Why my cat is really a dog

Lizzie’s shower part II

I have a cat. Many of you know this already. But she’s not really a cat either. She kind of oscillates between a cat and a dog. Here’s proof:

-          She’s intelligent like a dog. By 4 months, she has learnt how to undo the buckle on her collar as well as a full knot. In fact, she has out-smarted me, and managed to undo everything I try to tie onto her neck.

-          She wakes me up every morning by licking my face. Except that her tongue is dry and coarse, not smooth and wet like that of a dog.

-          She’s more affectionate than most cats I have known. Whether its 12pm, 9pm or 2am, she waits at the door for me when I get home, but of course, instead of pouncing on me, she rubs herself on my legs. And no, it’s not just because she’s hungry. It’s real love J

-          I live in an apartment so you don’t get to see the postman, but if she sees one, I’m sure she will chase the postman too.

Here are the aspects of a cat she has managed to retain:

-          She’s religiously clean. Her fur is silky and whiter than cotton.

-          She, thankfully, doesn’t bark.

-          She doesn’t need to be walked

-          She entertains herself. Even a stray litter crystal can entertain her for hours.

I’m not trying to spark a war room debate between cats and dogs. But I just wanted to share that this cat/dog has managed to amuse me for hours on end. But then again, I am easily amused.

In my previous post, I mentioned that I threw a shower for her. Here’s the menu from the shower:

Pink and white macarons (the white is cream cheese frosting)

Strawberry frangipani tartlets

Lemonade scones

White chocolate and raspberry brownies

Banana and coconut cake covered with fondant/RTR

Tuna, corn and mayo sandwiches

Salmon and cucumber sandwiches

Kitten sugar cookies as party favours

Pink Lemonade

Assortment of teas

As you can probably tell, the theme is pink and white to pay homage to Lizzie’s colouring.

Recipes:

Pink Lemonade

Pink Lemonade is the easiest thing in the world. It’s one part cranberry juice to 4 parts lemonade. Or adjust to your liking.

That was the shortest recipe EVER!

Strawberry and frangipani tartlets

Tart shell

Use the recipe from the lemon tart recipe

Filling

1/3 cup good strawberry jam

100g almond meal

100g butter, softened

90g caster sugar

Zest of 1 orange

1 tablespoon vanilla paste or extract

Method

Prepare and blind bake tartlets per instruction. You can make the tartlets in patty pan moulds or muffin pans.

Turn oven to 170 degrees C.

Make frangipane cream by mixing together all ingredients for the filling (except strawberry jam) in a medium bowl using a fork.

Drop ½ teaspoon of strawberry jam in the bottom of the tart cases. Dollop over frangipane cream.

Bake for 15 minutes or until golden.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

Lemonade scones

Ingredients:

3 cups self-raising flour

1 cup heavy cream

1 cup fizzy lemonade

I egg yolk for egg wash

Method:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C

Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add more flour or lemonade if needed to get the right dough. It won’t ruin the final product. I promise.

The dough should be light and just holds together but not sticky. Do not overwork.

On a lightly floured surface, flatten dough to about 2cm in height. Your hands are fine. No need for a rolling pin. Dip an 8cm round cutter into flour and cut rounds from the dough. Combine scraps of the dough and reroll out to cut out more. However, everytime you cut from the re-rolled dough, make sure you roll the dough thicker to compensate for the air escaping.

Place each round next to each other, and make sure they are lightly touching.  That helps it to rise in the oven.

Whisk egg yolk with 1 tbsp of water. Brush over top of scones.

Put in oven and bake for 20 minutes or tops are golden.

Serve warm or at room temperature with whipped cream and strawberry jam.

Homemade Ricotta Gnocchi, with love

My most damning vice is my curiosity. Obsession with knowing why things are the way they are. Trying to find explanations for how things work. And then I challenge myself to create it from scratch. This is also expressed in my cooking and baking. I want to make pasta, bread, pizza dough all by hand, even though it’s a thousand times easier to buy from the shop. Not just that, it’s also because I believe everything tastes better when it’s made with love, rather than on a conveyor belt.

And the enjoyment I get seeing the happiness that is so evident on people’s faces, as they taste my food. It’s pure, selfish pleasure.

I made hot cross buns. Actually, my Kitchenaid mixer did most of the hard labour. But nevertheless I made hot cross buns. I made 10 and I only ate 1. Because I underestimated how much boys eat. By boys, I meant one boy. Singular.

But Easter is over, and it’s therefore pointless to post a recipe for hot cross buns. I did however, also make gnocchi. I found if you use Ricotta in place of the potato, it reduces the amount of carbs, makes the gnocchi lighter and you don’t need to peel, cut, and boil potatoes. Technically you need to weight the ingredients etc. But I didn’t so the quantities below are only an estimate of what I actually used. I think the most important reference point is how the dough feels in your hand rather than the exact science.

I also made the sauce using canned cherry tomatoes to make it that extra bit special J

Ingredients:

For the gnocchi:

200g fresh ricotta

1 cup plain flour, preferably Italian 00 (more as needed)

2 egg yolks (freeze the whites to make meringues, macarons etc later on)

½ coarse salt such as Maldon

¼ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

For the sauce:

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 large onion (or one small one), diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp dried basil

½ dried chilli flakes

1/3 cup vodka

1 can cherry tomatoes (regular canned tomatoes are also fine)

Handful of rocket

Handful of fresh basil

Extra parmesan for garnish

* Prawns, beef or other meats as you prefer. I’ve left mine vegetarian.

Method:

For the gnocchi:

Put all ingredients into a large bowl and mix with a fork until combined.

Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly and gently just until smooth. Do not over-knead or your gnocchi will be tough. The dough should feel moist and silky but not sticky. Incorporate more flour as needed, but again, too much flour also makes gnocchi tough.

Separate the dough into 3 portions and roll each portion into a long log 1 centimetre in diameter. Cut small pillows from the log, and using a fork dipped in flour, roll the pillows with the back of the fork.  

Remember that the gnocchi will swell when boiled so keep that in mind when deciding how big to cut your pillows.

Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Add salt (like you do normally with pasta). Drop the gnocchi in. Gnocchi is cooked when it floats to the surface of the water.

They also freeze well uncooked.

For the sauce:

Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onions and garlic with a little salt. Cook until fragrant and soft. Add dried basil and chilli.

Turn the heat up. Tip in the vodka (making sure your face is not directly over the saucepan. I won’t tell you why, you can just try it if you wish and tell me what happens J )

Cook until the alcohol is nearly evaporated.

Add canned tomatoes and half fill the empty can with water and add that too.

Bring to the boil and cook into the sauce is thick without the lid on. Approximately 20 minutes.

Add cooked, drained gnocchi.

Take the saucepan off heat. Wilt the rocket and basil in the residual heat. Grate over parmesan and serve 2 greedy people.

* If you wish to add meat to the sauce, add it after the vodka and before the cherry tomatoes. Make sure you brown the meat/mince sufficiently. If you want to add prawns, add this about 5 minutes before the sauce finishes cooking as prawns take a lot shorter to cook and overcooking will make it rubbery.

I love my job and this mud cake

I love my job. Don’t turn your eyebrows at me.

Why am I telling you this on a baking blog you ask?

For one thing, I bribe people at work with my baking. It’s a good negotiation tool to have on hand. You should try it one day. And best of all, it is not covered by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act J

Food aside, my job is also a significant part of how I experience my life. It may not be as enjoyable as food, but it really helps if I at least like it. And I do.

I look at software contracts, bids and accounting standards all day, all week, all year. Software revenue recognition is the Everest of the accounting world. Because once you have conquered that, everything else seems only remotely interesting. At least I believe so.

Everyday I deal with idiots who really belong in the circus. But I appreciate it when I do find someone who just gets it. It helps me build relationships with people who count.

Once in a while I need to stay up late for an overseas conference call. It works well, because I’m practically nocturnal. But not so well when it’s an early morning one.

Every month end I have 50 billion journals to approve. It helps me understand the details. When it’s year end, I stay back late every day. It makes me feel like I’m contributing, even though I’m really just writing in my blog.

Every other day, I have auditors on my back. But it puts me on my toes and allows me to see the big picture. They are also an easy target for venting.

It also makes me crave chocolate more than what is natural and acceptable. I obsess over it all day, and then go home and bake something chocolatey and post it on here. See? It’s the cycle of life.

So now I have to tell you about this Mississippi mud cake. It’s dense, chocolatey and above all, sodden with Kahlua. It should be what people make wedding cakes out of, rather than that dry, solid stuff you need to eat like you would a steak.

Recipe: Mississippi Mud Cake

A liquid batter makes for a moist, dense cake. Baking it at low temperatures also helps. But you do have to be patient waiting for it to bake.

I recently made a double batch of this recipe and made a 2 tier cake to take to a birthday party where 1/3 of the attendees were children. It really only hit me much later that the liqueur and coffee wasn’t exactly appropriate for consumption by children. But hey, they enjoyed it and no one complained. That I know of.

Ingredients:

Makes 1 x 23cm/ 9” round cake

200g unsalted butter, chopped
150g best quality dark chocolate, chopped
250ml (1 cup) hot water
1 tablespoon instant coffee powder

80ml (1/3 cup) Kahlua or other coffee liqueur
1 tsp vanilla extract

440g (2 cups) caster sugar
250g (1½ cups) plain flour

1 tsp baking powder
25g (¼ cup) cocoa powder, sifted (very important, unless you are using the ultra expensive Valrhona cocoa)

½ tsp salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Method:

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Lightly grease a 23cm/9” cake pan with butter or veg oil; then line the bottom with baking paper.

Melt butter and chocolate over low heat. Let cool.

Whisk together the coffee powder and hot water until no lumps remain. Add to the chocolate mixture along with the Kahlua and vanilla.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and cocoa. Whisk this slowly into the chocolate mixture to avoid spillage. Then the eggs.

Pour into the prepared pan.

Bake for 1 hour. I would start poking at it with a toothpick around 45 minutes, just because ovens vary greatly.

Stand cake 30 minutes; turn onto wire rack to cool completely.

You can do so much with this cake. You can stack layers of it with ganache and sculpt into different shapes. You can make it ahead of time and freeze; or refrigerate. It’s so versatile, and tastes devine! Just don’t make it for children like I did.

Lizzie's shower - Part I

I have previously spoken about making plans and things not going according to plan (which happens more often than not...at least for me. If you’ve experienced otherwise, then I offer you my heartfelt congratulations). This is one example of an opportunity that was thrust upon me with very little planning.

Just over a month ago, some photos my friend posted on facebook of a kitten caught my eye. While he is a good person, I could never imagine him nursing a kitten, until I saw photographic proof. I inquired into the situation and found that a stray cat close by, had a litter of 5 kittens, all needing good homes... and 2 of them were female and pure white; exactly what I had wanted for a very long time.

Now, for the next 3 days I tore myself apart finding excuses why I am an unfit cat mum:

“I’m so busy at work, the kitten would never be happy being left by itself for so long.”

“I will have to go home EVERY night; no sleepovers!!!”

“Kittens need to be fed 4-5 times a day; does that mean I need to go home at lunch time every day to feed it???”

And most persistently:

“I can handle plants, but I’m just not ready now to be responsible for another living thing!”

In the end, I pushed all those fears aside, and just did it. And I’m way happier for it. The kitten seems pretty smitten too. Exhibit A.

Given she was a stray, and presumably not litter trained, I was prepared to buy carpet stain removers in bulk. But the clever little thing knew instinctively to use the litter tray. In fact, she would hold it in than do it on the carpet.  She has yet to have an accident. Touch wood.

She also instinctively knew not to continue eating once she’s full; a task that’s proving near impossible for many a well trained; fully grown human. So I can leave dry food out all day, and give her wet food as a treat when and if I make it home. And no, I’m not breaching any laws for the mistreatment of animals. It’s a perfectly fine diet for a kitten. I’ve done my research.

Most people, myself included, will focus on the 101 ways things will go wrong. But once you’re actually in the situation, you realise just how quickly you adapt. All the things you had imagined to be too difficult; will suddenly seem second nature.

Looking at the situation from another perspective, the happiness that the kitten had brought into my life far outweighs the minor disruptions that I have to endure; or even the kaleidoscope of scratch marks on my limbs. Exhibit B.

So really, it’s not about whether I can make my kitten happy, but how much I value my own happiness. Yes, it’s narcissistic and selfish.  But its human nature, and subconsciously, it’s the motivation we leverage when deciding what actions to take.

How much effort am I willing to put in to make myself happy?

Of course, what you’re thinking of doing need to be feasible too. I mean I would love to jump straight to getting a puppy; but I would be breaking a few building bylaws. In any case, I had a shower for my kitten in celebration of her arrival in my life. Yes, I can completely understand if you are raising your eyebrows at me in disdain. But once you see the food, you will forgive me. I promise.