Kitchen Alchemy

Well Australia Day has come and gone and I have not posted a single recipe that might be of any use to anyone anywhere on this topic. That's because I'm not really doing much creative cooking at the moment. However, I will regale you with a happy memory of Australia Day - it was easily 10 years ago, when my sister had moved to the central coast. She found a beautiful beach called Catherine Hill Bay, and my friend Jeannette and I decided to head up there for Australia Day. There aren't too many beaches in Sydney where a person can take their dog and allow them to run free. At Catherine Hill Bay you could happily do this at the far end of the beach. To get there you had to drive through a grave yard, park under some trees and traipse over some sandy hills to reach the beach. Jeannette and I had bought grass mats for the occassion. The idea was to lay down the grass mats and place our towels over the top to make a much more comfy position for ourselves to enjoy the ...

Straight out of school my first job was as a braille proofreader. No! I'm not blind! But I worked in partnership with a guy who was. He'd read a braille print out and I'd follow the original text and tell him if there were words missing or if there were punctuation problems with the transcript. We frequently stopped to chat because reading all day every day can get tedious. And one thing we chatted about was cooking. As it turned out, my colleague and I both had a thing for caramel fudge. So when I left that job and found the corner shop near my new job sold amazing home made caramel fudge, I naturally sent some back to my old work buddy. He didn't really like it - he preferred the Scottish tablet type of fudge which was a bit harder and more crystaline. But I liked the squidgey stuff. And I frequently was able to get fudge right after it was delivered while it was still warm. Years later I asked the guys who sold the fudge why they didn't stock it any ...

When I was a little kid my mother used to make the most amazing chocolate cake. It was a dark, moist cake, layered with whipped cream, which she sometimes flavoured with coffee. She made that cake for me to take to my second grade christms party one year. Mum sure had a lot of confidence that a bunch of seven year old kids would love the flavour of chocolate and coffee together. But she was right - that cake was devoured right down to the last crumb. I'm still of the opinion that a chocolate cake is the best kind of cake for any occassion. I made this one recently for a friend's mum's birthday. I added a few extra flourishes to turn it into a celebration cake. Ingredients 2 cups water 3 cups caster sugar 250g butter 2/3 cup cocoa powder 1tsp bicarb soda 4 eggs 3 cup self raising flour 1. Combine the water, sugar, butter and cocoa powder in the largest saucepan you've got. Place over a medium heat and bring to the boil, watching carefully that the m...