jussa lil' bit

This is my special fucken ladyfriend in her joy garden. She also grows veggies there.



Yes, abundance, yes. She also had this to say about common excess, and whilst it's not in standard 'comment' form I thought it was a lovely comment:

i really love the new blog,too. it's something that i think about a lot. and such a beautiful thing to soak in during a time when all i hear from everyone is tighten the belt, better get hip to the economics of scarcity, reign it in. but you say NO! sustainable excess! you're a fucking genius.

I wasn't going to leave in the 'fucking genius' bit but I thought it a bit dishonest not to present her words in their entirety.

I hadn't really thought about that myself when I started this little project up, but now that it's been put into those words in that order, I think about it all the time. And the more I think about that 'belt tightening' stuff the more little excesses I find to roll around in. And maybe in some small way that's a way of coping with things that are narrowing - by noticing the things on the other side which are opening up.

chocolate and beetroot cake

The first time I saw a slice of chocolate and beetroot cake it was displayed behind plexi-glass on the counter at Loafer, looking moist and shapely and deeply cocoa-coloured. I might even go so far as to use the word 'quivering' to describe it - it's a very sexy cake, and so very moist and spongey that you can almost detect movement in it the way you could with a pudding or jelly. And it's so packed with amazing that you envision it sort of jittering around on the plate until you break into it for the first bite, causing all of that energy to explode.

When we talk about beetroot there is always the preoccupation with the colour - the depth of it, the way it stains your fingers, your chopping board, your tongue. When you combine that with cocoa, well...you need to see it, really, and I'll need to take some photos through the process. There's also something, for me, about root vegetables that is really affirming, hardy, familiar, solid. The stuff reaches down into the ground to become what it is - there of course is something to be read in that - isn't there?

So when I saw that row of generous slices of chocolate beetroot cake, it went on my mental list of baking ambitions and showed up on the table a few weeks later. I served it to a couple of special friends, still warm, and the room was mostly quiet whilst it was consumed. It was a small event on a Sunday evening and everyone felt full of it. It is velvet and perfect. Vegetables making moisture in baked goods is the way forward.

The recipe, with credit given where credit is due:

chocolate and beetroot cake

the cake:

Roast 2 medium beetroots in foil @ 180C for 90 mins. Leave them to cool. Then mash them however you are able - puree is best, so food processor, blender, or knife/fork/immersion blender combination.

Cream 3 eggs and 1 cup of sugar in with the beetroot puree. Add 1 tsp vanilla (or the insides of a vanilla bean if you're so slowmantically inclined) and 3/4 cup veggie oil (or other preferred oil).

Sift these together:
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1/2 cup cocoa
and then combine with the wet ingredients.

Pour the batter into a lined cake tin, however you like them to be shaped, and bake for 40 minutes. Check for doneness, the size and shape of the pan will vary baking time. Let it cool for a little while and turn it out onto a plate.

the icing:

I didn't use this exactly. I wanted it to have cream in it so I whipped some cream and added some icing sugar to it, and a melted Lindt bar (100 grams of 70% dark). I may or may not have used a bit of vanilla, and I just add sugar a few tablespoonfuls at a time until I'm happy with the sweetness - I want the flavour of the chocolate to be the main feature, only a hint of sweetness. The beetroot provides so much sweet, and it is quite natural-tasting, mellow and sort of like real cane, it actually tastes a bit like a plant. So yeah, you can do what I did or figure out your own icing. This one, though, was amazing. I spread it on when the cake was still warm so it got a bit melty but in the perfect way - the first slices were definitely the best ones, and it's a whole new (still indulgent) experience the next day.

This is what it looks like.

abundance laboratories

the light that comes through your window in the morning,

and the chance to see it, evokes much gratitude.

the roots

At this week's market, a basket of multi-coloured carrots from Daylesford Organics. I particularly love purple carrots - there are some of the nantes variety sprouting on my windowsill - and am still searching for the perfect blue cheese dressing to adulterate their simple nutritional goodness. Taken by a special visitor who later turned a few of these babies into curry.

edible glitter

Easter cupcake from Babka. Lemon-flavoured and sprinkled with edible glitter, which is under-utilised in this modern culinary trend to minimalist aesthetics.

Yesterday was the perfect day, autumn at its best. Crisp and sunny and bright blue.

everything flowers

Garlic flower from a farm in the Grampians. We got some great tips for planting the bulbs which were at its very root, and some well-wishes that we wouldn't have to meet the farmer in a transaction the following year. Everywhere people are giving each other permission to be sustainable.

Oh, and in the background are some happy little beetrootlings.

So much just sprouts out of the ground. Lots of rain lately means everyone's deeply green and up-reaching. Tomorrow morning in the early light I start supporting peas and broad beanlings with bamboo and string.

exuberance

I have the privilege of knowing some fine individuals.

stories written in dust

Tiny corners of one particular goldmine of minute and ancient abundances. I'd like to someday grid the whole place and catalogue them. That would make a book.

chocolate chip cookies

My mum made chocolate chip cookies as a semi-profession, and so of course I will probably never use any recipe but hers - there's really no need. Hers were always thick and cakelike, but not dry - they were airy and pleasant to eat. You definitely would call them a cookie and not a biscuit. She had the timing perfect and they were never burned - she was very methodical and always working with the same equipment, not like us renters who have to move on just as we're figuring out the temperament of the oven that happens to us.

I've been making them since I left home, but I tend to modify the recipe as I've got more of a taste for flat, buttery, chewier cookies. I use real butter also, unsalted, a 250 g block of it (about a cup). I also use much less flour than she does - 2 cups, maybe a little more, but that's the thing you have to tailor very specifically to yourself. I prefer brown to white sugar so sometimes I only use brown. I also experiment with combinations of the two and find that 2 cups total is too much for me, so it's usually more like 1 1/2.

When I bake them I try to brown them a bit more, which isn't hard since they're so full of butter, and I go overboard on the chocolate chips because that tastes good to me. Or I do half the batch with a reasonable amount and then add a bunch extra for the last dozen. I also find that they are better as large cookies - ones you'd share or eat over a whole day - maybe 3 or 4 inches in diameter. That way they get crispy on the periphery and chewy in the centre, which gives you all of the textures you want. When you've got a small cookie you get a more uniform consistency, and I just want some heterogeneity.

I share them with everyone I can think of. They are the sort of thing that, unlike a slice of cake or a tart, travel well and can be passed from one hand to another. When I moved away from home at 18 my mum used to send them to me express post and they'd still be good on the other coast.

I can't bring myself to reprint her recipe in any other form than the original, so I have not listed my bastardisations - you'll have to scan the text above for them or, better yet, just figure out what sounds best to you and try it. After the first batch you'll know which way to go to get what you want.


Faukes Family Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oven at 350 F, 185 C, or gas mark 4 (knock of 15 degrees for fan-assisted, those horrible things)

Combine:
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup margarine (softened)
- 1/3 cup Crisco

Blend these together until smooth, whether you're strictly manual, pedal-powered, or electrically labour-saving in your method of creaming things. Assemble your dry ingredients and sift them together:

- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda (bicarb soda, sodium bicarbonate)
- 3 1/2 cups flour

and turn these into the wet ingredients until it's all absorbed.

Dump in 1 packet or more of your chocolate chips of choice and stir to distribute. Spoon them onto a cookie sheet and place in heated oven for 12 minutes. Sell them to your friends and their friends and the ladies at the bank, and then use the money to buy your kids' Christmas presents.

dreamers of dreams