It's not as easy at it looks

I had to stiffle a giggle or two last night over MasterChef's CWA baking challenge. Anyone who is a baker knows that a seemingly simple recipe is anything but.

Never baked a cake? OK - impress 100 CWA members with lamingtons, fruit cake and scones. Oh and do it outside. The result? Entertaining TV with the inevitable train wreck at the end - scones you could use as hockey pucks, raw fruit cakes and burnt [cake] bottoms.

I was curious to know if the prep team made sure the ingredients for the cakes were at room temperature? It's an important question. Baking is all about chemistry and having all of your ingredients at the right temperature allows the magic to happen. Get it wrong and your mixture curdles - and your cake won't rise properly.

Sorry to get all technical on you but I've become very passionate about chemistry lately. It wasn't my strong point at high school - I barely scraped a pass on my VCE exams, but now you'll find me pouring over technical cooking mannuals to understand how baking powder works and spending the day before getting my ingredients ready for a baking session.

MasterChef also reignited my interest in joining the CWA...who knows, maybe one day I'll win a 'Home Industries' award at the CWA State Exhibition. Now that would be worth promoting!

Happy Baking!

Comments

Andrea said…

OH Di, I couldn't agree more. Imagine pulling cakes out of an outdoor oven to be greeted by a raging wind? No wonder the finished product was below CWA standard. I wonder if the producers knew this might have happened? Well done on your blogger site. Love it.... xxx

Thursday, 01 July, 2010

Olive's Carrot Cupcakes {Recipe}

"Mummy, I'm hungry. Hungry for something sweet." Sound familiar? If only it were "Mummy, I'm hungry for green vegetables!" Sometimes getting kids to eat something healthy is a battle. The harder you try, the more they resist. We've been pretty lucky with Olive - she devours fruit. And while she's adamant she'll never eat a tomato (too many Charlie and Lola bedtime stories), she will eat green beans, peas and corn (and sometimes raw broccoli!) without fuss. The one veg she absolutely adores though are carrots. A carrot stick is a great snack for a hungry preschooler but when they're pining for something sweet, why not make them something healthy and sweet and bake some mini carrot cupcakes? These mini cupcakes are based on Stephanie Alexander's Simple Carrot Cake from The Cook's Companion . I like this recipe a lot because it uses olive oil which has lots of health benefits. If you have a food processor, you could ea...

Rainy Day Double Choc Cookies {Recipe}

This week Olive and I went on an eBay road trip to pick up her 'new' tap shoes. I could have just had them posted but I had an ulterior motive. The pick-up location, although right over the other side of town, was reasonably close to my old neighbourhood which happens to be a mecca for great food and coffee. After picking up the tap shoes (and bonus ballet shoes the seller thoughtfully included) I was looking forward to lunch. But as soon as I pulled out of the car park, the sky turned black and the rain started to pour. Bugger. I kissed my lovely lunch dreams goodbye and did what any sane parent of a three year old would do in the same situation - I headed for the nearest shopping centre with an underground car park. Ten minutes later I was sitting in the food court eating ricepaper rolls while Olive got Happy (I think you know what I'm talking about). Not quite the foodie experience I'd been hoping for. Every cloud has a silver li...

How to make sugar carrot cupcake decorations

The internet gods have not been kind to us this past week. Apparently a static-y phone line can interfere with our ADSL connection, putting to bed any hopes I had to bring you this tutorial and Mr Di-licious completing an online test for his law course. Sigh. At least I had my iPhone - I was still connected to the world so to speak, even if in a limited, small screen kind of way. But I digress. As promised, here is a 'tutorial' to help you make the cute as a button sugar carrots for the carrot cupcakes I made last week. They are embarrassingly easy to make. Before you know it you'll have a carrot patch that's the envy of Don Burke (sorry, Aussie joke). Tutorial: Making sugar carrot decorations To make the sugar carrots, you will need: orange fondant (I used Americolor Orange to colour) green fondant (I used Americolor Avocado to colour) a skewer or pointy modelling tool to make a dent in end of carrot small, fine paintbrush water ...

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