Past Week's Highlights

  Top of the morning to ya!

   I'm not setting a very good record. It has been shamefully long since I have posted and I've already broken my resolution to be consistent. 

   It's been quite a busy week or so and we are currently honoured with the presence of friends who are expecting their first baby and daughter today or tomorrow. (I will make a post soon about them.) They say watch pots never boil... Try waiting for a baby!  Granted, it's only 16:15hrs and today is her due date; but I am impatient to see this gorgeous baby. (And I am positive that Sarah is even more ready to have her baby than I am.)  ... On top of that, I have added baby-holding competition because Grandma flew in from the states. I have a feeling I've been drastically bumped down in pecking order. ;-)

    In the meantime, I have preoccupied myself with different baking brainstorms. Besides their passion for meats and braais, South Africans (or at least Afrikaners) love their puddings and custards. They also eat a lot of cake. So, I decided to take it upon myself to come up with a vanilla cake with custard filling. So, I made a custard using a simple online recipe I found. (Tasted like glorified sweetened condensed milk.) Then I googled a good vanilla cake recipe. And finally, I just made some basic buttercream frosting with the usual butter, confectioner's sugar, milk, vanilla extract, and a pinch of salt for good measure. 

   This is how it went:

     

And we have the cake batter...

One of the two layers. I could already tell from the first one (I had to bake them separately because I only had one pan) that these were going to be pretty dense. A lot of factors contributed to it's texture and weight. Trial and error. Trial and error. I just have to remind myself of Thomas Edison.  ;-) 

Morgan - my darling perfectionist sister - did the honours of leveling the cake.

Voila! The final product. Strawberry formation is a courtesy of my brother, Craig. (He wants full credit for that one and rightly so.)

Oven oat pancakes with Bulgarian plain yoghurt (!!!!), strawberry jam, and honey or syrup. This was one of our breakfasts. I had to do the recipe from memory because I couldn't find it online. It comes from the *amazing* cookbook Hearth and Home. Excellent quick, healthful breakfast. A winner for our family and guests.

 And my personal favorite breakfast: cinnamon pancakes with sauteed cinnamon-sugar apples. 

"Well... that's all I have to say about that."