I Made Cake!

The gluten-free flour mix stuff.

A while ago, I bought some gluten-free flour mix, because it was cheapish and I planned to make pizza bases with it. I then promptly forgot about it, and it's been standing in my cupboard ever since.

Then, yesterday, Francois and I went over to Bergen (my grandparents' home) to meet Dad and Carol for a creative day of decorating stuff to do with the wedding (which is just over a month away now!), and while we were there, everybody had some cupcakes except for me. No, don't feel sorry for me! I've gotten very used to not having wheaty goodies, and I barely felt any cake-envy at all. I swear.

When we left, Carol gave me some of the leftover icing that she had with her, thinking that I could use it for something. Well, that reminded me of the flour sitting in my cupboard, and so today I Googled how to make sponge cake. And I didn't just Google it. I DID it.

I followed the recipe for Basic Sponge Cake from Huletts, and improvised a little bit because I didn't have white sugar, or enough butter (I halved the recipe below), or normal cake flour. Here's what I did:


Gluten-Free Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

• 125g Butter (Meant to be room temperature, but it's HOT today and room temperature meant melted butter in my case. Oops!)
• 200g White Sugar (I didn't have white sugar, I only had brown. And I think my cake turned out alright, so it doesn't seem to matter TOO much.)
• 5ml Vanilla Essence (1tsp)
• 3 Extra Large Eggs (With my halved recipe, I used two average boring normal size eggs from Pick 'n Pay, and as I just mentioned, my cake seemed to work!)
• 280g Flour (Huletts says cake flour, but I say gluten-free flour mix! I used this stuff from Health Connection. I think I bought it at Dischem.)
• 15ml Baking Powder (1Tbs)
• 3ml Salt (1/2tsp)
• 150ml Milk (I just realised I made a hilarious mistake and only used 1Tbs of milk! THAT explains why it wasn't quite runny enough... And why it had difficulty rising. Haha! It's still yummy though.)

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line 2 x 20 cm cake tins. (I had one square glass baking dish.)
• Cream the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. 
• Add the vanilla essence.
• Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
• Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. 
• Fold into the creamed mixture, alternately with the milk.
• Spoon mixture into the prepared cake tins, and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden in colour and a skewer inserted comes out clean. 
• Leave in pans for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely before icing.

After following those instructions (albeit hilariously incorrectly), I then quartered my cake to ice in three different ways. 

On one quarter, I poured some glaze icing (water, icing sugar and vanilla essence) that Carol had given to me. 

Voila! Vanilla sponge cake with vanilla icing!

On another quarter, I poured very thin orange glaze icing (Carol's glaze icing mixed with orange juice) which soaked into the cake - yummy!

Voila! Orange-soaked cake!

On the other two quarters, I smeared the delicious chocolate icing that Carol made. 

Voila! Chocolate-coated vanilla sponge cake!

Well. My goodness. How tasty all of this cake is. It may not be perfect, but I no longer have cake-envy! For that matter, I think Francois is envious of MY cake! :D 

There's only one problem... 

I haven't eaten doughy delights in so long, that I can hardly eat any before I feel overcome by rich, sweet, cakey goodness. I can't eat all of it while it's fresh. I'm going to have to put some of it into the fridge for later. Woe is me. :(

Anyway, have a lovely day, all!

Make Your Own Ice Cap

So I completely stole this recipe from the internet in general. So many people have posted it. BUT. They all posted it as a recipe for Magic Shell. And as we all know, it's actually called Ice Cap.

Here's how it's done...

Make Your Own Ice Cap 

This recipe makes about 1 ¼ cups of Ice Cap. You can double it or triple it if you have a lot of kids... Or a sweet tooth.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup cocoa powder 
• ½ cup coconut oil 
• ¼ cup honey (or double if you like it very sweet. I don't.)

Method:

1. Put a little bit of water in a small pot. 
2. Put all of the ingredients into a small jug with a spout. 
3. Put the jug in the pot. Voila! A double boiler that will be easy to pour out of later. 
4. Put the pot on the heat. High, in case you were wondering. 
5. Once it starts melting, stir continously until everything is nicely mixed together. 
6. Once it's very smooth and super runny, turn the heat off. It should be ready before the water in the pot even starts boiling. If not, and the water starts simmering, turn the heat down. No need to get splashed with boiling water unnecessarily. 
7. Pour the sauce out into a pretty bottle. 

A Pretty Bottle!

I used an old olive oil bottle. The little pouring thing in the top is really useful for carefully pouring runny chocolate sauce... 

Anyway, you can keep this in the cupboard for a while, or in the fridge for longer. Just heat it up over some warm water if it solidifies in the bottle. 

And I bet you can't guess what I tested mine on. (Because this is the first time I've made it, by the way. Hence the required testing.) 

No, that funny little brown thing isn't what you're sniggering about.

Yes, you figured it out! Half of a frozen banana! AND IT WORKED! :D 

And, better than that, it tasted good. The sauce is quite bitter on its own, but when it's covering a sweet, frozen banana, it tastes great. So I'm quite chuffed. 

Now go and try it yourself. It's much cheaper than buying the normal Ice Cap, and probably healthier, too, if you care about that. 

Goodnight! (Good morning?) 

Being Bugged by Bothersome Balderdash

It's funny how things that don't even matter can really bug me. I start my current post like this, because I've been trying to edit my previous (very girly) post about the flowers in my garden.

Irritating thing #1:

Every time that I edit the post, none of the pictures can remember where they're supposed to be. Most of the photos aligned to the right have jumped to the middle, and therefore skipped down to the next line. So, every time that I want to edit something about the post, I have to realign about a third of the pictures in the post. It's so tedious.

Irritating thing #2:

The text won't line up with a bunch of the pictures. It just won't. It automatically sits below the line that I want it to sit at, and it can't be brought up higher, because in the post editor, it's all perfectly in line. It's so irritating, and it doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things, and it bugs the hell out of me.

To wrap this up:

I keep telling myself that I will give up trying to fix it... But I keep on coming back to it over and over again. I gave up on it last night, but today Ben pointed out a spelling error in the post...

So I opened up the editor, realigned all of the pictures, corrected the typo, and updated the post. And checked the online version to make sure that everything looked right. (Oh no! That text looks horrible the way it's NOT lined up with that picture!) And tried about three times to fix the placement of the text again... Realigning those pictures each time. Sigh...

So, I'm making myself not look at it anymore. I'm sorry it's not perfect. But neither am I, okay? :P

NEXT TOPIC!

Today, Francois and I went on a VERY short cycle. We haven't gone in quite a while, first because of weather, then because of work, then because of... I can't remember the other excuses. Anyway. Francois went cycling yesterday and the day before, but this was my first ride in quite a while.

It was exhausting. We didn't go far. But tomorrow we plan to do that Saasveld trail that I mentioned wanting to try ages ago... So hopefully the weather holds! Otherwise I may have a valid excuse to be lazy tomorrow.

And another topic change.

After the cycle, while recovering on the couch in our nice, cool house (which will be horribly cold in winter, I just know it), Mommy asked if I was available for some face time. So, I hopped through the shower and headed over to the Hoekwil Café for a Hangout with the family. We chatted about blogging, and the ability to be honest with one's writing (which Ben is much better at than we are, or so it seems), and pulled very strange faces at each other. It was great! I like my strange, wonderful family.

Moving onto a bit of yummy goodness:

Once I used up all of my free data for the day at the Café, and cut into some of our monthly data as well, Francois and I headed on home. While he ventured into the forest to chop some trees down (he does that sometimes, it's his inner lumberjack shining through), I got to work preparing a yummy treat.

It wasn't much work. I basically made a variation of the wheat-free chocolate mug cake that I blogged about a few days ago. (There was some peanut butter and other random stuff in it this time. Yum!)

But that isn't where things ended.

Francois' mom, Janine, was here for a bit of a holiday with her Fiancé and his daughter. Before they headed back up to Pretoria, they popped by with a bunch of food that they didn't finish while they were here. We certainly didn't complain. (That means thank you very much!) Nestled in one of the bags of food was some yummy creamy pudding stuff.

So naturally, that went on top of the mug cakes.

The resulting puddings were creamy, chocolatey deliciousness!

I've only just finished mine now. It was remarkably filling, especially thanks to the added richness of the topping.


On that scrummy-licious note:

I've just made another one of these for Francois, and am now leaving my tablet for the computer, to watch some more of the silly series that I was watching the other night. It's called Shameless, and it's fairly funny. (It's a show about a huge family, but is not recommended for family viewing - so don't watch it with your eight year old.)

So, goodnight folks!

Hormones and Worrying

Hormones are very inconvenient. Yesterday I was very irritable, and I couldn't figure out why. Everything Francois did got slightly on my nerves, even though he wasn't actually doing anything wrong. Eventually, I realised that I'm about half a week away from that time.

Ohhh... It all made sense! Figuring out the cause of my mood didn't improve it, but I did try to be a little nicer to Francois. I'm not sure if I succeeded, and I'm sorry if I didn't. I also took the opportunity (using hormones as an excuse) to finish off most of a bar of coconut and cashew chocolate... And then proceeded to whip up chocolate mug cakes for the two of us, as well.

Anyway, that was yesterday. Today, I'm less irritable, but definitely still affected by those nonsensey hormones. My mood easily slips into a marginally depressed one (better than an incredibly irritable one!), which is rather unusual in comparison to my general content and happy state of being. On top of that, little things that usually wouldn't cause me too much concern are making me worry instead.

Our little guppy cat.

Our kitty cat, Guppy, has been out exploring all day. She does this once in a while, it isn't uncommon at all. Usually, I feel nothing about not seeing her for a whole day. I know that she's a cat, and she's out doing cat things... But today, I find myself constantly glancing out into the garden, trying to spot her little black face somewhere in the bushes, and I keep wanting to go upstairs to peek into the boxes that she likes to sleep in, to see if she's cosied up in one of them.

She could be anywhere out there...

I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to have your kids move away from home... Not knowing whether they're alright or not. It must take a lot of time to teach yourself how to stop worrying about them... Or at least, to worry a little less.

I feel for you, Mom and Dad!

Sigh. Guppy must come home soon... And I must do other things while I wait for her.
Stupid hormones.

My Gluten-Free Chocolate Mug Cakes

My body hates wheat, and wheat hates my body. They have a bit of a war going on, they do. Quite a while ago, I realised that the reason for my constant discomfort and bloating was that particularly common grain. So for the most part, I've avoided the soft powdery embrace of any goodie or savoury treat that contains flour.

Since my denouncing of the substance, I've been tempted to eat wheaty things a few times, but each time have regretted it thoroughly. As a result, I've started experimenting with flour-free baking alternatives. (Gluten free flours are expensive!!)

Here's the recipe that I use to create two flour-free chocolate and banana mug cakes:

I was late with the camera. Sorry!

Ingredients:

• Bananas - 2
• Egg - 1
• Cocoa - 2 heaped teaspoons
• Sugar - 4 teaspoons
• Salt - 1/4 teaspoon
• Baking Powder - 1/2 teaspoon

Method:

1. If you have a blender, break the bananas up a bit and pop them into the jug. If not, pop them into a small mixing bowl, and proceed to mash them up as well as you can with a fork. I say 'as well as you can,' but actually, don't worry about making it too smooth. A few lumpy banana bits in the cake are not bad at all.
2. Add all of the dry ingredients, and then the egg. (If you add the dry ingredients after the egg, they cause quite a bit of powder to puff up into your face when you start mixing things up.)
3. Mix things up. If you're using a blender, this should take no time at all. You want the texture to be smooth, and the dry ingredients thoroughly and evenly combined with the wet. Obviously. That's what mixing is for. If you're mixing by hand, just use that fork again to mash things in nicely with the banana. 
4. Pour the batter into two mugs. There's no need to line the mugs with butter or anything, because banana isn't as sticky as flour. The mugs are usually pretty easy to wash if you rinse them straight after eating the cake, or if you leave it to soak for a short while. 
5. Microwave each cake separately for about one minute and twenty seconds. You can experiment with the perfect time for your microwave, just remember that less time will make a more gooey, moist cake, and more time will just allow the cake to dry out a bit more. You don't need to worry too much about overcooking it, because the banana stays very moist regardless. 
6. Eat the resulting deliciousness as soon as it's ready. Hot gooey mug cakes are the best puddings, in my opinion. 

Well, enjoy the yummy gluten- and flour-free pudding! Say thank you for the recipe and share it with other people, if you like. ;) Bye!