White Chocolate Caramel Oat Cake

If I had to pick a favourite cake, this would be it.
I remember when I was about 5 or 6 Mum and Dad would take me out to this place called Evan's for lunch and we would always share a piece of an oaty, caramely cake with sour yoghurt. When Evan's closed I thought I would never get to eat my favourite cake again :(
About ten years later I found this recipe in a Jo Segar cookbook. It looked very similar, and when I baked it I was amazed to discover it tasted exactly how I remembered the cake from Evan's tasted.
Everyone who has tried this cake loves it too. It's kind of like a really nice Anzac biscuit with caramel.

INGREDIENTS FOR CARAMEL:

• 1 x 400g can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 tbsps. golden syrup
• 150g butter

INGREDIENTS FOR CAKE:

• 1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour
• 3/4 cup flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar (firmly packed)
• 3/4 cup desiccated coconut
• 2 eggs
• 250g butter melted
• 1 tbsp. vanilla essence
• 1 cup white chocolate buttons/white chocolate pieces

Caramel:
To make the caramel, place all the ingredients in a small saucepan and still over a medium heat until well combined and smooth. Allow to cool. (If there is too much butter and some is floating on top, just carefully tip of the extra butter.) Don't worry if your caramel seems to catch on the bottom a little so long as it doesn't taste burnt.

Cake:
Preheat your oven to 180C.
Line a 25-26 cm spring form tin with baking paper.
To make the cake, place all the dry ingredients except the chocolate buttons in a large bowl and mix well. Beat the eggs, melted butter and vanilla together, then mix into dry ingredients. Press three-quarters of this mixture into the prepared tin (so there are no gaps).
Pour caramel over base, then crumble the remaining cake mixture on top.
Bake for 45 mins until golden brown.
Cool completely in the tin.
When cold melt the white chocolate in the microwave or stovetop, and drizzle over the top of the cake.

Keep cake chilled in fridge or serve warmish.
Serve with thick yoghurt, whipped cream, ice-cream or all three.
ENJOY
(From Jo Segar, The Cook School Recipes, Random House, New Zealand).

And no, the Ready Clingwrap is not a subtle product placement, I just forgot to move it.



Tea Time Apple Spice Cake

I found this cake one day while I was looking for something to make with apples, but I have changed the recipe slightly since.
(source: http://nzfavouriterecipe.co.nz/recipes/desserts/228-tea-time-apple-spice-cake)
It's a really moist and delicious cake, as well as being one of the easiest cakes I have ever made because you basically make it all in one bowl.
One of my favourite cakes of all time.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 large Granny Smith Apples (you can actually use whatever apples you like and put more in, like 3 or 4 especially if they are small).
• 1 cup of sugar
• Milk
• 100g butter
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp cinnamon (put more in if you like, I always do, all of the spice measurements are just suggestions)
• 1 tsp of nutmeg
• 1 - 2 tsp allspice
• 1 - 2 tsp ginger

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Line tin with baking paper.
3. Peel and thinly slice or dice apples and place in a mixing bowl.
4. Sprinkle sugar over apple.
5. Melt butter and beat egg into it (you should wait for the butter to cool down a little bit and then whisk the egg in fast, don't let it go stone cold or something weird happens when you pour the egg in.)
6. Pour butter mixture over apple (I recommend doing this as soon as you have mixed the egg and butter).
7. Add flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice to the mixture.
8. Mix well
9. If too dry add milk (I always have to add milk when I make it), mixture should be quite moist.
10. Bake for 1 hour at 180C or until cake is golden

ICING (sorry this isn't very specific):

• Butter
• Icing sugar
• Hot water
• Vanilla essence

Put some butter in a heatproof bowl, like a couple of tablespoons.
Pour some hot water over the butter, stir until it melts.
Add a teaspoon or so of vanilla essence.
Add icing sugar until icing is a still a little runny but not so runny that it will soak into the cake.
Drizzle onto cake.

Serve alone or with ice-cream or cream

SERVES: 6 -8
COOKING TIME: 50 - 60 minutes
PREP TIME: 12 minutes

How I Became a Whovian



I didn't grow up watching Doctor Who, in fact I didn't grow up watching television at all. The only TV shows I can remember watching before the age of 12 was the Magic School Bus and Little House on the Prairie.
The first definite memory I have of Doctor Who is reading about the Amy and the Doctor in my Nana's TV Guide, which, for some reason left me with the impression that he'd crashed the TARDIS into her car instead of her shed. At that point I probably assumed that this Doctor was a member of the medical profession and therefore lost interest.
It didn't help that until last year I hated, loathed and despised all things Sci-fi.
I saw the show advertised on TV a few times after that but, the real blame for my descent into the madness and awesomeness that is the Doctor Who fandom goes to two of my friends Vida and Liv.
We all went to orchestra together, and after ignoring each other for a couple of years we finally discovered we had heaps in common and became instant friends. We would always have intense discussions during break about LOTR and Ranger's Apprentice, but there was one subject they would always talk about that I couldn't relate to, Doctor Who.
After a few months, I got so fed up with my utter ignorance in this area that I went home and watched Christopher Eccleston's first episode - Rose.
Due to my hate of sci-fi I was convinced that it would be rubbish and that I would hate it.
First impressions were not the best - I thought the theme music was, well a bit weird. And who was this random girl, where was the doctor? Why was I even watching this, maybe I should just go and watch Sherlock again.
I decided that it would be pathetic to stop watching after the first five minutes so I kept going.
It was the moment when The Doctor said 'nice to meet you Rose. Run for your life' that I knew there was absolutely NO going back.
I think it was the way he smiled evilly while he brandished his sticks of dynamite that did it, but whatever it was I was completely hooked and not even the living plastic rubbish bins had the power to dissuade me.
My subsequent obsession can be pretty well summed up in 'Let It Go' from Frozen.
For the first few weeks I didn't really want to mention I liked the show to people other than my Who-mad friends in case they shunned me in disgust. I mean, I'm homeschooled, wear glasses and read as though the world is about to end, I really didn't need any more weirdness in my life.                                                                                                                                                          At some point I just decided didn't care anymore, being a nerd was awesome, so I just let it all go.
Two years, 104 episodes, two pinterest boards, one concert, four tee-shirts and other assorted memorabilia later I am a MASSIVE fan and EVERYONE knows it whether they wanted to or not.
Oh, I also love Sci-fi and sing along to the Doctor Who theme song whenever I hear it.
I still haven't got around to watching Classic Who yet, but it's defiantly one of my goals.

BONUS- MY TOP TEN DOCTOR WHO EPISODES.

1. The Empty Child (this was at that point, literally the most terrifying thing I had ever seen)
2. The Girl in the Fireplace (this episode was beautiful and sad)
3. Blink (DON'T BLINK)
4. The End of Time part 1&2 (I cried my eyes out for the last 15 minutes)
5. Silence in the Library (books, man-eating shadow and River Song what could be better)
6. The Time of Angels (I didn't need to sleep anyway)
7. The Big Bang (Something old something new, something borrowed and something blue)
8. The Wedding of River Song (Doctor Who?)
9. Partners in Crime (DONNA!!!!!!!!!)
10. The Angels Take Manhattan (Cried for about half an hour afterwards and was depressed for the rest of the week)

Let me know your favourite episodes in the comments?
How did you start watching Doctor Who?

The Lord of Silver Fountains...

This weekend I was overcome with an uncontrollable urge to do something creative with my time instead of just of just scrolling through Pinterest until my eyes glaze over.
I decided to embroider something to frame for my wall. Ironically, the idea for my embroidery pattern came from Pinterest.

Original Source: http://the-hobbit.tumblr.com/post/70056394742/i-made-this-as-i-fell-in-love-with-bards-poem

The poem is recited by Bard the Bowman on The Hobbit Desolation of Smaug, and I completely fell in love with it when I first heard it.
It is a prophecy about how The Lord of Silver Fountains (Thorin Oakenshield) will return to his throne under the mountain. I still get shivers every time I watch it!
You can watch the clip from the movie here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxKjrJZ3Is0

To turn this poem into an embroidery pattern, I just printed out a copy slightly smaller than the size of my square of calico and then traced the words onto the fabric with a tailor's chalk pencil (you shouldn't use a standard pencil as I learnt the hard way.)
I didn't want to do all of the words in the same colour thread because I thought that would look a bit bland and boring. Instead I thought it would look pretty cool if I embroidered each word in a colour associated with it, i.e. mountain in green and fountain in blue.

Sorry the picture quality is not the best :(

Some word, like emotions i.e. sadness, were a bit harder to colour match so I kind of just made them up as I went along. All words like at, in and the I embroidered in plain black thread.
When it was finished, I ironed it, trimmed the edges and then spent about half an hour trying to stretch out all the crinkles while I taped it into a frame.
In my opinion (although I am definitely biased after spending about 6 hours embroidering it) the finished product turned out well.

This project was quite easy. In fact the hardest part was probably trying to get it into the frame.
All you need is:

• Patience
• The ability to do line-stitch embroidery
• A piece of calico or any other white fabric
• Embroidery threads in the colours of your choice
• A tailor's chalk pencil in any colour other than white
• An embroider hoop
• A frame
• A needle
• Some scissors

You could do this kind of thing with any poem, bible verse or movie quote etc. of your choice.
I am also embroidering a picture of Wash's dinosaurs from Firefly, I will try and remember to post pictures of that when I'm finished (remembers Firefly is no more and sobs in corner).
I would also like to say thanks to all of the people who are subscribed to/read my humble blog, you guys are awesome :)

Photos From a Car Window

On the way back from the previously mentioned West Coast trip, the scenery was beautiful! It reminded me of some of the locations from Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit; which I suppose, is no surprise considering the Southern Alps (past which we were driving) were used as locations in  the Lord of the Rings movies.
I pretty much spent the entire drive from Greymouth to Christchurch hanging out the open window taking pictures (and getting yelled at by my sister because she couldn't hear her music due to the wind).
I thought I'd share some of the pictures, (the ones that didn't turn out as grey blurs that is).

Far over the Misty Mountains...