This is the cake that I made last week for birthday at work. A very simple cake to make but oh so very rewarding. I remember the first time I made an orange and almond cake. It was a total disaster. This time though I had a cake that was moist, slightly light (thanks to the whipped egg whites) and gloriously fragrant. This recipe has two slight variations from the Claudia Roden recipe for this cake that made it famous round the world in the form of the orange blossom water and the separated eggs. I could just about have this cake every day with a cup of tea for afternoon tea.
Orange and Almond Cake
2 large oranges
220g almond meal
220g white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
6 eggs, separated
a dash of orange blossom water if needed
Simmer the oranges in water to cover for 1 1/2-2hrs, longer is better as it means the oranges will be softer. Drain the oranges and allow to cool. Cut open, remove the seeds and pith. Puree the oranges in a blender. Heat oven to 180°C. Beat egg yolks and sugar until pale, beat in the orange puree, almond meal and baking powder. Whip the egg whites till you have soft peaks and fold gently into the cake mixture. Pour into a spring form cake pan, at least 20cm, 23cm is better. Bake until the cake has started to pull away from the edges of the pan and is firm to touch – it should take an hour, it may take longer. If the cake starts browning too much, cover with foil. Cool and then dust with icing sugar. Serve with cream if you are feeling decadent or Greek yoghurt if more restrained. If you are faced with oranges that are not very fragrant, add a little orange blossom water.
To make the pattern with the icing sugar, I arranged strips of paper over the cake top and dusted over the paper.
The last five weeks have been incredibly crazy for me. We changed contract holders at work and that meant for my section a new manager and two new admins, which has meant a lot of training from myself and the other girl who stayed on. It has been hard and there are times when I just want to erect a divider round my desk and close my self off my the rest of the world and get my work done. The reality of that is that I have been working long hours. Which is why this blog has been lacking. Most days I get home from work, have a bite to eat, have a little chill out and then fall asleep waiting for it to repeat all over again the next day. In saying all that though, I still love the outcome of my job and just wish there was more time
A week after the contract changed, I moved house. I am still in the same suburb but moved a few streets over to a house that is owned by a friend of Karl’s. My room is the smallest room I have ever lived in but I love it. For the first time since moving out of home, all my boxes are unpacked and that feels great! Everything has a place and I have also gotten rid of a lot of crap which is great. One of the things or probably the thing I love most about this house and one of the things that sold me on moving in was the deck. I iron on the deck, I eat my meals on the deck, I relax on the deck, I create on the deck. The deck is good. I am currently sitting at the dining table (the deck is the dining room) with my laptop, listening to the bats screech in the trees, the whistles from the basketball stadium across the park and the trains that crescendo and decrescendo past. If I get home and it is still light or on the weekends, I often kick back on the sofa on the lounge and read a book or do some crochet.
On the weekend I went to a BBQ which was organised by one of the ladies I started SES with all those months ago as we are no longer “newbies” but real members. A perfect excuse to make cupcakes 🙂 and SES cupcakes is what I made. Vanilla buttercake for the cake and then fondant icing with lollies on top.
Of course, I decorated the cakes on the deck and here is a photo of my set-up.
It’s just after 9pm and I can feel my eyes starting to close so I am going to curl up in bed with my book and wait for it all to repeat itself tomorrow 😀
Sundays are good days and bad days rolled into one. They are bad because it means back to work tomorrow and good because it means another day at home.
I went to the markets yesterday as I usually try to do on a Saturday. As a change though I picked two croissants. One for breakfast yesterday and one for breakfast today. A little indulgent I know but I have porridge for breakfast every other day, I’m exercising and I am the lightest I have been in I don’t know how long! Chocolate Croissants/Pain au Chocolat are one of the attractors that keep me coming back to the markets each week. When I was in Germany in 02/03, you could buy Chocolate Croissants for I think about €1.30 at the convenience store across the street. At the morning break, there would be a steady stream of teenagers coming back from the store with a Chocolate Croissant in one hand and perhaps a Kinder Surprise for later on. I can’t recall if I ever actually bought a Chocolate Croissant in Germany, I know I often bought a Kinder Surprise but I don’t remember reaching into the display case and grabbing a Chocolate Croissant.
Fast Forward four years later and on any day of the weekend around Brisbane you will find a “Farmers Market” though I say the word Farmers with caution because I have only been to one market in Brisbane that was strictly just a Farmers Market and that would be the Granite Belt wine/produce market that is held at South Bank occasionally. The Northey Street Organic Market is the second closet in terms of only having direct farm to you stalls but like the others does have a number of “market green grocers”. All the other markets appear to have perhaps between a third to a half of the fresh produce stalls are direct farmer to you and the rest will be the market green grocers who have the same variety of fresh produce that you would find at the local supermarket or green grocer. Perhaps one day the balance will swing more to direct farm to you stalls.
Back to Chocolate Croissants though, at all these markets there is often at least two, three or perhaps even four bakeries and in the last two odd years of going to the markets I have tasted I do believe all the Pain au Chocolat on offer at both markets and bakeries. My biggest complaint is that they are typically lacking in the chocolate department. If I want a Pain au Chocolat I want it to have a fair amount of chocolate in, otherwise I may as well just get a normal croissant, split it open and spread on a little Nutella. The very first Pain au Chocolat I had at a market in Brisbane was at the Mitchelton markets. I believe it was from Wild Breads and it was the closet to what I feel a Pain au Chocolat should be like. It had oozing dark chocolate in the middle and the pastry was golden and you could taste the butter. Since then I haven’t had any that have lived up to that first one. The Gympie Cultured Butter/Cheese stall does come close but isn’t what I would say perfect.
When I first started this post, I certainly hadn’t planned on writing the last three paragraphs! I had planned to show a photo and a little text.
A cup of tea or two (tea bag saved for that purpose) and a Pain au Chocolat which I ‘”refreshed” by running a little water over the top of it and placing it in the microwave on medium for about a minute. Worked quite well.
Now I’m off to the Art Gallery with Mum and then to The Farm to see Grandad.
Oh what a day that was.
There was rain, sword fighting, food, laughs, food, turf adventures, swimming, french cricket, food, water fights, lots of photo taking and generally just a fun day.
Matthew and the girls came in my car for the trip to The Farm and oh what at trip that was. Seven odd weeks later, I still think of that trip with a smile on my face.
As has always been done, you take a selection of your Christmas presents to The Farm. Matthew took his gas mask and the girls took their SuperSoakers. The journey was spent with the gas mask rotating between the three of them and scaring/getting a laugh out of other cars as we drove past. It was classic.
The Christmas Table.
Even before I started suggesting “Christmas at The Farm 08” I had wanted to have a meal on a long table with a white table cloth out on the turf or under the pecan nut trees. This Christmas I had that long table with white tablecloths.
Another thing I had been thinking about for a long time was having my glass hurricane vase, filled with glass baubles filled with beads. Christmas Day, saw the girls and I sitting on the floor of the garage filling the baubles and trying not to spill too many beads on the floor! Once they were filled though they looked gorgeous!
One of my other ideas was a large stack of pinecones on Mum’s 21st platter. Al and Ash collected the pine cones for me a couple of days before Christmas but come Christmas Day, I left the platter at Mum’s. Instead the girls had fun wrapping the pinecones with ribbons etc
After morning tea, it was time for the Christmas Tree. There were a few silly gifts given between families as well as the regular gifts intra-family. One of those silly gifts was from Karl and I. When we were in K-Mart getting presents for the girls we saw these foam swords and went “sweet” We bought the four that Chermside had in stock and then when I went to Toowong, I emptied their shelves and got another eight – one for all the grandkids and two extras in case of damages or if partners/wives/the girls wanted swords as well. The foam swords ruled the day.
Once the sword fights waned. It was time for French Cricket. For Christmas, Matthew and I gave the girls a Kanga Cricket bat and ball as they had loved playing French Cricket with us. We only gave them the ball on Christmas Eve and had planned on putting the bat with their stockings for Christmas morning, however I forgot to put the bat out so I wrapped it and took it to The Farm. But! I left the ball at home, so we used a tennis ball. We used to play a LOT of French Cricket at The Farm when we were younger. I don’t remember Grandad playing it when we were younger but Grandmum always did.
French Cricket with eighteen odd players is one hell of a game. When one of the boys got in, they would field out so they could slog it and then get in nice and close when it was one of the girls. It was all fine till James slugged the ball into the sweet potatoes… We only had one ball. That was a good sign though that it was time to start getting lunch organised.
The table was re-set, the BBQ was lit and the snags were been turned and then it started to rain. Luckily, it comes in pretty handy to have a large shed round the corner and with plenty of people it is easy to just move the entire set-up.
Aunty Susan and her girls (and Ian) had made the bon-bons for Christmas Lunch. Inside each of them was a gorgeous beaded Christmas ornament, a scratchie and the other usual goodies
After lunch we had a Turf Tour with Max
The girls were total posers and had a great time posing for photos of each other sword fighting on the turf.
When the Turf Tour was over, we retired to the front lawn to prepare ourselves for dessert. For some this meant more sword fighting
comparing hair length
or just having their photo taken
Dessert was a treasure trove of yummy food.
Trifle from Erica! Plum Pudding from me! Pavlova from Lisa! mmm so much dessert.
With our stomachs filled with sweet treats, a realisation came upon that the light was not going to last much longer and we had not yet taken the family photos!
All the family minus James who had gone visting
We know how to fight
With the fall of darkness, Iceland, Mum and Pabbi returned to Brisbane. The Howie kids, Karl, Matthew and I moved onto The Block where the Williams were staying to chill out in the pool. We had a lot of fun making whirlpools (walking in single file round the edge of the pool as fast as you can) and hypothesising why it is that some people get more pruney than others in the water.
Christmas Day was the highlight of what was an incredible Christmas season and I am looking forward to the next big family Christmas when or wherever that might be.
Friday night, after a day and a half of rain, I received a call from Mum inviting me to go waterfall hunting the next day. Most people who reads this most likely a) know Mum or are Mum or b) know enough about Mum to know that she has a thing for waterfalls. It was lightly raining when Mum picked me up from my house yesterday morning and it continued to rain all the way to Binna Burra/Lamington National Park. As we drove up the range we hit a large bank of low flying clouds which made the place look so mystical. There is not many things as beautiful as watching the sun try to shine through a cloud filled eucalypt forest. The straight, tall trunks of the eucalypt standing tall.
As we drove further up the range to Lamington we came out above the clouds. In the car park whilst we were kitting up, we met a lovely couple from Boulder, Colorado. Louisa and David came up to us in the car park and said to us, you look like experienced bush walkers, how do you remove leeches? After Mum demonstrating how to get leeches off and a little bit of a talk, we invited them along on our waterfall hunt. They were great walking partners as they are both scientists and liked stopping to look at all these strange and wonderful Australian rainforest curiosities.
The curiosities included jelly fungi, what we believe were bio-luminescent fungi (they glow in the dark), walking stick palms, little finch like birds, a Christmas Orchid in full bloom, a cluster of earth stars, a massive puff ball, trees with foam coming out the bark, a perfect land snail shell, lots and lots of strangling fig fruits on the rainforest floor and of course one of the highlights a Lamington Blue Spiny Crayfish.
Christmas Orchid
Lichen
Fern
Fungi
The falls were incredible, there was soo much water gushing over the lip. Yarrabilgong Falls were just as spectacular, the water was actually spurting over the lip and going out a metre or two before falling. From the Coomera Falls lookout we actually continued up the track to the next creek crossing where we saw a few more waterfalls coming into the creek and the Coomera Creek was just gushing with water.
Mum had a great time exploring more with her camera (she got a Canon G10 about two weeks ago and is loving it :)) and I am looking forward to seeing some of the photos she took. We ended the day with drinks and cake in the tea house before parting and heading back to Brisbane. Louisa and David, fly home today to a very different climate from what they have had the last few weeks.
Leeches of all sizes were out in force yesterday, I lost count of how many I picked off before they started sucking my blood but I did end up with eight of the suckers going undiscovered. I now have an itchy leg that I am doing my best not to rub as I haven’t gone to the chemist yet to pick up some Telfast.
