baking and the high seas
Well it happened on the weekend again. I lost another flip flop when our canoe flipped outside of North Head. We were paddling from Balmoral up to Long Reef as part of our training for the up coming Hamilton Island Cup Race. The only other time I've been in such big rolling swells was in Hamilton Island last year.
The weather was fine, the waves and wind were in the right direction. Ms. Frangipaddle and I even spotted two fairy penguins who came up to have a look at our canoe. I think they came from the Manly Colony of penguins! And we also saw an Albatross. We joked that they were like vultures of the sea - circling around us. Which I really shouldnt have joked about - as it turns out - our mens crew flipped and their canoe got swamped (which meant that they couldn't bail the water out fast enough - it happened to our crew last year). They were stranded in the ocean for quite sometime until a passing fishing boat picked them up. Everyone is okay now - but its humbling when you realise that when you're out in the ocean you are at it's mercy.
After all that adventure, I needed to bake. And so I embarked on 'the best ever chocolate cake' (which is the actual name of the recipe in my mum's women's weekly Cakes) for Joe's bday bbq on sunday. I have made the cake before and due to time constraints (alright I was getting a pedicure!) I baked it at his place - including the hands on cooking demonstration with a 5 year old assistant. It was all under control until we pulled the cake out of the oven and realised that the trays holding the pink silicon bakeware were slanting, resulting in lopsided cakes. So much for being a domestic goddess! Ordinarily I would have shaved off bits of cake to even it up and tarted it up with icing to hide the mistakes, but the crowd was hungry and didn't want any cake wasted - I ended up pouring over some chocolate sauce and getting people to throw malteasers on it.
The result: delicious!
The lesson: leave enough time to bake at home and/or check for slanting trays!
The weather was fine, the waves and wind were in the right direction. Ms. Frangipaddle and I even spotted two fairy penguins who came up to have a look at our canoe. I think they came from the Manly Colony of penguins! And we also saw an Albatross. We joked that they were like vultures of the sea - circling around us. Which I really shouldnt have joked about - as it turns out - our mens crew flipped and their canoe got swamped (which meant that they couldn't bail the water out fast enough - it happened to our crew last year). They were stranded in the ocean for quite sometime until a passing fishing boat picked them up. Everyone is okay now - but its humbling when you realise that when you're out in the ocean you are at it's mercy.
After all that adventure, I needed to bake. And so I embarked on 'the best ever chocolate cake' (which is the actual name of the recipe in my mum's women's weekly Cakes) for Joe's bday bbq on sunday. I have made the cake before and due to time constraints (alright I was getting a pedicure!) I baked it at his place - including the hands on cooking demonstration with a 5 year old assistant. It was all under control until we pulled the cake out of the oven and realised that the trays holding the pink silicon bakeware were slanting, resulting in lopsided cakes. So much for being a domestic goddess! Ordinarily I would have shaved off bits of cake to even it up and tarted it up with icing to hide the mistakes, but the crowd was hungry and didn't want any cake wasted - I ended up pouring over some chocolate sauce and getting people to throw malteasers on it.
The result: delicious!
The lesson: leave enough time to bake at home and/or check for slanting trays!
posted by Bex at 1:52 pm
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