Adventures in Parramatta: Home baking

This weekend has been about the home.

Op shopping for homey stuff.

Baking at home.

And this is how it went down:

After a visit to the parentals, I decided I needed to bake a cake. A lemon, lime and yoghurt cake to be exact, which was featured in the latest Better Homes and Gardens magazine. It was a simple cake - just measure, mix and bake. No need for a mixmaster. Just bowl and spoon.

It was a lovely tasting cake. Not to heavy, not too light, with the perfect amount of citrus through it. I had a slice of it with leftover greek yoghurt and a cup of lap sang soo chong for afternoon tea:

Next up was bread. I have not had much success with bread in the past. I am a big fan of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his River Cottage shows. His most recent one on Foxtel is River Cottage: Three Go Mad, where he gets three celebrities in and teaches them the River Cottage way. This week Ruby Wax was taught to make soda bread. It looked simple. It looked easy. And there wasn't a lot of kneading. So I looked up the recipe online. And I didn't have buttermilk. Or bi carb. So I contacted Chef Google for substitutes. 

Vinegar + milk = buttermilk. 

And baking powder + baking powder = bi carb.

I was sceptical but I figured I'd give it a go. And it worked. It was a lovely heavy bread, that was delicious with breakfast this morning.

My breakfast of champions: Poached eggs with truffle oil, smoked trout, lumpfish caviar and soda bread with an aldi chai latte from my expressi. Heaven before 10am.

Now that I have a mortgage, there are a couple of things that I am doing differently from, say 5 months ago. Shopping from my wardrobe. Shopping for clothes from Op Shops and bringing my breakfast and lunches to work at least 4 days a week. For the past month I have been baking Donna Hay's No Time to Cook Banana Bread and taking that to work. I eat breakfast at work whilst I wait for the oldest, slowest computers of the 21st Century to start up of a morning. Also, not having it at home allows me time to get dressed at a leisurely pace. So this week, I decided to go savoury. With another Donna Hay goodie.  

Here's hoping it tastes good tomorrow....

Happy Baking.