BLOG: White Enamel Pie Dish

Christmas cake with the help of friends

It was a delight to mix the dried fruit, see the cake batter coming together blending the dark brown sugar, butter, flour, eggs, and fruit. Our nine-year-old came home from school as I was mixing the batter and he gave it a stir for good luck before it was spooned into the tin. Our kitchen smelt like Christmas as the cake baked for four hours. The recipe made a high sided, dense, dark Christmas cake. Once it was cooled I followed Mickey's advice, wrapping it in baking paper, foil and a tea towel and placing it in a cupboard. I look forward to opening the cupboard door and breathing the scent of anticipation.

Flowers steal the Nundle Art Show

Salted dark chocolate layer cake

This Salted dark chocolate layer cake is for our friend KG who lives in Sydney and says that if she lived around the corner she would be on our doorstep every time I posted a cake shot on Instagram. Well, she was in the neighbourhood recently and I made this cake for dessert. The recipe is in October Country Style, 'Pure decadence', an excerpt from Donna Hay's cookbook Modern Baking. It's all about the super rich chocolate ganache with this cake. Unfortunately our daughter suffered the pain of watching me make the cake and then had to leave before it was served. However, our sons were very happy to have left overs in their school lunch boxes the next day.

Yankee Jack - The Musical, homegrown country arts

John Fryz Tamworth Country Music Festival photo essay

Chai chocolate chip biscuits

Don't you just love it when new recipes hit your email inbox. Immediately I am transported (read distracted) into the kitchen, imagining new dishes to try my hand at cooking, inspired by seasonal flavours, and expanding my skills. If a recipe title includes the word chai, it grabs my attention straight away. It is the beginning of spring, yet chai holds its allure. A recipe for Chai chocolate chip biscuits posted by ABC Life last Wednesday had me reaching for my phone to make a shopping list and I made the biscuits on Sunday. The recipe author Thalia Ho, of Butter and Brioche food blog, introduced me to a new technique called pan banging, literally banging the baking sheet against the oven rack several times during cooking to help the biscuit dough spread during baking. For the first time I used a small ice-cream scoop to measure out the biscuit dough, a tip I picked up from customers buying ice-cream scoops in our shop, resulting in eye-pleasing, uniform sized biscuits.

Reducing electricity bills

Reducing electricity bills is not a topic I would usually cover on our shop blog.  In the past two months there have been two free State Government energy education workshops in Tamworth, Demystifying Energy for Households, and Introduction to Energy Management and I went along to boost my energy literacy. No one likes opening up an electricity bill and feeling deflated to spend a large chunk of money, only to forget about conserving energy until the next bill. In line with the waste hierachy Reduce, Reuse, Recycle we try to be conscious of simple energy conservation, turning off lights when we aren't using rooms, installing heavy drapes to keep out the winter cold and shading western windows from summer heat, but now we are ramping up our knowledge a notch. We're taking steps to install solar to power efficient heating and cooling, and improve the comfort levels of our 125-year-old shop building.

Cooking with honey

Pear, fig and nut loaf with black leaf and ginger tea

A drizzly day always inspires me to turn the oven on and bake, helping to warm the house, fill it with comforting smells, and have a warm, delicious cake to share with my family. It is the last week of school in NSW, so it has the additional bonus of providing a nutrient dense lunchbox filler for our boys' recess. With a folder full of recipes I have collected over nearly three decades, it's also a welcome opportunity to try a new recipe that I have been wanting to make for a long time. Cakes with fruit, nuts, and spices always appeal to me, so a Pear, date and hazelnut recipe from The Sydney Morning Herald (June 19, 2007) beckoned to be made. Determined not to leave our eight acres on this particular day, I substituted ingredients, making it a Pear, fig and nut loaf. With the boys at school, come time for a cup of tea I toasted a slice of loaf and spread it with butter for a warming afternoon tea. With Duncan cutting a couple of slices as well, when our son arrived home from school he asked, "Where has all the cake gone?" We'll just have to make this recipe again.

Talking Threads: clothes with history