Marble cake

What do you do when one of you likes vanilla and the other likes chocolate? Well marry the two and make marble cake, of course!

 

This was mostly made by DH but I did find the recipe - so I can take credit for that :). The cake was very tasty - nice and moist; and a good balance of vanilla and chocolate. Here's the recipe. I halved the recipe.

 

• 4oz butter , softened
• 4oz caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4oz self-raising flour
• 1.5 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Line a loaf pan with parchment paper.
2. The recipe suggested that once could go the easy route and put everything in a food processor and blend. There are very things in life that have an easy route. So when you get one jump on it! That's what we did - blend everything except the cocoa powder.
3. Divide the mixture into two.
4. Add cocoa powder to one part.
5. Put globs of vanilla mixture into the loaf pan and intersperse them with the chocolate layer. Continue to layer in this manner till all batter is used up.
6. Using a skewer to make swirls - you could draw vertical lines from one end of the pan to the other to make the swirls. Don't go overboard with the swirls or you'll end up mixing the vanilla and chocolate.
7. Bake for 45-55 minutes and you've a yummy marble cake ready!

 

Tiramisu pudding

I found this recipe on the Kraft website and it turned out yummy! Everybody loved it! Plus it was so easy to make! Here's the original recipe. I didn't have a few ingredients so I made some substitutions.

• 1/8 cup Instant Coffee + Starbucks Hot cocoa
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp. hot water
• 1/4 pkg. (3 oz.) ladyfingers, split
• 1.5 cups cold milk
• 4 oz Cream Cheese
• 1.5 oz.  JELL-O Vanilla Flavor Instant Pudding

Directions

1. Dissolve 1/2 Tbsp. coffee+cocoa in hot water; drizzle over ladyfingers.
2. Line bottom and side of shallow 1-1/2-qt. bowl with ladyfingers.
3. Blend 1/2 cup milk, cream cheese and remaining undissolved flavored instant coffee in blender until smooth.
4. Add dry pudding mixes and remaining milk; blend well.
5. Carefully pour into lined bowl.
6. Refrigerate 4-5 hours or until set.

Note: I got t he ladyfingers in the frozen section of my grocery store. There are 24 in a package.
 

First signs of the approaching spring...

...the lovely Crocus!

P.S. This photo is a little late

The Sex lives of cannibals

Author: J Maarten Troost

That’s an interesting title for a book, isn’t it? It’s sure to fire up your curiosity about the contents. Well let me put out the curiosity by saying that the book doesn’t have much to do with the title. Like my friend, who recommended it said, not sure why the author chose that title.

It’s a true account by the author of his life in one of the south pacific islands called Tarawa. That doesn’t sound interesting at all; but let me tell you the author has a great sense of humor. His narration is hilarious! Of course there are times when a few pages are serious and that’s expected because it’s a real life story and it’s about an island that doesn’t have much. I loved reading the book and would highly recommend it! There were times when I just couldn’t control my laughter!

Chocolate Hazelnut Banana pie

I’ve been trying out a lot of pies lately. Nothing fancy or elaborate – just simple, quick and easy pies. Since this is the first time I’m meddling with pies I wanted to try simple first, understand them and then go to the more complex ones. My experience with the simpler ones has been absolutely great! Not only are they easy to make but they’re so tasty! The only catch – don’t look at the calories when you bite into them!

The recipe for this pie came from here. There are a few things I adapted based on what I had in my pantry.

• 2 oz semi-sweet chocolate morsels
• 1-1/2 cups thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping, divided
• 1 OREO Pie Crust (6 oz.)
• 1 banana, sliced
• 1 pkg. (3.4 oz.) JELL-O Vanilla Flavor Instant Pudding
• 1 cup cold milk
• 1/2 cup nutella
• Some chopped roasted almonds

1. Whisk chocolate and 1/2 cup COOL WHIP until well blended. Spread onto bottom of crust; top with bananas.
2. Beat dry pudding mix, milk and chocolate-hazelnut spread in medium bowl with whisk 2 min. Stir in remaining COOL WHIP; spread over bananas.
3. Refrigerate 3 hours.

Rebatch soap

Here's another of my trysts with natural cosmetics. Soap making has always had it's draw for me but given all the equipment I would need to try it out, I was holding back. Then I read about re-batch soap and it seemed the perfect fit for me. It gives you a feel of making soap without all the equipment and if you like it, you could go for the real stuff!

 

I bought the luxury re-batch soap from Brambleberry. If you're in WA and happen to go to Bellingham then you can buy it from their brick and mortar store, OTION. I love browsing that store!

 

I've put together a step-by-step tutorial of what I did.

 

1. Setup a double boiler. You can read about how I setup mine here. Add the grated soap to the upper pan. Add 1 tbsp boiling water to 1 lb of rebatch soap. I found that without the water it was taking the soap forever to come together. Keep mixing in the double boiler till the grated soap forms a mashed potato consistency.

 

 

2. Take the soap off the double boiler and add your essential oils. I added around 1/2 a tsp of rosemary EO to one batch (DH wanted a lightly scented soap) and 1 tsp lavender EO to another batch. Each batch was 1 lb.

 

3. I put one batch in a loaf pan and another in a muffin pan. The loaf pan is lined with wax paper and the muffin pan has cupcake liners. The wax paper and the cupcake liners made it very easy to take out the soap once molded. I oressed the soap well in both the molds so  that there were no air pockets.

 

4. I let the soaps set for a day and then took them out from their molds. Here are the cupcake soaps.

 

 

5. The loaf pan soap came out as a big bar, which I then cut into smaller bars.

 

 

6. Since I added a tbsp of water, I'm letting the soaps dry a few extra days. The more it dries the longer it'll last. The room where it dries has such a wonderful aroma of lavender and rosemary! I wonder how good my bathroom will smell once I start using these!

Happy New Year 2013!

(Source: I created this word art in Wordle)