2013 - The Most Five (PM)

Woot! Holidays! Well, technically it's more like a lunchbreak for me at the moment, but holidays are just around the corner, so I no complain.
Great Most Five list Mate. 

Let's take a wander back through the year of K and settle on five of the best bits. It was a year of pretty good bits, so it might be hard to narrow it down, but lets's try.

1. Running 10 kms.
I'm not one to make new year's resolutions, or set goals really. Goals are for sitting in between at the MCG, as far as I'm concerned. Heh. Not really. But kind of. Anyway, this year I decided that I was going to run 10kms in the wild, as opposed to on a treadmill. I have never been a runner you see, so for most of my life such a think seemed quite impossible to me. But then I started running more and more so about this time last year it popped in to my head as something I might be able to. At that point, the most I had run in the wild was a lap of Princess Park. So 10kms seemed like a big deal. And I totally did it. That was pretty rad for me.

2. That sandwich I ate that time. 
I don't know whether many most five lists will contain sandwiches but goddamn it mine does. It totally does. God save that sandwich and long may it reign.

3. Iceland
My whole european holiday ruled. I mean, you saw the kinds of sandwiches I was eating. I saw and did some wonderful things. But the best thing, the very very best thing, was Iceland.

That place imprinted on me the way wolves get imprinted on in Twilight, but everyone wears shirts in Iceland. I loved it and think about it often.

That's the kind of thing you see on the side of the road in Iceland.

4. Baby, Niecey and Little Nut's grasp of language.
When J told me about Baby saying "you fucko!" I was at my desk at work. I had to laugh discretely and doing so was harder than running 10 kms in the wild.  The mouths of babes are the funniest places in the world. And now there are so many babies to say funny things it's only going to get funnier from here on in.

5. This
This year was a year where, thanks to knocking around with Appleheart a lot, coming home to this kind of thing became a possibility.

Those are roasted salted almonds. That guy, I tell you what.
Happy this time of year everybody! See you in 2014!

2013 - The Most Five (AM)

Woot! It's here y'all. Holiday time. I am on holidays. And soon, I hope, K will be too. And today is our MSC break up day. YEAH! You know lots of blogs and newspapers and magazines and radio shows and television shows like to round up the year with top five lists. Best moments, worst moments, that kind of jazz. And here at MSC HQ we like to reflect on the year too. But something occurred to me while looking back on the year. First really, how the eff would I do any kind of top list? I mean, what do you base your answer on. And second, so many of my highs were somehow entwined with the lows. So for you I have my five most list. Just a bunch of things that made me most laugh, cry, and fall in love all over again. In no particular order.

1. Blur. Well, I've said it before, but how can I not say it again. Definitely one of the best moments of the year was when the Big Day Out announced Blur were playing. ONE OF THE BEST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR! And without a doubt that moment when my heart was ripped out and fell, like so many bloody lumps on the butcher's floor, barely beating to the floor... well that was one of the worst.

2. Baby is so lingual. And it is awesome. He is also really inquisitive. Which is also great, of course. But gee, having to answer 50,000 "why?" questions a day can be rough. Real rough. But his ever increasing vocabulary is generally a real joy. The other night as he was getting ready for bed he was looking at a book and I said, "Is that the book you want to read tonight." And he replied by saying, "No, I want a different book tonight, you fucko!" I had to leave the room I needed to laugh so much and when I tried to tell LB the story I was in tears and could not get the words out past the laughter. Still, he said it a little aggressively and I certainly don't want him calling people fucko. Most best and most worst. Again.

3. Visiting Mondonna in LA and then the Big Apple! What fun, what laughs. But gee it was tiring. And a bit hard. But I went to the motherflipping desert. And that was really the most. And best. That whole trip was great, but the California desert. WHOA! 

4. Hair and nails! Remember how I got a manicure in New York and then I was all "Hey! I'm gonna get manicures all the time!" And then I got one in Melbourne and it was chipped within 3 days. Remember how I got that haircut I hated (of course you do! I have barely spoken of anything else since.) I feel like I have been on some crazy journeys with these keratin filled biomaterials. And I haven't necessarily liked it. But hey, that is what is great about the year's end! You get to put all the shit from that year in the past and move on. Oh sure, time - it's just some theoretical concept, but what isn't!

5. Babies! I've met some rad babies this year produced by some of the finest people I know. And next year I'll meet some more rad babies. The most!

I hope K has some great mosts.

And I hope everyone is about to have some great holidays and festivities.

See you on the flip side!

Oh! Ewan! James! I'm so glad you could drop by today! Sure, you can bring your friend Chiwetel.

Upstairs Neighbours (PM)

I used to live in a flat on the first floor which meant I both had upstairs neighbours and was an upstairs neighbour. I actually remember nothing about the upstairs neighbors, I guess they were quiet. Plus, those flats had carpet which I guess helped. I definitely remember the downstairs neighbours, among whom lived a liturgical dancer of soft mannerisms and who, a Google search has led me to believe, may now be a woman, though as my neighbour s/he was a man. Those neighbours, rightly, complained when they found cigarette butts on their balcony. Now, I can't imagine anyone in our flat being so jerky they would throw cigarette butts down from the balcony. I guess it was an accident. Or it was the almost unbearable friends of the almost forgotten flat mate. Or it is the kind of shit which you don't think about when you are 20.

Which may explain the behaviour of the birds, Mate. Just young and careless.

Right now my only upstairs neighbours are possums. Like the birds they seem to  make a noise completely disproportionate to their size. As if they are dragging human bodies around the roof cavity. Just to be on the safe side, I do not fuck with those possums.

Upstairs Neighbours (AM)

My flat is on the top floor, which is good because it means I don't have to deal with the sound of upstairs neighbours. I'm told that this is an issue with ground floor flats, the sound travels down from above and it can be quite disruptive. You hear them walking, you hear them talking, you hear them making love to their boyfriends and girlfriends (eww...making love....J is going to hate reading that...sorry).

I've been pretty lucky really with my top floor life so far. And I guess I should have taken the time to stop and smell the roses so to speak because now a family of birds are nesting on my roof and the party is over, it is OVER.

I first noticed the sounds of gently rummaging a few months ago and thought, oh, how cute, some little birdy is on my roof. Then I would hear a little bit of chirping from time to time and again I thought it was cute.

I pictured something like this was going on:

A couple of little scamps having a nice time up there.

Heh,  here's an amusing aside. When I searched 'rainbow lorikeet' to find that photo, google suggested 'rainbow lorikeet diet'. I wonder whether there is some hot new diet where one eats like a rainbow lorikeet and drops the kilos just in time for summer. Or maybe you eat nothing but rainbow lorikeets and drop five kilos just in time for summer.

Anyway, as the days and weeks have passed, what was once gentle rummaging has turned in to what sounds like a birdy frat house. Those little bastards make a hell of a racket. First of all, there seems to be lots more of them. And they chirp a lot. And they run across the roof a lot and though their talons may be small, they are very noisy.  And what's with all the running. They have wings and the power of flight and it's a real slap in the face to know that they are just throwing it all away.
Also, they are active between the hours of 5 and 9am. They're working 5 to 9 and it is no way to make a living, believe you me.

Now I picture them like this:

And I want them to go away!

Nearly there (PM)

Wow, your boss sounds like a stand-up guy, Mate! My office closes between Christmas and New Year too. But the only day of free leave we get is the 27th, though to be fair to my work there are only 2 other days that aren't public holidays in that period and you are allowed to take 'miscellaneous leave' on those days. A leave kind that can also be used for having your dog put down or the other miscellanies of life. So I guess that's something. Plus, if you work in an organisation that has been in the news due to workplace bullying and suspected espionage I guess you gotta take what you can get right?

This, I've decided, this will be my last week before a whole 2 weeks off too, so I am likewise excited. But I wish Oprah had put a goodies bag under my chair.

Still, I guess holidays are as good as an Oprah goodies bag right. I intend to spend mine pretty much looking like this.*

*In my dreams of course. In reality they will more look like this:

Nearly there (AM)

Last week, at the Christmas party, our new boss announced he would be closing the office at midday on Christmas Eve and not be reopening it until the new year. Everyone was to spend that time with their people, he said. If we had applied for annual leave during that period, it would be credited back to us. The crowd erupted into a round of spontaneous applause and if he had told us to look under our seats for some kind of gift pack a-la Oprah, I wouldn't have been surprised. 

But this means that today begins my last week of work for a while and readers, I'm excited. So excited I'm going to play you a song. The worst song on a playlist I listen to when I exercise, by which I mean  my favourite. It's kind of a Eurovision song and by rights I should hate it but I don't, I really don't. 

I'll leave the rest of the explaining to Tarkan. Please give him a chance. 

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tu5s1KS9SU&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2Tu5s1KS9SU

Reflections on hunks (PM)

Consider this

Wow, it feels so right to be thinking and talking about hunks again.

Obviously Hemsworth is the stand out hunk of 2013, if for no other reason than this was the year that he emerged from the "is this a hunk?" chrysalis to become the beautiful hunky butterfly the collective crab-consciousness now knows him to be.   

I think the A- assessment is probably fair, but I also think perhaps he will grow and consolidate his  hunkiness and maybe even one day become a hall-of-famer. The man has a certain something that separates him from the others. It could be the simple fact that he is the only hunk around, but I think it's more thank that. I talked to my Mum on the phone just after she had seen Rush, and she did not ask me a single question about my life, she just wanted to talk about Hemsworth. So who knows where this could go.

The other thing I realised in 2013 is that James McAvoy is continuing his slow hunky burn, and maybe has made an even bigger impression on me than I first realised.
Consider this:
 
The other day I was driving along in my beloved Renault Clio and Appleheart said to me "You know, James McAvoy used to drive a Clio."



As soon as he said it,  the hunk part of my heart went schwing!  and it was quite surprising, and a little bit dangerous because I was driving a car at the time, but mostly surprising. I mean, it's not like a saw a picture of him. I just heard his name.

So I guess I hope a couple of new McAvoy films come out next year so I can learn more.   

Reflections on hunks (AM)

Sometimes I read old Miss Soft Crab posts. Usually because I want to see if we have already written about something, or what we have said on a topic. Sometimes because I see an intriguing tag that I can't remember and wonder what it relates to, sometimes just because I know this blog is really funny. Anyway on one such trip through the MSC archives I saw some pictures of Gael Garcia Bernal. Broadly speaking, they looked like this.

Hot!

And you can imagine what a pleasant surprise it was. Of course he was a Hunk of the Month so I shouldn't have been surprised to see him, but I guess it just really brought home the hunk recession we are living though. I know we have talked about it before but I guess I felt it was time to revisit the sad state of affairs and reflect on some of my thoughts on hunks over the past year. A year in which this blog, a blog with 49 posts bearing the 'hunk' tag only had 7, SEVEN hunk-tagged posts.

So, the year in hunks. What are my thoughts?


1. I guess the first thing to acknowledge is that despite some early questions, I am pretty sure that Chris Hemsworth is a hunk. Not quite A-grade, but certainly not B-grade. Like A- I guess. Shall we double check?

I guess the thing that confirmed it for me was that although I had wondered if I just thought he was hot because he was Thor, the ads for Rush confirmed that he was also quite hot as James Hunt, so you know, I guess the guy really is a hunk. Phew, sure am glad that question got answered!

Hot!

2. The hunks of my youth really came back into focus for me. Maybe it was because The Great Gatsby put Leonardo DiCaprio to the fore, but I really felt like this year I could move on from the 2010 puffy Leonardo to just kind of respect and appreciate him as an actor and some kind of hunk. Not a phwaor kind of hunk, something more subtle than that. A guy who has a special spot in my hunk heart. Even Ben Affleck managed to overcome, to some extent, his mid career follies (Bennifer, Pearl Harbour, that smug smirk he has - an ongoing problem really). I guess it as if, disappointed by their aging and revelations of them as possible douches, I rejected early hunks as if broken hearted, but now I've matured, they've matured, and I think we can finally be friends.

3. Ewan is still really hot.

Well, 2014, feel free to offer up some new hunks. There is still plenty of room.

Summer Whites (PM)

Other great white things of summertime:

Sour cream, that goes so nice in my burritos. Obviously burritos are a year-round food but all Mexican seems better in the summertime, and that's a fact.

Lemon flavoured Calippo. The only Calippo for me. These other flavours they have now, I don't care for them. Though Appleheart and I did have a cola Calippo in Berlin earlier this year and I can't say that was a problem for me. But that's not the point, the point is lemon Calippo is white and tart and sweet and delicious. Just like its icy cousins the lemonade icypole and lemon gelato. White summertime ice treats! 

Sheets that dry in the sun in half an hour. I dislike bed linen that is not white but my natural born grubbiness makes it hard to justify. Not in summer! Napisan plus and the sun makes it all ok. 

I also very much like buffalo mozzarella and these nice white flowers. 

Summer whites (AM)

White clothes in winter can be really nice. Though me, I tend to opt for cream in that cold season. But when summer comes around I want white, white, white. It's so fresh and cooling you know. And if you can pair it with grey, even better. Mmmmmm cold.

It is why, despite a long-running, one-sided feud with Gorman I had to be the bigger man and buy these shoes for summer.

In fact they are super light grey, practically white, basically mixing my two favourite summer colours into one single colour. Well played,  Gorman, you may have won this round...

It is also why I have been wanting a white Swatch for ages.

I finally bought one when we were in America and then lost it shortly after returning home. But this weekend, while crawling under the bed Baby saw something stuck between the mattress and the slats he liked the look of*, and hey presto, I got my watch back just in time to fit into all my fantasy summer outfits. Yeah boyyeeee.

Also, this love of white is, I guess, why I can't stop thinking about buying these.

And, if I'm to be honest, by the end of the week they will probably be mine.

What I really want is to dress in white and light grey all the time when it's hot, but the sweat and chilli oil of summer means sometimes I gotsta dress more practical like, you know. That's why ya gotta accesorise. Aight?! White!

*Swatches tick really, really loudly, I guess I stuffed the watch under the mattress in a sleepy stupor.

Sounds like my Wednesday night (PM)

Mate, your Wednesday night sounds great! And nothing like my Wednesday night.

Not that I can complain. I had Indian takeaway that really hit the motherflipping spot. Then I watched an episode of QI totally uninteruppted. Then I went to bed at 9:30 because I was exhausted after a bad night sleept the night before and attending the Fowles' renovator auction where I had to fight every tradey, man, his pregnant wife and their dog for hot deals on bathroom vanities and laundry sinks. So I guess you could say RIPing kind of sounds like my Wednesday night. But not in the same way that it sounds like James Gandolfini's.

Sounds like my Wednesday night (AM)

While I don't want to break the magical spell that we have cast which has you guys thinking that we write Miss Soft Crab on the mornings and afternoons of the day we post, I feel compelled to tell you what I'm doing right now.

It's Wednesday night and I'm at the nova by myself drinking a beer and eating a choc top and waiting for my film to start.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

Now it really is Thursday morning. I just wanted to add that the film I saw - Enough Said - was really good. I love James Gandolfini. I hope he's R'ing IP right now. 

Acrostic Monday (PM)

Please don't make me work

On hot summer days

Oh, how I long for

Lounging at the pool

Acrostic Monday (AM)

Instantly you arrived 

The very day you were meant to,

Summertime. 

How come spring didn't do that?

Expected us to be so grateful for the scraps it threw our way. 

Respecting us so little along the way. 

Eff Spring. Long live the summertime!

The sweet scent of summer (PM)

I basically loved everything about yesterday because not only was it warm and sunny, but there was no wind. It's the wind that really cheeses me off.  I have actual feelings of hatred towards it. 

But yesterday wind was all "where's the party?" and the sun was all "party? what party? I'm just going to stay home and wash my hair today" and that's exactly what happened. 

It was so warm and lovely yesterday that I walked home from yoga still wearing my yoga gear and at times, the black blazer I wear to work so I didn't look so naked. It looked stupid, sure, but was I loving being out in the warm summery evening?

You bet I was. 

The sweet scent of summer (AM)

Like most people I've been pretty damn cheesed off about this pathetic excuse for a spring. Maybe it's because all the rain has made life with this bullshit haircut more unbearable than I knew was possible. Maybe it's because I can't fit into my jeans and so have nothing to wear when the it is cold and wet. Maybe it's because it's been cold for the last 8 months and the reviving trip to North American summer only had reviving powers to last 6 to 8 weeks.Whatever it is I'm...cheesed off. I'm not saying this spring has been total bullshit. There have been nice days all over the place, I'll admit it. But there have also been so many bullshit cold wet days it's easy to forget the winners. And yesterday, yesterday was really the first taste of summer. Am I right?

 Like first in the morning I had to drive across town and it was hot and uncomfortable and I didn't like it much. But later in the day when I was at the pool I was pretty much loving the shit out of it.

After my swim (relax in the kids pool) I ran into a friend in the change room. She'd just arrived and complained about the heat "It's really hot. You know how you want it but then when it gets here you realise you are not prepared?" she said. I did know what she meant but after two hours in the pool I was pretty removed from that feeling. It wasn't long though until, waiting among a bunch of cu...people to be served some delicious ice cream at Messina I was hot and annoyed and I knew exactly what she meant. Hot hot heat can suck.

Tell that to the me that ate my dinner by the beach though as the sun set and boats sailed in.

Or the me that ate stone fruit salad for dessert.

The me that struggled to get comfortable for sleep due to heat would believe you though.

Summer, it makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you fall in love all over again.

The five stages of grief (PM)

Yeah. Tender is my heart for screwing up my life.

I just wish I had never let myself dream this goddamned stupid dream. I thought seeing blur was something that would never happen to me and I was getting on with life just fine. Sure, there were moments when it hurt, but life hurts, am I right? I was getting on with it.
Then this impossible thing happened. They were coming. And we were going to see them. And Strawberry and Chickpea would be there and it would be just like the 1990s. We were going to laugh and cry and fall in love all over again.
And now now it has unhappened. And I have to go back to the way it was before. I have to undream the dream. And that's really goddamned hard to do. Especially when No Distance Left to Run is playing.

Maybe they've become really puffy as they've aged, and seeing them would have been depressing.

Let's check!

Fuck you blur. I love you blur.

The five stages of grief (AM)

 
Yesterday I was doing some house painting. You know the kind of work, something that requires some attention but does leave a lot of your brain free to think about things. It can be quite enjoyable. I had my iPod on shuffle, it's better, I think, than just listening to an album when you are doing this kind of work cause it gives you more direction for your brain journey. Like, I wondered about why I find the song by Biggie, 'Big booty hos' quite offensive, while NWA's 'She swallowed it' barely offends me at all. I guess it depends what you grow up with, right? I thought about how seeing Prince live was not life changing, but in many ways it was kind of life defining. I thought about how I can't believe I'm going to get to see Blur at the Big Day Out. About how it was such a long-time dream. About how I would do anything to be up the front see Damon right there. About how it was too good to be true.

And then, maybe an hour later I got this message from K.

I knew instantly what it meant. I hadn't known anything and when I saw the message I knew Blur had cancelled the BDO shows. Of course I googled it right away and it was just one of those times when being right sucks the most.

And then, well then I spent the rest of the day on the Kubler-Ross journey.

First, denial. I could not fucking believe it. Even though I knew as soon as I saw K's text that it was happening, I could not fucking believe it.

Then anger. Fuck you BDO organisers for "shifting goalposts and [creating] challenging conditions" and fuck you Blur for cancelling. Fuck you all. (I love you Blur. I love you.)

I pretty much skipped bargaining because I'm not an idiot and I know I can't do anything to change things. 

Then depression.

Finally, acceptance. A depressed kind of acceptance. I guess it's possible that I'm not over the depression. I guess grief wasn't processed in a day.

I know how you feel, Damon. I know how you feel

Project Chocolate Cake - Final Reflections (PM)

Whoa! Mate, I think you may be onto something.

First, some final reflections on Nigella's cake:
-Like K and the D.Leb cake, after eating a few more slices of Nigella's cake my affection for it grew.
-Every time I got a bit of icing on my finger and then licked it off I was blown away by it's deliciousness. Try that icing you guys! But on a different cake.
-My mum told me the cake was delicious. "Don't you think the icing made it too sweet?" I asked her, but she just looked dubious and as if she just thought it was a really good cake. But I think she really likes chocolate cake a lot.

But I've been thinking things too, and I think that K is right. Think about any chocolate cake you have eaten in the last 15 years. Think about the ones about which you have declared, "Far out, this is delicious." What were those cakes like? Super chocolatey, probably rich, probably fudgy. Not at all like the straight up cake of childhood, which is kind of what I was hoping I would be able to make and would be delicious. Sure, that may be possible if you are living in a fool's paradise. But I'm living in a gangsta's paradise. Or something.

Project Chocolate Cake - Final Reflections (AM)

I've had a few conversations with people about the chocolate cake project over the last few days, and thought it might be a good idea to summarise what we've learnt and make some final reflections before we all move on with our lives. 

It seems that the chocolate cake project has stirred up a feeling or two in a few of Miss Soft Crab's beloved readers. In summary, it seems that people:

- love, and I mean love, talking to me about chocolate cake at the moment.

-are impressed with the matrix and excited by the opportunities it presents 

-remember top shelf chocolate cakes from when they were little, but have no recipe that they make now that they're sold on

It's making me wonder whether maybe, just maybe, chocolate cake is something that is just better in childhood. I mean, we all had different standards back then, didn't we? We all loved cake, we all loved chocolate, and we all loved icing. Childhood chocolate cakes brought all these things together and didn't give a damn about whether the chocolate flavour came from cocoa or melted chocolate (as if real chocolate came anywhere near childhood chocolate cakes...AS IF), they didn't give a damn about how much sugar was involved, they didn't give a damn about whether the cakes came out flat.  They just showed up and that was enough to make our little kid hearts explode. But now we've been around the block a few times, we've tasted good chocolate, we've tasted good cake, we want more. We're like junkies chasing the thrill of our first taste and I'm not entirely sure it's possible. 

Having said that, I may have had a few more slices of the D.Leb cake and my love for it only grew. I stand by my original comments...it doesn't taste mega-chocolatey in and of itself... but gee whiz readers, I've tasted worse things. You bet I have. I still plan on making the Felicity Cloake recipe at some point, but that's something for down the track. Right now I have to start thinking about christmas baking because I think this is the year I am going to try my hand at a gingerbread house. And mince pies. But the gingerbread house...that shit takes planning, because i'm not talking about some bullshit ikea flat pack gingerbread house (even though I kind of love ikea food) I'm talking about the real thing.

Anyway, I just thought I'd say those things about chocolate cake, because if there's one thing this project has taught me, it's that chocolate cake makes people feel a lot of feelings. 

No idea what I'm talking about? Catch up here, here, here and here. 

Project Chocolate Cake - The Cakes are Baked (PM)

Well, for me, Sunday was baking day. And I gotta tell ya, things did not go exactly to plan for me either.

Firstly, I'm flipping sick. A motherflipping cold. I can't really taste anything properly.

Secondly, because I only have one 20cm-cake tin and because I also didn't want to have too much cake I decided to halve Nigella's recipe, which, like D.Lebs also called for two cakes to be baked and then sandwiched together with an icing. I even thought to myself as I was measuring up, "Well I guess I will inevitably forget to halve something." And, as it was inevitable, I did. I halved everything except the eggs. Is that so bad? I don't know but I do know my cake didn't rise at all. Then again, neither did K's D.Leb cake, so maybe it was just some par for this weird course. Oh sure the cake got a giant dome, like all cakes (how the eff do you make an even topped cake?!?!?), but the edges, pah like pancakes. Has this got anything to do with the egg double up? Who knows.

Oh, sure I could have made the cake again, you know for science, but I've seen what happens to bloggers that cook and test and cook and test recipes.

Not an actual blogger

But, my own personal fuck-up notwithstanding this is definitely a cake with potential. Chucking a bunch of ingredients in a mixer and mixing them before chucking it in a tin and baking, my kind of cake.

As discussed, Nigella's recipe did not have enough cocoa. I tried her recommended dose but tasting the mix I decided it really needed a double up. So I doubled up.


So Nigella wants you to make two cakes, sandwich them together with icing, and ice, top and sides, with icing. Me, I'm not much of an icing gal. Its too sweet for my tastes so I was gonna kybosh the sandwiching, but after coming up with the flatty cake I decided the sandwich would add some height and substance.

The icing is a mixture of sour cream, butter, chocolate, golden syrup and icing sugar. I used a third of the sugar Nigella suggested, you know for thickness, it was pretty sweet, but also, it was pretty damn delicious.

So let's get down to brass tacks. The cake is moist and chocolatey and basically exactly like a chocolate cake. It's yum. But like the Lebovitz cake, the real chocolate hit comes from the icing, and that is not how I want my cake. Plus with the icing, it really was way to fucking sweet. What I know though is that I have learned some lessons. I'd like to try this cake again, maybe up the rising agents slightly, leave off the icing. Or modify it. 

I know that this is a chocolate cake I could meet again. Is it the one? I don't think so. Plus with this cold so the whole affair has been less scientific than I would have liked, because my taste buds and appetite are all askew. But science isn't made in a day.

Project Chocolate Cake - The Cakes Are Baked (AM)

Saturday was baking day and well you guys...things did not go quite as expected for me.

The cake itself was fine. A breeze to put together and it produced a lovely silky smooth batter.

There was a not a huge amount of batter mind you, so when split in to two pans (as the recipe called for) it  yielded two relatively flat cakes.

Not to worry, I thought. It will all come together nicely when it's assembled and iced.
But the opposite of that happened!

The ganache was kind of a disaster. The recipe called for 300 grams of chocolate, half a cup of water and about 160 grams of butter. While I'm more used to the traditional cream/chocolate combo,  I have no reason to doubt David Lebovitz so I did just as he said.

Problems arose as soon as I started to whisk the butter in. It just wouldn't integrate properly. I kept going, thinking maybe it would come good as I added more but it really didn't. It basically started off split, and didn't stop being split.
Soon butter was just pooling in the bowl.
I decided to add some icing sugar and that helped, but shit guys. Its not meant to be like this.

Basically the assembled cake looked really fugly. 

I had to put Vaseline on the lens so it would look half decent. Not really. I suspect I accidentally smeared some butter on my camera phone lens because baking and photography really don't mix. 

Anyway, I decided to put hundreds and thousands on top, again so it would look a little more presentable. 

Better. But still not great.

Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that bit came later.

I took it to the Neville's house where I was going for dinner on Saturday night. 

When I cut in to it, I have to say I liked what I saw.

Fluffy and moist. Dark and chocolatey. Just what I was hoping for. 

And the taste, readers. The all important taste. It was delightful, truly delightful. A deadset sweet treat, but not cloyingly sweet. But...it wasn't very chocolatey. Sure, the ganache tasted like chocolate. The cake's taste declared itself of the chocolate family. But I think I wanted more. 

Perhaps this is impossible if one also wants a light and fluffy texture,  which happily becomes a little fudgey the next day. 

Perhaps you can't have both lightness and bold chocolateyness. Regardless, this is an excellent cake, and one I would totally make again. But, I think I'm going to have to try the Felicity Cloake recipe too.  I've seen what no chocolate in the recipe can do, now science needs me to see what chocolate in a recipe can do. 

Unless...the nigella recipe J is tried can answer the question. 

Project Chocolate Cake - the matrix

So you guys, we made a chocolate cake matrix. You can check it out for reals here! Basically we broke down seven recipes we were interested in as previously reported.

The recipe were:
Dan Lepard's sour cream chocolate cake
David Lebovitz's devil's food cake
Felicity Cloake's perfect chocolate cake
Nigella's old fashioned chocolate cake
Smitten Kitchen's everyday chocolate cake
Add A Pinch's best chocolate cake ever
Skye Gyngell's chocolate cake

J:  Ok, so looking at the matrix what are your initial thoughts?

K:  Ok, the first thing that comes to my mind is...I don't think I'm pro-oil in a chocolate cake. That's seriously the first thing that comes to mind for me. What's your oil position?

J:  Interesting. I don't mind that so much. I mean, sure, butter is great, but I quite like the texture that oil gives cake. I guess my first thought is that lots of fat really makes cake moist and delicious, and I guess I have been trying to figure out what the most important factor is for me. Though I guess there is no single factor

K: Fat has got to be up there. It's got to be way up there. And personally I think some actual chocolate is important. But the fact that only three of seven recipes has real chocolate makes me think that it's not essential for chocolate flavour. I think one of us should make a recipe with chocolate and one without...

J:  You know I was thinking about this recently. As in every day this week. I don't think chocolate is necessary at all. For a brownie that requires fudgeyness, YES! But for cake, no. I make this self-saucing chocolate pudding from Te Cooks Companion sometimes with just cocoa and it is so chocolatey and delicious! I make chocolate ice-cream with just cocoa. I think that chocolate in a cake of the everyday variety I am after is not necessary and I am more than happy to make one.

K: Ok excellent. Let's put this shit to the test.  I agree with you about the chocolateyness of self-saucing pudding, and that has no chocolate anywhere near it. That makes me think that maybe chocolate cake doesn't need it, and it's just my perception that it does. And obviously when the doors of perception are cleansed we can see things as they really are. Or whatever.

Let's talk sugar. Are you a caster, white or brown girl?

J:  Well, I like the depth of flavour of brown sugar, obvs, but to be honest when it comes to baking I just use whatever I am told to or whatever I have on hand, I tend to feel that when you bake the subtletly of sugar flavour is lost so it doesn't matter. But maybe I am wrong. Shit, am I wrong? On the sugar vibe though I have to say that my main concern when I look at the matrix is the fucking quantity! 400grams! 320 grams! These people are kidding me.

K:  I agree. There are some real sugar fiends out there. They need to lay of the gear.

J:  Yeah, I confess that when following American recipes I usually use about 75% of their recommended dosage.

K:  Smart.

What are your thoughts about additions like coffee and vanilla? I suspect these are the sorts of flavours that aren't meant to be noticed, but to make the chocolate aspect taste more chocolatey.

J:  Yes I agree and I am all for it!

K:  Ok great. Should we try one recipe with and one without?

J:  Almost all the recipes have at least one of them. Let's not limit ourselves on this factor. Is there a recipe you are most drawn to? And if yes, is it based on the matrix do you think, or your first contact with it?

K:  The Felicity Cloake one was my initial favourite, but that's largely a first contact interest. I still like what it's got to offer. Chocolate. Butter. Muscovado sugar. Milk. I like the way it's described as light enough for tea but rich enough for dessert. But when you look at it alongside the others, it does seem like it would be awfully rich. What do you think?

J:  Yeah, it would probably be delicious, but also very rich, definitely. I was quite attracted to the Nigella one at first, the simplicity, plus my love of her chocolate molten babycakes. But when I look at that in the matrix and see how little cocoa it has compared to the others it looks awfully unchocolatey.

K:  It sure does. You know, we don't have to be slaves to these recipes. I mean, we've already learnt some things from the matrix. You could double the cocoa in the Nigella cake and see what happens. Or, what about the David Lebovitz cake? I think that one's got a lot of potential.

J:  Definitely. First, I totally trust that guy! Second, I like how it has all the necessary components in respectable quantities (compared to the others). Plenty of cocoa, enough fat, not stupid amounts of sugar. DL knows whats what, yo!

K:  For real. And speaking of not stupid amounts of sugar, Dan Lepard has a very reasonable amount in his cake. But a fair whack of honey. And very little cocoa. But a little chocolate. I wonder what it would be like...

J:  Yeah, it's true, it has some interesting things going on, but I have to say the picture doesn't crab me like some of the others do. Ok, are we going to base our baking on the matrix only? Should we, for science?

 

K:  Haha. Crab  you.

J:  Grab me! I wish I'd intentionally said crab me!

K:  Oh well. What are you thinking of basing the baking on, outside the matrix?

J:  Oh, I just mean, can pictures come into it?

K:  Oh, sure. Sure they can! We're here for a good time, not a long time Mate. We would be fools to ignore an important source of evidence like pictures.

J:  Ok, still I don't know. I think one of us should definitely try David Lebovitz's cake.

K:  Agreed. Should we dismiss Smitten Kitchen and Skye Gyngell due to too much sugar?

J:  Yes, I think so. Also the Add a Pinch one. Too much sugar. I don't even know that website. I just know I liked the look of that cake.

The cake from 'Add a Pinch'. Looks good, right?

K:  Shit. That looks hot. I'm hoping that David Leb's looks like that inside. Though these photos are just a big tease. Cakes, like people, need to be judged by what's on the inside, am I right?

J:  So right! I was pretty disappointed by DL's lack of photographic evidence. Lucky I have evidence that he knows how to cook.

K:  He really, really does.

J:  But where does that leave us? I guess with Nigella and Dan. I guess Dan's has more of a point of difference to DL's but Nigella...I find her hard to dismiss.

K:  The woman's got game. It can't be ignored. What about Nigella with extra cocoa?

J:  Ok, let's do that. Do you want to do David and I will do Nigells. But I am not going to up the chocolate too much, because I am curious about whether she could be right about it. Maybe I'll go up to 65g.

Or 80g.

K:  Ha.

Next week: The cake!

Project Chocolate Cake - the beginning.

This week, K and I are gonna get experimental on yo' asses. K's gonna start explaining.
 
K: The other day, I was looking for a chocolate brownie recipe. Now I like my brownie to be fudgey, not cakey. But if there is a slight hint of cakey - only very slight - well that's OK by me. However, while I know this is how I like my brownie to taste, I can't look at a recipe and figure out whether that's going to deliver me the right kind of brownie for me. The way people talk about their brownies helps. Some would come right out and say "this is a very fudgey brownie". And then I could look at the ingredients and figure out why. But you know how it is...there are so many goddamn recipes out there and you start to get mixed up and really hungry and sooner or later you just make a call. Anyway, the other day I wrote down a matrix with all the key brownie ingredients on one side, and all the different brownie recipes I liked the look of up to the top. Then I filled in all the details and it was a goddamned revelation. Soon, it became quite clear that there was no effing way I was going to pursue the recipe with HALF the chocolate of most of them, or the one with TWICE the sugar of most of them. It was very, very educational. I could easily see which recipe had the most butter/chocolate/eggs etc., which, when considered alongside the recipes' descriptions of how fudgey or cakey or whatever the brownie is, I could start to figure out why.


Of course I could only pick one, but there were some others that I really wanted to try too. That's when I thought that maybe we could use this system to find perfect recipes for other things. We could nominate some recipes we like the look of, then draw up a matrix...

J: Well, a while ago I was interested in finding a great, go-to chocolate cake recipe and I am still very much am interested in that…

K: I'm glad you're open to comparative baking experiments. And like you, I would love a basic go-to chocolate cake so it makes sense that we try that.


J: You know I have this problem generally that although I know everyone has different feelings and opinions to me, my first reaction is to interpret everything through my own beliefs. Like if I read a recipe for "best brownies" I assume they will be fudgey and crackly on top and delicious but of course the author may have totally different feelings about brownies. Of course if there is more information I can interpret that but without it I just assume the world would do and want as I do.

I'm definitely into using chocolate cake to experiment with. It's hard though, you know, like Deb has this light, airy, cake which is delicious, but is that what I want as my number 1 cake recipe? I think I want a denser one. All good chocolate cake is delicious in its own way, but I guess I need to figure out what I am really looking for.
 
K: That's right! I think we all read what we want to read in to recipes. And without proper baking knowledge, it's hard to read a recipe and see how it is going to make a brownie fudgey in the middle and crackly on top. So we rely on words like 'best' and get excited, sometimes for no reason at all. Obviously baking more is a way around this. But I want to bake more + understand more and do so in a systematic way. Rely less on the words and more on an ability to read a list of ingredients and a method and be able to think well, I can imagine how those babies will turn out and I'm interested. 
And as for chocolate cake, I think the things you raise are absolutely important for finding the right recipe. What we are looking for in a go-to chocolate cake? Because if we don't know what we are looking for, then how will we know when we get there? Huh?

And of course, we don't need to be looking for the same thing necessarily. Though I think in this case we will be.

Ok, my situation, for me: I don't want a chocolate cake that is too light and airy, and nor do I want a chocolate cake that is too heavy and dense. I want something that is in between. This is not something that is easy to come across. So often, chocolate cakes swing towards the super duper decadent. That ain’t right for me. Because it basically means that it is only OK to have it as dessert. And if I want a chocolate dessert, there are so many places I can go. Chocolate tart, chocolate mousse, chocolate gelati, chocolate self-saucing pudding. But cake, man. Cake is for the afternoon. Not exclusively, obviously. But it needs to be something that will be right at home in the afternoon. That is cake's time to shine, in my opinion.  I guess that's why they so often swing in the other direction, to light and airy town, where I assume cocoa is what gives it the chocolate flavour. But that's not right for me either.  If chocolate is involved, then I want it to get out front and centre.

But, and here's the tricky thing, I still want it to be cake. Not chocolate mousse, or tart or what have you. I want it to be cake.

This picture from the internet looks like a good solid chocolate cake

J:  I totally agree about the cake. That airy cake of Deb's is from a Swiss roll or cream layer cake recipe. And it is great like that, and i think would be great on its own, but on its own I'd probably have to eat half of it to get my chocolate fill. I think we are really after the same thing here. Something quite chocolatey, not a fudge packer, but with a hint of fudgeyness. But really, just a good chocolatey cake. With a nice crumb (whatever that means), moist, great with tea in the afternoon, enough to satisfy a chocolate craving and cake craving. Chocolate cake!

I am really looking forward to this experiment!

K: I think we are totally looking for the same thing, which is going to make it a particularly useful experiment. I'm really excited too. I'm going to start looking up recipes and start a matrix! 

Woot!

An open letter to K (PM)

Dear K,

Oh sure, I've thought about teaching. I was talking to LB about it just the other day. I mean the holidays! Shaping the minds of the youth! Who wouldn't want that!? Learning more about maths and practicing it. Yeah it sounds pretty good. And those Australia's terrible numeracy levels, ugh, so depressing. 

But what about all those jerk kids? Not to mention jerk principals you'd have to deal with. Jerk governmental policies on education. God, so many jerks. And I would have to learn so much maths! I mean I really don't know anything anymore. Not that I ever knew that much.

But I do really like pi/e.

I guess I've got some thinking to do.

J