Sometimes you want an easy-to-throw together cake that isn’t vanilla or chocolate. Sometimes you have a pantry full of honey as every time you’re at a fair or farmers market and you see another variety of honey you just can’t help yourself and end up buying yet another jar. Sometimes you just want to watch the hypnotic sensation of honey oozing from a spoon and falling lushly into a bowl of cake batter. Or maybe that’s just me. Continue reading
I am utterly enamoured with my mini donut baking pan. The holes are teeny tiny, resulting in a fairy-sized morsel that it irresistible. Whenever the baking urge strikes I often start with the pan and work backwards, searching for a worthy recipe. I have now found my ‘go to’ recipe for mini chocolate donuts, thanks to the lovely blog mysanfranciscokitchen.com
Going through my stats recently it occurred to me that you all love Donna Hay. This makes me incredibly happy because – as you may have guessed – I too love Donna. I have mentioned it many MANY times here before so it is wonderful to see that we are in simpatico 🙂 Continue reading
I have written before about how lucky I am to receive copious of amounts of cookbooks to review in my day job as a journalist. It seems every blogger and his dog has a book these days and some tomes are waaaay better than others. Putting my professional impartiality to one side for a moment I must confess that the books I enjoy reviewing the most are those published by the venerable Australian Women’s Weekly. I have been using their books for decades, as have my mum and nana. Their recipes always work and recently their books have undergone a stylish transformation. Continue reading
Many, many moons ago, when I was an unfortunate-looking teenager, my dad went on a holiday to France. My envy was palpable – growing up in a run-of-the-mill Sydney suburb all one ever heard about France was the chicness of the population, the deliciousness of the food and the classic style of the clothing. Continue reading
If you’re reading this in the northern hemisphere the title of this post may seem nonsensical. Australia readers [and maybe New Zealanders] will get it: this cake pays homage to a biscuit that many of us grew up with. Made by Arnotts it is plain vanilla bickie with puffy pink marshmallow topping and a river of raspberry jam down the centre. The whole creation is then sprinkled with desiccated coconut. Sickly? A bit. To children of a certain generation they were the ultimate in lunchbox treats.
With Australia Day looming Miss8 and I decided to do a riff on this old fav, using cake instead of cookie, as the base. Continue reading
Not only is Madeline the name of some of our very best friend’s daughters, but also the name of a delightfully light sweet morsel.
Oh Donna, you’ve done it again. I reckon that Ms Hay’s eponymous magazine is just getting better as time goes on. There’s a wider variety of recipes and they are all just so tempting that I every time a new edition appears in my letterbox I want to race to the kitchen and bake. That’s surely a sign of a fab mag.
The recent issue 68 had a cheesecake special, which totally had me drooling. The recipe that most caught my eye was dark chocolate coconut mini cheesecakes with pomegranate syrup. Not being a pomegranate fan I omitted this but don’t think mine were any the poorer for it. Continue reading
I fell in love with the book ‘Bake – Essential Companion’ by pastry queen Alison Thompson after borrowing it from the library and my lovely hubby surprised with a copy of my own for mother’s day last year.
If you’re a baking fanatic like me you’ll have hours of kitchen fun with this book. I’d never attempted a roulade until this one and I must say, I was very nervous. I did have a few problems with cracks in my cake and totally panicked until the Hungry Dad came to my rescue [swoon] and solved the issue with some ingenious use of plastic wrap. And the finished product was utterly delectable. I omitted the original recipe’s ¼ teaspoon ground cloves as my pantry was clove-free. Continue reading
Looking back I really should have named my blog ‘Donna Hay’s biggest fan bakes’ for that pretty much sums up my approach to cooking and blogging. And life, really. Continue reading
the hungry mum 