Anzac Day Cake
I don’t normally talk about cooking on Wednesdays. I reserve it for Fridays to hopefully entice you to do some home cooking on the weekend. But I didn’t want to leave this post too late cos Anzac Day was last Saturday. This Anzac Day cake recipe is from last Friday’s episode of Better Homes and Garden. I bought the magazine earlier this month and didn’t think I would try this recipe. But after I saw Fast Ed make it, I thought I’d give it a go. There are, however, some things that I would like to point out about this cake.
Firstly, the recipe calls for a LOT of golden syrup and sugar. The tin was lined in baking paper, greased and lightly coated with caster sugar. Then in the wet ingredients, I actually emptied a small bottle of golden syrup with the butter. In the dry ingredients, the recipe called for 80g of icing sugar too. I didn’t add as much but it was still a very sweet cake.
Secondly, I had to beat in 6 eggs into the wet ingredients! SIX! I think that’s a lot. I don’t bake cakes very often but this sounds like a lot to me. Is it? I’m sure every single one of them was necessary but that’s an egg per serving!
The actual process of cake making was really easy. Combine wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Stir and pour into tin. (By the way, I didn’t actually use the bottle of soy sauce in the picture for this recipe!)
But I don’t like lining cake tins. It’s a bitch. It’s a non-stick tin anyway. I wonder whether I could have gotten away with it.
Fast Ed’s recipe had a rum syrup that you pour over the baked cake. I didn’t have rum but instead I added 2 teaspoons of rum essence to the cake mixture before pouring into the tin. It gave just enough hint of the rum flavour and smell.
The recipe said that the cake would bake for 20 minutes in the oven. I don’t know why but mine took nearly an hour! Was it my oven? I didn’t change anything major to the recipe except adding the rum essence to it. Could that be it? Half the edges looked rather burnt from all the sugar caramelizing but it tasted goooood. 
The cake is really rich, moist and sweet. I invited a couple of friends over to share the cake cos Richard still has not much of an appetite from being sick. I froze a few slices and hope that it’ll defrost okay.
Anyway, enjoy the rest of your week and I hope there’s some home cooking going on. I’ll see you on Friday. 
Recipe from Fast Ed of Better Homes & Garden:
Watch video instructions
Or you can find the recipe in the May edition of Better Homes & Garden magazine (Page 123)
Who Are Your Favourite Craft Bloggers?
Who are your favourite craft bloggers? I am following several crafty blogs as you can see on my blogroll on the left sidebar. Their specialties vary from scrapbooking to knitting and crocheting to sewing and cooking. I enjoy reading them all. Here are my top three favourite craft blogs (not in any particular order):
These blogs inspire me with their creativity, their light hearted writing style and their photos delight me endlessly. I look forward to reading their latest crafty adventures everyday. But I’m yearning for more. Help me discover great craft blogs to tickle my senses and get my creativity juices flowing by answering one simple question.
What are your top three must-read craft blogs?
P.S. I’m still sick but getting better. *Cough… cough… splutter* (Wipes monitor). Sorry. Thanks Jackie and Umi for asking.
Sickie
Sorry, folks. I’m taking a sickie today. Have a good weekend and take care of each other!
Life’s Simple Pleasures
I bought a little toy from a soya bean drink stall in Singapore called Mr Bean. It’s such a cute little toy and I just couldn’t resist him.
When I got home and was putting the toy together, I saw this paragraph at the back of the box:
“Have you felt the beauty of a smile, the warmth of a touch or the bliss of simply watching the world go by… Share a little time and imagination with us. Let’s indulge in Life’s Simple Pleasures.”
If you’ve been to Singapore before, you would know that life there is far from simple. It’s fast paced, busy, loud and did I say, busy? It’s hard to find people enjoying life’s simple pleasures. I thought about this carefully and have managed to capture five wonderful memories from my trip there.
1. Meeting my cousin’s 17 month old daughter for the first time. Her name is Sofea and she is soooo cute. She has the sweetest smile and her face just lights up when she giggles.
2. Meeting my friend’s daughter, Georgia, for the first time. Teresa was heavily pregnant and gave birth the day before we flew back. We didn’t get a chance to meet her baby son, Kieran, but Georgia sure was entertaining!
She played doctor and nurse with Richard and it was such a crack up! Don’t be fooled by the photo. Georgia wasn’t the nurse. She kept bossing Richard around and Nurse Richard played along, following her every instruction very carefully. Haha… She is so imaginative and will make a very good big sister!
3. Catching up with my mum and three brothers. My two teenage brothers grow so fast! I’ve only met them a few months ago when they visited me here and now Irfan is already taller than me! Here we are sharing a meal together at Pastamania the night before we flew home. Who would have thought that their pesto pasta would actually be the best tasting pesto I’ve ever had! Either I need to eat out more in Australia or Pastamania got a good thing worth coming back to!
4. Friends! It’s always too long between visits! I miss having Jeevan and my two girl friends, Radiana and Dianah, around. But they’re more like family to me so the years never seem to have passed by when we get together again.
5. Finding unexpected surprises throughout the ever changing Singapore. I’ve only been away a bit more than two years and there are so many new buildings around. The train line has expanded too. There are so much construction around that it’ll be exciting coming back to see all the changes.
Here we are testing out Goretex jackets from the National Geographic shop where Salihin works at. The cold room is in the shop to test their jacket. Cold wind blasts you and the room is set at -7 degrees celcius! Such a cool experience, especially when it’s stinking hot and humid outdoors.
And the new Marina Barrage with the water play area and the grass roof was an interesting visit. It was also a hydrologist’s dream (…ahem… Richard). He took pictures of everything! I was just happy to find a place where I don’t have to fight for standing space and the water play area really helped cooled me down. (It was just so hot and humid!)
Click HERE to view more photos from Singapore
What are your simple pleasures?
{ 3 comments }Back from Singapore
I’m home and very tired. Been fighting off a cold before I even left Singapore and now my body has finally given in to it. So I won’t talk much today. But I do want to thank everyone again for their well wishes. I did have a good time catching up with family and friends in Singapore, despite the family loss.
Here is a photo of my 81 year old grandma, my mother (I won’t mention how old she is ) and my three younger brothers – Salihin, 30; Hakiim, 16; and Irfan, 14. And me, of course. I’m 31. Don’t ask me why I’m mentioning the ages. My brain’s too zonked out at the moment.
Well, I better go unpack between naps. I’ll see you on Wednesday. Hopefully more alert and refreshed after some R&R. Take care ’till then!
P.S. I’m behind at replying to the all the comments left on the previous posts. But I do appreciate every single one of them and I’ll get around to replying to them asap!
Get automagic 
blog updates
