[volcano cake]

It's my youngest boy's 8th birthday today, and the cake request was a volcano!! Mmmmm, challenge accepted.

Here's the recipe:

VOLCANO CAKE

6 eggs (separated)

1/2 cup stevia

2 tbs cocoa powder (for the egg whites)

2 tbs cocoa powder (for the egg yolks)

2 tbs almond spread

1 1/2 cups SR flour

1/2 zucchini (peeled and finely grated)

1/2 carrot (peeled and finely grated)

1/4 cup choc bits

1/2 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

2. Whisk the egg whites, stevia and 2 tbs cocoa powder until it forms soft peaks. (This may take a while, so be patient.) Hint: The mixture goes lighter in colour as you get close. :)

3. In a food processor mix together egg yolks, 2 tbs cocoa powder, almond spread, flour, zucchini, carrot, choc bits and milk. Blitz until thoroughly combined.

4. Set aside 1/3 of the egg white mixture.

5. To the remaining egg whit mixture fold in the rest of the ingredients you'd mixed together.

6. Pour this mixture (gently) into a 25cm spring form cake pan.

7. Then gently scoop the egg white mixture you saved into a mound on top of the centre of the cake. Use a spatula to pull up and smooth the sides of this mound to form a slight ridge around a depression at the top (this is the crater at the top of the volcano).

8. Bake for approx. 1 hr (until a skewer tests clean).

9. Once the cake is cool, drip melted chocolate around the rim of the 'top of the volcano' allowing it to run down the sides. As the chocolate starts to set, draw it up to the rim of the crater with a bamboo skewer and sculpt/mould the volcano into your desired shape. Chill the cake until the chocolate fully sets.

10. Make a red jelly separately and when set scoop into the crater (and put some flowing down the side) before serving. 

(The red jelly with the chocolate is very Black Forest-like. Delish.)

The texture of the cake was wonderfully 'cakey' and moist, and the choc bits sunk to the bottom making a great 'sedimentary layer'. The meringue layer of the cake under the crust was gooey and sweet, and although the chocolate top was at least 2-3cm thick at it's centre, a hot knife and cracking sections off worked a treat to distribute to my boy and his two friends ... they even came back for seconds!! (Not that I told them there were vegetables in the cake!!)

[pressie for my niece]

It's my niece's 7th birthday so what little girl wouldn't love a handmade bracelet in it's own special box? 

I think making the bracelet was the most difficult, not because of the complexity of the beading, that part was easy, but because my almost 8-yr-old son was reluctant and wriggling around when being the model for measuring the wrist size! My first measure attempt led to chasing a dozen or more beads bouncing around on the floor! Boys!!?!

Anyways, to jazz up the presentation I made an origami box and lid to put the bracelet in, and decorated it with a pretty pink quilled flower. Noice!

[butter & sugar free cupcakes]

I've been experimenting in the kitchen the past few weeks trying to find a 'healthy' cupcake. Last week's attempt was tasty, but didn't rise at all, so was very dense and more like a pudding, so I froze them and have been eating them as a warm dessert with a dollop of vanilla yoghurt (or icecream).

This week I am proud to say I have had some success with a much lighter 'cake-like' cupcake, rather than a banana bread! It's not exactly the same texture as a regular buttery and sugary cupcake, but that's because it has oats in it, so think of it as the 'multi-grain' version of a cupcake.

GUILT-FREE 'Z' CUPCAKES

Ingredients:

3 eggs (separated)

1/4 cup stevia (sugar alternative)

1/2 zucchini (peeled and finely grated)

1 tsp (heaped) almond spread

3/4 cup rolled oats (processed to a fine meal)

3/4 cup self-raising flour

1/4 tsp vanilla

Method:

(Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius)

1. Separate eggs - keep whites in a large bowl, put yolks into a food processor (or mixing bowl).

2. Add stevia to egg whites and whisk until soft peaks form.

3. Add grated zucchini, almond spread and vanilla to egg yolks and mix until well combined.

4. Then add rolled oats (meal) and flour, and mix to a paste.

5. Add paste to egg white mixture in small portions and gently combine with a folding action.

6. Once the paste is evenly distributed, place spoonfuls into patty pans (almost to the top) and bake until slightly golden on the edges and when a skewer comes out clean when you test.

7. To add a little 'guilt' to your 'clean' cupcake, wait until totally cool before icing with a small dollop of cream cheese frosting.

Ahhhh, stealth vegetables, don't you love 'em!

[home-made soft tortillas]

Rather slack on the blogging of recent times, but have picked up a great recipe for soft tortillas courtesy of a Facebook friend - thanks Tracey! 

My kids love this as we haven't had soft tortillas for ages as the store bought ones have preservative 282. We found out last year how much preservatives, artificial colours and MSG affected their behaviour, and since we've avoided these foods I've had calmer kids who can concentrate at school and sleep well at night! Just back to basics cooking really, without the crap! 😊

SOFT TORTILLAS

Ingredients:

300g plain flour

1 tbs oil

185ml water

1/4 tsp salt

Method:

Combine ingredients and knead into a dough. Rest dough for at least half an hour, divide into eight portions and roll into rounds. Dry fry in a non-stick pan on both sides until they colour slightly (and look like the ones from the shop), and serve with taco mince and salad.

They also freeze well (great for making 'wraps' for the kid's lunches) - just interleave each wrap with baking paper and then seal in a freezer bag. This way you can easily get one out at a time as you need them.

Happy preservative-free baking!

[celebratory quilling for some of the divas]

There have been a few milestone celebrations this past month, all of them for my wonderful dancing friends (aka the dancing divas). The celebrations kicked off the first weekend of March with a Rocky Horror 30th birthday. Anything for a dress up I say! I got my Magenta on (with many other Magentas), including the birthday girl, but the star performers were the birthday girl's hubby as Rocky and her brother as Frank'n'Furter. I also created a quilled birthday card for her in a monochromatic mid to very dark metallic blue colour scheme, with silver highlights.

The second event was an engagement, and it was lovely to see the sun out for a very pleasant afternoon in the park. Sitting under the boughs of sprawling trees while a light breeze gently buoying paper lanterns strung up in the foliage was just perfect. I'm sure the special couple were very thankful after having weeks of rain in the weeks leading up to that weekend. A little passport-sized photo accompanied the invitation so that was my inspiration for the quilled card I created, with the colour scheme picked from the background of the photograph.

The final diva celebration was last weekend for a 40th birthday get-together. The card I made was a actually a combination of a card and a picture frame, with a special slip-in card at the back where everyone could sign their name. I knew I'd picked the perfect colour scheme when we walked into her house as the feature colour in the living area was red! Using some scrap booking and collage techniques, the final piece was a delicious feast of reds, oranges and a little dark green as a highlight. The entire piece was contained within a paper frame, which I found a pattern for at this incredibly talented quiller's blog.

Quilled butterfly detail.

Quilling numbers and letters is rather tricky, you have to assemble the vertical paper strip in mirror reverse by delicately holding it by pins, pinned into a polystyrene board. Sometimes there are some very tricky moments when the paper strip comes adrift and you have to place it back on the pins with tweezers. You then have to carefully put glue on the uppermost edge of the paper strip and then place your paper down on top of it, wait a moment for the glue to start to stick, and then carefully peel it away from the pins. 

I've previously blogged a step-by-step guide on a 50th Birthday Project - I learnt the hard way on that project that you need to do the lettering in mirror reverse from the beginning!

[Masterchef-fest month of dinners]

Been a Masterchef-fest at our place for a while now. Here's the past month's efforts...

Homemade chicken lasagne (even made the pasta from scratch)

Baked veggie tasting plate with Rosemary Lamb Mince and homemade slaw - (Veggies: clockwise from top baked potato crisps, slaw, zucchini chips, roast pumpkin, popcorn cauliflower)

Corned beef with three veg

Moroccan lamb and feta DIY tacos

Chicken breast two ways with zucchini chips, cauliflower noisettes and tarragon-infused veggies

Spinach and feta tart with salad

Satay pork pies with potato bake, garlic roasted pumpkin, honey carrots, peas and corn

And to finish, a dessert: Strawberry tartlets

[new craft corner]

I've always been a furniture rearranger - ever since I was a pre-teen I'd switch my room around and make it feel like brand new. Nothing much has changed, as I did the same with my home office in January. What I didn't have was somewhere I could do my quilling and card making that didn't involve pulling things out of a cupboard and setting up on the dining table. (Which then had to be put all back away before the next meal!)

Over the weekend I finally managed to rearrange the inside of the cupboards and make one side of my really long Ikea desk as the 'craft corner' and the other the 'work' side. And the great roll front cupboards (yes, Ikea again) are fabulous as they can be rolled down once you've put everything back and you're left with a clean uncluttered space. Ikea may not be the best quality so far as materials (the foil desk tops chip and scratch so easily) but the storage solutions and neat hideaway things (like the cord cable organizer I have screwed to the underside of my desk) are just awesome. Plus I've found a few cheap desk mats from Officeworks protect the desk as well as making a nice writing surface.

I've replaced one of these desk mats with a cutting mat on the 'craft' side of my desk which means I can cut intricate patterns out of paper with a scalpel on my desk whenever I want! No dragging out the cut mat from under the cupboard every time I need to do some paper surgery! I also have all my papers, embellishments, punches and tools in easy reach. Likewise, on my 'work' side of the desk I have easy access to stationery and paperwork trays.

Now the hardest part is fighting the crafting bug when I really should be working!