Blue is obviously not the new black

OK, so a few years back kitchen appliances started coming out in a range of 'fashion colours'. Glossy reds, deep blues, shiny black - oh and for a few dollars more you could pay for no colour at all and get brushed chrome or stainless steel.

Awesome - I have aways loved cobalt blue and after scrimping together some hard earned cash, taking possession of a few gift vouchers and plotting my attack for 10% off sale time, I very excitedly went along to DJs and purchased my pride and joy - a shining beauty - my Sunbeam Mixmaster in gorgeous cobalt blue. Those who know me, know I have quite a few splashes of this shade about the house. I planned, in time, to get a few more items in this glorious shade to match, and make my kitchen a shrine to deepest blue.

So, yeah, well time got away. I look around now... no more cobalt blue. Everywhere I look is red, red, RED. Some cream, black (of course) and pastels. All of which are lovely, but why-o-why did they all conspire against me and stop making things in cobalt blue? Why?

My Mixmaster will now have to stand proud and tall, alone in the corner, and wave the flag for all the appliances gone before in that beautiful shade of blue.

No, pastel blue will NOT do.

Why???

**sob**

Substitutes

I am wanting to make Nigella's Chocolate Fudge Cake for a Good Friday get together at Mum's place but I was a bit put off by some of the ingredients. In fact, this is a common reason why I haven't ever made any of her recipes yet - she seems to use a lot of things unheard of in these parts, or at least hard to get a hold of, which usually = very expensive. I'd always been worried that substituting ingredients in recipes, you lose some kind of special flavour or texture or chemical reaction that only those things can impart, but I am feeling brave so decided it was time to get over this, and to do some research for suitable Antipodean substitutes particularly on the sugar front....

So here are my findings, thought they might be helpful -

Muscovado sugar can be substituted with dark brown sugar
Golden caster sugar = raw caster sugar
Demerera sugar = raw sugar

and a few more definitions just in case:

icing mixture = icing sugar + cornflour
pure icing sugar = powdered sugar to the Yanks and is just that - powdered sugar, nothing more
granulated sugar = plain old white sugar

I also discovered that the closest thing to corn oil is grapeseed oil as they both have a relatively neutral flavour. I'd say that canola oil or light olive oil would be OK too, just as long as the oil doesn't have a strong flavour.

Chocolate Fudge Cake here I come!

In the beginning...

Me...blogging...about food. What a shock!

I guess its not a huge surprise given my love of food and eating (which is absolutely obvious if you have ever met me) and also my love of writing and generally being verbose.

This blog is really my way of chronically my journey from complete cooking/baking novice to hopefully something better and there will probably be a few reviews along the way as well and general sharing of anything interesting I dig up.

My particular penchant is baking, something I think is genetic as my Nana and Mum were/are both fantastic bakers. Whilst I was on maternity leave recently I found that my dormant baking gene had been activated and so my family and friends have been subjected to my various experiments thus far. I will add details of them here when I get some pictures. Oh, and on that -I have been delving into the world of baking, cooking, cupcake and cake blogs, and wow there are some amazing and very informative ones out there. Equally as impressive is the photographic skills of some of these guys and girls. Well you won't find that here. I am a really bad photographer but hey, who knows, I could get better at that too as time goes by. Here's hoping.