rhubarb & white choc muffins

* egg & (almost) dairy free *

Yuuuum. This morning I got to town early enough to buy a muffin for breakfast. Raspberry & white chocolate. And then I was reading a post at pioneer woman about rhubarb cobbler.

Bam. It hit me. Rhubarb muffins. Perfect with apple sauce to replace eggs.

So when I got home from work this evening, instead of the millions of things I actually need to do, I got my bake on. Checked out a few recipes online, but meh, who needs a recipe?

All ya gotta do is roast some chunks of rhubarb sprinkled with a little brown sugar for about 1/2 an hour til they look like this...



Then dump them in a bowl which already contains a sticky mixture of SR flour, brown sugar, applesauce, water and cooking oil.


Add in some white chocolate chips, mix gently, then spoon into muffin cases. Bung it in the oven for another 1/2 hour or so*.


Eat one straight out of the oven, you know, just to check. Then take some photos. Then offer to your housemates. Then eat another.


Decide that this muffin invention is worthy of a blog post. Stay up past your bedtime editting photos and trying to think of witty things to write.

See? Not difficult at all! If you're one of those sensible people who like quantities, here is roughly what I used. Tweak** to your heart's content.

3 stalks rhubarb in 1cm chunks
2 cups SR flour
1/2 cup (packed) brown sugar, plus extra to sprinkle on rhubarb
180 mL*** applesauce
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup cooking oil
1/2 cup white chocolate bits

bake rhubarb with sprinkle of brown sugar at 200C for 30 mins
mix SR flour and brown sugar
add applesauce, oil & water. mix.
add rhubarb & choc bits. stir gently til just combined
spoon into 12 muffin cases
bake at 200C for 20-30 minutes or until knife into centre comes out clean.



* 'so' means 'cooked'. The usual, people, knife comes out clean, lightly brown on top... yada yada.

** tweaking is the bomb, cos you get to eat/share many batches of muffins.

*** which is (fun fact) 12 tablespoons unless you live in australia (like me) where it's 9

a tea party and cake

A good friend had a tea party yesterday for her 21st birthday. I took my camera. Apparently I am incapable of taking a good photo of a person, but here are some tea cup photos for your enjoyment.

There were many teas and teapots.


This one is basically straight out of camera. Can't believe it turned out so well. Also, the cake was amaaazing.

I was mega dainty and lady-like in my jeans.


Note to self. Don't sit facing the sunniest window. Makes for... interesting light.

pumpkin pie, tassie style

Step One. Decide that it's a good afternoon to cheat, and buy pre-made pie crust.


Step Two. Make pumpkin pie using awesome and super simple recipe.


Step Three. Realise you have boatloads of pie mix left over. Add a bunch (that's an exact amount, no really) of SR flour and make pumpkin pie mini-muffins.


Step Four. Stare in horror at the mess you've made. Decide to blog instead of cleaning up.


Step Five. Eat pie for dinner (no-one wants a photo of that).

because it was on special and I was having a crappy day...

And I cooked a stirfry in it tonight. Waaaay better than a tiny frying pan!

Wok + glass of red with housemate + chocolate = much less crappy day.

while waiting

a review, of sorts

I just finished reading The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson. By the end I couldn't put it down, so that should speak for itself. But actually, it took me a couple of weeks to get into it. I read only a couple of pages at a time and wasn't really sure if I'd read the whole thing.

My problem? The world Sanderson has created is just so different from ours. It's rich in detail and culture and such, but my goodness it's complicated at first. It was overwhelming. By about 1/4 of the way through I had it figured out enough to really enjoy the story and characters, so I'm really glad I persevered, but it really took a while.

That's actually all I'm going to say. You should read it.

lazy day

Today was good. For the first time in aaaages, I had absolutely nothing on. And so I achieved absolutely nothing and it was amazing. Messed around with photoshop, went for a down hill walk with Mum (Dad picked us up so we didn't have to walk back up the hill in the rain), watched a DVD I'd already seen and read a book.
And now Mum's cooking dinner, so I don't even have to worry about that. Takes me back to simpler times.
I am SO lazy.