Facing a lion and Blueberry upside down cake

Have you ever feared something so great that all the blood rushed from your head and the breath left your lungs? 

I don't mean fear like if you're caught in an armed hold up or running from a hungry lion. I mean what others could judge as being unfathomable fear: the fear of public speaking, the fear of driving a car, the fear of great heights or the fear of tiny spiders. 

Do you think our brain knows the difference between the fear of running for your life from a lion or running from a spider? Ask a person paralysed by spiders, who is unable to utter a single word or move a muscle while that spider is 'hunting' them down. Do they think their fear is any less than the person paralysed by a would be lion attack? Fear is fear after all, is it not?

This week I have been going through my own unfathomable fear, and it's caused me to lash out at those very people trying to help me. It's also left me in a dark pit of despair and shaken me to my very core.

What could this great fear be?

My doctor says I need to go back to work.

Doesn't sound like much, does it? But to me, hearing those words sent me into fight or flight. First, I fought those attacking words with my own attacking words on why I'm not ready to go into a workplace after an almost 12 month hiatus. Then I went into flight response and simply became mute while my doctor talked to me about the importance of this next step in my recovery process. I responded with no eye contact and no words. What could I say, after all?

For all my brain knew someone could have been threatening my life. Our brains are smart, but they aren't that smart to work out the variances in fear. My brain was telling me this woman was threatening my life. How was I to work when my concentration can't even get through a page in a book? How was I to fit into a workplace for a whole day when spending a few hours with dear loved ones exhausts me? What work am I going to do? I can't do what I've been doing for the last 16 years because it's too stressful. Where do I go? What do I do? How do I do it? How will I cope? The lion had caught me and I was awaiting the final death blow.

It's been a few days now since this experience. Slowly I'm coming back out of my darkness. Slowly the fear is ebbing away. Slowly.

You see very little rational thinking can be done when you're in a state of fear. Does this excuse my behaviour? No, I don't think it does. What it does mean is I have to learn more tools to control that fear. I have to work with my support team by admitting I'm scared and that we need to work on some coping strategies. Most of all I need to not let this lion beat me, but to learn to run with it instead.

Today I'm dusting myself off and getting my apron back on. It's my dear old uni friend's birthday and she deserves the very biggest of smiles from me PLUS a birthday cake. A blueberry upside down cake should do the trick for a very upside down kind of week.

Blueberry upside down cake
Adapted from Thibeault's Table

Blueberry upside down cake

Ingredients
60g melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 cups blueberries (fresh or Frozen)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
125g butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla or vanilla bean paste
1 1/3 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
3/4 cup milk

Method
In a 20cm diameter round cake tin, combine melted butter and brown sugar. Spread evenly on bottom of tin. Spread blueberries evenly over top. Sprinkle with lemon juice.

Cream butter and sugar, beating until light. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix together flour, baking powder, and cinnamon if using. Add dry ingredients alternately with milk to creamed mixture. Spread batter evenly over blueberry layer.

Bake in 180°C oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. Let cool 10 minutes in pan, then turn out onto large flat plate.

Dreams, cheesecake filled strawberries and ricotta zucchini rolls

When a dream becomes reality, these tasty finger delights are a must to help you celebrate.

Cheesecake filled strawberries

We've all had dreams, and I'm sure many of you have even had some of them come true. Often the bigger the dream the harder we have to work to see them grace the light of day.

Recently I was very proud to witness a dream become a reality for my dear friend Sonia and her husband Ian. And it was fantastic!

First, let's turn the clock back to 2003. Sonia and Ian purchased an old (and I mean old) Queensland cottage in Paddington, Brisbane, to turn it into their dream home. Now I remember this 'old' house. I would happily liken it to a block of swiss cheese; especially when I had the pleasure of sleeping in it one winter thinking I was going to wake up in the morning with hypothermia. You think I'm being dramatic...but I tell you the truth.

Over the years I have watched Sonia and Ian slowly, patiently - and sometimes not so patiently -renovate this house into a beautiful, cosy, blissfully warm home.

All those that have renovated, or those that have had the pleasure of hiring trades people, will understand the stress, frustration and expense you are confronted with when dealing with people you do not know, about a subject matter that you do not know, and about things, that frankly, you also do not know. Or is that just me?

Here enters reviewatradie.com.au. This brain child has been 12 months in the making and will benefit all of us in Australia to provide us access to reviews about tradies and also allow us to write those reviews ourselves.

Looking for a plumber? Check out reviewatradie.com.au

Looking for a carpenter? Check out reviewatradie.com.au

Now please remember this is in early stages so Sonia and Ian need your help. If you have a tradie that you think is fantastic and would like everyone in your area to know about them then jump on to the site and write a review. The more people who do this, the more we give those good people some work.

So where's the food in all of this? Well, I got to make a couple of tasty treats for Sonia and Ian's big launch afternoon tea that I have just had to share with you. They are simple, delightful and positively scrump-diddly-umptious. I made cheesecake filled strawberries and ricotta zucchini rolls. Both were thanks to my new found addiction to pinterest.

Ricotta zucchini rolls
Adapted from Apple pie, patis and pates blog

makes approximately 24 zucchini rolls

Ricotta zucchini rolls

Ingredients

4 small zucchinis

salt and pepper

extra virgin olive oil

For the ricotta filling:

ricotta cheese, about a cup

juice from about half a lemon

mint leaves, about a handful (the original recipe uses basil)

roasted slivered almonds, about a handful

Method

This is one of those recipes where exact measurements do not matter. Add more or less of anything that is to your liking.

Cut off the stem end of the zucchini. Using a mandolin or a vegetable peeler, slice the zucchini lengthwise into thin strips.

Season with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Leave to marinate in the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes. The zucchini strips will be more translucent and pliable after resting.

Zucchini strips marinating in extra virgin olive oil.

Mix the ricotta cheese with the lemon juice. Season with salt and mix vigorously until thoroughly incorporated.

Finely chop the mint leaves. Add the mint and almonds to the ricotta mixture and mix until evenly distributed.

Fresh ricotta mixture

Place about 1 tablespoon of the ricotta filling on the cut end of the zucchini strips.

Roll the zucchini strip over the filling and plate.

So easy and healthy: Ricotta zucchini rolls.

Cheesecake filled strawberries
Adapted from The Sweets Life blog

Tasty little morsels of cheesecake filled strawberries

Ingredients

4 punnets of strawberries, washed and top cut

125g cream cheese, softened (or spreadable)

1 tbsp caster sugar (to taste. Add more if you want a sweeter mixture)

½ tsp vanilla extract

zest of one small lemon

about 5 crushed biscuits of any sort. I just used a honey oat biscuit.

Method

Prep all strawberries and set aside.

In a food processor, blend cream cheese, caster sugar, vanilla and lemon zest until creamy. Add a little cream or milk, as I had to, to get a smooth enough consistency to get through a piping bag.

Cheesecake mixture piped on to strawberries

 Add cream cheese mix to a piping bag or a freezer bag with the corner snipped off. Pipe mixture onto strawberries. Dip the top in your biscuit crumbs. If not serving immediately, refrigerate until serving.

Dipping the cheesecake filled strawberries into the cookie crumbs

Cheesecake filled strawberries - they look good enough to eat!

Wishing you all happy cooking adventures!

Working ovens and a Chocolate & Hazelnut Torta

My beloved and I have been in our own home for just over a year now; you can see a pic of her here. She's a cute little house.

But being over 80 years old comes with a certain number of ailments. She has difficulties with her joints, her plumbing and her wiring. Her laugh-lines, however, are delightful and full of character that can only be gained from 80 years of loving inhabitants.

When it comes to repairing the old girl, we are in for a marathon and not a sprint I'm afraid. Unless we win lotto (of which I've never bought a ticket), make a bucket load of cash from my blog (ha ha ha), or our puppies dig up hidden treasure in our backyard (unlikely - finding treasure that is, not the digging).

The point of this story is to talk about my oven. It is crap! Or it was crap.

Allow me to set the scene. Before we bought the old girl we were living in a brand new, 3 bedroom townhouse with a gas stove and electric oven. Tough life!

The gas stove and electric oven in our rental property

When we moved to our very own piece of paradise I inherited this:

The non-working oven and stove top

It actually doesn't look too bad in this photo. However, the two hot plates on the left don't work and the oven has a wonderful knack of burning EVERYTHING that goes into it. This is the reason why I have not blogged about anything to do with baking since moving in. I have tried multiple ways to bake in the thing: put a tray on the bottom to defuse the heat, only place your tray of goodies on the very top part (as it was always burning the bottom), keep the temperature lower/higher/medium, cook for a shorter time/longer time………yes, I have tried it all.

FINALLY my beloved and I agreed to buy an interim oven. In about five years time we are going to renovate the end of the house that the kitchen is in, but I couldn't last that long with the crap oven. So we welcomed:

My beloved installing the new oven

We bought if from eBay for a bargain AUD$311 brand new. It had a couple of dents in it making it cheap. I'm still getting used to have four working hot plates (although they are still electric) and an oven that I can finally bake in. I am still using, however, my little camper gas oven for a lot of what I do. Some of you might have noticed it in a few past posts here and here.

Now for the first time in a very long time I would like to share with you a scrummy cake recipe, that is also gluten free, and one that I could cook in my very own oven.  Enjoy!


Chocolate & hazelnut torta
by Delicious magazine, May 2012 edition
*SRKitchen note - this recipe can easily be halved or turned into two cakes. Because it is so rich you only small slices are needed, unless you have a real sweet tooth.

Chocolate & hazelnut torta

Ingredients
400g hazelnuts, roasted
400g good-quality dark chocolate
400g unsalted butter, at room temperature
300g caster sugar
10 eggs
Good-quality cocoa powder, to dust (optional)
*I also added in a half-cup sour cherries to break up the sweetness of this cake.

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Grease a 25cm spring-form cake pan with butter.

Roasted, then peeled hazelnuts

Rub roasted hazelnuts in a clean tea towel to remove skins, then coarsely grind nuts in a food processor. (SRKitchen tip - alternatively get friends/partners/children to help remove the skins from the
hazelnuts. Makes the job quicker and you get to natter while you do it).

coarsely ground hazelnuts

Melt the chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water (don't let the bowl touch the water), stirring until melted and smooth. Cool slightly.

Gently melting chocolate

Using electric beaters, beat the butter and sugar with a pinch of salt until thick and pale.

Beaten butter and sugar

Add cooled chocolate and mix well until smooth and combined.

Melted chocolate added to the butter and sugar

Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time beating well after each addition, until combined.

Crack your eggs in a separate dish, just in case
you get a bad one.

Fold in the hazelnuts

Torta mixture all ready to go in cake pan

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan. Bake for 40-50 minutes until the top is firm to touch and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. (SRKitchen tip - I am still getting used to my oven, however I found the cake needed a longer cooking time. If this is needed with you place a piece aluminium foil (buttered) over the top of the cake to stop it from burning, something I didn't do).

Turn off the oven, open the door and leave cake to rest in the oven for a further 30 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Dust with cocoa powder, slice in wedges and serve with fresh berries (or mascarpone, as I did).

My beautifully clean oven inside

Sicilian orange cake

This week was book club week. I know, I'm such a nerd. Book club is really just an excuse for a group of us to get together, gossip, eat, drink, laugh...oh, and read books.

Book club was held at my place this month, so I treated the gang to a wonderful Sicilian orange cake by Rick Stein, with a few TSRK changes.

This recipe is perfect for summer; or for my overseas friends, this is the perfect cake to prepare you for the summer months you have coming up.

Sicilian orange cake
by Rick Stein from Mediterranean Escapes

Sicilian orange cake with cream cheese icing and
lemon, lime and orange zest on top

Ingredients
250g lightly salted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
250g caster sugar
4 medium eggs
1.5 tsp finely grated orange zest
250g self-raising flour*
85ml freshly squeezed orange juice

Method
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees celsius. Grease and line a 22 cm spring back round cake tin with non-stick baking paper.

Using an electric whisk cream the butter and sugar together for 4-5 minutes until very pale. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating very well between each one. Beat in the orange zest. Add the flour* all at once and mix in well, then slowly mix in the orange juice.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer, inserted into the centre of the cake, comes out clean. It it starts to brown too quickly, which it always does in my oven, loosely cover the cake with a sheet of lightly buttered foil.

*Flour - I have found that making your own self raising flour works best for this cake. Simply use the same amount of plain flour and add 3 tsp of baking powder to it. It works a treat.

Rick Stein icing
This is a great simple icing and works perfectly.
125 g icing sugar
5 tsp freshly squeezed orange juice

Simply sift the icing sugar into a bowl and stir in the orange juice until you have a spreadable consistency. Spread it over the top of the cake letting it drip down the sides. Delicious.

TSRK icing
To make your cake look a little more exotic for a birthday party - or book club - this is the one I used that isn't too sweet.

250g cream cheese, at room temperature
50g butter, at room temperature
1tsp orange zest
1/4 cup icing sugar, or to your liking of sweetness

With an electric whisk mix the cream cheese and butter. Add the zest and sugar to your liking. Spread the icing over the top and sides of the cake. To decorate I simply finely grated orange, lemon and lime zest over the top for a little colour.

Digging in!