Fat little dumplings

Holy crap! 5 months since my last blog post! Whatever have I been doing with my time? I certainly haven’t been making anything super tasty, in fact I have actually succumbed to the lure of a tub of cookie dough, currently residing in our freezer. It’s awesome because it promotes the idea of “fresh, home baked wholesomeness”, without the hassle of actually having to do it. It’s not the cooking part that’s a problem, it’s the cleaning up part that is presenting a mental barrier.

Apart from being lazy, I have actually been doing stuff. Yesterday was my hens day/night, and my friends organised for us to go to afternoon tea at the Sofitel with family-types, as a dignified precursor to a less dignified, sangria fuelled evening at the pub later on. Gaaaaaah, just the mention of sangria right now makes my stomach shrink with horror… the hangover today as a result of many litres of booze made me certain that today was to be my last day to live. But, I digress. Afternoon tea was bitchen – lots of gorgeous little sandwiches that had been trimmed of their pesky little crusts, smoked salmon blinis (well, I’m personally not a fan, but it did seem terribly posh), scones with jam and cream, and above all, lots of gorgeous little cakes! Can I just say that I LOVE the way a set menu such as afternoon tea pretty much sanctions gross over indulgence? at this rate, I will totally get the gout (although something about gout makes me think it might be a thing that only men get… Is this just wishful thinking though?). Check out the tasty spread!

Shit photo, I know, but take note of the cake on the second tier from the top of the… tiered thing. This was just a delightful piece of awesome, crammed full of custardy delights, and layered with sponge cake. Imagine – a marriage of my passions for sponge and custard! However did they know?

And now, I must go to bed. I am patting myself on the back right now for a job well done in making a blog entry. Good for me.

Ben and I recently attempted to make pizza dough, inspired by our friends Nina and Mario, who recently had us over for home made pizza, and made it look super easy to execute. So, we obediently trundled off to the supermarket to score us some yeast, and hunkered down in the kitchen for some dough kneading. We do have a pizza stone, which we picked up for a bargain price, and then carefully stored it out of sight, to avoid having to use it… Once we had dug up the pizza stone, we were in business, but it seems our business plan was not entirely sound. We managed to undercook both pizzas that we made, the second one quite spectacularly, so much so that when we tried to shift it off the pizza stone, it completely disintegrated, and we were left picking out the most cooked bits, and eating the vegies on top. Unfortunately, I didn’t whip out my trusty camera to capture the moment, so you’ll just have to picture something completely unappetising, possibly resembling vomit on a plate. Completely the opposite of the perfect pizzas we get at Carpaccio in Leichhardt. Check THIS out:

Oh, Carpaccio, you just never disappoint. Your pizza bases are always crisp and tasty, your toppings well cooked, and your sauce never has that nasty canned tomato taste that can be the death of a good pizza.

This place is truly my favourite place to get pizza, in spite of the unappealing noisy fountain and dated brick work outside the restaurant. It does kind of look muy lame-o from the outside, but it’s really really good! Give it a try!

So, Ben and I have recently gotten ourselves all revved up for re-initialising our health and fitness regime. It had been on hiatus for a while, during which we sat languidly on the lounge discussing exercise rather than doing it, and ate many lovely things, including a fair amount of stodge. This was until Ben determined that we require a THREE MONTHS OF POWER (that’s our motivational tagline) health and fitness binge, and we started over the weekend. Initially, we were going pretty well – we took a loooooooooong walk from Marrickville to Glebe (lugging a sponge cake – quite the achievement), and the cupcake day that I went to tested my inner strength, but I don’t think it broke it. I was going great guns until… the Black Star Bakery. If you are unfamiliar, it’s on Australia Street in Newtown, next to Oscillate Wildly. I had garnered support to visit the bakery by telling Ben I just wanted to “check it out”, you know, see what kind of stuff is in there, that kind of thing. Unfortunately, the shop is little, and as soon as you enter the people working there are all over you with expectant faces so… I caved. Looking back retrospectively, there was really no way that I would have ever entered such a place and walked away empty handed. Unfortunately, I came away with not one, but two tarts:

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Ben and I have just returned from a few days away in the Blue Mountains, where we mostly at things, and drank wine. On the last day of our stay, we hit Katoomba Street, and I picked up some uber tasty cupcakes for the trip home. Check these bad boys out:

They’re from a cupcake shop called “Cupids Cupcakes”, and they were fantastic: apple crumble flavour, strawberries and cream, chocolate mint and strawberry. Read the rest of this entry »