The sparkly event:

And a better photo of the cake:

Yes, that does say ‘happy jarod!!’. That’s what happens when you start piping words without planning how they’re going to fit on the cake. Who needs the word ‘birthday’ anyway?

I found the recipe on Smitten Kitchen. It is the best carrot cake I’ve ever tasted. So much so, this is the second carrot cake I’ve made in the past week. And of course it doesn’t contain the walnuts or raisins as suggested.

A couple of weekends ago we bought some bananas. Perhaps a few too many, because as they got to that nice brown-specked sweet stage, I couldn’t eat them all. I put them in the freezer until I could find a use for them that wasn’t the usual banana bread.

I checked my Edmonds cookery book, and the first suggestion under ‘Banana’ in the index was ‘Bacon Wrapped Bananas’. I wasn’t feeling that adventurous, so last night I settled for making a Banana Butterscotch Pudding.

Ingredients:

- 125 g Plain Flour
- 115 g caster sugar superfine
- 3 teaspoons Baking powder
- 1 Banana mashed
- 250 ml Milk
- 85 g salted Butter melted
- 1 Egg lightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- vanilla ice cream to serve

Topping:

- 140 g soft brown sugar
- 1/4 cup Golden Syrup
- 250 ml boiling Water

How to:

- Preheat the oven to 180°C
- Sift the flour, sugar, and baking powder into a bowl.
- Add the banana, milk, butter, egg and vanilla extract and whisk together until well combined.
- Pour into a greased 2.5 L baking dish.
- To make the topping, place the brown sugar, golden syrup and water in a small pot and bring to a boil.
- Pour the boiling mixture carefully over the pudding.
- Bake for 30 – 40 minutes or until cooked through when tested with a skewer.
- Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Here’s how the kitchen was set up today – instead of writing down the recipe, Jarod decided should make use of our laptop…

This was while the pudding was in the oven and after I’d cleaned the bowls. You can see how much bench space we have – most of the time I end up using the stove top as well, but it gets a bit squishy if I’m using the stove top at the same time…

Here is the pudding just as it’s come out of the oven…

And in a bowl with ice cream…

The original recipe says it serves 4, but I would say you’d get 6 or more servings out of it. It is extremely sweet, so hard to eat a lot at once.

Ingredients
- 100g good-quality dark chocolate, roughly chopped (I used Belcolade chocolate that I picked up at our local grocer).
- 1 egg
- 19g caster sugar
- 1 tsp cocoa powder, sifted
- 100ml thickened cream, plus extra whipped cream to serve
- Grated chocolate, to serve

How to
Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl in the microwave for 20 seconds. Stir thoroughly then heat for another 20 seconds. Stir through until all chocolate is melted. Set aside to cool slightly.

Combine eggs and sugar in a large bowl and beat with electric beaters for 5 minutes, or until mixture is pale, thick and doubled in volume. Fold in cooled chocolate and cocoa powder until combined.

In a separate bowl, whip cream until thickened. Use a large metal spoon to carefully fold the cream into the chocolate mixture, trying to keep the mixture as light as possible. Spoon into 2 serving glasses and chill in fridge for at least 1 hour. Top with extra whipped cream and grated chocolate to serve.

—

This is the richest chocolate mousse we’ve ever eaten. So much so we didn’t even get through the whole thing – we’ve got spare in the fridge for tomorrow. Nom.

50g butter
1/2 cup raw sugar
1/4 honey
1 crushed Weetbix
Just under 3/4 cup of Carman’s Classic Fruit Muesli
1/2 cup self raising flour

1. Preheat oven to 170C.
2. Melt butter, sugar and honey in a saucepan on medium heat.
3. Stir until sugar dissolved, then set aside to cool slightly.
4. In a bowl, combine Weetbix, muesli and self raising flour.
5. Pour combined dry ingredients into the butter, sugar and honey.
6. Mix well with a wooden spoon until combined.
7. Spread mix onto a baking paper lined tray, and put in the oven.
8. Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown.
9. Remove from oven and let cool before cutting to your preferred size.

Jarod approves. Om nom nom.

Ingredients:

- 3 tablespoons SR flour
- 3 tablespoons caster sugar
- 2 tablespoons cocoa
- 1 egg
- 3 tablespoons milk
- 3 tablespoons softened butter
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla essence
- 1 tablespoon choc chips (or more)
- 1 large mug

Method:

- Cream the butter and sugar with a fork.
- Add dry ingredients to the mug…mix well.
- Crack egg into mug. Mix well, scrape bottom to avoid any pockets of flour in the corners.
- Pour in the milk and vanilla essence. Mix some more.
- Add the choc-chips and stir a tiny bit. not too much or they all go to the bottom.
- Pop your mug into the microwave and cook for 2 minutes 30 seconds on high.
- Use mits when you get it out of the microwave. Tip into bowl already filled with ice cream.

It turned out to be nothing short of delicious, and we nommed the lot. Ok, now that all that formal stuff on how to make it is out of the way, lets have photos and crazy caption time!!

All the ingredients assembled.

Caster Sugar. Mmmmm, sweet!

The butter refused it leave its spoon. It was later prodded by a fork.

Creamed butter and sugar.

Cooooocooooooaaaa!

Self Raising Flour.

Stir stir stir.

1 egg. No egg shell.

More stiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrring.

Milk.

Yet more stirring.

Clean the outside edges for cleanliness sake.

Taste the batter to ensure deliciousness.

Add a precise quantity of choc bits.

Cook for two and a half minutes in your microwave on high.

Or until it rises and hits the ceiling of your microwave.

Use an oven mit. It’s friggen hot.

Icecream first.

Then the cake cake cake.

Thumbs up after a quick taste test.