So you wanted a post about cakes, eh Chrissy?
**Warning: Rude content**

Once upon a time we went to America and we were presented with a cake so vile and oh so anatomically correct that I suspect all of the women in the room immediately ran to the bathroom with mirrors and torches to compare their nether-regions to the magnificent glistening icing, that was representative of a trio of assorted female genitalia.
On a cake.
There was a jaunty little script at the bottom that said, “Welcome, ya bunch of *#%$.”

I’m not sure what the collective noun for such a gathering is, but I think it should either be a committee, or a cosy.
A cosy of
(The word that I dare not write, lest my Mum read this post and I be castigated.)

Every inch of my being wants to show you the photo of said c-cake, but I dare not, lest this blog be labelled as porn, and I am relegated to the literary internet dustbin.

The photo of this cake is neatly tucked away in the back of the photo album labelled “USA 2003”, and I delight at the thought that one day when I am all but dust, some descendant will look through the blurry, bland images of Denver and Vegas and Hawaii and come to this final little pearl and wonder, “What the fuck was that all about?”

They might flip back through the photos, trying to glean some hint as to why there ever was such a cake, who made it, and what happened to it after that first staged snapshot.

Well in case that never happens, I’ll tell you the story.

Not about the how and the who, but what happened next:

Everything happened.

Every single thing that you might imagine happening to a cake festooned with a cosy of vaginae, happened.

At first we were shy to approach her. As if she might bite, or something even worse. Then as the evening wore on, and we gathered our courage from the bottom of our Bud Lights, we became more enamoured of her subtle curves. We started to sidle up to her, make a few lewd inferences, and the boldest among us even tried to touch her up… There may have been a Donald Moment or two.

The rest of what happened is a little fuzzy, but I will tell you, that in the morning there was a pile of crumbs were the cake had been, no-one seemed to know where the the members of the cosy had gotten to, but Stanly The Pug had a dollop of pink icing on his nose that looked suspiciously like a clitoris.

I just hope that there were no American Pie moments.

…From The Ashers

When I was a kid, dinner was served up at the table at 6pm. Mum would set the table herself (after asking us seventeen billion times to do it for her), every night. We always had a table cloth, correct cutlery and crockery and glasses of milk. The milk was her downfall of course, because we would fill up on that before even starting. It’s amazing how easily the lactation of cows, made for their calves, can sustain the stomachs of human children.

My brothers and I would sit at the table, and it was as if some silent starter yelled, “LET THE GAMES BEGIN!” For that is what befell my mother for the next two hours. Every.single.night. And they weren’t fun games.

I look back, and I wonder how she did it. A single Mum, on meagre wages, working all day, then coming home to prepare something nourishing for her children, who never, ever ate it. Or even attempted most of it. The rule in our house was that we had to eat everything on our plates. I suspect that ‘the rule’ was never adhered to. Not even once. Every night we were bribed, threatened and cajoled. It almost always ended in tears, and that was just Mum.

Skip forward a score and ten, to where I am the person in the Mother Seat. Where I am the person thinking of the food, shopping for the food and cooking the food. So much carry on about food. Only to have the vermin cherubim screw up their gaping maws cute little faces and say, “I don’t like that.”

Because, of course, they don’t like anything.

And they don’t have the tools at their disposal that we did. We had a pet Labrador (they eat anything, yes, even Corned Beef with white sauce), we had overalls from Just Jeans (so many pockets) and we had milk (did you know you can hide one stalk of broccoli and nine peas in every glass?). The only thing they have at their disposal is whinging. And they use it well.

When they were little, I tried and tried to think of delicious and healthy things the children would like to eat for dinner. I stopped short of making food art, but I did attempt to make their plates contain ‘the colours of the rainbow’ every night. It made no difference. They still hated it.

So these days I have taken to simply pleasing myself and drinking wine. In fact, I delight in lovingly placing their plates in front of them, and hearing them say how much the despise the menu plan of the day. I see their displeasure as a personal success. So you can imagine how I laughed when I saw this on my instagram today:

Sorry family. If this is true, then my love for you is a bit shit.

(Who am I kidding, I’m not sorry. You’ll get over it.)

Are your kids good eaters? What are your failsafe recipes?

…From The Ashers

I’m a bit of a fan of having a sweetie to munch on the run, but I’m not a fan of ALL OF THE NUMBERS that seem to be on that stuff we call food these days. So most Sundays I do a bit of a bake to make things for me the kids to eat during the week.

This week I discovered got this in my Facey Feed. I can’t remember who it was from (sorry) or the proper name (who cares) so I’m calling it Big Batch Big Biccies, for it makes shitloads of biscuit (dare I say it? Cookie) dough.

Decorated by Coco. I said ‘just a couple’…Hmmm…

So here it is:

Ingredients

• 500g butter (let it soften to room temperature for ease in the next step)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tin of condensed milk (minus the spoonful or so you scoop out for yourself- cooking requires sustenance, no?)
• 5 cups of self raising flour

Method

• Cream the butter and sugar-  however you like. I did it with the beater because: lazy and also, lickers for the Evil Geniuses to lick afterwards.
• Add the condensed milk and flour and mix for ages, to form a dough.  Yes it takes a while, but it’s worth it.
• Bake at around 170 degrees for 10-15 minutes or so, depending how soft or brown you like them. Personally I’m all about a light brown and a bit gooey, like those Mrs Field’s Cookies I used to gorge on whilst shopping at Chadstone back in the day.

You will have HEAPS of dough, so what I did was to divide it into four.

One lot I let the kids decorate with Smarties, I know, I know, they aren’t healthy, but kids love the colour. The good news is, Smarties have removed the Nasty Six colourings, which for the record are: 102, 104, 110, 122, 124, 129.

Another lot I added a splash of vanilla essence and desiccated coconut, then put a dob of jam in the middle. Yum.

The last two batches I let my mate Sue (who was milling about the bench and generally just being a waste of space) roll into logs for freezing. She did a stellar job, wrapping in baking paper and cling wrap. If you are anti-cling I reckon they could just use the paper. Then they are all ready for thawing and cutting off for biccies at some future lazy* date. I reckon I’ll let the kids pop some chocolate nibs in those ones.

So there you have it: GO.

*Lazy? Did I say lazy, I meant busy of course.

Got any lazy recipes to share? 

Did you know about the Nasty colourings?

…From The Ashers xx

I love Surfers Paradise.

I love the buildings that are trying to reach the clouds, and keep the beach a secret.  I love the lurid pink neon, and the noise of traffic and tension.  I love the seedy bars, and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not? and the smell of salt and carbon monoxide mixed together.  I love the tattoos, and the bustling energy, and the women who look twenty-two from behind and sixty-five in the face.

But I don’t love the cafes.  And that’s okay, because I don’t come to the Goldy for fine food and wine, I come for fun, and a taste of something a little wilder, and little bit more edgy than my perfectly arranged seaside town.  I come for a little bit of naughty.

Today I found a little gem that I didn’t expect.  Nestled between restaurants in the Soul Sea Temple complex is a special slice of Melbourne-Up-North.  Complete with a roof of tiles that could be from Flinders Street Station and walls of concrete that could be from the City Square, is Cafe Elston.

Cafe Elston

Industry lights

The staff are so pretty they could have been ripped out of an ad for Beat Magazine, with their carefully coiffed hair and beards and freshly inked forearms.  I could have spent most of the afternoon trying to read their cutely colourful body art, but there were Bennys and cheese boards to be eaten, Espresso Martinis to drink, and cupcakes to gorge on.  Even the beer list was something to savour, with ice cold White Rabbit and My Wife’s Bitter to slake a karaoke croaky throat.

Botanical Benny

It was love at first sight when I saw Cafe Elston, which bloomed into true love when I was presented with the delicate blossoms of dishes created by some arty chef in the kitchen.  I suspected they were constructed by a mincy little pixie but when I glimpsed him a couple of times during my extended stay, the incongruous was almost jarring: tattooed and blokey and more at home at a Nirvana concert than making fiddly floral food art.

Cheese Board

Butterscotch Cupcakes

Thanks Cafe Elston.  You have managed walk a fine line between urban and garden, with surprising prettiness and cheeky Surfers fun.  A playful slice of Paradise that has an attitude I want to hang around with.

Perhaps the Gold Coast is shedding some of her slightly tattered glittery clothes and acting her age.  I like it.

Have you been to the Gold Coast lately?

Where is your fave place to hang out on the Goldy?

…From The Ashers xx

I was all over the place today.  Crying and not crying.  A throat full of burning lumps like held-back vomit.  Eyes hot and sandpapery.  And that feeling, the heavy-tight feeling, clenching the suboccipital muscles into bundles of gristle, with that impending sense of doom.  But the doom wasn’t impending.  The thing of dreadful fear had already happened.  Still, it was hard to fully inflate my lungs.

I called on BabyMac to find a perfect birthday cake to bake for my friend, ‘cos BabyMac knows a thing or two about sucking the good stuff outa life.

The cake is called Anne.  She’s big and sweet and full of goodness.  Four eggs from happy chooks.  Lashings of magnificent butter worth it’s weight in gold (no, really, it costs the same as gold).  And a shit load of sugar.  My mate would have loved Anne.  Anne has quite a heft about her.  She’s not for the faint of heart.  And my friend was not faint-hearted.  She was a tough bugger.  And she didn’t mind a cake.

So I baked Anne, and I shared her around.  I gave some to my family, some to my neighbours and some to a gorgeous friend.  I didn’t tell them why I’d given them some Anne to feast on, but they sent me back loving messages, and pictures, just the same.  Anne is that kind of cake.  She makes an impact, and I think she likes to get around a bit.  Anne likes making people smile, making them rub their bellies, and push back their chairs as they lick her last crumbs off their plate.  Anne reminds us of what it’s like to be alive, and nourished, under this big wide sky of potential.  Anne reminds us to savour all of the flavours of life, to taste as many different things as we can, and to devour every last morsel.

Turns out, Anne is a lot like my friend.  I think they would have liked each other.

Happy Birthday Hayls.  I saved you a bit of Anne. Bon Apps.

…From The Ashers xx