YIPEEEE!

I’m published again! 

Kudos to myself and my boyfriend for collaborating together on this piece about the rise of specialty coffee in Japan.

 Many thanks too to our dear friends Ken and Nao in Japan: they helped us with interpreting and also navigating our way through Tokyo, as well as being happy taste testers and opinion holders!

Check out the full article here.
For more information about the fantastic photographic elements tied in with the story, head to Grant's website.

Can i blame it on the oven, please?

I have never had a catastrophic experience in my baking life. On occasions, the appearance of my project may question its edibility: but it usually only takes one brave taste test and five minutes later the pan needs to be washed and the oven has to be reheated for round two.

There have also been successes (albeit rare) whereby the result is outstanding, both in form and flavour. I’d like to say they look as fantastic as the cover shot on Donna Hay, but just hold your horses there: I’m still a novice and I’ll hold that title for a while (perhaps my lifetime?) just to claim the infancy of my skills.

Well tonight actually happened to prove the infancy of those skills. Disaster. Absolute debacle.

I am so incredibly ashamed; I don’t even want the bin to see it.

Turkish lime yoghurt cake. Six ingredients: so simple. I had everything bar the lime and two eggs. So out I went, on an expedition to source the required constituents for my cake that was to be a Mother’s Day special.

I’m blaming it on the oven. I suspected its dubious behaviour from the start, when a) it is the size of a microwave and b) my boyfriend questioned the results of his one and only oven-requiring-dish, nachos.

I could take responsibility and say that it perhaps was my lazy mixing of ingredients. Or the incorrect pan (is a springform pan absolutely vital???). But honestly, such a flop for such minor inconsistencies? Puh-lease. 

Perhaps we'll just envision this is the plate on my bench instead. 

And the yellow dogs vomit that lies beneath the alfoil isn't the work of a wannabe-the-next-Donna-Hay.