Too Many Recipes No. 5 Devil's Food Cake

This is the fifth in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old.  You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here

Note the incredibly professional cake decorating skills!

I have to say, this was one of the recipes I was really looking forward to making when I started working my way through this recipe book.  In fact I think I have been looking forward to making it since I was 15, when I wrote it into my book.  It sounds so wonderfully decadent and promising and full of all sorts of evil.  All the things one looks for in a really good chocolate cake splurge.  I mean, if you're going to have chocolate cake, you might as well go all out, right?  Although, if we're really talking about a choc splurge, the ultimate trip would be a little number I have in one of my 'real' cookbooks called "Death By Chocolate" by Marcel Desaulniers.  A deadly little number indeed.  Just preparing the thing would do me in.  The recipe is broken up into sections, with stages allocated across three days.  That's three days to make one cake.  I wouldn't be letting anyone eat that one in a hurry.  I can imagine the shrieks "Are you mad?  That thing took me three whole days of my life to make.  And you think you can just eat it?" Death indeed!

Fortunately, this recipe is rather less complex and came together in quite a lot less time.  About ten minutes should do the trick.  No need for shrieking or death curses.  Phew!  Another 45 minutes in the oven, a bit of time to cool and decorate and we were done.  As has happened on more than one occasion, I caved into the pressure of my gathered 'peeps' (as it seems they are now being called) and carved into this cake within mere moments of its magnificent completion.  Lots of oohs and aahs and "Is that my piece?".  Just time to put the kettle on for a cup of tea to wash it down and we were in.

Some cakes are at their absolute best when they're really, really fresh, like my good friend the Raspberry Chocolate Cake (aka recipe no. 3).  That one has become a favourite here and was given special status as my birthday cake a couple of weeks ago, although this time I topped it with fresh raspberries and it was magnifique!  The old Devil's Food Cake does not come into this category however, preferring a few hours at the very least in which to settle into its rightful wickedness.  Thus we were all a little disappointed with our first taste.  The flavours just didn't seem to come together that well and it was overwhelmingly, well.....chocolatey and sweet.  Do you know what I mean?  So I popped it into the fridge and left it to get on with a little alchemy.  And it worked a treat.  Several hours later and another cup of tea with a snippet of cake on a nice little plate and all the flavours had melded quite satisfactorily, the cream in the middle had had time to make acquaintance with the strawberry jam (just a little something I had whipped up the day before) and the chocolate flavour had become deeper and  less overbearingly sweet. Much, much better.  Still not the kind of thing I would whip up for a day-to-day cake but something to save for a special occasion perhaps, or to share with a gaggle of chocolate cake loving friends.

Now onto the music.  I was thinking along the lines of Devil Went Down To Georgia, an obvious choice and I will admit to loving this song in the early 80s whilst in my tender youth so it was a treat to watch this clip and listen to all that fine ol' fiddlin' once again.  But then I have been thinking lately about a song by Sam Brown from about 1990 (if the shoulder pads are anything to go by) and the smoothness of her voice seems to match the smoothness of this cake.  So there are your choices for today.  Go choose, set up another tab so you can listen and read at the same time, put your devil horns on and we shall proceed with the recipe.

Devil's Food Cake

Ingredients

1 tbsp vinegar

1 cup undiluted Carnation evaporated milk*

1 1/2 cups self raising flour (or use plain flour with 3 tsp baking powder)

pinch of salt

1/2 cup cocoa

1 1/2 tsp bi-carb soda

1 1/4 cup sugar

2/3 cup melted butter

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

*If you're not familiar with it, evaporated milk is a sweet little concoction found in the supermarket.  Carnation is the brand most commonly found here and is the one I remember Mum buying. In fact, I suspect this recipe is from Carnation, judging by the emphasis on the name in the original recipe.  More than likely it was from a label off a tin many moons ago. You would probably find it somewhere close to the UHT milks.

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (375 Fahrenheit) 
• Grease 2 x 8" (20cm) cake tins and line the bases with baking paper or brown paper.  See here for more info.
• In a small bowl, add vinegar to the Carnation milk.  In a large bowl sift flour, salt, cocoa and sugar.  Pour in melted butter and 1/2 of Carnation milk.  Beat well for 2 minutes.
• Add remaining milk, eggs and vanilla and beat a further 2 minutes.
• Pour into 2 x 8" (20cm) cake tins and bake 35 - 40 minutes.
• Allow to cool slightly before removing cakes from their tins
• When completely cool, spread jam (if you like) over the top of one cake then whipped cream.  Top with the second cake then ice with chocolate icing.
• Decorate as you please, ignoring my magnificently dodgy efforts. (I put my name down for a series of cake decorating classes at high school many many years ago and made it through almost half of the first session until it became apparent to both my teacher and myself that I had, and still have, no real aptitude or patience for that level of fiddling around with little bits of icing.  We both agreed that I would be much happier and 'at home' in the pottery rooms so off I went and spent the remaining classes happily pottering away and singing along quite loudly to the radio, which I could because I was the only one in there.  Happy times!)
• Pop the whole shebang into the fridge for a couple of hours to do its thing.

What's to like about this cake:

• It is quick, easy and gives a good chocolatey result, thanks to the 1/2 cup of cocoa.
• It sounds impressive, although you kind of know that any food that includes the word 'devil' in the title is going to be bad news for your figure.

What's not to like:

• This is a coarse crumbed cake with quite a dense texture which makes it heavy.  You really only want one piece and you're done.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you're after a light fluffy sponge, this recipe is not going to give it to you.  Go with the Raspberry Chocolate Cake instead.
• As mentioned above, you know it's not going to be kind to your waistline, but I say "all things in moderation".

Too Many Recipes! 4. Apricot Bran Loaf

This is the fourth in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old.  You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here

After our rather sugar laden past few weeks, this cake came as a bit of dietary relief.  It is the sort of recipe that I generally look for - something with a bit of fruit in it so that I can pretend that it is healthy and not feel so bad if I eat a little too much.  And this one has bran too so it has to be kind of a healthy option. Yes?  It has a nice bit of sweetness to it without being loaded with sugar, thanks to the apricots. This is not the recipe though, to cook up if you're looking for indulgence - unless you are on a really, really strict diet and this cake actually looks like an indulgence.  If that's the case, then go for it and enjoy.  

It kind of made me think of ploughman's lunches and mugs of ale taken by the fire whilst watching a bit of Morris Dancing.  Can't say exactly why but there you have it.  Perhaps that should be a clue for this week's music link.  Well, it wasn't going to be but here you go anyway - a bit of Morris Dancing from Oxford and I have to say that it does kind of capture the mood of this cake.  I can well imagine being in the street and watching this, then popping in to a local tea shop for a cup of tea and a slab of Apricot Bran Loaf.  The music link I intended to put up was the song I was singing to myself while I was baking and that, dear reader, is this one from They Might Be Giants.  I love this song.  I love They Might Be Giants.  I love that my children also like their music and so we all get to enjoy it together.

But I digress.  Choose your link wisely, in a different tab of course, so you can read and listen at the same time and we shall proceed.

Apricot Bran Loaf

Ingredients:

120 g dried apricots

1tsp bi-carb soda

1 cup boiling water

60 g butter

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

1 1/2 cups bran  (I used oat bran as I couldn't find wheat bran when I went shopping)

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius (375 degrees Fahrenheit) and grease an 8" x 4" (20 x 10cm) loaf tin, lining the base with grease proof paper.  A little aside here, if you read last week's recipe, you may recall that I had a bit of a flashback about my mum re-using brown paper bags to line her cake tins so this week I tried it and have to report that, not only was it  extremely satisfying but it worked a treat as you will see in the above photo.  

Chop the apricots up into small-ish pieces, depending on how chunky you want your cake to be and put to soak in a small bowl with the bi-carb soda and boiling water for half an hour.  

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then beat in the egg.  Add walnuts, stir in apricots and the remaining liquid, the sifted flour and bran.  Mix well to produce a fairly stiff cake mixture.  Tip it all into your loaf tin and bake for around 40-45 minutes.  

Leave in the tin for 5 minutes or so before putting it on to a rack to cool.  Slice off chunks and spread with butter. (We didn't bother with the butter.  It was good enough without but you could if you wanted to.)

What's to like about this cake:  

• It's a really easy, fuss-free recipe.  Just remember to soak the apricots beforehand.
• A good cake to have on hand for a fairly healthy bit of morning or afternoon tea.

What's not to like:

• It was a bit on the crumbly side once it cooled down completely.  Perhaps it just needs to be eaten while it's still a bit warm.

Too Many Recipes! 3. Raspberry Chocolate Cake

This is the third in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old.  You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here

The original name of this cake in my recipe book is a Basic Chocolate Cake.  I feel it deserves so much more so I have taken the liberty of re-naming it.  Heck!  It's my book.  I get to do what I want!  Henceforth and forever more, let this cake be known as The Raspberry Chocolate Cake.  It is, indeed, basic to put together, which is a blessing for when we don't have much time and/or an almost walking 13 month old is hanging on to our leg, but this cake was so very good it disappeared very quickly indeed.  I actually had to make a second one because the first one was eaten before I had time to ice it, let alone photograph it.  And that was also a blessing because.....well, it was a double blessing actually because it meant that we got to enjoy it all over again and also because it gave me a sense of what the cake was like so I had an idea of how to embellish it as the recipe gave no instructions for icing or decoration.
And now to the music to go with this fine cake.  I have to confess I actually wasn't thinking of, or listening to music this time around.  I thought about linking to My Friend The Chocolate Cake (is that not a wonderful name for a band?) but that is just way too obvious....although I did just link to it didn't I?  Instead, I thought that today I would lead you to this song by an American folk singer, Elizabeth Mitchell.  We listen to a fair bit of her music here but this song in particular is one of my favourites and always lifts my mood.  So now you have a choice.  As always, I will give you a moment to choose your link and settle in with your music, remembering of course, to open the link in a different tab so you can read and listen at the same time......................................................   and, away we go.

Raspberry Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:
125 g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tbsp raspberry jam
1tbsp boiling water
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour (or substitute with plain flour and 3 tsp baking powder)
1/2 cup milk


Method:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius / 375 degrees Fahrenheit, adjusting accordingly if you have a fan-forced oven which, I may have mentioned before, I do not.
Grease a lamington tin or 2 x 8" (20cm) sandwich tins and line the base with baking paper if you feel so inclined, which I usually do because even though I grease cake tins well, cakes always seem to stick to the base if I don't line them with paper.  I have just, in this very moment, had a flashback of Mum cutting cake tin linings from brown paper bags which was a good way of recycling them and saved buying baking paper.  That is what I was brought up with but had forgotten all about it until now.  Gosh, it's a long time since I've done that.  Anyway, I digress.  Sorry about that. So back to the making of this cake.....


In a small bowl, mix the cocoa powder, raspberry jam and boiling water to a smooth paste and leave to cool.
Meanwhile, cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well as you add each one.  Add the chocolate mixture and stir that in. 
Now sift the flour at least three times - yes, three.  And yes it does seem to make a difference so is worth doing.  Add this to the cake mixture alternately with the milk and you will have a lovely light cake mix that tastes just delicious.  However, resist the temptation to eat it all raw and pour it into your prepared cake tin/s.  Bake for around 30-40 minutes, keeping an eye on it for the last bit.  Allow to cool, then either eat or decorate it.
I cut the cake into two layers and spread some raspberry jam and whipped cream, then topped it off with some basic chocolate icing and chopped up strawberries, lightly dusted with sifted icing sugar.  I had planned to pile it with fresh raspberries since they are coming into season now but at $11.50 a punnet I was a little (!!!) put off and opted for strawberries instead which did a very decent job.

What's to like about this cake?  Everything.  Easy to make and even easier to eat.
What's not to like?  Honestly cannot think of a thing unless one is on a diet.

Too Many Recipes! 2. Golden Aloha Cake

This is the second in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old.  You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here

When I read the name of this recipe, Golden Aloha Cake, I couldn't help but imagine something rather magnificent and maybe a little bit flamboyant.  Something pineappley and exotic. Something that would give you a feeling of laying under a palm tree on the beach in Hawaii, listening to a bit of this.  If you read the first post in this series, you will know that I had high expectations of these recipes.  They en captured many of my hopes and dreams of how I would live once I was grown up and living a life of sophistication out in the big world.  Imagine my surprise then, to find out that it is really just a fairly ordinary cake.  It kind of matches the surprise I felt in finding out that being grown up was not always such a sophisticated affair as I had expected. Not that the cake wasn't very tasty and not that life isn't very pleasant.  But the cake just didn't really live up to it's name. Perhaps I should have been listening to that bit of ukulele music linked above.  Instead I was listening to Brooke Fraser's music which mellows me out no end. So you can choose which you would like to listen to while you read through the rest of this.  So here is a moment in which to go to the link of your choice (remembering of course to open it in a separate tab so you can read and listen at the same time.  I'll just do something else for a moment while you organise it all  .............................................................. Okay, shall we continue?  Which did you choose I wonder?

Getting back to business now. In retrospect, had I known what I was going to end up with (which I should have because I did read the recipe a couple of times before I started) I could have planned to deliver it with a bit more pizazz.  Perhaps I should have layered it (the recipe did mention filling but I chose to ignore it) and topped it off with some beautiful golden hibiscus and some sparklers.

That said, it was a lovely cake to eat.  Just ask any of my children.  Even Ari, who is not a big cake eater, was very happy with this one.  It had a beautiful soft texture and was sweet and moist.  The original recipe in my book didn't specify an icing beyond "white frosting" so I made up a basic lemon icing which I have included in the recipe below.  And with that said, here it is now!

Golden Aloha Cake

Ingredients
3 cups self-raising flour (or use plain flour and add 2 tsp baking powder for every cup of flour)
1 1/2 cups sugar
pinch salt
1 cup milk
185g butter, softened
2 eggs
3 egg yolks extra
1/4 cup milk extra
1/3 cup pineapple juice or pineapple and orange juice
1 tsp vanilla essence
white frosting
coconut


Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (375 Fahrenheit).  Grease 2 x 20cm (8") sandwich tins and line bases.


Sift flour, sugar and salt into a large bowl.  Add milk and softened butter and beat with an electric mixer on low speed for two minutes.  Add eggs and egg yolks, beating well after each addition.  Blend in the extra milk, pineapple juice and vanilla essence.  Continue beating a further two minutes.


Divide mixture evenly between the two sandwich tins and bake for 30 minutes.  Allow to cool in tins for a few minutes before turning out onto cooling racks.
When cool, fill, cover with frosting, sprinkle with coconut.


Easy isn't it?  But it doesn't say any more about what filling or frosting to use.   This is the lemon icing I made up.  The quantities are, I am afraid, estimates as I didn't measure anything so add the liquid to the icing sugar bit by bit until you get the right consistency.


2 cups sifted icing sugar
1 tbsp butter 
2 tbsp boiling water
1 tbsp lemon juice


Melt the butter in a small bowl of boiling water.  Add the lemon juice then pour into the icing sugar and mix well.


What's to like?
I liked that this was quickly put together using a method that I had not come across before.  I have to admit that creaming butter and sugar, although it is pleasantly familiar, is not my favourite way of starting a cake.  


The texture of this cake is really something.  The softness really makes this a very edible cake.  In fact ours lasted less than 24 hours - for both cakes!!!!


What's not to like?
Apart from the disappointment over it not being quite as special looking as I had imagined (and I am still surprised at my surprise because, as I said earlier, I did read the recipe through beforehand.  The lack of spectacular decorations called for should have been a clue that this would indeed be a pretty plain looking little number) there is really not much not to like, unless you don't like soft, sweet cakes.  I will point out here, and perhaps I should have done so earlier, that there is not a very strong pineapple flavour.  In fact I don't know that I could taste it at all.  I did think of putting a bit of Malibu in but wanted to make up the original recipe before fiddling with it.  Perhaps next time I will.  

Too Many Recipes! 1. Viennese Chocolate Cake

This is the first in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old.  You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here

Recipe number one in my little black book of cakes and biscuits is an odd one for a Viennese Chocolate Cake.  Odd, I say, because it has crushed cornflakes scattered over the top.  I don't know that much about traditional Austrian cooking but I'm pretty sure there weren't a lot of crushed cornflakes floating around the kitchens.  So I'm not at all sure what makes this cake particularly Viennese, but I did find that I was humming The Blue Danube for most of the day that I made this cake and thinking of the Viennese Waltz, which one might dance to this beautiful music.  In fact, I am listening to it now via YouTube.  Click here and you can also listen to it while you read the rest of this post if you like (just open it in another tab so you read and listen at the same time).  I'll wait a moment while you organise it................................................Oh, and please excuse me while I change fonts.  Right, here we go.

Viennese Chocolate Cake

For the cake:
125g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
2 cups self-raising flour, sifted (I use plain flour with 4tsp baking powder - 1 tsp to each 1/2 cup flour)
1 tsp instant coffee
1/2 tsp vanilla extract or essence
1/2 cup milk
60g chocolate 


For the topping:
60g butter
1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup caster sugar
3/4 cup lightly crushed cornflakes
1 tsp cinnamon


For the Mocha Cream:
300ml cream
1/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp instant coffee
1/2 tsp vanilla

Method:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celcius / 375 Fahrenheit, making suitable adjustments if you have a fan-forced oven, which I don't.  Grease and line the bases of 2 x 8" (20cm) sandwich tins.


In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. If the butter is too hard, I sit the bowl in an inch or two of hot water in the sink for a couple of minutes to soften the butter a little but just make sure the tap is turned away from the bowl so it can't drip into the butter and sugar mix.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition


Chop up the chocolate roughly and melt it in a heatproof bowl over simmering water.  When it is completely melted, add it to the cake mixture along with the instant coffee.  I made the mistake of using granulated coffee without dissolving it in hot water first.  I actually put it in with the melting chocolate, thinking the heat would dissolve the granules.  It didn't, so I got little grains of coffee in my cake.  While it wasn't a big mistake, next time I would dissolve it in 1/2 a teaspoon of boiling water or, if you're not big on instant coffee, you could use a teaspoon or so of a really strong espresso shot and enjoy drinking the rest.


Now fold in the sifted flour, alternately with the milk.  You should end up with a fairly thick-ish cake batter.  Divide the mixture between the two sandwich tins.  I didn't have any of these so used a couple of 22cm cake tins which meant my cakes were not as high as they should have been.  I will have to buy some sandwich tins though as quite a lot of the recipes in this book seem to call for them.  Make up the topping according the instructions below and sprinkle over one of the cakes.


Bake the plain cake for 30-35 minutes and the cake with topping for 45-50 minutes.  Leave to cool a few minutes in the tins before turning out on wire racks.  The cake with topping is a little tricky as the crumbly bits wanted to drop off so it had to be done very quickly and deftly.  Leave them to cool completely then refrigerate several hours or overnight.  I imagine that the intention here is that the cakes would be wrapped in plastic wrap before they're put in the fridge.  Instead, I wrapped them in tea-towels and left them in the pantry overnight..


Slice the cakes carefully in half so you end up with four layers.  Sandwich them together with the Mocha Cream, keeping the layer with topping for the top (of course!).  Spread the sides of the cake with Mocha Cream also then chill before serving.  This last point about chilling the cake is well worth observing.  We cut into ours straight away and it was quite dry and disappointing.  However, after it had been left a few hours it was much, much better.  The cake had absorbed some moisture from the Mocha Cream (don't know why I feel compelled to give that capital letters) and it was quite delicious.  The next day it was still very good but the crunchy topping had lost some of it's crunch.


To make the topping:
Combine walnuts, sugar, cornflakes and cinnamon in a bowl.  Melt butter and mix gently into dry ingredients.


To make the Mocha Cream:
Combine all ingredients in a bowl, stirring gently but do not beat. This time I did dissolve the coffee granules in a tiny bit of hot water (1/2 tsp) and it worked beautifully.  Chill for several hours or overnight (while the cake is also resting) then beat until well thickened.




What's to like about this cake:

• I liked that it used melted chocolate instead of cocoa in the cake.  It was an interesting way of making a chocolate cake that I hadn't come across before.
• I also liked that is was, despite the fanciness of the name, quite a basic cake to make but it produced something that looks a little bit special.

What's not to like:

• I had to be a bit more organised than usual (not my strong point) to put this all together as components had to be made and then left for several hours.  I am generally inclined to choose recipes that can be made up and eaten almost immediately.  Even waiting for cakes to cool down to be iced can sometimes be too much as little hands will be picking bits off the edges as soon as the cake hits the cooling rack. 
• I ended up making the cake and the mocha cream in the evening so they could sit overnight and be ready for morning tea the next day.  Otherwise, they would need to be made early in the morning to be ready for afternoon tea or dessert.  Not too much of a hardship altogether really, just a bit of time management. 

Too Many Recipes! And so we begin.

Long, long ago, many lifetimes ago it seems, there was a girl growing up in the Mallee in the north-west of Victoria.  She lived with her father and two older brothers and spent her days going to school, spending time with friends, making things, going for walks through the bushland that surrounded her home and dreaming of one day making a home of her own, with a good man and five children to care for and love.  The girl imagined sewing and knitting clothes for her children, just as her own mother had done and baking all sorts of good smelling delights for their afternoon teas.  In these ways, she would show them how much they were loved.

So, she bought an exercise book, decorated the outside of it and began collecting recipes, just as her own mother had done many years before.  Soon after, the first book was given the company of two more books.  The first was for cakes and biscuits, the second for savoury dishes and the third for desserts.  Each recipe added was another layer to the dream life the girl imagined for her future self.  Images of aprons, dustings of flour, bountiful casseroles laid out on a checkered tablecloth and around the table, happy, healthy, well-fed children who glowed in their mother's love.

It has to be said though, that there was a degree of duality to the girl's recipe collecting.  Along with the wholesome casseroles and nut-loaves that would nourish her children's growing bodies, there were recipes that spoke to the girl of a different lifestyle; a lifestyle of sophistication and glamour, of dinner parties with interesting guests and of menus with a hint of continental influence.  All a far cry from the meat and three veg that she was used to cooking for her father and brothers each night, or the scones, anzac biscuits and tea-cakes she baked on weekends.  So into the girl's recipe books they all went, the wholesome one-pot cook ups and the fruit cakes feeling a little dowdy and colloquial next to the French Quiche Lorraine,  the grand Sacher-Torte and the Italian Cappucino.

 Years passed.  The girl left the Mallee and eventually found herself living in one of Melbourne's cool inner suburbs. The books had long been filled and were added to with more notebooks and folders, and the ultimate, real shop-bought cookbooks by the likes of Stephanie Alexander, Jamie Oliver, Stephano di Pieri, Nigella Lawson and Charmaine Solomon; books on baking, preserving, and the ultimate chocolate cookbook, Marcel Desaulinaire's 'Death By Chocolate'.  Friends gave her a subscription to Gourmet Traveller and she read about all manner of exotic ingredients, cooking methods she had never imagined and kitchen gadgetry that would ensure she looked like a serious home cook.  She read about restaurants and dinner party menus that made her girlhood imaginings of sophistication look as dowdy and colloquial as the casseroles and fruit cakes had previously.  She scorned the supermarkets in favour of South Melbourne's fresh vegetable markets, the Asian markets lining Richmond's busy Bridge Road, bustling Prahran market, bought only fresh, handmade pasta and eventually made the rather expensive shift to organic produce.  She was on her way to becoming a food snob.

More years passed and the girl (for she still felt quite young on the inside, despite the lines at the edges of her eyes and the beginnings of grey in her hair) left the big smoke to raise her soon-to-be-born babe closer to her sisters in the regional city of Geelong.  In the blink of an eye (or so the intervening nine years seemed) she was mother to four and wife to none.  As her babies grew up, she found that they didn't like a lot of the foods she had become accustomed to eating.  Singapore Hawker Stall Noodles were refused, Chicken Butter Masala caused noses to be turned upwards, Pad Thai was sent packing.  It seemed these children of hers wanted (horror of horrors), meat and three veg; the very thing the girl had been running away from since she had left home.  So she reaquainted herself with the dishes of her childhood, the dishes her mother had cooked for her when she was little, the dishes she had cooked for her father and brothers.  But, as she so often did in life, she did them her own way.  Familiar recipes were tweaked (although there were some she wouldn't dream of changing),  menus were adapted to suit the tastes of her growing family, she learned to make her own pasta with fresh eggs laid by her brood of hens, and her children grew.  Strong, healthy and happy just as she had dreamed of all those years ago.

The funny thing is, that the very first recipe book she started, way back then, had hardly ever been used except for a few absolute favourites.  The Hungarian Chocolate Pancake Cake, the Petite Roulades and even the good old Sacher Torte sat quietly unnoticed as the girl whipped up batches of Anzac Biscuits, Butter Biscuits and Dutch Orange Cakes from her high school cookery book, banana cakes, rock buns and cinnamon teacakes for her hungry children.

One day the girl wondered to herself, and then to her sister, "What if I cooked every recipe in that first book?  One recipe a week. Just to see if they're any good."  After all it seemed a shame to have all those lovely sounding recipes sitting there untried.  They both agreed that it was a fine idea indeed although, at that rate it would take about three years to get through just that one book and a lifetime to get through the whole collection, even if she stopped collecting recipes that very day, which I can assure you, she will not.

 Inspired by the film 'Julie and Julia' but with no such expectations of fame, the girl decided to record her baking triumphs and failures in her blog.  So she made herself a cup of tea, opened the book to recipe no. 1, dated May 1984, a Viennese Chocolate Cake, written out in her best teenage handwriting and made a shopping list, written out in her scrawling grown-up handwriting.  Then, when time permitted, she put on her apron, and began creaming the butter and sugar, losing herself in the familiarity of the motion.