gleaming timber doors of the globe bar at the observatory, augustus gloop was already ensconced in a large couch with a cup of milky tea. before too long, saffron was there too, with sister and friend in tow. and so.

there were five girls hungry for cream. there were three scorpio birthdays (and a fourth just out by two days), three flutes of pink champange, two pots of assam tea, one pot of ceylon, and one — a lovely silver thing — of english breakfast. there was a three-tier stand with fruit scones up top, crustless sandwiches in the middle, and tiny sweet things down below. there was not quite enough dollopy cream and really good jam to make it through the second round of scones, and when we asked for more, the second helping was half the size of the first. there was service so unobtrusive as to be non-existent, humph, and when you pay each for dainty little mouthfuls of food, maybe you don’t want to ask thrice for your tea, or wish that someone would come by and offer you more hot water for your depleted teapot.

for the record, the sandwiches were: salmon and capers, ham and cheese, cucumber, and egg salad. the sweet things were: sweet, sweet almondy caramelly slice thing, chocolate friand with three nuts (the nuts were: pistachio, walnut and almond), and white chocolatey custard fruit tart (the fruits were: blueberry, raspberry, strawberry and mango). you will see from the photograph that i couldn’t decide what i wanted as the last taste in my mouth. turned out it was the fruit tart.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 November 2005 at 9:56 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, snacks

for the last week or so, i’ve had three bananas going soft and ripe on the kitchen counter. not just leopard-spotted ripe, but dark, slug-like ripe. and really, i guess i started out with three, but the boy kept cutting them up for baby snacks. at one point i was sitting downstairs at the computer and heard him in the kitchen making knife-extracting, snacktime noises, and had to yell upstairs most unbecomingly, “i’m saving those bananas to cook with!”

for the last week or so, blueberries have been plentiful and cheap… well, affordable at least. remember that time we went to fratelli fresh and reached our hand out for a punnet of blueberries, and then recoiled and fell over frothing when we saw the pricetag? it has not been like that this time. at the supermarket, blueberries were going for a song (.94 a punnet, which, ok, is just over twice the price of an song at the iTunes store. a song and dance then).

for the last week or so, my father was in town. while my mother was here we discussed her dumpling skins, her kenwood chef, and what her old mixer was doing these days, now that she had mr kenwood. it turned out that old mr philips was languishing in a plastic bag in the back of a kitchen cupboard. “aiyah,” she said, “i should have brought it for you.” aiyah, i could only agree. and so a txt was sent and a box was packed, and when my father got off the plane a couple weeks later, he came bearing an electric mixer.

there is a point to all these little stories, and that point is everything came together sweetly — even with just one and a half black bananas — in a loaf tin in a 175° oven. yes, when i tipped it out, it were the most perfect banana-blueberry loaf ever. i didn’t even take a picture of it, because all you have to do is imagine the most perfect banana-blueberry loaf ever, and it was that. i had some fresh hot out of the oven yesterday afternoon, and some more toasted with butter this morning, and i will have more again tomorrow breakfastime, and it will be crunchy on the outside, light and moist on the inside, fat blueberries running deep blue stains over everything.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 November 2005 at 9:56 pm

permalink | filed under cake, kitchen

and the winner is…

me! for i am the proud new owner of a lovely pink beehouse teapot. ’twas a birthday gift from the boy, following such hint-droppery as, “i know what i want for my birthday: a beehouse teapot!” and “i have seen the pink one up the street, at the shop near bray’s books, called plenty. i have seen the yellow one in the same shop, except at bondi junction.”

for those of you following the saga of raspberry-coconut versus lemon curd, the loser was… also me, for when i rocked up to the markets on saturday, the cake stall was an empty counter between thai food and hippy vegetarian stodge. hungh.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 November 2005 at 1:15 pm

permalink | filed under cake

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