Me, kids? Never. My friends’ kids? Sure, hand them over. If they start to dribble or throw up, here, have them back.

That just about sums up my reaction to babies in general. I hope it doesn’t sound too negative, as I love kids; I’m just not interested in having any of my own. As my friends move towards more advanced stages of their lives, I happily celebrate their growing families. Yesterday was a bit of a baby day, spent at Jaime’s place in Westmead, meeting little Jules for the first time. We propped him and little Austin up against some large cushions and although they largely ignored each other, they were so cute that I had to dive head first into a photo frenzy. Austin in particular, is so adorable because his face is starting to open up a little. He has chubbed up to a healthy 7kg, with bulging rose tinted cheeks you can’t help but bring two fingers towards, to pinch ever so gently.

As their respective mothers recount the horror stories about the birth (episiotemies or emergency caesareans, anyone?) and subsequent sleepless nights, I feel the need to take my hat off to anyone (fathers included) who is brave enough to bring such a fragile life into this world and is prepared to shoulder the responsibilities it entails.

I’m writing this post in support of Holly who is holding a blogging event to highlight the March for Babies fundraiser she and her family will be taking part in, in honour of her beautiful son, Cole. You can read more about Cole on her blog, and make a donation to March for Babies as well, if you wish. [Also, the roundup is finally here, if you would like to see what else people have cooked up for this event :)]

These Lumberjack Cupcakes come from The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook by Jennifer Graham. It’s a great little cupcake book with a fabulous basic vanilla cupcake recipe and frosting which I think is the highlight of the whole book. I’ve tried several of their other recipes, but the vanilla one is still the best. The lumberjack cupcakes are apple and date flavoured and are nice, though I wouldn’t call them a definitive recipe for their genre. Cupcakes are always crowd pleasers though, particularly small versions of, which are very appropriate for little kids. I have decorated mine with vanilla cream cheese frosting and a twist of candied orange peel.

Lumberjack Cupcakes :
(makes 24 regular cupcakes or enough mini cupcakes to feed a screaming party of kids)

600g Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped
300g dates, pitted and diced
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 cups boiling water
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
200g softened butter
1 1/2 cups castor sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine apple, dates, bicarbonate of soda and boiling water in a bowl. Cover with plastic film and leave overnight at room temperature to allow the apples and dates to soften and absorb some of the water.

Preheat oven to 180’C. Line two 12-hole muffin trays with cupcake papers.

Sift together the flour, cinnamon and ginger. In a separate bowl, cream the butter for 1-2 minuts. Add half of the castor sugar and beat for 2 minutes. Add the remaining castor sugar and beat for 2 minutes or until sugar has almost dissolved. Add eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition or until mixture is light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined.

Stir in the apple and date mixture using a rubber spatula. Add the sifted flour mixture and fold in until well combined.

Spoon mixture into cupcake papers, filling each about three-quarters full. Bake for 20 minutes or until a fine skewer inserted comes out clean. Remove cupcakes from the trays immediately and cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes before frosting.

April in my mind, but I can’t sleep
So I take a walk under the trees
What did I see? Summer waits the leaves
As lovely as I’ve ever known
Happiness just comes and goes
–Here Comes the Phantom, The Clientele

So I’ve gone and done something a little unexpected and probably completely crazy. I’ve resigned from my job.

I say “crazy”, because this place actually looks after me pretty well. As anyone who works in the hospitality industry would know, it’s pretty unusual to get weekends off and not work nights. Both were my stipulations when I was asked to work here. The reason was that my previous job involved a lot of both. Lots of double shifts, sometimes in a row, and very late finishes (coupled with early starts). There were days where we’d be waiting until almost 1am, for a customer to finally order dessert. I wanted a break from all that for the time being. At my current job, I run my own section and get to experiment a little with dishes. Although, in a function environment, it can be very restrictive in terms of how elaborate you can be. We did a recent plating-up of new dishes for a tasting, and for every item I included in a dish, I had to think about whether I really wanted to reproduce that 300, 500 or even 1000+ times over. It’s like when Qantas apparently decided to remove a single olive from all their green salads, and saved $thousands. Remove a single sauce flourish from a dish and you could save yourself hours of frustration.

The decision isn’t as “sudden” as I make it out to be. I’ve been contemplating it for some time now, but when you like your boss and the people you work around, it’s hard to take that step. To that effect, I will miss everyone : Loading Dock Ben, ascerbic Lee, the incredibly patient and accomodating Darrell, the “Make it Sexy” BossMan, EVERYONE. Even Abir who never cleans the deep-fryers properly, and Galib who always leaves explosions of butter in my microwave. Well, maybe not Abir because he also borrows my knives without first asking.

I can think of several catalysts to my decision to leave. One was a dessert I had at Rockpool a couple of days ago. Another was when I finally cracked open one of my El Bulli cookbooks on a chance day off midweek. Yet another was a pastry chef they kindly hired to give me a hand for a couple of days during the leadup to our big function. A qualified pastry chef, who turns out to have Michelin-star experience and who I must say, was great to work with. Aside from getting a bit of help, it was so nice to be able to “talk pastry” with someone; get some answers to questions and exchange a few ideas. He gifted me with a recipe for a strawberry curry chutney which he insists I make sometime. Apparently it’s out of this world, even if it does sound a little suspect at this stage. I mean, strawberry? curry? chutney? Anyway, having Stuart around reminded me that I didn’t want to become complacent with my job. I didn’t want to be doing a job where I just came in and went through the motions. I’d like to get back into restaurants and be immersed in an environment where I’m regularly experiencing and learning new things.

So here I am. Four weeks to go and hopefully the world will be some sort of bivalve of mine.

Amrita of La Petite Boulangette is hosting this month’s SHF and has picked asian ingredients as the theme. As a tribute to my outgoing job, my choice of ingredient is Maccha/Matcha, or Japanese Green Tea, which I use quite often at work to make flavoured shortbread, amongst other things. It’s because of this job that I started to really use ingredients like maccha and leatherwood honey, and to teach myself to make things like muffins and danishes. This particular shortbread (the recipe for which has been altered from an AWW one) is incredibly short and fragile, but delicious. Once baked, I like sandwiching it with raspberry jam, or white chocolate ganache. It goes very well with a cup of tea, like most things in life 🙂

Green Tea Shortbread :

250g unsalted butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste
1 3/4 cups plain flour
1/4 cup rice flour
2-3 teaspoons maccha
pinch salt

Preheat oven to 190’C.

Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and maccha, beat until combined. Fold in sifted flours and salt. Fill into piping bag fitted with fluted tube. Pipe into straight lengths, S shapes or rosettes, on trays lined with baking paper. If you don’t have a piping bag handy, the mixture can also be rolled into balls and pressed down lightly with the tines of a fork.

Bake for 12 -15 minutes or until light golden and firm. Cool on trays. Serve shortbread as they are, or sandwich with homemade jam or chocolate ganache. You can also drizzle or dip the tops in chocolate or dust with icing sugar.

I love trying new recipes, but like everyone else, I hate it when disaster strikes. An unreliable recipe, or a fault in technique on your part; either or both invariably send me into the doldrums. Especially when the disaster is unsaveable, like a ganache, split beyond recognition, unceremoniously tipped into the bin with a mild hint of anger and frustration. Or a cookie so sweet you can feel your teeth protesting with every mouthful. I don’t mind telling you that I’ve been trying for what seems like months now, to make from scratch, a thin Malaysian crepe-like thing called Popiah, and can’t seem to get the consistency of the batter right, no matter what recipe I’ve tried from various ones I’ve printed off the internet, or found in recipe books. The ultimate bouncey dough eludes me.

Thank goodness then for those recipes we know like the back of our hands, which we can turn to for a mid-afternoon morale booster. They are the ones that soldier on and unfailingly produce pleasing results every single time. This friand recipe is one I’ve been using for quite some time now. It started when I was asked to produce friands (small, moist almond based cakes) on a daily basis for a nearby bar/restaurant. The beauty about friands is that they are so adaptable, and welcome all kinds of flavours, like chestnut and vanilla, green tea, cinnamon, chocolate and hazelnut, with unceasing variations in toppings such as fresh, poached or candied fruit, chopped nuts, thumbnail pieces of chocolate, cocoa nibs, and coloured sugar. The sky is your limit, in other words. Once you have mastered the basic recipe, the contents of your sweet pantry are your playground, really.

The following recipe has been slightly altered from the one found in Little Cafe Cakes by Julie Le Clerc, and is my contribution to Equal Opportunity Kitchen’s Tried, Tested and True event.

Almond and Vanilla Friands :

175g butter, browned and cooled
1 cup ground almonds
6 egg whites, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla paste
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup plain flour
topping of your choice eg. fresh raspberries, dried cranberries, chocolate chips, etc

Preheat oven to 190’C. Grease 10 individual cake or muffin tins.

Place all ingredients except the topping, into a mixing bowl. Stir until just combined.

Spoon mixture into prepared tins, they should be just over 1/2 full. Top each friand with topping of choice.

Bake for 25 minutes.

Alow to stand in tins for 5 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.

[Note: For mini ones, like those pictured above, I used a mini muffin tin and reduced the baking time by about 10-12 minutes]