I am trying to become better at baking. Being pregnant I have developed more of a sweet tooth and I seem to have a wee bit more time at the moment to try out recipes and things. I am usually a 'half a slice, please' person, normally because I have over done it on the savory options. Well a bigger appetite has meant more love for all things sweet.
We have moved into our new place in Mangere Bridge. It is a wee cottage and our knick knacks and tea ware have almost managed to squeeze themselves in somewhere. Slowly but surely Cam and I have been categorising and sorting and even throwing out bits and pieces of our collection of papers and images and things to reuse. Many of you will know already I love the reuse part of reduce, reuse and recycle.
At our flat we have a nice newish oven in our wee open plan kitchen but it has turned out to be a bit of a learning curve getting things right in there. First the hobbs were set to ballistic so we had an electrician adjust those. Now we can turn the elements to simmer or boil not just nuclear meltdown. Woohoo! The oven doesn't have a convection option so if I cook two things at once in there (which I almost always do, waste not want not) they take about half as long again to cook and require some switching about from the top to the bottom as the main source of heat is still at the top of the oven, even for bake!
I have made a few crumbles, magic slice, date slice and something called crunch which could not have been more true. Last night I made the best home made burger, rosemary new potatoes and lemon yogurt cake I have ever made! I could be getting the hang of this oven thing. Cooking two things at once is better than three in this kitchen too. There is actually less than 1m squared of bench space total, you know I have estimated that carefully right?!
Here is the cake I made:
http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/Lemon-Yoghurt-Cake-L3208.html
I used only half a cup of oil and 1 and a half cups of sugar and added a little more lemon juice and it took 45 minutes and a few up the top, now the bottom switcheroos in the oven. I made a glaze for the top too, just lemon juice and icing sugar heated up and poured over.
Pretty chuffed it worked.
