Cake Addict

What can I say? My boy loves cake. Ever since he first tried it he's been obsessed with it. If he sees cake, if someone mentions cake it sets him off ' Have cake Mum. Have cake mu-u-u-u-um'.

Cake is one of 'those' words in our house. You know the ones that have to be spelled out. I swear C A K E will be the first thing he learns to spell. This is a child who once ate about 1/2 a cup of pureed broccoli and carrot because he heard the mixer in the kitchen and thought I was making cake and wanted to taste it.

Unfortunately I'm one of those mean Mum's who only lets him have it his beloved cake on special occasions.

He near starved himself the day after his birthday because all he wanted was cake and I wouldn't let him have it. The child has an iron will. I wonder where he got that from?

Love Kylie

My Week in Cake

Ever had trouble finding time to scratch yourself? That's been me for the past little while. It's been great having my Mum visiting but all good things must come to an end. She's gone to stay with my sister for the next week before going home. She must to divide her time evenly you know.

(Seriously Mum, we're not six any more. I really don't think Michelle's going to care if you sleep here the whole time. Besides you're the best baby sitter ever! Love you xo)

I've baked so many cakes recently I couldn't care if I ever saw another. Don't think that's going to happen somehow since my friend Rain who decorates cakes for a living has asked me to take photos of her cakes for her. Pretty exciting huh? Someone thinks my photos are good enough to display!! I'll post a link to her blog as soon as she gets it up and running. She promises me she's started. I think maybe she needs a few more gentle nudges. People should see her cakes. They're amazing.

So what have I been creating? So glad you asked.

Harrison is so into cars at the moment I decided I would attempt a car cake. It wasn't that difficult in the end and I think it turned out alright. Some blue butter cream, a little bit of piping, some licorice wheels and windows, lollies for the lights and Bob's your uncle!

Jesse requested Pokemon cake this year. There was no way I was trying to create a Pokemon shaped cake so I enlisted in the help of my trusty cake decorating friend (everyone should have one) who gave me a few pointers and let me borrow some of her stuff. I ended up painting a picture of Jesse's favourite Pokemon onto royal icing on the top of the cake and slathering the sides of it in Red butter cream. The kids all loved it. I was pretty proud of my effort although believe me it looks alot neater in the picture.

I normally always make the kids a cake for their party and a little cake on their actual birthday. I got away with one for Jesse this year because his party was on his birthday. Wish we could do that every year. Harrison however got two. His second cake was so easy. I cheated and bought some of those ready made icing decorations. Thomas The Tank Engine this time. One for the top and a border for the sides. All it took was to pipe some of my leftover butter cream around the edges to hide the joins and it came out as good as a bought one. Almost.

So that's it for cakes for me until January. Well the fancy ones anyway.

Til Next time........

Love Kylie

Visitors YAY!

Just for the record, in that post down there when I said "There's no black and white'" I meant, ' It's all black and white', or 'there's no grey area'. Either or, you take your pick , they both make sense unlike what I originally wrote. You know what I mean. Just had to clear that up.

For the next week and a bit my Mum and step-dad are visiting so I've got limited time to spend blogging and browsing the net. They're sleeping in our office and I feel like a bit of intruder barging in to sit at the computer. Of course I also don't want to waste the precious time I have them here.

I'll be back with plenty to say soon. We had two birthday parties on the weekend which means two cakes I had to decorate and lots of photos taken!

I'll be back with the details
Love Kylie

When I Grow Up

Meet Jesse, my almost 10 yr old step-son.

Jesse has Asperger's Syndrome so life with Jesse can be very challenging. He can be sweet or he can be so frustrating I want to tear my hair out. He loves computer games and would play them all day if we let him. Just check out the look on his face.

The way his mind works fascinates me. I would love to know the thought process he goes through to get to the conclusions he does. Everything is so definite with him. There's no black and white.

The other day we had a conversation that went like this.

Jesse (quite concerned): Kylie, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up

Me: Well Jesse, your not 10 yet so that's OK, you have plenty of time to decide

Jesse (pauses to think for a minute): Are paleontologists the one's that dig up dinosaur bones?

Me: Yes

Jesse: A paleontologist then. Or an archaeologist. That's what I'll be.

And he walks away satisfied. One more decision made. One less worry.

If only everything was so easy.

Love Kylie

By Request - Mini Quiches

Remember me talking about how I don't measure? Well this was one of those times. I made them last Thursday night for a High Tea I was going to on Friday morning. I promised my friend I would make something to contribute then forgot all about it til the last minute. So I perused my ingredients stash and came up with these. I had planned to make mini quiches or something similar anyway. I was just lucky I already had the ingredients.

So here's my impromptu recipe:

Ingredients ( From what I remember) Makes 24

• 2 sheets of pre rolled puff pastry
• 4 eggs
• 1/4 cup of milk
• 4 or 5 cherry tomatoes diced
• A couple of tablespoons of fresh thyme
• Grated cheese
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Method

1. Using a small glass or cookie cutter, cut 24 circles from the puff pastry sheets. They need to be big enough to shape into a pie case in a mini muffin pan. I think I got about 9 out of each square of pastry then had to re-roll the scraps.
2. Whisk together the eggs and milk. Then add the tomatoes, thyme and salt and pepper
3. Spoon the mixture into the prepared pastry
4. Add a couple of pieces of grated cheese to the top of each quiche. They're so tiny I didn't add the cheese to the mixture because more than a couple of pieces of cheese in each one would make them too cheesy.
5. Bake at 200 degrees C until firm.

Of course there are lots of other things you could add. A bit of ham would have been nice and maybe some spring onions, but these were really simple and delicious.

I also made another 24 cases with a different filling. Not an egg filling but these were yummy too.

Filling ingredients:

• 250g creamed cheese
• 1/4 cup thickened cream
• About 4 tablespoons of chopped spinach
• 1 sachet of dried cream of chicken soup mix
• Salt and pepper

These ones got eaten really quickly so they must have been good.

Enjoy!

Love Kylie

A Few of My Favourite Things

Harrison - and the rest of my family and friends but especially Harrison. There is just nothing like the love I feel for him. I love him snot, dirt and all. Now that I have him I can finally understand the way my mother feels about me. This wasn't meant to get all emotional and mushy so lets get on with it shall we.
Orange blossoms - They're just starting to bloom and I love them. Not only are they pretty but they smell delicious. The best thing is our orange tree is right next to our clothesline so the smell makes hanging out the washing almost enjoyable. Note I said almost. I can't think of anything that would make it fun save watching someone else do it.

My camera - It's a Nikon D60 and I've only had it for a few months. I don't claim to be the worlds greatest photographer but I like to practice. Take the above picture for instance. Looks like a bunch of twigs right? Well essentially it is, but to me it's practice. A very generous friend let me borrow her 70-300mm f4-5.6 lens. It doesn't autofocus on my camera so I was practicing manually focusing. True I could have chosen more interesting subject matter but these twigs were really far away and that, in itself was cool. To me. At the time.

Baking - I do so much of it I have to love it. I made these little mini quiches for a high tea I attended on Friday morning. They were completely impromptu (I remembered Thursday night I was supposed to be making something something) and turned out great. Thank goodness because I didn't have time to make anything else.

I'm sure that there are many many more, but right now today, these are my favourite things.

Love Kylie

Vege Quiche

I have to say, the one thing I really should have considered when I decided that I was going to blog some recipes was that I'd have to measure. Me? Measure? So many times I've taken pictures of things I've cooked and gotten all excited about posting the pictures and recipes of this yummy food and then realised I have no idea exactly what quantities of ingredients I put in it. How am I supposed to post a recipe? It's not like I can get on here and type 'well just throw in a dash of A and about so much of B. So this morning when I decided to make this quiche I made sure to pay attention to what I put into it. And TA DA, we have a recipe.

It's not really a traditional quiche, more like a mutation of a quiche since it doesn't have any crust to speak of and I cook it in a lasagna dish, but it's the way I do it and it's yum!

Ingredients:

• 3 Zucchini's grated
• 2 carrots grated
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 1 small red capsicum diced
• 2 tomatoes diced
• 1 cup of grated cheese (any kind of tasty hard cheese)
• 1 cup of self raising flour
• 1/3 cup of olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 3 egg whites
• 4 eggs

Now I forgot about the cheese and the onion when I took the picture but as long as you don't forget to put them in the quiche you'll be OK. I like to add some corn kernels as well but I didn't have any.

Something else to note it, the reason I used egg whites is because I had left over from a salad dressing I made. Normally I would just used 6 whole eggs.

OK, I think that's it. Moving on..........

Method:

1. Mix the veges and cheese together in a large bowl
2. Next, add the flour and salt and pepper and stir it through making sure to coat everything in the flour
3. Mix the olive oil through
4. And now the eggs
5. Mix it all up with a wooden spoon making sure all the ingredients are well combined
6. Line a lasagna dish with baking paper and pour the mixture in. (Baking paper is my saviour. It's so much easier to line everything with baking paper than to grease the dish only to have something stick anyway. Plus, it makes washing up alot easier.)
7. Bake at 180 degrees C for approx 45 Min's

It's that easy and great for lunch boxes.

Enjoy!

Love Kylie