The Simplest Chocolate Cake

Who knew chocolate cake was possible without eggs or milk or butter? I didn't until I went searching and found quite a few recipes for making chocolate cake without these staples.  Not only can you make a chocolate cake but you can make one that is sweet, soft and moist and perfect for topping with chocolatey icing and sprinkles.

Instead of eggs, milk and butter, there are recipes for chocolate cakes that use oil, vinegar, baking soda and water. All the versions I found were slight variations on a recipe like this one for Chocolate Depression Cake. 

💓 Chocolate cake with sprinkles.💓

The recipe I followed, for a One Bowl Chocolate Cake from Ashika over at the Gardening Foodie blog, is so simple and quick to make. Everything gets whisked together in just one bowl so less washing up too. I tweaked Ashika's recipe slightly, by replacing white sugar with brown sugar and reducing the total amount of sugar in the batter, so it's less sweet than it would otherwise be, but the chocolate icing and sprinkles on top, make up for that.

Simplest Chocolate Cake

Dry Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon bicarb soda

Wet Ingredients:

250mls warm water

1/3 cup vegetable oil 

1 Tablespoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1.  Preheat oven to 180C. Line 20cm square cake tin.

2. Whisk together dry ingredients in large bowl.

3.  Make well in centre of dry ingredients and pour in wet ingredients.

4.  Mix until combined and there are no lumps in the batter.

5.  Pour batter into cake tin.

6.  Bake for 15-20mins or until cake is slightly springy to touch and skewer, inserted into 

     centre of cake, comes out clean.

7.  Cool in tin for 10mins before turning out cake onto a cake rack to cool.

8.  Ice with chocolatey icing and sprinkles too once cake is completely cool.

I decorated this cake with a very simple chocolate icing made with pure icing sugar, cocoa powder and a little hot water. I sprinkled tiny, colourful 100s & 1000s, saved from the bottom of a packet of Freckles sweets, over the top for a bit of fun.

It's definitely possible to make a cake - a lovely chocolatey cake - without eggs, butter or milk. And, if you have sprinkles, it's even better!

Meg

First Soapmaking: A Heart-Shaped Flop

I imagined bars of creamy, milky soap but ended up with these lumpy bumpy hearts instead. 😞

My first homemade soaps.

My first attempt at making soap didn't quite turn out perfectly but learning a new skill often takes time. This happened when I started knitting again so many years after my grandmother taught me how to cast on. So many dropped stitches! It happened too when I began teaching myself to sew. So much unpicking! And it seems now that soap making will take practice and patience and a willingness to try again. 

The soap recipe I followed is really very simple. There are very few ingredients in it; just pure soap flakes, milk and milk powder. Essential oils can be added but I chose not to add fragrance as I wanted to limit the chance for things to go awry. But awry they went anyway! Luckily, flops like this are simply opportunities to learn, aren't they...

Lumpy bumpy bases.

During my first soapmaking session, I ran into a few problems which I think probably led to this somewhat messy, heart-shaped result.  The pot I used was one I already had and I don't feel it has a heavy enough base because it didn't heat up well at low temperature so it took forever for the soap flakes to melt, and the bottom of the soap mixture began to burn when I increased the heat. It is also very light and kept moving off the hotplate as I tried stirring the soap mixture leading to a less-than-constant temperature. I will be keeping my eye out for a heavy based pot at the op-shops before I try making soap again. 

Smooth and creamy but still too thick.

After considerable time and with much stirring, both by hand and with a stick blender, my mixture did finally reach the point where it was creamy and smooth and ready to pour into my heart-shaped moulds. I found it very tricky transferring the soap mixture from the pot to fill each heart as the mixture quickly became too thick on the surface when removed from the heat meaning I could not achieve a smooth finish for the base of the soaps. I wonder if a simple rectangular container might work better and make for an easier transfer of mixture to mould. At least until I get the consistency right.

Imperfection!

After 24hours to set, I turned the soapy hearts out of their silicone mould. While they are 'rough' on the base, they are somewhat smoother on top. So, while I definitely won't be gifting my soap to anyone until I sort out a few glitches, it's still very much usable for us here at home. Well, it will be once it cures for a few weeks. In the meantime, I'll be scouring the op-shops to find me a better pot so that I can have another try. 

Are you a soap maker? How did your first attempts turn out?

Meg

Wholesome Brown Rice Salad

Our Christmas Day lunch is a cold meats and salads affair; it's too hot for a roast dinner when it's 40C in the shade in our down-under Summery Australia. (The weather was actually milder this year (at our place) but I had already roasted the chickens on Christmas Eve so no last-minute switch to a hot roast dinner was entertained.

A big bowl of Brown Rice Salad. 

Yum!

Amongst the array of salads I made for our family feast was this delicious and wholesome brown rice salad. It's made with healthy brown rice, lots of colourful vegetables, crunchy nuts, fresh herbs and my-favourite feta. The lemon and honey dressing is so very simple. My kind of food! 

My version of this salad combines the basis of this recipe, from Katie Workman of The Mom 100 with the currants, nuts and feta from this recipe by Nicola of Eat Well NZ. I reduced the olive oil from 1/3cup to 1/4cup for the dressing and used pecan nuts, instead of cashew nuts, because I had pecans in the pantry. It all mixed together deliciously!

🤎 Wholesome Brown Rice Salad 🤎

*** Omit the nuts if you have a nut allergy.***

Salad Ingredients:

4 cups cooked brown basmati rice

1 cup coarsely grated carrot

1 cup diced cucumber

1/2 cup diced red capsicum 

1/2 cup thinly sliced celery

1/2 cup chopped spring onion

1/2 cup toasted and roughly chopped pecan nuts

handful (or two) of currants

1 block of your favourite feta cheese

1/4 cup chopped parsley

2 Tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

Dressing Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil 

3 Tablespoons lemon juice

2 Tablespoons honey

1 Tablespoon white white vinegar

1 Tablespoon mustard

salt & pepper

1.  Mix all the vegetables, nuts and herbs through the cooked brown rice. 

2. Crumble in the feta cheese and sprinkle over the currants.

3. Whisk up the ingredients for the dressing and pour over the top of the salad. 

4. Toss to combine. Refrigerate in an air-tight container.

I doubled the recipe and made a huge bowl of this rice salad so there was plenty leftover; some to send home with family and some for us to enjoy bowlfuls of for lunch and dinner the next day. Lazy leftovers have to be one of the best things about Christmas Day lunch!

What did you cook for Christmas at your place that you have leftovers of?

Meg

Simple & Sweet Chocolate Fudge

A sweet, homemade fudge makes a lovely gift. This one is so simple; just a few ingredients melted together form a creamy, chocolatey treat. No candy thermometer required!

A little box of homemade chocolate fudge...

with peppermint crisp shards on top!

There are just a few simple steps to making this creamy chocolate fudge. I followed the recipe, for 3 Minute Chocolate Fudge, from the Chocolate, Chocolate & More website. It really does only take a few minutes!

Here's how to make it:

Put 400g condensed milk (one tin) & 2 cups dark chocolate chips 

into a microwave safe bowl.

Melt on high in microwave for one minute. Stir gently to combine.

Heat for another 30 seconds if needed to melt all chocolate chips.

Add one teaspoon vanilla extract & stir until well combined.

Cut up or crush topping for your fudge.

Carefully pour fudge into lined slice tray.

Sprinkle topping on & gently press into surface of the fudge.

After an hour or so in the refrigerator, your simple and sweet chocolate fudge should be set and ready to cut into squares. Keep in an airtight container and try to resist sampling too many pieces before packaging up your homemade fudge. 😉

To make my fudge that little bit more special, I topped it with the minty shards of a peppermint crisp. For a festive fudge, you could top with a crushed candy cane or some chopped dried fruits or nuts. 

Packaged up beautifully it makes a sweet, homemade gift for birthdays or Christmas. 

Meg

This Autumn in the Garden

It was a long, dry and very hot Summer here but we've had rain. There is just nothing like heavy, soaking rain! Everything is lush and green again. I lost a few plants over this past Summer; even a tough and hardy salvia. My avocado tree didn't make it either but it was looking sickly even before the Summer began so we made the decision not to waste any more water trying to get it to "perk up".  I won't replant another avo but will reinvigorate the soil with our compost and worm tea and then try a second citrus tree in that same spot. While a few plants didn't survive the Summer and have been duly composted, there are some, like my pineapple sage, that are showing signs of new life after pruning and rain. 

New leaves on the pineapple sage.

The pots of Portulaca that I planted, to cheer up that oppressive Summer and thus myself, are blooming beautifully. I have not grown these before but I am loving their gorgeous colours. I have a creamy yellow, a sunny yellow and a deep pink one. 

Pretty Portulaca in a pot.

Our little native bees carried on with their work while we carried on with ours. They love the Portulaca flowers too!

A little native bee on a Portulaca flower.

Our hive of native bees withstood the Summer heat; its position under the shade of the back deck keeping the hive cooler. Native bee hives can perish in high temperatures.  The entrance to their hive has been a busy one at particular times of day and, as always, they remain fascinating to watch. I often get distracted from my gardening chores and find myself resting on my shovel watching them!

 A salvia popular with all kinds of bees.

We've also been watching all the different bees that have been attracted, like bees to a honeypot (Sorry...couldn't help putting that in!), to this vigorous flowering salvia. It's been very popular with our tiny native bees, visiting honeybees and even a single teddy bear bee. What surprised us though, as we've never observed it before, were the dozens and dozens of native blue-banded bees that have been foraging in its flowers. These native bees are solitary so seeing so many on the same plant at the same time sent me off to research why. It seems that, while they are solitary, they will build their little nests very close to one another, sometimes in the same spot, burrowing into clay beside one another. There's always something new to learn from observing the garden! 

I plan to take cuttings and plant more of this salvia around the garden. It grew vigorously during our hot, dry Summer so its hardy and it provided lots of flowers for lots of different bees to forage in. It's a great plant!

A honeybee clings to one of this salvia's many little flowers.

While most of the salvias did well in our garden, our veg patch produced next to nothing all Summer. That's because I didn't plant anything much in the heat and neglected it as I seemed to lose my enthusiasm when I found, all bar one, of the Lebanese Cucumbers I was looking forward to munching on had been munched on by something else first. A gardener's heartbreak!

Leftovers in our veg patch.

Yesterday, before the sun was too high in the sky, I cleared out what was left in the veg patch and was pleased to see that the rain has left the soil crumbly and moist. I will prepare our little patch, the same way I always do, and plant soon. Better late than never! I want to grow what is tried and true here. Some silverbeet, lettuce, Tuscan Kale, beetroot, perpetual spinach and leeks. I will start with seedlings and I will put in some sweet peas too. I always have to have flowers!

Yesterday too, I was reading (because when I'm not gardening, I am dreaming about gardening) about urban flower farming in this Planthunter article and then read Dahlias at Dusk, over on Kate's blog, Foxs Lane. Oh, my! I would love my own little urban flower farm and I've never grown Dahlias and now think I must one day.  I have also enjoyed reading what some of you are growing in your gardens and what your veg patch plans are. Inspiration everywhere! 

Better get on with the turning of garden dreams into reality! 

Meg

A Quiet Start

Last night, while the skies over Sydney's iconic harbour exploded with all the razzle dazzle of a massive fireworks display, the celebrations here were much more low key. A simple and happy dinner with friends, shared out on the verandah in the cool of the evening, and a sparkler to twirl, as it burned and fizzled in the midnight air, was the extent of our revelry. 

Last year's calendar was promptly taken down, a responsibility our punctual son takes rather seriously, and replaced by a new one for the new 2019. Each new month of this coming year will see us flip the page to a beautiful photo taken of our beloved Straddie. If this year goes as quickly as the last one felt like it did, then we'll be back there again soon!

Sand and sea and sky on Straddie.

The colours inside a shell.

The first of these new year days has passed rather quietly. There was the bustle of breakfast and packing up after the sleepover of our boy's friends, but all fell quiet once they headed off to the cricket. It's a quiet I've thoroughly enjoyed just doing ordinary things. I scattered some parsley seeds in the garden from the flower heads up the back, knitted a bit more of a washcloth, watched two episodes of a dvd I borrowed from the library (such indulgence) and decluttered a few more boxes of old teaching materials in our study. I ate leftovers for lunch and I'll have them again for dinner. My 'boys' won't be home 'til late from the cricket, as it's all the way down at the Gold Coast, so Sir Steve dog and I will be in bed early.  I'll be catching some zzzzs well before midnight tonight. 😴

Happy New Year to you!
Meg